From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Sun May 1 00:11:14 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:11:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > What about the ability of accumulating virtual exchange units - > essentially by the manipulation thereof and beyond any limit of what > you can expect to be able to consume - having become the exclusive > adaptative trait, hierarchical factor and status symbol in our > societies? > I don't think anyone should be able to hoard more than they can consume. Not as long as there are those who're starving/dehydrating/freezing to death. When I know that those BILLIONS of people out there, who fight daily to survive, are incapable of making the 'smart' moves these Billionaires make (having been provided the same stable upbringing), THEN I'll concede, and personally hand them their 7, 8, 9 figure checks. Until then, be grateful to be standing on the shoulder of giants, and live off of a measly $5million a year, or some arbitrary multiple of the poorest income. $$$=Opportunity. Having 8 or 9 figures in your acct just means that there are MANY who won't have opportunity---because of you. Rationalize it away any way you'd like. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun May 1 00:48:06 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:48:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: References: <4DB48803.5000900@lightlink.com> <4DB567CA.505@lightlink.com> <20110425143156.GR23560@leitl.org> <4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com> <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: <007d01cc0799$703bcde0$50b369a0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Keith Henson ... Aluminum has a density of 2700 kg/cubic meter so if the shell were made of Al, it would be .001568 kg/m^2/2700 kg/m^3 or 5.8 x 10-7 meters thick. Or 580 nm thick... Keith I got the 600 nm number. The scheme I had in mind uses thicker reflectors however. From spike66 at att.net Sun May 1 01:11:35 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:11:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007a01cc06f4$a5a9fe70$f0fdfb50$@att.net> <009c01cc06fb$aa9bd8c0$ffd38a40$@att.net> Message-ID: <008901cc079c$b7c22b70$27468250$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mr Jones Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2011 4:44 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 1:58 AM, spike wrote: Simple solution: get an average worker to serve as CEO. Any takers? I'll take it. OK cool. Now all you need to do is find a board of directors willing to trust you with their fortune, and we have instant parity between CEO wages and that of the average worker. That was easy. Oh wait, they want someone with more. credentials? Don't they understand such people are expensive? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun May 1 03:33:24 2011 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:33:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] psi debate at Harvard (video) In-Reply-To: <4DBC8796.4070306@satx.rr.com> References: <4DBC8796.4070306@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <225570.28951.qm@web65601.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- > From: Damien Broderick > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Sat, April 30, 2011 3:05:10 PM > Subject: [ExI] psi debate at Harvard (video) > > Recent psi debate at Harvard, with Daryl Bem, Jonathan Schooler, and Sam >Moulton: > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tdiu5kwjKs That was interesting. It got me thinking if this samurai's skill at slicing airsoft bb's out of the air at 200+ mph with a sword might utilize a similar mechanism of presentiment/prescience or whatever you want to call it.?Sure does sound like the?psychologist is describing something similar when she fumbles for an explanation. History channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h9jrRTzlIY&feature=related Japanese TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj1Jytiw8e0 ?Stuart LaForge "There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure."- Dwight D. Eisenhower From reasonerkevin at yahoo.com Sun May 1 06:07:21 2011 From: reasonerkevin at yahoo.com (Kevin Freels) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 23:07:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Capitalism 2.0 was Status as human motivator In-Reply-To: References: <00c701cc0518$d0e42b70$72ac8250$@att.net> Message-ID: <87249.24110.qm@web81606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ________________________________ On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 2:22 PM, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis > ... > >>... I would not be averse even to nationalizing the banking system -- > investment and retail -- completely, just plain taking it out of the private > sector. The long and ignoble history of thievery in the business of big > money flows just begs for it...Best, Jeff Davis > > What of the long and ignoble history of thievery in the business of > government? Nationalizing the banking system will not help. Rather it > would make a bad problem worse, much worse. >+1 Spike! Look no further than the current irresponsible actions of >the Federal Reserve in devaluing the dollar. Sigh. In contrast to the responsible behavior of the private sector banks? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From reasonerkevin at yahoo.com Sun May 1 06:14:05 2011 From: reasonerkevin at yahoo.com (Kevin Freels) Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 23:14:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] it's better than it used to be In-Reply-To: References: <002b01cc04a1$82795fe0$876c1fa0$@att.net> Message-ID: <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Kelly said: Wikipedia is important primarily as a prime example of a new economic model that is, IMHO quite important. The encyclopedia itself is a huge accomplishment, but the open source economic model is the paradigm shift, and I believe that actually does rank up there with the invention of the printing press, double entry book-keeping, money, writing, poetry, musical notation, the English patent system, discovery of evolution, the invention of intellectual property, sliced bread and the scientific method as one of the great memes of all time. It will take a couple more decades, I think, to fully appreciate the model for what it will become, but I have no doubt that it will take its place among these other great memes. Kevin replies: Have you considered that the new economic model represented by Wikipedia isn't new at all? It is communism. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Sun May 1 07:04:44 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 00:04:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] PaleoCRON? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Probably too late for me then... I eat like shit. > Kelly, it's lots of fun to post to email lists on stimulating topics. But if you're seriously interested in living longer and seeing the future and having a life there, you're much better off devoting more time to things that can directly and clearly make a difference: -- learn about an implement healthier eating practices (it's NOT too late) -- learn about and adopt an efficient and effective exercise program -- make arrangements for cryopreservation, in case all else fails Onward! --- Max Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 1 10:14:56 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 12:14:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Capitalism 2.0 was Status as human motivator In-Reply-To: <87249.24110.qm@web81606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <00c701cc0518$d0e42b70$72ac8250$@att.net> <87249.24110.qm@web81606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DBD32A0.5070401@libero.it> Il 01/05/2011 08:07, Kevin Freels ha scritto: >>+1 Spike! Look no further than the current irresponsible actions of >>the Federal Reserve in devaluing the dollar. Sigh. > > In contrast to the responsible behavior of the private sector banks? The responsible private sector bank is to turn a profit (bigger is better) to their shareholders. If the Fed. and the government screw the working conditions, it is not the bankers to blame. It is not their job to write laws and rules. I don't think the banker went to the politicians with a gun, pointed it to the politician's heads and forced them to write these laws, mandate, rules. Mirco From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 1 13:14:04 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 06:14:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] it's better than it used to be In-Reply-To: <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <002b01cc04a1$82795fe0$876c1fa0$@att.net> <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/4/30 Kevin Freels : snip > Have you considered that the new economic model represented by Wikipedia > isn't new at all? It is communism. Not so. It is an alternate way of paying people. They get paid in status. Most people will work harder for status than they will for money. It's why lawyers give up big bucks to become judges. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 1 13:50:29 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 14:50:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Capitalism 2.0 was Status as human motivator In-Reply-To: <4DBD32A0.5070401@libero.it> References: <00c701cc0518$d0e42b70$72ac8250$@att.net> <87249.24110.qm@web81606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DBD32A0.5070401@libero.it> Message-ID: On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > I don't think the banker went to the politicians with a gun, pointed it > to the politician's heads and forced them to write these laws, mandate, > rules. > > You appear to know very little about how the Wall Street criminals work. The government regulators are in the pocket of the banks. The laws do not get enforced because they are paid off by the billionaires on Wall Street. The super rich ignore laws because money pays off all little problems. In 2007 they went to the Fed and said either you pay us off with a trillion dollar bailout or we crash the world financial system. Guns to the head are not just mechanical devices. BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 1 14:06:33 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 07:06:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: The New Speed of Money, Reshaping Markets In-Reply-To: <4dbd09b8.08452b0a.2584.ffffc705SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> References: <4dbd09b8.08452b0a.2584.ffffc705SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> Message-ID: Closely related to the recent threads here: "One debate has focused on whether some traders are firing off fake orders thousands of times a second to slow down exchanges and mislead others. Michael Durbin, who helped build high-frequency trading systems for companies like Citadel and is the author of the book ?All About High-Frequency Trading,? says that most of the industry is legitimate and benefits investors. But, he says, the rules need to be strengthened to curb some disturbing practices. ?Markets are there for capital formation and long-term investment, not for gaming,? he says. "As it tries to work out the implications of the technology, the S.E.C. is a year into a continuing review of the new market structure." Keith http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/business/02speed.html?src=busln ============================================================ January 1, 2011 The New Speed of Money, Reshaping Markets By GRAHAM BOWLEY Secaucus, N.J. A SUBSTANTIAL part of all stock trading in the United States takes place in a warehouse in a nondescript business park just off the New Jersey Turnpike. Few humans are present in this vast technological sanctum, known as New York Four. Instead, the building, nearly the size of three football fields, is filled with long avenues of computer servers illuminated by energy-efficient blue phosphorescent light. Countless metal cages contain racks of computers that perform all kinds of trades for Wall Street banks, hedge funds, brokerage firms and other institutions. And within just one of these cages ? a tight space measuring 40 feet by 45 feet and festooned with blue and white wires ? is an array of servers that together form the mechanized heart of one of the top four stock exchanges in the United States. The exchange is called Direct Edge, hardly a household name. But as the lights pulse on its servers, you can almost see the holdings in your 401(k) zip by. ?This,? says Steven Bonanno, the chief technology officer of the exchange, looking on proudly, ?is where everyone does their magic.? In many of the world?s markets, nearly all stock trading is now conducted by computers talking to other computers at high speeds. As the machines have taken over, trading has been migrating from raucous, populated trading floors like those of the New York Stock Exchange to dozens of separate, rival electronic exchanges. They rely on data centers like this one, many in the suburbs of northern New Jersey. While this ?Tron? landscape is dominated by the titans of Wall Street, it affects nearly everyone who owns shares of stock or mutual funds, or who has a stake in a pension fund or works for a public company. For better or for worse, part of your wealth, your livelihood, is throbbing through these wires. The advantages of this new technological order are clear. Trading costs have plummeted, and anyone can buy stocks from anywhere in seconds with the simple click of a mouse or a tap on a smartphone?s screen. But some experts wonder whether the technology is getting dangerously out of control. Even apart from the huge amounts of energy the megacomputers consume, and the dangers of putting so much of the economy?s plumbing in one place, they wonder whether the new world is a fairer one ? and whether traders with access to the fastest machines win at the expense of ordinary investors. It also seems to be a much more hair-trigger market. The so-called flash crash in the market last May ? when stock prices plunged hundreds of points before recovering ? showed how unpredictable the new systems could be. Fear of this volatile, blindingly fast market may be why ordinary investors have been withdrawing money from domestic stock mutual funds ?$90 billion worth since May, according to figures from the Investment Company Institute. No one knows whether this is a better world, and that includes the regulators, who are struggling to keep up with the pace of innovation in the great technological arms race that the stock market has become. WILLIAM O?BRIEN, a former lawyer for Goldman Sachs, crosses the Hudson River each day from New York to reach his Jersey City destination ? a shiny blue building opposite a Courtyard by Marriott. Mr. O?Brien, 40, works there as chief executive of Direct Edge, the young electronic stock exchange that is part of New Jersey?s burgeoning financial ecosystem. Seven miles away, in Secaucus, is the New York Four warehouse that houses Direct Edge?s servers. Another cluster of data centers, serving various companies, is five miles north, in Weehawken, at the western mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel. And yet another is planted 20 miles south on the New Jersey Turnpike, at Exit 12, in Carteret, N.J. As Mr. O?Brien says, ?New Jersey is the new heart of Wall Street.? Direct Edge?s office demonstrates that it doesn?t take many people to become a major outfit in today?s electronic market. The firm, whose motto is ?Everybody needs some edge,? has only 90 employees, most of them on this building?s sixth floor. There are lines of cubicles for programmers and a small operations room where two men watch a wall of screens, checking that market-order traffic moves smoothly and, of course, quickly. Direct Edge receives up to 10,000 orders a second. Mr. O?Brien?s personal story reflects the recent history of stock-exchange upheaval. A fit, blue-eyed Wall Street veteran, who wears the monogram ?W O?B? on his purple shirt cuff, Mr. O?Brien is the son of a seat holder and trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1970s, when the Big Board was by far the biggest game around. But in the 1980s, Nasdaq, a new electronic competitor, challenged that dominance. And a bigger upheaval came in the late 1990s and early 2000s, after the Securities and Exchange Commission enacted a series of regulations to foster competition and drive down commission costs for ordinary investors. These changes forced the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq to post orders electronically and execute them immediately, at the best price available in the United States ? suddenly giving an advantage to start-up operations that were faster and cheaper. Mr. O?Brien went to work for one of them, called Brut. The N.Y.S.E. and Nasdaq fought back, buying up smaller rivals: Nasdaq, for example, acquired Brut. And to give itself greater firepower, the N.Y.S.E., which had been member-owned, became a public, for-profit company. Brokerage firms and traders came to fear that a Nasdaq-N.Y.S.E. duopoly was asserting itself, one that would charge them heavily for the right to trade, so they created their own exchanges. One was Direct Edge, which formally became an exchange six months ago. Another, the BATS Exchange, is located in another unlikely capital of stock market trading: Kansas City, Mo. Direct Edge now trails the N.Y.S.E. and Nasdaq in size; it vies with BATS for third place. Direct Edge is backed by a powerful roster of financial players: Goldman Sachs, Knight Capital, Citadel Securities and the International Securities Exchange, its largest shareholder. JPMorgan also holds a stake. Direct Edge still occupies the same building as its original founder, Knight Capital, in Jersey City. The exchange now accounts for about 10 percent of stock market trading in the United States, according to the exchange and the TABB Group, a specialist on the markets. Of the 8.5 billion shares traded daily in the United States, about 833 million are bought and sold on Mr. O?Brien?s platforms. As it has grown, Direct Edge and other new venues have sucked volumes away from the Big Board and Nasdaq. The N.Y.S.E. accounted for more than 70 percent of trading in N.Y.S.E.-listed stocks just five years ago. Now, the Big Board handles only 36 percent of those trades itself. The remaining market share is divided among about 12 other public exchanges, several electronic trading platforms and vast so-called unlit markets, including those known as dark pools. THE Big Board is embracing the new warp-speed world. Although it maintains a Wall Street trading floor, even that is mostly electronic. The exchange also has its own, separate electronic arm, Arca, and opened a new data center last year for its computers in Mahwah, N.J. >From his office in New Jersey, Mr. O?Brien looks back across the water to Manhattan and his former office on the 50th floor of the Nasdaq building at One Liberty Plaza, and he reflects wistfully on the huge changes that have taken place. ?To walk out of there to go across the river to Jersey City,? he says. ?That was a big leap of faith.? His colleague, Bryan Harkins, the exchange?s chief operating officer, sounds confident about the impact of the past decade?s changes. The new world is fairer, he says, because it is more competitive. ?We helped break the grip of the New York Stock Exchange,? he says. In this high-tech stock market, Direct Edge and the other exchanges are sprinting for advantage. All the exchanges have pushed down their latencies ? the fancy word for the less-than-a-blink-of-an-eye that it takes them to complete a trade. Almost each week, it seems, one exchange or another claims a new record: Nasdaq, for example, says its time for an average order ?round trip? is 98 microseconds ? a mind-numbing speed equal to 98 millionths of a second. The exchanges have gone warp speed because traders have demanded it. Even mainstream banks and old-fashioned mutual funds have embraced the change. ?Broker-dealers, hedge funds, traditional asset managers have been forced to play keep-up to stay in the game,? Adam Honor?, research director of the Aite Group, wrote in a recent report. Even the savings of many long-term mutual fund investors are swept up in this maelstrom, when fund managers make changes in their holdings. But the exchanges are catering mostly to a different market breed ? to high-frequency traders who have turned speed into a new art form. They use algorithms to zip in and out of markets, often changing orders and strategies within seconds. They make a living by being the first to react to events, dashing past slower investors ? a category that includes most investors ? to take advantage of mispricing between stocks, for example, or differences in prices quoted across exchanges. One new strategy is to use powerful computers to speed-read news reports ? even Twitter messages ? automatically, then to let their machines interpret and trade on them. By using such techniques, traders may make only the tiniest fraction of a cent on each trade. But multiplied many times a second over an entire day, those fractions add up to real money. According to Kevin McPartland of the TABB Group, high-frequency traders now account for 56 percent of total stock market trading. A measure of their importance is that rather than charging them commissions, some exchanges now even pay high-frequency traders to bring orders to their machines. High-frequency traders are ?the reason for the massive infrastructure,? Mr. McPartland says. ?Everyone realizes you have to attract the high-speed traders.? As everyone goes warp speed, a number of high-tech construction projects are under way. One such project is a 428,000-square-foot data center in the western suburbs of Chicago opened by the CME Group, which owns the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It houses the exchange?s Globex electronic futures and options trading platform and space for traders to install computers next to the exchange?s machines, a practice known as co-location ? at a cost of about $25,000 a month per rack of computers. The exchange is making its investment because derivatives as well as stocks are being swept up in the high-frequency revolution. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission estimates that high-frequency traders now account for about one-third of all volume on domestic futures exchanges. In August, Spread Networks of Ridgeland, Miss., completed an 825-mile fiber optic network connecting the South Loop of Chicago to Cartaret, N.J., cutting a swath across central Pennsylvania and reducing the round-trip trading time between Chicago and New York by three milliseconds, to 13.33 milliseconds. Then there are the international projects. Fractions of a second are regularly being shaved off of the busy Frankfurt-to-London route. And in October, a company called Hibernia Atlantic announced plans for a new fiber-optic link beneath the Atlantic from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Somerset, England that will be able to send shares from London to New York and back in 60 milliseconds. Bjarni Thorvardarson, chief executive of Hibernia Atlantic, says the link, due to open in 2012, is primarily intended to meet the needs of high-frequency algorithmic traders and will cost ?hundreds of millions of dollars.? ?People are going over the lake and through the church, whatever it takes,? he says. ?It is very important for these algorithmic traders to have the most advanced technology.? The pace of investment, of course, reflects the billions of dollars that are at stake. The data center in Weehawken is a modern building that looks more like a shopping mall than a center for equity trading. But one recent afternoon, the hammering and drilling of the latest phase of expansion seemed to conjure up the wealth being dug out of the stock market. As the basement was being transformed into a fourth floor for yet more computers, one banker who was touring the complex explained the matter bluntly: ?Speed,? he said, ?is money. ? THE ?flash crash,? the harrowing plunge in share prices that shook the stock market during the afternoon of May 6 last year, crystallized the fears of some in the industry that technology was getting ahead of the regulators. In their investigation into the plunge, the S.E.C. and Commodity Futures Trading Commission found that the drop was precipitated not by a rogue high-frequency firm, but by the sale of a single $4.1 billion block of E-Mini Standard & Poor?s 500 futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange by a mutual fund company. The fund company, Waddell & Reed Financial of Overland Park, Kan., conducted its sale through a computer algorithm provided by Barclays Capital, one of the many off-the shelf programs available to investors these days. The algorithm automatically dripped the billions of dollars of sell orders into the futures market over 20 minutes, continuing even as prices started to drop when other traders jumped in. The sale may have been a case of inept timing ? the markets were already roiled by the debt crisis in Europe. But there was no purposeful attempt to disrupt the market, the regulators found. But there was a role played by some high-frequency machines, the investigation found. As they detected the big sale and the choppy conditions, some of them shut down automatically. As the number of buyers plunged, so, too, did the Dow Jones Industrial Average, losing more than 700 points in minutes before the computers returned and prices recovered just as quickly. More than 20,000 trades were ruled invalid. The episode seemed to demonstrate the vulnerabilities of the new market, and just what could happen when no humans are in charge to correct the machines. Since the flash crash, the S.E.C. and the exchanges have introduced marketwide circuit breakers on individual stocks to halt trading if a price falls 10 percent within a five-minute period. But some analysts fear that some aspects of the flash crash may portend dangers greater than mere mechanical failure. They say some wild swings in prices may suggest that a small group of high-frequency traders could manipulate the market. Since May, there have been regular mini-flash crashes in individual stocks for which, some say, there are still no satisfactory explanations. Some experts say these drops in individual stocks could herald a future cataclysm. In a speech last month, Bart Chilton, a member of the futures trading commission, raised concerns about the effect of high-frequency trading on the markets. ?With the advent of ? Star Trek?-like, gee-whiz H.F.T. technology, we are witnessing one of the most game-changing and tumultuous shifts we have ever seen in financial markets,? Mr. Chilton said. ?We also have to think about the myriad ramifications of technology.? One debate has focused on whether some traders are firing off fake orders thousands of times a second to slow down exchanges and mislead others. Michael Durbin, who helped build high-frequency trading systems for companies like Citadel and is the author of the book ?All About High-Frequency Trading,? says that most of the industry is legitimate and benefits investors. But, he says, the rules need to be strengthened to curb some disturbing practices. ?Markets are there for capital formation and long-term investment, not for gaming,? he says. As it tries to work out the implications of the technology, the S.E.C. is a year into a continuing review of the new market structure. Mary L. Schapiro, the S.E.C. chairwoman, has already proposed creating a consolidated audit trail, so that buying and selling records from different exchanges can be examined together in one place. In speeches, Ms. Schapiro has also raised the idea of limiting the speed at which machines can trade, or requiring high-frequency traders to stay in markets as buyers or sellers even in volatile conditions. just as human market makers often did on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. . ?The emergence of multiple trading venues that offer investors the benefits of greater competition also has made our market structure more complex,? she said in Senate testimony last month, adding, ?We should not attempt to turn the clock back to the days of trading crowds on exchange floors.? MOST of the exchanges have already eliminated a controversial electronic trading technique known as flash orders, which allow traders? computers to peek at other investors? orders a tiny fraction of a second before they are sent to the wider marketplace. Direct Edge, however, still offers a version of this service. The futures trading commission is considering how to regulate data centers, and the practice of co-location. The regulators are also examining the implications of so-called dark pools, another product of the technological revolution, in which large blocks of shares are traded electronically and without the scrutiny exercised on public markets. Their very name raises questions about the transparency of markets. About 30 percent of domestic equities are traded on these and other ?unlit? venues, the S.E.C. says. For Mr. O?Brien, the benefits of technology are clear. ?One thing has surprised me: people have looked at this as a bad thing,? he says. ?There is almost no other industry where people say we need less technology. Fifteen years ago, trades took much longer to execute and were much more expensive by any measure? because market power was more concentrated in a few large firms. ?Now someone can execute a trade from their mobile from anywhere on the planet. That seems to me like a market that is fairer.? For others who work at the company or elsewhere in the financial ecosystem of New Jersey, it has been a boon. ?A lot of my friends work here or in this area,? says Andrei Girenkov, 28, one of Direct Edge?s chief programmers, over lunch recently in Dorrian?s restaurant in Direct Edge?s building. ?It changed my life.? But some analysts question whether everyone benefits from this technological upending. ?It is a technological arms race in financial markets and the regulators are a bit caught unaware of how quickly the technology has evolved,? says Andrew Lo, director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at M.I.T. ?Sometimes, too much technology without the ability to manage it effectively can yield some unintended consequences. We need to ask the hard questions about how much of this do we really need. It is the Wild, Wild West in trading.? Mr. Lo suggests a need for a civilizing influence. ?Finally,? he says, ?it gets to the point where we have a massive traffic jam and we need to install traffic lights.? From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 1 14:21:35 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 07:21:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: The Theory That's Killing America's Economy -- and Why It's Wrong In-Reply-To: <4dbd04af.e7d8e70a.6f72.ffffd4f4SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> References: <4dbd04af.e7d8e70a.6f72.ffffd4f4SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> Message-ID: The main point made here: "The problem here is that the theory of comparative advantage pays no attention to the long term. So it can quite easily recommend a trade policy that gives us the highest possible living standard in the short run -- but by way of selling off our country out from under us. "This is what happens when a nation runs a trade deficit, which necessarily means that it's either sinking into debt to foreigners or selling off its existing assets to them. "The theory of comparative advantage is blind to this problem because it treats people's time horizons as a given. So if a nation wants a short-term consumption binge followed by long-term decline, the theory says "OK, no problem. You wanted it, you got it, what's not to like?" Keith http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/the-theory-thats-killing-_b_846452.html ========================================================== Ian Fletcher Author, 'Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why' The Theory That's Killing America's Economy -- and Why It's Wrong Posted: 04/ 7/11 08:43 PM ET I wrote in a previous article how America's disastrous embrace of free trade is ultimately based on a false theory of how the global economy works: the so-called Theory of Comparative Advantage. This is what economists, from the government on down, believe in. This matters. But I didn't explain why the theory is wrong -- which it is. Understanding its flaws is the price of admission to serious criticism of free trade, so it's well worth getting a grasp on them. Economic theory can be a tough chew, but it's worth the effort, if only to gain the intellectual confidence not to be intimidated by the so-called experts. So... let's take a look at some of that machinery behind the wizard's curtain, shall we? The theory's flaws, which are fairly well known to economists but mostly ignored, consist of a number of dubious assumptions upon which the theory depends. To wit: Dubious Assumption #1: Trade is sustainable. The problem here is that the theory of comparative advantage pays no attention to the long term. So it can quite easily recommend a trade policy that gives us the highest possible living standard in the short run -- but by way of selling off our country out from under us. This is what happens when a nation runs a trade deficit, which necessarily means that it's either sinking into debt to foreigners or selling off its existing assets to them. The theory of comparative advantage is blind to this problem because it treats people's time horizons as a given. So if a nation wants a short-term consumption binge followed by long-term decline, the theory says "OK, no problem. You wanted it, you got it, what's not to like?" A saner theory of trade (and of economics generally) would advise people that it's not a good idea to engage in decadent binges, regardless of how good it feels right now. It would recommend protectionist restraints on imports to force trade into balance, not free trade. Dubious Assumption #2: There are no externalities. An externality is a missing price tag. More precisely, it is the economists' term for when the price of a product does not reflect its true economic cost or value. The classic negative externality is environmental damage, which reduces the value of natural resources without raising the price of the product that harmed them. The classic positive externality is technological spillover, where one company's inventing a product enables others to copy or build upon it, generating wealth that the original company can't capture. If prices are wrong due to positive or negative externalities, free trade will produce suboptimal results. For example, goods from a nation with lax pollution standards will be too cheap. So its trading partners will import too much of them. And the exporting nation will export too much of them, overconcentrating its economy in industries that are not really as profitable as they seem, due to ignoring pollution damage. Positive externalities are also a problem. If an industry generates technological spillovers for the rest of the economy, then free trade can let that industry be wiped out by foreign competition because the economy ignored its hidden value. Some industries spawn new technologies, fertilize improvements in other industries, and drive economy-wide technological advance; losing these industries means losing all the industries that would have flowed from them in the future. Dubious Assumption #3: Productive resources move easily between industries. As noted in my original article, the theory of comparative advantage is about switching productive resources from less-valuable to more-valuable uses. It's about putting our economy to its own best use. But this assumes that the productive resources used to produce one product can switch to producing another. Because if they can't, then imports won't push our economy into industries better suited to its comparative advantage. Imports will just kill off our existing industries and leave nothing in their place. When workers, for example, can't move between industries--usually because they don't have the right skills or don't live in the right place--shifts in an economy's comparative advantage won't move them into a more appropriate industry, but into unemployment. In the United States, because of our relatively low minimum wage and hire-and-fire labor laws, this problem tends to take the form of underemployment, rather than unemployment per se. So $28 an hour ex-autoworkers go work at the video rental store for eight dollars an hour. The same goes for other inflexible factors of production, like real estate. That's why the shuttered factory rivals the unemployment line as a visual image of trade problems. Dubious Assumption #4: Trade does not raise income inequality. Even if free trade expands the economy overall (dubious), it can tilt the distribution of income so much that ordinary people see little or none of the gains. For example, suppose that opening up a nation to freer trade means that it starts exporting more airplanes and importing more clothes than before. Because the nation gets to expand an industry better suited to its comparative advantage and contract one less suited, it becomes more productive and its GDP goes up. So far, so good. Here's the rub: suppose that a million dollars' worth of clothes production requires one white-collar worker and nine blue-collar workers, while a million dollars of airplane production requires three white-collar workers and seven blue-collar workers. So for every million dollars' change in what gets produced, there is a demand for two more white-collar workers and two fewer blue-collar workers. Because demand for white-collar workers goes up and demand for blue-collar workers goes down, the wages of white-collar workers go up and those of blue-collar workers go down. But most workers are blue-collar workers -- so free trade has lowered wages for most workers in the economy! This is not a trivial problem: Dani Rodrik of Harvard estimates that freeing up trade reshuffles five dollars of income between different groups of people domestically for every one dollar of net gain it brings to the economy as a whole. Dubious Assumption #5: Capital is not internationally mobile. The theory of comparative advantage is about the best uses to which America can put its productive resources, what economists call "factors of production." We have certain cards in hand, so to speak, the other players have certain cards, and the theory tells us the best way to play the hand we've been dealt. Or more precisely, it tells us to let the free market play our hand for us, so market forces can drive all our factors to their best uses in our economy. Unfortunately, this relies upon the impossibility of these same market forces driving these factors right out of our economy. If that happens, all bets are off about driving these factors to their most productive use in our economy. Their most productive use may well be in another country, and if they are internationally mobile, then free trade will cause them to migrate there. This will benefit the world economy as a whole, and the nation they migrate to, but it will not necessarily benefit us. This problem applies to all factors of production, but the crux of the problem is capital. Capital mobility replaces comparative advantage, which applies when capital is forced to choose between alternative uses within a single national economy, with absolute advantage. And absolute advantage contains no guarantees whatsoever about the results being good for both trading partners. Capital immobility doesn't have to be absolute, but it has to be significant and as it melts away, trade shifts from a guarantee of win-win relations to a possibility of win-lose relations. David Ricardo, the British economist who invented the theory of comparative advantage in 1817, actually knew about this problem perfectly well, and wrote about it in his book on the subject. So there's no excuse for modern economists to ignore it. Dubious Assumption #6: Short-term efficiency causes long-term growth. The theory of comparative advantage is what economists call "static" analysis. That is, it looks at the facts of a single instant in time and determines the best response to those facts at that instant. But it says nothing about how today's facts may change tomorrow. More importantly, it says nothing about how one might cause them to change in one's favor. So even if the theory of comparative advantage tells us our best move today, given our productivities in various industries, it doesn't tell us the best way to raise those productivities tomorrow. That, however, is the essence of economic growth, and in the long run much more important than squeezing every last drop of advantage from the productivities we have today. Economic growth is ultimately less about using one's factors of production than about transforming them--into more productive factors tomorrow. The theory of comparative advantage is not so much wrong about long-term growth as simply silent. Analogously, it is a valid application of personal comparative advantage for someone with secretarial skills to work as a secretary and someone with banking skills to work as a banker. In the short run, it is efficient for them both, as it results in both being better paid than if they tried to swap roles. (They would both be fired for inability to do their jobs and earn zero.) But the path to personal success doesn't consist in being the best possible secretary forever; it consists in upgrading one's skills to better-paid occupations, like banker. And there is very little about being the best possible secretary that tells one how to do this. Dubious Assumption #7: Trade does not induce adverse productivity growth abroad. When we trade with a foreign nation, this will generally build up that nation's industries, i.e. raise its productivity in them. Now it would be nice to assume that this productivity growth in our trading partners can only make them ever more efficient at supplying the things we want, and we will just get ever cheaper foreign goods in exchange for our own exports, right? Wrong. Consider our present trade with China. Despite all the problems this trade causes us, we do get compensation in the form of some very cheap goods, thanks mainly to China's very cheap labor. The same goes for other poor countries we import from. But labor is cheap in poor countries because it has poor alternative employment opportunities. What if these opportunities improve? Then this labor may cease to be so cheap, and our supply of cheap goods may dry up. This is actually what happened in Japan from the 1960s to the 1980s, as Japan's economy transitioned from primitive to sophisticated manufacturing and the cheap merchandise readers over 40 will remember (the same things stamped "Made in China" today) disappeared from America's stores. Did this reduce the pressure of cheap Japanese labor on American workers? It did. But it also deprived us of some very cheap goods we used to get. And it's not like Japan stopped pressing us, either, as it moved upmarket and started competing in more sophisticated industries. Oops! When Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson -- author of the best-selling economics textbook in history -- reminded economists of this problem in a (quite accessible) 2004 article , he drew scandalized gasps from one end of the discipline to the other. But nobody was able to explain why he was wrong. They still haven't. I don't expect most readers to get all the above analysis the first time through. But I do hope that everyone who's read this far now understands that there is no good reason -- regardless of what most economists say -- to assume that free trade is necessarily best. The economic logic of those who say it is, is riddled with enough holes to sink a container ship. Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace it and Why by Ian Fletcher Follow Ian Fletcher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/IanFletcher From spike66 at att.net Sun May 1 14:12:29 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 07:12:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] it's better than it used to be In-Reply-To: <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <002b01cc04a1$82795fe0$876c1fa0$@att.net> <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004101cc0809$cf010460$6d030d20$@att.net> From: Kevin Freels Subject: Re: [ExI] it's better than it used to be Kelly said: >>.Wikipedia is important primarily as a prime example of a new economic model that is, IMHO quite important. Kevin replies: >.Have you considered that the new economic model represented by Wikipedia isn't new at all? It is communism. On the contrary. Communism is not voluntary. Wikipedia represents spontaneous creation of order and value, utterly without government intervention or subsidy. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun May 1 15:03:46 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 11:03:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2011/4/30 Mr Jones : > On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> >> What about the ability of accumulating virtual exchange units - >> essentially by the manipulation thereof and beyond any limit of what >> you can expect to be able to consume - having become the exclusive >> adaptative trait, hierarchical factor and status symbol in our >> societies? > > I don't think anyone should be able to hoard more than they can consume. > ?Not as long as there are those who're starving/dehydrating/freezing to > death. ?When I know that those BILLIONS of people out there, who fight daily > to survive, are incapable of making the 'smart' moves these Billionaires > make (having been provided the same stable upbringing), THEN I'll?concede, > and personally hand them their 7, 8, 9 figure checks. > Until then, be?grateful?to be standing on the shoulder of giants, and live > off of a?measly?$5million a year, or some arbitrary multiple of the poorest > income. > $$$=Opportunity. Having 8 or 9 figures in your acct just means that there > are MANY who won't have opportunity---because of you. Rationalize it away > any way you'd like. ### Ah, the typical moralizing - you can't be richer than I because somebody out there is poor. Of course, virtually none of the moralizers who are usually quite rich and personally, through charitable giving, well-capable of feeding/hydrating at least a couple hundred of the alleged victims of capitalism, actually does anything about it. All they do is rail against the rich. This tells me that their true intention is signaling - trying to tell the tribe they are one of us, not trying to raise themselves above others, showing solidarity with each and everyone, worthy of love and respect. Such hypocrisy is usually fueled by envy, sometimes by a desire to blend in with the masses, out of an instinctive fear of being attacked. They always attack the best, the few, since the few are an easy target for the looting mob. And if all this signaling makes an economy less efficient, therefore less able to improve the lives of everyone, including the poor - who cares? There are appearances to be kept, debate points to be scored. Screw the poor, they are just an excuse to kick your enemies in the shin. Rafal From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 1 16:59:46 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 11:59:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] it's better than it used to be In-Reply-To: <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <002b01cc04a1$82795fe0$876c1fa0$@att.net> <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DBD9182.8080405@satx.rr.com> On 5/1/2011 1:14 AM, Kevin Freels wrote: > > Have you considered that the new economic model represented by Wikipedia > isn't new at all? It is communism. No, it's anarchism. (Except that it's not really, because Jimmy and the others at the top still have unelected executive power.) Damien Broderick From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 1 17:52:27 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 19:52:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: The Theory That's Killing America's Economy -- and Why It's Wrong In-Reply-To: References: <4dbd04af.e7d8e70a.6f72.ffffd4f4SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <4DBD9DDB.2080904@libero.it> Il 01/05/2011 16:21, Keith Henson ha scritto: > The main point made here: > > "The problem here is that the theory of comparative advantage pays no > attention to the long term. So it can quite easily recommend a trade > policy that gives us the highest possible living standard in the short > run -- but by way of selling off our country out from under us. > > "This is what happens when a nation runs a trade deficit, which > necessarily means that it's either sinking into debt to foreigners or > selling off its existing assets to them. > > "The theory of comparative advantage is blind to this problem because > it treats people's time horizons as a given. So if a nation wants a > short-term consumption binge followed by long-term decline, the theory > says "OK, no problem. You wanted it, you got it, what's not to like?" > > Keith > > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/the-theory-thats-killing-_b_846452.html > ========================================================== The theory is right in its aprioristic setting. The rest is only a problem of time horizons. What is right with a time horizon of one year could be wrong with a time horizon of ten or one hundred. A trade deficit signal the nation, in its aggregate, value the money less than the stuff and services it can buy. The reverse is also true. Lower is the value of the money, greater the trade deficit. This is not strange if the money give no interest if saved and the interest is low when borrowed. Nor if the money is printed and showered around like there is tomorrow. Yes, I'm looking you, Fed! Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 1 18:07:11 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 20:07:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Capitalism 2.0 was Status as human motivator In-Reply-To: References: <00c701cc0518$d0e42b70$72ac8250$@att.net> <87249.24110.qm@web81606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DBD32A0.5070401@libero.it> Message-ID: <4DBDA14F.8060809@libero.it> Il 01/05/2011 15:50, BillK ha scritto: > On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: >> I don't think the banker went to the politicians with a gun, pointed it >> to the politician's heads and forced them to write these laws, mandate, >> rules. > You appear to know very little about how the Wall Street criminals work. > The government regulators are in the pocket of the banks. The laws do > not get enforced because they are paid off by the billionaires on Wall > Street. The super rich ignore laws because money pays off all little > problems. > In 2007 they went to the Fed and said either you pay us off with a > trillion dollar bailout or we crash the world financial system. Guns > to the head are not just mechanical devices. This is a reason, not an excuse, for the Fed or the government behaviour. The government could have nationalized the bank and saved them. Then they could have fired all executives and throw the book at them. Making them pay all the bonuses out of their nose. The government decided to be in the pocket of big banks and save them at the expenses of the people (in reality it decided it long time ago and it probably don't remember when it was not there). They are to be blamed as much, if not more, than the bankers. Because, if the government want they can change the rules. If they don't it is because they like the game as it is. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 1 18:31:14 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 20:31:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] it's better than it used to be In-Reply-To: <4DBD9182.8080405@satx.rr.com> References: <002b01cc04a1$82795fe0$876c1fa0$@att.net> <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DBD9182.8080405@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DBDA6F2.6020002@libero.it> Il 01/05/2011 18:59, Damien Broderick ha scritto: > On 5/1/2011 1:14 AM, Kevin Freels wrote: >> >> Have you considered that the new economic model represented by Wikipedia >> isn't new at all? It is communism. > > No, it's anarchism. (Except that it's not really, because Jimmy and the > others at the top still have unelected executive power.) It is anarcho-capitalism, because Jim Whales keep to be the owner of Wikipedia (the infrastructure), but he can not force anyone to do as he wish. He can only try to entice them to work for Wikipedia. In fact, many people have set up many different versions of Wikipedia because they don't like the rules there. Mirco From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 1 19:01:02 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 21:01:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] it's better than it used to be In-Reply-To: <4DBD9182.8080405@satx.rr.com> References: <002b01cc04a1$82795fe0$876c1fa0$@att.net> <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DBD9182.8080405@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20110501190102.GX23560@leitl.org> On Sun, May 01, 2011 at 11:59:46AM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: >> Have you considered that the new economic model represented by Wikipedia >> isn't new at all? It is communism. > > No, it's anarchism. (Except that it's not really, because Jimmy and the > others at the top still have unelected executive power.) As soon as Jimbo will continue screwing up long enough (deletionism rings a bell?) Wiki*ia will be suddenly facing a fork. And the general public is fickle and swift, these days. What's best, the next iteration could be well p2p, and hence have no fund-raising or censorship issues. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun May 1 19:10:13 2011 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 12:10:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Capitalism 2.0 was Status as human motivator In-Reply-To: <4DBDA14F.8060809@libero.it> References: <00c701cc0518$d0e42b70$72ac8250$@att.net> <87249.24110.qm@web81606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DBD32A0.5070401@libero.it> <4DBDA14F.8060809@libero.it> Message-ID: <994494.9414.qm@web65609.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- > From: Mirco Romanato > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Sun, May 1, 2011 11:07:11 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Capitalism 2.0 was Status as human motivator > > Il 01/05/2011 15:50, BillK ha scritto: > > You appear to know very little about how the Wall Street criminals work. > > The government regulators are in the pocket of the banks. The laws do > > not get enforced because they are paid off by the billionaires on Wall > > Street. The super rich ignore laws because money pays off all little > > problems. It's not just the banks. Most government agencies mandated to regulate a particular industry end up getting?in bed?with that industry. Sometimes literally. ?It's called regulatory capture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture ? > > In 2007 they went to the Fed and said either you pay us off with a > > trillion dollar bailout or we crash the world financial system. Guns > > to the head are not just mechanical devices. > > This is a reason, not an excuse, for the Fed or the government behaviour. > The government could have nationalized the bank and saved them. Then > they could have fired all executives and throw the book at them. Making > them pay all the bonuses out of their nose. The big picture of what is going on is called the "Iron Triangle". It so weird that people on either side of the political spectrum blame one vertex of the triangle or another?but so?few?see that?the whole damn triangle stinks of corruption. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics) And here is a graph that shows that special interests recieve $222 in pork for every?$1 they spend on a campaign contribution. The weird thing is that judges?rule that bribing politicians *before* they get elected is protected by "free speech" even if the person doing the bribing is a foreign national. But then again most judges are elected officials themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Money_96.pdf&page=1 ? > The government decided to be in the pocket of big banks and save them at > the expenses of the people (in reality it decided it long time ago and > it probably don't remember when it was not there). They are to be blamed > as much, if not more, than the bankers. Because, if the government want > they can change the rules. If they don't it is because they like the > game as it is. What we need to do?is ignore the million dollar TV commercials that trick us into blaming the?"other idealogy" for this mess?and realize that liberals, conservatives,?libertarians, independents, and essentially *everyone* who?can't afford to buy politicians in exchange for pork are all in the same sinking boat. Then we need to realize that whenever a mainstream candidate starts talking ideology,?it is all just?to obfuscate his or her real agenda. Then maybe we can have intelligent discussions?about solutions instead of endless finger pointing?and shouting matches. Perhaps we might even collectively figure out how to get someone like this?elected to high office:?? "I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. ... You are a den of vipers and thieves." ? Andrew Jackson in 1834 on closing the Second Bank of the United States. Stuart LaForge "There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure."- Dwight D. Eisenhower From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun May 1 20:01:05 2011 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 01 May 2011 16:01:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> I hate to post this. I don't want to start up the carb-vs-fat thread again. And I don't want to step on the toes of those who believe differently than I do. But I was asked to read Gary Taubes' "Good Fats, Bad Fats" and respond back when I had. I don't want anybody to think that was intellectually dishonest by not doing so. I know that my opinion will not sway anybody in this forum. So this is not an attempt to reopen the debate. Unless somebody has something new to say, we don't have to say it all over again. As promised, I have acquired and read Gary Taubes' "Good Fats, Bad Fats" for review. I also read "Why We Get Fat", perused the websites, watched multiple videos and interviews with Taubes, and listened to a few podcasts with Taubes. The summary of all my review has not changed my opinion one bit. Instead, it has strengthened my resolve that this is the most unscientific book since "The Bell Curve". It is pseudo-science wrapped up in scientific sounding words. In conclusion, I still believe that total calories in minus total calories expended equals remaining calories stored as fat. These calories can be fat or carb, it does not matter. Eating more calories than expended will cause weight gain. Exercise will expend more calories and reduce weight gain. Eating less will reduce calorie input and reduce weight gain. High fat is just as dangerous as high carbs. There are good fats and good carbs that should replace bad fat and bad carbs. Nothing in Taubes' book (or elsewhere) convinces me that these basic scientific beliefs are wrong or that there is a conspiracy to fake all this science and hide the real science. For reference, here are my main problems with Taubes' entire approach in this book and elsewhere: 1. Hypothesis. Taubes admits that his theory is at the "hypothesis" stage. Although he keeps saying all the science supports him, when directly asked, he admits that there are no scientific experiments that support his claims. It is all supposition and hypothesis. Real science would pursue funding and perform experiments to determine if the hypothesis is true. Pseudoscience goes straight to publishing to make money off of diet books. 2. Anecdotal Evidence. Taubes books are full of anecdotal evidence. He introduces his book with the "Eisenhower Paradox". He even admits that anecdotal evidence is not generally useful in science, yet he thinks it will be useful anyway, and he just plows on. Most of his material doesn't even pretend to be scientific. It is his own unscientific observations and mere assertions of "obvious" common sense. 3. Cherry-Picked Evidence. Taubes claims that no studies have been done yet. He seems to be begging the scientific community to pay attention to his hypothesis and test them. The problem is that it has been tested. There have been decades of testing with hundreds if not thousands of studies and experiments. They virtually all disprove Taubes' hypothesis. Because they don't get the conclusion he wants, he dismisses them as "wrong". Then, when there is nothing left that he counts as accurate, he pretends that studies haven't been done. This is simply not true. 4. Conspiracy Theory. While Taubes seems to claim that no studies have been done, he actually says no "real" studies have been done. When directly asked, he admits that there have been many studies and experiments. He even admits that virtually all of the evidence is against him. But he explains this away by falling back on the conspiracy theory. It is all bad science. Everybody is wrong but him. Corporate interests and the medical establishment want to perpetuate the myth of bad science. Therefore, we must ignore all the evidence and believe his hypothesis without evidence. It is not possible to believe in Taubes' hypothesis without buying into the conspiracy theory. In the absence of conspiracy, the evidence simply does not add up. One must accept the conspiracy claims to make his story even plausible. 5. Unfalsifiable. Taubes claims that the scientific literature is wrong. What's more, the peer-review process is tainted, the experimental process is done wrong, the interpretation is done wrong, and nobody can (re)produce the results he predicts. In normal science, this would disprove a hypothesis. But for pseudoscience, this is more evidence of the conspiracy. Therefore, we cannot rely upon the normal scientific processes when evaluating his hypothesis. Instead, he falls back on anecdotal evidence, fringe theories, minority reports, and unreproducible claims. I.E., his hypothesis is supposedly outside of science and must be accepted before science is done properly, instead of the other way around. This is how pseudoscience works, not science. If standard science cannot be used to test his hypothesis, then what method should be used? 6. Special Pleading. Taubes, and those who support him, are doing science backwards. Science is tested by seeing if it predicts observation. But Taubes dismisses observation when it disputes his hypothesis. He explains that Orientals on a traditional diet of rice are healthier than when they come to America and eat an Western diet. He even admits that it would seem like they ate a lot of carbs. But he dismisses it, positing that maybe they don't eat as many carbs as we think, or that maybe they have something special in their diet that protects them from the effects of carbs. In other words, instead of explaining the observation with existing theory, he tries to override the observation by adding unknown/undiscovered effects to explain why his theory doesn't fit observation. Similar claims are made for statins, which lower cholesterol. Why do they also seem to reduce heart-attack rates if cholesterol doesn't cause heart-attacks? Maybe there is another unknown/undiscovered protective mechanism the statins use instead of the direct obvious one (lowering cholesterol) that was predicted and observed. He seems to throw up so many special pleadings and exceptions, that it almost seems like there are a multitude of exception where carb diets are actually good for you, according to Taubes. This also violates the concept of Occam's Razor, where the simple/direct/obvious explanation is rejected in favor of a more complicated/convoluted explanation to get the same observational results. 7. Misapplied evidence. Taubes quotes a lot of studies that show that people transitioning from traditional diets where they did well end up doing poorly on a Western diet. This is well known and not disputed. But then he always throws in his own claim that this is because of carbs, even where the original study did not distinguish carbs or fats. He concludes that eating McDonalds is bad, but claims it is the carbs in the bun, not the fat in the meat. Or it is the carbs in the french fries, not the fat they are boiled in. These types of studies provide no evidence for or against the carb-vs-fat question. Taube misapplies them as supporting conclusions that they do not. He ignores that fact that these studies support the fat hypothesis just as well or the calories in/out hypothesis. The studies don't distinguish between any of these factors as being causative over opposing hypotheses. 8. Misrepresented evidence. While googling for these studies to review for myself, I was shocked at how often I also found the original researchers attacking Taubes for misrepresenting their work and misstating their conclusions. He seems infamous in scientific circles for misrepresenting other people's work as supporting the opposite conclusion than it really does. Taubes' response to these accusations is that the accusers are becoming part of the conspiracy, having to deny their association with his conclusions. But again, this story only hold together if everybody else is lying except Taubes. 9. Old evidence. The other problem I kept running into is the sheer age of most of his references. Taubes seems to prefer old evidence rather than newer evidence. This seems to be because earlier experiments are (mis)used to support his hypothesis where later refined experiments clearly dispute it. Experiments tend to get better as they are repeated later. Mistakes and flaws in methodologies are corrected as science progresses. As such, science tends to prefer later experiments, while pseudoscience tends to prefer the earlier experiments. For example, earlier experiments did not distinguish between good and bad cholesterol. Thus, the earlier experiments were more ambiguous as to whether increasing cholesterol was good or whether decreasing cholesterol was good. When science determined that there were different types of cholesterol and started distinguishing between them in studies, it became obvious that increasing good cholesterol was good and decreasing bad cholesterol was good. Science would adjust the hypothesis to keep up with experimental evidence. Pseudoscience merely dismisses the later evidence as a conspiracy and continues to cling to the earlier less rigorous evidence which cannot be replicated. 10. Moving goalposts. I have had a problem with Taubes' supporters which is slightly mirrored by Taubes' himself. He adapts to later knowledge, not by changing his hypothesis, but by rewriting history. Earlier claims were that grains were unavailable before modern agriculture. However, as more and more evidence grows that grains were routinely eaten by Neanderthals, the claim merely shifts that they didn't eat enough grains to matter. I had the same experience on the Extropians list. The claim was that grains simply could not have been used pre-agriculture. But when I proved they were, nobody cared. The requested evidence didn't matter. I had a similar response when asked to review a website. I was assured that it had evidence to prove all the claims. But when I trashed the website in response, the claim shifted that the website was a poor shadow of the real evidence contained in the books. Every time requested counter evidence if produced, seems to be ignored in favor of a new standard of evidence. But, as with all pseudoscience, evidence is never good enough, or is fake evidence from the conspiracy. It is not clear what standard of evidence or what experiment could possibly be acceptable. This seems more of a faith-based belief system that cannot be disproved, instead of an evidence-based system that adapts to existing evidence. So, if Neanderthals ate cooked grains and legumes, it seems that they must be added to the paleo diet, or else the whole thesis of emulating the paleo diet is mute. 11. Inconsistent science. The other problems with Taubes is the inconsistent science. He argues that calories ingested don't affect energy levels or weight. He argues that exercise doesn't decrease weight. He even claims that people gain weight when they don't eat enough calories. He questions the whole equation of calories in and calories out. That breaks basic laws of thermodynamics. How could somebody believe in this while still believing in physics? How could somebody believe in this while still going to the gym? It seems that overturning a whole area of science would have ripple effects that would invalidated other areas of science as well. But somehow people believe this hypothesis for nutrition, but ignore its implications in other areas. -- Harvey Newstrom CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon May 2 01:55:41 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 21:55:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 4:01 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: Instead, it has strengthened my resolve that this is the most > unscientific book since "The Bell Curve". ?It is pseudo-science wrapped up > in scientific sounding words. ### Comparison to "The Bell Curve" is an accolade, implying devotion to truth-seeking against herd-mentality. ------------------ > > In conclusion, I still believe that total calories in minus total calories > expended equals remaining calories stored as fat. ?These calories can be fat > or carb, it does not matter. ?Eating more calories than expended will cause > weight gain. ?Exercise will expend more calories and reduce weight gain. > Eating less will reduce calorie input and reduce weight gain. ### I agree with this. However, there is a strong possibility that the exact composition of our diet has an impact on our satiety and basic metabolism, independently of the total calories ingested. This would mean that some diets make it more difficult to maintain a proper caloric balance under conditions of food abundance. ?High fat is > just as dangerous as high carbs. ### People on Atkins diet have a lower total caloric intake, despite lack of any limitations on the amounts of food. This would contradict your statement. ?There are good fats and good carbs that > should replace bad fat and bad carbs. ### Yes, there are tantalizing but not definite indications that sucrose and fructose are more likely to cause liver steatosis than equivalent amounts of glucose and complex carbohydrates. ?He explains > that Orientals on a traditional diet of rice are healthier than when they > come to America and eat an Western diet. ### But this is the case only with persons living in rural areas or otherwise under relative caloric scarcity - and even an otherwise unhealthy diet is good if done under mild caloric restriction. The epidemic of metabolic syndrome in Japan and in Chinese cities, and its absence in rural areas, are compatible with this interpretation. For Americans living under conditions of extreme food abundance it is important to look primarily at overfed Orientals rather than at thin ones. ---------------- ?Similar claims are made for > statins, which lower cholesterol. ?Why do they also seem to reduce > heart-attack rates if cholesterol doesn't cause heart-attacks? ?Maybe there > is another unknown/undiscovered protective mechanism the statins use instead > of the direct obvious one (lowering cholesterol) that was predicted and > observed. ### It is a well-known observation that lowering cholesterol for the most part is completely useless in preventing heart disease or other problems. There are only two cholesterol-lowering interventions proven to improve survival - statins and exercise/caloric restriction. Niacin seems to work but not as well. All other cholesterol-lowering drugs are either useless or even harmful, as shown by large placebo controlled studies. If you don't believe, look up fenofibrate, gemfibrozil, ezetimibe, you name it. This implies that cholesterol most likely is not the problem, except perhaps in some rare inherited dyslipidemias. And whenever I see a patient on fenofibrate or another of these quack cures, I always strongly advise them to stop taking it, even if they have statin intolerance. ?When science determined that there were > different types of cholesterol and started distinguishing between them in > studies, it became obvious that increasing good cholesterol was good and > decreasing bad cholesterol was good. ### As noted above, there is no conclusive evidence of that claim. All drugs designed to increase HDL ended in humongous losses for pharma, despite initial hype, because they increased all-cause mortality. Rafal From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 2 06:26:23 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 00:26:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <480844.48052.qm@web114411.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20110418140115.GZ23560@leitl.org> <4DAC945C.8010605@mac.com> <20110418203336.GL23560@leitl.org> <4DAF8FD1.8010502@mac.com> <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 3:53 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 27 April 2011 06:59, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Yes, I do. I am not sure that we can measure that in a fully rigorous > manner, but I have once or twice listed in my writings a series of > extremely dramatic turning points which have almost invariably taken > place in the hundred of years roughly from the second half of the XIX > century and the first half of the XX. Medicine, surgery, diagnostics, > physics, engineering, chemistry, genetics, engines, biology, natural > history, mathematics, lifestyle, avionics, linguistics, cosmology, > computing, prophylaxis, art, you name it. Stephano, the game changing breakthroughs you are yearning for will be realized in nanotech, biotech and artificial intelligence. You are right that there haven't been paradigm shifts in the last 40 years, just more and better of the same. The areas where things may have actually shifted in a somewhat meaningful way is that which was wireless is wired, and that which was wired is wireless. That which was broadcast is now pointcast, and that which was pointcast is now broadcast. These are game changing issues. In the zeitgeist, I think perhaps the most significant change is the death of privacy, or rather the need for privacy in the younger folk. Paradigm shifts are hard to spot from inside of them, they only become clear later. I hear vinyl records made a really big comeback last year. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 2 06:37:38 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 00:37:38 -0600 Subject: [ExI] EROEI In-Reply-To: References: <20110429112952.GN23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 9:57 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > If it takes that long, I doubt we will see it at all. ?That's probably > post singularity. ?I expect the singularity to be accompanied by a > precipitous fall in energy demand per capita. ?The advanced countries > use on the order of 10kW per person. ?It would take about 1% of that > to power them directly and 1/5 of a percent to run the brains alone. The Singularity will result in a precipitous fall in energy demand? I really don't see how. Every advance so far made by humanity has resulted in higher per capita energy demand. I don't see how the Singularity is different in this regard. Could you please spell out your argument Keith, this is very counter-intuitive for me. You may be right, I just don't see how you could be. -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 2 06:40:15 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 08:40:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <4DAF8FD1.8010502@mac.com> <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 12:26:23AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > In the zeitgeist, I think perhaps the most significant change is the > death of privacy, or rather the need for privacy in the younger folk. I can tell you the politically active youth is *very* aware of their need for privacy. And all these purchasers with fine digital balances *and* zip lock baggies will learn about their need for privacy in no time at all. > Paradigm shifts are hard to spot from inside of them, they only become We haven't had any paradigm shifts in the last 40 years. > clear later. I hear vinyl records made a really big comeback last > year. From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon May 2 06:48:08 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 1 May 2011 23:48:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] EROEI In-Reply-To: References: <20110429112952.GN23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 11:37 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 9:57 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >> If it takes that long, I doubt we will see it at all. ?That's probably >> post singularity. ?I expect the singularity to be accompanied by a >> precipitous fall in energy demand per capita. ?The advanced countries >> use on the order of 10kW per person. ?It would take about 1% of that >> to power them directly and 1/5 of a percent to run the brains alone. > > The Singularity will result in a precipitous fall in energy demand? I > really don't see how. Every advance so far made by humanity has > resulted in higher per capita energy demand. I don't see how the > Singularity is different in this regard. Could you please spell out > your argument Keith, this is very counter-intuitive for me. You may be > right, I just don't see how you could be. It's developed in some detail in "the clinic seed" Keith From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 2 06:58:13 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 00:58:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] How slow is capitalism? In-Reply-To: References: <4DB8C384.3020803@mac.com> <4DB91A7F.3060402@moulton.com> <4DB9E91F.8050003@mac.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:28 PM, Jones Murphy wrote: > Why has the reign of an Ayn Rand > disciple at the Fed, with the most Mieses-friendly policies since the > ones which helped precipitate the Great Depression, ended in the > greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression? Greenspan served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. Whether he implemented Mieses friendly policies is potentially up for debate. What is not as clear to me is how you can blame him for the stuff that has happened mostly since 2006 which seems clearly more problematic than that which happened before. He kept the economy going through Democratic and Republican administrations with quite a bit of stability. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 2 07:01:34 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 01:01:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: How slow is capitalism? In-Reply-To: References: <4DB8C384.3020803@mac.com> <4DB91A7F.3060402@moulton.com> <4DB9E91F.8050003@mac.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 11:16 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Where do you see freedom in the world? Singapore? At least business/financial freedom. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 2 07:13:51 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 08:13:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] How slow is capitalism? In-Reply-To: References: <4DB8C384.3020803@mac.com> <4DB91A7F.3060402@moulton.com> <4DB9E91F.8050003@mac.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Greenspan served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United > States from 1987 to 2006. Whether he implemented Mieses friendly > policies is potentially up for debate. What is not as clear to me is > how you can blame him for the stuff that has happened mostly since > 2006 which seems clearly more problematic than that which happened > before. He kept the economy going through Democratic and Republican > administrations with quite a bit of stability. > > There are thousands of articles criticising Greenspan's record. His career was de-regulated bubble after bubble, building up to the collapse in 2007. Start with Wikipedia for a quick summary of the disaster that was Greenspan. BillK From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 2 07:19:05 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 01:19:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> References: <4DAF8FD1.8010502@mac.com> <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 12:40 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 12:26:23AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I can tell you the politically active youth is *very* aware of > their need for privacy. And all these purchasers with fine > digital balances *and* zip lock baggies will learn about > their need for privacy in no time at all. You may be right, but regaining privacy once lost, is difficult. > We haven't had any paradigm shifts in the last 40 years. Since 1971? So the personal computer, Internet, cell phone, laser printers, none of that constitutes a paradigm shift? If so, then what does? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 2 07:37:01 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 01:37:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] it's better than it used to be In-Reply-To: <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <002b01cc04a1$82795fe0$876c1fa0$@att.net> <564427.15626.qm@web81607.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/1 Kevin Freels : > Kelly said: > Wikipedia is important primarily as a prime example of a new economic > model that is, IMHO quite important. The encyclopedia itself is a huge > accomplishment, but the open source economic model is the paradigm > shift, and I believe that actually does rank up there with the > invention of the printing press, double entry book-keeping, money, > writing, poetry, musical notation, the English patent system, > discovery of evolution, the invention of intellectual property, sliced > bread and the scientific method as one of the great memes of all time. > It will take a couple more decades, I think, to fully appreciate the > model for what it will become, but I have no doubt that it will take > its place among these other great memes. > > Kevin replies: > Have you considered that the new economic model represented by Wikipedia > isn't new at all? It is communism. As others have already said, open source is nowhere near communism. At least not communism as has been practiced by governments so far. Everyone is free to participate or not for as long as they want. Nobody's wealth is taken at the point of a gun and given to others. There is a pseudo government that has evolved in Wikipedia, to its detriment IMHO. When it first started out, it was better and more anarchistic. Not quite so much now. Some people take themselves way too seriously over there. Wikipedia as it exists now isn't the very best example of open source out there. Probably the very best is the Internet and the World Wide Web. TCP/IP, Email protocols, RFPs, Apache web servers, where would the Internet be without open source? -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 2 07:37:04 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 08:37:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> References: <4DAF8FD1.8010502@mac.com> <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 7:40 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > I can tell you the politically active youth is *very* aware of > their need for privacy. And all these purchasers with fine > digital balances *and* zip lock baggies will learn about > their need for privacy in no time at all. > Quote: Privacy Lost: The Amazing Benefits of the Completely Examined Life It's time to stop complaining and start appreciating the advantages of the open-source you. PCWorld May 1, 2011 2:00 am Your iPhone's tracking you. Your game network just surrendered all your personal data. And your mom is posting your potty-training videos on Facebook. Like many of us, you're laboring under the delusion that privacy matters--that there's such a thing as too much (public) information. It's time to get over it! ---------------------- BillK From moulton at moulton.com Mon May 2 07:40:49 2011 From: moulton at moulton.com (F. C. Moulton) Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 00:40:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How slow is capitalism? In-Reply-To: References: <4DB8C384.3020803@mac.com> <4DB91A7F.3060402@moulton.com> <4DB9E91F.8050003@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DBE6001.9040109@moulton.com> On 05/01/2011 11:58 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Greenspan served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United > States from 1987 to 2006. Whether he implemented Mieses friendly > policies is potentially up for debate. Actually I do not think there is much debate about it. Greenspan was a Regulator. I fail to see how anyone can seriously argue that what Greenspan was involved in had anything to do with a free market approach. Greenspan was a Regulator and as a regulator he did not always regulate very well. Do not confuse a free market approach with what Greenspan was doing. > What is not as clear to me is > how you can blame him for the stuff that has happened mostly since > 2006 which seems clearly more problematic than that which happened > before. Actually there are long lead time situations where action or inaction in one time period manifests itself many years later. > He kept the economy going through Democratic and Republican > administrations with quite a bit of stability. That is correct for specific time periods but we need to remember that growth and stability over one time period might plant the seeds for instability later. Fred From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 2 07:45:46 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 01:45:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves." -Abraham Lincoln Nuf said. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 2 07:57:49 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 08:57:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot > strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about > prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up > by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of > man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage > by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help > people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do > for themselves." > ? -Abraham Lincoln > > This was, of course, not written by Abraham Lincoln. It was written by a Presbyterian minister and his list of pithy maxims became wildly popular, especially by the rich who loved quoting the first line. The Rev. William John Henry Boetcker was a Presbyterian minister and notable public speaker who served as director of the pro-employer Citizens' Industrial Alliance, a position he held when, in 1916, he produced a booklet of "nuggets" from his lectures, which included maxims such as "We cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong" and "We cannot help the poor by kicking the rich." etc..... BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 2 09:11:36 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 11:11:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 01:19:05AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 12:40 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 12:26:23AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > I can tell you the politically active youth is *very* aware of > > their need for privacy. And all these purchasers with fine > > digital balances *and* zip lock baggies will learn about > > their need for privacy in no time at all. > > You may be right, but regaining privacy once lost, is difficult. > > > We haven't had any paradigm shifts in the last 40 years. > > Since 1971? So the personal computer, The microcomputer has been around since 1970 (the IC is even earlier), and it has no fundamental architectural differences from the mini, nor the mini from the mainframe. > Internet, cell phone, laser Packet-switching is 1968. Mobile phone is 1973. > printers, none of that constitutes a paradigm shift? If so, then whata Laser is 1960, laser printer is 1969. > does? The switch from phytobiomass to fossil energy. Industrialization. Paradigm shifts are rarer than people seem to think. From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 2 09:32:32 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 11:32:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110502093232.GI23560@leitl.org> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 08:37:04AM +0100, BillK wrote: > > > Quote: > Privacy Lost: The Amazing Benefits of the Completely Examined Life > It's time to stop complaining and start appreciating the advantages of > the open-source you. > > PCWorld May 1, 2011 2:00 am > > Your iPhone's tracking you. Your game network just surrendered all > your personal data. And your mom is posting your potty-training videos > on Facebook. Like many of us, you're laboring under the delusion that > privacy matters--that there's such a thing as too much (public) > information. It's time to get over it! > ---------------------- People are stupid, film at 11. From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 2 10:29:36 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 12:29:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110502102936.GN23560@leitl.org> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 01:19:05AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > You may be right, but regaining privacy once lost, is difficult. Therein lies the lesson for the fools. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 2 10:50:09 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 12:50:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: References: <4DB48803.5000900@lightlink.com> <4DB567CA.505@lightlink.com> <20110425143156.GR23560@leitl.org> <4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com> <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 30 April 2011 21:06, Keith Henson wrote: > For a non rotating Dyson sphere that's thin enough the light pressure > would balance the gravity from the sun. ?The light pressure at the > distance of the earth's orbit is around 9.3 N per square km. Now that you make me think of it, in a non-rotating Dyson sphere object on the internal surface would be bound to fall towards the sun, right? The gravity of even a relatively thick surface would hardly compensate... -- Stefano Vaj From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 2 11:54:26 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 13:54:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: References: <4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com> <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20110502115426.GP23560@leitl.org> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 12:50:09PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 30 April 2011 21:06, Keith Henson wrote: > > For a non rotating Dyson sphere that's thin enough the light pressure > > would balance the gravity from the sun. ?The light pressure at the > > distance of the earth's orbit is around 9.3 N per square km. > > Now that you make me think of it, in a non-rotating Dyson sphere > object on the internal surface would be bound to fall towards the sun, > right? The gravity of even a relatively thick surface would hardly > compensate... There's no point in a solid Dyson sphere, as photonic pressure makes for impractically thin shells. You can consider a circumsolar cloud of nodes in active orbits with photonic sails. Inasmuch the cloud can use active sail tilting to produce anisotropic radiation emission which is useful for propulsion is not too obvious. You can spend 1:1 duty cycle climbing orbits up and down, so net effect is zero. You can switch them to transparency, like window blinds. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 2 12:22:20 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 14:22:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Capitalism 2.0 was Status as human motivator In-Reply-To: References: <00c701cc0518$d0e42b70$72ac8250$@att.net> <87249.24110.qm@web81606.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DBD32A0.5070401@libero.it> Message-ID: On 1 May 2011 15:50, BillK wrote: > In 2007 they went to the Fed and said either you pay us off with a > trillion dollar bailout or we crash the world financial system. Guns > to the head are not just mechanical devices. Yup. But there are "cultural" limitations as well in play from the side of governments and/or society in general... I hate being the usual decadence complainer but the lack of lateral thinking, vision, will required for paradigm shifts operate also at a socio-political level. Governments have been blackmailed *and* lost during the last (present?) crisis. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 2 12:32:04 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 14:32:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: The Theory That's Killing America's Economy -- and Why It's Wrong In-Reply-To: References: <4dbd04af.e7d8e70a.6f72.ffffd4f4SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> Message-ID: On 1 May 2011 16:21, Keith Henson wrote: > Author, 'Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why' Interesting. But isn't the "what should replace it" part underdeveloped? :-/ -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 2 12:38:47 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 14:38:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: The Theory That's Killing America's Economy -- and Why It's Wrong In-Reply-To: References: <4dbd04af.e7d8e70a.6f72.ffffd4f4SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> Message-ID: Ah, OK, I see, this is not a subtitle of the article, but the title of a separte book On 2 May 2011 14:32, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 1 May 2011 16:21, Keith Henson wrote: >> Author, 'Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why' > > Interesting. But isn't the "what should replace it" part underdeveloped? :-/ > > -- > Stefano Vaj > -- Stefano Vaj From rpwl at lightlink.com Mon May 2 12:43:19 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 08:43:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: References: <4DB48803.5000900@lightlink.com> <4DB567CA.505@lightlink.com> <20110425143156.GR23560@leitl.org> <4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com> <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DBEA6E7.5070303@lightlink.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 30 April 2011 21:06, Keith Henson wrote: >> For a non rotating Dyson sphere that's thin enough the light pressure >> would balance the gravity from the sun. The light pressure at the >> distance of the earth's orbit is around 9.3 N per square km. > > Now that you make me think of it, in a non-rotating Dyson sphere > object on the internal surface would be bound to fall towards the sun, > right? The gravity of even a relatively thick surface would hardly > compensate... > Uh, the gravity of even an infinitely dense spherical object would be exactly zero on the inside surface. Gauss's law. Richard Loosemore From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Mon May 2 13:11:52 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 09:11:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > ### Ah, the typical moralizing > Morality has nothing to do with this. I don't subscribe to the objective-moral-truth camp. This is about long-term viability/sustainability, and avoiding people 'pissing in the pool' so to speak. > - you can't be richer than I because > somebody out there is poor. > By all means, be richer than I. Be WAY richer. My objection isn't those that have much, it's that the way the system has been designed prevents many from having ANY, due to those few that have so much. > Of course, virtually none of the > moralizers who are usually quite rich and personally, through > charitable giving, well-capable of feeding/hydrating at least a couple > hundred of the alleged victims of capitalism, actually does anything > about it. All they do is rail against the rich. > I don't disagree with you here. We've created a system full of short-sighted fools. > > This tells me that their true intention is signaling - trying to tell > the tribe they are one of us, not trying to raise themselves above > others, showing solidarity with each and everyone, worthy of love and > respect. Such hypocrisy is usually fueled by envy, sometimes by a > desire to blend in with the masses, out of an instinctive fear of > being attacked. They always attack the best, the few, since the few > are an easy target for the looting mob. > Well, when the few hold such an exorbitant amount of available opportunity, who can blame them. > > And if all this signaling makes an economy less efficient, therefore > less able to improve the lives of everyone, including the poor - who > cares? > Less efficient my ass. If anything capitalists should WANT those billions of people as consumers. That kind of forward thinking goes against everything our quarterly-profit-driven world stands for, however. Again, short-sighted fools. Sort of like the USoA wasting TRILLIONS on securing oil reserves, instead of investing TRILLIONS in infrastructure/energy independence. Missing the forest for the trees. > There are appearances to be kept, debate points to be scored. > Not a concern of mine. I often forget I have one, till I'm reminded by my better half, that I'm getting a lil 'rough'. Who's keeping score? How much am I down by? > Screw the poor, they are just an excuse to kick your enemies in the > shin. > Rather give 'em a hand up, someone gave us one along the way. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Mon May 2 13:22:35 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 09:22:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. I don't think the rich would be destroyed by having only 5 houses instead of 10. Or 10 cars instead of 20. Or 3 servants, instead of 10. Poor guy. How will he EVER get by having 8 figures in the bank instead of 9. > You cannot > strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. How are they weakened? > You cannot bring about > prosperity by discouraging thrift. It's a shame you don't see the value in investing in the prosperity of humanity, after all, there's a selfish motive to it as well. You cannot lift the wage earner up > by pulling the wage payer down. Right. Let's let him float up in the stratosphere 1,000x's that lowly little 'average' guy. > You cannot further the brotherhood of > man by inciting class hatred. Which is ironic. Since the ultra-elite run the TV networks that foster that very response throughout the world, lest we turn our attention on the unbelievable inequality causing this whole thing to begin with. > You cannot build character and courage > by taking away people's initiative and independence. Those people scraping by, struggling to survive have character in spades. It's the 'others' I wonder about. > You cannot help > people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do > for themselves." > Absolutely. Who's asking for a handout? I'm asking for an equal opportunity is all. What? It's ok to spend TRILLION$ killing each other, just not helping each other? Sociopath? > -Abraham Lincoln > > Nuf said. > Some things are best left unsaid. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Mon May 2 13:29:26 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 09:29:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] EROEI In-Reply-To: References: <20110429112952.GN23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: > > It's developed in some detail in "the clinic seed" > http://www.terasemjournals.org/GNJournal/GN0202/henson1.html The first page google sent me to had a broken link. Found this one through your wiki page (for those who ran into the same issue I did). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 2 13:33:33 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 15:33:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: On 1 May 2011 22:01, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > I hate to post this. ?I don't want to start up the carb-vs-fat thread again. Come on. Even if I was not led to change my views, I found the discussions on the subject rather informational and constructive. >?The summary of all my review has not changed my opinion one > bit. ?Instead, it has strengthened my resolve that this is the most > unscientific book since "The Bell Curve". I really fail to see the connection. I do not know what exactly your objections to the Bell Curve are, but as far as I remember it is a book based on original research as to the distribution of IQ across the US population. Your main complaint about Good Calories, Bad Calories appears to be that it does not reflect any such kind of study. > In conclusion, I still believe that total calories in minus total calories > expended equals remaining calories stored as fat. That would imply a perfectly "efficient" metabolism, wouldn't it? Now, I think it is a fact with any dietary style a portion of the calories ingested are simply... wasted. In turn, it would seem reasonable to expect the metabolic influences of dietary styles to affect the the quantity of calories that are "put away" and "stored" for delayed use in the form of fat. > He explains > that Orientals on a traditional diet of rice are healthier than when they > come to America and eat an Western diet. ?He even admits that it would seem > like they ate a lot of carbs. I do not remember the author's position on the subject, but on the merits I believe a consensus exists that if a large percentage of what one eats is carbs, damages are contained by limiting his or her caloric intake as low as possible, including by eating little else. Conversely, if one eats carbs at will, reducing their overall incidence in one's diet by ingesting other food on top of them is likely to increase, not to reduce the damages. -- Stefano Vaj From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 2 13:38:34 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 15:38:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: <007d01cc0799$703bcde0$50b369a0$@att.net> References: <4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com> <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> <007d01cc0799$703bcde0$50b369a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110502133834.GV23560@leitl.org> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 05:48:06PM -0700, spike wrote: > I got the 600 nm number. The scheme I had in mind uses thicker reflectors > however. Phased arrays can radiate into any direction you want. From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon May 2 13:38:38 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 06:38:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: References: <4DB48803.5000900@lightlink.com> <4DB567CA.505@lightlink.com> <20110425143156.GR23560@leitl.org> <4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com> <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:50 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 30 April 2011 21:06, Keith Henson wrote: >> For a non rotating Dyson sphere that's thin enough the light pressure >> would balance the gravity from the sun. ?The light pressure at the >> distance of the earth's orbit is around 9.3 N per square km. > > Now that you make me think of it, in a non-rotating Dyson sphere > object on the internal surface would be bound to fall towards the sun, > right? The gravity of even a relatively thick surface would hardly > compensate... No, but if it is a few hundred nanometers thick, the light pressure will keep it in place. When he was an undergraduate, Eric Drexler made aluminum films that were around 200 nm thick. That thin enough you could see a strong light right through the film. Keith From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 2 13:39:16 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 15:39:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <480844.48052.qm@web114411.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20110418140115.GZ23560@leitl.org> <4DAC945C.8010605@mac.com> <20110418203336.GL23560@leitl.org> <4DAF8FD1.8010502@mac.com> <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 2 May 2011 08:26, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Stephano, the game changing breakthroughs you are yearning for will be > realized in nanotech, biotech and artificial intelligence. The slight difference in my own brand of transhumanism is that I am more inclined to say "the game changing breakthroughs I am yearning for SHALL be realized in nanotech, biotech and artificial intelligence." -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 2 14:18:29 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 16:18:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: References: <4DB48803.5000900@lightlink.com> <4DB567CA.505@lightlink.com> <20110425143156.GR23560@leitl.org> <4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com> <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 2 May 2011 15:38, Keith Henson wrote: > No, but if it is a few hundred nanometers thick, the light pressure > will keep it in place. OK, let us say in conclusion that there is no way to create a Dyson sphere in the style of a "concave Earth", with people walking on the internal surface in a more or less normal fashion but seeing the horizon slip upwards... -- Stefano Vaj From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 2 14:24:43 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 16:24:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: References: <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20110502142443.GC23560@leitl.org> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 04:18:29PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > OK, let us say in conclusion that there is no way to create a Dyson > sphere in the style of a "concave Earth", with people walking on the > internal surface in a more or less normal fashion but seeing the > horizon slip upwards... Why would you want to build that? Even if you could, it would be inefficient. We are computational processes already, so there's only need to improve the embodiment/optimize the physical layer. From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon May 2 14:40:04 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 07:40:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: References: <4DB48803.5000900@lightlink.com> <4DB567CA.505@lightlink.com> <20110425143156.GR23560@leitl.org> <4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com> <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 7:18 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 2 May 2011 15:38, Keith Henson wrote: >> No, but if it is a few hundred nanometers thick, the light pressure >> will keep it in place. > > OK, let us say in conclusion that there is no way to create a Dyson > sphere in the style of a "concave Earth", with people walking on the > internal surface in a more or less normal fashion but seeing the > horizon slip upwards... There is a way to come close. Larry Niven did it with the Ringworld series of books. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld You don't even need scrith (super strong material) to do it. You spin the inner part supported on magnetic bearings and pile the rest of the material in the system on the outside and let solar gravity hold it down. Keith From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon May 2 12:23:41 2011 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 09:23:41 -0300 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again References: <4DB48803.5000900@lightlink.com><4DB567CA.505@lightlink.com><20110425143156.GR23560@leitl.org><4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com><007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net><4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se><000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net><4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> Message-ID: <8796237E13E1409E9D27191AED8DA0A0@cpdhemm> I have always wondered, however, if such a sphere built by the re-arrangement of the non-stellar matter of our system would find its internal surface at a distance from the sun suitable to life... I have no idea, also because I expect that the internal temperature of a Dyson star would probably be fairly different from that of a planetary surface at the same distance... It would probably be as hot as Venus. I don't know how to really calculate it and I'm merely speculating based on the fact that the day in Venus is 243 Earth days long. Sunlight 24/7 square angle can do nasty things. Yes, I know about Venus atmosphere and such. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 2 15:22:58 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 17:22:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: <20110502142443.GC23560@leitl.org> References: <007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net> <4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se> <000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net> <4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> <20110502142443.GC23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 2 May 2011 16:24, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 04:18:29PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > >> OK, let us say in conclusion that there is no way to create a Dyson >> sphere in the style of a "concave Earth", with people walking on the >> internal surface in a more or less normal fashion but seeing the >> horizon slip upwards... > > Why would you want to build that? Mmhhh. Large-scale sculpture? :-) -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Mon May 2 15:28:36 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 08:28:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> . On Behalf Of Mr Jones . Subject: Re: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Kelly Anderson: "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. >.I don't think the rich would be destroyed by having only 5 houses instead of 10. Or 10 cars instead of 20. Or 3 servants, instead of 10. . Right you are. The rich wouldn't be destroyed, but the other seven servants would be, by unemployment. Their families would be destroyed by despair, hunger and alcoholism, which seems to hang around unemployment like an odor. What of the home builders of the other five homes, and the car builders of the other 10 cars? And their families? The DMV wouldn't be destroyed, but neither would they collect their fees on the other idle cars. Tragic is this, for those cars would bring money to the state coffers while not be adding any additional wear on the roads or traffic because they are sitting still and quiet in a massive garage somewhere with one of the otherwise unemployed seven servants cheerfully waxing and maintaining it. Rich people are our friends. They help us all, even if indirectly. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Mon May 2 17:49:46 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 13:49:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/2 spike > > > > > *?* *On Behalf Of *Mr Jones > > *?* > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading > > > > On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Kelly Anderson: > > "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. > > > > >?I don't think the rich would be destroyed by having only 5 houses > instead of 10. Or 10 cars instead of 20. Or 3 servants, instead of 10. > ? > > > > Right you are. The rich wouldn?t be destroyed, but the other seven > servants would be, by unemployment. > > > > Their families would be destroyed by despair, hunger and alcoholism, which > seems to hang around unemployment like an odor. What of the home builders > of the other five homes, and the car builders of the other 10 cars? And > their families? The DMV wouldn?t be destroyed, but neither would they > collect their fees on the other idle cars. Tragic is this, for those cars > would bring money to the state coffers while not be adding any additional > wear on the roads or traffic because they are sitting still and quiet in a > massive garage somewhere with one of the otherwise unemployed seven servants > cheerfully waxing and maintaining it. > > > > Rich people are our friends. They help us all, even if indirectly. > > > > spike > Fair enough. When it's being used, it can at least be viewed in positive light as you've just shown me. What good is $100Million in an off-shore tax safe haven doing humanity? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon May 2 20:11:09 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 21:11:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Great Silence again In-Reply-To: <8796237E13E1409E9D27191AED8DA0A0@cpdhemm> References: <4DB48803.5000900@lightlink.com><4DB567CA.505@lightlink.com><20110425143156.GR23560@leitl.org><4DB71084.2090805@satx.rr.com><007f01cc0454$11f9a880$35ecf980$@att.net><4DB73B03.5070107@aleph.se><000001cc0467$5f8cb020$1ea61060$@att.net><4DBC2CF2.2010008@aleph.se> <8796237E13E1409E9D27191AED8DA0A0@cpdhemm> Message-ID: <4DBF0FDD.3090404@aleph.se> A square meter at distance r from the sun will receive L/4 pi r^2 Watts of sunlight. If it re-radiates that as a blackbody we get the relation sigma epsilon T^4 = L/4 pi r^2 (where sigma is 5.6e-8 and epsilon is the emissivity). Rearranging we get T = [L / 4 pi sigma epsilon r^2]^0.25 For epsilon 1, r = 149e9 (1 AU) and L=3.83e26 W we get the temperature 409 K, or 136 C. It is a fun exercise to adapt this analysis to a sphere half in shadow and see what "natural" temperature Earth would have. Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) wrote: > > I have always wondered, however, if such a sphere built by the > re-arrangement of the non-stellar matter of our system would find its > internal surface at a distance from the sun suitable to life... I have > no idea, also because I expect that the internal temperature of a > Dyson star would probably be fairly different from that of a planetary > surface at the same distance... > > > > It would probably be as hot as Venus. I don't know how to really > calculate it and I'm merely speculating based on the fact that the day > in Venus is 243 Earth days long. Sunlight 24/7 square angle can do > nasty things. Yes, I know about Venus atmosphere and such. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 3 00:11:37 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 17:11:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> On 05/02/2011 06:22 AM, Mr Jones wrote: > On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Kelly Anderson > wrote: > > "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. > > > I don't think the rich would be destroyed by having only 5 houses > instead of 10. Or 10 cars instead of 20. Or 3 servants, instead of > 10. Poor guy. How will he EVER get by having 8 figures in the bank > instead of 9. > > You cannot > strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. > ENOUGH! When the hell is this group going to be actually about making a future we look forward to living instead of endlessly chewing the same cud year after effing year? I have had it! - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue May 3 01:11:11 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 18:11:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> Message-ID: <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Mr Jones . >>.Rich people are our friends. They help us all, even if indirectly.spike >.Fair enough. When it's being used, it can at least be viewed in positive light as you've just shown me. What good is $100Million in an off-shore tax safe haven doing humanity? MrJones Is doing? The question is what good did that fortune do for humanity while it was being amassed to start with. There are as many different answers to that question as there are great fortunes. The good for humanity was done to generate the fortune. What it does after depends on governments incentivizing its use for the good of all. But I can deal with the other question as well. $.1G in an offshore account benefits humanity, since the banker holding that fortune invests it in order to make money on it. The businesses thus created benefit their owners and their employees, as well as their customers, and the bank stock holders. Governments in the nations where the money is invested collect taxes, so they benefit, as well as the citizens of those countries. The biggest benefit to us is to remind governments that if their tax burden gets too high, the people with wealth and talent in those nations will take their money and go elsewhere. So it encourages governments to treat their wealthy and talented with respect. That reminder keeps all our taxes lower. The US was set up so that we would be a collection of state governments that compete with each other to keep taxes under control. California is a great example of what happens when tax burdens get too high. Raising taxes, as California did in both 2009 and 2010 actually causes revenues to go down, because the rich Californians take their money and skill elsewhere. Offshore accounts remind the federal government that it is in competition with other governments. It needs to treat its rich people with respect and create a mutually beneficial relationship with them. Rich people are to be incentivized to invest domestically, creating wealth and jobs, resulting in domestic trade, infrastructure building, all kinds of good things. The flip side is if there is a business-unfriendly government, the rich sit on their money and wait it out, as we are seeing now. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue May 3 01:14:55 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 18:14:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: References: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <011c01cc092f$83eb98b0$8bc2ca10$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: Re: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories ... Harvey Newstrom wrote: >>... I hate to post this. ?I don't want to start up the carb-vs-fat thread again. >...Come on. Even if I was not led to change my views, I found the discussions on the subject rather informational and constructive...--Stefano Vaj Me too, I thought it informative and an example of a subject that has not already been done to death years ago. Carry on, caloriers! spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 3 02:05:08 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 21:05:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DBF62D4.6040503@satx.rr.com> On 5/2/2011 8:11 PM, spike wrote: > The flip side is if there is a business-unfriendly government, the rich > sit on their money and wait it out, as we are seeing now. A government, like the one before it, so unfriendly that it shovels trillions of dollars into businesses, especially when they screw up? Damien Broderick From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 3 02:15:56 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 19:15:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/2 spike : snip > The flip > side is if there is a business-unfriendly government, the rich sit on their > money and wait it out, as we are seeing now. Part of that is *our* fault. Nobody sees anything worth investing in at the moment. Coming up with such ideas is the job of engineers and we have not been doing so recently. Of course, I have been working on it, but the concept have yet to be examined by other engineers to any serious extent. Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 3 02:20:36 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 22:20:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: <4DBF62D4.6040503@satx.rr.com> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> <4DBF62D4.6040503@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 10:05 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/2/2011 8:11 PM, spike wrote: > >> The flip side is if there is a business-unfriendly government, the rich >> sit on their money and wait it out, as we are seeing now. > > A government, like the one before it, so unfriendly that it shovels > trillions of dollars into businesses, especially when they screw up? ### Banks are no longer businesses. They are just government revenue collection front offices. The US government has a long history of using the banking system to steal money from people - first by issuing Treasury bonds, then establishing the dollar as the legal tender, then abandoning the gold standard, establishing the Fed, and slowly inflating currency, or in other words, stealing the value of money from whoever has it. Of course, these government-controlled institutions, like AIG, Fannie Mae, Merrill-Lynch, eventually screw up - but since the government controls them, we end up paying for their losses. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 3 02:30:49 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 22:30:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2011/5/2 Mr Jones :. > > I don't think the rich would be destroyed by having only 5 houses instead of > 10. ?Or 10 cars instead of 20. ?Or 3 servants, instead of 10. ?Poor guy. > ?How will he EVER get by having 8 figures in the bank instead of 9. ### The rich spend a much lower fraction of their income on consumption, compared to low-income persons, they productively invest instead. You are using a communist caricature that deflects attention from the real issue - taxation of the rich prevents productive investments, first and foremost, which is very, very bad, and somewhat reduces luxury consumption, which is also bad (the 7 servants have to find another job, and since the money is held by the government, they may end being employed to slaughter brown people or something like that). Just admit to yourself, Jones - you are consumed by envy. Then cast this ugliness out of your soul and you will be a better person for it. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 3 02:43:52 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 22:43:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 9:11 AM, Mr Jones wrote: > On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> >> ### Ah, the typical moralizing > > Morality has nothing to do with this. ?I don't subscribe to the > objective-moral-truth camp. ?This is about long-term > viability/sustainability, and avoiding people 'pissing in the pool' so to > speak. > ### AFAICR, except for calling for cutting military spending (with which I enthusiastically agree) you haven't yet supported any policy which would improve long term viability of the economy. Fleecing the best workers is actually short-sighted pissing in the pool. ---------------- > > By all means, be richer than I. ?Be WAY richer. ?My objection isn't those > that have much, it's that the way the system has been designed prevents many > from having ANY, due to those few that have so much. ### So why do you want to take money from CEOs? How did Sam Walton prevent millions of Chinese workers from improving their incomes? ------------------------- > > Well, when the few hold such an?exorbitant?amount of available opportunity, > who can blame them. ### No, they hold accounting tokens. They don't prevent others from finding opportunities, that's why the industrious and smart coming from modest means, like about 95% of the US business elite, are able to help millions to achieve better lives (e.g. by bringing the US consumers and Chinese peasants together in a mutually beneficial trade arrangement, Walmart pulled hundreds of millions of people away from the brink of starvation and into the middle class), and yes, some of the executive make billions of dollars, which is still a very small fraction of a percent (usually <0.1%) of the total gains to the society. ---------------- > > Less efficient my ass. ?If anything capitalists should WANT those billions > of people as consumers. ?That kind of forward thinking goes against > everything our quarterly-profit-driven world stands for, however. ?Again, > short-sighted fools. ?Sort of like the USoA wasting TRILLIONS on securing > oil reserves, instead of investing TRILLIONS in > infrastructure/energy?independence. ?Missing the forest for the trees. ### Man, every sentence above is a leftist/environmentalist cliche, and none of them make the slightest quantitative sense. Trillions for energy independence? Lol. Wasting trillions on securing oil reserves? I wish. Just a couple days ago the EPA scuttled an expedition looking to drill for oil in the Arctic. 2.2 billion $ that was already invested went down the drain, a few billion in possible gains up in smoke. But who cares, the US is rich, no? Building a consumer base by firing your good executive and hiring a cheap one? Give me a break. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 3 02:47:29 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 22:47:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:57 AM, BillK wrote: > > This was, of course, not written by Abraham Lincoln. ### Somehow I am not surprised. Abe was a racist, populist, lying dictator, it would be strange if he wrote something as reasonable and honest. Rafal From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 3 02:49:17 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 21:49:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4DBF6D2D.40102@satx.rr.com> On 5/2/2011 9:30 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Just admit to yourself, Jones - you are consumed by envy. Then cast > this ugliness out of your soul and you will be a better person for it. Rafal, there is a difference between ugly envy and righteous indignation. You (like most of us) feel furious indignation toward governments and their toadies. Some feel it toward tobacco companies who foist lethal addictive substances on hundreds of millions of humans. Some feel it toward the armed and murderous purveyors of other drugs, including some drugs that many on this list wish to consume. Some feel it toward bankers and manufacturers who fuck up big time but are bailed out at public expense, while those responsible for the damage get multi-million dollar bonuses. Envy is not the only motive for wishing to prevent some from engaging in harmful actions that make them vastly wealthy at the expense of others, or at least reducing the profits they make in doing so. Damien Broderick From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 3 03:02:44 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 20:02:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: snip > > ### The rich spend a much lower fraction of their income on > consumption, compared to low-income persons, they productively invest > instead. That used to be the case, back in the days of steel, railroad, even oil. But it hasn't been for decades. The rich "invest" in what really amounts to ponzi schemes. Keith From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 3 02:51:56 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 22:51:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: <20110502093232.GI23560@leitl.org> References: <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502093232.GI23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 5:32 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > People are stupid, film at 11. I'll wait for the highlights on youtube, I don't have time for the whole film. "The #1 movie in America was called "Ass." And that's all it was for 90 minutes." -Narrator, Idiocracy (2006) From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 3 03:57:59 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 23:57:59 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: <4DBF6D2D.40102@satx.rr.com> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <4DBF6D2D.40102@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 10:49 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: Envy is not the > only motive for wishing to prevent some from engaging in harmful actions > that make them vastly wealthy at the expense of others, or at least reducing > the profits they make in doing so. ### Of course, it is reasonable to be indignant at those who get rich by harming us all - but the opposite happens in a market economy (i.e. competitive enterprises making or losing money by satisfying legitimate desires of customers) where the gain of the CEO leads to much greater gains, not losses, for the rest of us. Therefore, indignation at an honest CEO's 8 figure income is not righteous, only envious. I reserve my righteous indignation for the specific executives who survive by using government power to transfer wealth to themselves, like every single banker who took TARP money, and for the government officials who enabled it, like Mr Bernanke, Bush and Obama, and of course for the clueless voters who got us into this mess in the first place. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 3 03:58:53 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 23:58:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 11:02 PM, Keith Henson wrote: >> ### The rich spend a much lower fraction of their income on >> consumption, compared to low-income persons, they productively invest >> instead. > > That used to be the case, back in the days of steel, railroad, even oil. > > But it hasn't been for decades. ?The rich "invest" in what really > amounts to ponzi schemes. ### Give us some statistics, no? Rafal From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 07:00:57 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 08:00:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Samantha Atkins > > ENOUGH! When the hell is this group going to be actually about making a > future we look forward to living instead of endlessly chewing the same cud > year after effing year? I have had it! > > - s > Hi Samantha - I think ExI is very good at what it does, there is some truly remarkable thought in here, but if it's organization-toward-action you want, may I suggest you check out this new transhumanist group I'm involved with: http://zerostate.net All the Best, Amon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 08:19:38 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 09:19:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements Message-ID: On 3 May 2011 08:00, Amon Zero wrote: > 2011/5/3 Samantha Atkins > >> ENOUGH! When the hell is this group going to be actually about making a >> future we look forward to living instead of endlessly chewing the same cud >> year after effing year? I have had it! >> > > I think ExI is very good at what it does, there is some truly remarkable > thought in here, but if it's organization-toward-action you want, may I > suggest you check out this new transhumanist group I'm involved with: > > http://zerostate.net > I was going to hold off mentioning this until an official statement is prepared, but couldn't let Samantha's relevant comment slide by. Now that I've mentioned Zero State, I suppose I'd better give a little more information. Before I do, let me say that I believe deeply in the intellectual value of lists like ExI, and none of what I have to say is remotely intended as a criticism of this list. I've been involved with transhumanism (admittedly very quietly in the early years) for the better part of two decades now. Compared to many younger people coming to these ideas afresh now I'm some kind of "old timer", but I see myself as occupying a curious space between transhumanist 'generations'. I was not an early-days Extropian, but have been around long enough to remember when Extropy *was* transhumanism, for all intents and purposes. I still consider myself to be an Extropian, among other things. Then of course came the WTA (and later, Humanity+), which seemed to signal an age of pluralist and popular transhumanism. The very populist impulse that drives H+, however, has alienated any number of younger newcomers who, ironically, crave the older, more extreme vision of transhumanism. Add to that the extreme economic times we live in, and the matter of subcultures - both factors which tend to radicalize young people - and thus evolves the niche for a new form of transhumanism. In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. That's not to say that the various facets of transhumanism do not heavily overlap, but that the wheel simply seems to be turning once more. This phenomenon has been noticed and commented upon by blogger Paul Raven, who recently spoke for H+ UK: http://futurismic.com/2011/03/08/schismatic-transhuman-sects/ Recently, some people may have been aware of a minor and (to my mind) pointless scuffle between Raven's "classic" transhumanists and a new group known as the "transhuman separatists". Don't worry, I'm not going to argue in favour of Transhuman Separatism. Many of the people involved are good friends of mine, but they are largely operating in an arena where the "grown-ups" know everything already, and seldom want to engage in conversation. When they do, the extreme TS stance and juvenile vigour encourages them to disengage pretty quickly. The thing to remember is, however, that these 'kids' are going to grow up. They *want* to further transhumanism. They want *action*, and they *don't* want bland populist Kurzweilian messages, for the most part. When I first came across TS, my first impulse was to criticize it. Rigorously, frequently, and loudly. Maybe verbally beat some sense into them. But the sheer fact that I stuck around led to an interesting development... they began to understand me, and I them. It soon became clear that there was a way forward. So, we formed the notion of 'TX' (Transhuman X), a network of transhumanist nodes and subcultures, each with different values, intentions, and perspectives, but at root willing to work together for a transhumanist future. "Work" here is the key word... these are people who are not content to sit back and be technology's cheerleaders. They want to help. To innovate. To engage. Right now, the nascent TX network barely exists as anything more than an idea. Because my belief system is not a good fit with the ideas of Transhuman Separatism, I set up my own node within the TX network. That node is known as the "Zero State". The term 'zero' refers to the sum of human knowledge that we *know* would continue to be important to civilization after a period of extremely rapid technological and cultural development (or Singularity, if you prefer). It's simply a name that conveys the feeling that after point X, all bets are off. The two common values of all TX nodes are: - Art and culture can contribute to transhumanism too (not just science & engineering) - Considered action is preferred over ungrounded philosophical conversations That second point makes it clear why I responded to Samantha, I hope. Zero State has announced its principles, values, and intent here: http://zerostate.net Among other things, we will be carrying out and supporting work in the areas of Artificial and Augmented Intelligence, political engagement, and virtual world building (i.e. the development of infrastructure for a "virtual State"). Even if just for a chance to share your opinion on these matters, I hope some of you will come and visit us. We're all in this future together! ;-) All the Best, Amon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 3 09:12:52 2011 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 04:12:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Amon Zero > So, we formed the notion of 'TX' (Transhuman X), a network of transhumanist > nodes and subcultures, each with different values, intentions, and > perspectives, but at root willing to work together for a transhumanist > future. "Work" here is the key word... these are people who are not content > to sit back and be technology's cheerleaders. They want to help. To > innovate. To engage. > as a young transhumanist i see this as just more masturbation and grandstanding. Set up as many groups as you want... but please get back to work eventually. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 10:21:57 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 11:21:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Bryan Bishop > 2011/5/3 Amon Zero > >> So, we formed the notion of 'TX' (Transhuman X), a network of >> transhumanist nodes and subcultures, each with different values, intentions, >> and perspectives, but at root willing to work together for a transhumanist >> future. "Work" here is the key word... these are people who are not content >> to sit back and be technology's cheerleaders. They want to help. To >> innovate. To engage. >> > > as a young transhumanist i see this as just more masturbation and > grandstanding. Set up as many groups as you want... but please get back to > work eventually. > Bryan, the work has already begun. But if people are to get involved they need to be told what they're getting involved in, and I thought people might appreciate a little back-story. The alternative to such "masturbation", of course, is to do nothing. Best, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 3 10:37:19 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 03:37:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Amon Zero : snip > I think ExI is very good at what it does, there is some truly remarkable > thought in here, but if it's organization-toward-action you want, may I > suggest you check out this new transhumanist group I'm involved with: > http://zerostate.net > All the Best, > Amon I need a new group, but one where all the people can deal with rocket science. Know of any such? Keith From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 10:37:42 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 11:37:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 3 May 2011 11:21, Amon Zero wrote: > 2011/5/3 Bryan Bishop > >> >> as a young transhumanist i see this as just more masturbation and >> grandstanding. Set up as many groups as you want... but please get back to >> work eventually. >> > > > Bryan, the work has already begun. > But if people are to get involved they need to be told what they're getting > involved in, and I thought people might appreciate a little back-story. > The alternative to such "masturbation", of course, is to do nothing. > Also, just to clarify, my point was that there are now groups dedicated to goal-oriented project work rather than conversation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but up until now the only options for a transhumanist to translate their knowledge, skills and interests have been to (A) get a job in a relevant field, (B) work independently, or (C) join a small institute with a very narrow remit. Broader, explicitly transhumanist groups have seemed to exist only for discussing the latest developments and ideological tropes. Maybe, just maybe, we are seeing the emergence of a fourth option for networked, concrete work. Best, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 10:43:09 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 11:43:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> Message-ID: On 3 May 2011 11:37, Keith Henson wrote: > > I need a new group, but one where all the people can deal with rocket > science. > > Know of any such? > Sadly Keith, I do not - but I'd love to see you start one! ;-) Seriously though, the whole point of a networked project approach is that people can (hopefully) come together over shared interests, knowledge, skills, *plus* a desire to actually achieve explicit goals. The difference between this and any other specialist group is that there's a protocol for announcing your progress and finding resources across the wider network. I know I'm getting a little enthusiastic here, but I see this as perfectly congruent with the Extropic ideal of "Dynamic Optimism". I do apologise though, I can't remember what the maximum of posts per day is, and don't want to troll. I believe this is my fourth post on the matter. Honestly, I'm trying to be as constructive as possible here, not stir up trouble... at least not non-constructive trouble! ;-) Best, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 3 10:53:36 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 03:53:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Amon Zero : > On 3 May 2011 11:37, Keith Henson wrote: >> >> I need a new group, but one where all the people can deal with rocket >> science. >> >> Know of any such? > > Sadly Keith, I do not - but I'd love to see you start one!?? ;-) Sigh, it may come to that. > Seriously though, the whole point of a networked project approach is that > people can (hopefully) come together over shared interests, knowledge, > skills, *plus* a desire to actually achieve explicit goals. The difference > between this and any other specialist group is that there's a protocol for > announcing your progress and finding resources across the wider network. Perhaps I should watch them for a while. > I know I'm getting a little enthusiastic here, but I see this as perfectly > congruent with the Extropic ideal of "Dynamic Optimism". I do apologise > though, I can't remember what the maximum of posts per day is, and don't > want to troll. I believe this is my fourth post on the matter. Honestly, I'm > trying to be as constructive as possible here, not stir up trouble... at > least not non-constructive trouble!? ;-) Don't worry about it. The admins will cut you slack for constructive postings. Keith From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 11:11:49 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 12:11:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: Efficiency of algorithmic trading) Message-ID: On 3 May 2011 11:53, Keith Henson wrote: > > Don't worry about it. The admins will cut you slack for constructive > postings. > > Keith > Cheers for that Keith. Yes, I would recommend keeping one eye on proceedings, in case any like-minded people come out of the woodwork as things proceed. It's the earliest of early days yet, but the intention is to have periodic brief status reports from all project groups, so people have a sense of what's going on that they might like to watch or contribute to. There have been people interested in work on AI (most relevant to my dayjob), VR, BioHacking, and one or two other things, but you're the first person who has mentioned rocket science! All the Best, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 3 12:11:02 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 14:11:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Amon Zero > The thing to remember is, however, that these 'kids' are going to grow up. > They *want* to further transhumanism. They want *action*, and they *don't* > want bland populist Kurzweilian messages, for the most part. > Indeed. As much as I may like our exchanges on transhumanist fora, and their ability to help us cross-educate ourselves to shared ideas, values, languages, not to mention to keep up-to-date with regard to what is happening, the real point is what we do out of the door. In this respect, as one need not be in the military to wage war, and military men may well in fact be pacifist at heart, I do not think that it is the primary job of the transhumanist(s) movement as such to get directly involved in posthuman change-relevant technologies, but rather that of changing society to the best of their possibilities in a direction making such a change more likely, more imminent, and in the first place - possible. This is why I think transhumanism to be basically a political identity, requiring action to its supporters along the lines of any other grass-root movement. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue May 3 11:16:54 2011 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Tue, 03 May 2011 07:16:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: References: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <006301cc0983$9e581440$db083cc0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Stefano Vaj wrote, > On 1 May 2011 22:01, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > I hate to post this. I don't want to start up the carb-vs-fat thread again. > > Come on. Even if I was not led to change my views, I found the > discussions on the subject rather informational and constructive. Don't get me wrong. I thought it was a useful discussion. I just don't think we need to repeat it so soon, unless someone has something new to say. From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue May 3 11:27:04 2011 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Tue, 03 May 2011 07:27:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: References: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: <006401cc0985$0f677300$2e365900$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote, ### People on Atkins diet have a lower total caloric intake, despite lack of any limitations on the amounts of food. This would contradict your statement. Not at all. I actually agree with the above statement and think it is scientific. What is funny is that I don't think you realize that Taubes would disagree with you. He would argue that total calories don't matter and that lowering total caloric intake isn't useful. He would claim that as a doctor, you have been brainwashed by the medical conspiracy establishment into believing this false lie about total calories being a good meter of anything. That conspiracy theory is what my statement was trying to dispute, not your scientific statement above. From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 13:06:46 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 14:06:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Stefano Vaj > > This is why I think transhumanism to be basically a political identity, > requiring action to its supporters along the lines of any other grass-root > movement. > I agree with this wholeheartedly. For a lot of people, the grass-roots activity they want to engage in is not obviously political, but it is political in the sense that in sends a message to peers and other observers: "my worldview is valid, supported by others, and we're working to realize it - deal with it!". Naiive as it may sound, I believe that such a stance can be much more effective in swaying public and political opinion than simply commenting on what may or may not happen, what should or should not happen. - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 3 13:40:39 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 06:40:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: Efficiency of algorithmic trading) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Amon Zero : snip > . . . but you're the first person who has mentioned rocket science! Between here and the singularity, the most serious problem the human race faces is the end of easy to obtain energy. Power satellites are one of a few ways to deal with the problem--which is huge in extent. Nuclear power works, but the risk cost is serious. Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 3 13:53:26 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 06:53:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Amon Zero : snip > In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. Happened to the post Apollo space movement. L5 Society (later merged into the National Space Society) was one of the early ones, but there were dozens of them, maybe a dozen of them of them still around. It's my considered opinion that none of them accomplish anything useful. In the early days a number of them had leaders or active members that were contributing technical work, but as time went on, they left and the people who remained were high on political motivation, but completely unable to judge ideas on technical feasibility or even at the level of high school physics. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 3 13:33:01 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 14:33:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Amon Zero wrote: > I agree with this wholeheartedly. For a lot of people, the grass-roots > activity they want to engage in is not obviously political, but it is > political in the sense that in sends a message to peers and other observers: > "my worldview is valid, supported by others, and we're working to realize it > - deal with it!". > > Naiive as it may sound, I believe that such a stance can be much more > effective in swaying public and political opinion than simply commenting on > what may or may not happen, what should or should not happen. > > Although actually doing stuff is exciting for the youngsters it is not impossible that some of the older people who are already too busy (or too tired) to get their hands dirty themselves might have useful words of advice to offer. A lot of thrashing around with trial and error development might be avoided with a touch on the rudder to point you in the right direction. 'Behind every successful man is a strong woman'. Oops, sorry, that should be --- 'Behind every successful man is a surprised woman'. BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue May 3 14:00:19 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 07:00:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: <4DBF62D4.6040503@satx.rr.com> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> <4DBF62D4.6040503@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <007701cc099a$706320e0$512962a0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Damien Broderick Subject: Re: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading On 5/2/2011 8:11 PM, spike wrote: >>... The flip side is if there is a business-unfriendly government, the rich sit on their money and wait it out, as we are seeing now. >...A government, like the one before it, so unfriendly that it shovels trillions of dollars into businesses, especially when they screw up? Damien Broderick Ja. If a government shovels trillions of dollars into businesses and yours is not one of those on the receiving end, the government is taking your capital and giving it to your competitor. That is a perfect example of a business unfriendly government. The winning strategy now is to try to preserve some capital, wait for government to run out of other people's money, then when it does, the needs will be great and the opportunities greater. spike From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 14:18:24 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 15:18:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: Efficiency of algorithmic trading) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 3 May 2011 14:40, Keith Henson wrote: > 2011/5/3 Amon Zero : > > snip > > > . . . but you're the first person who has mentioned rocket science! > > Between here and the singularity, the most serious problem the human > race faces is the end of easy to obtain energy. > > Power satellites are one of a few ways to deal with the problem--which > is huge in extent. > > Nuclear power works, but the risk cost is serious. > Ah yes - good point. Space Based Solar Power actually gets a very brief mention in the ZS principles (point 3J): http://zerostate.net Cheers, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 3 14:59:52 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 15:59:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 3 May 2011 14:33, BillK wrote: > > Although actually doing stuff is exciting for the youngsters it is not > impossible that some of the older people who are already too busy (or > too tired) to get their hands dirty themselves might have useful words > of advice to offer. A lot of thrashing around with trial and error > development might be avoided with a touch on the rudder to point you > in the right direction. > I have to say, I personally would be over the moon if we started to see that kind of thing happening. I have small children and a demanding job myself, so already delegation and distributed responsibility is becoming very important, and I expect/hope that people in relatively low-commitment "guidance" roles will come to be an important feature of the initiative. We shall see. Perhaps the most productive thing I can do on this front is to say that when there is a stable list of projects and activities in progress (hopefully 1-3 weeks from now), I'll post it here with contact details for each team, so anyone interested can say hi and offer welcome advice to the relevant team(s) without having to wade through a lot of uninteresting discussion etc...? I'd make a point of telling team leaders to expect this - the knowledge of ExI list members would, I think, prove immensely valuable to these projects. Best, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 3 15:11:48 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 17:11:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: Efficiency of algorithmic trading) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110503151148.GR23560@leitl.org> On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 06:40:39AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > Nuclear power works, Not really. > but the risk cost is serious. That, too, but that's not the real reason why it doesn't work. From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 3 15:54:01 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 03 May 2011 11:54:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The proposed new Rocket-Science group In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DC02519.3020101@lightlink.com> Keith Henson wrote: > I need a new group, but one where all the people can deal with rocket science. > > Know of any such? Do you mean rocket science in the domain-specific sense, or in the sense of "competent enough to understand hard science"? Richard Loosemore From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 3 15:57:09 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 03 May 2011 11:57:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Nuclear power works, but the risk cost is serious In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DC025D5.8080404@lightlink.com> Keith Henson wrote: > Nuclear power works, but the risk cost is serious. Correct. However, one approach is to develop the kind of AGI systems that would be capable of understanding and controlling the risk factors (from the design stage out). That is my approach, as opposed to the approach of putting the energy collectors in orbit. Richard Loosemore From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 3 15:59:06 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 17:59:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The proposed new Rocket-Science group In-Reply-To: <4DC02519.3020101@lightlink.com> References: <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> <4DC02519.3020101@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110503155906.GU23560@leitl.org> On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 11:54:01AM -0400, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Keith Henson wrote: >> I need a new group, but one where all the people can deal with rocket science. >> >> Know of any such? > > Do you mean rocket science in the domain-specific sense, or in the sense > of "competent enough to understand hard science"? Feel free to use astro at postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/pipermail/astro/ -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From kanzure at gmail.com Tue May 3 17:25:34 2011 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 12:25:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The proposed new Rocket-Science group In-Reply-To: <4DC02519.3020101@lightlink.com> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <4DBF4839.70808@mac.com> <4DC02519.3020101@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:54 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > I need a new group, but one where all the people can deal with rocket > science. try arocket on the exrocket server -- - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Tue May 3 17:57:34 2011 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 11:57:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Nanogirl News ~ In-Reply-To: References: <8CDD7D12D50ED8D-EA4-492@webmail-m060.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <501A043A-EAC8-4B3B-9CED-3A2D3D8F1743@halcyon.com> > >> The Nanogirl News >> 5.3.2011 >> >> Researchers create terahertz invisibility cloak. Researchers at Northwestern University have created a new kind of cloaking material that can render objects invisible in the terahertz range. Though this design can't translate into an invisibility cloak for the visible spectrum, it could have implications in diagnostics, security, and communication. The cloak, designed by Cheng Sun, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, uses microfabricated gradient-index materials to manipulate the reflection and refraction of light. Sun's results will be presented May 4 at CLEO: 2011, the annual Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics. (April.7.2011 EurekAlert): http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-04/nu-rct042711.php >> >> Sandia and UNM lead effort to destroy cancers. Melding nanotechnology and medical research, researchers have produced an effective strategy that uses nanoparticles to blast cancerous cells with a melange of killer drugs. In the cover article of the May issue of Nature Materials, the researchers describe silica nanoparticles as honeycombed with cavities that can store large amounts and varieties of drugs. (April.18.2011 Sandia): https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/nano-treatment/ >> >> (Hopes for an artificial brain) Researchers create functioning synapse using carbon nanotubes. Engineering researchers the University of Southern California have made a significant breakthrough in the use of nanotechnologies for the construction of a synthetic brain. They have built a carbon nanotube synapse circuit whose behavior in tests reproduces the function of a neuron, the building block of the brain. (Physorg April 21.2011) http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-functioning-synapse-carbon-nanotubes.html >> >> Paper that's stronger than steel? UTS Scientists have reported remarkable results in developing a composite material based on graphite that is a thin as paper and ten times stronger than steel.In work recently published in the Journal of Applied Physics, a UTS research team supervised by Professor Guoxiu Wang has developed reproducible test results and nanostructural samples of graphene paper, a material with the potential to revolutionize the automotive, aviation, electrical and optical industries. >> (April.20.2011 _Connect): https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/nanoktn/articles/-/blogs/3729519;jsessionid=5539327C46640BF060846A17A74D8BC2.MekushUdbew4 >> >> The world's smallest wedding rings. Creating artificial structures from DNA is the objective of DNA nanotechnology. This new discipline, which combines biology, physics, chemistry and material science makes use of the ability of the natural DNA-strains' capacity for self assembly. Smileys or small boxes, measuring only 10s of nanometers (10 one-billionths of a meter) were created from DNA in a drop of water. Prof Alexander Heckel and his doctoral student Thorsten Schmidt from the "Cluster of Excellence for Macromolecular Complexes" at Goethe University were able to create two rings of DNA only 18 nanometers in size, and to interlock them like two links in a chain. (April.12.2011 R&D): http://www.rdmag.com/News/2011/04/Engineering-DNA-The-world-s-smallest-wedding-rings/ >> >> Dallas nanotechnology expert Jim Von Ehr giving keynote speech at Foresight Institute nanotech conference at Google HQ in June. One of the most notable things about Von Ehr is that, in addition to running his own company, he's deeply involved in investing in tech companies and addressing trends in the field, particularly in his own realm of nano. (April.27.2011 Dallas News): http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/04/dallas-nanotechnology-expert-j.html >> >> Nanoscience May Hold Key to Surgical Recovery. New nano-systems developed in York may eventually help patients recover from surgery without the danger of allergic reactions to drugs. Researchers from the University of York's Department of Chemistry have developed synthetic molecules capable of binding the chemical drug heparin, which they believe may provide an alternative to protamine. >> (April.26.2011 ScienceDaily): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110426081951.htm >> >> New 'nanobead' approach could revolutionize sensor technology. Researchers at Oregon State University have found a way to use magnetic "nanobeads" to help detect chemical and biological agents, with possible applications in everything from bioterrorism to medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring or even water and food safety. When fully developed as a hand-held, portable sensor, like something you might see in a science fiction movie, it will provide a whole diagnostic laboratory on a single chip. The research could revolutionize the size, speed and accuracy of chemical detection systems around the world. >> (April.26.2011 Army Research Laboratory): http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/apr/new-?nanobead?-approach-could-revolutionize-sensor-technology >> >> Collecting the sun's energy. Conventional silicon-based rigid solar cells generally found on the market are not suitable for manufacturing moldable thin-film solar cells, in which a transparent, flexible and electrically conductive electrode collects the light and carries away the current. A woven polymer electrode developed by Empa has now produced first results which are very promising, indicating that the new material may be a substitute for indium tin oxide coatings. (April.19.2011 Empa): >> http://www.empa.ch/plugin/template/empa/1256/106208/---/l=2 >> >> Nanotechnology-based Sunscreens Help Prevent Skin Cancers. The Nanodermatology Society (NDS), an organization led by physicians and focusing on applications of nanotechnology and dermatology in scientific and medical fields, has released a paper on the safety of nanotechnology application in sunscreens. Titanium dioxide and zinc oxide have been used in sunscreens. (April.25.2011 AZnano): http://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=22289 >> >> Origami DNA Advances Nanotechnology. While the primary job of DNA in cells is to carry genetic information from one generation to the next, some scientists also see the highly stable and programmable molecule as an ideal building material for nanoscale structures that could be used to deliver drugs, act as biosensors, perform artificial photosynthesis and more. (April.28.2011 Laboratory Equipment) http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-origami-dna-advances-nanotechnology-042811.aspx >> >> SanDisk Announces 19-Nanometer Manufacturing Technology. SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), the global leader in flash memory cards, today announced a 64-gigabit (Gb), 2-bits-per-cell (X2) based monolithic chip made on 19-nanometer (nm) technology, the most advanced memory process technology node in the world. This latest technology enables SanDisk to produce embedded and removable storage devices with the high capacities and small form factors used in mobile phones, tablet computers and other devices. (April.25.2011 Scandisk): http://www.sandisk.com/about-sandisk/press-room/press-releases/2011/2011-04-20-sandisk-announces-19-nanometer >> >> The Etch-a-SketchTM of Microscopy Creates Single Electron Transistors. Researchers from Pitt, University of Wisconsin at Madison and HP Labs, again led by Levy, have used the Etch-a-SketchTMtechnique to build a single-electron transistor, which they have dubbed SketchSET (sketch-based single electron transistor). The research, which was initially published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, marks the first time that a single-electron transistor has been made from oxide materials. (April.20.2011 IEE Spectrum): http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/the-etchasketchtm-of-microscopy-creates-single-electron-transistors >> >> New Polymer Solar Power - Thermal Device Unveiled. A new polymer-based solar-thermal device developed by the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University can generate power from both heat and visible sunlight. The concept could potentially slash the cost of home heating by as much as 40 percent. >> (April.29.2011 Energy Matters): http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=1482 >> >> Nanotechnologists take lessons from nature. "That is the lesson of nature, where a humble bacterial cell outperforms our best computer chips by a factor of 100 million, and it does this in part by being less than perfect." (April.28.2011 Vanderbilt University): http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2011/04/nanotechnologists-take-lessons-from-nature/ >> >> DNA Nanotechnology to Create Artificial Structures from DNA. Generating synthetic structures from DNA is the aim of DNA nanotechnology. This new field, which merges biology, physics, chemistry and material science utilizes the capability of the natural DNA-strains' ability for auto assembly. (AZnano April.18.2011) >> http://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=22223 >> >> Johns Hopkins Cancer Nanotechnology Training Center (CNTC) launched. The war on cancer is fought on many fronts, even tiny, nanoscale ones. To train new scientists and engineers to combat the spread of cancer, Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT) has established a pre-doctoral (PhD) training program in Nanotechnology for Cancer Medicine. Together with the institute's previously established Nanotechnology for Cancer Medicine postdoctoral fellowship, these two training programs will comprise the Johns Hopkins Cancer Nanotechnology Training Center (CNTC). (nanowerk April.8.2011) >> http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=20934.php >> >> IBM's MRSA Infection-Fighting Nanotechnology Caps Century of Healthcare Innovation. Earlier this week, scientists from IBM Research announced ground breaking early research discovering new types of nanoparticles that are physically attracted like magnets to MRSA cells, ignoring healthy cells completely and targeting and killing the bacteria by poking holes in its walls. This discovery could greatly improve the effectiveness of medication. (PRNewswire April.7.2011) http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibms-mrsa-infection-fighting-nanotechnology-caps-century-of-healthcare-innovation-119416349.html >> >> Scientists make quantum breakthrough. ?We have shown that when atoms in a vacuum chamber are guided inside a laser light beam, they too can create a speckle pattern - an image of which we have captured for the first time?...The team trapped a cloud of cold helium atoms at the focus of an intense laser beam pointed downwards at the imaging system, and then gradually turned down the laser intensity until the speckled image appeared. (April.20.2011 Physorg): http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-scientists-quantum-breakthrough.html >> >> Molecular movements of neural transporters unveiled. A team of scientists from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Weill Cornell Medical College has shed light on the molecular workings of transporter proteins, molecular machines embedded in the cell membranes of neurons that modulate the transfer of signals between cells and recycle neurotransmitters. (April.25.2011 nanowerk): http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=21141.php >> >> 2 graphene layers may be better than 1. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have shown that the electronic properties of two layers of graphene vary on the nanometer scale. The surprising new results reveal that not only does the difference in the strength of the electric charges between the two layers vary across the layers, but they also actually reverse in sign to create randomly distributed puddles of alternating positive and negative charges. (April.27.2011 e! Science News): http://esciencenews.com/articles/2011/04/27/2.graphene.layers.may.be.better.1?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eScienceNews%2Fpopular+(e!+Science+News+-+Popular) >> >> UCLA researchers now 1 step closer to controlled engineering of nanocatalysts. Yu Huang, assistant professor of material science and engineering at UCLA Engineering, and her team have demonstrated a rational approach to producing nanocrystals with predictable shapes. Huang's work could one day lead to the ability to rationally produce nanocatalysts with desired crystal surfaces and hence catalytic properties. (April.19.2011 University of California Los Angeles): http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/newsroom/featured-news/archive/2011/ucla-researchers-now-one-step-closer-to-controlled-engineering-of-nanocatalysts >> >> Water molecules characterize the structure of DNA genetic material. Water molecules surround the genetic material DNA in a very specific way. Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have discovered that, on the one hand, the texture of this hydration shell depends on the water content and, on the other hand, actually influences the structure of the genetic substance itself. These findings are not only important in understanding the biological function of DNA; they could also be used for the construction of new DNA-based materials. (April.26.2011 nanowerk): http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=21156.php >> >> Nanotechnology research 'could offer nickel allergy treatment option'. Scientists in the US have devised a potential new method of treating nickel allergies using a special type of nanoparticle. The team at Brigham and Women's Hospital have created a cream containing calcium-based particles measuring billionths of a metre in diameter, which can be applied to the skin of those affected by the common dermatological condition. (April.5.2011 Zenopa): http://www.zenopa.com/news/800488078/Nanotechnology_research__could_offer_nickel_allergy_treatment_option_ >> >> Quantum light successfully teleported. Researchers from Australia and Japan have successfully teleported wave packets of light, potentially revolutionizing quantum communications and computing. The team, led by researchers at the University of Tokyo, said this is the first-ever teleportation, or transfer, of a particular complex set of quantum information from one point to another. (April.15.2011 CBC news): http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/04/15/technology-quantum-teleportation.html >> >> New DNA nanoforms take shape (w/video). Miniature architectural forms ? some no larger than viruses ? have been constructed through a revolutionary technique known as DNA origami. Now, Hao Yan, Yan Liu and their colleagues at ASU's Biodesign Institute have expanded the capability of this method to construct arbitrary, two- and three-dimensional shapes, mimicking those commonly found in nature. Such diminutive forms may ultimately find their way into a wide array of devices, from ultra-tiny computing components to nanomedical sentries used to target and destroy aberrant cells or deliver therapeutics at the cellular or even molecular level. (April.21.2011 nanowerk): http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=21112.php >> >> Kind regards, >> Gina "Nanogirl" Miller >> www.nanoindustries.com >> www.nanogirl.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Tue May 3 18:46:00 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 11:46:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Interview with Natasha, Transhumanism Meets Design Message-ID: Nice interview with Natasha, spurred by the Humanity+ @ Parsons conference she is co-chairing: http://www.psfk.com/2011/05/transhumanism-meets-design-ethically-expanding-human-potential.html -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Tue May 3 18:51:05 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 11:51:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <987102.51499.qm@web114410.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> BillK quoth: > 'Behind every successful man is a strong woman'. > > Oops, sorry, that should be --- > > 'Behind every successful man is a surprised woman'. Don't you mean 'Behind every surprised woman is a successful man'? :>> Ben Zaiboc From bbenzai at yahoo.com Tue May 3 18:55:34 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 11:55:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] The Nanogirl News In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <731114.15950.qm@web114402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Gina Miller Posted: > >> The Nanogirl News Gina! Welcome back! Good to see an issue of Nanogirl news again, I hope you're doing ok. Ben Zaiboc From js_exi at gnolls.org Tue May 3 19:38:32 2011 From: js_exi at gnolls.org (J. Stanton) Date: Tue, 03 May 2011 12:38:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] On Taubes And Toilets (was re: GCBC) Message-ID: <4DC059B8.2060205@gnolls.org> Harvey Newstrom wrote: > What is funny is that I don't think you realize that Taubes would > disagree with you. He would argue that total calories don't matter > and that lowering total caloric intake isn't useful. He would claim > that as a doctor, you have been brainwashed by the medical conspiracy > establishment into believing this false lie about total calories > being a good meter of anything. > > That conspiracy theory is what my statement was trying to dispute, > not your scientific statement above. Taubes spends two entire chapters in "Why We Get Fat" debunking that specific misinterpretation. Here's a damn funny article about it: http://sparkofreason.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-taubes-and-toilets.html "One of our toilets has been acting balky lately. Last night I went to flush it and nothing happened. I started pondering on the possible causes of this, and had a brief vision of a bunch of Ph.D's standing around, stroking their chins and sagely examining the toilet through glasses perched on the ends of their noses. After a few knowing glances at each other, they pronounced: "From the First Law of Thermodynamics, we know the problem with your toilet is that, at some point in the past, less water came in than left!"" JS http://www.gnolls.org From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 3 20:00:58 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 14:00:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > The two common values of all TX nodes are: > - Art and culture can contribute to transhumanism too (not just science & > engineering) > - Considered action is preferred over ungrounded philosophical conversations Just out of curiosity, is there room for someone who knows computer science and cares deeply about mental health, particularly the mental health of AGIs? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 3 22:45:27 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 16:45:27 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> References: <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 3:11 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> Since 1971? So the personal computer, > > The microcomputer has been around since 1970 (the IC is even > earlier), and it has no fundamental architectural differences > from the mini, nor the mini from the mainframe. But socially, it was a mega-quake/tsunami to put it in people's homes. >> Internet, cell phone, laser > > Packet-switching is 1968. Mobile phone is 1973. > >> printers, none of that constitutes a paradigm shift? If so, then whata > > Laser is 1960, laser printer is 1969. > >> does? > > The switch from phytobiomass to fossil energy. Industrialization. > > Paradigm shifts are rarer than people seem to think. So in your opinion, when was the last real paradigm shift and what was it? -Kelly From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 3 23:12:10 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 03 May 2011 16:12:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: Efficiency of algorithmic trading) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On May 3, 2011, at 7:18 AM, Amon Zero wrote: > On 3 May 2011 14:40, Keith Henson wrote: > 2011/5/3 Amon Zero : > > snip > > > . . . but you're the first person who has mentioned rocket science! > > Between here and the singularity, the most serious problem the human > race faces is the end of easy to obtain energy. I think it is economic collapse of a greater magnitude than seen before bring on the destruction of many western and some eastern technological societies. Beside that energy is a piece of cake. I can think of ways that would fix energy that are actually doable at reasonable cost within a decade. Not so much on fixing the economic tsunami bearing down on us. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 3 23:16:15 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 03 May 2011 16:16:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> Message-ID: On May 2, 2011, at 7:15 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > 2011/5/2 spike : > > snip > >> The flip >> side is if there is a business-unfriendly government, the rich sit on their >> money and wait it out, as we are seeing now. Any one that cares about not destroying value would not invest it in many places right now. It is a very dangerous environment. > > Part of that is *our* fault. Nobody sees anything worth investing in > at the moment. > Not so. They don't see currency stability or a debt ratio that is a safe environment to invest in nor a stable government unlikely to attempt to run their sector of the economy on the next emergency. > Coming up with such ideas is the job of engineers and we have not been > doing so recently. > Plenty of good ideas out there. And there is more private equity looking for a place to be invested than in the last few years. - s From nanogirl at halcyon.com Wed May 4 02:57:34 2011 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 20:57:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Nanogirl News In-Reply-To: <731114.15950.qm@web114402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <731114.15950.qm@web114402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1FD56949113241E5917967E216BC43F3@3DBOXXW4850> There are a couple reasons: moving, a new job (video editor) and my email provider kept blocking the Extropy Chat list - but I think I have all the kinks worked out now. And thank you for the welcome back Ben, that is very kind of you. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Zaiboc" To: Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 12:55 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] The Nanogirl News > Gina Miller Posted: > >> >> The Nanogirl News > > Gina! Welcome back! > > Good to see an issue of Nanogirl news again, I hope you're doing ok. > > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed May 4 03:04:19 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 20:04:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: Efficiency of algorithmic trading) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/3 Samantha Atkins : > > On May 3, 2011, at 7:18 AM, Amon Zero wrote: > > On 3 May 2011 14:40, Keith Henson wrote: >> >> 2011/5/3 Amon Zero : >> >> snip >> >> > . . . but you're the first person who has mentioned rocket science! >> >> Between here and the singularity, the most serious problem the human >> race faces is the end of easy to obtain energy. > > I think it is economic collapse of a greater magnitude than seen before > bring on the destruction of many western and some eastern technological > societies. ?Beside that energy is a piece of cake. They are *deeply* connected problems. Getting access to vast amounts of low cost energy will fix the economic problems, even pay off the government debt and fund social security. 20 million bbls of oil a day @ $100 per bbl is $2 B a day, $730 B/year, And the eventual cash flow from this project is at least 2,000 GW of new power sats a year that are worth 1.6 B/GW. > I can think of ways that would fix energy that are actually doable at > reasonable cost within a decade. I know of one way, $100/kg to GEO and power satellites that will fix the problem and another, StratoSolar that might do so. (Long list of unsolved problems.) Do your solutions get energy down to the point of being able to make synthetic gasoline for a dollar a gallon? That's what it takes. If you have ideas that are less expensive than power satellites, let me know and I will work on them. I spent more than a year on StratoSolar because it looks (and still looks) like it might be promising. Keith > Not so much on fixing the economic tsunami > bearing down on us. > - s > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 4 07:15:42 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 09:15:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110504071542.GE23560@leitl.org> On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 04:45:27PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > Paradigm shifts are rarer than people seem to think. > > So in your opinion, when was the last real paradigm shift and what was it? It's a matter of opinion. I would put the industrial revolution, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution but up to ~1970 maybe. The next Big One will be the switch from fossil to renewable energy sources and material base, the second industrial revolution by way of machine-phase nanotechnology and advanced automation, including machine intelligence, accompanied by expansion into space. Inasmuch we're in the first stages of it already is hard to tell. Near future will show. From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 4 07:08:33 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 00:08:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Nanogirl News ~ In-Reply-To: <501A043A-EAC8-4B3B-9CED-3A2D3D8F1743@halcyon.com> References: <8CDD7D12D50ED8D-EA4-492@webmail-m060.sysops.aol.com> <501A043A-EAC8-4B3B-9CED-3A2D3D8F1743@halcyon.com> Message-ID: I'm so glad that Gina Miller's Nanogirl News is back! I'm quite certain the Singularity would just not be the same without it... John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 4 07:34:49 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 00:34:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Book: "The Longevity Project" Message-ID: This coming Thursday night on Coast to Coast AM, starting at 10 or 11pm in your area... "Professor of Psychology Howard Friedman will discuss an eight decade study which documents who really thrives under certain conditions and who dies early. The comprehensive study busts myths about the secrets to living a longer life." The radio interview... http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2011/05/05 The book... http://www.amazon.com/Longevity-Project-Surprising-Discoveries-Eight-Decade/dp/1594630755/ctoc I don't want my fellow transhumanists dropping like flies, and so I consider it important to share these links... John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 4 07:44:37 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 08:44:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: <20110504071542.GE23560@leitl.org> References: <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> <20110504071542.GE23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 8:15 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > It's a matter of opinion. I would put the industrial revolution, > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution > but up to ~1970 maybe. > > The next Big One will be the switch from fossil to renewable > energy sources and material base, the second industrial > revolution by way of machine-phase nanotechnology and advanced > automation, including machine intelligence, accompanied by > expansion into space. > > I think your definition of paradigm shift is too restrictive. You are almost making it mean the same as Singularity. You are out on your own with this usage, In current language use 'paradigm shift' means almost any significant change in general thought patterns or ways of working. (Though if you work in Marketing, a new soap powder is called a 'paradigm shift'). Wikipedia has a good article, discussing the origin of the term and current usage. BillK From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 4 08:02:11 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 01:02:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Amon Zero wrote: >In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. That's not to say that the various facets of transhumanism do not heavily overlap, >but that the wheel simply seems to be turning once more. The Mormon Transhumanist Association comes to mind (you can tell where our booth is at a H+ conference, by listening for the sounds of irritated voices and grinding teeth)... http://transfigurism.org/ John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 4 08:32:01 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 09:32:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real Message-ID: Spike mentioned a project to allow Farmville players to try their skills on a real-life farm. A trial project is now starting up in the UK. Quote: A National Trust farm is to be run by online subscribers voting on which crops to grow and livestock to rear. For a ?30 annual fee, 10,000 farm followers will help manage Wimpole Home Farm, in Cambridgeshire. The National Trust says its MyFarm project aims to reconnect people with where their food comes from. It was partly inspired by the online Facebook game Farmville and follows the example of Ebbsfleet Football Club which is run on a similar basis. Decisions about the running of the team in Kent has been in the hands of MyFootballClub subscribers since 2008. --------------------- BillK From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 4 09:14:42 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 11:14:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: Efficiency of algorithmic trading) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110504091442.GG23560@leitl.org> On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 04:12:10PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > I think it is economic collapse of a greater magnitude than > seen before bring on the destruction of many western and > some eastern technological societies. Beside that energy is a piece of cake. A purely financial collapse would be an eminently recoverable problem. But the reason for the collapse are systemic, and resource scarcity is the key driver. > I can think of ways that would fix energy that are actually > doable at reasonable cost within a decade. Not so much on A decade scale implies immediate (as: starting today) deployment, with no innovation required. Apart from negawatts (cut the US blue whale in half) I can only think of micro co-gen plants first, and solar thermal and solar PV second. Germany plans to reach 41.6 GWp photovoltaic capacity by 2014. This would mean ability to supply up to ~50% of peak demand load or 4-5% of total demand. > fixing the economic tsunami bearing down on us. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From amon at doctrinezero.com Wed May 4 11:09:19 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 12:09:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 3 May 2011 21:00, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > The two common values of all TX nodes are: > > - Art and culture can contribute to transhumanism too (not just science & > > engineering) > > - Considered action is preferred over ungrounded philosophical > conversations > > Just out of curiosity, is there room for someone who knows computer > science and cares deeply about mental health, particularly the mental > health of AGIs? > Hey Kelly - Short version: Yes. Longer version: My own background is in cognitive psychology, so I'd be the first to want to define terms, warn of anthropomorphization, get to the heart of what you're interested in, etc. That said, we will be (and to some extent, already are) looking at various aspects of AI. Initial phase is about recognizing and assessing issues, putting together written reports that give a sense of where our resources will be best applied, and how. So, at this stage, there is benefit in exploring a wide range of related issues, just to see where our investigations take us. I can imagine this issue being relevant to the work of a team with a wider remit, or perhaps even as a theoretical research project in its own right, if you felt like leading such a thing...? I say "theoretical" only because we have no AIs with potential mental health issues (yet!), but the general intention is that projects like this may yield valuable insights and guidelines for practical projects to incorporate into their work. I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to copy this post (no names) over to the private ZS facebook group, so people can see the kinds of issues others may be interested in pursuing. Best, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Wed May 4 11:47:43 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 12:47:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/4 John Grigg > Amon Zero wrote: > >In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. That's not to say that > the various facets of transhumanism do not heavily overlap, >but that the > wheel simply seems to be turning once more. > > The Mormon Transhumanist Association comes to mind (you can tell where our > booth is at a H+ conference, by listening for the sounds of irritated voices > and grinding teeth)... > > http://transfigurism.org/ > Hi John - I must say I've found you guys (i.e. Mormon Transhumanists) quite intriguing for some time. There are people within ZS working to adapt its principles into a religion of sorts (known so far as "the praxis" - small p - or "transhuman praxis", where Praxis - capital p - refers to ZS as a whole), which gave rise to one of the more interesting early discussions / debates. Basically, a slim majority of early ZS members were opposed to any 'religion' or 'spiritual philosophy' angle whatsoever, *even when* they agreed with every single tenet of the proposed belief system. So it was the label, the word 'religion' itself, that was making them squeamish. Anyway, we went for a compromise in the best distributed-networks tradition, allowing the religion project to go ahead, but emphasizing that it is just one way in which people may choose to engage with the ideas and action of offer, which all members are equally free to determinedly ignore. If anyone is wondering why we'd bother with a religious aspect at all, let's just say that some of our members know a large number of sympathetic 'fellow travellers' who are some shade of pagan or spiritualist and would more naturally grok transhumanism presented that way. If the details and principles are the same, I don't see a problem myself. Best, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed May 4 11:45:04 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 04:45:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] paradigm shift Message-ID: <003601cc0a50$b667d020$23377060$@att.net> ...On Behalf Of BillK ... >(Though if you work in Marketing, a new soap powder is called a 'paradigm shift'). ... Ja, we had one of those recently. The west coast states banned phosphates in detergents. Now the new soap is more environmentally friendly, woohoo! Of course, the new soap doesn't actually work. The proles partially compensate by using more of it, and running the laundry on higher temperatures. The laundry still doesn't get clean, but at least it is more expensive. This pleases the soap industry since in increases sales. Grocery stores win, because they distribute the soap. It pleases the utilities because they sell more gas and electricity. Gasoline sales increase, because soap tourists go to Nevada to buy detergent that actually works. The clothing industry is happy because higher temperature washes make the clothing wear more quickly, increasing sales. So there were many winners in that soap powder paradigm shift. I wasn't among them. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed May 4 11:59:34 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 04:59:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real >Spike mentioned a project to allow Farmville players to try their skills on a real-life farm. A trial project is now starting up in the UK. >It was partly inspired by the online Facebook game Farmville and follows the example of Ebbsfleet Football Club which is run on a similar basis. Decisions about the running of the team in Kent has been in the hands of MyFootballClub subscribers since 2008. ---- BillK Thanks BillK, this gets me half way there. A story in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer has Tom recruiting the local kids to do the job he was assigned and pay him for the privilege of doing it. In general and depending on the circumstances, farming in America on a small scale isn't profitable, so in many if not most cases, the farmer must pay to do that kind of work. Most real farmers have another paying job unrelated to farming, and live on dreams of making it big, which they seldom do. Since it is so educational and helps connect them with the food on their plate and all that, my goal is to figure out how to convince the Farmville community to operate my farm and pay me for the opportunity. I think there is a buttload of money to be made here. spike From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 4 12:14:50 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 08:14:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DC1433A.1020004@lightlink.com> BillK wrote: > Spike mentioned a project to allow Farmville players to try their > skills on a real-life farm. > A trial project is now starting up in the UK. > > > Quote: > A National Trust farm is to be run by online subscribers voting on > which crops to grow and livestock to rear. > For a ?30 annual fee, 10,000 farm followers will help manage Wimpole > Home Farm, in Cambridgeshire. > The National Trust says its MyFarm project aims to reconnect people > with where their food comes from. > > It was partly inspired by the online Facebook game Farmville and > follows the example of Ebbsfleet Football Club which is run on a > similar basis. Decisions about the running of the team in Kent has > been in the hands of MyFootballClub subscribers since 2008. > --------------------- We grew a substantial chunk of our vegetables from our own land last year. It was great: all we had to do was sit in the office and vote for which crops to plant where, and, foom!, a few months later all that food magically appeared. Oh, and there were also 3,000 hours of sweat, backache, sunburn, bug bites, mud, and rain to endure. But, nah, apart from that.... ;-) Any Farmville fanatics on reading this list? If you send me (um, let's see, ?30 annual fee, 10,000 farm followers...) ?300,000 I promise we will do it all again this year. :-) Richard Loosemore From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 4 12:22:03 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 08:22:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> spike wrote: >> ... On Behalf Of BillK > Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real > >> Spike mentioned a project to allow Farmville players to try their skills on > a real-life farm. > A trial project is now starting up in the UK. > > > >> It was partly inspired by the online Facebook game Farmville and follows > the example of Ebbsfleet Football Club which is run on a similar basis. > Decisions about the running of the team in Kent has been in the hands of > MyFootballClub subscribers since 2008. ---- BillK > > > Thanks BillK, this gets me half way there. A story in Mark Twain's Tom > Sawyer has Tom recruiting the local kids to do the job he was assigned and > pay him for the privilege of doing it. In general and depending on the > circumstances, farming in America on a small scale isn't profitable, so in > many if not most cases, the farmer must pay to do that kind of work. Most > real farmers have another paying job unrelated to farming, and live on > dreams of making it big, which they seldom do. > > Since it is so educational and helps connect them with the food on their > plate and all that, my goal is to figure out how to convince the Farmville > community to operate my farm and pay me for the opportunity. I think there > is a buttload of money to be made here. Uh, Spike, I hate to come across as the world expert on farming here, but I am not sure you are really in touch with the way it actually works on the ground. Small farms ARE profitable. They set up a filthy, almost-collapsing house somewhere on the farm, then get a couple of dozen undocumented immigrants from Guatamala to come live in it. These folks then work in shifts, all day, all night, seven days a week, for wages so low that some of them have to get second jobs to make enough to send home. Then the farmer makes a fortune, builds the biggest McMansion that this part of the world has ever seen, gets cable installed, and sits back to enjoy life. Don't believe it? Hey, come visit! I can put you up in the barn. :-) Richard Loosemore From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 4 13:09:53 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 15:09:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> <20110504071542.GE23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110504130953.GO23560@leitl.org> On Wed, May 04, 2011 at 08:44:37AM +0100, BillK wrote: > I think your definition of paradigm shift is too restrictive. You are Beats watering down, though. Paradigm changes can be paraphrased as when the rules of the game change. In the history of the Earth, it was the formation of the Earth, then the advent of life on Earth, then advent of intelligent life. In case of us, it's when we first become people, then after we invented agriculture and tapped animal and phytobiomass, and the second time it was the shift from phytobiomass and animal power to fossil energy and machine power. > almost making it mean the same as Singularity. You are out on your own The Singularity is just a shrinking event horizon of predictability. Just as with regular spacetime singularities you don't see anything out of ordinary when you fall in and pass through the event horizont. No need to wax rhapsodic, and conjure burning bushes. It's just business as usual, only more so. > with this usage, In current language use 'paradigm shift' means almost > any significant change in general thought patterns or ways of working. > (Though if you work in Marketing, a new soap powder is called a > 'paradigm shift'). > > Wikipedia has a good article, discussing the origin of the term and > current usage. > I knew that would mention Kuhn, even before I looked. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From spike66 at att.net Wed May 4 15:08:19 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 08:08:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore ... >...Uh, Spike, I hate to come across as the world expert on farming here, but I am not sure you are really in touch with the way it actually works on the ground... Oh very much to the contrary sir. Read on. >...Small farms ARE profitable. They set up a filthy, almost-collapsing house somewhere on the farm, then get a couple of dozen undocumented immigrants from Guatamala to come live in it. These folks then work in shifts, all day, all night, seven days a week, for wages so low that some of them have to get second jobs to make enough to send home... Richard, none of that is applicable if the owner of the farm holds security clearances or a professional license of any kind. I am in both those categories. In that case, one must hire legal domestic labor and pay them minimum wage. One must file all the legal paperwork, pay all the proper taxes, do everything according to the letter of the law, otherwise risk losing those credentials for real employment. If anyone with a measly 120 acres has figured out how to merely achieve break-even under those circumstances, they are a miracle worker, worthy to teach the rest of us. >...Then the farmer makes a fortune, builds the biggest McMansion that this part of the world has ever seen, gets cable installed, and sits back to enjoy life. Don't believe it? Hey, come visit! I can put you up in the barn. :-) Richard Loosemore Ja, so people make money on illegal operations. I want to figure out how to make actual money legally. I can assure you it involves something other than producing food crops. Food is too cheap by huge margin to make money creating it. But if I can get a bunch of amateur Farmvillers to assume all risk, pay the legal labor, pay someone to write and track hundreds of 1099 forms and pay me for my land, that might be the way. spike From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 4 15:54:38 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 11:54:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> spike wrote: >> ... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore > ... > >> ...Uh, Spike, I hate to come across as the world expert on farming here, > but I am not sure you are really in touch with the way it actually works on > the ground... > > Oh very much to the contrary sir. Read on. > >> ...Small farms ARE profitable. They set up a filthy, almost-collapsing > house somewhere on the farm, then get a couple of dozen undocumented > immigrants from Guatamala to come live in it. These folks then work in > shifts, all day, all night, seven days a week, for wages so low that some of > them have to get second jobs to make enough to send home... > > Richard, none of that is applicable if the owner of the farm holds security > clearances or a professional license of any kind. I am in both those > categories. In that case, one must hire legal domestic labor and pay them > minimum wage. One must file all the legal paperwork, pay all the proper > taxes, do everything according to the letter of the law, otherwise risk > losing those credentials for real employment. If anyone with a measly 120 > acres has figured out how to merely achieve break-even under those > circumstances, they are a miracle worker, worthy to teach the rest of us. Oh, to be sure. I think all the local farmers with security clearances left for the city quite a while ago. I was talking about *real* farmers in America. >> ...Then the farmer makes a fortune, builds the biggest McMansion that this > part of the world has ever seen, gets cable installed, and sits back to > enjoy life. Don't believe it? Hey, come visit! I can put you up in the > barn. :-) Richard Loosemore > > Ja, so people make money on illegal operations. Whoa!! Most of your food comes from these illegal operations. If these illegal farmers stopped hiring slaves, you would starve. ;-) So don't be so quick to knock it, this is the USA you live in, so be proud of the Blind Eye system that keeps slavery alive and kicking in the 21st century. > I want to figure out how to > make actual money legally. I can assure you it involves something other > than producing food crops. Food is too cheap by huge margin to make money > creating it. But if I can get a bunch of amateur Farmvillers to assume all > risk, pay the legal labor, pay someone to write and track hundreds of 1099 > forms and pay me for my land, that might be the way. Well, to be sure, if you can get 10,000 suck.. er, sorry, I mean amateur farmvillers to pay $20 each, per year for the privilege of managing one ten-thousandth of your crops, then may you live long in all those ducats, sir! However, a few small questions. How are you going to manage the chaos of 10,000 micro-lots, each with a different crop? Are you going to pay a sufficiently large number of mincome yokels to manage a hundredth of an acre of potatoes next to a hundredth of an acre of strawberries, and so on for all 100 acres of your land? Methinks that could break your budget in no time at all, even with the $200,000 per annum spigot turned full on. And how long do you think those amateur farmvillers will keep paying their $20 per year when all they get is (1) a decision point, when they choose the crop, and (2) a thumbs-up/thumbs-down at the end of the season, telling them whether or not the whole planting got eaten by eel-worms? Or, do you plan to give each person a webcam looking at their plot, and access to computer controlled water spraying devices? Or remotely piloted robots that they can use for an hour every night, doing the weeding? I don't think they'll stick around long if it isn't fast and interesting. Farming does not really have a reputation for being fast and interesting. Don't get me wrong: I have spent many happy hours trying to figure out ways to use AGI to manage one kind (High Farming, Organic, Permaculture) of farming, so I am not a million miles away from your intentions here. I just am not sure how well this plan was thought through, ... master. Richard Loosemore From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 4 16:17:19 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 11:17:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> On 5/4/2011 6:59 AM, spike wrote: > I think there > is a buttload of money to be made here. I've never understood this American phrase. I assume you don't keep your money inside your rectum, and since that's quite a small space it suggests a rather small amount of money, even in large bills. Hiding your plastic card up there would be rather painful. Or does it suggest (as Freudians claimed) that, to the unconscious, money = shit? Just wondering. Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 4 16:21:54 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 17:21:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 4:54 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > However, a few small questions. ?How are you going to manage the chaos of > 10,000 micro-lots, each with a different crop? ?Are you going to pay a > sufficiently large number of mincome yokels to manage a hundredth of an acre > of potatoes next to a hundredth of an acre of strawberries, and so on for > all 100 acres of your land? ?Methinks that could break your budget in no > time at all, even with the $200,000 per annum spigot turned full on. > > And how long do you think those amateur farmvillers will keep paying their > $20 per year when all they get is (1) a decision point, when they choose the > crop, and (2) a thumbs-up/thumbs-down at the end of the season, telling them > whether or not the whole planting got eaten by eel-worms? > > According to the UK pilot scheme, it is more like a majority voting system for the whole farm, like a huge management committee. :) Quote: The 1,200 acre site is home to rare breeds of sheep, cattle, poultry, horses and goats and produces meat, eggs, wheat and oil seed rape. Subscribers will be expected to make key decisions on which crops to plant, which animals to buy and whether to put in measures such as new hedgerows to help wildlife. They will be asked to make 12 major monthly decisions during the course of the year as well as other choices. The options put to members will be within parameters dictated by climate, legislation, and the requirements of the environmental stewardship scheme which the farm is signed up to, as well as the heritage protection given to the estate. The MyFarm website will feature video updates, webcams, information about farming and expert opinion and subscribers will also be entitled to a family ticket to visit the site. ------------- The point about the free family ticket is that the National Trust usually charge about 15 USD per visitor to their properties, so that is a valuable perk. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 4 16:30:08 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 18:30:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Zero State & other 'splinter' transhumanist movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 3 May 2011 15:33, BillK wrote: > Although actually doing stuff is exciting for the youngsters it is not > impossible that some of the older people who are already too busy (or > too tired) to get their hands dirty themselves might have useful words > of advice to offer. > At the veeeeery least, evangelism is always open to anybody of any age with a normal network of social connections, and today with any access to the 'Net. See what has been achieved in this area by things going from environmentalism to religious fundamentalism, from the free software/open source movement to the Pirate Party/ies. There are so many publicly accessible fora, blogs, commercial sites where ideas or news or works relevant to transhumanism are being discussed, or information thereupon can be offered or relayed, including Amazon, Facebook or Wikipedia, that even those who are not really inclined, say, to write books or to organise popular anti-luddite riots :-), easily find here a full-time (or, more probably, a five-minutes-a-day) activism job. In fact, I would suggest that a good rule would be to write at least two messages to the "outside" world for any "internal" exchange one might care to entertain... :-) As to splintering, as long as we do not have to participate to elections I would not be too concerned. Christianism has had a spectacular success in spite of (or, perhaps, also thank to) a history of schisms and fragmentation. Let hundred flowers bloom, and healthy competition amongst them to take care of their pruning. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed May 4 16:45:15 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 09:45:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/4/2011 6:59 AM, spike wrote: > >> I think there >> is a buttload of money to be made here. > > I've never understood this American phrase. In some respects it isn't even American. a large load, of about 108 imperial gallons (491 liters). From the middle-english 'butt' (n), which is a large cask/container used for storing liquids, esp wine You can find more than you want of alternate explanations here http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=buttload Or an exact measurement here: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_metric_equivalent_of_a_butt_load Two hogsheads, sheesh. Keith > I assume you don't keep your > money inside your rectum, and since that's quite a small space it suggests a > rather small amount of money, even in large bills. Hiding your plastic card > up there would be rather painful. Or does it suggest (as Freudians claimed) > that, to the unconscious, money = shit? > > Just wondering. > > Damien Broderick > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 4 16:53:29 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 18:53:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <4DAF8FD1.8010502@mac.com> <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 2 May 2011 09:37, BillK wrote: > Privacy Lost: The Amazing Benefits of the Completely Examined Life > We used (say, in tribal life) not to have any real privacy. We are probably going back to that in the global village. Mind, I liked it to some extent. But what is much worse than the loss of privacy is the *delusion* of privacy - or the attempts to get it back. In Europe, a EU directive pertaining to personal data processing and originating from Big Brother and the Bad, Big Corporate Computer Out Of Control fantasies, has led to a situation where there are *additional* public agencies and police activities and prosecutorial powers devoted to putting their collective nose in your PC (or, in some countries like Italy, even in your paper archive), namely to ensure that you are not processing personal data without the consent of the individual - or even the legal entity! - concerned and outside the scope of the relevant regulations; thus ultimately *increasing* social control and loss of privacy. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 4 17:04:04 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 19:04:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> References: <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 2 May 2011 11:11, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 01:19:05AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > Since 1971? So the personal computer, > > The microcomputer has been around since 1970 (the IC is even > earlier), and it has no fundamental architectural differences > from the mini, nor the mini from the mainframe. > > > Internet, cell phone, laser > > Packet-switching is 1968. Mobile phone is 1973. > > > printers, none of that constitutes a paradigm shift? > > Laser is 1960, laser printer is 1969. > Yes, exactly my point. But even more importantly, the science behind all that is almost entirely concentrated around the turn of the century - that is, the *XX* century, not the current one. *This* qualifies as a paradigm shift in my opinion. The last fifty years appear in retrospect more similar to the developments having taken place from 1750 to 1800. A lot of nifty new gadgets, yes. Radically game-changing discoveries? No. And personally, I am concerned about the latter, and think transhumanism is about the effort to identify and implement what is culturally and socially required to allow for a coming back of historical and epistemological incandescence... In the meantime, let us be happy that thank to that grand past not all momentum is (still) lost, and that the Project Human Genome or the Large Hadron Collider managed to be completed much later than the "heroic" days of the respective sciences. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From analyticphilosophy at gmail.com Wed May 4 16:38:20 2011 From: analyticphilosophy at gmail.com (Jeff Medina) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 12:38:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <006401cc0985$0f677300$2e365900$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <006401cc0985$0f677300$2e365900$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 7:27 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > What is funny is that I don't think you realize that Taubes would disagree with you. ?He would argue that total calories don't matter You are arguing against a straw man / cartoon version of Taubes. He certainly would never suggest a 25,000 calorie per day fish & coconut oil diet would lead to better health or weight loss as compared with a 1,500 calorie per day high carb (based on, let's say, fruit/veg/whole grains/legumes) diet, for example. Conversely, I don't think you, Harvey, would suggest that 1,500 calories per day of Snickers bars supplemented with vitamins/minerals would lead to equivalent health outcomes as 1,500 calories per day of your current diet. If you agree that these two options lead to different results, you agree that there are good calories and bad calories, and "total in vs. total out is all that matters" is wrong. Taubes' point is not that total calories don't matter, it is that something else matters rather more than total calories. His claim is that if you lower your carbohydrate intake, your total calorie intake will *automatically* lower, because your now-healthier body will be better at telling you what it needs and how much and when. > That conspiracy theory is what my statement was trying to dispute, not your scientific statement above. About five paragraphs down on http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/gary-taubes-goo.html there are some examples of scientific misconduct that indicate why Taubes has the conspiracy theory vibe. "When people challenge the establishment, 99.9 per cent of the time they are wrong. If I was writing about me, I?d begin from the assumption that I am both wrong and a quack." - Gary Taubes -- Jeff Medina "Do you want to live forever?" "Dunno. Ask me again in five hundred years." (_Guards! Guards!_, Terry Pratchett) From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 4 17:09:14 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 19:09:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> <20110504071542.GE23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 4 May 2011 09:44, BillK wrote: > I think your definition of paradigm shift is too restrictive. You are > almost making it mean the same as Singularity. > Yes, this may be a linguistic issue. But I contend that what happened during my grand-mother life was already a mini-Singularity in its own right. As was, on an even larger scale, the neolithic revolution, and before that hominisation. Now, I should like to make our own Singularity not only happen, but be the grandest of all four, even though perhaps not as large as the fifth... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 4 17:25:45 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 12:25:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DC18C19.1000404@satx.rr.com> On 5/4/2011 11:45 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > You can find more than you want of alternate explanations here > http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=buttload Not an ideal source here, perhaps. > Or an exact measurement here: > http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_metric_equivalent_of_a_butt_load > > Two hogsheads, sheesh. :) Thanks, Keith, that's surprising. Not really enough greenbacks for Unca Scrooge to dive into, I guess. Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 4 17:29:37 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 12:29:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <4DC18C19.1000404@satx.rr.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <4DC18C19.1000404@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DC18D01.90101@satx.rr.com> On 5/4/2011 12:25 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > remember, that is about two 55-gallon barrels worth of stuff.> > > Not really enough greenbacks for Unca Scrooge to dive into, I guess. Actually, given that Scrooge is a drake, it's probably ample. Not so much for a human. From spike66 at att.net Wed May 4 17:38:06 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 10:38:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <00a801cc0a82$090042a0$1b00c7e0$@att.net> >... Richard Loosemore ... >> Ja, so people make money on illegal operations. >Whoa!! Most of your food comes from these illegal operations... Coool! That gives me a GREAT idea, thanks. We already have organic produce for a certain segment of the population. To maintain certified organic, farms must do yakkity yak and bla bla. So we set up certified legal produce! That's good thinking Richard. Hell we could combine them: organic LEGAL produce! Locally grown! We could have the price up to subsistence level with just a few such add-ons. >... If these illegal farmers stopped hiring slaves, you would starve. ;-) ... Welll, I wouldn't. But poor people might. But the phrase "hiring slaves" is a contradiction in terms. >... So don't be so quick to knock it... Knock it? I was seeking to make money. Clean lucre, by the cubic buttload. Hmmm, that too might be a contradiction in terms. >...this is the USA you live in, so be proud of the Blind Eye system... Blind eye system? Well, sure our border enforcement is lax to non-existent. I don't know what to do about that. Open to suggestion. >... that keeps slavery alive and kicking in the 21st century... Indeed? Hired slaves? Before you go on with that thought, picture actual slavery. Two examples, 19th century southern US states, and 20th century Germany. Compare with that situation you equate with 21st century slavery. It is the anti-particle to the two examples I gave, similar in some characteristics, opposite in one critically important one: the 21st century version is voluntary. No, wait, understatement. The slaves in my example would risk it all to escape. The slaves in your example break the law, pay all they have and risk everything including their lives, to sign up to be hired slaves. >...Well, to be sure, if you can get 10,000 suck.. er, sorry, I mean amateur farmvillers to pay $20 each, per year for the privilege of managing one ten-thousandth of your crops, then may you live long in all those ducats, sir! Thanks, I will try. >...However, a few small questions. How are you going to manage the chaos of 10,000 micro-lots, each with a different crop?... I will not manage it. I rent fertile ground. It is up to the nanofarmer to manage everything. They hire, they water, they fertilize, they accept all risk, I collect a pittance. >... Are you going to pay a sufficiently large number of mincome yokels... I will not hire. The renters will hire. They will enjoy it. They will pay to do it. >... Methinks that could break your budget in no time at all... I agree, but it would not break *my* budget. Rather the budget of the nanofarmer, and she can afford it. The point of having a nanofarm is that the investment and risk is small. Of course the potential payback is negligible, but that isn't my problem. >... And how long do you think those amateur farmvillers will keep paying their $20 per year when all they get is (1) a decision point, when they choose the crop, and (2) a thumbs-up/thumbs-down at the end of the season, telling them whether or not the whole planting got eaten by eel-worms?... $20 per year? I want $200 per acre year. How long do they stay? Don't know. But there is a low risk way to find out. >...Or, do you plan to give each person a webcam looking at their plot, and access to computer controlled water spraying devices?... Excellent thinking sir! That's a hell of an idea. Keith Henson and I kicked around a few ideas like that too. >... Or remotely piloted robots that they can use for an hour every night, doing the weeding? That's even better! RP slavebots free the slaves you spoke of earlier and dis-incentivizes them from coming here. >... I don't think they'll stick around long if it isn't fast and interesting. Farming does not really have a reputation for being fast and interesting... That is a major challenge for the video game generation, granted. >...Don't get me wrong: I have spent many happy hours trying to figure out ways to use AGI to manage one kind (High Farming, Organic, Permaculture) of farming, so I am not a million miles away from your intentions here. I just am not sure how well this plan was thought through, ... master... Richard Loosemore Thanks I freely share with you the credit and with anyone who contributes ideas. In return I offer my everlasting gratitude and respect. {8-] I add a hint of urgency. Because of failing health of both the CEO and the head of the labor department, I may need to take a more active role soon, oy. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed May 4 17:42:26 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 10:42:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Damien Broderick Subject: [ExI] buttload On 5/4/2011 6:59 AM, spike wrote: >> I think there is a buttload of money to be made here. >...I've never understood this American phrase. I assume you don't keep your money inside your rectum, and since that's quite a small space it suggests a rather small amount of money, even in large bills. Hiding your plastic card up there would be rather painful. Or does it suggest (as Freudians claimed) that, to the unconscious, money = shit? Damien Broderick It's a polite way of saying the more common term "shitload of money." There was a humorous commercial: man is rushed to the hospital, facing down on the gurney, doctor pulls a bill out of his ass. "This man has money coming out the wazoo. Get him to a private room!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0_tfoTTGOQ spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 4 18:24:35 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 13:24:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> On 5/4/2011 12:42 PM, spike wrote: > It's a polite way of saying the more common term "shitload of money." That's what I suspected. So isn't this a strangely hostile way to speak of large quantities of money? If someone is called a shithead, it's not a term of praise, or a suggestion that his head is really very ample and well-stocked. Damien Broderick From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 4 18:25:32 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 14:25:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <00a801cc0a82$090042a0$1b00c7e0$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <00a801cc0a82$090042a0$1b00c7e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC19A1C.30700@lightlink.com> spike wrote: >> ... Richard Loosemore > ... > >>> Ja, so people make money on illegal operations. > >> Whoa!! Most of your food comes from these illegal operations... > > Coool! That gives me a GREAT idea, thanks. We already have organic produce > for a certain segment of the population. To maintain certified organic, > farms must do yakkity yak and bla bla. So we set up certified legal > produce! That's good thinking Richard. Hell we could combine them: organic > LEGAL produce! Locally grown! We could have the price up to subsistence > level with just a few such add-ons. Actually, that gives me and EVEN GREATER idea!!! I am going to sell CDs that have a label on them that shouts out the fact that they are CERTIFIED LEGAL!!! Not downloaded from YouTube, not file-shared, not pressed in some scummy pirate factory in Shanghai, but actually real and kosher, made by the original record company! People will pay a premium for those. Heck, they might pay ... what? .... $17 a CD, just for the good feeling they'll get from knowing that they're legal. I'll be able to buy your small-potatoes farmville-for-real enterprise with the small change left over from my CD mega-corp. Thanks Spike! Richard Loosemore From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 4 18:28:22 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 14:28:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <00a801cc0a82$090042a0$1b00c7e0$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <00a801cc0a82$090042a0$1b00c7e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC19AC6.90905@lightlink.com> spike wrote: >> ... Richard Loosemore >> ...this is the USA you live in, so be proud of the Blind Eye system... > > Blind eye system? Well, sure our border enforcement is lax to non-existent. > I don't know what to do about that. Open to suggestion. Huh? Get with the *program*, Spike! :-) The U.S. Chambers of Commerce are (quietly) going apeshit over the idea that people like you might plug the holes in border security!! Cut off their supply of slaves?! Ack, what can you be thinking? :-) Richard Loosemore From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 4 18:24:42 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 14:24:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110504142442.0etyqickp440gw0s@webmail.natasha.cc> I am eating lunch, thank you. delete. Quoting spike : >> ... On Behalf Of Damien Broderick > Subject: [ExI] buttload > > On 5/4/2011 6:59 AM, spike wrote: > >>> I think there is a buttload of money to be made here. > >> ...I've never understood this American phrase. I assume you don't keep your > money inside your rectum, and since that's quite a small space it suggests a > rather small amount of money, even in large bills. Hiding your plastic card > up there would be rather painful. Or does it suggest (as Freudians claimed) > that, to the unconscious, money = shit? Damien Broderick > > It's a polite way of saying the more common term "shitload of money." > > There was a humorous commercial: man is rushed to the hospital, facing down > on the gurney, doctor pulls a bill out of his ass. "This man has money > coming out the wazoo. Get him to a private room!" > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0_tfoTTGOQ > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 4 19:06:03 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 20:06:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <006301cc0983$9e581440$db083cc0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> References: <003901cc083a$849c6870$8dd53950$@HarveyNewstrom.com> <006301cc0983$9e581440$db083cc0$@HarveyNewstrom.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Don't get me wrong. ?I thought it was a useful discussion. ?I just don't > think we need to repeat it so soon, unless someone has something new to say. > > Maybe Skeptic magazine has something new to say......... Myths About Fat and What to Do About It by Harriet Hall There is certainly no shortage of diet fads and weight loss myths. The plethora of contradictory information can make it difficult for us to distinguish between sound nutrition science and plain old nonsense. In our second review of the year of Gary Taubes? latest book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It (read the first review here), Harriet Hall, M.D. (the Skepdoc) advises against jumping on any bandwagons. Quote: Diets are just tricks to get people to reduce total calorie intake, and low-carb diets are no exception. A 2003 systematic review in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that weight loss on low-carb diets was principally associated with decreased caloric intake and increased diet duration, but not with reduced carbohydrate content. ---------------- BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 4 19:51:36 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 14:51:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] CR--maybe not so much use Message-ID: <4DC1AE48.10901@satx.rr.com> Mouse Study Questions Fat-Loss And Longevity Link 04 May 2011 Since the 1930s scientists have proposed food restriction as a way to extend life in mice. Though feeding a reduced-calorie diet has indeed lengthened the life spans of mice, rats and many other species, new studies with dozens of different mouse strains indicate that food restriction does not work in all cases. Diet and fat loss Researchers at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio's Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, with colleagues at the University of Colorado, studied the effect of food restriction on fat and weight loss in 41 genetically different strains of mice. The scientists then correlated the amount of fat reduction to life span. The answer: Mice that maintained their fat actually lived longer. Those that lost fat died earlier. Contrary to view "Indeed, the greater the fat loss, the greater the likelihood the mice would have a negative response to dietary restriction, i.e., shortened life," said James Nelson, Ph.D., professor of physiology at the Barshop Institute. "This is contrary to the widely held view that loss of fat is important for the life-extending effect of dietary restriction. It turns the tables a bit." The results are expected to be published in the June issue of Aging Cell. More study needed Dr. Nelson's graduate student, Chen-Yu Liao, who will soon receive his Ph.D. and advance to a postdoctoral fellowship at California's Buck Institute for Research on Aging, cautioned that the new findings cannot be directly applied to people until similar studies are done in humans. People are best advised to adopt a moderate approach, not losing all fat but definitely not keeping unhealthy amounts of fat, either. "None of the mice in this study were what we would consider to be obese," Liao said. Genes impact effect The findings bear out what geneticists long have said: there is nothing that works for every genotype, which is an organism's specific and unique set of genes. "We know that humans respond to diet very differently as individuals based on their genetics," Dr. Nelson said. "Some have great difficulty losing weight while others have difficulty maintaining weight. If these results translate to humans, they would suggest that individuals who have difficulty losing weight may benefit from the positive effects of dietary restriction more than those who lose weight easily." Notes: Authors: Fat Maintenance Is a Predictor of the Murine Lifespan Response to Dietary Restriction. Chen-Yu Liao1,2, Brad A. Rikke3, Thomas E. Johnson3,4, Jonathan A.L. Gelfond2,5, Vivian Diaz2, James F. Nelson1,2 DOI: 10.1111/j.1474-9726.2011.00702.x 1Department of Physiology, UT Health Science Center San Antonio; 2Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, UT Health Science Center San Antonio; 3Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado, Boulder; 4Department of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado, Boulder; 5Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UT Health Science Center San Antonio Source: Will Sansom University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/224149.php From spike66 at att.net Wed May 4 20:58:39 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 13:58:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Damien Broderick Subject: Re: [ExI] buttload On 5/4/2011 12:42 PM, spike wrote: >> It's a polite way of saying the more common term "shitload of money." >That's what I suspected. So isn't this a strangely hostile way to speak of large quantities of money? If someone is called a shithead, it's not a term of praise, or a suggestion that his head is really very ample and well-stocked...Damien Broderick Well that's one way of looking at it, consider this too: it may be a derivative of the still more polite term "boatload of money." On the other hand, often money is treated with a certain contempt if one is in dire need and the buttload of money belongs to someone else. Consider the sentence: "Dr. Goldstein put a buttload of money into the market just before the crash, but no matter, for he has money coming out the wazoo anyway." Etymologists may be debating it for some time to come. Since we are on the subject of curious Americanisms, do consider the puzzling term "fuck-all" meaning nothing. Logically then, the term "fuck-nothing" would mean everything? Seems backwards to me, but submit the question to a literary-minded Australian: do explain please Dr. Broderick. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed May 4 21:04:00 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 14:04:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] China unveils its space station Message-ID: <71775.84568.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110504/full/473014a.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110505 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 4 21:50:57 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 16:50:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> On 5/4/2011 3:58 PM, spike wrote: > do consider the puzzling term "fuck-all" > meaning nothing. Short for "sweet fuck-all," aka SFA, which is no less puzzling. Then there's an equally mysterious derivation from Fanny Adams, but I have a hunch that was a later euphemism. From timhalterman at gmail.com Wed May 4 21:29:12 2011 From: timhalterman at gmail.com (Tim Halterman) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 16:29:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] China unveils its space station In-Reply-To: <71775.84568.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <71775.84568.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: "Last week's announcement came just two weeks after the passage of a 2011 US federal spending bill that explicitly prohibits NASA from collaborating with China." So sad. If it's true that China will begin using its US debt holdings (or else eat the devaluation) to acquire natural resources (rare earths) from around the world I think Americans are really going to regret their lack of cooperation come the next couple of decades. 2011/5/4 Dan > > http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110504/full/473014a.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110505 > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjv2006 at gmail.com Wed May 4 21:36:40 2011 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 14:36:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Request for Information (RFI) 100 Year Starship Study Message-ID: https://www.fbo.gov/download/4e9/4e97f00f960077f97483818426f13673/RFI_-_100_Year_Starship_Study.pdf REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) 100 YEAR STARSHIP STUDY BACKGROUND Throughout history technical challenges have inspired generations to achieve scientific breakthroughs of lasting impact. Nearly fifty years ago, for instance, the race to the moon sparked global excitement surrounding space exploration that persists to this day. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has initiated a study to inspire the first steps in the next era of space exploration?a journey between the stars.1 Neither the vagaries of the modern fiscal cycle, nor net-present-value calculations over reasonably foreseeable futures, have lent themselves to the kinds of century-long patronage and persistence needed to definitively transform mankind into a space-faring species. The 100 Year StarshipTM Study is a project seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The genesis of this study is to foster a rebirth of a sense of wonder among students, academia, industry, researchers and the general population to consider ?why not? and to encourage them to tackle whole new classes of research and development related to all the issues surrounding long duration, long distance spaceflight. DARPA contends that the useful, unanticipated consequences of such research will have benefit to the Department of Defense and to NASA, and well as the private and commercial sector. This endeavor will require an understanding of questions such as: how do organizations evolve and maintain focus and momentum for 100 years or more; what models have supported long term technology development; what resources and financial structures have initiated and sustained prior settlements of ?new worlds?? DARPA is supported in this effort by NASA Ames Research Center, who will act as the execution agent on DARPA?s behalf. DESCRIPTION We are seeking ideas for an organization, business model and approach appropriate for a self- sustaining investment vehicle. The respondent must focus on flexible yet robust mechanisms by which an endowment can be created and sustained, wholly devoid of government subsidy or control, and by which worthwhile undertakings?in the sciences, engineering, humanities, or the arts?may be awarded in pursuit of the vision of interstellar flight. Several attributes are of interest, specifically: 1 For more information, see prior press releases at http://www.darpa.mil/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=1799 and http://go.usa.gov/bqB, as well as the study website at http://www.100yearstarshipstudy.com. Long-term survivability over a century-long time horizon; Self-governance, independent of government participation or oversight; Self-sustainment, independent of government funding; and Relevance to the goal of moving humanity toward the goal of interstellar travel, including related technological, biological, social, economic, and other issues. Respondents are requested to provide a description of a proposed organization and approach for the establishment and operation of the 100 Year StarshipTM research entity. Responses should describe the: ? Organizational structure; ? Governance mechanism; ? Investment strategy and criteria; and ? Business model for long-term self-sustainment, as needed to meet the objectives and attributes described above. DARPA anticipates issuing an appropriate contract instrument for initial start-up and early operating expenses for the organization not to exceed several hundred thousand dollars. This RFI is intended to solicit ideas and information on structure and approach, and identify parties qualified and interested in furthering the 100 Year StarshipTM effort. DARPA may draw upon the responses to this RFI in formulating the structure and content of a subsequent Broad Area Announcement (BAA) or Request for Proposals (RFP). In providing a response to this RFI, respondents should consider that a future BAA or RFP will likely ask for details on: Methods for inspiring new generations of researchers, Methods for obtaining initial and sustaining funding, Branding and messaging for the long term research strategy, Approach to an ongoing relationship to government research, Proposed Handling of Intellectual property of researchers and future products, Methods to incentivize researchers, Specific types and domains of future research. PURPOSE OF RFI The information obtained will be used for planning and acquisition strategy development. We will use the information obtained as a result of this RFI on a non-attribution basis. Providing data and information that is limited or restricted for use by the Government for that purpose would be of very little value and the inclusion of such restricted/limited data/information is discouraged. Regretfully we will be unable to respond to each individual submission, but will provide an update to development and acquisition plans. The Government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this RFI or to otherwise pay for the information solicited. As stipulated in FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not considered offers, shall not be used as a proposal, and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. To the full extent that it is protected pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act and other laws and regulations, information identified by a respondent as "Proprietary or Confidential" will be kept confidential. INFORMATION FOR RESPONDENTS Responses may be a maximum of five (5) letter-size pages, with minimum 12-point font and 1- inch margins. All responses should include the responding organization?s name, an individual point of contact, physical address, e-mail address, and phone number. Please submit all responses as a single file in Adobe PDF electronic format to 100YSS at darpa.mil by 12:00pm (noon) Eastern Time, Friday, June 3, 2011. Regretfully, we are unable to answer questions about this RFI. Furthermore, no telephone inquiries will be accepted. Respondents are reminded that the evaluation process does not involve the procedures set forth in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) nor the NASA FAR or DFARS supplement since this announcement will not result in the award of a contract, grant, or cooperative agreement. Compliance with U.S. Laws, Regulations, and Policies: Submissions must comply with all applicable U.S. laws, regulations and policies. Use of Government Resources: If a submission is reliant on Government furnished equipment, facilities or services, such conditions should be documented in the response. "100 Year Starship" and "100YSS" are property of the United States, trademark applications pending at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 4 21:59:05 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 22:59:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 10:50 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > Short for "sweet fuck-all," aka SFA, which is no less puzzling. Then there's > an equally mysterious derivation from Fanny Adams, but I have a hunch that > was a later euphemism. > The problem for etymologists is that swear words were banned from most written publications before the 20th C. So tracing the usage and origin gets a bit tricky. ;) BillK From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Thu May 5 00:09:26 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 20:09:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] China unveils its space station In-Reply-To: References: <71775.84568.qm@web30105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/4 Tim Halterman > I think Americans are really going to regret their lack of cooperation come > the next couple of decades. So true, so true. This Chinese Space Station will be but a minute portion of that regret. What a fall it's going to be. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 5 03:42:39 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 04 May 2011 22:42:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct Message-ID: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> NASA space probe proves Einstein correct Thursday, 5 May 2011 by Kerry Sheridan Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON: Huge objects in the universe distort space and time with the force of their gravity, scientists said after a NASA probe confirmed two key parts of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. "Einstein survives," chuckled Francis Everitt, Stanford University physicist and principal investigator for Gravity Probe B (GP-B), one of the U.S. space agency's longest running projects. The physics experiment was more than four decades in the making, and finally launched in 2004. The Earth in honey "In Einstein's universe, space and time are warped by gravity. The Earth distorts the space around it very slightly by its gravity," he said, explaining the Jewish physicist's theory devised nearly 100 years ago, long before the technology existed to test it. "Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey. As the planet rotates, the honey around it would swirl, and it's the same with space and time," said Everitt. "GP-B confirmed two of the most profound predictions of Einstein's universe, having far-reaching implications across astrophysics research," he said, predicting the mission would "have a lasting legacy on Earth and in space." Confirmation of Einstein's theory The satellite carried four advanced gyroscopes to measure geodetic effect, or the warping of space and time around a gravitational body, and frame-dragging, or how much a spinning object pulls space and time with it when it turns. If Einstein's theory were disproved, the "gyroscopes would point in the same direction forever while in orbit", NASA said. "But in confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity, the gyroscopes experienced measurable, minute changes in the direction of their spin as they were pulled by Earth's gravity." Remarkably close to projections The probe's measurements came remarkably close to Einstein's projections, according to the findings published in Physical Review Letters. The satellite, which wrapped up its data mission last year, was first envisioned in 1959. Leonard Schiff, head of Stanford's physics department, and George Pugh of the Defense Department, dreamed up a satellite that would orbit the Earth and test the notion. Everitt joined the project in 1962, followed by NASA in 1963. "Forty-one years later, the satellite was launched into orbit about 400 miles above Earth," NASA said. The technologies created in the development of the gravity probe have been used in making precise global position systems (GPS) and in gauging the background radiation of the universe. "That measurement is the underpinning of the 'big bang theory' and led to the Nobel Prize for NASA's John Mather," NASA said. From spike66 at att.net Thu May 5 04:59:12 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 21:59:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <002e01cc0ae1$2da9bdc0$88fd3940$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Damien Broderick Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct >NASA space probe proves Einstein correct Thursday, 5 May 2011 >by Kerry Sheridan >...WASHINGTON: Huge objects in the universe distort space and time with the force of their gravity, scientists said after a NASA probe confirmed two key parts of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. "Einstein survives," chuckled Francis Everitt, Stanford University physicist and principal investigator for Gravity Probe B (GP-B), one of the U.S. space agency's longest running projects... Woohoo! By coincidence, I was looking for Gravity Probe B news just last week, thinking the results were coming due any time now. I have the privilege of working on aspects of the project over 20 years ago. Gravity Probe B is the most complicated and technologically sophisticated spacecraft I ever saw. The program has been around in some form for over 50 years. Congrats to Dr. Everitt for surviving to see this day, to Stanford, to Lockheed. spike From anders at aleph.se Thu May 5 12:09:13 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 13:09:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > I am eating lunch, thank you. During dinner last night a person having to leave early gave Nick a few bills to pay for his share. The look of revulsion on Nick's face when he touched the money was impressive. And indeed, money does tend to carry a lot of germs. One shouldn't speak of money during dinnertime, that is for sure. :-) BillK wrote: > The problem for etymologists is that swear words were banned from most > written publications before the 20th C. So tracing the usage and > origin gets a bit tricky. ;) > As far as I know, this is not entirely true. There are always some words which are outside cultured discourse, but which set it is changes over time. Plenty of pre-Victorian English text is pretty... earthy. The real problem is that the swears we use in speech tend to be different from the ones we write. There is a blossoming subfield of etymology and linguistics studying swear words Not that I ever have much use of such language when there are characters like &^$#?*&\!!! (mind my forth) -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Thu May 5 12:39:13 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 13:39:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense Message-ID: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> I am working on my speech for the IAA Planetary Defense conference ("From Threat to Action"). It is such a cool name; the fact that it is held in the Bucharest Palace of the Parliament (just google this monstrosity) fuels my imagination of broadshouldered science-generals standing around a giant holodisplay screen moving missiles and lasers into the right orbits to meet the invaders... Of course, the real topics will be far more mundane - photometry, orbit estimation, mission planning, international coordination and so on. But it is real work on reducing a global catastrophic risk, which is terribly cool. I would like to hear your input: what are the best approaches for dealing with the "billion body problem", the fact that human rationality when it comes to risk tends to be fairly... problematic. How do we handle the bias that as long as no disaster has happened yet people underestimate the risk, that planetary defense is the ultimate public good, and that people tend to treat big threats as belonging in a fiction category that are fun to think about but not act on? And from a transhumanist perspective, assuming accelerating technological progress, might it not be smart to wait when you detect a threat in X years time, since in a few more years we will have far more tech to deal with it? How do you make a rational estimation of when you should strike, given uncertainties in how anti-threat technology will develop plus the (known) increase in difficulty in deflecting threats later? Another interesting aspect is that power-law distributed disasters with probabilixy P(x) = x^-a (x is disatster size, a>1 is an exponent) have infinite expectation is a<2 - sooner or later one is going to be much larger than you can handle. Even for a>2 much of the expected losses over time come from the extreme tail, so it is rational to spend more on fixing the extreme tail than stopping the small everyday disasters. But this will of course not sit well with taxpayers or victims. Should we aim for setting up systems that really prevent end-of-the-world scenarios even at great cost, or is it better to have mid-range systems that show action occasionally? Even when they fail utilitarian cost-benefit analysis and the MaxiPOK principle? And watch the skies: * http://www.universetoday.com/85360/take-a-look-huge-asteroid-to-fly-by-earth-in-november/ * -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From rpwl at lightlink.com Thu May 5 13:48:53 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 09:48:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> Anders Sandberg wrote: > I would like to hear your input: what are the best approaches for > dealing with the "billion body problem", the fact that human > rationality when it comes to risk tends to be fairly... problematic. How > do we handle the bias that as long as no disaster has happened yet > people underestimate the risk, that planetary defense is the ultimate > public good, and that people tend to treat big threats as belonging in a > fiction category that are fun to think about but not act on? Although I am concerned about the fact that human rationalilty is problematic, when it comes to risk assessment, I am even more concerned with a meta-aspect of this problem: the irrationality of those who say they are studying the risks. Which is to say, people who *assess* risk behave irrationally in the face of quantifiable versus non-quantifiable risks. When they can put numbers on a risk, they love to study the heck out of out it (even if, in fact, it is not that important), because playing games with numbers and equations makes the risk-scientist have a warm feeling that they are doing something. But if, on the other hand, the risk scientist can't put numbers on a certain category of risk, that means it is not much fun to play with, so she tends to downplay or ignore it. Case in point: planetary defense. Plenty of scope for mathematical analysis. By contrast, conside the risk of complex civilisational collapse (due to a cluster of interacting factors too large to name here) that occurs before a technology is found that will enable survival of the end of easy energy. This -- which is probably a billion times more likely, in the next fifty years, than asteroidal obliteration of all planetary life -- contains little scope for analysis. So it receives much less attention. Another example, which I consider far more dangerous, is the debate over AI safety. Since AI (if it could be done safely) would have the potential to solve many of these problems (both civilisational collapse and asteroidal impact), it begs to be given priority consideration. However, those who study the risks of AI seem to be almost obsessed with doing one of two things: a) Calculating what can be calculated (pursuing logical proofs of friendliness, or the impossibility of such proofs), or b) Investigating abstract mathematical "AI" theories that (for example) entail computing systems with resources exceeding the size or lifetime of an infinite numbers of universes, and with no clear way to relate these to real implementations that actually work. Both of these lines of research are immense fun, if you love mathematics. But in the face of the practical issue of getting to a solution, they are worse than useless. I think that the best thing that could happen right now is for the risk scientists to stop and look at themselves for a while. Try to understand their OWN biasses first, then, when they've got a grip on that, get back to looking at everyone else's. Richard Loosemore From spike66 at att.net Thu May 5 14:23:55 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 07:23:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> Message-ID: <004201cc0b30$1116bba0$334432e0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] buttload >...During dinner last night a person having to leave early gave Nick a few bills to pay for his share. The look of revulsion on Nick's face when he touched the money was impressive. And indeed, money does tend to carry a lot of germs... {8^D Thanks Anders. My limited contact with Nick made me think he might be slightly up-tight about that sort of thing. At a dinner gathering, it's fun to make comments such as "Currency is filthy, revolting, germ laden material, so clearly this is why god gave us such wonderfully competent immune systems, that we may retain our health while handling so much money." >...As far as I know, this is not entirely true. There are always some words which are outside cultured discourse, but which set it is changes over time. Plenty of pre-Victorian English text is pretty... earthy. The real problem is that the swears we use in speech tend to be different from the ones we write. There is a blossoming subfield of etymology and linguistics studying swear words... -- Anders Sandberg The beauty of the written word, especially the internet, is that one can use language that one will never utter in sound space. If one is interested in linguistics, especially etymology, this represents complete freedom, for one can write things one would ordinarily never write. If one is on the internet, one has admittedly dubious but plausible deniability for any post, for there is no way to prove who is the actual writer. Finally, on the internet, one is perfectly free to make comments one would never make in polite company, for I have no way of proving that all who read are uniformly polite company. {8^D Best wishes to Nick. Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! {8-] Do jump at every opportunity to stay off the roads this weekend, regardless of the status of your account with Alcor. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Thu May 5 15:18:28 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 10:18:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> Message-ID: <01327A232C5244BCA72AF5DA19B1A99A@DFC68LF1> Anders wrote: natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > I am eating lunch, thank you. "During dinner last night a person having to leave early gave Nick a few bills to pay for his share. The look of revulsion on Nick's face when he touched the money was impressive. And indeed, money does tend to carry a lot of germs. One shouldn't speak of money during dinnertime, that is for sure. :-)" LOL! Glad I just finished my breakfast. :-) Natasha From spike66 at att.net Thu May 5 15:14:23 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 08:14:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] paleo immune system: was RE: buttload Message-ID: <005801cc0b37$1e570cf0$5b0526d0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of spike >...At a dinner gathering, it's fun to make comments such as "Currency is filthy, revolting, germ laden material, so clearly this is why god gave us such wonderfully competent immune systems, that we may retain our health while handling so much money." spike With the discussion of paleo diets, we should recognize that mankind has experienced a jarring change in our environment as well. Compared to how we evolved, our environments are suddenly very squeaky clean. Our immune systems suddenly have very little to do. Perhaps we need to intentionally introduce a small but reasonable level of germs and filth, just to remind our immune systems they still have a job. We don't want them getting lazy and out of practice. We can think of filth as comfort food for the leucocytes. A good way to accomplish this would be handling currency. Do let's have a gathering at a local restaurant, devour sushi and pass money around the table the whole time. Onlookers will be so puzzled. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu May 5 16:30:15 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 09:30:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <01327A232C5244BCA72AF5DA19B1A99A@DFC68LF1> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> <01327A232C5244BCA72AF5DA19B1A99A@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <006d01cc0b41$b71de030$2559a090$@att.net> Anders wrote: natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > I am eating lunch, thank you. >>... One shouldn't speak of money during dinnertime, that is for sure. :-)" >...LOL! Glad I just finished my breakfast. :-) Natasha On the contrary, one should speak of money during dinnertime, especially when at a social gathering. Then the unnecessarily squeamish get squicked and lose their appetite, so they enjoy the beneficial effects of caloric restriction. I, being far less sensitive about germs and being one who gets turned on by any discussion involving money, may then devour all the left-over sushi from the squickster's plates. Everyone wins. There is a stream passing through the family farm. Occasionally a fish passes through. I want to go half rations for about six meals in a row, express a savage urge to go down there and grab one of the scaly sons a bitches, tear it open with my bear hands and devour it raw. Undo a couple million years of evolution in an afternoon, totally go protobonobo, do it naked, grunt and growl, utter comments such as "AAAARRrrrrr." Post it on the internet, burn off excess human dignity, embarrass the hell out of my descendants forever. Remote farms are good for that sort of silliness. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 5 17:01:53 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 10:01:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <006d01cc0b41$b71de030$2559a090$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> <01327A232C5244BCA72AF5DA19B1A99A@DFC68LF1> <006d01cc0b41$b71de030$2559a090$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 9:30 AM, spike wrote: snip > > There is a stream passing through the family farm. ?Occasionally a fish > passes through. ?I want to go half rations for about six meals in a row, > express a savage urge to go down there and grab one of the scaly sons a > bitches, tear it open with my bear hands and devour it raw. In days long gone when most of the meat the family ate was from rabbits we raised, I would eat rabbit liver hot out of the rabbits I was butchering. (The kids did as well.) That fresh, rabbit liver is sweet and crunchy. And you would not believe the buzz you get from the B vitamins snip > > Remote farms are good for that sort of silliness. This was smack in the middle of Tucson. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 5 17:30:41 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 18:30:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 1:09 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > As far as I know, this is not entirely true. There are always some words > which are outside cultured discourse, but which set it is changes over time. > Plenty of pre-Victorian English text is pretty... earthy. The real problem > is that the swears we use in speech tend to be different from the ones we > write. There is a blossoming subfield of etymology and linguistics studying > swear words > > I was referring to f**k and c**t which were banned from dictionaries from about 1800 to 1965. (And there may be other words as well, but I've led a very sheltered life). Etymology pretty much relies on analysing the written word and where swear words are concerned you find entries like 'used in xxxxx in 1965, but thought to be in common use since 1800s' BillK From spike66 at att.net Thu May 5 17:34:09 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 10:34:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> <01327A232C5244BCA72AF5DA19B1A99A@DFC68LF1> <006d01cc0b41$b71de030$2559a090$@att.net> Message-ID: <009501cc0b4a$a50a68b0$ef1f3a10$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Keith Henson >...express a savage urge to go down there and grab one of the > scaly sons a bitches, tear it open with my bear hands and devour it raw. Problem: I don't know where to find bear hands. Might hafta just use my bare hands instead, or grow and sharpen my fingernails to imitate bear claws. >...In days long gone when most of the meat the family ate was from rabbits we raised, I would eat rabbit liver hot out of the rabbits I was butchering. (The kids did as well.) Oy, see what happens to me from hanging out with you? {8^D Keith, if we ever suffer from an EMP that fries everyone's electronics, I plan to find you and make you the royal survival consultant. >...That fresh, rabbit liver is sweet and crunchy. And you would not believe the buzz you get from the B vitamins... Keith That comment alone will drive the market for B vitamins. We are a society in desperate search for a buzz. I wouldn't be surprised if that is somehow related to a paleo thing: the old ones knew of certain plants that would cause a buzz. Perhaps it predates alcohol and marijuana. We used to call it loco weed. Horses would sometimes find it, and once a horse had loco weed, they would act crazy. Some would develop what appears to be analogous to a human addiction to dope. After that the horse would go searching for loco weed, and wasn't ever good for much of anything else. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu May 5 17:53:51 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 10:53:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> Message-ID: <009f01cc0b4d$665a4100$330ec300$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 10:31 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] buttload On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 1:09 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> As far as I know, this is not entirely true. There are always some >> words which are outside cultured discourse... >...I was referring to f**k and c**t which were banned from dictionaries from about 1800 to 1965. (And there may be other words as well, but I've led a very sheltered life)... Ja. These are words which ironically are now found in the written medium on the internet written by people who never utter the terms. I read everything John Steinbeck ever wrote. He used the F word exactly once in all that, in a book called the Long Valley if I recall correctly, first published in 1938. That was from the delightfully gritty earlier work of that brilliant writer. It's been 25 years, so I might be wrong on where that term was used. >...Etymology pretty much relies on analysing the written word and where swear words are concerned you find entries like 'used in xxxxx in 1965, but thought to be in common use since 1800s' BillK Speaking of which, check this: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/05/05/computer.kiss.device/index.htm l?hpt=T2 You KNOW what comes next. Whoever makes it to the market first with a reasonably good set of internet enabled simugenitals will make a cubic buttload of money. Furthermore, no one will resent them for being rich. I have heard talk of this, but never actually seen it on the market. Just to be sure, perhaps I should go visit the local purveyor of such items. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 5 19:07:26 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 13:07:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 6:39 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I am working on my speech for the IAA Planetary Defense conference ("From > Threat to Action"). It is such a cool name; the fact that it is held in the > Bucharest Palace of the Parliament (just google this monstrosity) fuels my > imagination of broadshouldered science-generals standing around a giant > holodisplay screen moving missiles and lasers into the right orbits to meet > the invaders... Of course, the real topics will be far more mundane - > photometry, orbit estimation, mission planning, international coordination > and so on. But it is real work on reducing a global catastrophic risk, which > is terribly cool. > > I would like to hear your input: what are the best approaches for dealing > with the "billion body problem", the fact that ?human rationality when it > comes to risk tends to be fairly... problematic. How do we handle the bias > that as long as no disaster has happened yet people underestimate the risk, > that planetary defense is the ultimate public good, and that people tend to > treat big threats as belonging in a fiction category that are fun to think > about but not act on? > > And from a transhumanist perspective, assuming accelerating technological > progress, might it not be smart to wait when you detect a threat in X years > time, since in a few more years we will have far more tech to deal with it? > How do you make a rational estimation of when you should strike, given > uncertainties in how anti-threat technology will develop plus the (known) > increase in difficulty in deflecting threats later? > > Another interesting aspect is that power-law distributed disasters with > probabilixy P(x) = x^-a (x is disatster size, a>1 is an exponent) have > infinite expectation is a<2 - sooner or later one is going to be much larger > than you can handle. Even for a>2 much of the expected losses over time come > from the extreme tail, so it is rational to spend more on fixing the extreme > tail than stopping the small everyday disasters. But this will of course not > sit well with taxpayers or victims. Should we aim for setting up systems > that really prevent end-of-the-world scenarios even at great cost, or is it > better to have mid-range systems that show action occasionally? Even when > they fail utilitarian cost-benefit analysis and the MaxiPOK principle? > > And watch the skies: * > http://www.universetoday.com/85360/take-a-look-huge-asteroid-to-fly-by-earth-in-november/ Some people seem more than willing to spend countless trillions of dollars resolving or just mitigating global warming. Compare almost any risk to humanity to global warming in terms of a cost risk analysis, and you can make a really good case for addressing it (vs. global warming). It's a powerful way to make your point, I think. Global warming may be catastrophic, but even under the most alarming scenarios, nobody sees global warming as an extinction event for human beings. Yet an asteroid strike of sufficient size is just such an event. What do the mathematical models you use have to say about climate change, and how does the response to that compare to the response to asteroid detection and mitigation? Just a thought. -Kelly From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu May 5 21:41:43 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 14:41:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <189609.26526.qm@web114403.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> BillK Quoted: > A 2003 systematic review in the > Journal of the American Medical Association showed that weight loss on > low-carb diets was principally associated with decreased caloric > intake and increased diet duration, but not with reduced carbohydrate > content. Um, What? Low-x is not associated with reduced x? What?? Ben Zaiboc From anders at aleph.se Fri May 6 00:41:46 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 01:41:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DC343CA.4040504@aleph.se> Kelly Anderson wrote: > Some people seem more than willing to spend countless trillions of > dollars resolving or just mitigating global warming. Compare almost > any risk to humanity to global warming in terms of a cost risk > analysis, and you can make a really good case for addressing it (vs. > global warming). It's a powerful way to make your point, I think. > I doubt it makes my point rhetorically well, remember that most people are pretty irrational when it comes to global warming :-) Actually, I think the key issue is that climate change is a bit like a Christmas tree: you can decorate it with whatever ideological, political or economical decorations you want. If you want to dress it up in socialism, free markets, conservative values or eurobureaucracy, you can do it. Compare that to an asteroid defense program. Much fewer decorations that fit. You can't really make it "about" social equality or your favorite economic tool. This might be good news for the feasibility of actually doing something but there are going to be much less interest in spending (other peoples) money on it. > What do the mathematical models you use have to say about > climate change, and how does the response to that compare to the > response to asteroid detection and mitigation? > My models have nothing directly to say about climate change, except that the statistics of drought disasters *is* worth worrying about - a very flat power law with a few very deadly cases. If climate change increases the frequency of droughts or equivalent agricultural problems then a lot of people will be in trouble. Asteroids actually have a very nice x^-6 power law - very rare big events. Just going from my data I should clearly talk climate change at the conference :-) (actually, the real threat in that analysis is wars and democides, so I should be talking about how to defang governments sensibly) This shows an interesting problem we have: NEOs are not the biggest or most important threats we need to stop. Yet they are the best managed of all of them. We know their physics, it is deterministic, we have a lot of data on them, we have some experimental interventions (asteroid and comet landings), there is a community working on the problem and there is even some public understanding of the issue. Try finding that combination for climate change, wars, AGI, bioweapons or nanotech. The only thing anywhere close is pandemics. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Fri May 6 00:54:17 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 01:54:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> <4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DC346B9.3090609@aleph.se> Richard Loosemore wrote: > > Which is to say, people who *assess* risk behave irrationally in the > face of quantifiable versus non-quantifiable risks. When they can put > numbers on a risk, they love to study the heck out of out it (even if, > in fact, it is not that important), because playing games with numbers > and equations makes the risk-scientist have a warm feeling that they > are doing something. Good point. Might explain why we are doing so well on NEOs. > I think that the best thing that could happen right now is for the > risk scientists to stop and look at themselves for a while. Try to > understand their OWN biasses first, then, when they've got a grip on > that, get back to looking at everyone else's. However, most work on dealing with risks is not done by risk scientists but by ordinary scientists. They see the risk, think they ought to do something, and then do something. In the quantifiable fields it looks much better than in the nonquantifiable fields. I would love to convey the importance of other xrisks to this community, but I don't want to clank down too much on what they are doing - after all, they are doing something to reducing xrisks, and otherwise their efforts would not be spent on xrisk mitigation at all. It is not as if people look around, realize they need to stop xrisks, find the most important one, and start working on it. Maybe they should, but that is not how it works right now. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 6 01:01:14 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 21:01:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC346B9.3090609@aleph.se> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> <4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> <4DC346B9.3090609@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20110505210114.h3wdcovlw08c40cg@webmail.natasha.cc> Quoting Anders Sandberg : > However, most work on dealing with risks is not done by risk scientists > but by ordinary scientists. They see the risk, think they ought to do > something, and then do something. In the quantifiable fields it looks > much better than in the nonquantifiable fields. New Strategic Theory: Proactionary Principle New phrasing: Human Extinction Risk is a better phrase than Existential Risk. cheerio, Natasha From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri May 6 01:20:02 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 20:20:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? Message-ID: 0. Mailing-list Metanarratives It is very interesting to look at the memetic progression of the ExI email list. Especially important is the reactions of the list to foreign or rarely-discussed topics. Whether a topic gains a foothold in the list is based on some relative equilibration rate; if the meme does not disturb the current equilibrium in a strong enough manner, the list returns to its most recent equilibrium. Looking at the ExI emails recently we can see an absolutely significant increase in political and economic discussion; threads pertaining to this thrive. (i.e. Damien's thread on psi died swiftly, though there was certainly a point months ago where it would not have.) The most potent germ of these recent discussions seems to have Darren Greer's (who has since vanished!) "Call to Libertarians" posting. Since then we have seen a fairly constant thread of political discussion. In analyzing this, I have decided that now is a good time to make this post; I just hope my above precedence doth not preclude my prescient sentiments. (Prosaic, right?) I. A Capitol Idea Since you are all politicos *de nos jours* we might try and evaluate political epimemetics in the past few centuries--or to what direction they tend. Being predominantly a Western group, we can talk about politics that are more familiar to all of us, which manifest most strongly in that great white hippo Liberal Democracy and its opponent, libertarianism. Both are concerned with freedom, but which is most 'free'? On the face of things, libertarianism seems to be freedom at its purest. But it is also true that pure freedom, a la state of nature, carries with it the constant stress of death and despair. So then we have carried ourselves more and more towards governance, the governance of LD, which supposes we may pool our ideological moxie into a centralized power source that guarantees us what actually seems to be MORE freedom--with MORE rules, but a liberation from death-stress. This second liberation should obviously be what we are tuned in to pursue. Transhumanism is exactly a negation of death-stress, and supposes numerous controls placed on the "free" human body and mind in order to protect it (because natural freedom is the freedom to kill and be killed.) Now we can see that H+, at least in the upcoming transitory phases, is a philosophy of control, of nuclear ideas; it is a philosophy of the entire world undergoing the same paradigm shift at roughly similar times. We can also look more primitive forms of H+, which people tend to call "technology." For years we have been cephalizing the cures to our ailments; a smartphone has a Great-Eye (camera,) a Great-Mouth (phone,) a Great-Mind (Internet.) A hospital contains what would have been distributed among shamen and midwives, the supermarket brings disparate products to one location. Cephalization greatly reduces the effort cost of DOING THINGS, and it greatly increases the security one needs to place on the head--you can cut a starfish anywhere but humans best protect their head--which is exactly why 9/11 had such a large impact, because we got shot in the economosociopolitical head. All the preceding would lead to an apparent problem that 1) H+ should pursue a doctrine of political unity and governmental centralization for the beginning stages of the transition but 2) any centralized doctrine has the caveat of being very attackable. It is easy to make H+ the evil scientist, especially for those who are anti-science, or who have been compromised by science, technology, or liberal democratics. Which of course leads us to: II. "...need it like I need a prole in the head." In the realm of the few versus the many, we are certainly the former. The state of the proletariat should be very obvious to everyone here, especially the alarming state of the anti-intellectual movement. It helps to ask questions and try and find answers: how do we move from today's world into one where a large majority or all of the global community has found peace with science and H+? I have begun to think that it is untenable to believe there will one day be a society where all humans are one with the machine. Even today there are resistors to modern technology--think how much worse the opposition will be. There is the point that to do this is to fundamentally force a worldview on people. But we also can see that this should be the 'best' worldview for humanity. We must find a way to first let the proletariat find peaceful existence with the intellectuals, but not necessarily to adopt their way of life. There are pockets of the world today where life of very old ways still reigns. Perhaps the Earth would be this next refuge, relative to the solar system or galaxy, where those who chose not to spacelive could reside, and the silly, carefree games of Earth could still be played. It would even be nice to go back and explore our world of origin, especially for those minds who were born on it. It could even assuage the problem of jobless-robo-fears: a no-bot work zone or such. The main thread here is one of coexistence. How should we separate or integrate the spheres *here and now* so we might work towards this 'Earth reservation' scenario? One idea is physical separation--a world of Spacelings, and a world of Earthlings--on Earth. This might be too extreme, though. There should not be the idea that one class rules the other but that they are complementary. ATP should not hate the brain or vice versa, or even come into opposition. The puzzle is to arrange the gears of today's society without excess modification so that they will turn together. In the first stages of this project, contact and cooperation will have to be made (so I suggest that those of you unaccustomed to the atmosphere don your ivory biohazard suits.) III. What it is The conclusion to come to is that the H+ movement is not nearly as centralized as it should like to be--or, there is no aspect or group within H+ with a strong enough collective identity, or at least none with one that is publicly recognizable. This is a problem. The solution, of course, is to begin building strong H+ cells that can interact with regular people on a local level, showing them how H+ and science can be friendly and help lives. We can also take advantage of countries which are currently below the standards of living, whose inhabitants have no posh lives to let go; in places like rural Africa, H+ is ten times as relatively helpful as in America. If anything in here alters your mindset, I hope it will be in convincing you that transhuman passivism will never work, that we need *active*, *presence-maintaining* communities who are constantly interacting with the real world to solve its problems. Not only will you feel good, you will be rooting transhumanists as the good guys. And it's good to have the strength of the masses on your side with the always-looming possibility that everything goes to shit. To keep with metanarratives, I suppose I'll end this something like: Potentially dangerous meme, pulled the trigger, unknown consequences, yadda yadda. I'm sure you are all used to it. Keep it liminal. -Will From amara at kurzweilai.net Fri May 6 01:46:49 2011 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 18:46:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <20110505210114.h3wdcovlw08c40cg@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> <4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> <4DC346B9.3090609@aleph.se> <20110505210114.h3wdcovlw08c40cg@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <05b101cc0b8f$778eae10$66ac0a30$@net> >New phrasing: Human Extinction Risk is a better phrase than Existential Risk. Yes, I always thought that referred to the dangers of reading French philosophy :) From spike66 at att.net Fri May 6 02:37:45 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 19:37:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <05b101cc0b8f$778eae10$66ac0a30$@net> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> <4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> <4DC346B9.3090609@aleph.se> <20110505210114.h3wdcovlw08c40cg@webmail.natasha.cc> <05b101cc0b8f$778eae10$66ac0a30$@net> Message-ID: <001b01cc0b96$95644c40$c02ce4c0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Amara D. Angelica Subject: Re: [ExI] Planetary defense >>New phrasing: Human Extinction Risk is a better phrase than Existential Risk. >Yes, I always thought that referred to the dangers of reading French philosophy :) Ja I agree too. The term existential has long ago been ruined by vague froofy 19th century philosophers with not enough to do. Extinction risk is snappy, it has actual fist in the glove. Well done Natasha! spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 6 04:06:35 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 21:06:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Study Reveals TA-65 Behavior In-Reply-To: <4dc3388e.8e5fe70a.6e6c.051cSMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> References: <4dc3388e.8e5fe70a.6e6c.051cSMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> Message-ID: I have been following this topic since the late 1970s http://www.churchofvirus.org/bbs/index.php?board=54;action=display;threadid=29734 All I can say is *wow*. Keith http://www.dddmag.com/News-Study-Reveals-TA-65-Behavior-050511.aspx?et_cid=1496906&et_rid=45509009&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.dddmag.com%2fNews-Study-Reveals-TA-65-Behavior-050511.aspx ===================================================== *Study Reveals TA-65 Behavior *Drug Discovery & Development - May 05, 2011 A study, ?The Telomerase Activator TA-65 elongates short telomeres and increases healthspan of adult/old mice without increasing cancer incidence? describes TA-65?s mechanism of action and organismal response. Maria Blasco, the head of the National Cancer Research Center in Spain, and her colleagues demonstrated that TA-65, a naturally occurring molecule derived from the Astragalus plant, activates the telomerase enzyme, lengthens critically short telomeres, rescues cells in various organ systems, and improves healthspan. This activity was not observed in the control group. The Blasco study states, ?TA-65 dietary supplementation in female mice leads to an improvement of certain health-span indicators including glucose tolerance, osteoporosis and skin fitness, without significantly increasing global cancer incidence?. ?This study proves the efficacy and legitimacy of TA-65. For the first time in medical history there is something which has the potential to effectively lessen and possibly eliminate the crippling effects of aging decline and degradation caused by insufficient telomerase and short telomeres,? says Noel Thomas Patton, founder of TA Sciences, Release Date: April 12, 2011 Source: T.A. Sciences ============================================================== http://emediahealth.com/2011/04/23/ta-65-anti-aging-study-shows-health-increase-in-adult-and-old-mice-from-telomerase-lengthening/ ============== *TA-65 Anti-Aging Study Shows Health Increase In Adult and Old Mice from Telomerase Lengthening* Use of Our Content [image: Print This Article] Print This Article Share Posted on April 23, 2011by Alison The biomedical research journal Aging Cell recently published a study entitled Telomerase activator TA-65 elongates short telomeres and increases health span of adult/old mice without increasing cancer incidence. The research adds to the growing evidence that TA-65 can lengthen very short telomeres and extend the healthy portion of lifespan as indicated by measurements collected including glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity, osteoporosis, and skin condition. The study also examined changes in cancer rates between the control group and TA-65 supplemented group. There was a small but statistically insignificant increase in liver cancer rate, leading to the authors concluding that TA-65 appears to improve health measures in aging mice without significantly increasing cancer risk. *Cancer Researchers Intrigued by TA-65 and Telomerase Activation*The research was conducted in Spain by Maria Blasco of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre and her collaborators Bruno Bernardes de Jesus, Kerstin Schneeberger, Elsa Vera, Agueda Tejera, and Calvin Harley. Cancer researchers are highly interested in the understanding of telomeres and telomerase because the majority of cancers appear to multiply rapidly in large part due to the involvement of the telomerase enzyme that repairs the telomere end caps on DNA strands, thus allowing unlimited replication of cancer cells. A major concern with TA-65 and similar compounds such as Geron?s TAT2 is that they may encourage the growth of cancers. This study shows that the risk of this appears to be low. Some believe that this is partly due to how TA-65, TAT2, and other telomerase activators tend to supercharge the immune system and thereby enable the body to destroy microscopic cancer tumors rapidly before they get out of control. If so, it is yet another one of the many double-edge swords of biology in which a single compound that can destroy health can also immensely benefit health. In biology, context is everything. A failure to appreciate the overall systemic role of any one biochemical tends to result in people creating all-good or all-bad oversimplifications that mislead the public and even many other scientists. For example, consider how LDL cholesterol has gotten such an immensely bad rap that it has resulted in the development of numerous very dangerous drug and diet regimens that actually destroy people?s health by interrupting chemical pathways in the body that can create cholesterol. In the process, such treatments deplete the body of CoQ10, damage mitochondrial health, lower measured levels of necessary sex hormones, and do little to change the overall risk for cardiovascular disease. Ironically, some of the treatments can actually increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases despite lowering the popularly maligned LDL cholesterol. It?s likely that TA-65, TAT2, and any other telomerase activators are not going to be either a panacea or a high-priced carcinogenic scam. Aging is immensely complicated. Frequently it appears that causes of one aging mechanisms are the effects of other aging mechanisms. In such complex systems, it is imprudent or even outright irresponsible to oversimplify the role of any one mechanism such as telomere lengthening. To declare it as either the ?key to reversing aging? or the ?key to runaway cancer growth? is misleading. For starters, telomerase activation may be both at the same time simply depending upon which cells are using it at the moment. *Do Today?s Telomerase Activators Increase Lifespan?*There are many questions about just how bioavailable any of the currently researched telomerase activators truly are. Additionally, many point out that they seem to function mostly by increasing telomere length of very short telomeres without affecting the length of telomeres in most cells. Some question whether there may be other as yet unknown mechanisms for their actions that could explain these seemingly conflicting observations. There is still no conclusive proof that any of the current crop of telomerase activators can extend lifespan of humans. It?s my personal view that telomere lengthening will one day be regarded as one major component in workable anti-aging medicine for the masses. Unfortunately, at present TA-65 is still very expensive and furthermore the available dosages and observable effects are probably only a fraction of what is needed to make a huge difference on its own. Even if that changes markedly, I still believe that many other areas of aging must be addressed in concert for their to be huge change in health or lifespan of humans. My particular favorite target today is mitochondrial dysfunction. Poorly functioning mitochondria are implicated in so many devastating diseases of aging such as diabetes, Alzheimer?s, Parkinson?s, chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease, congestive heart failure, and much more. There are actually many inexpensive supplements available to target mitochondrial dysfunction at a reasonable cost and they have substantially more research backing for effectiveness at improving health than any telomerase activators do yet. Consider carnitine as an example of one inexpensive but highly effective supplement for improving mitochondrial health. In recent weeks, I?ve written several articles on carnitine supplements that are an excellent first step to improving your mitochondrial health and thereby lowering risk for diabetes, liver disease, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegenerative diseases. Carnitine can be used at much lower cost than more esoteric supplements such as TA-65. A daily dose of 500mg of carnitine per day can be had in capsule form starting at less than $3 per month versus $200 per month for the starting dosages of TA-65. Granted, carnitine is probably not going to directly increase the length of short telomeres as it is not a telomerase activator. But what it can do is to help your mitochondria body burn off fats, reshape LDL cholesterol to be more light and fluffy and thereby less likely to trigger cardiovascular disease, and in the process reduce inflammation, glycation, and oxidative damage that may themselves lead to more rapid shortening of telomeres. Carnitine has no significant risk when used in reasonable quantities (generally regarded as up to around 2000mg per day) because it is a natural healthy nutritional component of commonly consumed red meats such as beef that is not present in sufficient quantities in most other food sources. Most people who are trying to ?eat healthy? often suffer from low carnitine levels by following the common advice to avoid conventionally prepared fatty red meats. Doing so does help avoid unhealthy omega 6 fats and glycated proteins, but it wipes out the most plentiful source of carnitine in the diet. Thus carnitine supplements are a great way to get back this important mitochondrial nutrient in combination with a diet low in fatty red meats. Take a look at L-Carnitine Helps Reduce LDL Cholesterol, Triglycerides, Blood Glucose, and Insulin in Fatty Liver Disease and Diabetes Patientsand Vegetarians May Suffer Shorter Life Due to Carnitine, Carnosine, and Vitamin B12 Deficienciesfor more information. To learn more about how lengthening telomeres is just one component of a complete anti-aging protocol, see TA-65 Telomere Lengthening Just One Part of Anti-Aging Healthcare . *Accusations of Financial Conflicts of Interest*Some biomedical researchers are criticizing the researchers behind the recent TA-65 study for financial conflict of interest as they have been involved in the development of TA-65 or operations of businesses offering related anti-aging testing services such as telomere length measurement. In general, it has been clear for decades that the people interested in the field of anti-aging medicine often have both a strong personal interest in the topic and also make their livings from their work in the field. They certainly could be influenced by monetary considerations. But that is true of anybody working in biomedical research, even many who think they have no conflicts of interest. For example, Judith Campisi of California?s Buck Institute for Research on Aging points to how Maria Blasco is involved in a start-up for-profit business offering telomere length measurement testing services. She finds the timing of the research study?s release to be suspicious given the recent launch of Blasco?s new company Life Lengths. What is naive or even disingenuous on the part of critics such as Campisi is their failure to admit they may have financial motivations themselves. The success of competing anti-aging supplements such as TA-65 or drugs in development such as TAT2 represents a financial threat to themselves. If TA-65 or any supplement or drug were to be conclusively shown to have life-lengthening properties and thereby become widely used, it could endanger the ability of these critics to continue their research in their areas of specialization. That?s the case even if these critics are not working in what is considered strictly anti-aging medicine. For instance, if TA-65 or Geron?s TAT2 or other astragalus derivatives were someday shown to be highly effective and became inexpensive enough for widespread use for immune system boosting in people with chronic viral infections such as herpes and AIDS, it could represent a significant financial risk to thousands of employees of companies and institutes selling widely used anti-viral medications. Ultimately, it is very easy to toss around the charge of financial bias regarding anybody working in biomedical research but virtually impossible to conclusively prove there is no such conflict of interest. Scientists often work as competitors to each other, even if they have no financial ownership in their employers or any businesses in the biomedical field. Just look at the history of the discovery of DNA and its structure to understand that publicly recognized giants in the field such as Watson, Crick, Pauling, Wilkins, Franklin, and others were both fiercely competitive with each other and quick to use discoveries the others made even for their own purposes even though there was no immediately obvious way to make a huge profit out of such discoveries at the time. Don?t let claims of financial bias scare you too much. Consumers are going to have to practice a certain level of ?buyer beware? thinking, carefully considering that virtually everybody writing about anti-aging nutrition and medicine has some level of financial interest in it just as is the case in basically every other marketplace. That?s why it is important to look for multiple studies behind any type of health care product. Any one or two studies could be really flawed or outright biased, but if you can find 10 or 20 studies from a variety of universities, clinics, and companies backing up the effectiveness of a particular drug or nutrient then it is unlikely that all of them will be flawed, especially if most show similar benefits and discussion of how the drug or nutrient works and any side effects it may have. Even after you select a product that looks promising, be sure to give it a try with some objective attempts to measure its impact on your health such as via routine blood testing to monitor for effect. *Further Reading* TA-65 Customer Interviewed by CBS Los Angeles Channel 2 How Astragalus Extracts Help Immune System Fight Viruses TA-65 Telomere Lengthening Just One Part of Anti-Aging Healthcare Is TA-65 the Means to Immortality? TA-65 Telomere Activation and Right to Healthcare Choice Breakthrough in vivo Scientific Study Published: TA-65 Increases Healthspan, Renews Organ Systems, and Increases Critically Short Telomere Lengths Turning on Immortality: The Debate Over Telomerase Activation The telomerase activator TA-65 elongates short telomeres and increases health span of adult/old mice without increasing cancer incidence (PubMed) New Anti-Aging Pill Under Fire Discovery of DNA Structure and Function: Watson and Crick ------------------------------ These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The products mentioned in this post and on this website are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Related from EmediaHealth - TA-65 Customer Interviewed by CBS Los Angeles Channel 2 - 2 months ago - TA-65 Telomere Lengthening Just One Part of Anti-Aging Healthcare - Dec 4, 2010 - Is TA-65 the Means to Immortality? - 11 days ago Related Articles - Review Casts More Doubts on a Lung Cancer Study - The New York Times ? 5 days ago - Health Notes: Lupus study in Williamsburg -- are you eligible? - Hampton Road Daily Press ? 8 days ago - Chernobyl: 25 years after the disaster, debate over health effects remains - Morning Call ? 9 days ago >From the Blogs - Dr. Al Sears Presents TA-65 New Anti-Aging Supplement - seedol.com ? Nov 5, 2010 - ?War is Not a Normal Situation? NAMI Interview with Army General David... - thelifeledger.com ? Nov 11, 2010 - Young At Heart ? How Meditation Can Increase Your Longevity - finerminds.com ? Jan 11, 2011 Related Video - [image: []] [image: []] Health WatchCBS News - Video ? Mar 14, 2009 - [image: []] [image: []] Study Links Cancer to Meats ABC News Video ? Dec 26, 2007 - [image: []] [image: []] Study Shows Cancer, Race LinkCBS News - Video ? Mar 14, 2009 This entry was posted in Anti-Aging, Cancer , Cardiovascular, Cholesterol , Diabetes, Immune System , Mitochondrial Health , Vitamins & Supplements and tagged Agueda Tejera , Bruno Bernardes de Jesus , Calvin Harley , Elsa Vera, Geron Corporation , Judith Campisi , Kerstin Schneeberger, Maria Blasco , TA-65, TAT2 , telomerase, telomerase activator , telomeres . Bookmark the permalink . ================================================================= http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1474-9726.2011.00700.x/abstract ============================ *The telomerase activator TA-65 elongates short telomeres and increases health span of adult/old mice without increasing cancer incidence* 1. Bruno Bernardes de Jesus1, 2. Kerstin Schneeberger1, 3. Elsa Vera1,2, 4. Agueda Tejera1, 5. Calvin B. Harley3, 6. Maria A. Blasco1 Article first published online: 14 APR 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1474-9726.2011.00700.x ? 2011 The Authors. Aging Cell ? 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland Issue [image: Cover image for Vol. 10 Issue 2] *Aging Cell*Early View (Online Version of Record published before inclusion in an issue) Additional Information (Show All) How to Cite Author Information Publication History *How to Cite*de Jesus, B. B., Schneeberger, K., Vera, E., Tejera, A., Harley, C. B. and Blasco, M. A. (2011), The telomerase activator TA-65 elongates short telomeres and increases health span of adult/old mice without increasing cancer incidence. Aging Cell, 10: no. doi: 10.1111/j.1474-9726.2011.00700.x *Author Information* 1. 1 2. Telomeres and Telomerase Group, Molecular Oncology Program, Spanish National Cancer Centre, Melchor Fern?ndez Almagro 3, Madrid E-28029, Spain 3. 2 4. Life Length, Agust?n de Betancourt 21, Madrid E-28003, Spain 5. 3 6. Telome Health, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA *Correspondence: *Maria A. Blasco, Telomeres and Telomerase Group, Molecular Oncology Program, Spanish National Cancer Centre, Melchor Fern?ndez Almagro 3, Madrid, E-28029, Spain. Tel.: +34-917328034; fax: +34-917328028; e-mail:* mblasco at cnio.es *Publication History* 1. Article first published online: 14 APR 2011 2. Accepted manuscript online: 22 MAR 2011 09:26AM EST 3. Accepted for publication *9th February 2011* *SEARCH*Search Scope All contentPublication titlesIn this journalIn this issueBy Citation Search String - Advanced > - Saved Searches > *SEARCH BY CITATION*Volume: Issue: Page: *ARTICLE TOOLS* - Get PDF (1026K) - Save to My Profile - E-mail Link to this Article - Export Citation for this Article - Get Citation Alerts - Request Permissions Share | - Abstract - Article - References - Supporting Information - Cited By View Full Article with Supporting Information (HTML) Get PDF (1026K) *Keywords:* - telomerase activation; - TA-65; - telomere length; - aging; - mouse *Summary*Here, we show that a small-molecule activator of telomerase (TA-65) purified from the root of *Astragalus membranaceus* is capable of increasing average telomere length and decreasing the percentage of critically short telomeres and of DNA damage in haploinsufficient mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) that harbor critically short telomeres and a single copy of the telomerase RNA *Terc* gene (G3 *Terc+/ *MEFs). Importantly, TA-65 does not cause telomere elongation or rescue DNA damage in similarly treated telomerase-deficient G3 *Terc / *littermate MEFs. These results indicate that TA-65 treatment results in telomerase-dependent elongation of short telomeres and rescue of associated DNA damage, thus demonstrating that TA-65 mechanism of action is through the telomerase pathway. In addition, we demonstrate that TA-65 is capable of increasing mouse telomerase reverse transcriptase levels in some mouse tissues and elongating critically short telomeres when supplemented as part of a standard diet in mice. Finally, TA-65 dietary supplementation in female mice leads to an improvement of certain health-span indicators including glucose tolerance, osteoporosis and skin fitness, without significantly increasing global cancer incidence. View Full Article with Supporting Information (HTML) Get PDF (1026K) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 6 05:13:20 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 23:13:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 1:57 AM, BillK wrote: > On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot >> strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about >> prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up >> by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of >> man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage >> by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help >> people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do >> for themselves." >> ? -Abraham Lincoln >> >> > > > This was, of course, not written by Abraham Lincoln. > > It was written by a Presbyterian minister and his list of pithy maxims > became wildly popular, especially by the rich who loved quoting the > first line. > > > The Rev. William John Henry Boetcker was a Presbyterian minister and > notable public speaker who served as director of the pro-employer > Citizens' Industrial Alliance, a position he held when, in 1916, he > produced a booklet of "nuggets" from his lectures, which included > maxims such as "We cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong" > and "We cannot help the poor by kicking the rich." > etc..... Sorry about that one. Snopes agrees with you. Apparently, even Ronald Regan was taken in by this one... It is entirely possible that Lincoln might have said something similar... it is a true statement no matter where it came from IMHO. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 6 05:20:59 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 23:20:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Efficiency of algorithmic trading In-Reply-To: <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> References: <20110429090553.GG23560@leitl.org> <20110429093852.GJ23560@leitl.org> <007801cc08dd$9d76b960$d8642c20$@att.net> <011701cc092e$fe6306b0$fb291410$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/2 spike : > Raising taxes, as > California did in both 2009 and 2010 actually causes revenues to go down, > because the rich Californians take their money and skill elsewhere. I'm not going to complain about that, because a lot of them move to Utah, where they contribute to one of the better economies going these days... ;-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 6 05:42:43 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 23:42:43 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2011/5/4 Stefano Vaj : > On 2 May 2011 11:11, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 01:19:05AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> > Since 1971? So the personal computer, >> >> The microcomputer has been around since 1970 (the IC is even >> earlier), and it has no fundamental architectural differences >> from the mini, nor the mini from the mainframe. I stand by personal computing as a paradigm shift. It's not about the technology, but the access, and the uses they have been put to. Existing technology is not equivalent to a paradigm shift. Hero of Alexandria built steam driven toys in antiquity. That did not result in a paradigm shift, it was the work steam power was put to that resulted in the real paradigm shift 2000 years later. > The last fifty years appear in retrospect more similar to the developments > having taken place from 1750 to 1800. > > A lot of nifty new gadgets, yes. Radically game-changing discoveries? No. By 1970, we had finished integrating all of the technology from the Roswell crash into our society. There won't be another paradigm shift until there is another crash. It's so simple, I am surprised that I would be the first to bring it up. Geez, and some of you call yourselves rocket scientists... Perhaps RK has a line on when the next craft will be recovered... ;-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 6 06:23:11 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 00:23:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 11:53 AM, spike wrote: > Speaking of which, check this: > > http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/05/05/computer.kiss.device/index.htm > l?hpt=T2 > > You KNOW what comes next. ?Whoever makes it to the market first with a > reasonably good set of internet enabled simugenitals will make a cubic > buttload of money. ?Furthermore, no one will resent them for being rich. ?I > have heard talk of this, but never actually seen it on the market. ?Just to > be sure, perhaps I should go visit the local purveyor of such items. > If you want a serious treatment of this subject, I highly recommend Love + Sex with Robots by David Levy. This book is not exactly for kids or anything, but it is a very serious visit into a weird corner of the future. David argues very convincingly that this WILL happen, and not as far out as most of us might think. I suspect someone very soon will combine robotics with the RealDoll, and create an extremely expensive, amazing device that will make the moral majority very uncomfortable. As for nobody resenting them, I seriously disagree with that assessment. The nature of sex in the future is very interesting to me and worth watching because sex seems to be a technology leader. The first VCRs were frequently sold to view X rated material. Most of the early Internet video and video chat was sexual. Some of the first images available on the Internet were pornographic. The first pornographic moving picture was made around 1906. I haven't checked into it, but I'd bet the new 3d televisions have a porn connection. Sex will clearly be the technical lead on haptic interfaces. I believe that it won't be any time at all before the Kinect is used in a serious pornographic application. There is already a pretty lame demo of one out there. It will be done better soon without a doubt. As for robotics, there are a number of home made robots out there that are pretty astonishing, as well as kind of disturbing. Of course, there are the mainstream and high end sex toys, including the Sybian that demonstrate not only that they can be effective, but that they can sell for a buttload of money. Just the base Sybian is $1315. But that's like a car without air conditioning. The Venus 2000 for men starts at $815. The RealDoll is something around $5000. The overall porn industry is estimated to be somewhere between $12-$50 Billion. The point being that there is a lot of money out there for this sort of stuff. Teledildonics is going to be big! People look at me funny when I say this stuff, but I don't see how you can argue with the history. -Kelly From atymes at gmail.com Fri May 6 06:30:17 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 23:30:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 11:23 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Sex will clearly be the technical lead on haptic interfaces. I believe > that it won't be any time at all before the Kinect is used in a > serious pornographic application. There is already a pretty lame demo > of one out there. It will be done better soon without a doubt. >From last December: http://www.pcworld.com/article/213927/kinect_porn_game_lets_you_reach_out_and_tweak_someone.html Or is that the lame demo you mentioned? From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 6 06:42:06 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 00:42:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] psi debate at Harvard (video) In-Reply-To: <225570.28951.qm@web65601.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <4DBC8796.4070306@satx.rr.com> <225570.28951.qm@web65601.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > History channel: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h9jrRTzlIY&feature=related > > Japanese TV: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj1Jytiw8e0 This same guy was on Stan Lee's Superhumans. He cut a plastic BB in half on the second try. It really was amazing, but not as amazing as some of the other things on that show. I was particularly impressed with the fast draw artist from Las Vegas who shot two balloons with two bullets but it only made one discernible sound. This show may be one of the better glimpses of what transhumanism might look like. -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 6 07:03:11 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 09:03:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110506070311.GC23560@leitl.org> On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 11:42:43PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I stand by personal computing as a paradigm shift. It's not about the What would you call the invention of agriculture and harnessing of animal power? Or shift from phytobiomass to fossil power and machine use and industrialization? Or advent of life on the prebiotic Earth? > technology, but the access, and the uses they have been put to. > Existing technology is not equivalent to a paradigm shift. Hero of > Alexandria built steam driven toys in antiquity. That did not result > in a paradigm shift, it was the work steam power was put to that > resulted in the real paradigm shift 2000 years later. As personal computers are wearable devices now surely that is another paradigm shift? Touch screens, another paradigm shift? Multi-touch, a yet another? Personal GPS navigation, check? Hybrid cars, too? Hey, how about the FinFET Intel just launched as part of their 22 nm node? Is that a paradigm shift, too? > > The last fifty years appear in retrospect more similar to the developments > > having taken place from 1750 to 1800. > > > > A lot of nifty new gadgets, yes. Radically game-changing discoveries? No. > > By 1970, we had finished integrating all of the technology from the > Roswell crash into our society. There won't be another paradigm shift > until there is another crash. It's so simple, I am surprised that I It is very simple indeed: we've slowed down the innovation rate, but for a few nifty but not that big of a deal areas. No, you can't eat an iPad. > would be the first to bring it up. Geez, and some of you call > yourselves rocket scientists... Perhaps RK has a line on when the next > craft will be recovered... ;-) Aliens'r'us. From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 6 07:10:32 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 09:10:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110506071032.GD23560@leitl.org> On Fri, May 06, 2011 at 12:23:11AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 11:53 AM, spike wrote: > > Speaking of which, check this: > > > > http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/05/05/computer.kiss.device/index.htm > > l?hpt=T2 > > > > You KNOW what comes next. ?Whoever makes it to the market first with a > > reasonably good set of internet enabled simugenitals will make a cubic > > buttload of money. ?Furthermore, no one will resent them for being rich. ?I > > have heard talk of this, but never actually seen it on the market. ?Just to > > be sure, perhaps I should go visit the local purveyor of such items. > > http://www.gizmag.com/realtouch-virtual-sex-device-for-men/14126/ > If you want a serious treatment of this subject, I highly recommend > Love + Sex with Robots by David Levy. This book is not exactly for > kids or anything, but it is a very serious visit into a weird corner > of the future. David argues very convincingly that this WILL happen, > and not as far out as most of us might think. > > I suspect someone very soon will combine robotics with the RealDoll, > and create an extremely expensive, amazing device that will make the > moral majority very uncomfortable. > > As for nobody resenting them, I seriously disagree with that assessment. > > The nature of sex in the future is very interesting to me and worth > watching because sex seems to be a technology leader. The first VCRs > were frequently sold to view X rated material. Most of the early > Internet video and video chat was sexual. Some of the first images > available on the Internet were pornographic. The first pornographic > moving picture was made around 1906. I haven't checked into it, but > I'd bet the new 3d televisions have a porn connection. > > Sex will clearly be the technical lead on haptic interfaces. I believe > that it won't be any time at all before the Kinect is used in a > serious pornographic application. There is already a pretty lame demo > of one out there. It will be done better soon without a doubt. > > As for robotics, there are a number of home made robots out there that > are pretty astonishing, as well as kind of disturbing. > > Of course, there are the mainstream and high end sex toys, including > the Sybian that demonstrate not only that they can be effective, but > that they can sell for a buttload of money. Just the base Sybian is > $1315. But that's like a car without air conditioning. The Venus 2000 > for men starts at $815. The RealDoll is something around $5000. The > overall porn industry is estimated to be somewhere between $12-$50 > Billion. The point being that there is a lot of money out there for > this sort of stuff. > > Teledildonics is going to be big! > > People look at me funny when I say this stuff, but I don't see how you > can argue with the history. > > -Kelly > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From atymes at gmail.com Fri May 6 06:24:04 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 23:24:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Request for Information (RFI) 100 Year Starship Study In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/4 Stephen Van Sickle : > > https://www.fbo.gov/download/4e9/4e97f00f960077f97483818426f13673/RFI_-_100_Year_Starship_Study.pdf Interesting little piece of science fiction they're asking for. I'm thinking of putting a submission together, based on the asteroid mining idea I've floated, and going on from there to "set things up so that it will be in the obvious self-interest of the residents of the resulting space colony, to develop and exploit cutting edge technologies, culminating in interplanetary flight within a few decades and quite possibly interstellar flight within a century". Would anyone on this list be interested in helping me fill that submission out, to the level of detail DARPA requests here? (Don't reply if you merely intend to suggest ideas for me to write. If you have a good idea, you'll have to write it well enough to include in the submission; I can't do that for you by this deadline.) From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 6 07:42:40 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 01:42:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Adrian Tymes > http://www.pcworld.com/article/213927/kinect_porn_game_lets_you_reach_out_and_tweak_someone.html > > Or is that the lame demo you mentioned? Yup, that's the one. Do you disagree that it is lame? -Kelly From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri May 6 07:43:16 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 00:43:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <009f01cc0b4d$665a4100$330ec300$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> <009f01cc0b4d$665a4100$330ec300$@att.net> Message-ID: Spike wrote: Problem: I don't know where to find bear hands. Might hafta just use my bare hands instead, or grow and sharpen my fingernails to imitate bear claws. >>> Spike, I thought you engineering types were all very adept tool using animals! John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri May 6 07:50:43 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 00:50:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Spaceship Two Message-ID: Virgin Galactic moves forward... http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/04/6584950-spaceshiptwo-unfurls-its-feathers John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri May 6 08:06:02 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 01:06:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: <002e01cc0ae1$2da9bdc0$88fd3940$@att.net> References: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> <002e01cc0ae1$2da9bdc0$88fd3940$@att.net> Message-ID: A news article excerpt: by Kerry Sheridan Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON: Huge objects in the universe distort space and time with the force of their gravity, scientists said after a NASA probe confirmed two key parts of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. "Einstein survives," chuckled Francis Everitt, Stanford University physicist and principal investigator for Gravity Probe B (GP-B), one of the U.S. space agency's longest running projects. The physics experiment was more than four decades in the making, and finally launched in 2004. The Earth in honey "In Einstein's universe, space and time are warped by gravity. The Earth distorts the space around it very slightly by its gravity," he said, explaining the Jewish physicist's theory devised nearly 100 years ago, long before the technology existed to test it. >>> Why does the article mention Einstein was Jewish? What does that have to do with anything??? John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 6 10:39:13 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 12:39:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] CR--maybe not so much use In-Reply-To: <4DC1AE48.10901@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC1AE48.10901@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 4 May 2011 21:51, Damien Broderick wrote: > > "We know that humans respond to diet very differently as individuals based > on their genetics," Dr. Nelson said. "Some have great difficulty losing > weight while others have difficulty maintaining weight. If these results > translate to humans, they would suggest that individuals who have difficulty > losing weight may benefit from the positive effects of dietary restriction > more than those who lose weight easily." > Why, I lose (or put on) weight very slowly whatever my dietary, lifestye or training habit are at the moment - going Atkins and then Paleo really changed my quality of life more than my overall look - so according to those studies I would appear to be an ideal candidate to CR... :-/ Still, the idea of reducing my energy, resistance to cold, libido and ability to think of anything else than food, has very little appeal me. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri May 6 10:48:27 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 11:48:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <20110505210114.h3wdcovlw08c40cg@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> <4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> <4DC346B9.3090609@aleph.se> <20110505210114.h3wdcovlw08c40cg@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <4DC3D1FB.4040801@aleph.se> natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > > New phrasing: Human Extinction Risk is a better phrase than > Existential Risk. While it makes the term immediately understandable to most people it also misses a lot of important disaster types. The 1984 scenario of a boot stamping on a face forever is not extinction, yet I think it deserves to be regarded in the same category of transgenerational and terminal risks. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From mbb386 at main.nc.us Fri May 6 12:01:25 2011 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 08:01:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: References: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> <002e01cc0ae1$2da9bdc0$88fd3940$@att.net> Message-ID: > Why does the article mention Einstein was Jewish? What does that have to do > with anything??? > I also thought that was strange. Why didn't they mention his hair instead? Has about as much bearing on his theories... :* Regards, MB From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 6 13:23:33 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 08:23:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC3D1FB.4040801@aleph.se> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se><4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> <4DC346B9.3090609@aleph.se><20110505210114.h3wdcovlw08c40cg@webmail.natasha.cc> <4DC3D1FB.4040801@aleph.se> Message-ID: <90089B26C9BC4A7BADB02311C3C346A6@DFC68LF1> Anders wrote: natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > > New phrasing: Human Extinction Risk is a better phrase than > Existential Risk. "While it makes the term immediately understandable to most people it also misses a lot of important disaster types. The 1984 scenario of a boot stamping on a face forever is not extinction, yet I think it deserves to be regarded in the same category of transgenerational and terminal risks." Hi Anders, the details of this is not my are of expertise. But I think Amara and Spike are correct in their responses. Association means a lot. I could be wrong, but I think that the primary reason many in our community has latched on so tightly to "Existential Risk" is because Nick Bostrom borrowed it for his writings and many in people community followed. I don't know if there was ever a discussion about the phrasing and associations, etc. Regarding associations: the 1984 scenario of boot stamping of George Orwell, I see existentialism and risk, but not existential risk. Anyway, its fiction and existence is fact. Now, I'm going to gracefully bow out of this discussion because I will only paint myself in a corner and come of as stupid. Max, can you take it from here? This is your area of expertise. Best, Natasha From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 6 13:25:28 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 08:25:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <001b01cc0b96$95644c40$c02ce4c0$@att.net> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> <4DC2AAC5.5080508@lightlink.com> <4DC346B9.3090609@aleph.se> <20110505210114.h3wdcovlw08c40cg@webmail.natasha.cc><05b101cc0b8f$778eae10$66ac0a30$@net> <001b01cc0b96$95644c40$c02ce4c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <351A316936AC49238CE86E6FB8ADFF23@DFC68LF1> Spike wrote: >... On Behalf Of Amara D. Angelica Subject: Re: [ExI] Planetary defense >>New phrasing: Human Extinction Risk is a better phrase than >>Existential Risk. >Yes, I always thought that referred to the dangers of reading French philosophy :) "Ja I agree too. The term existential has long ago been ruined by vague froofy 19th century philosophers with not enough to do. Extinction risk is snappy, it has actual fist in the glove. Well done Natasha!" Thanks Spike, but it is Max's phrase I believe. He is the one that I discussed it with when I was trying to figure out existential risk meant if it was not about French philosophy. :_) Best, Natasha From sparge at gmail.com Fri May 6 13:05:48 2011 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 09:05:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] CR--maybe not so much use In-Reply-To: References: <4DC1AE48.10901@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/6 Stefano Vaj : > Still, the idea of reducing my energy, resistance to cold, libido and > ability to think of anything else than food, has very little appeal me. So reducing hunger for food is good but reducing hunger for sex is not? I've brought it up here before, but I would welcome a simple way to control my libido. Replacing it with food obsession would be no improvement. -Dave From spike66 at att.net Fri May 6 13:36:45 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 06:36:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Request for Information (RFI) 100 Year Starship Study In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <005601cc0bf2$a4f591d0$eee0b570$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Request for Information (RFI) 100 Year Starship Study 2011/5/4 Stephen Van Sickle : > > https://www.fbo.gov/download/4e9/4e97f00f960077f97483818426f13673/RFI_ -_100_Year_Starship_Study.pdf >Interesting little piece of science fiction they're asking for... I can do orbit mechanics and weight estimations, or double check your estimates. Would that help? The DARPA people sometimes come up with funds for studies, but this is the tightest budget time I have ever seen. Might still be worth a try. spike From spike66 at att.net Fri May 6 13:50:57 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 06:50:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: References: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> <002e01cc0ae1$2da9bdc0$88fd3940$@att.net> Message-ID: <005c01cc0bf4$a107a3e0$e316eba0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of MB Subject: Re: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct >> Why does the article mention Einstein was Jewish? What does that have to do with anything??? >I also thought that was strange. Why didn't they mention his hair instead? Has about as much bearing on his theories... :* Regards, MB I have been trying for years to get my hair to do that. It won't do the Reagan thing either. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 6 14:36:51 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 16:36:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 6 May 2011 03:20, Will Steinberg wrote: > I. A Capitol Idea > Since you are all politicos *de nos jours* we might try and > evaluate political epimemetics in the past few centuries--or to what > direction they tend. Being predominantly a Western group, we can talk > about politics that are more familiar to all of us, which manifest > most strongly in that great white hippo Liberal Democracy and its > opponent, libertarianism. > > Both are concerned with freedom, but which is most 'free'? On > the face of things, libertarianism seems to be freedom at its purest. > But it is also true that pure freedom, a la state of nature, carries > with it the constant stress of death and despair. > "Predominantly Western" sounds like an eufemism. Predominantly "Anglo-Saxon", or even "American(ised?)" could be closer to target. :-) In fact, I am always surprised in our little political discussions how the great divide seems between those who are primarily concerned with i) individual freedom "to do what one likes" and those who are primarily with ii) individual freedom "from basic and/or not-so-basic needs". In continental speech, political freedom is (or used to be until quite recently) in the first place iii) *collective freedom*, as in independence and self-determination, at a national, local and group level, which of course include the ability of the relevant entity to choose for itself the norms to which to obey and under which to function. Now, it is worth noting that some tensions exist as well between this latter view and the formers, since the formers' proponents are only too ready to admit that, eg, legislative process is bound to restrict itself to the notarisation of the rules which "objectively" serve at best freedom of type i) or of type ii), so they are not so inclined to grant much scope for the ability of a given people to regulate its internal affairs as it sees best (as opposed to, say, the intervention of an "enlightened" foreign power or international bureaucracy) or for political and legal diversity across the world - with the related "Darwinian" competition amongst different systems, which seems to me as the best possible bet for transhumanism on a global scale. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 6 15:23:21 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 17:23:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: References: <20110424115345.GC23560@leitl.org> <4DB4251C.5060301@aleph.se> <20110502064015.GD23560@leitl.org> <20110502091136.GH23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 6 May 2011 07:42, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/4 Stefano Vaj : > > On 2 May 2011 11:11, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 01:19:05AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> > Since 1971? So the personal computer, > >> > >> The microcomputer has been around since 1970 (the IC is even > >> earlier), and it has no fundamental architectural differences > >> from the mini, nor the mini from the mainframe. > > I stand by personal computing as a paradigm shift. It's not about the > technology, but the access, and the uses they have been put to. > Be it as it may, we are quickly going to end up with much fewer things where "It's not about the technology, but the access" will be applicable unless we become again able to sustain a rate of "fundamental" innovation similar to that 1850-1950, or perhaps 1870-1970 to be optimist. > By 1970, we had finished integrating all of the technology from the > Roswell crash into our society. There won't be another paradigm shift > until there is another crash. It's so simple, I am surprised that I > would be the first to bring it up. > Indeed. Even though Roswell is in the US, and theoretical innovation prior to 1970 took place to a large extent in Europe... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 6 15:24:19 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 08:24:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Request for Information (RFI) 100 Year Starship Study In-Reply-To: <005601cc0bf2$a4f591d0$eee0b570$@att.net> References: <005601cc0bf2$a4f591d0$eee0b570$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 6:36 AM, spike wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes > Subject: Re: [ExI] Request for Information (RFI) 100 Year Starship Study > > 2011/5/4 Stephen Van Sickle : >> >> https://www.fbo.gov/download/4e9/4e97f00f960077f97483818426f13673/RFI_ > -_100_Year_Starship_Study.pdf > > >>Interesting little piece of science fiction they're asking for... > > > I can do orbit mechanics and weight estimations, or double check your > estimates. ?Would that help? > > The DARPA people sometimes come up with funds for studies, but this is the > tightest budget time I have ever seen. ?Might still be worth a try. I have thought about this problem and come up with many, many solutions over the past several decades. It's a nearly hopeless effort. The problem is that the technical base keeps changing. But if anyone really wants to go, the only sensible approach within current knowledge is to power star ships from the stars. ." . . the Sun releases energy at the mass-energy conversion rate of 4.26 million metric tons per second," Light sails using even the smallest part of this would support a lot of traffic at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. One problem with this is stopping at the target start and (if you want to) getting back. Another problem is finding anyone interested in going. Those who go would be cut off from social acceleration. Keith From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 6 15:37:18 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 17:37:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC343CA.4040504@aleph.se> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> <4DC343CA.4040504@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 6 May 2011 02:41, Anders Sandberg wrote: > This shows an interesting problem we have: NEOs are not the biggest or most > important threats we need to stop. Yet they are the best managed of all of > them. We know their physics, it is deterministic, we have a lot of data on > them, we have some experimental interventions (asteroid and comet landings), > there is a community working on the problem and there is even some public > understanding of the issue. Try finding that combination for climate change, > wars, AGI, bioweapons or nanotech. The only thing anywhere close is > pandemics. > Yes. Personally, I am not terribly keen on the subject, but it is cool, and it is relatively likely that something may actually end up being done to reduce the risk, with some additional and more assured nice byproducts such as increased investments in cutting-edge technology and increased attention to space. It would seem naive and myopic to me the choice of ignoring all that on the basis that theoretically the best possible allocation of the relevant resources would be different, especially when such a re-allocation is largely implausible. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 6 15:53:31 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 17:53:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] CR--maybe not so much use In-Reply-To: References: <4DC1AE48.10901@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 6 May 2011 15:05, Dave Sill wrote: > 2011/5/6 Stefano Vaj : > > Still, the idea of reducing my energy, resistance to cold, libido and > > ability to think of anything else than food, has very little appeal me. > > So reducing hunger for food is good but reducing hunger for sex is > not? I've brought it up here before, but I would welcome a simple way > to control my libido. Replacing it with food obsession would be no > improvement. In fact, I am not especially enthusiastic about reducing my gastronomic keenness either. I had (luckily) temporary taste disturbances owing to cholesteatoma surgery having affected my corda tympani nerve, and I can guarantee you that in terms of depressing and mood effects it is only marginally better than impotence or blindness. Of course, one could probably "control" such effects, but I should rather have by gastronomic or sex drive or sense of sight, thank you. An entirely different story IMHO is tolerance/addiction, such that induced by carbs, where what comes into play is more quantity, frequency and repetition than the taste for a pleasurable, diverse and interesting life experiences. Now, even though with food quality can compensate to some extent for quantity, I suspect that on CR the typically reported "obsession for food" is just that, obsession, not any wish to experiment with the new creations of a great chef or even the more mundane satisfaction of appreciating a good steak rather than the McDonald surrogate thereof. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 6 15:55:20 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 17:55:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 5 May 2011 05:42, Damien Broderick wrote: > NASA space probe proves Einstein correct > Thursday, 5 May 2011 > > by Kerry Sheridan > Agence France-Presse > > > WASHINGTON: Huge objects in the universe distort space and time with the > force of their gravity, scientists said after a NASA probe confirmed two key > parts of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. > How boring. Too bad things are not just the opposite. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri May 6 16:26:52 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 18:26:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI Message-ID: On 6 May 2011 08:23, Kelly Anderson wrote: > If you want a serious treatment of this subject, I highly recommend > Love + Sex with Robots by David Levy. This book is not exactly for > kids or anything, but it is a very serious visit into a weird corner > of the future. David argues very convincingly that this WILL happen, > and not as far out as most of us might think. > > I suspect someone very soon will combine robotics with the RealDoll, > and create an extremely expensive, amazing device that will make the > moral majority very uncomfortable. > This makes me think of the debate endlessly resurfacing on the poorly-defined and somewhat contradictory idea "friendly AIs". If a robot is bound to (behave as if he) be sexually attracted by you, you are not likely to recognise it as a sexual partner rather than a well-performing masturbatory device, same as you are not going to consider as "intelligent" in the AGI sense a computer, no matter how efficient at what it does, if his goals and motivs are not convincingly bio-like. If he or she is not bound to (behave as if he) be sexually attracted by you, there is little point in having one around just as a sex toy when your chances are just the same with a fellow human being. Or perhaps better... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Fri May 6 17:14:30 2011 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 11:14:30 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Love and robots In-Reply-To: <8CDDA28244C47D3-B7C-1C77E@Webmail-d111.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CDDA28244C47D3-B7C-1C77E@Webmail-d111.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: > You can watch my latest animation "Love" that I entered into a Moby contest here: > http://vimeo.com/groups/saatchiandsaatchi/videos/23239274 > > If you like love, robots or Moby - you may like this - at least I hope you do. > > Love and robots to you! > Gina "Nanogirl" Miller > www.nanogirl.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From micheals at msu.edu Fri May 6 17:06:18 2011 From: micheals at msu.edu (salvatore micheal / sam iam) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 13:06:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future Message-ID: Kelly's future could be closer than we think. First watch the movie Robot Maid (can watch over Netflix). http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-7i-49-en-70-3pda.html or http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1381106/ to read a description. It's a sad but telling movie of our near-future times.. Soon our technology will be capable of: building/making realistic 'sex toys' (robots/dolls capable of performing complex sex acts) interface devices so that sex can be performed 'over the internet' (see movie below) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262826/ the link above is for Thomas in Love (also viewable over Netflix), a subtle French movie about a man isolated by agoraphobia but what he does about it (his condition) is more telling about 'our human condition' i suspect the ending may be unrealistic So our technology soon will enable us to 1. fall in love with virtual characters 2. make love via technology (another ref is the movie version of Brave New World - see link below) 3. love with robots/simulacrum http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080468/plotsummary is the link for the older version.. i believe there's a reference in there about having sex through a kind of device the device fails and the girl gets pregnant this is our soon-to-be technology. what we DO with it is the Real question. will we replace real partners with robot lovers? (at what percentage? the fact we will is established) what will be the legal consequences? (such as with gay marriage and spousal rights) as an example, will we be able to marry our robot gfs/studs? will they have entitlement rights? what will be the social impacts of robot partners? (such as projected by the movie AI?) will we only use them in the sex trade? (as opposed to attempting to increase their awareness - purpose: partners in space exploration) the last item could be both 'good and bad' for society: using robots in the sex trade will reduce demand for humans currently involved this increased dependency on robot-sex will tend to isolate humans from each other (just as the internet has a 'reversing effect' of actually isolating us - instead of 'bringing us together' as it could/should) it's possible there might be 'rogue robots' performing sex-crimes (such as illustrated in Robot Maid) - how do we deal with that? when we embrace robot gfs/studs as lovers, we create a Huge set of problems society must face in the process when we use technology to make love with distant partners, we also take on a set of issues associated with that when we fall in love with virtual characters, more social problems evolve.. sex over/via technology is a Hugely impacting set of problems facing humanity as we develop and integrate the technology ... i personally feel technology has a tendency to isolate us from each other this will only increase in the near future because robots/dolls/studs can perform more consistently, with less complaints, less 'negative' characteristics (for a lover), i suspect they will be used more and more (as the technology becomes cheaper and more realistic) whether the robots/dolls/studs will actually be capable of feelings/love is a Whole 'nother issue indeed.. i'm guessing the first feeling robot will arrive around 50 years from now (not just simulate feelings - actually Feel) if a robot can feel love, can we prohibit marriage / more permanent relationships? many will disagree with me but i use awareness as a guide: if a robot is truly aware (as in a human/dolphin/whale/elephant/..) sense, then to me - it's human and deserves to be treated as human we need to decide these issues BEFORE their development. ... i'm not part of the group who insists only humans 'have souls' or are the only 'instances of the divine'.. i personally believe awareness is equivalent to 'having a soul' and makes the difference between machine and 'human'. i continue to push 'robot rights' before we develop sophisticated ones (such as displayed in the film AI).. ... no matter how inconsistent (something i Hate), flakey (another thing i Hate), superficial (yet another thing i Hate), or materialistic (yet yet another thing i Hate) girls are, i LOVE human women. human women are magical to me .. words fail when i try to describe them .. as a personal aside, something happened to me recently which sorta blows away any robot-gf discussion.. it renewed my faith in human beings - human beings are to be cherished and adored - not ignored and cast aside for robots.. ^^ that's just my humble opinion, sam -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri May 6 17:40:14 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 10:40:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI On 6 May 2011 08:23, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>.If you want a serious treatment of this subject, I highly recommend Love + Sex with Robots by David Levy. I suspect someone very soon will combine robotics with the RealDoll, and create an extremely expensive, amazing device that will make the moral majority very uncomfortable. Focus on this a minute. If someone manages to create a sex machine and the moral majority is squirmy about it, I ask them to show me in their sacred literature exactly what commandment or principle or ethical guideline is being violated by the whole notion. Do let them cite the example of Onan in Genesis 38:8-10, I'm ready, eager even, to debate that. Go ahead, I dare ya. {8^D Kelly, you are one who was trained in that discipline (religion based morality.) Pretend you are still in that thought-space, and do suggest a line of argument that there is AAAAANYTHING at all wrong with taking care of one's biological needs using a sexbot. Anything. Bible only, no Mormon lit please. Be prepared; I have pondered this long and hard, and I find nothing, nada. {8^D {8-] >.This makes me think of the debate endlessly resurfacing on the poorly-defined and somewhat contradictory idea "friendly AIs". .If he or she is not bound to (behave as if he) be sexually attracted by you, there is little point in having one around just as a sex toy when your chances are just the same with a fellow human being. Or perhaps better... :-) -- Stefano Vaj For a remarkable Hollywood treatment of this topic, see West World: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070909/ That was made nearly 40 years ago, but it was a fun romp, not a comedy but not really a terror drama either; rather it was thought provoking, and way ahead of its time. It has so many elements we yak on about today: AGI, friendly evolving to unfriendly, sexbots, good kick and stomp with Yul Brenner doing a convincing job as a proto-Data, lots of good visuals for those of us who appreciate early to mid 1970s fashion. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moulton at moulton.com Fri May 6 19:44:00 2011 From: moulton at moulton.com (F. C. Moulton) Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 12:44:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC44F80.2000502@moulton.com> Persons interested in the legal issues related to robots and sex may want to consider the existing legal status of vibrators. This is an ever shifting area but for a summary go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrator_%28sex_toy%29 and scroll down to the Legal section. As for the theological argument it might be interesting to look at the history of masturbation and various religious dogmas. Not that I am recommending spending one's time doing that historical investigation however for the moment I will keep my opinion of religious dogma out of the discussion. Fred From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 6 20:38:49 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 22:38:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110506203849.GK23560@leitl.org> On Fri, May 06, 2011 at 06:26:52PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > If a robot is bound to (behave as if he) be sexually attracted by you, you Beware of BDSM robots. > are not likely to recognise it as a sexual partner rather than a > well-performing masturbatory device, same as you are not going to consider > as "intelligent" in the AGI sense a computer, no matter how efficient at > what it does, if his goals and motivs are not convincingly bio-like. From spike66 at att.net Fri May 6 21:54:59 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 14:54:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <20110506203849.GK23560@leitl.org> References: <20110506203849.GK23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00f301cc0c38$3f800c40$be8024c0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI On Fri, May 06, 2011 at 06:26:52PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> If a robot is bound to (behave as if he) be sexually attracted by you... >...Beware of BDSM robots. On the contrary sir. They can be seen as perfectly logical safety devices. We pair up BM robots with SD humans. The human gets her kicks safely, the robots can be easily repaired afterwards. They feel no actual pain, but they can be programmed to simulate either pleasure or suffering. As for SD robots for BM humans, we have had those for a century: motorcycles. Well sorta. The whole notion is exciting as a controls problem. Consider the Kurzweil piano. This might give Ray a kick to know one of his products inspired this idea. Amara, or anyone who is buddies with Ray, do feel free to pass it along. If so do extend an invitation to contact me offlist. I have a million ideas along these lines. He might be able to achieve this. Consider a Kurzweil piano with its digital sampling of an acoustic piano. When certain keys are hit, the piano responds by playing the pitch. So we digitally record audio responses of various human participants in the act of copulation. Find those who make the most pleasurable audio-erotic feedback. Then put sensors in various places on the sex machine, and program it to make the most delightful audio feedback responses when the sensors are stimulated correctly. That would certainly add a dimension to the whole robo-erotic experience. Side benefit: when one hears certain sounds, one knows what the neighbor is up to, and it is perhaps a bad time to go visit. An intermediate product I suppose would be to digitally sample human audio-erotic responses and add it as an instrument to a Kurzweil digital piano. Then rig it to where one can remotely switch it on, during a formal recital for instance. Imagine the comedy value. If someone likes something that is illegal, such as simulated rape for instance, they can express that instinct harmlessly with a machine. Granted it would be a difficult engineering problem to build a strugglebot. But we like difficult engineering challenges. Regarding the argument that mechanosex would lead to greater isolation between people, I would again argue to the contrary. Online contacts will eventually simultaneously derive the idea of letting her sexbot pleasure his sexbot. The humans watch and listen to the digital sounds thus generated. Perhaps they get on turned. At that time, each grabs his or her own sexbot and retires to a bedroom for an hour or two. Then the two humans could visit afterwards and discuss how it was. As the two sexbots again turn their attention towards each other. Or, we could set up a feedback macro, where the two sexbots master skills in how to do humans from each other: listening and learning from the sounds they produce in the other. The possibilities are endless and delightful. spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri May 6 22:42:28 2011 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 15:42:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <20110506203849.GK23560@leitl.org> References: <20110506203849.GK23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <803016.17469.qm@web65604.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ? ----- Original Message ---- > From: Eugen Leitl > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Sent: Fri, May 6, 2011 1:38:49 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI > > On Fri, May 06, 2011 at 06:26:52PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > > If a robot is bound to (behave as if he) be sexually attracted by you, you > > Beware of BDSM robots. But just in case, your safe word is: "1001010000110101010101010100010000100101010111000001010111110010". Good luck. From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sat May 7 02:26:20 2011 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 22:26:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: <005c01cc0bf4$a107a3e0$e316eba0$@att.net> References: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> <002e01cc0ae1$2da9bdc0$88fd3940$@att.net> <005c01cc0bf4$a107a3e0$e316eba0$@att.net> Message-ID: spike writes: > I have been trying for years to get my hair to do that. It won't do the > Reagan thing either. > Maybe you should try a beauty salon - they can do remarkable things with hair! ;) Regards, MB From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat May 7 03:17:14 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 21:17:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Only Behavior? (Was Re: From Friendly AI to Loving AI) In-Reply-To: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DC4B9BA.70104@canonizer.com> Everyone always cracks me up, all this talk about "(behave as if he)" and so on. Is there nothing beyond behavior that anyone is interested in yet? What about the all the effing good stuff? Is any of that mentioned in any of the books about the future of sex? Or is it all just about lying behavior? I was excited to see so much talk about BDSM, this is obviously a minority camp, and I pity the majority that are in for a big surprise when they fully find out how effing great true BDSM really is. But still, for me, even only the "pair up BM robots with SD humans" is missing what is for me the real good stuff. What gets me off mostly, being a switch, is knowing what it will feel like for someone doing something to me. That kind of shared recursive awareness is way beyond anything purely behavioral. I am so looking forward to effing what that is like to others, I bet most of you will be completely shocked, as any behavior, talking, or anything will never get close to what it is really like. Fully sharing all this is still effingly impossible, you can still only know half of what is going on, only guessing from the 'behavior' - really wondering if they are lying, if they are experiencing more or less than you ever knew was possible... Is anyone interested in knowing such or what their partner is really experiencing? Is their behavior all that matters to you? Do you always want your partner to tell you what they need, via some behavior? Or do you want to know, first hand, and not just experience half of it and guess the rest through behavior? Stefano mentioned "or perhaps better..." Might I ask what you imagine such to be? I hope it's more than just behavior? I imagine taking all these phenomenal pleasures, hard wired, like puppet strings by my primitive creator, making me do what it wanted me to do. I'm so pained that I must give up so much of what I want to do, in order to spend the time to get any of this, and giving up so much of the reverse, as I work to resist such, to be socially acceptable, and to get anything useful done at all. I imagine rewiring all this great stuff to more powerfully in synch with everything I want to do, not all this gross waist of time, anti social stuff. And not only that, I imagine getting my hands involved in designing and improving and hacking such phenomenal stuff, and pushing towards becoming omni phenomenal. I bet there are things possible out there in nature trillions of times more than any human has come close to experiencing, even if you only stay with what some of the lessor animals must be experiencing when they do it. Who cares about mindless behavior and programming such into ever more sophisticated behavior playback machines that are only behaving as if they are in love? Why is everyone, especially transhumanists, so quick to miss what the expert consensus is telling us about what consciousness, sex, and effing really is, what it really means, and what sharing all that will be like in the near future? (for more info see the new proposed opening part of the Representational Qualia camp statement here: http://canonizer.com/thread.asp/88/1/22/11 ) Is anyone else out there interested in more than just behavior? It should would be nice to know, definitively. Brent Allsop P.S, I'm watching how many of you respond with the popular completely clueless, primitive, and ignorant "Oh Gross, I don't want to know what my partner is experiencing and share what I'm experiencing..." most people respond to such talk with. Seriously, I really want to know if anyone really gets any of this, and rigorously measure how much progress the experts are making at educating the rest of the world about what is about to be effing possible and what the world will be like 100 years from now. That which you measure, improves, and if you have half a clue, please support the "Representational Qualia Camp" and help us educate the rest of the world. On 5/6/2011 11:40 AM, spike wrote: > > >...*On Behalf Of *Stefano Vaj > *Subject:* [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI > > On 6 May 2011 08:23, Kelly Anderson > wrote: > > >>...If you want a serious treatment of this subject, I highly recommend > Love + Sex with Robots by David Levy... I suspect someone very soon > will combine robotics with the RealDoll, > and create an extremely expensive, amazing device that will make the > moral majority very uncomfortable. > > Focus on this a minute. If someone manages to create a sex machine > and the moral majority is squirmy about it, I ask them to show me in > their sacred literature exactly what commandment or principle or > ethical guideline is being violated by the whole notion. Do let them > cite the example of Onan in Genesis 38:8-10, I'm ready, eager even, to > debate that. Go ahead, I dare ya. {8^D Kelly, you are one who was > trained in that discipline (religion based morality.) Pretend you are > still in that thought-space, and do suggest a line of argument that > there is AAAAANYTHING at all wrong with taking care of one's > biological needs using a sexbot. Anything. Bible only, no Mormon lit > please. Be prepared; I have pondered this long and hard, and I find > nothing, nada. {8^D {8-] > > > >...This makes me think of the debate endlessly resurfacing on the > poorly-defined and somewhat contradictory idea "friendly AIs". ...If > he or she is not bound to (behave as if he) be sexually attracted by > you, there is little point in having one around just as a sex toy when > your chances are just the same with a fellow human being. Or perhaps > better... :-)-- Stefano Vaj > > For a remarkable Hollywood treatment of this topic, see West World: > > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070909/ > > That was made nearly 40 years ago, but it was a fun romp, not a comedy > but not really a terror drama either; rather it was thought provoking, > and way ahead of its time. It has so many elements we yak on about > today: AGI, friendly evolving to unfriendly, sexbots, good kick and > stomp with Yul Brenner doing a convincing job as a proto-Data, lots of > good visuals for those of us who appreciate early to mid 1970s fashion. > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat May 7 04:00:31 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 21:00:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] cool check this Message-ID: <005201cc0c6b$4fc1d9c0$ef458d40$@att.net> Tuning into solar power with nanoantennas 05 May 2011 A nanoscale antenna that can collect light and convert it into a current shows promise for energy harvesting applications, say its US developers. These nanoantennas could be combined with conventional solar cells to increase the portion of visible light that they can turn into electricity. Nanoantenna structure By altering the length of nanoantennas they can be tuned to turn light from the whole of the visible spectrum into electricity C Science/AAAS Just as a car antenna can pick up radio waves, an optical nanoantenna can receive light waves. Naomi Halas and colleagues at Rice University in Houston have taken the concept of the optical nanoantenna one stage further to make a photosensor. They combined nanoantennas that detect light, with a photodiode that converts light energy into an electrical current. The team grew arrays of gold nanoantennas, between 110 nm and 158 nm in length, directly onto a silicon semiconductor surface and exposed the device to infrared radiation. Halas explains that the length of the nanoantennas is very important as the wavelength of light detected - in this case infrared - corresponds to the length of the nanoantenna used. She explains that the absorbed infrared radiation is turned into 'hot' electrons - highly energetic electrons - which can jump the barrier between the gold and the silicon to produce a current. Halas believes the device has a 'unique capability for light harvesting that could significantly advance devices such as solar cells'. Martin Cryan, an expert in nanophotonics at the University of Bristol, UK, believes this is an exciting new direction for optical antennas. 'This work includes the photon to electron conversion function, which is important for both energy and information processing and could lead to many new technological developments in both these areas,' he says. David Andrews, an expert on energy harvesting materials from the University of East Anglia, also in the UK, speculates that Halas's design could lead to the development of relatively cheap detectors operating in the near infrared region, 1250-1650 nm. But at this stage he is concerned about the efficiency of the device, which is about 1 per cent. 'The target efficiency will be too small for realistic energy harvesting purposes; the real applications are likely to lie in the realm of photosensing and imaging,' he says. Halas concedes that more work is necessary to improve the efficiency of the device. 'There are numerous ways we can improve the current efficiencies by refining the device design and exploiting the same physical principle,' she tells Chemistry World. 'Our device is a marriage of nanoscale optics with electronics, and we anticipate that it will stimulate further advances in the convergence of these fields,' she adds. Mike Brown -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: moz-screenshot-4.png Type: image/png Size: 5273 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: knight110506-250.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 15746 bytes Desc: not available URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat May 7 05:01:17 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 22:01:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Request for Information (RFI) 100 Year Starship Study In-Reply-To: References: <005601cc0bf2$a4f591d0$eee0b570$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 6:36 AM, spike wrote: > I can do orbit mechanics and weight estimations, or double check your > estimates. Would that help? For a high level view of a 100 year plan, we should probably leave out that level of detail. It is a given that orbit and Earth escape velocity can be achieved by some means; the exact details of space elevator vs. laser boost vs. whatever will have to be a footnote - if even that much. I'm thinking more, the long term organizational plan - that which sets up the environment that encourages the people doing this to do cutting edge research, because it's in their own self interest. Mainly, it's about setting something up where the regulations, environmental concerns, and established powers that hobble such research presently, are not in the way. If you want to help me with that...? > The DARPA people sometimes come up with funds for studies, but this is the > tightest budget time I have ever seen. Might still be worth a try. Yeah. Launching even one object - required, at some point, for a starship project - requires more than the entire budget, as does researching manufacturing capabilities sufficient to make anything capable of replicating itself using purely lunar or asteroidal resources using only a significant fraction of a small launch vehicle's payload. Thus, this will have to attract more resources and investment while everything's on the ground. Phase one is all about getting a self-sufficient effort up and running. On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 8:24 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > I have thought about this problem and come up with many, many > solutions over the past several decades. > > It's a nearly hopeless effort. > > The problem is that the technical base keeps changing. This is a 100 year effort. The limits and specifics of today's technology are largely irrelevant. (The limits of physics are relevant, but today's tech rarely actually gets to that limit in areas of concern.) > Another problem is finding anyone interested in going. ?Those who go > would be cut off from social acceleration. FTL travel will likely be necessary. There are a few possible means of achieving that known today - but seeing which (if any) actually prove possible at all, and then turning them from merely possible into practical - will take a lot of work. And, of course, it is a gamble: it may well turn out that FTL is impossible. But currently, nobody is seriously willing to even explore the field. After all, even if someone invented a method of teleporting from Earth orbit to Mars orbit tomorrow that merely cost $100 million to build, it would be nearly impossible to raise that amount of money. That itself is a problem, which DARPA appears to be trying to address here. From spike66 at att.net Sat May 7 05:21:50 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 22:21:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Only Behavior? (Was Re: From Friendly AI to Loving AI) In-Reply-To: <4DC4B9BA.70104@canonizer.com> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DC4B9BA.70104@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <006f01cc0c76$abb100c0$03130240$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Brent Allsop Subject: [ExI] Only Behavior? (Was Re: From Friendly AI to Loving AI) >.Everyone always cracks me up, all this talk about "(behave as if he)" and so on. Is there nothing beyond behavior that anyone is interested in yet? What about the all the effing good stuff? Is any of that mentioned in any of the books about the future of sex? Or is it all just about lying behavior? I was excited to see so much talk about BDSM, this is obviously a minority camp, and I pity the majority that are in for a big surprise when they fully find out how effing great true BDSM really is. Whooooaaa there Hoss. I claim no expertise in this, nor any experience. As a controls engineer, I was thinking of the technical problem of rigging up a doll with subcutaneous sensors which cause certain delightful sounds. That doesn't seem like a terribly difficult controls problem. I think I could do it myself. We could use that Japanese internet kissing technology to let couples interact remotely. There are people in this world who just cannot get a human mate, perhaps through no fault of their own, for any number of reasons. Perhaps they have a venereal disease they caught from being raped, or they have some terrible facial deformity from birth, or some unfortunate body odor which they cannot control, or even if it is their own fault, such as if they are terminally geeky or a psychopathic asshole with whom even Mister Rogers could not get along, it doesn't matter to me. This technology could help. >. But still, for me, even only the "pair up BM robots with SD humans" is missing what is for me the real good stuff. What gets me off mostly, being a switch, is knowing what it will feel like for someone doing something to me. OK well I am completely out to sea in that particular discipl. uh. that particular field of knowledge. I was just imagining the whole whips and chains scene and thinking one would end up causing injury perhaps. But if we had an instrumented android with leather skin, it would be durable and replaceable, and we could build one to look like Seven of Nine. It could be that the mechanical problems are way more difficult than I am imagining, for otherwise it would have been done by now. In retrospect, it seems like a nearly obvious idea. But the keyboard notion with the digitally sampled orgasmic gasps and howls set to pitches seems like it would work, and be a hoot. Think of the advantages: it would be fun to listen to, the kids would willingly practice the piano, the neighbors would look at you with scornful respect and envious admiration, that sorta thing. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Sat May 7 08:50:16 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 01:50:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: References: <4DC21CAF.6000409@satx.rr.com> <002e01cc0ae1$2da9bdc0$88fd3940$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:01 AM, MB wrote: > > > > Why does the article mention Einstein was Jewish? What does that have to > do > > with anything??? > > > > I also thought that was strange. Why didn't they mention his hair instead? > Has about > as much bearing on his theories... :* > >by Kerry Sheridan >Agence France-Presse The source is French... John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sat May 7 09:45:02 2011 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 10:45:02 +0100 (BST) Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Anders, may I ask your professionally biased opinion on something? I was looking online for a copy of "Global catastrophic risks" by Bostrom and Cirkovic, and amazon indicated the paperback edition comes out next month. Am I better off waiting for the new edition and whatever new information it contains, or will a copy of the first edition be just as good? Anders also wrote> "This shows an interesting problem we have: NEOs are not the biggest or most important threats we need to stop. Yet they are the best managed of all of them. We know their physics, it is deterministic, we have a lot of data on them, we have some experimental interventions (asteroid and comet landings), there is a community working on the problem and there is even some public understanding of the issue. Try finding that combination for climate change, wars, AGI, bioweapons or nanotech. The only thing anywhere close is pandemics." Well, bioweapons aren't something your independent think tank or study group can do anything more than issue a policy report about - actually getting hold of samples of the most deadly viruses and bacteria and then studying them with a view to working on vaccines or medicines is difficult legally, as governments want to control them. Suitable high level biosecurity facilities are expensive, and getting ethics committee approval to do the work may not be easy. AGI & nanotech are largely unknowns as they aren't deterministic and we have little data. It's very hard to build public awareness until you can people a concrete example of the tech and what it can do. Wars - people are aware, but the level of compassion fatigue is huge. Given that you can't uninvent modern war (given the tens of millions of AK-47 derivatives in Africa, and that the Lord's Resistance Army wages war by kidnapping children, getting them drunk and giving them machetes), that interventions cost money and the lives of intervening soldiers, and that most of them occur far away from the developed world, it is very hard to get people to care. There are communities working on reducing warfare, but it's a hard task. Climate change - the problem here is that the public is aware of conflicting points of view. There are many communities working on it, stacks of data for people to analyse, but global climate is only semi-deterministic. Given that most policy changes to intervene in climate change have strong economic implications, and the economy is a similarly chaotic system, and people can string together data sets to support the course of action they prefer. This confuses the hell out of the public. Tom From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sat May 7 09:57:36 2011 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 10:57:36 +0100 (BST) Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <700256.9070.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Einstein's jewishness has about as much do with his theories as Steven Hawking's disability does with his. However, New Scientist (the source of the article) is a relatively mainstream British publication, and falls prey to the same journalistic conventions that a lot of British magazines do. They feel the need to mention these things in the same way that they have to use adjectives like "wealthy" or "permanently tanned" to describe Simon Cowell, as if there's a person left in the country who hasn't seen him on TV or heard about how much he earns. Likewise, mentioning which school or university our senior politicians went to doesn't really comment on their ability to do the job but does help act as a class signifier - so the chancellor of the exchequer's expensive education is always mentioned, just as his opposite half on the opposition is always labelled "former postman" or "trade unionist". Tom From max at maxmore.com Sat May 7 09:29:51 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 02:29:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Michael Rose's 55 Theses Message-ID: Most of you will find eminent anti-aging researcher Michael Rose's new 55 Theses intriguing. Given that we've been having quite a lot of discussion of paleo-related issues, you might especially take a look at the last 6 or 7 of the theses. But take a look at the whole thing. Food for thought. http://55theses.org --- Max -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat May 7 15:14:15 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 07 May 2011 16:14:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> Tom Nowell wrote: > Anders, may I ask your professionally biased opinion on something? I was looking online for a copy of "Global catastrophic risks" by Bostrom and Cirkovic, and amazon indicated the paperback edition comes out next month. Am I better off waiting for the new edition and whatever new information it contains, or will a copy of the first edition be just as good? > In my fairly unbiased opinion (since I don't get royalties and actually don't know much about the new edition), there is no real difference between them so I would go for the first edition. > Well, bioweapons aren't something your independent think tank or study group can do anything more than issue a policy report about - > actually getting hold of samples of the most deadly viruses and bacteria and then studying them with a view to working on vaccines or medicines is difficult legally, as governments want to control them. Suitable high level biosecurity facilities are expensive, and getting ethics committee approval to do the work may not be easy. > Sure, but the problem can be attacked even outside the lab. Focusing on existing pathogens is a bit like spending a lot of effort tracking a few known worrisome NEOs - important, but the real threat is likely from the unknowns. Setting up smart monitoring systems is doable on the political-legal-academic-administrative levels. Understanding the threat on a systemic scale can be very useful: how can we detect, react, contain and respond to a new biothreat? What stakeholder groups can be roped in, can we invent new lab procedures to fix these problems (and convince funding bodies about them)? > AGI & nanotech are largely unknowns as they aren't deterministic and we have little data. It's very hard to build public awareness until you can people a concrete example of the tech and what it can do. > And then it might be too late. Public awareness might even be one of the last priorities for many xrisks. Not because the Masses are stupid and we Enlightened Technocrats can run things, but simply because 1) before we have good enough information to make rational decisions they will not have much to contribute anyway (sometimes a big pool of broad imagination is powerful and makes bugs shallow, sometimes not), 2) public awareness tends to drive political willingness to make decisions - if there are no rational decisions to make yet, or worse, if there are obvious but wrong ones, it is not useful. 3) public awareness is very useful if the public can help with managing the xrisk - looking for weird activity, reporting invasive species, twittering warnings and coordination - but some risks do not lend themselves to it. Maybe in a few years we will have the Neighborhood Turing Watch checking local processing for malicious infestations of code, but we need to understand how to set it up. > Wars - people are aware, but the level of compassion fatigue is huge. Given that you can't uninvent modern war (given the tens of millions of AK-47 derivatives in Africa, and that the Lord's Resistance Army wages war by kidnapping children, getting them drunk and giving them machetes), that interventions cost money and the lives of intervening soldiers, and that most of them occur far away from the developed world, it is very hard to get people to care. There are communities working on reducing warfare, but it's a hard task. > 100 years of world cuisine: http://100yearsofworldcuisine.com/ (this visualisation made my day today) I doubt any xrisk is going to be a simple task. Wars are likely among the hardest, since they are motivated by pretty deep seated issues - not just human emotions but economics, memetics and coordination issues. But they are also coordinated activities (that is why they are so dangerous) and that means we can perhaps influence their coordination too. And since wars tend to make other GCRs and xrisks worse or possibly trigger them they are a cruicial part of the anti-xrisk agenda. Pinker's observation on the reduction of violence is actually quite cheering. We are making things safer in one sense (average violence amplitude is going down), although the scale limits (once wars were limited by geography) has disappeared. > Climate change - the problem here is that the public is aware of conflicting points of view. There are many communities working on it, stacks of data for people to analyse, but global climate is only semi-deterministic. Given that most policy changes to intervene in climate change have strong economic implications, and the economy is a similarly chaotic system, and people can string together data sets to support the course of action they prefer. This confuses the hell out of the public. > It confuses the hell out of the (honest) experts too. Being in touch with the climate community around Oxford has made me realize 1) the physical part of the science is pretty solid, 2) the data is messy anyway and prediction is largely a fool's game, and 3) the all-important dynamics of geosystem-human system interaction is not understood well at all. So most claims about climate and climate policy are based on faulty inputs. The best approach is likely to push *hard* on tech development here - we want to get off fossil anyway, solar power and other forms of local power production are good for resilience, low-energy computing is needed for uploading, and so on. Saving the world is no picnic. But it feels pretty rewarding. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Sat May 7 15:15:42 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 11:15:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Spaceship Two In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/6 John Grigg > Virgin Galactic moves forward... > > > http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/04/6584950-spaceshiptwo-unfurls-its-feathers > > John : ) > FTA: > The company, backed by British billionaire Richard Branson, has also > partnered with > Sierra Nevada Corp. on the development of another space plane capable of > orbital flight, known as the Dream Chaser > . Aviation Week & Space Technology is reporting that > Sierra Nevada is planning to conduct Dream Chaser drop tests next year, > using WhiteKnightTwo. That means the next few years could see a whole lotta > dropping going on in the skies over Mojave. ...And Branson has his hands in it all. Clearly someone has their eye on bigger things. Anyone on the list ever speak with him? Is he a trans-humanist? Signed up for cryo? A quick google search shows that he's got a company that does 'cord blood banking', he's clearly not afraid of being on the leading edge. Someone should talk to him. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 7 15:13:35 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 11:13:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] paleo immune system: was RE: buttload In-Reply-To: <005801cc0b37$1e570cf0$5b0526d0$@att.net> References: <005801cc0b37$1e570cf0$5b0526d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 11:14 AM, spike wrote: > evolved, our environments are suddenly very squeaky clean. ?Our immune > systems suddenly have very little to do. ?Perhaps we need to intentionally > introduce a small but reasonable level of germs and filth, just to remind > our immune systems they still have a job. ?We don't want them getting lazy > and out of practice. ?We can think of filth as comfort food for the Worse than lazy and bored is when the immune system goes into "disordered" behavior and attacks otherwise healthy parts/functions. I imagine if your doctor tells you to mitigate RA symptoms by dark-ages sanitation conditions in your home you'll quickly find a new doctor. From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 7 15:05:51 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 11:05:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] buttload In-Reply-To: <009501cc0b4a$a50a68b0$ef1f3a10$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC17C0F.6040406@satx.rr.com> <00a901cc0a82$a248d490$e6da7db0$@att.net> <4DC199E3.1010001@satx.rr.com> <00ec01cc0a9e$0bd6f890$2384e9b0$@att.net> <4DC1CA41.1030001@satx.rr.com> <4DC29369.9070203@aleph.se> <01327A232C5244BCA72AF5DA19B1A99A@DFC68LF1> <006d01cc0b41$b71de030$2559a090$@att.net> <009501cc0b4a$a50a68b0$ef1f3a10$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 1:34 PM, spike wrote: > Problem: I don't know where to find bear hands. ?Might hafta just use my > bare hands instead, or grow and sharpen my fingernails to imitate bear > claws. Why would you want your hands to imitate pastry? >>...In days long gone when most of the meat the family ate was from rabbits > we raised, I would eat rabbit liver hot out of the rabbits I was butchering. > (The kids did as well.) > > Oy, see what happens to me from hanging out with you? ?{8^D ?Keith, if we > ever suffer from an EMP that fries everyone's electronics, I plan to find > you and make you the royal survival consultant. I second that. I figured I should vote now because after the kind of collapse you mentioned I doubt I'll survive for long, let alone find anyone. Sadly I doubt I could get to my step sister's house without GPS - and if the computers in our cars were dead it's too far of a hike to be worth the trip. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 7 16:34:34 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 18:34:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <4DC44F80.2000502@moulton.com> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DC44F80.2000502@moulton.com> Message-ID: On 6 May 2011 21:44, F. C. Moulton wrote: > As for the theological argument it might be interesting to look at the > history of masturbation and various religious dogmas. Not that I am > recommending spending one's time doing that historical investigation > however for the moment I will keep my opinion of religious dogma out of > the discussion. > It is however interesting how bioluddite feminism manages to make a "technology=oppression" manifesto of female masturbatory devices' history. See The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines . -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 7 16:45:19 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 18:45:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/6 salvatore micheal / sam iam > So our technology soon will enable us to > 1. fall in love with virtual characters > 2. make love via technology (another ref is the movie version of Brave New > World - see link below) > 3. love with robots/simulacrum > Mmhhh. isn't that the kind of overhype we transhumanists like to indulge in? Let us just say that technology is making all that increasingly easier. People have for a long time fallen in love with virtual characters, made love via technology (eg, the telephone...), and loved their (literally or metaphorically) "sexy" toys. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat May 7 17:22:26 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 10:22:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 12:42 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Adrian Tymes >> http://www.pcworld.com/article/213927/kinect_porn_game_lets_you_reach_out_and_tweak_someone.html >> >> Or is that the lame demo you mentioned? > > Yup, that's the one. Do you disagree that it is lame? Nope. Just, it struck me as a serious attempt, quality of result notwithstanding. From spike66 at att.net Sat May 7 18:01:34 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 11:01:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DC44F80.2000502@moulton.com> Message-ID: <00d001cc0ce0$ce4d6cd0$6ae84670$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: Re: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI On 6 May 2011 21:44, F. C. Moulton wrote: >>. for the moment I will keep my opinion of religious dogma out of the discussion. Fred Fred you are far too polite sir. Offering one's opinion of religious dogma is allowed here. Encouraged even. {8^D >.It is however interesting how bioluddite feminism manages to make a "technology=oppression" manifesto of female masturbatory devices' history. >.See The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel P. Maines . -- Stefano Vaj An interesting and fun bit of well-researched historical fiction was TC Boyle's Road to Wellville. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Wellville The book was remarkably well done, bringing in a number of obscure historical circumstances of Battle Creek Michigan around the dawn of the 20th century. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of corn flakes and other health foods, set up a sanitarium, or what we would now call a health spa, where patients were subjected to a rigorous diet and exercise program to help them regain their health. All around Kellogg's facility, "doctors" set up therapeutic institutions where they practiced "pelvic massage" on the well-to-do ladies. This all went on without Dr. Kellogg's knowledge, and certainly without his approval. Perhaps he wondered why the clients tended to return from their day shopping with a rosy cheeked glow, and why they were so eager to return year after year. In any case, there is an excellent movie made from the book, with Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Broderick, and Dana Carvey in one of his rare semi-drama roles (he is excellent in that.) They advertise Wellville as a comedy, but if so, it is more of a subtle PG Wodehouse style comedy rather than Saturday Night Live style slapstick. Even then, it would be a rare example of historically-accurate comedy: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1089667353/ Note: this trailer isn't a good representation of the film. I get the feeling the makers of this ad didn't actually view it, but rather just fast forwarded to the sexy parts and did some cut and paste. I find JH Kellogg an interesting character, because he was so experimental, so far ahead of his time. He was a proto-extropian. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 7 18:35:09 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 20:35:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Request for Information (RFI) 100 Year Starship Study In-Reply-To: References: <005601cc0bf2$a4f591d0$eee0b570$@att.net> Message-ID: On 7 May 2011 07:01, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > FTL travel will likely be necessary. There are a few possible > means of achieving that known today - but seeing which (if any) > actually prove possible at all, and then turning them from merely > possible into practical - will take a lot of work. > Personally, I have always had a soft spot for some sort of Bussard-like solution. And as soon as you reach an inverse of tau high enough,100 years of ship time may make for a long distance... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat May 7 18:23:20 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 11:23:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00da01cc0ce3$d81c13d0$88543b70$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj . >.People have for a long time fallen in love with virtual characters.... -- Stefano Vaj Ja, for perhaps over 100 years. I have fallen desperately in love with Jody Foster's Ellie Arroway from Contact, with Donna Reed's Mary Hatch from It's a Wonderful Life, with Amy Madigan's Annie from Field of Dreams, with Ingrid Bergman's Elsa in Casablanca. Perhaps with sufficiently advanced virtual reality, we could pick three or four of our favorite fiction characters and make a composite. Imagine a woman with Mary's beauty and kindheartedness, Elsa's beauty and do-the-right-thing-ism, Annie's spirit, and Ellie Arroway's brains. Oh my. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat May 7 18:45:10 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 11:45:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] BDSM was Only Behavior? Message-ID: 2011/5/6 Brent Allsop : snip > I was excited to see so much talk about BDSM, this is obviously a minority > camp, and I pity the majority that are in for a big surprise when they fully > find out how effing great true BDSM really is. Some years ago and completely without any intent, I figured out where the evolutionary origin of BDSM comes from. "An EP explanation stresses the fact that we have lots of ancestors who gave up and joined the tribe that had captured them (and sometimes had killed most of their relatives). This selection of our ancestors accounts for the extreme forms of capture-bonding exemplified by Patty Hearst and the 'Stockholm Syndrome.' . . . It accounts for battered wife syndrome, (Battered person syndrome) where beatings and abuse are observed to strengthen the bond between the victim and the abuser--at least up to a point.Henson has proposed that the partial activation of this psychological trait accounts for other mysterious human traits such as Basic training "a mildly traumatic experience intended to produce a bond" and fraternity hazing (perhaps also other similar initiation rites). The difficulty colleges have had in stamping out injurious hazing may stem from instinctual knowledge of how to induce bonding in captives. "He also makes a case that the intense reward from sexual practices such as BDSM derives from activation of the capture-bonding psychological mechanisms." Keith From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 7 19:28:40 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 21:28:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: <700256.9070.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <700256.9070.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 7 May 2011 11:57, Tom Nowell wrote: > Einstein's jewishness has about as much do with his theories as Steven > Hawking's disability does with his. > Both *might* have something to do with their theories, the same being also the product of personal history. As, for that matter, their respective first girlfriends. As for Marie Curie being a woman and for Heisenberg being a national-socialist. But what is vaguely irritating here is the journalist's obvious effort try to be "proactively" politically correct. I wonder if he would have mentioned the Jewishness of Mr. Madoff, for instance. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 7 19:42:48 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 21:42:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <00da01cc0ce3$d81c13d0$88543b70$@att.net> References: <00da01cc0ce3$d81c13d0$88543b70$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/7 spike > Ja, for perhaps over 100 years.? I have fallen desperately in love with Jody Foster?s Ellie Arroway from Contact, with Donna Reed?s Mary Hatch from It?s a Wonderful Life, with Amy Madigan?s Annie from Field of Dreams, with Ingrid Bergman?s Elsa in Casablanca. Why, glad to hear we are not on the same food chain, this would make for a nice division of labour... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sat May 7 19:36:10 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 12:36:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] disrespective: was RE: NASA space probe proves Einstein correct Message-ID: <010801cc0cee$04dd1810$0e974830$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj >. >.Both *might* have something to do with their theories, the same being also the product of personal history. As, for that matter, their respective first girlfriends.-- Stefano Vaj Ah but Stefano, how do you KNOW their first girlfriends were respective? My first one was anything but. That's part of the reason we broke up. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sat May 7 19:59:51 2011 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 07 May 2011 12:59:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <20110507125951.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0a44f23a07.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Ben Zaiboc wrote, > BillK Quoted: > > > A 2003 systematic review in the > > Journal of the American Medical Association showed that weight loss on > > low-carb diets was principally associated with decreased caloric > > intake and increased diet duration, but not with reduced carbohydrate > > content. > > Um, What? > > Low-x is not associated with reduced x? > > What?? I think what is being referenced here is that studies showed that the weight loss on various diets was 100% calculable based on reduced calories. It didn't matter if the reduced calorie diet was low-carb, high-carb, low-fat, or high-fat. Total calories in and out accounted for all of the weight loss. There was no difference between different caloric sources. Therefore, the conclusion is that low-carb diets only work due to reduced caloric intake and increased diet duration, and not due to the reduced percentage of carbohydrate in the diet. -- Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sat May 7 20:21:06 2011 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 07 May 2011 13:21:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <20110507132106.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.ea14cef24c.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> BillK wrote, > > Myths About Fat > and What to Do About It > by Harriet Hall > > There is certainly no shortage of diet fads and weight loss myths. The > plethora of contradictory information can make it difficult for us to > distinguish between sound nutrition science and plain old nonsense. In > our second review of the year of Gary Taubes? latest book Why We Get > Fat and What To Do About It (read the first review here), Harriet > Hall, M.D. (the Skepdoc) advises against jumping on any bandwagons. > > Quote: > Diets are just tricks to get people to reduce total calorie intake, > and low-carb diets are no exception. A 2003 systematic review in the > Journal of the American Medical Association showed that weight loss on > low-carb diets was principally associated with decreased caloric > intake and increased diet duration, but not with reduced carbohydrate > content. This is 100% correct. I love skeptics and science. I strongly recommend skeptical information: - The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe - Science-based Medicine - The James Randi Educational Foundation - QuackCast - What's the Harm - Bad Astronomy - NeuroLogica Blog - Pharyngula - Skeptoid - and so many more I wish there was more science and skepticism on this list, like in the good old days. There seems to be more and more pseudoscience and sloppy thinking these days. -- Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 7 20:49:21 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 21:49:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: References: <700256.9070.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/7 Stefano Vaj wrote: > Both *might* have something to do with their theories, the same being also > the product of personal history. As, for that matter, their respective first > girlfriends. As for Marie Curie being a woman and for Heisenberg being a > national-socialist. But what is vaguely irritating here is the journalist's > obvious effort try to be "proactively" politically correct. I wonder if he > would have mentioned the Jewishness of Mr. Madoff, for instance. > > There have been a lot of similar complaints in the comments section on this article to her describing Einstein as Jewish. I don't think she attached much significance to it at all and is probably surprised at the complaints. She is Irish-American, so is not Jewish herself. Her record shows that she has spent time as a reporter in Israel, Lebanon and Cyprus before being assigned to Washington, so she knows the Middle East area. Her articles tend to be sent around the world via the press agency she works for, so she automatically adds details like nationality to the people she references in her articles. And, after all, Einstein came from a Jewish family and supported Israel (if not Judaism). Not mentioning that to avoid upsetting people is almost as bad as unnecessarily mentioning it. It's getting difficult to write without offending somebody these days. BillK From mail at harveynewstrom.com Sat May 7 21:11:37 2011 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sat, 07 May 2011 14:11:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <20110507141137.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.082e164d3e.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Jeff Medina wrote, > On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 7:27 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > What is funny is that I don't think you realize that Taubes would disagree with you. ?He would argue that total calories don't matter > > You are arguing against a straw man / cartoon version of Taubes. > > He certainly would never suggest a 25,000 calorie per day fish & > coconut oil diet would lead to better health or weight loss as > compared with a 1,500 calorie per day high carb (based on, let's say, > fruit/veg/whole grains/legumes) diet, for example. If that is incorrect, then what is Tabues' big alternative hypothesis he claims mainstream science will not accept? Is this not an accurate description of Taubes' hypothesis? Unless I totally misunderstood Taubes, I believe this is exactly what he is saying. The whole premise of "Good calories, Bad calories" is that carb calories make you fat no matter how few you eat, and that fat calories won't make you fat no matter how many you eat. > Conversely, I don't think you, Harvey, would suggest that 1,500 > calories per day of Snickers bars supplemented with vitamins/minerals > would lead to equivalent health outcomes as 1,500 calories per day of > your current diet. Yes, real challenges and quack challenges look the same. They have to be distinguished by scientific testing. Good start. But then he fails to identify how we distinguish science from pseudoscience, and he fails to then perform the necessary steps to But then he fails to go on and perform the science Agreed. So where is his evidence to prove he is not a quack? The fact that he recognizes that he comes from a quack-like position does not mean he is not a quack. Show me the evidence. If by "health outcomes", we are still talking about "weight gain" as in the first paragraph, then yes. I assert that 1500 calories of Snickers equals the same weight gain as 1500 calories of my current diet. > About five paragraphs down on > http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/gary-taubes-goo.html there are > some examples of scientific misconduct that indicate why Taubes has > the conspiracy theory vibe. Yes. But proving other people wrong does not mean Taubes is right. The best his arguments do is tear down the opposing side so that we are starting from scratch. He still doesn't have any good science built up on his side. > "When people challenge the establishment, 99.9 per cent of the time > they are wrong. If I was writing about me, I?d begin from the > assumption that I am both wrong and a quack." - Gary Taubes Yes. All science begins with this assumption. Then science uses the experimental method to determine the truth. Until Taubes performs this next necessary step, he is still at the quack stage. Other people have performed these experiments and have concluded that Taubes is a quack. We are still awaiting any counter evidence that Taubes wants to present. But he seems better at writing conspiracy theory books than doing actual science to prove his hypothesis. -- Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP From max at maxmore.com Sat May 7 21:44:46 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 14:44:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <20110507132106.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.ea14cef24c.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> References: <20110507132106.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.ea14cef24c.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: BillK wrote, > > > > Myths About Fat > > and What to Do About It > > by Harriet Hall > > > > > > Quote: > > Diets are just tricks to get people to reduce total calorie intake, > > and low-carb diets are no exception. A 2003 systematic review in the > > Journal of the American Medical Association showed that weight loss on > > low-carb diets was principally associated with decreased caloric > > intake and increased diet duration, but not with reduced carbohydrate > > content. > Low carb diets may work primarily by being more satisfying and making it easier to reduce total calorie intake. The reduced carbohydrate intake may have some additional effect. However, there is an assymetry between losing weight and not gaining weight. Based on the evidence (which, by the way, Taubes covers well), it's MUCH easier to avoid gaining weight on a low-carb diet even if you are eating an amount that the standard view says should cause you to gain weight. The theory on that perfectly matches my own experience. Max More Strategic Philosopher. Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sat May 7 23:10:28 2011 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 17:10:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The Nanogirl News ~ In-Reply-To: References: <8CDD7D12D50ED8D-EA4-492@webmail-m060.sysops.aol.com><501A043A-EAC8-4B3B-9CED-3A2D3D8F1743@halcyon.com> Message-ID: <01E57E1EB9E7489B836A5E1D34A8B164@3DBOXXW4850> Thank you John. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com ----- Original Message ----- From: John Grigg To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2011 1:08 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] The Nanogirl News ~ I'm so glad that Gina Miller's Nanogirl News is back! I'm quite certain the Singularity would just not be the same without it... John : ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jedwebb at hotmail.com Sun May 8 05:08:45 2011 From: jedwebb at hotmail.com (Jeremy Webb) Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 05:08:45 +0000 Subject: [ExI] disrespective: was RE: NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: <010801cc0cee$04dd1810$0e974830$@att.net> References: <010801cc0cee$04dd1810$0e974830$@att.net> Message-ID: Long term relationships, just as I thought! :0) Not on your team! JW From: spike66 at att.net To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Date: Sat, 7 May 2011 12:36:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] disrespective: was RE: NASA space probe proves Einstein correct From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj >? >?Both *might* have something to do with their theories, the same being also the product of personal history. As, for that matter, their respective first girlfriends.-- Stefano Vaj Ah but Stefano, how do you KNOW their first girlfriends were respective? My first one was anything but. That?s part of the reason we broke up. spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun May 8 11:07:27 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 04:07:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <750174.62090.qm@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "Harvey Newstrom" explained: > > Ben Zaiboc wrote, > > BillK Quoted: > > > > > A 2003 systematic review in the > > > Journal of the American Medical Association showed that weight loss on > > > low-carb diets was principally associated with decreased caloric > > > intake and increased diet duration, but not with reduced carbohydrate > > > content. > > > > Um, What? > > > > Low-x is not associated with reduced x? > > > > What?? > I think what is being referenced here is that studies showed that the > weight loss on various diets was 100% calculable based on reduced > calories. It didn't matter if the reduced calorie diet was low-carb, > high-carb, low-fat, or high-fat. Total calories in and out accounted > for all of the weight loss. There was no difference between different > caloric sources. Therefore, the conclusion is that low-carb diets only > work due to reduced caloric intake and increased diet duration, and not > due to the reduced percentage of carbohydrate in the diet. Well, it could have been better phrased. Anyway, "Total calories in and out accounted for all of the weight loss", as opposed to what? magic? What possible other mechanism can account for weight loss? I'd have thought that we could take the first law of thermodynamics for granted here. The statement seems to be simply confirming it. IOW, apart from saying that biology conforms to physics, it says nothing. Unless the claim really is that some diets can break the laws of physics. If not, then we all agree that calories in - calories out (in all forms) = weight difference. So the thing that's being disagreed on, is whether there is a *practical* difference between a low-carb diet and a low-fat diet, rather than a difference between calories derived from fat and ones from carbohydrate. Am I correct? If so, then we can ignore (as in 'Take for granted' rather than 'Dismiss') the basic physics of dieting, and concentrate on the *effect on behaviour* of the diets. The main effect that makes a difference seems to be the degree of satiety produced by different foods (I think there are other differences too, but let's keep it simple). As far as I can see, theoretical, anecdotal and personal observations seem to point to fat being better at producing satiety than carbohydrates. This would mean that a low-carb diet would be easier to stick to, and more agreeable generally, than a low-fat one. Everyone is different, though, and satiety is a highly subjective thing. So my advice would be to try a few different diets, try to avoid bias as best you can, and go with what works for you. Does that sound reasonable? Ben Zaiboc From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 8 22:04:13 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 15:04:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: Efficiency of algorithmic trading) In-Reply-To: <20110504091442.GG23560@leitl.org> References: <20110504091442.GG23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <5814B7C5-B2E2-4969-9059-B03F8FCBD096@mac.com> On May 4, 2011, at 2:14 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 04:12:10PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > >> I think it is economic collapse of a greater magnitude than >> seen before bring on the destruction of many western and >> some eastern technological societies. Beside that energy is a piece of cake. > > A purely financial collapse would be an eminently recoverable > problem. > > But the reason for the collapse are systemic, and resource > scarcity is the key driver. > >> I can think of ways that would fix energy that are actually >> doable at reasonable cost within a decade. Not so much on > > A decade scale implies immediate (as: starting today) > deployment, with no innovation required. Apart from negawatts > (cut the US blue whale in half) I can only think > of micro co-gen plants first, and solar thermal and solar > PV second. Agreed. We have the research behind us to build GW and larger molten salt thorium reactors. If we managed to get more sane and streamline some of the nuclear red tape we could have much more electrical capacity on hand without burning oil or NG and so without coal. We could have it in that timeframe. Getting rid of oil for IC engines would take a while. But with enough energy you can make a variety of liquid fuels quickly enough for the interim. > > Germany plans to reach 41.6 GWp photovoltaic capacity > by 2014. This would mean ability to supply up to ~50% > of peak demand load or 4-5% of total demand. I wish them luck. I don't think this is really plausible economically or otherwise, yet. I would be happy to be wrong. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 8 22:07:39 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 15:07:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] remind me again.. why not a religion? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: What? NO!!! But wait.. We need deep affirmation through action, through conscious focus, through fully feeling into and binding with our emotion and holding in deepest esteem such a radically positive future. It is much more difficult to achieve and in all aspects possible affirm that consistently, all the way through, without a community of those who also have the same deep focus and willingness to deepen it even further. It is much easier to do if in community - a place to recharge, to contribute, to draw from, to be inspired by and to inspire, to help and be helped. There needs to be a consistent pure message, a vision, compelling and full of heart as well as mind. We can discuss possibilities endlessly and indeed must continue to ever more constructively do so. But we need to unify into a shared dream - shared goals that we polish to greater and greater clarity, conviction and effective manifestation. We need many of the powers and privileges of religion. We need to have an open untaxable means of donating to the cause we hold dear and its spread and most importantly its achievement. Religious tithes and offerings and normal non-taxable status of religious institutions should do nicely. We need to pull on not just reason but all the heart, on hope, on belief in things not yet, and perhaps many decades from being, seen. This does not throw open the door for simply believing whatever we wish. That which is believed in must be scientifically plausible. The Good News is this leaves more than enough room for the extraordinarily good best dreams of humanity and more. We will need that kind of large group cohesion to have a chance of moving these dream goals forward as quickly as possible. This kind of cohesion is also essential to become ?one people? separate from (but membership extended to) others. We include others as they affirm our creed, on the basis of knowledge of and agreements with our goals and enough of our methods to be part of the work in whatever way suits each person?s gifts and interests. The question is not: Can we do this? Or even: Should we do this? The question is: Will we do this? Or will we stay lone brilliant quirky cats howling into the cosmic night? On May 4, 2011, at 4:47 AM, Amon Zero wrote: > 2011/5/4 John Grigg > Amon Zero wrote: > >In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. That's not to say that the various facets of transhumanism do not heavily overlap, >but that the wheel simply seems to be turning once more. > > The Mormon Transhumanist Association comes to mind (you can tell where our booth is at a H+ conference, by listening for the sounds of irritated voices and grinding teeth)... > > http://transfigurism.org/ > > > Hi John - > > I must say I've found you guys (i.e. Mormon Transhumanists) quite intriguing for some time. There are people within ZS working to adapt its principles into a religion of sorts (known so far as "the praxis" - small p - or "transhuman praxis", where Praxis - capital p - refers to ZS as a whole), which gave rise to one of the more interesting early discussions / debates. Basically, a slim majority of early ZS members were opposed to any 'religion' or 'spiritual philosophy' angle whatsoever, *even when* they agreed with every single tenet of the proposed belief system. So it was the label, the word 'religion' itself, that was making them squeamish. > > Anyway, we went for a compromise in the best distributed-networks tradition, allowing the religion project to go ahead, but emphasizing that it is just one way in which people may choose to engage with the ideas and action of offer, which all members are equally free to determinedly ignore. > > If anyone is wondering why we'd bother with a religious aspect at all, let's just say that some of our members know a large number of sympathetic 'fellow travellers' who are some shade of pagan or spiritualist and would more naturally grok transhumanism presented that way. If the details and principles are the same, I don't see a problem myself. > > Best, > A > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Sun May 8 22:30:37 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 15:30:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> Message-ID: <6DD4E0C5-E66E-42E8-A80C-9BE1FF099372@mac.com> On May 4, 2011, at 4:59 AM, spike wrote: >> ... On Behalf Of BillK > Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real > >> Spike mentioned a project to allow Farmville players to try their skills on > a real-life farm. > A trial project is now starting up in the UK. > > > >> It was partly inspired by the online Facebook game Farmville and follows > the example of Ebbsfleet Football Club which is run on a similar basis. > Decisions about the running of the team in Kent has been in the hands of > MyFootballClub subscribers since 2008. ---- BillK > > > Thanks BillK, this gets me half way there. A story in Mark Twain's Tom > Sawyer has Tom recruiting the local kids to do the job he was assigned and > pay him for the privilege of doing it. In general and depending on the > circumstances, farming in America on a small scale isn't profitable, so in > many if not most cases, the farmer must pay to do that kind of work. Most > real farmers have another paying job unrelated to farming, and live on > dreams of making it big, which they seldom do. > > Since it is so educational and helps connect them with the food on their > plate and all that, my goal is to figure out how to convince the Farmville > community to operate my farm and pay me for the opportunity. I think there > is a buttload of money to be made here. - I love this. Of course! And at the same time you build out all that new tele-operated and more autonomous robotic gear. Which is just what you need for space and lunar infrastructure build out. What's not to like? > - samantha From jedwebb at hotmail.com Sun May 8 23:37:27 2011 From: jedwebb at hotmail.com (Jeremy Webb) Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 23:37:27 +0000 Subject: [ExI] remind me again.. why not a religion? In-Reply-To: References: , , , , Message-ID: Religion comes from spirit, not from people. If you've never managed to push your hands together and get psychic contact with a deity via an ordination, then you are not doing religion, but some other group activity. That's my ten cents worth ... JW From: sjatkins at mac.com Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 15:07:39 -0700 To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [ExI] remind me again.. why not a religion? What? NO!!! But wait.. We need deep affirmation through action, through conscious focus, through fully feeling into and binding with our emotion and holding in deepest esteem such a radically positive future. It is much more difficult to achieve and in all aspects possible affirm that consistently, all the way through, without a community of those who also have the same deep focus and willingness to deepen it even further. It is much easier to do if in community - a place to recharge, to contribute, to draw from, to be inspired by and to inspire, to help and be helped. There needs to be a consistent pure message, a vision, compelling and full of heart as well as mind. We can discuss possibilities endlessly and indeed must continue to ever more constructively do so. But we need to unify into a shared dream - shared goals that we polish to greater and greater clarity, conviction and effective manifestation. We need many of the powers and privileges of religion. We need to have an open untaxable means of donating to the cause we hold dear and its spread and most importantly its achievement. Religious tithes and offerings and normal non-taxable status of religious institutions should do nicely. We need to pull on not just reason but all the heart, on hope, on belief in things not yet, and perhaps many decades from being, seen. This does not throw open the door for simply believing whatever we wish. That which is believed in must be scientifically plausible. The Good News is this leaves more than enough room for the extraordinarily good best dreams of humanity and more. We will need that kind of large group cohesion to have a chance of moving these dream goals forward as quickly as possible. This kind of cohesion is also essential to become ?one people? separate from (but membership extended to) others. We include others as they affirm our creed, on the basis of knowledge of and agreements with our goals and enough of our methods to be part of the work in whatever way suits each person?s gifts and interests. The question is not: Can we do this? Or even: Should we do this? The question is: Will we do this? Or will we stay lone brilliant quirky cats howling into the cosmic night? On May 4, 2011, at 4:47 AM, Amon Zero wrote: 2011/5/4 John Grigg Amon Zero wrote: >In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. That's not to say that the various facets of transhumanism do not heavily overlap, >but that the wheel simply seems to be turning once more. The Mormon Transhumanist Association comes to mind (you can tell where our booth is at a H+ conference, by listening for the sounds of irritated voices and grinding teeth)... http://transfigurism.org/ Hi John - I must say I've found you guys (i.e. Mormon Transhumanists) quite intriguing for some time. There are people within ZS working to adapt its principles into a religion of sorts (known so far as "the praxis" - small p - or "transhuman praxis", where Praxis - capital p - refers to ZS as a whole), which gave rise to one of the more interesting early discussions / debates. Basically, a slim majority of early ZS members were opposed to any 'religion' or 'spiritual philosophy' angle whatsoever, *even when* they agreed with every single tenet of the proposed belief system. So it was the label, the word 'religion' itself, that was making them squeamish. Anyway, we went for a compromise in the best distributed-networks tradition, allowing the religion project to go ahead, but emphasizing that it is just one way in which people may choose to engage with the ideas and action of offer, which all members are equally free to determinedly ignore. If anyone is wondering why we'd bother with a religious aspect at all, let's just say that some of our members know a large number of sympathetic 'fellow travellers' who are some shade of pagan or spiritualist and would more naturally grok transhumanism presented that way. If the details and principles are the same, I don't see a problem myself. Best, A _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 9 04:45:04 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 21:45:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> On May 6, 2011, at 7:36 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 6 May 2011 03:20, Will Steinberg wrote: > I. A Capitol Idea > Since you are all politicos *de nos jours* we might try and > evaluate political epimemetics in the past few centuries--or to what > direction they tend. Being predominantly a Western group, we can talk > about politics that are more familiar to all of us, which manifest > most strongly in that great white hippo Liberal Democracy and its > opponent, libertarianism. > > Both are concerned with freedom, but which is most 'free'? On > the face of things, libertarianism seems to be freedom at its purest. > But it is also true that pure freedom, a la state of nature, carries > with it the constant stress of death and despair. > > "Predominantly Western" sounds like an eufemism. Predominantly "Anglo-Saxon", or even "American(ised?)" could be closer to target. :-) > > In fact, I am always surprised in our little political discussions how the great divide seems between those who are primarily concerned with i) individual freedom "to do what one likes" and those who are primarily with ii) individual freedom "from basic and/or not-so-basic needs". In my case and that of many others here they are nearly exactly equal and for the same reasons. The first is the only way I believe can enable the second. > > In continental speech, political freedom is (or used to be until quite recently) in the first place iii) *collective freedom*, as in independence and self-determination, at a national, local and group level, which of course include the ability of the relevant entity to choose for itself the norms to which to obey and under which to function. > > Now, it is worth noting that some tensions exist as well between this latter view and the formers, since the formers' proponents are only too ready to admit that, eg, legislative process is bound to restrict itself to the notarisation of the rules which "objectively" serve at best freedom of type i) or of type ii), so they are not so inclined to grant much scope for the ability of a given people to regulate its internal affairs as it sees best (as opposed to, say, the intervention of an "enlightened" foreign power or international bureaucracy) or for political and legal diversity across the world - with the related "Darwinian" competition amongst different systems, which seems to me as the best possible bet for transhumanism on a global scale. > There is a bit too much cultural relativism here. Not all cultures are as likely to lead to as happy and empowered outcomes. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at harveynewstrom.com Mon May 9 04:54:37 2011 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 21:54:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <20110508215437.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0dc46a8543.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Ben Zaiboc wrote, > Anyway, "Total calories in and out accounted for all of the weight loss", as opposed to what? magic? What possible other mechanism can account for weight loss? I'd have thought that we could take the first law of thermodynamics for granted here. The statement seems to be simply confirming it. IOW, apart from saying that biology conforms to physics, it says nothing. Agreed. This seems obvious to me as well. However, this evidence was posted (by another poster) because Taubes literally claims that "calories in and out" do not account for weight gain and weight loss. He literally argues that carb calories are more fattening than the identical number of fat calories. He literally argues that exercise will not help people lose weight. So we are ending up rehashing the basic laws of physics to argue against these pseudoscience claims. > If not, then we all agree that calories in - calories out (in all forms) = weight difference. I hope you have better luck convincing people of this than I have. > As far as I can see, theoretical, anecdotal and personal observations seem to point to fat being better at producing satiety than carbohydrates. This would mean that a low-carb diet would be easier to stick to, and more agreeable generally, than a low-fat one. Agreed. I think this is very likely to be true. This explanation seems to fit all the scientific facts without having to reject science, fake history, and invoke conspiracy theories to explain it all. Maybe these people are actually eating less calories after all. > Everyone is different, though, and satiety is a highly subjective thing. So my advice would be to try a few different diets, try to avoid bias as best you can, and go with what works for you. > > Does that sound reasonable? Imminently so. Any diet that lowers total calories will work. I fully agree that someone can eat a high fat diet and lose weight, as long as they consume fewer calories. Now try to get a Taubes follower or Paleo dieter to agree that someone can lose weight on a high carb diet by the same token. -- Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP From max at maxmore.com Mon May 9 06:09:54 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 23:09:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <20110508215437.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0dc46a8543.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> References: <20110508215437.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0dc46a8543.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 9:54 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > [snip]. So we are ending up rehashing the > basic laws of physics to argue against these pseudoscience claims. > You say you've read Taubes' book. But comments like this suggest that you have either not read big chunks of it, or filtered it out. Your earlier comment about Taubes' supposedly violating the laws of thermodynamics completely ignored his very direct treatment of this. Your claims of pseudoscience are deeply disappointing and, frankly, shameful. What you mean is that anyone who doesn't agree with your vegetarian views are using pseudoscience. This is deeply disappointing --- max > Imminently so. Any diet that lowers total calories will work. Yes, but for how long. You willfully ignore the utter failure of diets to keep weight off. Any reduced calorie diet can remove fat, but almost everyone regains it. A low-carb diet makes it much easier to maintain. The whole simplistic idea that all that matters is calories consumed vs. calories expended by exercise ignores all the other mechanisms by which calories can be used up. -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon May 9 13:29:07 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 06:29:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <57347.65583.qm@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "Harvey Newstrom" wrote: I wrote: > > Does that sound reasonable? > > Imminently so. LOL :> > Any diet that lowers total calories will work. I fully > agree that someone can eat a high fat diet and lose weight, as long as > they consume fewer calories. Now try to get a Taubes follower or Paleo > dieter to agree that someone can lose weight on a high carb diet by the > same token. I'm not a 'Taubes follower' but I do follow a version of the palaeo diet, which seems to be doing me good (losing excess weight, feeling and sleeping better, the usual claims), so you have at least one Palaeo dieter who agrees that you /can/ lose weight on a high-carb diet. For a little while, before the cravings become too much and you cave in, abandon the diet, gorge on even more carbs and get fat again. The traditional dieter's story. Unless you're one of the unusual people (we probably all know one) who can eat all the pasta they like, and stay as thin as a rake. The people who never appear on any dieting studies. Ben Zaiboc: > From: extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org > Subject: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 92, Issue 17 > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Date: Monday, 9 May, 2011, 13:00 > 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: Project-oriented networks (was: > Efficiency of??? algorithmic > ? ? ? trading) (Samantha Atkins) > ???2. remind me again.. why not a religion? > (Samantha Atkins) > ???3. Re: Farmville for real (Samantha > Atkins) > ???4. Re: remind me again.. why not a > religion? (Jeremy Webb) > ???5. Re: Cephalization, proles--Where is > government going? > ? ? ? (Samantha Atkins) > ???6. Re: Good Calories, Bad Calories > (Harvey Newstrom) > ???7. Re: Good Calories, Bad Calories (Max > More) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 15:04:13 -0700 > From: Samantha Atkins > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Project-oriented networks (was: > Efficiency of > ??? algorithmic trading) > Message-ID: <5814B7C5-B2E2-4969-9059-B03F8FCBD096 at mac.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII > > > On May 4, 2011, at 2:14 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > On Tue, May 03, 2011 at 04:12:10PM -0700, Samantha > Atkins wrote: > > > >> I think it is economic collapse of a greater > magnitude than > >> seen before bring on the destruction of many > western and > >> some eastern technological societies.? Beside > that energy is a piece of cake. > > > > A purely financial collapse would be an eminently > recoverable > > problem. > > > > But the reason for the collapse are systemic, and > resource > > scarcity is the key driver. > > > >> I can think of ways that would fix energy that are > actually > >> doable at reasonable cost within a decade.? > Not so much on > > > > A decade scale implies immediate (as: starting today) > > deployment, with no innovation required. Apart from > negawatts > > (cut the US blue whale in half) I can only think > > of micro co-gen plants first, and solar thermal and > solar > > PV second. > > Agreed.? We have the research behind us to build GW > and larger molten salt thorium reactors.? If we managed > to get more sane and streamline some of the nuclear red tape > we could have much more electrical capacity on hand without > burning oil or NG and so without coal.? We could have > it in that timeframe.? ? Getting rid of oil for IC > engines would take a while.? But with enough energy you > can make a variety of liquid fuels quickly enough for the > interim.? > > > > > Germany plans to reach 41.6 GWp photovoltaic capacity > > by 2014. This would mean ability to supply up to ~50% > > of peak demand load or 4-5% of total demand. > > I wish them luck.? I don't think this is really > plausible economically or otherwise, yet.???I > would be happy to be wrong. > > - samantha > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 15:07:39 -0700 > From: Samantha Atkins > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [ExI] remind me again.. why not a religion? > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" > > > What?? NO!!! > > But wait.. > > We need deep affirmation through action, through conscious > focus, through fully feeling into and binding with our > emotion and? holding in deepest esteem such a radically > positive future.? It is much more difficult to achieve > and in all aspects possible affirm that consistently, all > the way through, without a community of those who also have > the same deep focus and willingness to deepen it even > further.???It is much easier to do if in > community - a place to recharge, to contribute, to draw > from, to be inspired by and to inspire, to help and be > helped. > > There needs to be a consistent pure message, a vision, > compelling and full of heart as well as > mind.???We can discuss possibilities > endlessly and indeed must continue to ever more > constructively do so.? But we need to unify into a > shared dream - shared goals that we polish to greater and > greater clarity, conviction and effective manifestation. > > We need many of the powers and privileges of > religion.? We need to have an open untaxable means of > donating to the cause we hold dear and its spread and most > importantly its achievement.? Religious tithes and > offerings and normal non-taxable status of religious > institutions should do nicely.??? > > We need to pull on not just reason but all the heart, on > hope, on belief in things not yet, and perhaps many decades > from being, seen.? This does not throw open the door > for simply believing whatever we wish.? That which is > believed in must be scientifically plausible.? The Good > News is this leaves more than enough room for the > extraordinarily good best dreams of humanity and more. > > We will need that kind of large group cohesion to have a > chance of moving these dream goals forward as quickly as > possible.? This kind of cohesion is also essential to > become ?one people? separate from (but membership extended > to) others.???We include others as they > affirm our creed, on the basis of knowledge of and > agreements with our goals and enough of our methods to be > part of the work in whatever way suits each person?s gifts > and interests. > > The question is not: > > Can we do this? > > Or even: > > Should we do this? > > The question is: > > Will we do this? > > Or will we stay lone brilliant quirky cats howling into the > cosmic night? > > On May 4, 2011, at 4:47 AM, Amon Zero wrote: > > > 2011/5/4 John Grigg > > Amon Zero wrote: > > >In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. > That's not to say that the various facets of transhumanism > do not heavily overlap, >but that the wheel simply seems > to be turning once more. > >? > > The Mormon Transhumanist Association comes to mind > (you can tell where our booth is at a H+ conference, by > listening for the sounds of irritated voices and grinding > teeth)...? > >? > > http://transfigurism.org/ > > > > > > Hi John - > > > > I must say I've found you guys (i.e. Mormon > Transhumanists) quite intriguing for some time. There are > people within ZS working to adapt its principles into a > religion of sorts (known so far as "the praxis" - small p - > or "transhuman praxis", where Praxis - capital p - refers to > ZS as a whole), which gave rise to one of the more > interesting early discussions / debates. Basically, a slim > majority of early ZS members were opposed to any 'religion' > or 'spiritual philosophy' angle whatsoever, *even when* they > agreed with every single tenet of the proposed belief > system. So it was the label, the word 'religion' itself, > that was making them squeamish. > > > > Anyway, we went for a compromise in the best > distributed-networks tradition, allowing the religion > project to go ahead, but emphasizing that it is just one way > in which people may choose to engage with the ideas and > action of offer, which all members are equally free to > determinedly ignore. > > > > If anyone is wondering why we'd bother with a > religious aspect at all, let's just say that some of our > members know a large number of sympathetic 'fellow > travellers' who are some shade of pagan or spiritualist and > would more naturally grok transhumanism presented that way. > If the details and principles are the same, I don't see a > problem myself. > > > > Best, > > A > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 15:30:37 -0700 > From: Samantha Atkins > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Farmville for real > Message-ID: <6DD4E0C5-E66E-42E8-A80C-9BE1FF099372 at mac.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII > > > On May 4, 2011, at 4:59 AM, spike wrote: > > >> ... On Behalf Of BillK > > Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real > > > >> Spike mentioned a project to allow Farmville > players to try their skills on > > a real-life farm. > > A trial project is now starting up in the UK. > > > > > > > >> It was partly inspired by the online Facebook game > Farmville and follows > > the example of Ebbsfleet Football Club which is run on > a similar basis. > > Decisions about the running of the team in Kent has > been in the hands of > > MyFootballClub subscribers since 2008. ---- BillK > > > > > > Thanks BillK, this gets me half way there.? A > story in Mark Twain's Tom > > Sawyer has Tom recruiting the local kids to do the job > he was assigned and > > pay him for the privilege of doing it.? In > general and depending on the > > circumstances, farming in America on a small scale > isn't profitable, so in > > many if not most cases, the farmer must pay to do that > kind of work.? Most > > real farmers have another paying job unrelated to > farming, and live on > > dreams of making it big, which they seldom do.? > > > > Since it is so educational and helps connect them with > the food on their > > plate and all that, my goal is to figure out how to > convince the Farmville > > community to operate my farm and pay me for the > opportunity.? I think there > > is a buttload of money to be made here. - > > > I love this.? Of course!? And at the same time > you build out all that new tele-operated and more autonomous > robotic gear.? Which is just what you need for space > and lunar infrastructure build out.? > > What's not to like? > > > > - samantha > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 23:37:27 +0000 > From: Jeremy Webb > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] remind me again.. why not a religion? > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" > > > Religion comes from spirit, not from people. If you've > never managed to push your hands together and get psychic > contact with a deity via an ordination, then you are not > doing religion, but some other group activity. > > That's my ten cents worth ... > > JW > > > > From: sjatkins at mac.com > Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 15:07:39 -0700 > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [ExI] remind me again.. why not a religion? > > > > > > What?? NO!!! > But wait.. > We need deep affirmation through action, through conscious > focus, through fully feeling into and binding with our > emotion and? holding in deepest esteem such a radically > positive future.? It is much more difficult to achieve > and in all aspects possible affirm that consistently, all > the way through, without a community of those who also have > the same deep focus and willingness to deepen it even > further.???It is much easier to do if in > community - a place to recharge, to contribute, to draw > from, to be inspired by and to inspire, to help and be > helped. > There needs to be a consistent pure message, a vision, > compelling and full of heart as well as > mind.???We can discuss possibilities > endlessly and indeed must continue to ever more > constructively do so.? But we need to unify into a > shared dream - shared goals that we polish to greater and > greater clarity, conviction and effective manifestation. > We need many of the powers and privileges of > religion.? We need to have an open untaxable means of > donating to the cause we hold dear and its spread and most > importantly its achievement.? Religious tithes and > offerings and normal non-taxable status of religious > institutions should do nicely.? ? > We need to pull on not just reason but all the heart, on > hope, on belief in things not yet, and perhaps many decades > from being, seen.? This does not throw open the door > for simply believing whatever we wish.? That which is > believed in must be scientifically plausible.? The Good > News is this leaves more than enough room for the > extraordinarily good best dreams of humanity and more. > We will need that kind of large group cohesion to have a > chance of moving these dream goals forward as quickly as > possible.? This kind of cohesion is also essential to > become ?one people? separate from (but membership extended > to) others.???We include others as they > affirm our creed, on the basis of knowledge of and > agreements with our goals and enough of our methods to be > part of the work in whatever way suits each person?s gifts > and interests. > The question is not: > Can we do this? > Or even: > Should we do this? > The question is: > Will we do this? > Or will we stay lone brilliant quirky cats howling into the > cosmic night? > > On May 4, 2011, at 4:47 AM, Amon Zero wrote: > 2011/5/4 John Grigg > > > > > Amon Zero wrote: > >In short, transhumanism appears to be splintering. > That's not to say that the various facets of transhumanism > do not heavily overlap, >but that the wheel simply seems > to be turning once more. > > The Mormon Transhumanist Association comes to mind (you can > tell where our booth is at a H+ conference, by listening for > the sounds of irritated voices and grinding > teeth)...??? > > http://transfigurism.org/ > > > Hi John - > > I must say I've found you guys (i.e. Mormon Transhumanists) > quite intriguing for some time. There are people within ZS > working to adapt its principles into a religion of sorts > (known so far as "the praxis" - small p - or "transhuman > praxis", where Praxis - capital p - refers to ZS as a > whole), which gave rise to one of the more interesting early > discussions / debates. Basically, a slim majority of early > ZS members were opposed to any 'religion' or 'spiritual > philosophy' angle whatsoever, *even when* they agreed with > every single tenet of the proposed belief system. So it was > the label, the word 'religion' itself, that was making them > squeamish. > > Anyway, we went for a compromise in the best > distributed-networks tradition, allowing the religion > project to go ahead, but emphasizing that it is just one way > in which people may choose to engage with the ideas and > action of offer, which all members are equally free to > determinedly ignore. > > If anyone is wondering why we'd bother with a religious > aspect at all, let's just say that some of our members know > a large number of sympathetic 'fellow travellers' who are > some shade of pagan or spiritualist and would more naturally > grok transhumanism presented that way. If the details and > principles are the same, I don't see a problem myself. > > Best, > A > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > ??? > ???????? > ?????? ??? > ? > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 5 > Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 21:45:04 -0700 > From: Samantha Atkins > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is > government going? > Message-ID: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714 at mac.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > > On May 6, 2011, at 7:36 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > > On 6 May 2011 03:20, Will Steinberg > wrote: > > I. A Capitol Idea > >? ???Since you are all politicos > *de nos jours* we might try and > > evaluate political epimemetics in the past few > centuries--or to what > > direction they tend.? Being predominantly a > Western group, we can talk > > about politics that are more familiar to all of us, > which manifest > > most strongly in that great white hippo Liberal > Democracy and its > > opponent, libertarianism. > > > >? ???Both are concerned with > freedom, but which is most 'free'?? On > > the face of things, libertarianism seems to be freedom > at its purest. > > But it is also true that pure freedom, a la state of > nature, carries > > with it the constant stress of death and > despair.? > > > > "Predominantly Western" sounds like an eufemism. > Predominantly "Anglo-Saxon", or even "American(ised?)" could > be closer to target. :-) > > > > In fact, I am always surprised in our little political > discussions how the great divide seems between those who are > primarily concerned with i) individual freedom "to do what > one likes" and those who are primarily with ii) individual > freedom "from basic and/or not-so-basic needs". > > In my case and that of many others here they are nearly > exactly equal and for the same reasons.? The first is > the only way I believe can enable the second. > > > > > In continental speech, political freedom is (or used > to be until quite recently) in the first place iii) > *collective freedom*, as in independence and > self-determination, at a national, local and group level, > which of course include the ability of the relevant entity > to choose for itself the norms to which to obey and under > which to function. > > > > Now, it is worth noting that some tensions exist as > well between this latter view and the formers, since the > formers' proponents are only too ready to admit that, eg, > legislative process is bound to restrict itself to the > notarisation of the rules which "objectively" serve at best > freedom of type i) or of type ii), so they are not so > inclined to grant much scope for the ability of a given > people to regulate its internal affairs as it sees best (as > opposed to, say, the intervention of an "enlightened" > foreign power or international bureaucracy) or for political > and legal diversity across the world - with the related > "Darwinian" competition amongst different systems, which > seems to me as the best possible bet for transhumanism on a > global scale. > > > > There is a bit too much cultural relativism here.? Not > all cultures are as likely to lead to as happy and empowered > outcomes.? > > - s > > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 6 > Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 21:54:37 -0700 > From: "Harvey Newstrom" > To: "ExI chat list" > Subject: Re: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories > Message-ID: > ??? <20110508215437.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0dc46a8543.wbe at email09.secureserver.net> > ??? > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Ben Zaiboc > wrote, > > Anyway, "Total calories in and out accounted for all > of the weight loss", as opposed to what?? magic?? > What possible other mechanism can account for weight > loss?? I'd have thought that we could take the first > law of thermodynamics for granted here.? The statement > seems to be simply confirming it.? IOW, apart from > saying that biology conforms to physics, it says nothing. > > Agreed.? This seems obvious to me as well.? > However, this evidence was > posted (by another poster) because Taubes literally claims > that > "calories in and out" do not account for weight gain and > weight loss. > He literally argues that carb calories are more fattening > than the > identical number of fat calories.? He literally argues > that exercise > will not help people lose weight.? So we are ending up > rehashing the > basic laws of physics to argue against these pseudoscience > claims. > > > If not, then we all agree that calories in - calories > out (in all forms) = weight difference. > > I hope you have better luck convincing people of this than > I have. > > > As far as I can see, theoretical, anecdotal and > personal observations seem to point to fat being better at > producing satiety than carbohydrates.? This would mean > that a low-carb diet would be easier to stick to, and more > agreeable generally, than a low-fat one. > > Agreed.? I think this is very likely to be true.? > This explanation seems > to fit all the scientific facts without having to reject > science, fake > history, and invoke conspiracy theories to explain it > all.? Maybe these > people are actually eating less calories after all. > > > Everyone is different, though, and satiety is a highly > subjective thing.? So my advice would be to try a few > different diets, try to avoid bias as best you can, and go > with what works for you. > > > > Does that sound reasonable? > > Imminently so.? Any diet that lowers total calories > will work.? I fully > agree that someone can eat a high fat diet and lose weight, > as long as > they consume fewer calories.? Now try to get a Taubes > follower or Paleo > dieter to agree that someone can lose weight on a high carb > diet by the > same token. > > -- > Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, > > CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP > ISSPCS IBMCP > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 7 > Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 23:09:54 -0700 > From: Max More > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 9:54 PM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > > [snip].? So we are ending up rehashing the > > basic laws of physics to argue against these > pseudoscience claims. > > > You say you've read Taubes' book. But comments like this > suggest that you > have either not read big chunks of it, or filtered it out. > Your earlier > comment about Taubes' supposedly violating the laws of > thermodynamics > completely ignored his very direct treatment of this. Your > claims of > pseudoscience are deeply disappointing and, frankly, > shameful. What you mean > is that anyone who doesn't agree with your vegetarian views > are using > pseudoscience. > > This is deeply disappointing > > --- max > > > > Imminently so.? Any diet that lowers total > calories will work. > > > Yes, but for how long. You willfully ignore the utter > failure of diets to > keep weight off. Any reduced calorie diet can remove fat, > but almost > everyone regains it. A low-carb diet makes it much easier > to maintain. > > The whole simplistic idea that all that matters is calories > consumed vs. > calories expended by exercise ignores all the other > mechanisms by which > calories can be used up. > > > -- > Max More > Strategic Philosopher > Co-founder, Extropy Institute > CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 > Scottsdale, AZ 85260 > 877/462-5267 ext 113 > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 92, Issue 17 > ******************************************** > From sparge at gmail.com Mon May 9 14:14:01 2011 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 10:14:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <20110508215437.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0dc46a8543.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> References: <20110508215437.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0dc46a8543.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 12:54 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Any diet that lowers total calories will work. If you define "work" as "cause weight loss", yes. But I think there's a lot more to a healthy, satisfying diet than merely the number of calories consumed per day. I haven't read "Good Calories, Bad Calories", but I'd guess that Taubes' point is that even though two servings of different foods might have the same number of calories, one might be more beneficial to the body than the other, and one might even be outright harmful. Macronutrients matter. A high carb diet--even a "low" glycemic one--is going to tax the insulin system much more than a low carb diet. >?I fully > agree that someone can eat a high fat diet and lose weight, as long as > they consume fewer calories. ?Now try to get a Taubes follower or Paleo > dieter to agree that someone can lose weight on a high carb diet by the > same token. I'm not a Taubes follower or a Paleo dieter--I consider myself a primal lifestyler--but I certainly agree that people can lose weight on a high carb diet. I just don't think it's particularly healthy, and, from my own experience, it's a lot harder than losing weight on a low carb diet. -Dave From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 9 14:59:00 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 09:59:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Humanity+ @ Parsons : NYC See you there! Message-ID: Don't forget to get your tickets! http://humanityplus.org/conferences/parsons/ Here is today's press mention: http://www.suckerpunchdaily.com/tag/transhumanism-meets-design/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: humanity+ and parsons logo email.PNG Type: image/png Size: 10692 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 9 15:55:39 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 17:55:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] NASA space probe proves Einstein correct In-Reply-To: References: <700256.9070.qm@web27004.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 7 May 2011 22:49, BillK wrote: > She is Irish-American, so is not Jewish herself. Yes, I suppose that a Jewess would not have felt the need to mention it... :-) > Not mentioning that to avoid upsetting people is almost as bad as > unnecessarily mentioning it. > > It's getting difficult to write without offending somebody these days. Indeed. But I suspect that the reason why such mention may have upset people is not that a few American nazi lunatics could take offence, but rather that an Irish-American lady reporter might, say, feel the need to specify "Einstein, the male scientist who...". :-D -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 9 16:53:56 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 18:53:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <20110507125951.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0a44f23a07.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> References: <20110507125951.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0a44f23a07.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: On 7 May 2011 21:59, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > I think what is being referenced here is that studies showed that the > weight loss on various diets was 100% calculable based on reduced > calories. ?It didn't matter if the reduced calorie diet was low-carb, > high-carb, low-fat, or high-fat. ?Total calories in and out accounted > for all of the weight loss. All other things being equal, this would imply that the calories spent in digesting food are always the same irrespective of the food being digested, or the way it is administered. This seems indeed counterintuitive, even without taking into account the changes which different dietary style operate with regard to human metabolism, or even more trivial things such as water retention - which may have little to do with calories or body fat, but does influence one's weight. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 9 16:59:17 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 18:59:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <20110507141137.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.082e164d3e.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> References: <20110507141137.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.082e164d3e.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: On 7 May 2011 23:11, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Unless I totally misunderstood Taubes, I believe this is exactly what he > is saying. ?The whole premise of "Good calories, Bad calories" is that > carb calories make you fat no matter how few you eat, and that fat > calories won't make you fat no matter how many you eat. Is it really your understanding that Taubes means that a man with a 250-calories-per-day allowance administered in the form of bread, or glucose, would die of starvation as a fat man? :-/ -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 9 17:01:49 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 19:01:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: References: <20110507132106.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.ea14cef24c.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/7 Max More : > However, there is an assymetry between losing > weight and not gaining weight. Based on the evidence (which, by the way, > Taubes covers well), it's MUCH easier to avoid gaining weight on a low-carb > diet even if you are eating an amount that the standard view says should > cause you to gain weight. The theory on that perfectly matches my own > experience. Exactly the same here... And, btw, as one who *likes* cuisine and tastes, this is one of the most interesting byproducts of a paleo lifestyle. -- Stefano Vaj From mail at harveynewstrom.com Mon May 9 17:11:47 2011 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 10:11:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <20110509101147.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.c2edc8f90d.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Max More wrote, > You say you've read Taubes' book. But comments like this suggest that you > have either not read big chunks of it, or filtered it out. You are absolutely correct. I filtered big chunks of it out. I explained ad nauseum on this list what I filtered out. I explained why I filtered things out. I explained what criteria I use to filter things out. I explained what criteria would satisfy me. I have repeatedly asked what criteria other people use instead of mine. I don't have anything else to add to this conversation. -- Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP From mail at harveynewstrom.com Mon May 9 17:16:15 2011 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 10:16:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <20110509101615.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.1d536725f2.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Stefano Vaj wrote, > This seems indeed counterintuitive, even without taking into account > the changes which different dietary style operate with regard to human > metabolism, or even more trivial things such as water retention - > which may have little to do with calories or body fat, but does > influence one's weight. I rather trust the scientifically measured double-blind replicated results than going with my gut as to what seems "counterintuitive". -- Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP From mail at harveynewstrom.com Mon May 9 17:27:44 2011 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 10:27:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <20110509102744.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.bebe067141.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Stefano Vaj wrote, > Is it really your understanding that Taubes means that a man with a > 250-calories-per-day allowance administered in the form of bread, or > glucose, would die of starvation as a fat man? :-/ Yes. Taubes gives the example of obese women with starving babies. He argues that no mother would eat food while their baby starves. So he literally claims that the women are eating less total calories than a starving baby, yet they are still growing obese. He says their fat metabolism is out of whack, causing them to store fat even though they are not getting enough to eat. -- Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Re: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories > From: Stefano Vaj > Date: Mon, May 09, 2011 12:59 pm > To: ExI chat list > > > On 7 May 2011 23:11, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > Unless I totally misunderstood Taubes, I believe this is exactly what he > > is saying. ?The whole premise of "Good calories, Bad calories" is that > > carb calories make you fat no matter how few you eat, and that fat > > calories won't make you fat no matter how many you eat. > > Is it really your understanding that Taubes means that a man with a > 250-calories-per-day allowance administered in the form of bread, or > glucose, would die of starvation as a fat man? :-/ > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 9 17:47:58 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 19:47:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <750174.62090.qm@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <750174.62090.qm@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 8 May 2011 13:07, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > If so, then we can ignore (as in 'Take for granted' rather than 'Dismiss') the basic physics of dieting, and concentrate on the *effect on behaviour* of the diets. No, I suspect that nutrition styles do influence more than just behaviour. In fact, as long as I keep my "breaches" to a minimum I appear to be able to ingest any physically possible quantity of proteins without putting on a single ounce, even when it may exceed by far my caloric needs. Obviously, both metabolic changes (eg, insuline/glycagone balance) and/or difference in our ability to transform various kinds of excess food into fat come into play. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 9 17:54:32 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 19:54:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <57347.65583.qm@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <57347.65583.qm@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 9 May 2011 15:29, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Unless you're one of the unusual people (we probably all know one) who can eat all the pasta they like, and stay as thin as a rake. A former girlfriend of mine can do just that. But interestingly she also reports a subjective improvement of her general condition (eg, yeast overgrowth, digestion, immune system, skin and liver health) and physical performance (eg, in sports) by switching to a more paleo-oriented nutritional style. And diabetes, cavities, hypertension, etc. can of course kick in even if you are not especially prone to obesity. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 9 18:05:17 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 20:05:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/9 Samantha Atkins : > There is a bit too much cultural relativism here. Why, this is my trademark, isn't it? :-) > Not all cultures are as > likely to lead to as happy and empowered outcomes. Besides the not-so-secondary issue of reaching a consensus on what a "happy outcome" may be, if this is true, isn't it better not to put all the eggs in one and the same basket, allowing pseudo-Darwinian mechanisms to play their role also on societies? The eminent relevance of the subject for transhumanism is that neoluddism stands a chance (well, a very good chance in a stagnant, globalised Brave New World...) exactly inasmuch as it is "governed" (and enforced) on a global basis. I maintain that cultural and political diversity not only give us more chances to adapt and evolve, but also keeps each single system more efficient, if anything because it requires it to retain and develop as much as possible traits that make it competitive with others. Those appears to include almost invariably the acceptance of technology and innovation and risk rather than not... -- Stefano Vaj From mail at harveynewstrom.com Mon May 9 18:08:36 2011 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 11:08:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories Message-ID: <20110509110836.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.4c3904ce20.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Max More wrote, > Your claims of pseudoscience are deeply disappointing and, frankly, shameful. Seriously? You are disappointed in me and I should feel ashamed? What are you, my mother? I am disappointed that nobody here is posting counter-evidence and alternative scientific studies to refute me. All I am getting is popular web sites, diet books, and YouTube videos. Is this what passes for extropian "science" nowadays? -- Harvey Newstrom, Security Consultant, CISSP CISA CISM CGEIT CSSLP CRISC CIFI NSA-IAM ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP From spike66 at att.net Mon May 9 20:07:27 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 13:07:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: References: <20110507132106.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.ea14cef24c.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: <004d01cc0e84$b86d1410$29473c30$@att.net> >...On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: Re: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories 2011/5/7 Max More : > However, there is an assymetry between losing weight and not gaining > weight... Exactly the same here... And, btw, as one who *likes* cuisine and tastes, this is one of the most interesting byproducts of a paleo lifestyle. -- Stefano Vaj Stefano, there's your answer. Put away the "cuisine" and restrict your diet to only revolting swill. Then when you try a caloric restricted diet, your "tastes" will work in your favor instead of against you. Eating light will become easy, desirable even. spike From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 9 20:49:55 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 13:49:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> On 05/09/2011 11:05 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2011/5/9 Samantha Atkins: >> There is a bit too much cultural relativism here. > Why, this is my trademark, isn't it? :-) > >> Not all cultures are as >> likely to lead to as happy and empowered outcomes. > Besides the not-so-secondary issue of reaching a consensus on what a > "happy outcome" may be, if this is true, isn't it better not to put > all the eggs in one and the same basket, allowing pseudo-Darwinian > mechanisms to play their role also on societies? Did I say anything about one being the best? No. I just made the obvious observation that some cultures are less likely to produce good outcomes as others. Do you deny this is true? Are all darwinian competitors equally competent for the challenges of their environment? No. But mechanisms to sort cultures do not have to rely only on darwinian wait and see. > The eminent relevance of the subject for transhumanism is that > neoluddism stands a chance (well, a very good chance in a stagnant, > globalised Brave New World...) exactly inasmuch as it is "governed" > (and enforced) on a global basis. I wasn't talking about forcing a culture but rather carefully picking one's culture and being picky enough to not grant all cultures equal respect. > I maintain that cultural and political diversity not only give us more > chances to adapt and evolve, but also keeps each single system more > efficient, if anything because it requires it to retain and develop as > much as possible traits that make it competitive with others. Those > appears to include almost invariably the acceptance of technology and > innovation and risk rather than not... Some cultures are known non-starters for the world we currently live in. Why beat around the bush about that? - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Mon May 9 20:52:36 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 13:52:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DC85414.1010007@mac.com> On 05/06/2011 12:42 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Adrian Tymes >> http://www.pcworld.com/article/213927/kinect_porn_game_lets_you_reach_out_and_tweak_someone.html >> >> Or is that the lame demo you mentioned? > Yup, that's the one. Do you disagree that it is lame? That is about the dumbest device I have ever seen. Wake me up when they can wire our brains together close enough for intended touch (and so on) to be actually felt. In the meantime 3D avatars, a bit of animation, imagination and a bit of role play works well enough to be interesting. :) - samantha From max at maxmore.com Mon May 9 21:31:36 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 14:31:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Announcing the Humanity+ Aubrey de Grey Advocacy Prize In-Reply-To: <0fb3236ac6-max=maxmore.com@mail.vresp.com> References: <0fb3236ac6-max=maxmore.com@mail.vresp.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Humanity+ Date: Mon, May 9, 2011 at 2:16 PM Subject: Announcing the Humanity+ Aubrey de Grey Advocacy Prize To: max at maxmore.com The main strength of Humanity+ has always been its membership. The members of Humanity+ run the organization, elect leadership, fund projects, and help advocate for the transhumanist cause. Thousands of people worldwide already identify as transhumanists, but still might not know how they can contribute to building a better future with technology. That's why we're announcing the *Humanity+ Aubrey de Grey Advocacy Prize*, which will be awarded this summer to whoever can refer the largest number of new Full, Plus and Sponsor Membersbefore July 1st. *The Advocacy Prize includes:* - Lunch with Humanity+ Advisor Aubrey de Grey, a leading advocate for anti-aging research - A free pass to any 2011-2012 Humanity+ conference, including the first-ever transhumanist conference in East Asia, this fall in Hong Kong - Free Humanity+ Plus Membership for a year - A free Humanity+ T-Shirt and mug - A free transhumanist book of the winner's choice, along with a copy of Aubrey's book Ending Aging - A page listing the winner's name and biography on the Humanity+ website at humanityplus.org - A personalized, engraved Lucite trophy You can apply to win the Advocacy Prize today by emailing us at info at humanityplus.org, or by filling out this easy form. We'll send you free tips on how you can market effectively, tell people about transhumanism and compete for the Prize. Apply today! *Why Join Humanity+?*With the power of technology, humanity has come a long way in the last five hundred years. In the future, we can do even more: make ourselves younger, smarter, and happier, and solve age-old problems like disease, poverty, and death that have vexed us ever since the dawn of civilization. However, we can't accomplish something this ambitious alone. By joining Humanity+, you show your support for a world where we do not shun new technologies - like those who opposed the use of anaesthesia in surgery - but use them and develop them in an ethical way, to improve our lives and enhance our brains and bodies. There are many benefits to membership in Humanity+. As a member, you become part of a community of transhumanist thinkers that includes some of the most revolutionary minds of the last twenty years, such as Aubrey de Grey, Max More, Patri Friedman and James Hughes. To encourage discussion among this community, we have created a Humanity+ members-only mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/humanityplus-members . Humanity+ is a democratically run organization, and the Humanity+ membership has ultimate decision-making power, since they elect the Board of Directors. Those who are interested can also take advantage of their Membership by running for a Board seat. Our next Board election is scheduled for January of 2012; to register to vote, members can go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/humanityplusvote/and click "Join This Group!". We at Humanity+ also try to support and encourage the development of local transhumanist communities. Once you join Humanity+, we will be able to put you in contact with the transhumanists and Humanity+ chapters in your local area, as well as inform you about conferences or other events nearby. We sometimes arrange for Humanity+ members in a certain area to get discounts to events; if a Humanity+ chapter, affiliate or other transhumanism-related group is holding an event you'd like to attend, just ask us at info at humanityplus.org. Most importantly, joining Humanity+ will show the world that there are lots of people who think that we can do better, that the current world is not the best that we can do, that there is room for improvement and that many human problems are solvable. Join nowto show your support. *What Do My Membership Dollars Support?*It's been an exciting year for us at Humanity+. Our December conference at Caltechwas a big success, and was mentioned in a TIME Magazine cover story. Our May conference at Parsonswill feature luminaries like public relations pioneer Howard Bloom and digital artist Scott Draves. We've gotten lots of cool new people on board, and are now hosting the Gada Prize, a $20,000 prize for better 3D printing technology. Ben Goertzel, our Chairman, also presented at Peter Thiel's Breakthrough Philanthropy event- the world's premier gathering for radical, technology-based charity to improve the human condition. However, all of these things cost money - for web hosting, for travel, for food, for fees and taxes and prize funds. As a nonprofit, we recognize that without our donors and members, none of these things could have happened. We have some amazing people on the Humanity+ team, but at the end of the day, things can't get done without the funding to support them. By joining Humanity+, you help provide critical funds to support projects like H+ Magazine , Humanity+ conferences, the Humanity+ newsletter and H+ Press. The more people join, the closer we also get to launching these four, revolutionary new projects: - Development of a new, open-source DNA synthesis machine. Current synthesis machines cost tens of thousands of dollars, and each gene then costs about $300 per thousand base pairs. By using new technology to design a more efficient synthesizer, and then putting the blueprints online, we will allow anyone to test new ideas in genetics and biology for less than a tenth of the current cost. - New computer vision software for the OpenCog AI architecture. This software will allow OpenCog AI to control and experiment with physical, real-world robots, in addition to virtual characters. - A Humanity+ conference in Hong Kong this November. This will be the first-ever transhumanist conference in East Asia, and will help bring ideas which have primarily been developed by Western thinkers to over two billion people. - A high-quality, professional overhaul of the Humanity+ website. An organization's website is the face it presents to the world, and a better website will enable us to get more support for transhumanism and the power of technological progress. To support Humanity+ financially, join todayas a Plus or Sponsor member. In addition to the benefits of Full Membership above, you'll receive a free transhumanist book of your choice, as well as heavily discounted or free tickets to all Humanity+ events. If you are interested in giving Humanity+ a one-time donation, contact Humanity+ Executive Director Tom McCabe at thomas at humanityplus.org; all donations are 100% tax-deductible. We personally thank you for your contributions to the transhumanist cause, and hope that we can move forward together in ensuring a bright future for humanity. ------------------------------ Click to view this email in a browser If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please reply to this message with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line or simply click on the following link: Unsubscribe ------------------------------ Humanity+ 5042 Wilshire Blvd #14334 Los Angeles, California 90036 US Read the VerticalResponse marketing policy. [image: Try Email Marketing with VerticalResponse!] -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon May 9 21:23:55 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 14:23:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: <4DC85414.1010007@mac.com> References: <4DC85414.1010007@mac.com> Message-ID: <007801cc0e8f$66e07500$34a15f00$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins Subject: Re: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) On 05/06/2011 12:42 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Adrian Tymes >> http://www.pcworld.com/article/213927/kinect_porn_game_lets_you_reach_out_an d_tweak_someone.html >> >> Or is that the lame demo you mentioned? > Yup, that's the one. Do you disagree that it is lame? >...That is about the dumbest device I have ever seen. Wake me up when they can wire our brains together close enough for intended touch (and so on) to be actually felt - samantha Hmmm, wiring our brains together isn't on the immediate horizon. But we can imagine plenty of cool stuff that could be done now, ja? Agreed this kissing thing isn't it, but it suggests the next obvious step. >...In the meantime 3D avatars, a bit of animation, imagination and a bit of role play works well enough to be interesting. :) Perhaps but I am thinking of actual hardware to go along with the animation and avatars. It just seems like we have all the elements in place here, the controls tech, the mechanical feedback devices, the transducers, the bandwidth. It again surprises me no one has successfully integrated all of it to make a far more elaborate version of the tele-smoocher. It wouldn't be great, at least at first. I can imagine a suit of sorts, with a number of separately inflatable bladders to simulate a hand stroking a participant. We have the Wii controllers, and the lightweight compact optical angular rate sensors and so forth. I better stop here, for every time I mention this, I find there are companies doing this sort of thing, but I am so not hip I don't know about it. It occurred to me the other day that the reason this whole notion doesn't appear to be going forward is that it just costs too much. Anyone who has the money for all this elaborate teledildonics could easily just hire a bio-unit to take care of one's needs. Humans are difficult competition in that area. Once I sat down and started trying to estimate the cost of building a screwbot, it gets to into the five digit numbers very quickly, not counting the unknown repair and maintenance costs. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 9 22:35:41 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 16:35:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: <007801cc0e8f$66e07500$34a15f00$@att.net> References: <4DC85414.1010007@mac.com> <007801cc0e8f$66e07500$34a15f00$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:23 PM, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins >>...That is about the dumbest device I have ever seen. ?Wake me up when they >> can wire our brains together close enough for intended touch (and so on) >> to be actually felt ?- samantha I think women are going to be a little harder to please in this area than men in general. I think haptic interfaces will get much better than they are now prior to the brain interface that you envision. Also, I think a lot of money will be made with mediocre haptics in the near and mid term future. > Hmmm, wiring our brains together isn't on the immediate horizon. ?But we can > imagine plenty of cool stuff that could be done now, ja? ?Agreed this > kissing thing isn't it, but it suggests the next obvious step. Like I said, it will be easier to satisfy (if that's the right word, and I think it is ;-) men than women. Although a remote controlled Sybian, with a nice Skype connection, while not exactly simulating sex, would probably be fairly satisfying to many women. Again, it is pretty darned expensive. >>...In the meantime 3D avatars, a bit of animation, imagination and a bit of > role play works well enough to be interesting. ?:) > > Perhaps but I am thinking of actual hardware to go along with the animation > and avatars. ?It just seems like we have all the elements in place here, the > controls tech, the mechanical feedback devices, the transducers, the > bandwidth. ?It again surprises me no one has successfully integrated all of > it to make a far more elaborate version of the tele-smoocher. ?It wouldn't > be great, at least at first. ?I can imagine a suit of sorts, with a number > of separately inflatable bladders to simulate a hand stroking a participant. Inflation of a bladder gives only a press-release feeling, not a stroking across the skin feeling... Getting touch remote to work well is honestly a difficult problem. > We have the Wii controllers, and the lightweight compact optical angular > rate sensors and so forth. > > I better stop here, for every time I mention this, I find there are > companies doing this sort of thing, but I am so not hip I don't know about > it. The most serious commercial effort I know of is the one Eugen referenced: http://www.realtouch.com/ It seems to be aimed exclusively towards men at this point, but deep inside the website they have announced a female product to be available sometime in the future. It does have a remote controlled aspect, although I haven't dug in enough at this point to know how capable it is. If anyone would like to fund some research... I might be convinced to do some hands off investigating ;-) > It occurred to me the other day that the reason this whole notion doesn't > appear to be going forward is that it just costs too much. I sincerely doubt that it's a money issue. People (granted a small group) have spent $5000 for a RealDoll. People spend $1000-$5000 a night for a really high end escort. So I think it is either some kind of psychological barrier that most people won't venture past, or the products just don't deliver to the point that word of mouth spreads. I saw a television show once that talked to guys who used realdolls, and many of them had purchased several. One guy had 5, and in the documentary, introduced his real world girlfriend to his five dolls. The documentary indicated that she left him some time later. Go figure. Another fellow had to send his only doll in for repair. He was a basket case until it came back. He still lived with his parents. Strange cat. Seems like cat or something along those lines might have been his actual name... Word of mouth is hard in this area in any case. When is the last time you talked to your girlfriends about your favorite vibrator Samantha... ;-) I understand that there is a kind of tupperware party for female sex toys that has caught on in some parts of the country. Probably not in Utah... >?Anyone who has > the money for all this elaborate teledildonics could easily just hire a > bio-unit to take care of one's needs. ?Humans are difficult competition in > that area. ?Once I sat down and started trying to estimate the cost of > building a screwbot, it gets to into the five digit numbers very quickly, > not counting the unknown repair and maintenance costs. Yes, it is expensive. Yet there exists a group of men who are so uncomfortable dealing with real women, that there is a market for such devices. Following a typical expense curve the prices should come down, and the devices will also work better. If enough people buy them. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Mon May 9 23:12:33 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 16:12:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] segway meets transformers Message-ID: <001501cc0e9e$9485a570$bd90f050$@att.net> I never did get too excited about the Segway. It was way cool from a controls engineering perspective, but impractical. This rig might be better however: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/05/09/transforming-electric-motorcycle-f uture/?test=faces I can imagine this is really expensive, but cool. {8-] spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon May 9 23:58:32 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 16:58:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: References: <4DC85414.1010007@mac.com> <007801cc0e8f$66e07500$34a15f00$@att.net> Message-ID: <002001cc0ea5$00b16440$02142cc0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson > >...I understand that there is a kind of tupperware party for female sex toys that has caught on in some parts of the country. Probably not in Utah... >>?Anyone who has the money for all this elaborate teledildonics could easily just hire >>a bio-unit to take care of one's needs... >...Yes, it is expensive. Yet there exists a group of men who are so uncomfortable dealing with real women, that there is a market for such devices. Following a typical expense curve the prices should come down, and the devices will also work better. If enough people buy them. -Kelly Ja. Kelly, I singled out you the other day when I was asking about the religious objection to sexbots. The reason is along the lines of what you just cited. There are guys who aren't really suitable mates, yet they are religious, they own buttloads of money, and for whatever reason would not consider hiring a person to take care of their urges. There aren't a lot of these, but I have known a few. I personally wouldn't hire a harlot even if I needed relief. I would sooner just find one and give her 100 bucks with no request for services in return, than hire one. Hiring a harlot doesn't feel a damn bit right to me, even if I were single, and I am not even religious. For that small subset of humanity, the sexbot would be just the E-ticket ride they have wanted all their lives. I can imagine a religious objection to that, the Judas argument: if anyone has money for that kind of silliness, then they should be giving it to their church. Of course, Jesus gave Judas a smackdown for that notion (Matthew 26: 6-11.) I can imagine the learned theologians would shy away from the Onan argument. So, if we recognize it's a limited market, it looks to me like it would work out OK for the religious. That being said, I thought the whole episode in Matthew 26 sounded weird. This other woman was in there fooling with Jesus' feet while he was in the process of copulating with Simon's friend Bethany. Hey I didn't make it up. It says right there in Matthew 26 verse 6: "Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper..." But I digress. spike From steinberg.will at gmail.com Tue May 10 02:06:31 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 21:06:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: The state of nature, where human is free to do what it wants, is exactly ONE free. Unit freedom. However, there are many obstacles in this state which lead to premature death. (what death isn't premature though amirite) The point of government is to nucleate the powers of all good humans in order to GUARANTEE those freedoms, leading to a society with a much higher freedom level than one. I agree with the message and ends of libertarianism, but not the hasty routes its eponymous proponents have laid out. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 10 04:18:49 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 22:18:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > ? ? Both are concerned with freedom, but which is most 'free'? ?On > the face of things, libertarianism seems to be freedom at its purest. > But it is also true that pure freedom, a la state of nature, carries > with it the constant stress of death and despair. ?So then we have > carried ourselves more and more towards governance, the governance of > LD, which supposes we may pool our ideological moxie into a > centralized power source that guarantees us what actually seems to be > MORE freedom--with MORE rules, but a liberation from death-stress. > This second liberation should obviously be what we are tuned in to > pursue. ?Transhumanism is exactly a negation of death-stress, and > supposes numerous controls placed on the "free" human body and mind in > order to protect it (because natural freedom is the freedom to kill > and be killed.) I chafe at this characterization of what it means to be libertarian. Your freedom to swing your fist ends exactly where my nose begins. The purpose, and just about the only purpose, of government is to protect us from people who would use their "freedom" to take away the freedom of another. What you are describing as a state of nature sounds more like anarchy. Libertarian thought is divorced from anarchy in that libertarians want a government to protect us from the criminal element that would take away our freedoms. The problems come primarily when the government engages in activity that were it performed by an individual would be a crime. While it would not be legal for me to take money from you, the government can take money from you and give it to me. There should be exactly enough rules (from the libertarian standpoint) to keep us from hurting each other without consequences, and not one more. Libertarianism is definitely not "natural freedom", it is "just freedom" (as in justice). Today, too much of America is "free as in beer"... and too little "free as in freedom" -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 10 04:40:22 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 22:40:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: <002001cc0ea5$00b16440$02142cc0$@att.net> References: <4DC85414.1010007@mac.com> <007801cc0e8f$66e07500$34a15f00$@att.net> <002001cc0ea5$00b16440$02142cc0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 5:58 PM, spike wrote: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >> >>...Yes, it is expensive. Yet there exists a group of men who are so > uncomfortable dealing with real women, that there is a market for such > devices. Following a typical expense curve the prices should come down, and > the devices will also work better. If enough people buy them. ?-Kelly > > Ja. ?Kelly, I singled out you the other day when I was asking about the > religious objection to sexbots. ?The reason is along the lines of what you > just cited. ?There are guys who aren't really suitable mates, yet they are > religious, they own buttloads of money, and for whatever reason would not > consider hiring a person to take care of their urges. ?There aren't a lot of > these, but I have known a few. ?I personally wouldn't hire a harlot even if > I needed relief. ?I would sooner just find one and give her 100 bucks with > no request for services in return, than hire one. ?Hiring a harlot doesn't > feel a damn bit right to me, even if I were single, and I am not even > religious. I never have hired a sex worker, and I don't think I ever would. I did give one a ride once. Didn't even occur to me when I picked her up, she just looked damn cold. That was an interesting conversation for sure. Sometimes, I can be a little dense due to having spent a lot of time in the back of a turnip truck. :-) I think there are more repressed religious types than you imagine. Here in Utah, for example, there are quite a few highway billboards offering therapy to those who are addicted to pornography. When repressed by religiousness, acting out at a lower level than full fornication is very appealing. The thought goes like... "God won't smite me for masturbation, but I'll burn in hell for screwing a prostitute." It would be very easy for religious types to go way down the slippery slope with these interactive sex toys. The problem being that it induces a self loathing that leads to further acting out. I'd bet the 1-900 numbers are big here and in the bible belt. What is the point of those things for people with a relaxed attitude towards regular sex living in San Francisco or New York? If they just had normal heterosexual sex with a cheerleader in high school, they wouldn't be pushed down these unusual side alleys of more or less deviant auto-sexual behavior. We have people die of hanging themselves in their closets... sad really. Lots of homosexuals commit suicide on purpose in these parts of the country as well. I think there are also those who are not religious, but would prefer sexbots or virtual sex or remote sex just to avoid the possibility of getting a sexually transmitted disease. AIDS is still pretty damn frightening. Finally, there are the healthy sexual relationships of people who are separated by distance, such as the folks in the armed forces. Serving this group would be my justification for working on teledildonics, if I were inclined to do so. > For that small subset of humanity, the sexbot would be just the E-ticket > ride they have wanted all their lives. ?I can imagine a religious objection > to that, the Judas argument: if anyone has money for that kind of silliness, > then they should be giving it to their church. ?Of course, Jesus gave Judas > a smackdown for that notion (Matthew 26: 6-11.) ?I can imagine the learned > theologians would shy away from the Onan argument. > > So, if we recognize it's a limited market, it looks to me like it would work > out OK for the religious. Religious people are just as horny as the rest of the people out there... it's just all bottled up. > That being said, I thought the whole episode in Matthew 26 sounded weird. > This other woman was in there fooling with Jesus' feet while he was in the > process of copulating with Simon's friend Bethany. ?Hey I didn't make it up. > It says right there in Matthew 26 verse 6: "Now when Jesus was in Bethany, > at the home of Simon the leper..." LOL... > But I digress. There is also the expense. Hiring a prostitute twice a week would burn through a lot more money than buying a completely legal realdoll. While it seems weird, fucking a big rubber doll is legal, while fucking a totally willing babe for money is not. Strangely, if she gives it away, it's legal again. These rules make the sex laws of Terre Haute, Indiana seem normal. There, it is still illegal to show one's ankles in public, or keep ice cream in your pocket. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 10 05:11:57 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 23:11:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > spike wrote: > Whoa!! ?Most of your food comes from these illegal operations. ?If these > illegal farmers stopped hiring slaves, you would starve. ;-) ?So don't be so > quick to knock it, this is the USA you live in, so be proud of the Blind Eye > system that keeps slavery alive and kicking in the 21st century. While I agree that Mexican migrant workers are far from slaves... let's do a little mind experiment. What would happen if we were to say, "No Thanks, we'll pick our own food... and you good folks stay in Mexico." For the first few years, there would be a widespread shortage of strawberries. Then Adam Smith's invisible hand would start picking the strawberries. This could happen in a number of ways. We might import more strawberries from Mexico. We might discover that Americans will do that sort of work, for the right wage. More likely, IBM would stop working on Watson, and would start working on smarter robotics for picking our food. There would be big money to be made in that area. There isn't now, because the migrant labor is so cheap. What do you think? Would a dearth of cheap labor lead as the mother of invention to better robotic field hands? -Kelly (who actually worked as a migrant farm laborer in his teen years... corn detassling... hay baling... picking and planting pineapples... what great fun it all was!) From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 10 05:20:04 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 9 May 2011 23:20:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] segway meets transformers In-Reply-To: <001501cc0e9e$9485a570$bd90f050$@att.net> References: <001501cc0e9e$9485a570$bd90f050$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/9 spike : > I never did get too excited about the Segway.? It was way cool from a > controls engineering perspective, but impractical. Strangely, there is a Segway shop in semi-rural Spanish Fork, UT... they have to be a front for laundering drug money or something... ;-) >This rig might be better > however: > > http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/05/09/transforming-electric-motorcycle-future/?test=faces > > I can imagine this is really expensive, but cool.? {8-] It really helps to be a teenager to think this far out of the box! Very cool. I don't see why it would HAVE to be expensive, if you made enough of them. -Kelly From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 10 05:51:42 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 01:51:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <20110508215437.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0dc46a8543.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> References: <20110508215437.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.0dc46a8543.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 12:54 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: However, this evidence was > posted (by another poster) because Taubes literally claims that > "calories in and out" do not account for weight gain and weight loss. ### Does he? -------------- > He literally argues that carb calories are more fattening than the > identical number of fat calories. ### Well, that is most likely true, since high glycemic index foods appear to be stronger mitochondrial suppressants than proteins or fats and thus are more likely to induce reduce basal metabolism and motor activity, which would lead to a greater fat accumulation from the same amount of ingested calories. -------------------------- ?He literally argues that exercise > will not help people lose weight. ### But this is correct - under an unrestricted feeding regimen (i.e. the normal condition for modern Westerners), exercise does not promote significant weight loss (there are some marginal effects, difficult to disentangle from other influences). Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 10 05:27:04 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 01:27:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 12:18 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: Libertarian thought is divorced from anarchy in that > libertarians want a government to protect us from the criminal element > that would take away our freedoms. ### Hey, I *don't* want a government, and I *am* a libertarian! Let's have an anarchocapitalist slugfest here, like in the good old times! :) Rafal From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 10 06:09:56 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 00:09:56 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/6 salvatore micheal / sam iam : > Kelly's future could be closer than we think. I hope I have that much of a future... :-) > First watch the movie Robot Maid (can watch over Netflix). > http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-7i-49-en-70-3pda.html Sounds cute, and disturbing, at the same time. > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1381106/ > to read a description. > It's a sad but telling movie of our near-future times.. > Soon our technology will be capable of: > building/making realistic 'sex toys' (robots/dolls capable of performing > complex sex acts) I have little doubt of this. > interface devices so that sex can be performed 'over the internet' (see > movie below) > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262826/ > the link above is for Thomas in Love (also viewable over Netflix), a subtle > French movie about a man isolated by agoraphobia > ?but what he does about it (his condition) is more telling about 'our human > condition' I can see agoraphobia becoming more prevalent in the future, as it is enabled by the Internet, etc. I really enjoyed Nim's Island... not that it has much to do with anything but agoraphobia. :-) > ?i suspect the ending may be unrealistic > So our technology soon will enable us to > 1. fall in love with virtual characters We can fall in love with just about anything. A great example is the Tamagotchi phenomenon, especially as it played out in Japan. Some people actually went to court during divorce to determine who owned a Tamagotchi. Others delayed trips because of the needs of these little fellows. The point is, you don't need much of a virtual character to fall in love with. There are lots of guys out there in love with their favorite porn star... > 2. make love via technology (another ref is the movie version of Brave New > World - see link below) I think this is harder, as it's still in the future. > 3. love with robots/simulacrum > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080468/plotsummary is the link for the older > version.. > i believe there's a reference in there about having sex through a kind of > device > the device fails and the girl gets pregnant > this is our soon-to-be technology. Sounds like a standard condom with a hole in it... :-) > what we DO with it is the Real question. > will we replace real partners with robot lovers? (at what percentage? the > fact we will is established) Agreed. When the divorce rate is 50%, and a robot becomes the most natural and safe 'rebound' relationship, it could get really high. I think mostly it depends on whether women become less militant in the future. If women have to compete with robots, will it improve the women? Men are treated so shabbily in many relationships that robots make a pretty reasonable alternative to further abuse. With the continued growth of nasty personality disorders, I think this could become pretty common. > what will be the legal consequences? (such as with gay marriage and spousal > rights) > ?as an example, will we be able to marry our robot gfs/studs? will they have > entitlement rights? Health insurance for my robot partner? :-) Eventually, if we achieve AGI, I think it has to happen. Otherwise, we'll just cease to be of any importance sooner. > what will be the social impacts of robot partners??(such as projected by the > movie AI?) This will be the biggest bit, I think. I think it may lead to the end of marriage as we know it now. If people start living to obscene ages, the need for reproductive sex will go down to near zero. That will change things nearly as much as the robotics part. > will we only use them in the sex trade? (as opposed to attempting to > increase their awareness - purpose: partners in space exploration) Not unless that's all they are good for. The guys in this TV show about the realdoll dressed them up, talked to them, did lots besides sex with them. > the last item could be both 'good and bad' for society: > using robots in the sex trade will reduce demand for humans currently > involved Yes, and that is probably a good thing. An aside... If I rented out a group of RealDolls, would that be a brothel? Would it be illegal? Should it be illegal? Is sex with toys for money a decent business model? > this increased dependency on robot-sex will tend to isolate humans from each > other (just as the internet has a 'reversing effect' of actually isolating > us - instead of 'bringing us together' as it could/should) I think the Internet brings us together in silos of common interest, but tears us apart in the real world. My girlfriend has no interest in transhumanism, for example. > it's possible there might be 'rogue robots' performing sex-crimes (such as > illustrated in Robot Maid) - how do we deal with that? Initially, they'll be taken apart. Then the anti capital punishment people will jump in as they gain human rights. It's going to be a bumpy ride for sure. > when we embrace robot gfs/studs as lovers, we create a Huge set of problems > society must face in the process We also potentially solve a huge set of problems. These things are tools, to be used for good and evil, just like any other tool. I think there could be a pretty big reduction of rape in the future as suitable alternatives and ubiquitous surveillance develop. > when we use technology to make love with distant partners, we also take on a > set of issues associated with that Is that better than having a military wife have an affair at home, or a soldier having a fling out in the field? There are a lot of Amer-Vietnamese out there from this sort of thing. I suspect there will be American-Iraqis and American-Afganis too... I haven't heard much about it. I think relationships have been better with the video conferencing technology provided to soldiers. Helps them feel like they are still part of a family. Teledildonics will help the soldiers of the future feel more connected to the "real world" back home, I hope. > when we fall in love with virtual characters, more social problems evolve.. Just as there are "chat affairs" now. The thing we most learned from The Johnson studies back in the day is that the variety of human sexual behaviors know few if any bounds. This is just more of the same. > sex over/via technology is a Hugely impacting set of problems facing > humanity as we develop and integrate the technology Tell me more... Is this bigger than a life expectancy of 500 years? I wonder. > i personally feel technology has a tendency to isolate us from each other > this will only increase in the near future Or bring us closer when we have to be apart. Makes long distance relationships more doable. > because robots/dolls/studs can perform more consistently, with less > complaints, less 'negative' characteristics (for a lover), You don't think they'll improve upon Viagra in the future? :-) > ?i suspect they will be used more and more (as the technology becomes > cheaper and more realistic) Yes, but will this mean less sex between people? What about a marriage where one partner wants way more sex than the other partner (yeah, I know it would NEVER happen in the real world, but just play along...) this seems like a way to get some balance. All this social networking stuff started with sex somewhere near the core, didn't it? (I have to admit some ignorance with regards to social networking, so I could be WAY off base here). > whether the robots/dolls/studs will actually be capable of feelings/love is > a Whole 'nother issue indeed.. Not initially, but eventually, it seems inevitable. > i'm guessing the first feeling robot will arrive around 50 years from now > (not just simulate feelings - actually Feel) We'll see, I hope. It could be sooner than that. > if a robot can feel love, can we prohibit marriage / more permanent > relationships? We can never prevent permanent relationships. Some people have those now with realdolls or even less. Whether marriage is extended to such relationships is dependent upon how marriage is defined. This is why the conservative religionists don't want marriage between gays. One thing inevitably leads to another if you don't stop it at the first step (so they argue). I tend to agree with this view. I don't see anything more peculiar about a marriage between a girl and her sentient robot than a marriage between two guys. I can't see marriage extending to non sentient beings... or under sentient beings... like animals, children, etc. Just too lopsided. > many will disagree with me but i use awareness as a guide: > if a robot is truly aware (as in a human/dolphin/whale/elephant/..) sense, > then to me - it's human and deserves to be treated as human > we need to decide these issues BEFORE their development. I agree. I'm inclined to give them as many rights as we can up front, so that when we're the laggards, they'll still extend those rights back to us! > i'm not part of the group who insists only humans 'have souls' or are the > only 'instances of the divine'.. Nah, me either. > i personally believe awareness is equivalent to 'having a soul' and makes > the difference between machine and 'human'. This is going to be a big argument in the future. Eventually, we'll all be Kasparovs in everything though. > i continue to push 'robot rights' before we develop sophisticated ones (such > as displayed in the film AI).. You go! Although you can't go extending rights to appliances. There must be a high degree of sentience. > no matter how inconsistent (something i Hate), flakey (another thing i > Hate), superficial (yet another thing i Hate), or materialistic (yet yet > another thing i Hate) girls are, i LOVE human women. Me too, but I am open to the idea that it is perhaps because there is not yet a better alternative. Once a better alternative does exist in the real world, it becomes a trickier proposition. And it goes both ways. Lots of women will trade in their real men for robots too. > human women are magical to me .. words fail when i try to describe them .. > as a personal aside, something happened to me recently which sorta blows > away any robot-gf discussion.. > it renewed my faith in human beings - human beings are to be cherished and > adored - not ignored and cast aside for robots.. I hope it works out that way for the majority of humans. Then again, humans will evolve towards robots, and you could have the best of both worlds. > that's just my humble opinion, sam Hey, this is all just a guess Sam. Who knows how it's all going to play out. But sexbots, virtual personalities, pet rocks and Tamagotchi of the future will all be a part of it. How big a part? Who can say. Certainly big enough that someone is going to make a dynamic double butt load of money. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 10 06:16:51 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 00:16:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 12:18 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > ?Libertarian thought is divorced from anarchy in that >> libertarians want a government to protect us from the criminal element >> that would take away our freedoms. > > ### Hey, I *don't* want a government, and I *am* a libertarian! > > Let's have an anarchocapitalist slugfest here, like in the good old times! :) Rafal, you can call yourself whatever you would like. But the common definition of libertarian doesn't do away with government for the common defense and all that. How to anarchists keep a more cohesive government next door from running all over the top of them to strip their resources? -Kelly From moulton at moulton.com Tue May 10 07:42:21 2011 From: moulton at moulton.com (F. C. Moulton) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 00:42:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> On 05/09/2011 11:16 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki >> ### Hey, I *don't* want a government, and I *am* a libertarian! >> >> Let's have an anarchocapitalist slugfest here, like in the good old >> times! :) > Rafal, you can call yourself whatever you would like. But the common > definition of libertarian doesn't do away with government for the > common defense and all that. > > How to anarchists keep a more cohesive government next door from > running all over the top of them to strip their resources? > Let us pause for just a moment before we have yet another session of people talking past each other and failing to seriously consider what is being posted: 1. I assume that everyone here is intelligent enough to realize that the term anarchist as used here does not refer to the strawman caricature of some person all dressed in black haphazardly throwing bombs. 2. Historically and currently the term "libertarian" has been and is still used by different people to mean either "limited government" or "anarchist" positions even though the usages have an innate incompatibility. 3. There is literature on this issue going back many years. While I do not agree with all of the conclusions I find the book Anarchy, State and Utopia by Nozick to be an useful read when confronting these questions. 4. Since the term "anarchocapitalist" was mentioned we should note that there are those who hold that one can only be an anarchist if they oppose what is generally considered as market based economic activity. On the other had there are those that claim that the anarchist position does not preclude any voluntary activity which is not based on something such as theft or fraud. This latter position is often referred to as "Anarchism without Adjectives". Recently this disagreement occurred on Facebook and a new FB community was formed https://www.facebook.com/anarchismwithoutadjectives 5. So would it be a good idea to have a handful of people doing a back and forth on the question of "Does libertarianism explicitly exclude anarchist position or does libertarianism explicitly exclude even the smallest minimal state position or are both included?" I doubt if it would be useful to have a long back and forth about the issue here for several reasons; one of which is that few people on this list have read much if any of the serious literature on the topic. Fred From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 10 09:52:42 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 11:52:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kiss Device (was Re: buttload) In-Reply-To: References: <4DC85414.1010007@mac.com> <007801cc0e8f$66e07500$34a15f00$@att.net> <002001cc0ea5$00b16440$02142cc0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 10 May 2011 06:40, Kelly Anderson wrote: > If they just had normal heterosexual sex with a cheerleader in high > school, ... or, for that matter, with a movie star... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 10 09:59:02 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 11:59:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <004d01cc0e84$b86d1410$29473c30$@att.net> References: <20110507132106.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.ea14cef24c.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> <004d01cc0e84$b86d1410$29473c30$@att.net> Message-ID: On 9 May 2011 22:07, spike wrote: > Stefano, there's your answer. ?Put away the "cuisine" and restrict your diet > to only revolting swill. ?Then when you try a caloric restricted diet, your > "tastes" will work in your favor instead of against you. ?Eating light will > become easy, desirable even. Mmhhh. I am not sure that disgusting nutrition makes for spontaneous caloric restriction (and that again is a price many would not be willing to pay). In fact, the possible caloric restriction for those who do not have access to reasonable quality food appears to be entirely involuntary... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 10 10:01:11 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 12:01:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 10 May 2011 07:11, Kelly Anderson wrote: > What do you think? Would a dearth of cheap labor lead as the mother of > invention to better robotic field hands? "Cheap labour", including in terms of large-scale slavery, has historically always been a short-term bonanza for a few slave masters and a secure recipe for economic decadence in the mid and long term. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 10 10:30:20 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 12:30:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On 9 May 2011 22:49, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Did I say anything about one being the best? No. ?I just made the obvious > observation that some cultures are less likely to produce good outcomes as > others. ?Do you deny this is true? ?Are all darwinian competitors equally > competent for the challenges of their environment? ?No. ?But mechanisms to > sort cultures do not have to rely only on darwinian wait and see. Of course, cultures and systems are the product of human choice, not of any "waiting and seeing", same as mutations, breeding and drift for biological traits. Darwinian mechanisms are what select them ex post. > I wasn't talking about forcing a culture but rather carefully picking one's > culture and being picky enough to not grant all cultures equal respect. Relativism, unless in some weird politically-correct version thereof, does not imply "equivalence" (on which measure?). On the contrary, it implies that your value judgments cannot be based but on your own culture, which is by definition "special" for any of us. Only, one should not be surprised that the same goes for others. > Some cultures are known non-starters for the world we currently live in. For those which are, what is really the problem? In fact, there are more people frightened by China than by the Amish... -- Stefano Vaj From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue May 10 13:44:25 2011 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 06:44:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> Message-ID: <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I think it would be more useful to ask why people believe what they believe -- why they believe X and Y go together (are either compatible or implied/inferred/corollaries) or don't go together (are incompatible). This usually works better when people start discussing what it means for them to be X and why they believe Y follows from, does not follow from, or is inconsistent with X. In this vein, looking to, say, Robert Nozick's famous book -- and leaving aside that he doesn't much ground his views as simply present them and give criticism to opposing views, such as egalitarianism, socialism, welfare statism, and market anarchism -- one can see something many libertarians in America share: a natural rights basis for their libertarianism. (Usually, talk about self-ownership or non-initiation of forces leads to the same position. For example, the non-initiation of force principle has to be combined with some framework in which force and its initiation can be defined. While this doesn't solve all problems, without this -- and usually, the framework is some sort of rights framework -- you have immediate issues like you stopping me from fleeing with your car might be considered you initiating force. The typical libertarian approach that problem Nozick (minarchist) and Rothbard (anarchist) would both agree on is that rights do define things you might defend with force, though this doesn't mean, say, deadly force can be used (contra Walter Block) for someone stepping across your lawn. But without rights, it's hard to define just where force is being used justly.) If one accepts this -- and one realizes people can still use the label "libertarian" in other ways, some of which would go against natural rights -- one might clear up many issues. Or, at least, it'll make the differences more clear even it the issues aren't resolved. (One has to be especially careful these days, too, because "libertarian" has taken on a certain chic and the word is being much more widely used than ever before, especially in America. I recall a time, and I'm not that old, when "libertarian" either got a blank stare or was confused with "liberal" -- as in _welfare state_ liberal and not classical liberal -- by people I would talk to in the States. Now, it's much more likely one has to explain why one is not a[n American] conservative or a Republican.) And this is only going to resolve or clearly define those issues presuming "libertarian" etc. are defined that way. To merely toss around the words without being clear about their meaning -- or presuming one meaning when others mean something else -- is going to result in people talking passed each other rather than communicating. But you already know this, I'm sure. Regards, Dan "Anarchy is the radical notion that other people are not your property." -- Roderick T. Long ________________________________ From: F. C. Moulton To: ExI chat list Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 3:42 AM Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism On 05/09/2011 11:16 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki >> ### Hey, I *don't* want a government, and I *am* a libertarian! >> >> Let's have an anarchocapitalist slugfest here, like in the good old >> times! :) > Rafal, you can call yourself whatever you would like. But the common > definition of libertarian doesn't do away with government for the > common defense and all that. > > How to anarchists keep a more cohesive government next door from > running all over the top of them to strip their resources? > Let us pause for just a moment before we have yet another session of people talking past each other and failing to seriously consider what is being posted: 1. I assume that everyone here is intelligent enough to realize that the term anarchist as used here does not refer to the strawman caricature of some person all dressed in black haphazardly throwing bombs. 2. Historically and currently the term "libertarian" has been and is still used by different people to mean either "limited government" or "anarchist" positions even though the usages have an innate incompatibility. 3. There is literature on this issue going back many years.? While I do not agree with all of the conclusions I find the book Anarchy, State and Utopia by Nozick to be an useful read when confronting these questions. 4. Since the term "anarchocapitalist" was mentioned we should note that there are those who hold that one can only be an anarchist if they oppose what is generally considered as market based economic activity. On the other had there are those that claim that the anarchist position does not preclude any voluntary activity which is not based on something such as theft or fraud.? This latter position is often referred to as "Anarchism without Adjectives".? Recently this disagreement occurred on Facebook and a new FB community was formed https://www.facebook.com/anarchismwithoutadjectives 5. So would it be a good idea to have a handful of people doing a back and forth on the question of "Does libertarianism explicitly exclude anarchist position? or does libertarianism explicitly exclude even the smallest minimal state position or are both included?"? I doubt if it would be useful to have a long back and forth about the issue here for several reasons; one of which is that few people on this list have read much if any of the serious literature on the topic. Fred _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 10 13:59:25 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 06:59:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 12:42 AM, F. C. Moulton wrote: snip > I doubt if it > would be useful to have a long back and forth about the issue here for > several reasons; one of which is that few people on this list have read > much if any of the serious literature on the topic. I suppose Heinlein would not be considered serious literature but a lot of the lower case libertarians came from Heinlein's "space cadets" branch (the other major branch being the "Randroids"). I get the impression that few of the people who have joined the list in recent years read much if any Heinlein. Don't know about Rand. The whole list has suffered something on a meta level like topic drift. Keith From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 10 14:15:29 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 10:15:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: >> spike wrote: >> Whoa!! Most of your food comes from these illegal operations. If these >> illegal farmers stopped hiring slaves, you would starve. ;-) So don't be so >> quick to knock it, this is the USA you live in, so be proud of the Blind Eye >> system that keeps slavery alive and kicking in the 21st century. > > While I agree that Mexican migrant workers are far from slaves... > let's do a little mind experiment. > > What would happen if we were to say, "No Thanks, we'll pick our own > food... and you good folks stay in Mexico." > > For the first few years, there would be a widespread shortage of > strawberries. Then Adam Smith's invisible hand would start picking the > strawberries. This could happen in a number of ways. We might import > more strawberries from Mexico. We might discover that Americans will > do that sort of work, for the right wage. More likely, IBM would stop > working on Watson, and would start working on smarter robotics for > picking our food. There would be big money to be made in that area. > There isn't now, because the migrant labor is so cheap. > > What do you think? Would a dearth of cheap labor lead as the mother of > invention to better robotic field hands? > > -Kelly (who actually worked as a migrant farm laborer in his teen > years... corn detassling... hay baling... picking and planting > pineapples... what great fun it all was!) Are you kidding? You are speculating about what would happen to a very complex system if you were to change one of the variables. But your speculation was actually just a Free Market Voodoo Fantasy. You cite "strawberries" as the crop that would suffer if all the undocumented and semi-slave workers were ejected. You would not have a shortage of strawberries, you would have a shortage of every foodstuff imaginable, all the way up to the meat that is packed in meat-packing plants. That is a serious error, because your later suggestion that IBM would stop working on Watson and instead build strawberry picking robots looks deeply implausible when you understand that what IBM would *actually* have to do is build general-purpose farm laborers to do an unbelievable variety of jobs. In other words, they would have to build a full-scale AGI. Strawberry picking is utterly trivial compared with the full range of skills required Second, the response to the sudden loss of slave labor would not be that IBM would gear up and deliver robot farm laborers to replace them. Rather, the farm managers would be forced to raise wages until they could attract ordinary humans into that workforce. This would cause a massive spike in food prices and trigger an inflationary spiral in the entire economy. This would in turn force the government to react, because the only way to win an election would be to promise an end to the quadrupled food prices. Their reaction would be: to invite migrant workers back in. They would have no choice whatsoever. BUT.... assuming they stood their ground, then what? Would IBM then allow itself to smacked upside its head by Adam Smith's Invisible hand? Would they deliver AGI farm workers? Garbage. They simply could not do it. That is Voodoo Fantasy Free Market BS. The technology does not exist, and could not be made cheap enough and versatile enough to substitute for more than a small fraction of the jobs. At least, not in the short term. Long term (decade or more, maybe). But only if IBM were sure that the government would NEVER EVER cave in to the pressure to let the migrants back in. So the moral of the story is not about the Invisible Hand doing wonderful things if it is only given the chance, but about the fact that a complex system will do things that are not even dreamt of in your system. Richard Loosemore From steinberg.will at gmail.com Tue May 10 15:09:21 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 10:09:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: People forget the less obvious roles of government. Maybe a minarchist says its ok with no government as long as we have police or whatever. But the entire point of regulation is to stop evil people from doing evil things. I come from Pennsylvania, where recently where has been a big scandal about 'fracking'--fracturing underground rock with high pressures to get natural gas. It messes with our water table and whatnot. The only barrier to things like this is regulation--the companies are simply too evil to comply with anything that does not produce profit. Libertarians forget that in their ideal society there might be no EPA or secretary of agriculture or any of the small things people forget about but also need. These companies are the issue with putting libertarianism into play. The truth is, a company is not a person and is subject to different rights. We cannot open the floodgates of freedom with wolves ready to pick our bones clean. First the wolves must be removed. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 10 14:51:00 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 16:51:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 10 May 2011 16:15, Richard Loosemore wrote: > This would cause a massive spike in food prices and trigger an inflationary > spiral in the entire economy. > > This would in turn force the government to react, because the only way to > win an election would be to promise an end to the quadrupled food prices. > > Their reaction would be: ?to invite migrant workers back in. ?They would > have no choice whatsoever. This sounds like destiny, doesn't it? Even more deterministic than classical economic theory. But of course, those on the course to civilisational, political and economic defeat are bound to blame inescapable natural laws or objective circumstances for their present and upcoming troubles. -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Tue May 10 15:23:49 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 08:23:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] helping older people Message-ID: <000c01cc0f26$4336cae0$c9a460a0$@att.net> If you can endure the first couple minutes of this, the third minute has some really interesting robotics notions, stuff I have been pondering for years. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2011/05/10/feyerick.mit.age.lab.cnn? hpt=C2 Here's one I want to add, when we think of ways to help older people in our society. Go take some packaged food item from your freezer. Go ahead, pick anything in there. You need only two pieces of information: how hot and how long to cook, ja? There's all this completely irrelevant information in huge font, none of which anyone gives a rat's ass. But look at where it tells you the temperature to set the oven and how long to leave it in there. That part is in microfilm. They scream all this other nonsense, and whisper the only thing anyone cares about. I never had glasses, but now I need reading glasses. Most of the time I don't have them on my person. So the freezer packages hide from me the only thing on that package I care about. Look around, you will find a hundred examples of failing or refusing to put the relevant information in large font. On your tires, you care about exactly one piece of information, maximum pressure. That is in microfilm font. The tire brand is in huge raised letters. I don't care about that, only the maximum pressure rating. Continue on that theme. Hotel shower, two bottles, sometimes three, shampoo, conditioner, hand lotion. They all look pretty similar. In the shower, you don't have your glasses. So why are the identifiers in microfilm? Why couldn't they have a big first letter: Shampoo and Conditioner? And couldn't they make the freezer packages with all their silly useless info on the front of the package, and the back of the package with nothing but big black and white lettering 450 for 35 min! or u-wave for 6 min! Is that so hard? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue May 10 15:46:48 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 08:46:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore ... >...Second, the response to the sudden loss of slave labor...the farm managers would be forced to raise wages until they could attract ordinary humans into that workforce... Richard Loosemore Oooh Richard, careful there, me lad. We know what you meant, but it is easy to slip and make these kinds of comments. My take on it is if one wants completely legal farm produce, one must advertise and market it as such, perhaps convince the grocers to carry it in a separate premium section in the store, like they do now with organic produce. There is an independent agency which certifies organic. Likewise we could set up an independent (for profit) (my) profit)) agency which inspects and certifies all-legal produce. That one carries a semi-humorous ironic message: everything else not certified all-legal in the local grocery has something somewhere illegal in its production. Those who care about the plight of slave labor will flock to buy my all-legal produce, even at elevated prices. Result: soon the slave labor will be freed from slavery, by being laid off, woohoo! Problem solved. Oh, wait... spike From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 10 15:58:16 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 16:58:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/10 Dan wrote>: > I think it would be more useful to ask why people believe what they believe > -- why they believe X and Y go together (are either compatible or > implied/inferred/corollaries) or don't go together (are incompatible). This > usually works better when people start discussing what it means for them to > be X and why they believe Y follows from, does not follow from, or is > inconsistent with X. I just came across and interesting article> which (although it is written in support of libertarian POV) makes some good points. Quote: Rothbard seems to think that he can show us that we are committed to accepting self-ownership, and that once he does this we are committed on pain of irrationality to accepting everything that follows logically from it, no matter how absurd it might seem.*** But this is not how moral reasoning works, or ought to work. Demonstrating that a moral principle has some intuitive support gives you some reason to accept it. (e.g. ?taxation is like theft and theft is wrong so taxation is wrong?). But that reason can be overcome if it turns out that the intuitive principle has deeply counterintuitive implications. (e.g., ?it is wrong to tax $100 away from a millionaire to save the life of a starving child?). Good moral reasoning involves something like the back-and-forth method of reflective equilibrium. All but our most deeply held moral beliefs, and perhaps even them, are held subject to revision in the light of new evidence, new arguments, and new inquiries. This is why my own attraction to libertarianism is grounded in a kind of moral pluralism. Yes, I believe that coercion is a prima facie bad. But I also believe that it is prima facie bad for people to fail to get what they deserve, or for their basic needs to be unmet. These moral beliefs, to my mind, have just as firm a standing as my opposition to coercion. I see no reason to believe that in a conflict between them, the opposition to coercion should always trump. Of course, this also makes it difficult for me to support an absolute, bright-line, form of minimal state libertarianism, as opposed to a more modest form of classical liberalism (see here for elaboration of the distinction). But such is the price of nuance, I think. -------------- That points at one of the problems I have with libertarians -- Once you accept principle 'A' then we are committed on pain of irrationality to accepting everything that follows logically from it, no matter how absurd it might seem. Sorry, but I just won't do that. BillK From sjatkins at mac.com Tue May 10 16:58:26 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 09:58:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] helping older people In-Reply-To: <000c01cc0f26$4336cae0$c9a460a0$@att.net> References: <000c01cc0f26$4336cae0$c9a460a0$@att.net> Message-ID: On May 10, 2011, at 8:23 AM, spike wrote: > If you can endure the first couple minutes of this, the third minute has some really interesting robotics notions, stuff I have been pondering for years. > > http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2011/05/10/feyerick.mit.age.lab.cnn?hpt=C2 > > Here?s one I want to add, when we think of ways to help older people in our society. Go take some packaged food item from your freezer. Go ahead, pick anything in there. You need only two pieces of information: how hot and how long to cook, ja? There?s all this completely irrelevant information in huge font, none of which anyone gives a rat?s ass. But look at where it tells you the temperature to set the oven and how long to leave it in there. That part is in microfilm. They scream all this other nonsense, and whisper the only thing anyone cares about. I never had glasses, but now I need reading glasses. Most of the time I don?t have them on my person. So the freezer packages hide from me the only thing on that package I care about. Well, you don't need glasses. Just lay the package beside your phone or on the smart kitchen counter and it speaks to you about such facts. :) Print is so 20th century. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Tue May 10 19:56:09 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 15:56:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Particularly interesting to me were these few sentences... Yes, I believe that coercion > is a prima facie bad. But I also believe that it is prima facie bad > for people to fail to get what they deserve, or for their basic needs > to be unmet. These moral beliefs, to my mind, have just as firm a > standing as my opposition to coercion. I see no reason to believe > that in a conflict between them, the opposition to coercion should > always trump. I agree the govt doesn't get to dig into your pocket for any lil' ole thing they want/need/desire. But until people have their basic needs met, society deserves the burden, as a whole. Amass as much capital as your greedy heart desires, once children aren't starving to death because some company like Glencore has found a way to game the system. "Stability is to be prized," said Oxfam's David Green. And that is the last thing Glencore wants, as it's instability which is most profitable - for those who have the inside knowledge to exploit it. Govt provides a kind of balancing against the power of capital (at least it's supposed to, when working properly). What we've witnessed the past few'ish decades, is what happens when capital rules the roost semi-unchecked. De-regulation hands the keys to the inmates. On the other hand, micro-managed regulation mucks things up too; as always there's a balance to be found. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue May 10 22:38:11 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 15:38:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] what if... Message-ID: <00ca01cc0f62$f1b98260$d52c8720$@att.net> Thought experiment. What if. you really are a genuine charitable religious person from some African hell hole, and you really did come into a cubic buttload of money by some mysterious means, and you really do want to rob that poor country blind and get it out of there, and give it away to some random rich western person who you heard was honest on the internet. Because of all the silly spam, I think it would be an impossible task. You would be forced to keep all that money. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Tue May 10 23:03:57 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 18:03:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] what if... In-Reply-To: <00ca01cc0f62$f1b98260$d52c8720$@att.net> References: <00ca01cc0f62$f1b98260$d52c8720$@att.net> Message-ID: Docking you points for redundancy wrt to "cubic buttload." From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue May 10 23:22:19 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 17:22:19 -0600 Subject: [ExI] what if... In-Reply-To: <00ca01cc0f62$f1b98260$d52c8720$@att.net> References: <00ca01cc0f62$f1b98260$d52c8720$@att.net> Message-ID: Ahh Spike, Great thought experiment! I love following the 411 scam baiters that scam these scammers. I even dabbled in that a bit, myself, and got quite a bit out of a few scammers with some very fun and elaborate stories. (Unfortunately, no real cache yet, just a bunch of forged casher?s checks and stuff like that.) All you really need is a good reputation system, which is really just the ability for crowds to communicate concisely and quantitatively (you know, like canonizer.com is trying to do.) Also, one friend of mine said, like the infamous Better Business Bureau, we need a better consumer bureau. For example some people are real bad consumers, they return lots of items, only purchase things that are on sale, using every possible coupon, while I know I?m a much better consumer. Love to pay large tips, never return stuff, use a payment method that is cheapest for the seller, not just cheapest for me? and I would like to have some reliable way to communicate such information to all the stores and places of business I walk into. Some day soon, whether via something like canonizer.com, or perhaps some more AI assisted method for doing surveys and merge and find consensus amongst diverse views, we?ll have the ability for crowds to communicate concisely and quantitatively. When that happens, everyone and everything will have a reputation. Finally, all the spam and scam will be a thing of the anonymous wild west web of the past and the people in Nigeria? will be able to do business online. Brent Allsop P.S. If you are in Nigeria, trying to any business online, feel free to use canonizer.com to start building your expert consensus reputation, so you can finally get people to trust you. 2011/5/10 spike > Thought experiment. > > > > What if? you really are a genuine charitable religious person from some > African hell hole, and you really did come into a cubic buttload of money by > some mysterious means, and you really do want to rob that poor country blind > and get it out of there, and give it away to some random rich western person > who you heard was honest on the internet. > > > > Because of all the silly spam, I think it would be an impossible task. You > would be forced to keep all that money. > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moulton at moulton.com Wed May 11 02:07:17 2011 From: moulton at moulton.com (F. C. Moulton) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 19:07:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DC9EF55.5040305@moulton.com> On 05/10/2011 06:44 AM, Dan wrote: > In this vein, looking to, say, Robert Nozick's famous book -- and > leaving aside that he doesn't much ground his views as simply present > them and give criticism to opposing views, such as egalitarianism, > socialism, welfare statism, and market anarchism -- one can see > something many libertarians in America share: a natural rights basis > for their libertarianism. (Usually, talk about self-ownership or > non-initiation of forces leads to the same position. For example, the > non-initiation of force principle has to be combined with some > framework in which force and its initiation can be defined. I should have mentioned something which I am sure you know (but others may not) that Nozick wrote his book partially in response to the book A Theory Of Justice by John Rawls. Rawls is probably not as influential now as in prior years but is still worth being familiar with because occasionally one finds allusions to his ideas from A Theory Of Justice. I think that using the Pan-Critical Rationalism of Bartley can go a long way towards helping develop a flexible philosophical approach to political thinking. For those without the time to read The Retreat to Commitment there is a good summary essay by Max which is well worth reading. Fred -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michaelanissimov at gmail.com Wed May 11 01:45:01 2011 From: michaelanissimov at gmail.com (Michael Anissimov) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 18:45:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] detailed analysis of SIAI financials posted Message-ID: http://lesswrong.com/lw/5il/siai_an_examination/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 11 02:42:21 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 22:42:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 2:09 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/6 salvatore micheal / sam iam : > >> no matter how inconsistent (something i Hate), flakey (another thing i >> Hate), superficial (yet another thing i Hate), or materialistic (yet yet >> another thing i Hate) girls are, i LOVE human women. > > Me too, but I am open to the idea that it is perhaps because there is > not yet a better alternative. Once a better alternative does exist in > the real world, it becomes a trickier proposition. And it goes both > ways. Lots of women will trade in their real men for robots too ### Nerds and losers, who never get laid anyway, will be the first to completely remove themselves from the relationship/sexual market, followed by average guys, who tend to get the short end of the stick in relationships anyway. Fat chicks will have no choice but to follow. The remaining 50% of women will be killing themselves trying to get a piece of the remaining 10% of assholes who will have a great time, briefly. Artificial wombs and robo-nannies will then put all women out of work for good but all this will be meaningless, since the real game will be amongst uploads, who would comprise 99.9% of the population within a few years of their invention. All assuming the UFAI doesn't eat everybody. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 11 02:53:40 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 22:53:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > semi-slave workers ### People who run through the desert, risking being attacked by coyotes, border police, crazy anti-immigrant vigilantes, and common thugs, only to enthusiastically deliver themselves into slavery? Either, those Mexicans must be stupid, or else, you have no idea what you are talking about. Which one is it? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 11 03:08:30 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 23:08:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 12:18 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> ?Libertarian thought is divorced from anarchy in that >>> libertarians want a government to protect us from the criminal element >>> that would take away our freedoms. >> >> ### Hey, I *don't* want a government, and I *am* a libertarian! >> >> Let's have an anarchocapitalist slugfest here, like in the good old times! :) > > Rafal, you can call yourself whatever you would like. But the common > definition of libertarian doesn't do away with government for the > common defense and all that. > > How to anarchists keep a more cohesive government next door from > running all over the top of them to strip their resources? ### I used to believe that a government is unavoidable for protection purposes and as little as 7 years ago I argued against anarchocapitalists on this list but since then I have moved on. The argument for anarchocapitalism is long, and the analysis of the situations under which it could exist is complex, so let me refer you to two horrendously long screeds I authored: http://triviallyso.blogspot.com/2009/11/of-beating-hearts.html http://triviallyso.blogspot.com/2010/01/of-beating-hearts-part-2.html If you can wade through it without exasperation or yawning, hit me with your criticism. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 11 03:23:32 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 23:23:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Will Steinberg wrote: > > I come from Pennsylvania, where recently where has been a big scandal > about 'fracking'--fracturing underground rock with high pressures to > get natural gas. ?It messes with our water table and whatnot. ?The > only barrier to things like this is regulation--the companies are > simply too evil to comply with anything that does not produce profit. > Libertarians forget that in their ideal society there might be no EPA > or secretary of agriculture or any of the small things people forget > about but also need. ### I happen to work now temporarily in Williamsport, PA, where frakking is the big hope for the future. I see this whole controversy as one of the most evil excesses of governmental regulation and environmental hysteria: We have a true paradigm shift in energy production, promising cheap, safe, clean energy for hundreds of years, abundant sources of fertilizer to feed the world, and what happens? The inventors and entrepreneurs who can make us so much better off are being demonized, while the usual crowd of misanthropic enemies of the future are howling in rage, trying to squelch progress before it takes off, under the pretext of "protecting the environment", whipping up the usual horror stories of ghastly dangers that await us if we make a step forward. Of course, all the "dangers" are just theory, and poor theory too, they are designed to trigger the fear of the unknown ("radioactive contamination of water supply"? Could *you* come up with a better bugaboo to scare the masses?), or try to incite envy ("profit" and "evil" all in one sentence). A great opportunity for enterprising bureaucrats to gain power and destroy human lives. And I'd say: Down with the EPA! Burn every piece of regulation that these creatures ever created! End the evil! Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed May 11 03:40:33 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 23:40:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/10 Mr Jones : > Govt provides a kind of balancing against the power of capital (at least > it's supposed to, when working properly). ?What we've witnessed the past > few'ish decades, is what happens when capital rules the roost > semi-unchecked. ?De-regulation hands the keys to the inmates. ### The key to control is deception: To convince the controllees that they are the controllers (e.g. by giving them the bread-and-circus show of elections), to conceal the truth (increasing political control of the financial system) and replace it in the popular narrative with its polar opposite ("capital rules the roost unchecked"). Once you have defined the terms to suit you, the little creatures are just running around like headless chickens, ready for the plucking. And all that happens quite naturally, no evil conspiracy needed, just some natural human weaknesses and the grinding wheels of government-controlled educational system churning out obedient yes-humans. Rafal From msd001 at gmail.com Wed May 11 01:49:36 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 21:49:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] helping older people In-Reply-To: References: <000c01cc0f26$4336cae0$c9a460a0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/10 Samantha Atkins : > Well, you don't need glasses. ?Just lay the package beside your phone or on > the smart kitchen counter and it speaks to you about such facts. ?:) > Print is so 20th century. Yeah, there's almost no need for any of the packaging that tricks your brain into thinking the contents are actually food. Better to just barcode the thing and let people's devices show them relevant marketing. In fact, there's no need for the unfortunate prole to even GO shopping - just let the food channel broadcast all the meals you could be eating if only you'd press the "gimme some" button on the touch-screen. The store could ship boxes of nutrimush directly to your smart kitchen - which would then deliver the contents as needed. You get the immediate satisfaction of knowing you will have (at some point) actually eaten the thing you purchased. By the time you've consumed it, you have no idea what it was anyway - so it needn't be any good. In all seriousness though, the microwave should be able to scan a barcode, lookup the relevant details from the manufacturer of the product(s) and provide the rest with minimal other effort. However, aren't the "old people" still buying mostly real food and cooking it the traditional way? VCR Plus was invented to make it possible for the average idiot to record on VHS their favorite TV show. By the time TV listings had finally started putting VCR Plus codes on their listings, nobody cared about recording on VHS (and TV listings) Today we assume there's an app for nearly everything. There's probably also an app for finding apps - if there isn't, i'm sure someone will write it before I can get around to it. That's why there are some apps we need but will never have. :( From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 11 06:49:23 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 08:49:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] detailed analysis of SIAI financials posted In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110511064923.GY23560@leitl.org> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 06:45:01PM -0700, Michael Anissimov wrote: > http://lesswrong.com/lw/5il/siai_an_examination/ I didn't expect much, but I'm still disappointed. From anders at aleph.se Wed May 11 07:26:52 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 10:26:52 +0300 Subject: [ExI] i.materialise Machine Man Human Augmentation Design Challenge Message-ID: <4DCA3A3C.2010105@aleph.se> Something you might want to contribute to (and fitting with the Humanity+ theme this weekend): http://i.materialise.com/blog/entry/i-materialise-machine-man-human-augmentation-design-challenge Not certain how much you can do within the competition constraints, but as Stravinsky said, "limitations set you free" - maybe this is good fuel for creativity. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 11 08:06:09 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 01:06:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This is a very interesting thread and I had fun responding... On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:09 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/6 salvatore micheal / sam iam : > > > Agreed. When the divorce rate is 50%, and a robot becomes the most > natural and safe 'rebound' relationship, it could get really high. I > think mostly it depends on whether women become less militant in the > future. If women have to compete with robots, will it improve the > women? Men are treated so shabbily in many relationships that robots > make a pretty reasonable alternative to further abuse. With the > continued growth of nasty personality disorders, I think this could > become pretty common. > You bring up a fascinating point. But just as we guys have our viewpoints, women have their own "war stories" to share and emotional scars to reveal. I do think many women have gotten harshly demanding, and I have seen a some ugly cases up close. I realize many women want the handsome and successful alpha male type, and so when they decide to "settle" for a beta male because that's what they can get, they develop great resentment, and take it out on the poor guy that they married. I do think the scenario you envision is very eye-opening. I could see at first men with female androids being seen as eccentric losers, but then as the machines get very sophisticated in terms of personality & intelligence, and with physical beauty to rival the most gorgeous flesh and blood women, that they will become accepted and then even be seen as a sign of wealth and status. I suppose when the cost comes down to the area of a present-day luxury car, they will become relatively commonplace. I could envision late 21st century teenage/college age boys mocking each other by saying, "you have only have had sex with androids!" And at least for young men, having sex with real women will probably be seen as a way to score points with their peers and be "real men." But as men age and find themselves nursing their emotional wounds, beautiful and highly intelligent female androids may become a popular method for getting their needs for companionship met. But then again, even a beautiful female android with human level/type intelligence might not fully meet the needs of a man. It might be that a machine partner who is *programmed* to be very understanding and seemingly loving, might seem very unreal and superficial to flesh and blood men. Human-style emotional complexity and unpredictability, even harshness and shortcomings, might up to a point be desired. I suppose that could be programmed in, but should we? > > what will be the legal consequences? (such as with gay marriage and > spousal > > rights) > > as an example, will we be able to marry our robot gfs/studs? will they > have > > entitlement rights? > I think when an android partner has human level intelligence & self-awareness, you will see machine civil liberties becoming a major issue. Is it right for even the manufacturing company to program their android with human level (or even higher) intelligence to love/be loyal to the human partner who bought it? And should that android have a mind that allows it to drift away from/desert a human partner, when things just "don't work out?" > Health insurance for my robot partner? :-) Eventually, if we achieve > AGI, I think it has to happen. Otherwise, we'll just cease to be of > any importance sooner. > > > what will be the social impacts of robot partners? (such as projected by > the > > movie AI?) > I suppose it will go from having an android you never have coming out of the house with you, to it being seen as an equal that you share your life with, and then (among a "liberated" and very advanced android) a point may come where an upgradable/very advanced android may view it's human partner as inferior, but still stay with him/her out of a sense of loyalty and compassion. I can envision advanced androids divorcing their human partners to share their lives with those equal to them, i.e., other androids! But there will be posthumans/former humans who will be worthy partners for them. > > This will be the biggest bit, I think. I think it may lead to the end > of marriage as we know it now. If people start living to obscene ages, > the need for reproductive sex will go down to near zero. That will > change things nearly as much as the robotics part. I think marriage will also morph over time. But I suspect reproductive sex, even among near-immortals, will not end over time, because mature nanotech and space travel & colonization (even if just within our own solar system) will lead to expanding populations. And I believe many people will not choose (at least for the first several centuries of their lifespan) to be uploads. > > will we only use them in the sex trade? (as opposed to attempting to > > increase their awareness - purpose: partners in space exploration) > > Not unless that's all they are good for. The guys in this TV show > about the realdoll dressed them up, talked to them, did lots besides > sex with them. > > > the last item could be both 'good and bad' for society: > > using robots in the sex trade will reduce demand for humans currently > > involved > > Yes, and that is probably a good thing. > I suspect human exploitation will always exist, and android exploitation will be added to the list of crimes. There will be some who will enjoy using/hurting a self-aware and highly intelligent artificial mind. > > An aside... If I rented out a group of RealDolls, would that be a > brothel? Would it be illegal? Should it be illegal? Is sex with toys > for money a decent business model? > > > this increased dependency on robot-sex will tend to isolate humans from > each > > other (just as the internet has a 'reversing effect' of actually > isolating > > us - instead of 'bringing us together' as it could/should) > I tend to agree with you about the isolation aspect of things. But in time as fully self-aware and intelligent androids are developed, the sense of mechanical masturbation and loneliness will hopefully leave such couples. And yet, I could easily envision human beings feeling a huge gulf between themselves and their very intelligent and self-aware android partners. It might be far worse than those who marry mail order brides from very different cultures. > I think the Internet brings us together in silos of common interest, > but tears us apart in the real world. My girlfriend has no interest in > transhumanism, for example. I have always had a similar problem with girlfriends... > > it's possible there might be 'rogue robots' performing sex-crimes (such > as > > illustrated in Robot Maid) - how do we deal with that? > > Initially, they'll be taken apart. Then the anti capital punishment > people will jump in as they gain human rights. It's going to be a > bumpy ride for sure. > There have already been studies using robots capable of learning, that show some robots willing to share, while others actually lie and are selfish. And so this will only get worse as the decades go by... > > > when we embrace robot gfs/studs as lovers, we create a Huge set of > problems > > society must face in the process > > We also potentially solve a huge set of problems. These things are > tools, to be used for good and evil, just like any other tool. I think > there could be a pretty big reduction of rape in the future as > suitable alternatives and ubiquitous surveillance develop. > I think rape is done as a hurtful power trip over other sentients, and so I don't think there will be a huge reduction in rapes by using androids as surrogates for such urges. Surveillance tech may do a vastly better job at cracking down on this crime. > > > when we use technology to make love with distant partners, we also take > on a > > set of issues associated with that > > Is that better than having a military wife have an affair at home, or > a soldier having a fling out in the field? There are a lot of > Amer-Vietnamese out there from this sort of thing. I suspect there > will be American-Iraqis and American-Afganis too... I haven't heard > much about it. I think relationships have been better with the video > conferencing technology provided to soldiers. Helps them feel like > they are still part of a family. Teledildonics will help the soldiers > of the future feel more connected to the "real world" back home, I > hope. This will be a touchy subject when the time comes and the technology matures, but I see it as becoming popular. I can envision teledildonic pods on every major warship and distant military base. > > when we fall in love with virtual characters, more social problems > evolve.. > > Just as there are "chat affairs" now. The thing we most learned from > The Johnson studies back in the day is that the variety of human > sexual behaviors know few if any bounds. This is just more of the > same. > > > sex over/via technology is a Hugely impacting set of problems facing > > humanity as we develop and integrate the technology > > Tell me more... Is this bigger than a life expectancy of 500 years? I > wonder. > > > i personally feel technology has a tendency to isolate us from each other > > this will only increase in the near future > > Or bring us closer when we have to be apart. Makes long distance > relationships more doable. > A good point! But a colonist on Neptune, with a wife on Earth, will have to deal with quite a time lag in terms of signals that link teledildonic devices. > > because robots/dolls/studs can perform more consistently, with less > > complaints, less 'negative' characteristics (for a lover), > > You don't think they'll improve upon Viagra in the future? :-) > > > i suspect they will be used more and more (as the technology becomes > > cheaper and more realistic). > There may be "limited" open marriages in the future that include android partners, but not other flesh and blood humans. > > Yes, but will this mean less sex between people? What about a marriage > where one partner wants way more sex than the other partner (yeah, I > know it would NEVER happen in the real world, but just play along...) > this seems like a way to get some balance. All this social networking > stuff started with sex somewhere near the core, didn't it? (I have to > admit some ignorance with regards to social networking, so I could be > WAY off base here). > > > whether the robots/dolls/studs will actually be capable of feelings/love > is > > a Whole 'nother issue indeed.. > > Not initially, but eventually, it seems inevitable. > Yes, I agree. I wonder to what extent their emotional range will be similar to ours? And will an android be more emotionally healthy than the typical "normal" human? I sure hope so... > > > i'm guessing the first feeling robot will arrive around 50 years from now > > (not just simulate feelings - actually Feel) > > We'll see, I hope. It could be sooner than that. > Perhaps within thirty years (using the classic 2040 Singularity date), but we will see. > > > if a robot can feel love, can we prohibit marriage / more permanent > > relationships? > > We can never prevent permanent relationships. Some people have those > now with realdolls or even less. Whether marriage is extended to such > relationships is dependent upon how marriage is defined. This is why > the conservative religionists don't want marriage between gays. One > thing inevitably leads to another if you don't stop it at the first > step (so they argue). I tend to agree with this view. I don't see > anything more peculiar about a marriage between a girl and her > sentient robot than a marriage between two guys. I can't see marriage > extending to non sentient beings... or under sentient beings... like > animals, children, etc. Just too lopsided. > Hey, I heard a story about a guy who wants to marry his sports car! lol There is controversy now about gays marrying, and in time it will continue regarding artificial intelligences, aliens, and genetically uplifted animals. > > > many will disagree with me but i use awareness as a guide: > > if a robot is truly aware (as in a human/dolphin/whale/elephant/..) > sense, > > then to me - it's human and deserves to be treated as human > > we need to decide these issues BEFORE their development. > There are various organizations now that are already discussing these important issues. > > I agree. I'm inclined to give them as many rights as we can up front, > so that when we're the laggards, they'll still extend those rights > back to us! > A very good point! I can imagine the time when an android rebukes a fellow android by saying, "you are in a relationship with a genetically mainline and non-upgraded human?!" "Yuck!!!" We humans will have to go transhuman/posthuman pretty fast to be worthy partners for the androids/artificial intelligences. lol > > > i'm not part of the group who insists only humans 'have souls' or are the > > only 'instances of the divine'.. > > Nah, me either. > I was raised Mormon, and I have thought of writing a science fiction/fantasy short story about a spirit in the Mormon "pre-mortal life," who finds out that instead of going down to Earth to be born to a human woman, he is going to be "born" as an artificial intelligence. > > > i personally believe awareness is equivalent to 'having a soul' and makes > > the difference between machine and 'human'. > But in time that difference will dissolve away. > > This is going to be a big argument in the future. Eventually, we'll > all be Kasparovs in everything though. > > > i continue to push 'robot rights' before we develop sophisticated ones > (such > > as displayed in the film AI).. > > You go! Although you can't go extending rights to appliances. There > must be a high degree of sentience. > I suspect my toaster wants its rights, and will continue to burn my toast until I grant them! : ) > > > no matter how inconsistent (something i Hate), flakey (another thing i > > Hate), superficial (yet another thing i Hate), or materialistic (yet yet > > another thing i Hate) girls are, i LOVE human women. > And some women *are* actually mature and caring individuals! ; ) But yes, I sure know what you mean. > Me too, but I am open to the idea that it is perhaps because there is > not yet a better alternative. Once a better alternative does exist in > the real world, it becomes a trickier proposition. And it goes both > ways. Lots of women will trade in their real men for robots too. I can envision future husbands lovingly (or not so lovingly) saying to their wives, "you better behave or I will trade you in for an android model!" lol And yes, there will be many women who have been repeatedly burned by men who will be headed to the nearest android dealership when they have the chance... Men are often stereotyped as being the ones who prize physical beauty in the opposite sex, but I know many women value it just as much. A male android with the features of the typical romantic novel bookcover showing the handsome Scotsman will be a big seller! > > human women are magical to me .. words fail when i try to describe them > .. > > as a personal aside, something happened to me recently which sorta blows > > away any robot-gf discussion.. > > it renewed my faith in human beings - human beings are to be cherished > and > > adored - not ignored and cast aside for robots.. > > I hope it works out that way for the majority of humans. Then again, > humans will evolve towards robots, and you could have the best of both > worlds. > > > that's just my humble opinion, sam > > Hey, this is all just a guess Sam. Who knows how it's all going to > play out. But sexbots, virtual personalities, pet rocks and Tamagotchi > of the future will all be a part of it. How big a part? Who can say. > Certainly big enough that someone is going to make a dynamic double > butt load of money. Yes, the future Bill Gates or Larry Ellison of android companions is probably in grade school right now... Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: ### Nerds and losers, who never get laid anyway, will be the first to completely remove themselves from the relationship/sexual market, followed by average guys, who tend to get the short end of the stick in relationships anyway. Fat chicks will have no choice but to follow. The remaining 50% of women will be killing themselves trying to get a piece of the remaining 10% of assholes who will have a great time, briefly. >> Hahaha!!! Rafal, you surprise me with your wisdom about the human condition. ; ) I look forward to the upcoming book, "Rafal's Transhumanist Guidebook to Women and Dating!" lol Yeah, your scenario seems actually pretty likely to me. You continue: Artificial wombs and robo-nannies will then put all women out of work for good but all this will be meaningless, since the real game will be amongst uploads, who would comprise 99.9% of the population within a few years of their invention. All assuming the UFAI doesn't eat everybody. >>> I don't understand why artificial wombs and robo-nannies will put all women out of work. What these technologies will do is free up women to focus much more on their professional careers, and not pass out from family chores related exhaustion! lol Regarding uploads, I see people living as "meat/cyborg" real world transhumans for centuries/millennia, until they decide to finally graduate to being an upload. I'm dating a very sweet gal right now. I wonder if she could somehow be an android? Naw... She probably just has the sweet and loving female personality gene! John : ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 11 08:07:18 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 01:07:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] detailed analysis of SIAI financials posted In-Reply-To: <20110511064923.GY23560@leitl.org> References: <20110511064923.GY23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: Eugen, how are you disappointed? I was actually relatively impressed. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 11 08:58:39 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 01:58:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <40D40B24-AEC7-4E38-B564-FC628380B695@mac.com> On May 11, 2011, at 1:06 AM, John Grigg wrote: > This is a very interesting thread and I had fun responding... > > > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:09 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/6 salvatore micheal / sam iam : > > > Agreed. When the divorce rate is 50%, and a robot becomes the most > natural and safe 'rebound' relationship, it could get really high. I > think mostly it depends on whether women become less militant in the > future. If women have to compete with robots, will it improve the > women? Men are treated so shabbily in many relationships that robots > make a pretty reasonable alternative to further abuse. With the > continued growth of nasty personality disorders, I think this could > become pretty common. > > > You bring up a fascinating point. But just as we guys have our viewpoints, women have their own "war stories" to share and emotional scars to reveal. I do think many women have gotten harshly demanding, and I have seen a some ugly cases up close. I realize many women want the handsome and successful alpha male type, and so when they decide to "settle" for a beta male because that's what they can get, they develop great resentment, and take it out on the poor guy that they married. Well that is a bit sexist If guys actually marry agrown up woman instead of an insecure child they might not need to worry so much about such things. Same thing is true on the other side. Now some would be alpha males out there are probably really big on having that trophy wife to show off their all-around prowess. Equally sexist, right? Not to worry. I expect human 2.0 to get over a lot of this stuff if we are to have much change at a future. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Wed May 11 08:35:35 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 09:35:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] IEET, Democracy, Libertarianism, & alternative points of view Message-ID: More on the subtleties of transhumanist politics: http://transhumanpraxis.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/zero-state-vs-technoprogressivism-the-ieet/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 11 09:04:10 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 11:04:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] i.materialise Machine Man Human Augmentation Design Challenge In-Reply-To: <4DCA3A3C.2010105@aleph.se> References: <4DCA3A3C.2010105@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20110511090410.GZ23560@leitl.org> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:26:52AM +0300, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Something you might want to contribute to (and fitting with the > Humanity+ theme this weekend): > http://i.materialise.com/blog/entry/i-materialise-machine-man-human-augmentation-design-challenge > > Not certain how much you can do within the competition constraints, but A laser-sintered titanium implant to enhance a normal, healthy human? Using which metric for enhancement? Like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=extreme%20body%20mod&hl=en&safe=off&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1745&bih=982 ? I think that's going to be very, very tough. > as Stravinsky said, "limitations set you free" - maybe this is good fuel > for creativity. Laser-sintered Ti would be a great material for RepRap. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 11 10:17:32 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 03:17:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <40D40B24-AEC7-4E38-B564-FC628380B695@mac.com> References: <40D40B24-AEC7-4E38-B564-FC628380B695@mac.com> Message-ID: Samantha Atkins wrote: >Not to worry. I expect human 2.0 to get over a lot of this stuff if we are to have much change at a future. I suspect human 3.0 will still be a misbehaving monkey, but with much greater powers to do mischief. I have greater faith in A.I.... John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 11 10:27:10 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 12:27:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 11 May 2011 04:53, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > >> semi-slave workers > > ### People who run through the desert, risking being attacked by > coyotes, border police, crazy anti-immigrant vigilantes, and common > thugs, only to enthusiastically deliver themselves into slavery? What else is new? As long as it is the cool thing to do, people would not really mind... :-) It is interesting in this respect that emigration rarely concern the really, really poor. Usually it has to do with restless twenty or thirty-something young males from frustrated semi-poor, half-westernised classes and countries with routine access with satellite TV channels, who sometimes put up a sum in hard currency that in their own country would allow them to start some activity or get to college. I suspect that starvation, slavery or unemployment tend to be a much more concrete prospective in the favelas around the increasingly fenced quarters of the western ?lites than in many "traditional" societies, where a lower income pro capite exists but you are more likely to eat your own food or to barter and the concept of "employment" itself becomes very fuzzy. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 11 10:33:49 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 12:33:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11 May 2011 04:42, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > The remaining 50% of women will be killing themselves trying to get a > piece of the remaining 10% of assholes who will have a great time, > briefly. Sounds good, I hope to be in time to profit from that window of opportunity... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 11 10:37:53 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 12:37:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: <40D40B24-AEC7-4E38-B564-FC628380B695@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/11 John Grigg : > I suspect human 3.0 will still be a misbehaving monkey, but with much > greater powers to do mischief.? I have greater faith in A.I.... As discussed several time in the list, either AIs are deliberately programmed to exhibit an animal-like behaviour convincingly emulating actual or imaginary individuals, or we are unlikely ever to distinguish them from increasingly powerful and sophisticated versions of the universal computers we already have. -- Stefano Vaj From rpwl at lightlink.com Wed May 11 14:12:33 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 10:12:33 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DCA9951.6000509@lightlink.com> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > >> semi-slave workers > > ### People who run through the desert, risking being attacked by > coyotes, border police, crazy anti-immigrant vigilantes, and common > thugs, only to enthusiastically deliver themselves into slavery? > > Either, those Mexicans must be stupid, or else, you have no idea what > you are talking about. > > Which one is it? Well, I know they are less stupid than the person who lists those factors as if they were the only ones that are relevant, in an attempt to insult someone who does know what those other factors are. Richard Loosemore From anders at aleph.se Wed May 11 07:24:35 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 10:24:35 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DCA39B3.6030202@aleph.se> Thanks for your help. The talk went well, will likely show up on YouTube sometime in the future. Overall, this conference is immensely cheering. This is a GCR we have a handle on. Sure, most deflection projects are still pie in the sky, but the surveys are getting close (~90% complete) for checking civilization-killers - we are likely safe from these, except for a small number of longperiodic comets. "The risk of surprise by a large impact has been completely retired". It is still probably worthwhile to develop the capacity to nudge things away and be prepared for the occasional airburst, but we do not need to fear the sky falling. The irony is of course that solving an xrisk or GCR nets you rather little credit - nothing visible is happening. Motto of today: "There is no such thing as free launch" -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Wed May 11 15:32:18 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 11:32:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:40 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > 2011/5/10 Mr Jones : > > > Govt provides a kind of balancing against the power of capital (at least > > it's supposed to, when working properly). What we've witnessed the past > > few'ish decades, is what happens when capital rules the roost > > semi-unchecked. De-regulation hands the keys to the inmates. > > ### The key to control is deception: To convince the controllees that > they are the controllers (e.g. by giving them the bread-and-circus > show of elections), Yes, well I'm certainly not of the opinion that our elections are without their faults. I'll even agree that it's little more than show. I'd love to overhaul the entire system, but that's a whole different story entirely. > to conceal the truth (increasing political control > of the financial system) HA! > and replace it in the popular narrative with > its polar opposite ("capital rules the roost unchecked"). > So you're honestly trying to tell me here, that the problem isn't deception by way of capital's influence, but actually the govt trying to influence capital? I sure hope this isn't your message, and that I've merely interpreted it incorrectly. So what then...Just let the rich go ahead and run the show their way? After all, they won't do anything to hurt us, having their eyes only set on quarterly profits and share prices? > > Once you have defined the terms to suit you, the little creatures are > just running around like headless chickens, ready for the plucking. > Yes we are. And that's exactly how the big $$$'d interests want us. So long as we're busy fighting amongst ourselves, no one will have the time to realize the game is rigged. > And all that happens quite naturally, Absolutely. And rationally as well. If you're short-sighted that is. > no evil conspiracy needed, It's hard to have this level of coercion taking place, without individuals conspiring to make it so. Evil, I don't believe in. > just > some natural human weaknesses and the grinding wheels of > government-controlled educational system churning out obedient > yes-humans. Again, I agree on the Education system being severely out of date, and out of tune with what's necessary to thrive in the 21st century, yet those in the position to make changes have no incentive to; Worse yet, they have every incentive NOT TO see it happen. Why would the rich/elite want a better education system? So that they have honest competition? They can afford to send their offspring to schools who aren't based on some outdated Prussian model, originally developed for Industrial Revolution button-pushers. Make no mistake, I'm no govt fan-boy, certainly not our current crop/system. But to think that $$$ could do a better job is absurd. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Wed May 11 17:29:03 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 10:29:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] New hope for fusion power? Message-ID: Perhaps one of the newer projects might succeed where the older one have not? http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/10/6619613-fusion-goes-forward-from-the-fringe --- Max -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed May 11 19:27:40 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 13:27:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 9:58 AM, BillK wrote: > <> > which (although it is written in support of libertarian POV) makes > some good points. The idea that the law ?may not properly compel [a] parent to feed [his or her] child or to keep it alive? is not something I would assert. The reason being that your child is another human being, and the law should protect your child from everyone else, including you, their parents. Having a child be property of the parent minimizes their classification as a human being. So this doesn't meet my definition of libertarian or decent behavior on the part of government. Given that, I do think that DCFS, in it's current implementation, is too governmental, and too interfering in people's lives. It serves as a mechanism for "reeducation" in the very worst sense of that word. I speak here from extensive personal experience in dealing with this particular governmental pain in the ass, despite the fact that I have never abused a child. Now, if the government compels you to give maximum care to a child with a fatal birth defect, I have issues with that... but that is a corner case. > Quote: > Rothbard seems to think that he can show us that we are committed to > accepting self-ownership, and that once he does this we are committed > on pain of irrationality to accepting everything that follows > logically from it, no matter how absurd it might seem.*** ?But this is > not how moral reasoning works, or ought to work. ?Demonstrating that a > moral principle has some intuitive support gives you some reason to > accept it. ?(e.g. ?taxation is like theft and theft is wrong so > taxation is wrong?). In general, I subscribe to "tax is theft." Fr?d?ric Bastiat's "The Law" (http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html) is one of the most cogent explanations of this point of view, and it was published in 1850 when government's micromanagement of the citizenry was a fraction of what it has now evolved into. Bastiat's thesis is that the ONLY legitimate government is one that defends the right of every individual to life, liberty, and property and NOTHING MORE. I agree with his thesis 100%. I do believe that we should, as a society, protect the disabled, elderly, disadvantaged, uneducated, build roads, provide infrastucture, etc. But I believe that we are FAR better off doing this with NGOs, Charities, and dare I say it, capitalistic corporations. When taxes are collected to insure my life, liberty and property, I can accept that as a legitimate use of my money. We can argue about how taxes are collected. Whether it be an import tax, a luxury tax, an income tax, an inheritance tax, a land tax, etc. But that isn't the main issue. If the tax is used to protect me from my fellow citizens, enemy countries and enemy memes, then I feel pretty good about that. It protects my freedom. So I am willing to pay a "freedom" tax, that is taxes that will go directly to things that keep me free. Ideally, there should be some way to agree to be taxed for this purpose, and a suitable consequence should you choose not to agree. (i.e. your freedom isn't as fully guaranteed as someone who does agree to the tax.) Ron Paul has some interesting specifics in this area related to contract law. > But that reason can be overcome if it turns out > that the intuitive principle has deeply counterintuitive implications. > ?(e.g., ?it is wrong to tax $100 away from a millionaire to save the > life of a starving child?). I support this statement. It is wrong to take $100 from a millionaire to save the life of a starving child. If he wants to donate the $100, that's super! But to force him at the point of a gun, with threat of imprisonment if he does not comply, is indeed WRONG, imho. > Good moral reasoning involves something > like the back-and-forth method of reflective equilibrium. ?All but our > most deeply held moral beliefs, and perhaps even them, are held > subject to revision in the light of new evidence, new arguments, and > new inquiries. ?This is why my own attraction to libertarianism is > grounded in a kind of moral pluralism. ?Yes, I believe that coercion > is a prima facie bad. It is the worst thing a government can do, unless you have committed a crime against another citizen, or against the government itself. What do you mean by moral pluralism? > But I also believe that it is prima facie bad > for people to fail to get what they deserve, or for their basic needs > to be unmet. Isn't that their problem? Why do we owe ANYTHING to anyone else? We have our own internal morality, of course, but what makes it the government's job to enforce morality? Who died and made you Robin Hood? I also believe in insurance, but I don't want the government to be an insurance company either. By your argument, it seems to me that the government should sell everyone car/house/health insurance, by force, upon threat of imprisonment if they don't want to buy the insurance. I don't think so. > These moral beliefs, to my mind, have just as firm a > standing as my opposition to coercion. Your personal morality is required for a libertarian (as I describe it) society to function, because otherwise, the poor and disadvantaged would be downtrodden. I have no disagreement that these things should be taken care of, but WHY does it HAVE to be the government that provides the solutions? That is the core question for me, not whether charitable works should be promoted in a society. > I see no reason to believe > that in a conflict between them, the opposition to coercion should > always trump. ?Of course, this also makes it difficult for me to > support an absolute, bright-line, form of minimal state > libertarianism, as opposed to a more modest form of classical > liberalism (see here for elaboration of the distinction). ?But such is > the price of nuance, I think. This is not nuance. It's a matter of what part of society has what responsibility. I say government should stay out of the way of charity, and vice versa. I don't want a military run by a charity or a corporation! That would be chaos of a tremendous degree. Likewise, I see chaos because government has gotten into business and functions as a charity too! > That points at one of the problems I have with libertarians -- > Once you accept principle 'A' then we are committed on pain of > irrationality to accepting everything that follows logically from it, > no matter how absurd it might seem. Sorry, but I just won't do that. > Bill, this isn't just about rationality. It's about division of responsibility in society. It doesn't HAVE to be government, it can be private. Because of the efficiency of acting locally, and avoiding the bureaucracy of huge organizations, society would simply be more efficient if the government were in charge of MUCH LESS than they are today. Does that sound irrational to you, or just wrong? I can accept that this might be the wrong position, and will listen to your arguments, but if you think it's irrational to think in this manner, then I don't know where to go... -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed May 11 19:39:49 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 13:39:49 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/10 Mr Jones : > Particularly interesting to me were these few?sentences... >> >> Yes, I believe that coercion >> is a prima facie bad. ?But I also believe that it is prima facie bad >> for people to fail to get what they deserve, or for their basic needs >> to be unmet. ?These moral beliefs, to my mind, have just as firm a >> standing as my opposition to coercion. ?I see no reason to believe >> that in a conflict between them, the opposition to coercion should >> always trump. > > I agree the govt doesn't get to dig into your pocket for any lil' ole thing > they want/need/desire. ?But until people have their basic needs met, society > deserves the burden, as a whole. I agree with this, except for the "as a whole" part. I think there are enough generous people, at least in a country like America, to care for the truly indigent. The problem with government is you end up with a program like Food Stamps that now serves 35 million people (12% of the population). These are not all indigent. I know, I was on Food Stamps myself for a while and I was by no means indigent at the time. I just qualified for the program. I'm pretty sure I would qualify now. I am not indigent, but I could steal money from all of you (at least the Americans who pay taxes) by going down and applying. > Amass as much capital as your greedy heart > desires, once children aren't starving to death because some company like > Glencore?has found a way to game the system. > "Stability is to be prized," said Oxfam's David Green.?And that is the last > thing Glencore wants, as it's instability?which is most profitable - for > those who have the inside knowledge to exploit it. I'm not familiar with Glencore, but I probably would not like what they are doing. If you have an article to read or something, I'd be glad to comment further. > Govt provides a kind of balancing against the power of capital (at least > it's supposed to, when working properly). ?What we've witnessed the past > few'ish decades, is what happens when capital rules the roost > semi-unchecked. ?De-regulation hands the keys to the inmates. ?On the other > hand, micro-managed regulation mucks things up too; as always there's a > balance to be found. Of course, there is balance. But to say that there are only two players, government and corporations, in the game is disingenuous. There are a lot more players than that, including lobbyists, churches, NGOs, non-profits, charities, professional organizations, unions, etc. All of these play a part, and I argue that some of them should play a much bigger part than they do today. And government should play a smaller part, for sure. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 11 20:04:31 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 21:04:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 8:27 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I support this statement. It is wrong to take $100 from a millionaire > to save the life of a starving child. If he wants to donate the $100, > that's super! But to force him at the point of a gun, with threat of > imprisonment if he does not comply, is indeed WRONG, imho. > And that is exactly why 99% of the population regard hardline libertarians as insane. The child is starving because the billionaire and millionaire classes have left almost nothing for the rest of the population. Look around at the destruction of the USA by the wealthy, then tell me about charity again. Unfortunately, no amount of discussion will change your emotionally rooted belief. It is impossible to argue someone out of a position that they were not argued into in the first place. We'll have to agree to differ on this one. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Thu May 12 00:04:36 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 02:04:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] New hope for fusion power? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DCB2414.3050600@libero.it> Il 11/05/2011 19:29, Max More ha scritto: > Perhaps one of the newer projects might succeed where the older one have > not? > > http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/10/6619613-fusion-goes-forward-from-the-fringe It is interesting, but I have more trust in the EMC2 polywell research. Also, there is the Rossi's e-cat device that appear to not raise interest here. Mirco p.s. but I would like their steam-punk tech to work. From max at maxmore.com Thu May 12 01:38:31 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 18:38:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: <20110509110836.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.4c3904ce20.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> References: <20110509110836.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.4c3904ce20.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Max More wrote, > > Your claims of pseudoscience are deeply disappointing and, frankly, > shameful. > > Seriously? You are disappointed in me and I should feel ashamed? What > are you, my mother? No. You mother may have said you should be ashamed of something without a sensible basis (I can guess what), but I?m responding to your repeated condescending, superior attitude. If you had stuck to facts and specific points instead of being condescending, I wouldn?t have been pissed off enough to say that. Instead, you repeatedly accuse those sympathetic to Taubes? writing and paleo ideas (or to some of them) as being pseudoscientific. So, yes, you should be ashamed of repeating throwing accusations of pseudoscience at people who are long-term critical thinkers and understand scientific method, and who have been able to question and change their own long-held views. It would be easy to respond in kind, to attack your motives, and your wholesale dismissal of every part of Taubes? book, among other things, but it wouldn?t be productive. If it were someone else saying this, someone who I don?t know and who doesn?t know me well, it wouldn?t be a big deal. But as it is, it is. This approach is particularly irritating when you make false claims, such as about Atkins? heart attack, but won?t acknowledge error on an easily verifiable point. Constantly accusing those with a differing view from yours of being pseudoscientific (especially when those people are actually rather sophisticated in their understanding of science and methodology) reminds me of those who constantly go on about cognitive biases, as if simply knowing about them (and assuming no one else does) means that they are not subject to them. This kind of approach is symptomatic of a wider problem: people justifying their positions by reference to real or imagined authorities and consensus. That?s a complete failure to use critical rationalism. Consensus and ?the science? is far from an infallible guide: The scientific orthodoxy or scientific consensus previously and wrongly rejected and even ridiculed many advances and truths. These include the Marquis of Worcester's steam engine, Fulton's steamboat of a century ago, Priestly on oxygen, the transatlantic steamboat, the stethoscope, numerous other technical inventions, the causes of infectious disease including Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory, Olive Wendell Holmes and puerperal fever, and Semmelweiss on sanitary techniques, Dr. Joseph Goldberger?s views of the causes of pellagra (nutrition, not infection), Alfred Wegener?s theory of continental drift, and the mistaken authorities on hormone replacement therapy. Of course the great and powerful force of ?the science? have also rightly rejected many ideas. The point is that a good critical rationalist shouldn?t be comfortable leaning heavily on the crutch of consensus or ?the? science. (There is no such thing in most disciplines.) > I am disappointed that nobody here is posting counter-evidence and > alternative scientific studies to refute me. All I am getting is > popular web sites, diet books, and YouTube videos. Is this what passes > for extropian "science" nowadays? Plenty of the websites referred to include numerous scientific studies. One Amazon reviewer noted that ?the nutritional establishment has not offered any serious or substantial rebuttal to this book. Instead, the establishment does what it always does: it tells people to avoid ?pseudo-science? and to trust the ?experts? ? i.e. the FDA, USDA, NAS, et. al.? By the way, don?t assume that I agree with everything in Taubes? books. For instance, I think he should pay attention to the difference between omega-3 and omega-6, and not just to macronutrient ratios. I?m also not convinced that you can lose weight easily just by restricting carbs if that doesn?t also restrict calories?although I do agree that you can eat more on a low-carb diet without *gaining* weight, and that it?s easier to maintain weight loss on a lower-carb diet. I just don?t think you have remotely done him justice. I cannot take the time right now to go through all your dismissals of Taubes? (or your other dismissals of paleo-related views). I will comment only on what seem to me to be very poorly considered remarks about Taubes on thermodynamics. Those comments show no evidence of having read what you claim to have read, or else a determination to ignore what you read. You say: > He questions the whole equation of calories in and calories out. That breaks > basic laws of thermodynamics. How could somebody believe in this while > still believing in physics? How could somebody believe in this while still > going to the gym? It seems that overturning a whole area of science would > have ripple effects that would invalidated other areas of science as well.? And: > So we are ending up rehashing the > basic laws of physics to argue against these pseudoscience claims. As J.S. pointed out, ?Taubes spends two entire chapters in "Why We Get Fat" debunking that specific misinterpretation.? Those chapters are 6 and 7. He also pointed to an amusing and incisive response on this point: http://sparkofreason.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-taubes-and-toilets.html "One of our toilets has been acting balky lately. Last night I went to flush it and nothing happened. I started pondering on the possible causes of this, and had a brief vision of a bunch of Ph.D's standing around, stroking their chins and sagely examining the toilet through glasses perched on the ends of their noses. After a few knowing glances at each other, they pronounced: "From the First Law of Thermodynamics, we know the problem with your toilet is that, at some point in the past, less water came in than left!"" Taubes? also discussed this issue in Good Calories, Bad Calories, especially in Chapter Seventeen, ?Conservation of Energy?, esp. 292-3, 296; also see 309, 348. Nowhere does Taubes? deny the first law of thermodynamics. He accepts that ?change in energy stores = Energy intake minus Energy expenditure.? To emphasize this, see p. 74 of Why We Get Fat, where he says: ??Those who consume more calories than they expend in energy will gain weight.? This is true. It has to be. To get fatter and heavier, we *have* to overeat. We have to consume more calories than we expend. That?s a given. But thermodynamics says nothing about why this happens, *why* we consume more calories than we expend.? What he does argue is that energy expenditure is not just matter of calories burned from exercise. The body can ?waste? additional calories or can use them more efficiently (why do you think people on CR are colder and people over-eating may be sweating?). He also argues that it?s mistaken to assume that an association (between positive caloric balance and weight gain) means that positive caloric balance necessarily causes weight gain. It could be (and he makes a strong case for this) that a change in energy stores causes a positive energy balance. He also disputes the assumption that energy intake and energy expenditure are independent variables. Taubes? presents a tremendous amount of excellent evidence that undermines the simple ?calories in, calories out? view, but you apparently just ignore it all. Sweeping it all aside (no matter how well referenced in the scientific literature) as ?pseudoscience?, is easier than dealing with the specific explanations. > Unless I totally misunderstood Taubes, I believe this is exactly what he > is saying. The whole premise of "Good calories, Bad calories" is that > carb calories make you fat no matter how few you eat, and that fat > calories won't make you fat no matter how many you eat. You totally misunderstood Taubes. I will be unable to respond to this discussion any further this week, and probably not until the middle of next week. --- Max -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 12 01:48:24 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 18:48:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Of course, all the "dangers" are just theory, and poor > theory too, they are designed to trigger the fear of the unknown > ("radioactive contamination of water supply"? Could *you* come up with > a better bugaboo to scare the masses?) How about "no water, because it just dropped through the fractured rock, out of reach of all the wells and root systems the residents were relying on"? From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 12 02:51:55 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 19:51:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DCA39B3.6030202@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCA39B3.6030202@aleph.se> Message-ID: When I first saw this thread subject line, I thought planetary defense was the classic X-Com videogame scenario taken seriously! lol I just saw "The Battle for Los Angeles (a much bigger budget Skyline)" and so have alien invaders on the brain. I must ask, why would defending L.A. be so vital? It might be the one major city we could allow the aliens to have! ; ) I'd like to think the Pentagon will get involved with planetary defense, at least where nasty asteroids are concerned. And "economic defense" from the exploitive and criminal individuals in Wall Street & Corporate America, might also be added to on their list... John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 03:02:39 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 23:02:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/11 John Grigg : > I don't understand why artificial wombs and robo-nannies will put all women > out of work.? What these technologies?will do is free up women to focus much > more on their professional careers, and not pass out from?family chores > related?exhaustion! ### But by then there will be no real work for non-modified humans anyway. lol? Regarding uploads,?I see people living as > "meat/cyborg" real world?transhumans for centuries/millennia, until they > decide to finally?graduate to being an upload. ### I am not so sanguine. Once you have beings living in the 1000X speed fast lane, things will be happening awfully fast from the human perspective. -------- > > I'm dating a very sweet gal right now.? I wonder if she could somehow be an > android?? Naw...? She probably just has the sweet and loving > female?personality gene! ### Where did you find her?! Gratz anyway. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 03:03:29 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 23:03:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 11 May 2011 04:42, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> The remaining 50% of women will be killing themselves trying to get a >> piece of the remaining 10% of assholes who will have a great time, >> briefly. > > Sounds good, I hope to be in time to profit from that window of > opportunity... :-) ### Nah, you sound like a nice guy, no offense intended :) Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 03:08:20 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 23:08:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DCA9951.6000509@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <4DCA9951.6000509@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 10:12 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> >> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Richard Loosemore >> wrote: >> >>> semi-slave workers >> >> ### People who run through the desert, risking being attacked by >> coyotes, border police, crazy anti-immigrant vigilantes, and common >> thugs, only to enthusiastically deliver themselves into slavery? >> >> Either, those Mexicans must be stupid, or else, you have no idea what >> you are talking about. >> >> Which one is it? > > Well, I know they are less stupid than the person who lists those factors as > if they were the only ones that are relevant, in an attempt to insult > someone who does know what those other factors are. ### Deriding somebody's ridiculous rhetoric shouldn't count as a personal insult. It's the rhetoric that's being derided, giving an option to correct it, rather than to dig oneself in deeper. Rafal From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 12 03:18:59 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 20:18:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] what if... In-Reply-To: <00ca01cc0f62$f1b98260$d52c8720$@att.net> References: <00ca01cc0f62$f1b98260$d52c8720$@att.net> Message-ID: This is not a bad thing, by most measures. If you were such a person, you could probably do more good by keeping the money. 2011/5/10 spike : > Thought experiment. > > > > What if? you really are a genuine charitable religious person from some > African hell hole, and you really did come into a cubic buttload of money by > some mysterious means, and you really do want to rob that poor country blind > and get it out of there, and give it away to some random rich western person > who you heard was honest on the internet. > > > > Because of all the silly spam, I think it would be an impossible task.? You > would be forced to keep all that money. From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Thu May 12 03:25:10 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 23:25:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/10 Mr Jones : > > Particularly interesting to me were these few sentences... > >> > >> Yes, I believe that coercion > >> is a prima facie bad. But I also believe that it is prima facie bad > >> for people to fail to get what they deserve, or for their basic needs > >> to be unmet. These moral beliefs, to my mind, have just as firm a > >> standing as my opposition to coercion. I see no reason to believe > >> that in a conflict between them, the opposition to coercion should > >> always trump. > > > > I agree the govt doesn't get to dig into your pocket for any lil' ole > thing > > they want/need/desire. But until people have their basic needs met, > society > > deserves the burden, as a whole. > > I agree with this, except for the "as a whole" part. I think there are > enough generous people, at least in a country like America, to care > for the truly indigent. I would love to think that's true. And if I knew it to be true, I'd be all for govt being shrunk beyond belief. But that'd require more than just meals/shelter for the indigent. We'd still need roads, water, etc. > The problem with government is you end up with > a program like Food Stamps that now serves 35 million people (12% of > the population). These are not all indigent. I know, I was on Food > Stamps myself for a while and I was by no means indigent at the time. > I just qualified for the program. I'm pretty sure I would qualify now. > I am not indigent, but I could steal money from all of you (at least > the Americans who pay taxes) by going down and applying. > In order to qualify for foodstamps, you've got to have a fairly minimal income. A 4 person family (2 adults/2kids) has to have an income under something like $36k/yr to qualify (not certain, but I'm fairly close I believe). That's a pretty low income. Unless you're living in some crime ridden inner-city, with horribly performing school systems, you'd have a hard time getting by. Is this really how we should expect our families to live? > > > Amass as much capital as your greedy heart > > desires, once children aren't starving to death because some company like > > Glencore has found a way to game the system. > > "Stability is to be prized," said Oxfam's David Green. And that is the > last > > thing Glencore wants, as it's instability which is most profitable - for > > those who have the inside knowledge to exploit it. > > I'm not familiar with Glencore, but I probably would not like what > they are doing. If you have an article to read or something, I'd be > glad to comment further. > http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/05/20115723149852120.html > > > Govt provides a kind of balancing against the power of capital (at least > > it's supposed to, when working properly). What we've witnessed the past > > few'ish decades, is what happens when capital rules the roost > > semi-unchecked. De-regulation hands the keys to the inmates. On the > other > > hand, micro-managed regulation mucks things up too; as always there's a > > balance to be found. > > Of course, there is balance. But to say that there are only two > players, government and corporations, in the game is disingenuous. > Fair enough, there are other players. To think that churches, and lobbyists (who lobbies for the poor, honestly, who can they afford?), non-profits etc can take care of the massive amount of underprivileged out there is disingenuous. Even WITH the MILLIONS if not BILLIONS the govt throws towards the poor....they're still poor. You mean to tell me, that if Uncle Sam didn't take a few bucks out of each check...all of a sudden these NGOs, and non-profits would miraculously be able to take care of everyone in need? I don't buy it. Granted I'm a cynic. > There are a lot more players than that, including lobbyists, churches, > NGOs, non-profits, charities, professional organizations, unions, etc. > It's funny you mention unions. Seeing as big $$$'d interests are trying to tear apart any union they can across the land. Unions lead to a strong middle class. Something which I'm fully in support of; as the middle class goes, so goes the country. $$$'d interests however, would have us cut off our nose, to spite our face (starve out the middle class, to increase q1, 2, 3, and 4 profits). Currently in Ohio, there's rumor that the major contractors in town (Few big boys, lil' guys starved out by big guys as of past decade or so) are going to try and get $8/hr back from the Union Carpenters. $16k/yr they want to take from these guys. They're living in 25k sq/ft homes, driving 150k porsches....and they want 16k/yr from the pockets of the guys who broke their backs to get them that porsche/mansion. Again, I'm not a hater of the rich, I'm a hater of the poor (hate they even exist in this day and age). I don't mind someone with $$$ making much more off of a group of individuals he pays well. But pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. When is enough truly enough? Does one need enough to support 100 families to feel satisfied? 1000? 1 million? > All of these play a part, and I argue that some of them should play a > much bigger part than they do today. If the part they play, is up to the challenge at hand, by all means. I don't care who's putting food in the mouthes, or clothes on the back... > And government should play a > smaller part, for sure. Govt as of late (past few+ decades) has been a joke, I agree. They don't need to be in every aspect of our life. I'm no govt fan-boy I assure you. But less than I trust govt...I trust big $$$. I'd love to think my fellow humans were empathic and forward-thinking enough to take care of one another...but that just isn't the case. And while I don't think we're all created equal, I do believe we all deserve an equal chance to do something with our life. Until we provide that equal opportunity, I'll be unhappy with the way things are. I realize this means zero, but can't shake the fact that we're all standing on the shoulder of giants, and as such, should offer everyone else the opportunity to check out the view. ;) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 03:27:37 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 23:27:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Mr Jones wrote: >> and replace it in the popular narrative with >> its polar opposite ("capital rules the roost unchecked"). > > So you're honestly trying to tell me here, that the problem isn't deception > by way of capital's influence, but actually the govt trying to influence > capital? ### Precisely. ?I sure hope this isn't your message, and that I've merely > interpreted it incorrectly. ?So what then...Just let the rich go ahead and > run the show their way? ?After all, they won't do anything to hurt us, > having their eyes only set on quarterly profits and share prices?\ ### The mere existence of a hierarchical, centralized power structure (a.k.a. the government) provides the opportunities for the few to exert influence they would have absolutely no chance of achieving in a situation where decision-making is distributed (a.k.a. the free market). Remember, the government is first of all, its own friend. Then it's a friend of those with time and money to spare to influence it (big activist, big media, big business). You and I are just a little pest. On the other hand, since the workers of this world are the true source of most wealth, in a world where no one can take what you produce against your will, i.e. in a free market, we would be its rulers, through independent exercise of our will in the form of free trade with other free men, not through attempts at coercing others by voting to direct hired gunmen. ----------------- > Make no mistake, I'm no govt fan-boy, certainly not our current crop/system. > ?But to think that $$$ could do a better job is absurd. > ### Money should rule the world. Money made by workers, and kept by workers, rather than made up of thin air by bureaucrats and redistributed to their clients. Rafal From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Thu May 12 03:31:16 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 23:31:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: > > Of course, all the "dangers" are just theory, and poor > > theory too, they are designed to trigger the fear of the unknown > > ("radioactive contamination of water supply"? Could *you* come up with > > a better bugaboo to scare the masses?) > > How about "no water, because it just dropped through the > fractured rock, out of reach of all the wells and root systems > the residents were relying on"? > _______________________________________________ > Or how about,,,,the water isn't radioactive...it's just got a ton of other unnatural nasty shit in it, that makes it just as unhealthy to drink. You honestly expect us to believe that we'd be better off trusting big $$$'d interests to ensure our safety, than the EPA? You're out of your damned mind. Granted, the govt is being bought out daily....but you think cutting out the middle man is going to increase our quality of life? No-way-in-hell. Tell you what...when the OWNER of that natural gas company...lives on a piece of land, using a well, who's water has been breached by said fracking...then we can begin to have a conversation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From reasonerkevin at yahoo.com Thu May 12 03:36:27 2011 From: reasonerkevin at yahoo.com (Kevin Freels) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 20:36:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ________________________________ From: Kelly Anderson To: ExI chat list Sent: Wed, May 11, 2011 2:39:49 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism 2011/5/10 Mr Jones : > Particularly interesting to me were these few sentences... >> >> Yes, I believe that coercion >> is a prima facie bad. But I also believe that it is prima facie bad >> for people to fail to get what they deserve, or for their basic needs >> to be unmet. These moral beliefs, to my mind, have just as firm a >> standing as my opposition to coercion. I see no reason to believe >> that in a conflict between them, the opposition to coercion should >> always trump. > > I agree the govt doesn't get to dig into your pocket for any lil' ole thing > they want/need/desire. But until people have their basic needs met, society > deserves the burden, as a whole. I agree with this, except for the "as a whole" part. I think there are enough generous people, at least in a country like America, to care for the truly indigent. The problem with government is you end up with a program like Food Stamps that now serves 35 million people (12% of the population). These are not all indigent. I know, I was on Food Stamps myself for a while and I was by no means indigent at the time. I just qualified for the program. I'm pretty sure I would qualify now. I am not indigent, but I could steal money from all of you (at least the Americans who pay taxes) by going down and applying. > Amass as much capital as your greedy heart > desires, once children aren't starving to death because some company like > Glencore has found a way to game the system. > "Stability is to be prized," said Oxfam's David Green. And that is the last > thing Glencore wants, as it's instability which is most profitable - for > those who have the inside knowledge to exploit it. I'm not familiar with Glencore, but I probably would not like what they are doing. If you have an article to read or something, I'd be glad to comment further. > Govt provides a kind of balancing against the power of capital (at least > it's supposed to, when working properly). What we've witnessed the past > few'ish decades, is what happens when capital rules the roost > semi-unchecked. De-regulation hands the keys to the inmates. On the other > hand, micro-managed regulation mucks things up too; as always there's a > balance to be found. Of course, there is balance. But to say that there are only two players, government and corporations, in the game is disingenuous. There are a lot more players than that, including lobbyists, churches, NGOs, non-profits, charities, professional organizations, unions, etc. All of these play a part, and I argue that some of them should play a much bigger part than they do today. And government should play a smaller part, for sure. -Kelly I'm curious how you view the future. I'd say we're only 15-20 years away from losing all of our truck drivers to driverless trucks that can drive 24x7. As more work is done by machines eventually there will come a time when there is little that can't be done by machines better and cheaper than a human can do it. We're going to need fewer and fewer people to manage things. How does this work in a libertarian world? Also, please try to convince me that gas prices at the moment and the near destruction of the global economy aren't a direct result of capitalism in it's purest form run rampant without enough regulation. Finally, have you considered the benefit that the wealthy receive over the long term from the redistribution of wealth? If they just kept it all, eventually all the money would pool up on their end and the economy would come to a crawl (just like now). Moving that money out to the lower end where it is spent, moves the economy and at the same time, it always works its way back up to the top in the form of profits - assuming they have something worth buying. It forces corporations to profit by innovating rather than profiting by doing nothing. Innovation is scary, risky, and costs money. When possible, corporations will profit by reducing costs rather than innovating. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 04:02:49 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 00:02:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 4:04 PM, BillK wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 8:27 PM, Kelly Anderson ?wrote: > >> I support this statement. It is wrong to take $100 from a millionaire >> to save the life of a starving child. If he wants to donate the $100, >> that's super! But to force him at the point of a gun, with threat of >> imprisonment if he does not comply, is indeed WRONG, imho. >> > > > And that is exactly why 99% of the population regard hardline > libertarians as insane. > > The child is starving because the billionaire and millionaire classes > have left almost nothing for the rest of the population. Look around > at the destruction of the USA by the wealthy, then tell me about > charity again. > > Unfortunately, no amount of discussion will change your emotionally > rooted belief. It is impossible to argue someone out of a position > that they were not argued into in the first place. ### Well, yeah, if you refuse to think, and prefer to feel, you can't progress. I remember I thought like you did, but I pulled myself up by my intellectual bootstraps (with a kick or two from sages of great wisdom). First of all, you need to calm your emotions, especially rage. It's OK to hate but only *after* analysis, not before. Once you are calm, you can dissect the situation, that is apply a form of reasoning called "disjoint analysis" - looking at all combinations of relevant alternatives. In this care, you should first ask the question: What are moral dilemmas involved here? What is the moral choice? Is it really the case the taxing the millionaire is the *only* way of saving the starving child? If the answer is "Yes", then the initial moral dilemma is valid - you have a choice between saving a life and taking a bit of money that is presumably not needed too much (from the way the problem is posed, the millionaire stands for somebody who is not believed to need the resources he controls). This is the dilemma the leftist manipulators want you to consider, and stop thinking right there. If the answer is "No", then there is no moral dilemma as posed. You can feed the child without taxing the millionaire, so there is no choice between death and taxation. This is the point which your leftist handler hopes to prevent you from considering (by fanning your rage - rage feels nice, but as I said, only after you are done thinking). The next element in the disjoint analysis is asking whether there are any the real-world situations where the answer to the previous question is "Yes". If indeed there are real world situations where you have a true dilemma, you will have a description of the possible conditions where taxation would be justified, provided you think preventing a severe harm (saving a starving child) is more important than refraining from inflicting a minor harm on another person. However, if the answer is "No", then the moral analysis stops here: If there are no real world situations posing a choice between starving children and taxing millionaires, then the whole point is moot, a piece of communist demagoguery and best left behind. So, now ask yourself the question: Is it really true that at any place in the world today there are starving children that can *only* be saved by taxing millionaires? Are there? Even a single one? I can give you the answer: There is not a single starving child in the world than can be saved only by taxing millionaires. Every starving child can be saved by taxing the middle class. In fact, since nowadays there are very few starving children, and the poor (i.e. the -2SD income group) are actually quite rich by historic standards, you could maybe even save the children by taxing the poor. You could also save any single starving child by your own personal charity, since you are a rich Westerner, you could possibly save 5 or 6 children without going hungry yourself. Therefore, there is absolutely no moral case for taxing the rich to save the children. Every claim to the contrary is a lie, a communist obfuscation, a piece of hypocrisy, likely driven by envy. Now, after thinking your way through, you can let your emotions flow. You should hate hypocrites and liars. You should be opposed to envy. You should be an outraged libertarian. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 04:11:02 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 00:11:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/11 Kevin Freels : > > I'm curious how you view the future. ?I'd say we're only 15-20 years away > from losing all of our truck drivers to driverless trucks that can drive > 24x7.?As more work is done by machines eventually there will come a time > when there is little that can't be done by machines better and cheaper than > a human can do it. We're going to need fewer and fewer people to manage > things. How does this work in a libertarian world? ### Easy. A truck driver buys a few shares of the company that owns robotic trucks. Since the wealth generated by the company is enormous, the dividends on those few shares equal his real income. He can retire and enjoy a pleasant, robot-and-capitalism supported life (there are some wrinkles to this analysis, could be discussed with an economically-minded person). -------------------- > Also, please try to convince me that gas prices at the moment and the near > destruction of the global economy aren't a direct result of capitalism in > it's purest form run rampant without enough regulation. ### In Newspeak, right is wrong, and wrong is right. You believe the opposite of the truth, you blame the solution for the problem and see the problem as the solution. Just as intended by those who formed your mind. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 04:22:02 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 00:22:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> Of course, all the "dangers" are just theory, and poor >> theory too, they are designed to trigger the fear of the unknown >> ("radioactive contamination of water supply"? Could *you* come up with >> a better bugaboo to scare the masses?) > > How about "no water, because it just dropped through the > fractured rock, out of reach of all the wells and root systems > the residents were relying on" ### Think about it: What is heavier, water or rock? If you crack rock by injecting steam at immense pressure, with continued external pressure applied, and then release the steam and gas, will you end up with a sponge capable of absorbing water, or will the rock snap back into compact layers? Will water under normal hydrostatic pressure (i.e. the water table, not the injected superheated steam) be able to re-open the pores in the rock? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 04:27:45 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 00:27:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/11 Mr Jones : > Or how about,,,,the water isn't radioactive...it's just got a ton of > other?unnatural?nasty shit in it, that makes it just as unhealthy to drink. ### If new nasty shit shows up in water, you can sue. If the value of the water is lower than the value of the gas, then the gas producer will have enough money to pay you off, and then some. If the harm inflicted by poisoning water (which in this case is purely theoretical) were higher than the benefit to gas consumers, the producer will be bankrupted. Self-regulation in action. ------------------- > You honestly expect us to believe that we'd be better off trusting big $$$'d > interests to ensure our safety, than the EPA? ### After a long and dispassionate analysis I came to hate and despise the EPA with a burning intensity. ------------------ ?You're out of your damned > mind. ?Granted, the govt is being bought out daily....but you think cutting > out the middle man is going to increase our quality of life? > ?No-way-in-hell. > Tell you what...when the OWNER of that natural gas company...lives on a > piece of land, using a well, who's water has been breached by said > fracking...then we can begin to have a conversation. ### I have a well and I hope they would frack where I live. The value of my land would go up. Rafal From atymes at gmail.com Thu May 12 05:04:23 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 22:04:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki >> wrote: >>> Of course, all the "dangers" are just theory, and poor >>> theory too, they are designed to trigger the fear of the unknown >>> ("radioactive contamination of water supply"? Could *you* come up with >>> a better bugaboo to scare the masses?) >> >> How about "no water, because it just dropped through the >> fractured rock, out of reach of all the wells and root systems >> the residents were relying on" > > ### Think about it: What is heavier, water or rock? If you crack rock > by injecting steam at immense pressure, with continued external > pressure applied, and then release the steam and gas, will you end up > with a sponge capable of absorbing water, or will the rock snap back > into compact layers? A sponge. Happens all the time in canyons (this being how they are formed). Water is very good at seeping into these cracks. And then there's the issue of what lies below the cracked rock, and how much water that can absorb. From steinberg.will at gmail.com Thu May 12 05:50:51 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 00:50:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > 2011/5/11 Mr Jones : > ### If new nasty shit shows up in water, you can sue. If the value of > the water is lower than the value of the gas, then the gas producer > will have enough money to pay you off, and then some. If the harm > inflicted by poisoning water (which in this case is purely > theoretical) were higher than the benefit to gas consumers, the > producer will be bankrupted. > > Self-regulation in action. > You live in a fantasy world. Money does not equal quality of life. Affected people cannot afford to sue companies or are too disillusioned. Not everyone knows how to do perfect, economic cost-benefit analysis. Does it even apply? The details of every transaction are obscured; the people are constantly kept out of the loop and in debt. They do not want dirty money to keep drinking water. They are angry. These are insidious societal problems that do not go away, only continue to cause damage as they become less noticeable under a mass of red tape. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 06:53:56 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 02:53:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:04 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >>> How about "no water, because it just dropped through the >>> fractured rock, out of reach of all the wells and root systems >>> the residents were relying on" >> >> ### Think about it: What is heavier, water or rock? If you crack rock >> by injecting steam at immense pressure, with continued external >> pressure applied, and then release the steam and gas, will you end up >> with a sponge capable of absorbing water, or will the rock snap back >> into compact layers? > > A sponge. ?Happens all the time in canyons (this being how they > are formed). ?Water is very good at seeping into these cracks. ### You know the notion of the "water table"? Water cannot seep *under* the water table, unless there is a convective process moving is sideways and up, or if there is subduction (which is negligible over non-geological timescales). Canyons are *above* water table, water runs from precipitation over or through rocks until it reaches the water table or surface water reservoir. To help you to understand the notion, assume that there is a lake under the ground, the water table. The way you can drain it is to find a way for it to flow down. Fluffing up the bottom (=frakking) does not usually change the water level unless you open a connection to a lower stratum capable of absorbing water, and that is a quite rare situation. You are talking then about the so-called "perched water table", too uncommon to be an issue. ------------------ > > And then there's the issue of what lies below the cracked rock, and > how much water that can absorb. ### Generally, there is nothing there that can absorb water in any appreciable amounts. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 07:02:15 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 03:02:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Will Steinberg wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> 2011/5/11 Mr Jones : >> ### If new nasty shit shows up in water, you can sue. If the value of >> the water is lower than the value of the gas, then the gas producer >> will have enough money to pay you off, and then some. If the harm >> inflicted by poisoning water (which in this case is purely >> theoretical) were higher than the benefit to gas consumers, the >> producer will be bankrupted. >> >> Self-regulation in action. >> > > You live in a fantasy world. > > Money does not equal quality of life. ?Affected people cannot afford > to sue companies or are too disillusioned. ?Not everyone knows how to > do perfect, economic cost-benefit analysis. ?Does it even apply? ?The > details of every transaction are obscured; the people are constantly > kept out of the loop and in debt. ?They do not want dirty money to > keep drinking water. ?They are angry. ?These are insidious societal > problems that do not go away, only continue to cause damage as they > become less noticeable under a mass of red tape. ### You live in a fantasy world. Money can buy all the water you need. Affected people find it very easy to sue everybody and his uncle, in humongous class-action lawsuits that give undue advantage to the claimants, not the defending businesses. Only the court experts need to make a cost-benefit analysis. Cost benefit analysis is the only valid consideration, everywhere. People are keeping themselves out of the loop by relying on government bureaucrats to do what they need to do themselves. Those in debt usually deserve it, and I'd say, screw them. If they don't want just compensation, screw them too, luddites should be eradicated. The most insidious social problem is violence, and its most egregious form is the government. Rafal From anders at aleph.se Thu May 12 07:12:34 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 10:12:34 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCA39B3.6030202@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DCB8862.6020003@aleph.se> John Grigg wrote: > I'd like to think the Pentagon will get involved with planetary > defense, at least where nasty asteroids are concerned. And "economic > defense" from the exploitive and criminal individuals in Wall Street & > Corporate America, might also be added to on their list... It is fun to watch the different cotteries in this community. There is a laser gang, thinking about how to ablate asteroids. Then there is the kinetic impact gang and the gravity tractor gang. And then there is the nuke gang, running hydrocode simulations of big explosions. You can guess who have ties to military defense labs. While asteroid protection might look like a good military project (long-term, costly, requires a big integrated organisation, never-ending struggle) it also has the downside of being very different from the rest of military operation. It is not anything like an army, navy or airforce operation - there are few possibilities for using the system for anything in the other military branches, and their kit is mostly irrelevant to stopping a NEO. Building a IPBM - an interplanetary ballistic missile - is more about the launch system than the warheads, plus understanding some tricky timing in when to detonate the warheads (you want the optimal standoff distance). You need the experts on nukes, but also plenty of space engineers, and astrophysicists. Wall Street intervention has tried in Kazakhstan, where president Nazurbayev sent businessmen "profiteers" to re-education camps. Strangely the economy took a nosedive. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu May 12 07:30:48 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 03:30:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rafal Smigrodzki Date: Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:30 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? To: Adrian Tymes On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:08 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:53 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> ### You know the notion of the "water table"? Water cannot seep >> *under* the water table > > Yes. ?As was pointed out by someone else: cracking the rocks > lowers the water table, by cracking the thing that keeps the water > table at its previous elevation. If you claim that a substantial amount of water can "seep" down, you have to explain what substance is being displaced by the water. Above the water table the displaced substance is air. Below the water table (by definition) the rock is saturated. Not a drop of water can seep in there no matter how finely you chop up the rock (special considerations apply to rocks that react with water, but these are not found in sedimentary layers), unless you substantially and permanently increase the rock porosity. Don't you get it? Of course, since you remove a bit of matter from the depths (after all, you are mining gas), there will be a bit extra space - but the amount of water needed to fill it in will not exceed the amount of gas pumped, in fact it should be substantially less due to spontaneous compaction of rock under pressure. Since precipitation is orders of magnitude higher than any conceivable intensity of gas pumping, this is never going to be an issue. Generally, there are no new issues related to fracking and its environmental impact. Coal mining, oil mining, metal mining - all these present similar externality challenges, none of which requires governmental intervention, and none of which would justify interference with these productive activities. ------------------- > >> Fluffing up the bottom (=frakking) does not >> usually change the water level unless you open a connection to a lower >> stratum capable of absorbing water, and that is a quite rare >> situation. > > The rarity of that needs to be pointed out in these cases. ?Some > water will slip into the cracks - but not much, and if it stays there, > the water table is not significantly impacted. ?But only if it does, > in fact, stay there and go no further. ### Yes, exactly. It doesn't have anywhere to go. Rafal -- Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD Chief Clinical Officer, Gencia Corporation 706 B Forest St. Charlottesville, VA 22903 tel: (434) 295-4800 fax: (434) 295-4951 This electronic message transmission contains information from the biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail (fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately. From js_exi at gnolls.org Thu May 12 07:41:07 2011 From: js_exi at gnolls.org (J. Stanton) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 00:41:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Calories in/out, grains (of starch), and stable isotope analysis Message-ID: <4DCB8F13.3000201@gnolls.org> [Resending due to the mysterious post-eater that strikes whenever I haven't said anything for several days. Expect an earlier-dated duplicate of this to show up 6-8 weeks hence, if the past is any guide.] The problem with invoking "calories in, calories out" is that the two quantities aren't independent. Nor is a calorie a calorie. In this article, I walk through an excellent, tightly controlled study showing that isocaloric meals dramatically differ in their effects on satiety, metabolic markers, and subsequent calorie intake. Specifically, high-carb, low-fat, low-protein meals lead to substantially greater hunger and subsequent caloric intake than lower-carb, higher-fat, higher-protein meals. http://www.gnolls.org/2052/how-heart-healthy-whole-grains-make-us-fat/ If you'd like to go through the entire study yourself, it's here: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/103/3/e26 Next up: Since the "when did pre-agricultural humans eat" subject has come up a couple times recently, I believe this is relevant. This paper has been heavily misinterpreted by the New York Times (and countless other pop-sci treatments) to claim that pre-agricultural humans relied upon cereal grains: "Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing" http://www.pnas.org/content/107/44/18815.full Note that of the nine detected plant remains, only one is a grain -- of a bunchgrass, not of any plant subsequently cultivated by humans. All the others are roots and rhizomes, plus one sedge seed. See this table: http://www.pnas.org/content/107/44/18815/T1.expansion.html It is apparently quite popular to see references in the scientific literature to "starch grains" and mistake that to mean "cereal grains". Also there is the evidence of stable isotope analysis: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology, 2009, 251-257, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-9699-0_20 Stable Isotope Evidence for European Upper Paleolithic Human Diets Michael P. Richards http://www.springerlink.com/content/n2871q7u63170045/ "This paper presents the published and unpublished stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values for 36 European Upper Paleolithic humans from 20 sites. The isotope data were measured to determine the sources of dietary protein in Upper Paleolithic diets; **** the evidence indicates that animal, not plant, protein was the dominant protein source for all of the humans measured. **** Interestingly, the isotope evidence shows that aquatic (marine and freshwater) foods are important in the diets of a number of individuals throughout this period." Again, Ohalo II provides the first evidence of significant grain consumption, ~18 Kya...and agriculture didn't spread beyond a small region of the Middle East until thousands of years after its initial invention ~12 Kya. JS http://www.gnolls.org From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 12 08:25:13 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 09:25:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### You live in a fantasy world. Money can buy all the water you need. > Affected people find it very easy to sue everybody and his uncle, in > humongous class-action lawsuits that give undue advantage to the > claimants, not the defending businesses. Only the court experts need > to make a cost-benefit analysis. Cost benefit analysis is the only > valid consideration, everywhere. People are keeping themselves out of > the loop by relying on government bureaucrats to do what they need to > do themselves. Those in debt usually deserve it, and I'd say, screw > them. If they don't want just compensation, screw them too, luddites > should be eradicated. The most insidious social problem is violence, > and its most egregious form is the government. > > Nice to know that the 44 million surviving on food stamps deserve it because it is their own fault. I guess you don't have to worry about the problem now. Half of those 44 million are children though, so the US should probably scrap the child labour laws so the kids can stop lazing around and get a job to support themselves. Perhaps the US should pay for their plane tickets to China, where all the jobs are? It is a great comfort to know that anybody that is struggling to survive deserves their situation. I'm just jetting off to my private island, but I'll ask my secretary to send 100 dollars to Save the Children, just so I can claim to be giving to charity. (It's tax deductible as well, which helps. Not that I pay much tax anyway, of course. Wink, wink). BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 12 15:49:10 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 08:49:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Tom Nowell wrote: snip >> AGI & nanotech are largely unknowns snip > > And then it might be too late. snip Well stated. > >> Wars - people are aware, but the level of compassion fatigue is huge. >> Given ?that you can't uninvent modern war (given the tens of millions of >> AK-47 ?derivatives in Africa, and that the Lord's Resistance Army wages war >> by kidnapping children, getting them drunk and giving them machetes), that >> interventions cost money and the lives of intervening soldiers, and that >> most of them occur far away from the developed world, it is very hard to get >> people to care. There are communities working on reducing warfare, but it's >> a hard task. Especially when you don't understand the ecological root cause of war. > 100 years of world cuisine: http://100yearsofworldcuisine.com/ (this > visualisation made my day today) Ugh. > I doubt any xrisk is going to be a simple task. Wars are likely among the > hardest, since they are motivated by pretty deep seated issues - not just > human emotions but economics, memetics and coordination issues. See "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War" for my view on the order in which these are evoked and why. I have been talking about the evolutionary origin of wars for a long time, http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2009-July/052083.html and there has been virtually no feedback. I can't decide if it is just too obvious, or way to deep for this mailing list. > But they are > also coordinated activities (that is why they are so dangerous) and that > means we can perhaps influence their coordination too. I suspect this isn't going to help. Evolution has wired in turning up the gain on a class of memes, xenophobic ones, and I can't see where one kind of xenophobic meme is going to be any better than another kind. Better we keep the mechanism switched off. > And since wars tend > to make other GCRs and xrisks worse or possibly trigger them they are a > crucial part of the anti-xrisk agenda. Agreed. Which is why keeping the economic growth above the population growth is key. It keeps the psychological mechanisms leading to war in the "off" state. > Pinker's observation on the reduction of violence is actually quite > cheering. We are making things safer in one sense (average violence > amplitude is going down), I argue that this is a simple consequence of low population growth combined with modest economic growth in the places where violence is down. Violent talk and then violent behavior will come back rapidly in declining economic conditions. I think you can see the early phases of that in the US. > although the scale limits (once wars were limited > by geography) has disappeared. > >> Climate change - snip > > It confuses the hell out of the (honest) experts too. Being in touch with > the climate community around Oxford has made me realize 1) the physical part > of the science is pretty solid, 2) the data is messy anyway and prediction > is largely a fool's game, and 3) the all-important dynamics of > geosystem-human system interaction is not understood well at all. Clearly stated and accurate. For example, with nanotech plants that made diamond or even polyethylene we could have a crisis in a decade of too little CO2 in the atmosphere. > So most > claims about climate and climate policy are based on faulty inputs. The best > approach is likely to push *hard* on tech development here - we want to get > off fossil anyway, solar power and other forms of local power production are > good for resilience, low-energy computing is needed for uploading, and so > on. Ground solar currently has an energy payback time of 2-4 years. Space based looks like under two months. > Saving the world is no picnic. But it feels pretty rewarding. Hmm. I might use other terms. Keith > Anders Sandberg, > Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy > Faculty Oxford University > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Thu May 12 17:49:39 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 10:49:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> Message-ID: <005001cc10cc$f7c69060$e753b120$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Keith Henson >...For example, with nanotech plants that made diamond or even polyethylene we could have a crisis in a decade of too little CO2 in the atmosphere... Keith Keith that wouldn't be a crisis. Reasoning: it's only a crisis if there are no rich people to blame and sue. If nanotech devours the CO2, then there are plenty of deep pockets defendants on whom to pin every incident of bad weather, every drought and flood, every heat wave and killer freeze. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 12 18:08:00 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 11:08:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: I think people talking about gas extraction from tight shale and it's potential to contaminate water need to understand how the process works. Looks it up before you make authoritative statements about it. Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 12 18:24:24 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 11:24:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <005001cc10cc$f7c69060$e753b120$@att.net> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <005001cc10cc$f7c69060$e753b120$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 10:49 AM, spike wrote: > >>... On Behalf Of Keith Henson > >>...For example, with nanotech plants that made diamond or even polyethylene > we could have a crisis in a decade of too little CO2 in the atmosphere... > Keith > > Keith that wouldn't be a crisis. ?Reasoning: it's only a crisis if there are > no rich people to blame and sue. ?If nanotech devours the CO2, then there > are plenty of deep pockets defendants on whom to pin every incident of bad > weather, every drought and flood, every heat wave and killer freeze. Spike, that's a point. Of course, if the CO2 level when low enough, all the people without nanotech food synthesizers would starve and not be there to sue anyone. Keith From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 12 18:50:26 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 20:50:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: <20110512185026.GI23560@leitl.org> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 11:08:00AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > I think people talking about gas extraction from tight shale and it's > potential to contaminate water need to understand how the process > works. France outlawed fracking today. Germany should follow up soon enough, though they make noises about testing, and such. > Looks it up before you make authoritative statements about it. I know that one of the components of fracking fluid is diesel oil, which won't fly anywhere in Europe. It's dead, Jim. From steinberg.will at gmail.com Thu May 12 19:14:06 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 14:14:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <20110512185026.GI23560@leitl.org> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <20110512185026.GI23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: These videos, unless they are fake/spin/psyops, are pretty good examples of why the frack is bad. http://youtu.be/qYJj-1jNOxE http://youtu.be/U01EK76Sy4A http://youtu.be/d6G6Ap-mF0k From spike66 at att.net Thu May 12 19:26:12 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 12:26:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] now we hafta fight these guys too? Message-ID: <001e01cc10da$74b0f1d0$5e12d570$@att.net> This whole story is irony wrapped in comedy, packed inside a paradox: Green Smoke and Mirrors? Vatican Weighs in on Climate Change http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/11/green-smoke-mirrors-vatican-weighs -climate-change/ Climate science hipsters, is this helping or harming? I just find it funny that the same guy who encourages his followers to breed without constraint is so concerned about glaciers. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu May 12 20:25:07 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 13:25:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] what are these? Message-ID: <004301cc10e2$b004f530$100edf90$@att.net> If we use up the word "slave" to describe illegal immigrant farm labor, what word to we use to describe these guys? http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/12/satellite-images-of-north-korea-prison- camps-find-200000-living-as-slaves/?utm_source=The+Harvest+Is+Bountiful &utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=05e5051c4e-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 12 22:05:44 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:05:44 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/11 John Grigg : > This is a very interesting thread and I had fun responding... Glad you're having fun John. It really is fascinating to delve into the future of human and transhuman sexuality. It's at least as fun as the more common fantasy of sex in weightlessness. For the record, I don't think weightless sex is going to be as much fun as some people seem to think it's going to be... From the attempts made on the Zero G plane, it looks really, really difficult... Pole vaulting looks kind of fun, but it looks hard too. > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:09 PM, Kelly Anderson > wrote: >> >> 2011/5/6 salvatore micheal / sam iam : >> >> >> Agreed. When the divorce rate is 50%, and a robot becomes the most >> natural and safe 'rebound' relationship, it could get really high. I >> think mostly it depends on whether women become less militant in the >> future. If women have to compete with robots, will it improve the >> women? Men are treated so shabbily in many relationships that robots >> make a pretty reasonable alternative to further abuse. With the >> continued growth of nasty personality disorders, I think this could >> become pretty common. > > You bring up a fascinating point.? But just as we?guys have our viewpoints, > women have their own "war stories" to share and emotional scars to reveal. I would never disagree with this. I think assholes are fairly evenly distributed across the sexes. > I do think?many?women have gotten harshly?demanding, and I have seen a?some > ugly?cases up close. The interesting thing is that since the 70s, it has become vogue for women to be assholes, whereas in the majority of human history, only men were able to be assholes in primary relationships. I just wish it had been the other way around, meaning that everybody just stopped being ass holes. > I?realize many women want the?handsome and successful > alpha male type, and so when they decide to "settle" for a beta male because > that's what they can get, they develop great resentment, and take it out on > the poor guy that they married. And are supported in their feelings by the uber-feminist "all sex, even inside of marriage, is rape" crowd. > I do think the scenario you envision is very eye-opening.? I could see at > first men with female androids being seen as eccentric losers, but then as > the?machines get very sophisticated in terms of personality & > intelligence,?and with physical?beauty to rival the most?gorgeous flesh and > blood women, that they will become accepted and then even be?seen as a sign > of wealth and status.? I suppose when the cost comes down to the area of a > present-day luxury car, they will become relatively commonplace. Howard Stern, the shock jock, once said he had sex with a RealDoll provided to him. He described it as the best sex he ever had. While I doubt this was actually the truth, he probably did have a pretty good time. It is almost a certainty that people's attitudes about this sort of thing will evolve and change over time. Today, it seems somewhat mainstream for a woman to have a vibrator. They have half hour shows for such things on the shopping network late at night. So they must sell a butt load of this stuff. I don't think men are as open to talking in general, and certainly not about their sex toys. But overall sales will act as a surrogate for talking in determining when things have reached a level of acceptance. How abnormal can porn be when it's a 15 billion dollar industry with AT&T being a major player in the market? Yet most people still don't talk about it openly, because it's a fairly private thing. > I could?envision late 21st century?teenage/college age boys mocking each > other by?saying, "you have only have?had sex with androids!"? And at least > for young men, having sex with real women will probably be seen as a way to > score points with their peers and be "real men."? But as men age and find > themselves nursing their emotional wounds, beautiful and highly?intelligent > female androids may become a popular method?for getting their needs for > companionship met. Good points. Also, men seem to like variety and probably have more sex drive as a gender (YMMV). Men's needs are easier to meet with an android. For a woman to be satisfied, the android would have to listen attentively for hours on end to the same story they just heard about yesterday. If I could buy an android to do my listening for me, and just relate the new information to me, it would be a HUGE time saver. I don't really NEED to hear the same story ten times, but the women I have been with seem to need to tell their stories many times. > But then again, even a beautiful female android with human level/type > intelligence might not fully meet the needs of a man.? It might be that > a?machine partner who is *programmed* to be very understanding and seemingly > loving, might seem very unreal and superficial to flesh and blood men. > Human-style emotional?complexity and unpredictability, even harshness and > shortcomings, might up to a point be desired.? I suppose that could be > programmed in, but should we? I think it would be inappropriate to create a sexbot with (to borrow from Douglas Adams) a brain the size of a planet. At least for men. If you look at human sexuality with any degree of science, you find that there is a huge range of behaviors that we look for. From vampiric sex, to S&M, to exhibitionism, to prostitution, and so on and so on. If you could create a sexbot that enjoyed taking a beating, for example, then I think you would find a market for that. At first this is counter intuitive, but a neural network is just responsive to pain and ecstasy. Just because evolution found that wiring "pain" from a beating to the part of the brain that processes "pain", doesn't mean that an android has to be wired the same way. You could wire it so that it found such interaction to be pleasure, and it would go to some length to seek that pleasure. It sounds sick, but it's just crossing the wires. Is it immoral to build punching bags? Will the punching bags of tomorrow get pleasure from being hit harder? It's just a few steps down that same road, so I think we'll get there. >> > what will be the legal consequences? (such as with gay marriage and >> > spousal >> > rights) >> > ?as an example, will we be able to marry our robot gfs/studs? will they >> > have >> > entitlement rights? > > I think when an android partner has human level intelligence & > self-awareness, you will see machine civil liberties becoming a major > issue.?? Is it right for?even the manufacturing?company to program?their > android with human level (or even higher)?intelligence to love/be loyal > to?the human partner who bought it?? And should that android have a mind > that allows it to drift away from/desert a human partner, when things just > "don't work out?" That's why I don't anticipate a high level of intelligence in companion robots, ever. Unless you are a lab partner, not a sex partner. Why create problems for yourself? Just create a sexual being that lives for sex? If you have doubts that such a being could be happy, just visit the bonobos at the zoo, if your zoo can take it. :-) >> Health insurance for my robot partner? :-) ?Eventually, if we achieve >> AGI, I think it has to happen. Otherwise, we'll just cease to be of >> any importance sooner. >> >> > what will be the social impacts of robot partners??(such as projected by >> > the >> > movie AI?) The limit to your thinking here is that one robot (or one brain) has to perform all the functions. It's said that men want a whore in bed, a chef in the kitchen, a maid to take care of the house, and occasionally someone to talk to, etc. Why not have multiple AGIs hosted in the same body, and switch from one to another as the need arises. I want my partner to be HAPPY to take out the garbage when it's time to do that, and HAPPY to go to bed, and HAPPY to watch the Super Bowl or Star Trek with me. Perhaps one brain can't be HAPPY at ALL those things, so put multiple AGIs in one body, and problem solved. > I suppose it will go from having an android you never have coming out of the > house with you, to it being seen as an equal that you share your life with, > and then (among a "liberated" and very advanced android) a point may come > where an upgradable/very advanced?android may view it's human partner as > inferior, but still stay with him/her out of a sense of loyalty and > compassion.? I can envision advanced androids divorcing their human partners > to share their lives with those equal to them, i.e., other androids! > But?there will be?posthumans/former humans?who?will?be worthy partners for > them. An android that is a thousand times smarter than you probably would not find you an interesting partner. Perhaps this can be fixed by upgrading the human. I dunno. > I think marriage will also morph over time.? But I?suspect reproductive sex, > even among near-immortals, will not end over time, because mature nanotech > and space travel & colonization?(even if just within our own solar system) > will lead to expanding populations.? And I?believe many people will not > choose (at least for the first several centuries of their lifespan) to be > uploads. Only time will tell. I don't know what to base such a guess on. I guess that we do have a "need" to raise children, but I see no need for those children to necessarily be biological. > I suspect human exploitation will always exist, and android exploitation > will be added to the list of crimes.? There will be some who will enjoy > using/hurting a self-aware and highly?intelligent?artificial mind. But what if you create a highly intelligent artificial mind that LIKES being treated that way? Don't bind your thinking with evolutionary machinery. We will be the intelligent designers. If an android likes being treated in a particular way, then it isn't abuse to treat them that way. If they LIKE picking strawberries, and are fulfilled by picking strawberries, then it isn't exploitation for them to be employed as strawberry pickers. Design the future, don't evolve it. Why shouldn't an android get an orgasm when it picks an especially nice strawberry? :-) >> An aside... If I rented out a group of RealDolls, would that be a >> brothel? Would it be illegal? Should it be illegal? Is sex with toys >> for money a decent business model? Sad that nobody tried answering this question... >> > this increased dependency on robot-sex will tend to isolate humans from >> > each >> > other (just as the internet has a 'reversing effect' of actually >> > isolating >> > us - instead of 'bringing us together' as it could/should) > > I tend to agree with you about the isolation aspect of things.? But in time > as fully self-aware and intelligent androids are developed, the sense of > mechanical masturbation and loneliness will hopefully leave such couples. Yes. > And yet, I could easily envision human beings?feeling a huge gulf between > themselves and their very intelligent and self-aware?android partners.? It > might be far worse than those who marry mail order brides from > very?different cultures. Again, think how you would design the perfect sex partner. You wouldn't put a huge brain into such a creature, would you? If you would, I think that's kind of cruel. Think Marvin or the Elevators in Adam's books. That is cruelty. >> I think the Internet brings us together in silos of common interest, >> but tears us apart in the real world. My girlfriend has no interest in >> transhumanism, for example. > > I have always had?a similar?problem with girlfriends... Trekkies and gamers occasionally get lucky, and find a trekkie or gamer girlfriend, but not often in my experience... >> > it's possible there might be 'rogue robots' performing sex-crimes (such >> > as >> > illustrated in Robot Maid) - how do we deal with that? >> >> Initially, they'll be taken apart. Then the anti capital punishment >> people will jump in as they gain human rights. It's going to be a >> bumpy ride for sure. > > There have already been studies using?robots capable of learning, that show > some robots willing to share, while others actually lie and are selfish. > And so this will only get worse as the decades go by... Or we'll figure it out, and program them better. See my posts on "raising" robot children. >> > when we embrace robot gfs/studs as lovers, we create a Huge set of >> > problems >> > society must face in the process >> >> We also potentially solve a huge set of problems. These things are >> tools, to be used for good and evil, just like any other tool. I think >> there could be a pretty big reduction of rape in the future as >> suitable alternatives and ubiquitous surveillance develop. > > I think rape is done as a hurtful?power trip over other sentients, and so I > don't think there will be a huge reduction in rapes by using androids as > surrogates for such urges.? Surveillance tech may do a vastly better job at > cracking down on this crime. If there is a continuous video feed covering a broad spectrum from a jogger's vicinity to a remote location, I suspect jogging down the Provo River Trail would get much safer, very quickly. I think you could design an android that LIKED being a rape victim, but also LIKED acting like it didn't want to be a rape victim. In other words, one that a rapist would enjoy going after, but who wasn't damaged in the process. It's all about how you wire up the reward system. There are similar issues in VR, but this email is getting longish. > This will be a touchy subject when the time comes and the technology > matures, but I see it as becoming popular.? I can envision teledildonic pods > on every major warship and distant military base. I predict this as the FIRST place you will see this implemented well. Take as a precursor to this that the first documented case of the spread of an STD from one man to another through a sex doll occurred on a naval vessel. In WWII, when we wouldn't talk about sex in the US, the US Army was showing STD movies to GIs. The armed forces have a real interest in taking the lead in these areas. >> Or bring us closer when we have to be apart. Makes long distance >> relationships more doable. > > A good point!? But a colonist on Neptune, with a wife on Earth, will have to > deal with quite a time lag in terms of > signals that link?teledildonic devices. If I send my "sexual state" from Neptune to Earth to have sex with my wife through an android surrogate, and the experience is sent back to me to enjoy in a similar fashion, then the several light hour flight time might be somewhat overcome. Think of it as Tivo for sex. :-) >> > whether the robots/dolls/studs will actually be capable of feelings/love >> > is >> > a Whole 'nother issue indeed.. >> >> Not initially, but eventually, it seems inevitable. > > Yes, I agree.? I wonder to what extent their emotional range will be similar > to ours?? And will an android be more emotionally healthy than the typical > "normal"?human?? I sure hope so... Again, don't think of your android sex partner as a full human, or even a full intelligence, but one optimized for the purpose. This is a software issue, not a hardware issue. Your wife might not feel so "cheated upon" if you had sex with a brainless android... There may be some women today who would feel less cheated on if their husband visited a prostitute, rather than having a girlfriend on the side... maybe. I'm stretching here. >> > if a robot can feel love, can we prohibit marriage / more permanent >> > relationships? Why is love the key here anyway? Our society links love and marriage in a way that is pretty new. Historically, people married for a variety of reasons, most of which did not really involve love, at least not at the beginning. If people can adapt to arranged marriages, surely designed surrogates would be able to do the same. Also, you can turn off a surrogate when you aren't using it. Go to sleep now dear... we'll have sex in the "morning"... :-) I don't think turning off an AGI is any more dishonorable than sending your kids to bed at night. Remember, the future is stranger than you think. > Hey, I heard a story about a guy who wants to marry his sports car! lol > There is controversy now about?gays marrying, and in time it will continue > regarding artificial intelligences, aliens, and genetically?uplifted > animals. Stranger than you think... :-) >> I agree. I'm inclined to give them as many rights as we can up front, >> so that when we're the laggards, they'll still extend those rights >> back to us! > > A very good point!? I can imagine the time when an android rebukes a fellow > android by saying, "you are in a relationship with a genetically mainline > and non-upgraded human?!"? "Yuck!!!"? We humans will have to go > transhuman/posthuman pretty fast to be worthy partners for the > androids/artificial intelligences. lol Yes, if a full partner is where we go with this. > I was raised Mormon, and I have thought of writing a science fiction/fantasy > short story about a spirit in the Mormon "pre-mortal life," who finds out > that?instead of going down to Earth to be born to a human woman, he is going > to be "born" as an artificial intelligence. Let's start a new thread on this... I have lots of Mormon/transhumanist/scifi ideas... >> > i personally believe awareness is equivalent to 'having a soul' and >> > makes >> > the difference between machine and 'human'. > > > > > But in time that difference will dissolve away. As we are left in the dust bin of history, sure. :-) >> Me too, but I am open to the idea that it is perhaps because there is >> not yet a better alternative. Once a better alternative does exist in >> the real world, it becomes a trickier proposition. And it goes both >> ways. Lots of women will trade in their real men for robots too. > > I can envision future husbands lovingly (or not so lovingly) saying to their > wives, "you better behave or I will trade you in for an android model!" lol > And yes, there will be many women who have been repeatedly burned by men who > will be headed to the nearest android dealership when they have the > chance...? Men are often stereotyped as being the ones who prize physical > beauty in the opposite sex, but I know many women value it just as much.? A > male android with the features of the typical romantic novel bookcover > showing the?handsome Scotsman will be a big seller! It will be harder to create an android that will satisfy women, because their needs are broader. Many men would be fairly satisfied with a sexbot and a chefbot... forget the rest. > Yes, the future Bill Gates or Larry Ellison of android companions is > probably in grade school right now... I would bet so, probably grade school in Japan though. :-) Human women are magical to human men because human men are evolved to think so (and vice-versa). As we unravel the whys and wherefores of this, I think we can create androids that will be just as attractive as the real thing. > I'm dating a very sweet gal right now.? I wonder if she could somehow be an > android?? Naw...? She probably just has the sweet and loving > female?personality gene! Good for you John. That is definitely the best thing going today!!! Tomorrow, who knows? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 12 22:09:13 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:09:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] what are these? In-Reply-To: <004301cc10e2$b004f530$100edf90$@att.net> References: <004301cc10e2$b004f530$100edf90$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/12 spike : > If we use up the word ?slave? to describe illegal immigrant farm labor, what > word to we use to describe these guys? > > > > http://singularityhub.com/2011/05/12/satellite-images-of-north-korea-prison-camps-find-200000-living-as-slaves/?utm_source=The+Harvest+Is+Bountiful&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=05e5051c4e-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN > Slaves seems like a good word to me. You need read nothing aside from this article to know that good government REALLY matters. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 12 22:12:24 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:12:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] now we hafta fight these guys too? In-Reply-To: <001e01cc10da$74b0f1d0$5e12d570$@att.net> References: <001e01cc10da$74b0f1d0$5e12d570$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/12 spike : > This whole story is irony wrapped in comedy, packed inside a paradox: Totally agree with you on that. > Green Smoke and Mirrors? Vatican Weighs in on Climate Change > > http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/11/green-smoke-mirrors-vatican-weighs-climate-change/ > > Climate science hipsters, is this helping or harming?? I just find it funny > that the same guy who encourages his followers to breed without constraint > is so concerned about glaciers. The church confused about science? That could never happen. Of course, when the science is this confusing... one can hardly blame them. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 12 22:17:13 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:17:13 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DC343CA.4040504@aleph.se> References: <4DC29A71.7070408@aleph.se> <4DC343CA.4040504@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 6:41 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> Some people seem more than willing to spend countless trillions of >> dollars resolving or just mitigating global warming. Compare almost >> any risk to humanity to global warming in terms of a cost risk >> analysis, and you can make a really good case for addressing it (vs. >> global warming). It's a powerful way to make your point, I think. > > I doubt it makes my point rhetorically well, remember that most people are > pretty irrational when it comes to global warming :-) But enough are irrational in the direction that helps your point... :-) > Actually, I think the key issue is that climate change is a bit like a > Christmas tree: you can decorate it with whatever ideological, political or > economical decorations you want. If you want to dress it up in socialism, > free markets, conservative values or eurobureaucracy, you can do it. Compare > that to an asteroid defense program. Much fewer decorations that fit. You > can't really make it "about" social equality or your favorite economic tool. > This might be good news for the feasibility of actually doing something but > there are going to be much less interest in spending (other peoples) money > on it. You can make it about survival, and that is a prerequisite to arguing about all the other things... :-) >> What do the mathematical models you use have to say about >> climate change, and how does the response to that compare to the >> response to asteroid detection and mitigation? > > My models have nothing directly to say about climate change, except that the > statistics of drought disasters *is* worth worrying about - a very flat > power law with a few very deadly cases. If climate change increases the > frequency of droughts or equivalent agricultural problems then a lot of > people will be in trouble. Asteroids actually have a very nice x^-6 power > law - very rare big events. Just going from my data I should clearly talk > climate change at the conference :-) (actually, the real threat in that > analysis is wars and democides, so I should be talking about how to defang > governments sensibly) My suggestion was merely that the mathematics of Risk are probably on your side, and that global warming solutions rarely come out on top in actuarial tables of "things we can afford to do something meaningful about". > This shows an interesting problem we have: NEOs are not the biggest or most > important threats we need to stop. Yet they are the best managed of all of > them. We know their physics, it is deterministic, we have a lot of data on > them, we have some experimental interventions (asteroid and comet landings), > there is a community working on the problem and there is even some public > understanding of the issue. Try finding that combination for climate change, > wars, AGI, bioweapons or nanotech. The only thing anywhere close is > pandemics. You might also benefit from comparison to the history of Hurricane prediction, another similar kind of disaster in terms of risk math. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 12 22:24:01 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:24:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Tom Nowell wrote: > bioweapons > AGI & nanotech > Wars > Climate change > > Tom Can't we all just agree that clean water is worth working on? Or how about the indoor use of charcoal? Or is that stuff just too third world for people to care about? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 12 22:29:08 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:29:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > Ground solar currently has an energy payback time of 2-4 years. Where does this come from? It is certainly not the case for small scale solar. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 12 22:37:11 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:37:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:15 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Richard Loosemore >> wrote: >>> >>> spike wrote: >>> Whoa!! ?Most of your food comes from these illegal operations. > Are you kidding? ?You are speculating about what would happen to a very > complex system if you were to change one of the variables. I'm sure it is very complicated. > But your speculation was actually just a Free Market Voodoo Fantasy. > > > You cite "strawberries" as the crop that would suffer if all the > undocumented and semi-slave workers were ejected. ?You would not have a > shortage of strawberries, you would have a shortage of every foodstuff > imaginable, all the way up to the meat that is packed in meat-packing > plants. Strawberries was not meant literally... > That is a serious error, because your later suggestion that IBM would stop > working on Watson and instead build strawberry picking robots looks deeply > implausible when you understand that what IBM would *actually* have to do is > build general-purpose farm laborers to do an unbelievable variety of jobs. > ?In other words, they would have to build a full-scale AGI. ?Strawberry > picking is utterly trivial compared with the full range of skills required Sure enough. But if the most labor intensive items are automated first, then the people left to do the work would do more meaningful work, no? > Second, the response to the sudden loss of slave labor would not be that IBM > would gear up and deliver robot farm laborers to replace them. Rather, the > farm managers would be forced to raise wages until they could attract > ordinary humans into that workforce. In the short term, this is exactly right. Some price increases are good. They lead to market solutions that help us go in the right direction. The current immigration policy is no more or less market manipulation than farm subsidies. > This would cause a massive spike in food prices and trigger an inflationary > spiral in the entire economy. Yup. Is that always a bad thing? > This would in turn force the government to react, because the only way to > win an election would be to promise an end to the quadrupled food prices. > > Their reaction would be: ?to invite migrant workers back in. ?They would > have no choice whatsoever. Hopefully under a more rational guest worker program. I am, BTW, in favor of a guest worker program. Especially, if children of guest workers are not automatic anchor babies. Of course, that's not likely to happen without a constitutional amendment. > BUT.... assuming they stood their ground, then what? ?Would IBM then allow > itself to smacked upside its head by Adam Smith's Invisible hand? ?Would > they deliver AGI farm workers? > > Garbage. ?They simply could not do it. ?That is Voodoo Fantasy Free Market > BS. ?The technology does not exist, and could not be made cheap enough and > versatile enough to substitute for more than a small fraction of the jobs. > > At least, not in the short term. ?Long term (decade or more, maybe). But > only if IBM were sure that the government would NEVER EVER cave in to the > pressure to let the migrants back in. You do bring up a VERY good point here, that governments are less predictable than many other aspects of the future. > So the moral of the story is not about the Invisible Hand doing wonderful > things if it is only given the chance, but about the fact that a complex > system will do things that are not even dreamt of in your system. Screwing with things always has unintended consequences. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 12 22:39:08 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:39:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 9:46 AM, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore > My take on it is if one wants completely legal farm produce, one must > advertise and market it as such, perhaps convince the grocers to carry it in > a separate premium section in the store, like they do now with organic > produce. ?There is an independent agency which certifies organic. ?Likewise > we could set up an independent (for profit) (my) profit)) agency which > inspects and certifies all-legal produce. > > That one carries a semi-humorous ironic message: everything else not > certified all-legal in the local grocery has something somewhere illegal in > its production. ?Those who care about the plight of slave labor will flock > to buy my all-legal produce, even at elevated prices. ?Result: soon the > slave labor will be freed from slavery, by being laid off, woohoo! ?Problem > solved. > > Oh, wait... Makes more sense to me than "organic"... It would probably be very expensive, but do you think it would be more expensive than organic? (Real question) -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Thu May 12 22:58:55 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 15:58:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] now we hafta fight these guys too? In-Reply-To: References: <001e01cc10da$74b0f1d0$5e12d570$@att.net> Message-ID: <006b01cc10f8$2be3e070$83aba150$@att.net> 2011/5/12 spike : > This whole story is irony wrapped in comedy, packed inside a paradox: Totally agree with you on that. > Green Smoke and Mirrors? Vatican Weighs in on Climate Change http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/11/green-smoke-mirrors-vatican-weighs -climate-change/ >...The church confused about science? That could never happen. Of course, when the science is this confusing... one can hardly blame them. -Kelly But this one disappointed me. For so many years, the Vatican seemed determined to work with science instead of against it. They seemed to have learned their lesson from the whole unfortunate Galileo affair. He was sent to hell for his heresies after he perished in 1642. It wasn't until 2008 that the Vatican changed his status from heretic to hero. Presumably they took him out of hell and put him in heaven, but wait. By my calculations he spent 366 years in hell, when he was right all along. Does that seem right to you? The Vatican wanted to avoid another such embarrassment, so they were quite open minded by the time Charles Darwin came along. With the Jesuits, they seemed very hip to science, even sponsoring some branches of research. I don't know why they dropped the ball on this one. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 12 23:14:12 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:14:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >> Ground solar currently has an energy payback time of 2-4 years. > > Where does this come from? It is certainly not the case for small scale solar. ^ "What is the Energy Payback for PV?" (PDF). National Renewable Energy Laboratory. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37322.pdf. Retrieved 2008-11-24. If you say that's not the energy payback time, what is? I.e., how much energy does it take to make and install PV vs the average power production per day? Keith > -Kelly > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Thu May 12 23:07:17 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 16:07:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> Message-ID: <006c01cc10f9$57238af0$056aa0d0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Subject: Re: [ExI] Farmville for real On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 9:46 AM, spike wrote: >> ... ?Those who care about the plight of slave labor will flock to buy my all-legal produce, even at elevated prices. ? >> Result: soon the slave labor will be freed from slavery, by being laid off, woohoo! ?Problem solved. >>...Makes more sense to me than "organic"... >...It would probably be very expensive, but do you think it would be more expensive than organic? (Real question) -Kelly No one knows, Kelly. All-legal produce has never been attempted. Regarding all-legal produce, it would probably be more expensive than organic, but it would be a better product, so it might depend on how you count it. My mother, being a licensed CPA, attempted to account properly and pay all the taxes on her farm labor. When she filled out all the forms and submitted them to the appropriate authorities according the rules, they had no idea what to do with them. They had never had anyone actually attempt to try to follow all the farm labor tax rules. The agency had never seen it! I... am... not... kidding... spike From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 00:01:46 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 17:01:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DCC74EA.70802@mac.com> On 05/11/2011 08:25 PM, Mr Jones wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Kelly Anderson > > wrote: > > 2011/5/10 Mr Jones >: > > Particularly interesting to me were these few sentences... > >> > >> Yes, I believe that coercion > >> is a prima facie bad. But I also believe that it is prima > facie bad > >> for people to fail to get what they deserve, or for their basic > needs > >> to be unmet. These moral beliefs, to my mind, have just as firm a > >> standing as my opposition to coercion. I see no reason to believe > >> that in a conflict between them, the opposition to coercion should > >> always trump. > > > > I agree the govt doesn't get to dig into your pocket for any > lil' ole thing > > they want/need/desire. But until people have their basic needs > met, society > > deserves the burden, as a whole. > > I agree with this, except for the "as a whole" part. I think there are > enough generous people, at least in a country like America, to care > for the truly indigent. > > > I would love to think that's true. And if I knew it to be true, I'd > be all for govt being shrunk beyond belief. But that'd require more > than just meals/shelter for the indigent. We'd still need roads, > water, etc. Are you claiming people cannot get all those things without making them a government project? > The problem with government is you end up with > a program like Food Stamps that now serves 35 million people (12% of > the population). These are not all indigent. I know, I was on Food > Stamps myself for a while and I was by no means indigent at the time. > I just qualified for the program. I'm pretty sure I would qualify now. > I am not indigent, but I could steal money from all of you (at least > the Americans who pay taxes) by going down and applying. > > > In order to qualify for foodstamps, you've got to have a fairly > minimal income. A 4 person family (2 adults/2kids) has to have an > income under something like $36k/yr to qualify (not certain, but I'm > fairly close I believe). That's a pretty low income. Unless you're > living in some crime ridden inner-city, with horribly performing > school systems, you'd have a hard time getting by. Is this really how > we should expect our families to live? Irrelevant. Anyone who wants to help anyone they consider poorer than they can stand can. They just can't use a gun to force those that don't feel as they do to do the same. Which is where government is a bad idea in that government has legalized force available to it and does precisely this sort of thing with it. Goodbye freedom. To add insult to injury you get more poverty instead of less by involving the government. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 13 03:20:46 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 23:20:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:04 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > A sponge. ?Happens all the time in canyons (this being how they > are formed). ?Water is very good at seeping into these cracks. > > And then there's the issue of what lies below the cracked rock, and > how much water that can absorb. is this related to the capillary action along the new surface area? More cracks = more surface area :: better sponge? From msd001 at gmail.com Fri May 13 03:27:29 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 23:27:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 6:24 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > Can't we all just agree that clean water is worth working on? Or how > about the indoor use of charcoal? > > Or is that stuff just too third world for people to care about? > clean water isn't a particularly sexy "project" for people who already have plenty of it. As for indoor charcoal, it tells you right on the bag not to do that. Didn't you read the directions? :) From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 13 03:38:22 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 20:38:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Can't we all just agree that clean water is worth working on? I think I have discussed how to make just about unlimited clean fresh water out of sea water here. Wrote a paper on it that was published in the proceedings of a conference. I can send out copies if anyone wants. But I bet there are no takers. Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 13 03:46:50 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 23:46:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <20110512185026.GI23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > These videos, unless they are fake/spin/psyops, are pretty good > examples of why the frack is bad. > > http://youtu.be/qYJj-1jNOxE > > http://youtu.be/U01EK76Sy4A > > http://youtu.be/d6G6Ap-mF0k ### Methane leakage into well water is a common occurrence wherever there is shallow shale. So far there has been no proven impact of fracking on the frequency of such events. Even if there was an increase in methane leaks into potable water, this would not be a reason to prohibit fracking, although the operators could be expected to pay well-owners for methane gas traps to be installed in their wells. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 13 03:50:51 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 23:50:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:25 AM, BillK wrote: > Nice to know that the 44 million surviving on food stamps deserve it > because it is their own fault. ### Yes, it is. And no, actually they don't deserve the stamps. ----------------- I guess you don't have to worry about > the problem now. Half of those 44 million are children though, ### Then it's their parents' fault. --------------- so the > US should probably scrap the child labour laws so the kids can stop > lazing around and get a job to support themselves. ### Actually, yes, and Robin Hanson agrees with me. ------------ Perhaps the US > should pay for their plane tickets to China, where all the jobs are? ### ? ------------- > > It is a great comfort to know that anybody that is struggling to > survive deserves their situation. I'm just jetting off to my private > island, but I'll ask my secretary to send 100 dollars to Save the > Children, just so I can claim to be giving to charity. > (It's tax deductible as well, which helps. ?Not that I pay much tax > anyway, of course. Wink, wink). ### Caricature. Insincere, too. From amon at doctrinezero.com Fri May 13 08:09:07 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 09:09:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On 13 May 2011 04:50, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:25 AM, BillK wrote: > > > Nice to know that the 44 million surviving on food stamps deserve it > > because it is their own fault. > > ### Yes, it is. And no, actually they don't deserve the stamps. > ----------------- > I guess you don't have to worry about > > the problem now. Half of those 44 million are children though, > > ### Then it's their parents' fault. Although I am partial to aspects of libertarianism - particularly the non-economic, politics of personal liberty aspects - it is viewpoints like Rafal's above, that make me glad that there is unlikely to ever be a libertarian movement that achieves its aims in any kind of systematic way. In other words, for once I am glad of a "movement" whose members are all talk. I'm aware that this is quite a pointed comment (for me, at least), but I have to agree with Samantha that these pointless conversations have been doing the rounds for 2+ decades now, never changed anything that I'm aware of, and don't look set to change anything in the forseeable future. - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 13 06:51:40 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 08:51:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110513065140.GK23560@leitl.org> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 04:29:08PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > > Ground solar currently has an energy payback time of 2-4 years. > > Where does this come from? It is certainly not the case for small scale solar. Keith refuses to acknowledge modern realities. Terrestrial thin-film EROEIs under a year (several months he cited for SPS, which do not yet exist). Nanosolar claims less than a month, but I find that not believable, not without official data. From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 13 07:01:59 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 09:01:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110513070159.GM23560@leitl.org> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 04:14:12PM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> Ground solar currently has an energy payback time of 2-4 years. > > > > Where does this come from? It is certainly not the case for small scale solar. > > ^ "What is the Energy Payback for PV?" (PDF). National Renewable > Energy Laboratory. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37322.pdf. > Retrieved 2008-11-24. > > If you say that's not the energy payback time, what is? I.e., how > much energy does it take to make and install PV vs the average power > production per day? "Life cycle assessment and energy pay-back time of advanced photovoltaic modules: CdTe and CIS compared to poly-Si", by Marco Raugei, Silvia Bargiglia and Sergio Ulgiati at Energy Volume 32, Issue 8, August 2007, Pages 1310-1318 http://www.civil.uwaterloo.ca/beg/Downloads/NREL_PV_Embodied_Energy.pdf EROEI of >40, energy payback time (which is not relevant, EROEI integrates over lifetime, energy payback doesn't contain total energy harvested over lifetime) of under a year. "Update of PV energy payback times and life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions" V. Fthenakis, H.C. Kim, M. Held, M. Raugei and J. Krones, 24th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, 21-25 September 2009, Hamburg, Germany etc. I think SPS will have a pretty tough competitor, as in 10-20 years both the ROI and EROEI will be untouchable. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 13 06:55:42 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 08:55:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110513065542.GL23560@leitl.org> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 04:39:08PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Makes more sense to me than "organic"... > > It would probably be very expensive, but do you think it would be more > expensive than organic? (Real question) When speaking about organic http://www2.grist.org/pdf/reganold-Science-05-06-11.pdf (it's a Science paper, despite the earl). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 13 09:34:49 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 11:34:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110513093449.GC4351@leitl.org> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 08:38:22PM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > Can't we all just agree that clean water is worth working on? > > I think I have discussed how to make just about unlimited clean fresh > water out of sea water here. Not without a desalination plant, energy, and infrastructure to distribute it. > Wrote a paper on it that was published in the proceedings of a conference. > > I can send out copies if anyone wants. I would like a copy, please. > But I bet there are no takers. I don't think I want that paper, anymore. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 13 09:57:55 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 11:57:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <20110512185026.GI23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110513095755.GD4351@leitl.org> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 11:46:50PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Methane leakage into well water is a common occurrence wherever > there is shallow shale. So far there has been no proven impact of > fracking on the frequency of such events. Even if there was an > increase in methane leaks into potable water, this would not be a > reason to prohibit fracking, although the operators could be expected > to pay well-owners for methane gas traps to be installed in their > wells. I find it curious that you put the burden of proof on the other side, while focusing on more trivial impacts of fracking. Even cursory websearches lead to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing ... Environmental and health effects Environmental and human health concerns associated with drilling by means of hydraulic fracturing include the contamination of ground water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, and the potential mishandling of waste.[23] The potential costs associated with possible environmental clean-up processes, loss of land value and human and animal health concerns are undetermined. For the first time, in a study published in 2010, the EPA has discovered contaminants in drinking water including: arsenic, copper, vanadium, and adamanatanes. Many of these contaminants are known to cause a variety of illnesses such as cancer, kidney failure, anaemia, and fertility problems.[24] New technological advances and appropriate state regulations are working to study and safely implement the process.[25] Arguments against hydraulic fracturing center around the extent to which fracturing fluid used far below the earth's surface might pollute fresh water zones, contaminate surface or near-surface water supplies, impact rock shelf causing seismic events or lead to surface subsidence. However, well casing failures and failures of the well grouting systems may have been responsible for gas migration into drinking water aquifers in Dimock, Pennsylvania.[26] The transport, handling, storage and use of chemicals and chemical-laden water can also cause accidents that release materials into the environment, though this does not occur during the hydraulic fracturing process itself. It has been reported that the hydraulic fracturing industry has refused to publicly disclose, due to intellectual property concerns, the specific formulation of the fluids employed in the fracturing process. A "NOW on PBS" episode aired in March 2010 introduces the documentary film Gasland. The filmmaker claims that the chemicals include toxins, known carcinogens and heavy metals which may have polluted the ground water near well sites in Pennsylvania and Colorado. The film also makes a case for explosive gases entering private potable water wells, causing "flammable water". [edit] Chemicals used in fracturing fluid A number of chemicals identified in fracturing fluid are hazardous chemicals that may cause health risks that range from rashes to cancer. Some chemicals are identified as carcinogens. Some chemicals found injected into the earth identify as endocrine disruptors, which interrupts hormones and glands in the body that control development, growth, reproduction and behavior in animals and humans.[23] Energy in Depth, an oil and gas industry organization has published a list of chemicals in a "typical solution used in hydraulic fracturing," but notes "The specific compounds used in a given fracturing operation will vary."[27] The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has published a list of chemicals used in fracturing fluids. The report addresses many issues with well fracturing. The EPA has stated that on December 3, 2010, Halliburton has provided ?written confirmation? that it will disclose hydraulic fracturing operations as per request. The EPA initiated a mandatory request for all operations to be disclosed. Halliburton is to provide the EPA with information by January 31, 2011. EPA?s mandatory request is subject to enforcement.[28] A 2008 newspaper report states that medical personnel were inhibited in their treatment of workers injured in a fracturing accident because they did not know which specific chemicals were used. In the article, a nurse claimed she may have been exposed to the unknown chemicals on the patient's clothes.[29] Release of information, pertaining to hazardous components of any and all industrial chemicals, to medical and emergency personnel has been governed by OSHA since the 1974 Right-To-know legislation. If referenced by medical personnel, Material Safety Data Sheets will provide all information necessary for personal protection and the treatment of chemical exposure. [edit] Water and Health In April 2010 the state of Pennsylvania banned Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. from further drilling in the entire state until it plugs wells believed to be the source of contamination of the drinking water of 14 homes in Dimock Township, Pennsylvania.[30] The investigation was initiated after a water well exploded on New Year's Day in 2009. The state investigation revealed that Cabot Oil & Gas Company "had allowed combustible gas to escape into the region's groundwater supplies."[31] One use of hydraulic fracturing is in stimulating water wells. In that case, the fluid used may be pure water (typically water and a disinfectant such as bleach).[32] Another use of hydraulic fracturing is to remediate waste spills by injecting bacteria, air, or other materials into a subsurface contaminated zone.[33] In the United States, a 2004 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study concluded that the process was safe and didn't warrant further study, because there was "no unequivocal evidence" of health risks, and the fluids were neither necessarily hazardous nor able to travel far underground. That study, however, was not intended as a general study of hydraulic fracturing, but only of its use in coalbed methane deposits, and the study did not consider impacts above ground.[34] The EPA report did find uncertainties in knowledge of how fracturing fluid migrates through rocks, and upon its release service companies voluntarily agreed to stop using diesel fuel as a component of fracturing fluid in coalbed methane walls due to public concerns of its potential as a source of benzene contamination.[35] Environmental group Riverkeeper presented a report to the EPA of over 100 cases cases of contamination.[36] It has published a report of various environmental impacts using reports from federal and state regulators.[37] The increased use of hydraulic fracturing has prompted more speculation about its environmental dangers. A 2008 investigation of benzene contamination in Colorado and Wyoming led some EPA officials to suggest hydraulic fracturing as a culprit. One of the authors of the 2004 EPA report states that it has been misconstrued by the gas-drilling industry.[34] On 21 February 2011, the ABC's investigative journalism program Four Corners aired a program showing incidents of gas leaks into the water basin and evidence of contamination by hydraulic fracturing in Chinchilla, Queensland as a result of drilling carried out by a Queensland gas company, QGC.[38] A 2011 study by Congressional Democrats found that, in the process of hydraulic fracturing, "oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009," according to the New York Times.[39] A 2011 investigation by the New York Times based on various leaked EPA documents found that hydraulic fracturing had resulted in significant increases of radioactive material including radium and carcinogens including benzene in major rivers and watersheds.[40] At one site the amount of benzene discharged into the Allegheny River after treatment was 28 times accepted levels for drinking water.[39] A 2011 peer-reviewed study found, on average, methane concentrations 17 times above normal in samples taken from water wells near shale gas drilling sites employing hydraulic fracturing. Water samples from 68 private water wells in the states of Pennsylvania and New York were tested and some were found to have extremely high concentrations of methane: 64 milligrams of methane per liter of drinking water, compared with a normal level of one milligram or lower. According to one of the authors of the study, "That sort of concentration is up at a level where people worry about an explosion hazard."[41][42] The average concentration of methane in the water wells near drilling sites lies within a range that, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior, is dangerous and requires urgent "hazard mitigation" action.[43][44]. The research was conducted by scientists at Duke University and what they found was that "levels of flammable methane gas in drinking water wells increased to dangerous levels when those water supplies were close to natural gas wells. They also found that the type of gas detected at high levels in the water was the same type of gas that energy companies were extracting from thousands of feet underground, strongly implying that the gas may be seeping underground through natural or manmade faults and fractures, or coming from cracks in the well structure itself " [45] . Methane contamination has been a common complaint among people who live near natural gas drilling areas. In 2009, a Propublica investigation revealed that methane contamination is widespread, "methane related to the natural gas industry has contaminated water wells in at least seven Pennsylvania counties since 2004" [46] . Because of this contamination, several homes have blown up after gas seeped into their water supplies; there have been reports of house explosions in Pennsylvania and Ohio [47] [48] . In one case in 2004, a methane leak caused an explosion that killed a couple and their 17 month old grandson [49] . [edit] Well blowouts and spills A well blowout in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania on June 3, 2010, sent more than 35,000 gallons of hydraulic fracturing fluids into the air and onto the surrounding landscape in a forested area. Campers were evacuated and the company EOG Resources and the well completion company C.C. Forbes have been ordered to cease all operations in the state of Pennsylvania pending investigation. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has called this a "serious incident".[50][51] [edit] Natural gas drilling and seismic events. Injection of fluid into subsurface geological structures, such as faults and fractures, reduces the effective normal stress acting across these structures. If sufficient shear stress is present, the structure may slip in shear and generate seismic events over a range of magnitudes; it is believed that natural gas drilling may have caused earthquakes in North Texas; Cleburne TX never had earthquakes in its recorded history until extensive fracking came into the area.[52] Subsidence is not directly caused by hydraulic fracturing but may occur after considerable production of oil or ground water. Subsidence occurs over reservoirs whether they have been subject to hydraulic fracturing or not because it is a result of producing fluids from the reservoir and lowering the reservoir pore pressure. The subsidence process can be associated with some seismicity. Reports of minor tremors of no greater than 2.8 on the Richter scale were reported on June 2, 2009 in Cleburne, Texas, the first in the town's 140-year history.[53] [edit] Air and Health A potential hazard that is commonly overlooked is the venting of bulk sand silos directly to atmosphere. When they are being filled, or emptied during the fracture, a fine cloud of silica particulate will be vented directly into atmosphere. This dust has the potential to travel many kilometers on the wind directly into populated areas. While the immediate personnel are wearing personal protective equipment, other people in the area of a well fracture can potentially be exposed.[54]. Many particulates and chemicals can be released into the atmosphere, such as sulfuric Oxide, nitrous oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOC), benzene, toluene, diesel fuel, hydrogen sulfide which can have serious health implications [55]. [edit] Other consequences A 2011 Cornell University study found that, rather than being a bridge fuel, natural gas extracted by hydraulic fracturing may contribute as much to global warming as coal, or more so. The authors of the study acknowledge, however, that the data they used were not the best available, so this has left the study open to interpretation. The natural gas industry has noted significant problems with the study's methodology, including comments from the authors that acknowledge the data may be unreliable.[56] There are also potential community complications as a result of fracking. When drilling companies move into a new area the population increases and with it comes problems related to population boom. There is the potential for noise and light pollution complaints, reports of crime can go up, motor vehicle accidents increase, sexually transmitted infections increase, and strain on schools are all some potential problems facing communities where gas drilling is nearby. In Garfield county, Colorado the Colorado School of Public Health released a second draft report released the Battlement Mesa Health Impact Assessment on March 1st, 2011 for public comment [57] . Congress has requested that the EPA undertake a new, broader study of hydraulic fracturing. The report is due to be released in 2012.[58] From anders at aleph.se Fri May 13 10:36:59 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:36:59 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DCD09CB.3060604@aleph.se> Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Tom Nowell wrote: > >> bioweapons, AGI & nanotech, Wars, Climate change >> > > Can't we all just agree that clean water is worth working on? Or how > about the indoor use of charcoal? > > Or is that stuff just too third world for people to care about? > Apples and oranges (i.e different but comparable along a few dimensions). Water and charcoal kills many people every day, and on average more people die of them than any of the above GCRs. But were a serious GCR to happen, it might kill *far* more people - or all of them. So do you focus on the average case, the past average, the long-term average or the tail risk? While the mundane threats - water, sanitation, local pollution, food - are a bit unsexy, doing something about the big threats often suffer from either paralysis (they seem too big) or silliness bias (they are not 'real'). Far more work is spent on intermediate threats that might rationally be lower priority, like terrorism or certain diseases. The biggest problem is that people do not work or fund risk mitigation in any particularly rational way.. I think the rational approach here is to go for the big wins and they are likely at both ends of the scale. There are low hanging fruits in female education and water/sanitation solutions, there are potentially huge wins in slight reductions of big GCRs. It is not as if the budget for desalination is seriously competing with the budget for nuclear disarmament. And if we can make risk management smarter, then we will get more big wins. So work on the metalevel might actually be more helpful in lives saved per year than rushing into the workshop/lab and working on the direct solution. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Fri May 13 10:58:28 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:58:28 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> Keith Henson wrote: >> I doubt any xrisk is going to be a simple task. Wars are likely among the >> hardest, since they are motivated by pretty deep seated issues - not just >> human emotions but economics, memetics and coordination issues. >> > > See "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War" for my view > on the order in which these are evoked and why. > > I have been talking about the evolutionary origin of wars for a long > time, http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2009-July/052083.html > and there has been virtually no feedback. I can't decide if it is > just too obvious, or way to deep for this mailing list. > No idea, but I think evo psych might not be *enough* as an explanation or as a tool for fixing the problem. I have no doubt it might help us understand the original underpinnings of human aggressive behavior, but there are plenty of other factors - human cultural patterns are good at hijacking or exapting evolved affordances(just consider ideological warfare), the economics of warfare has changed several times (warfare for material resources has mutated into 'politics by other means' and security policy) and the technological changes make various factors very different (distance warfare, automated warfare, lethalty, deterrence game theory etc). That you might be able to trace plenty of these factors causally back to some old fitness drivers doen't necessarily help understanding them practically. An evopsych analysis of the financial crisis is unlikely to give us a good recipe for avoiding the next one, while an analysis on the principal-agent problem level might be much more helpful. Some basics are however likely true. If the future looks bright, then you want to invest your resources rather than compete for scarce resources. So increasing growth potential is a good thing. Institutions allowing conflicts to bleed off in nonviolent ways (lawsuits, arbitration) or make the cost/benefit ratio of violence different (social trust, enforcement of laws, economic incentives for cooperation) also help. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Fri May 13 12:55:49 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:55:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense (PDC2011 summary) In-Reply-To: <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DCD2A55.5050305@aleph.se> Ok, a quick summary of what I learned at the 2011 IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Bucharest. Microsummary: we are on the right track! The latest estimates of the NEO size distribution by Alan W Harris retain the shape of previous estimates, a power law with a pretty steep exponent and an unexplained 'dimple' where there are too few 10-100 m NEOs. Donald Yeomans showed that the impact flux from comets is small compared to NEAs (less than a percent). Satelite surveys have produced a flood of data (check out this animation http://vimeo.com/groups/skysthelimit/videos/15166379 or my graphs at http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/sets/72157626697547832/with/5712742374/ ) and we have good reason to think we have already seen a sizeable fraction of the NEAs that would be serious GCRs - and they are in orbits that are safe for at least the next century. This has really reduced the expected risk. The mandate from the US congress wants a 90% completion by 2020 for the big (>140) NEAs, which might be tough unless there is some extra push (ideally a Venus orbit satelite or more time at the Large Synoptic Survey). The LSS will be able to catch a lot of 45 m objects 1-3 months out, and people are starting to seriously look at finding smaller objects on their "death plunge" just before they hit Earth. They pose just local risk (if any at all) but as the GCR risk is retired their relative risk go up. Mark Boslough showed that some of them might produce pretty destructive airbursts. This domain also deals with the "we are going to be so successful that we are going to put ourselves out of business" problem - we are 10 times more likely to save lives by including imminent impactors in the next surveys, although the number of lives saved might be smallish. Obama's call for a manned NEO mission is a tough challenge, mainly because the best objects from a mission technical perspective (low deltav etc) might be smaller than the spaceship! Overall, NEO missions are maturing but the Japanese seem to be a decade ahead with Hayabusa and Hayabusa II. Deflecting asteroids with kinetic impactors looks pretty good, but a lot hinges on the porosity of the asteroid. A fluffy asteroid just absorbs the impact, while a "hard" asteroid will eject a plume of debris that gives an extra push. Unfortunately we have no way of measuring the porosity, so plenty of talks investigated models and ways of estimating it. Gravity tractors are wimpy, but seem to be fairly close to a realistic technology. They are pretty useless for deflecting an asteroid away from Earth, but enough for preventing it from going through a keyhole. This makes them a pretty ideal supplement for any mission. Flotillas of tractors can be more effective than single tractors. Paul W. Chodas also showed that there are "Jabbas", robust states of an orbit that are hard to budge. Nuclear deflection looks like it is workable, but it is definitely a last resort and mainly useful for imminent hits. Some serious issues about how to avoid dispersing loosely held together impactors. The main problem is getting the warheads to the impactor in time and to have them detonate at the right standoff distance. Erick Ball described a real "Armageddon" scenario where a 5 km long periodic comet discovrered ~290 days out could be deflected if mankind really got its act together - something we all felt was doubtful. Several other deflection methods (laser ablation, robotic rockthrowing, ion beam shepherds, painting to cause Yarkovsky effect deviations...) are investigated but not ready from prime time. Another problem is that NEOs seem to be quite different from each other, and methods that work for one type might need to be tweaked for other types. Organisationally, things are moving forward. NEO study and defense is becoming more and more organised in the big space agencies, the UN and the US government. Some interesting notes from Frans von der Dunk on the legal aspects: check out the report "Legal Aspects of NEO Threat Response and Related Institutional Issues" http://swfound.org/media/40426/Legal%20Aspects%20of%20NEO%20Response%20and%20Institutional%20Issues%20-%20Final%20Report.pdf In particular, the 'responsibility to proetect' might apply here, requiring states to have capabilities to deal with NEO risks. There are also an interesting possible tradeoff between sharing information and doing missions in an open manner and avoiding liability: if damage occurs in the course of a NEO response states might not be held liable as long as the mission is confirmed to parameters set by proper mandate international community groups. My own talk was about the issue of cognitive bias and rationality in impact mitigation. Basically, our biases are interfering with both the public, decisionmakers and the research community, and overcoming them is an important part in public relations, explaining the situation and doing the research. Not all of them are bad for the impact risk community: the preference for hard numbers really helps it in the "competition" with softer risks. But availability bias (it has never happened, never will) and scope neglect (a million dead are just statistics) make many decisions rather irrational. There are also problems with planetary defence being a public good, being long-term (it might be rational to put off doing things for a while, since tech is advancing - but this easily leads to putting off doing things too long; the "sweet spot" might be a decade, about a political lifetime) and discounting the future too heavily. However, I think the impact community are an example to all of us dealing with other xrisks. They are doing a pretty good job. They have managed to 1) demonstrate the existence of a risk and quantify it, 2) convinced enough decisionmakers to fund preliminary investigation, 3) built a lively interdisciplinary community devoted to the risk and mitigation (with an inflow of new students carrying on and developing the thinking). Other risk communities may do well to study how they did it. And finally, a great motto: "There ain't no such thing as a free launch". -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Fri May 13 13:54:01 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 09:54:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense (PDC2011 summary) In-Reply-To: <4DCD2A55.5050305@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> <4DCD2A55.5050305@aleph.se> Message-ID: I just watched a program on this the other day, fascinating stuff. Another idea they mentioned (providing we had enough time), was parking a craft near the object, to alter it's velocity (by a relatively minuscule amount) thus changing it's trajectory to a 'safe' one. I hope the nuke option truly is the LAST option. On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > and they are in orbits that are safe for at least the next century. Provided no currently unknown variables don't lead to altered trajectory? Certainly some object we don't know about could come by and change things? Mark Boslough showed that some of them might produce pretty destructive > airbursts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event gave us a taste. with 10?15 megatons of TNT (42?63 PJ) the most likely[7]?roughly > equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear > bomb tested on March 1, 1954, about 1,000 times more powerful than the > atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, > Japan, and about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba, > the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 13 14:47:18 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 07:47:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110513070159.GM23560@leitl.org> References: <20110513070159.GM23560@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 12:01 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 04:14:12PM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: >> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >> >> Ground solar currently has an energy payback time of 2-4 years. >> > >> > Where does this come from? It is certainly not the case for small scale solar. >> >> ^ "What is the Energy Payback for PV?" (PDF). National Renewable >> Energy Laboratory. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37322.pdf. >> Retrieved 2008-11-24. >> >> If you say that's not the energy payback time, what is? ?I.e., how >> much energy does it take to make and install PV vs the average power >> production per day? > > "Life cycle assessment and energy pay-back time of advanced photovoltaic modules: CdTe and CIS compared to poly-Si", by Marco Raugei, Silvia Bargiglia and Sergio Ulgiati at Energy Volume 32, Issue 8, August 2007, Pages 1310-1318 > > http://www.civil.uwaterloo.ca/beg/Downloads/NREL_PV_Embodied_Energy.pdf See Figure 2 of the above cited paper. .9 year is the bare PV, put a frame on it and it goes up to just short of two years. Payback time is significant because that's the time it takes to get back the energy that you put into making and installing the PV. In an energy constrained situation (like Japan) it would take the whole output of energy for two years to switch to this form of solar power. (And Japan is worse than Europe for clouds.) > EROEI of >40, energy payback time (which is not relevant, > EROEI integrates over lifetime, energy payback doesn't > contain total energy harvested over lifetime) of under a year. > > "Update of PV energy payback times and life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions" V. Fthenakis, H.C. Kim, M. Held, M. Raugei and J. Krones, 24th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, 21-25 September 2009, Hamburg, Germany It's not on the web, but I bet you it's no better. The frames alone have a year payback. > etc. > > I think SPS will have a pretty tough competitor, as in 10-20 > years both the ROI and EROEI will be untouchable. It's about ten times as short a payback time, which is reflected in the price, 2 cents/Wh vs at least 20 cents per kWh, and you don't need storage for space based solar power. (If it cost a small multiple more more or has a substantially longer energy payback time, then I don't think solar power from space is worth doing at all.) This really gets reflected in the cost of synthetic transport fuels, $50 per bbl vs $410 per bbl. Long term, nobody except the very rich travels on ground based solar. StratoSolar might be even better than SBSP. Based on materials (Steel, aluminium cost, it might get down to 1.5 cents per kWh. The front end demonstration cost are a lot lower too. But the engineering is really hard, mostly because of wind. Wind forces go up as the square of the velocity so the design of the main concentrator is dominated by the fact it must be folded up into an aerodynamic shape for a week out of two years. StratoSolar gets 24 hour power for an incremental cost of 1/10 of a cent per kWh. It uses 35,000 cubic meters of firebrick for thermal storage at 1400 C. At that temperature a firebrick has more energy per kg than a lithium ion battery. I am not hung up on either of these, if someone has a ground solar method that is less expensive an/or pays back faster I will support that. The US and Europe can probably get along on what they have till the singularity. But if Japan will freeze in the dark unless they go back to nuclear or take a radical step like SBSP. Full blown nanotechnology will certainly give us energy at any price we want. But it's not entirely obvious what kind of "economy" might exist post singularity. Keith > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A ?7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 13 15:03:52 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 08:03:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <20110513093449.GC4351@leitl.org> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <20110513093449.GC4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 2:34 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 08:38:22PM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: >> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> > Can't we all just agree that clean water is worth working on? >> >> I think I have discussed how to make just about unlimited clean fresh >> water out of sea water here. > > Not without a desalination plant, energy, and infrastructure to distribute > it. > >> Wrote a paper on it that was published in the proceedings of a conference. >> >> I can send out copies if anyone wants. > > I would like a copy, please. > >> But I bet there are no takers. > > I don't think I want that paper, anymore. OK It starts on page 348 of the Beamed Energy Conference from 2009 if you want to look it up sometime. Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 13 15:37:28 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 08:37:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 3:58 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Keith Henson wrote: snip > No idea, but I think evo psych might not be *enough* as an explanation or as > a tool for fixing the problem. About the only use I have found for EP is that it ends you wondering what is going on with irrational human behavior. Turns out that irrational is just a point of view and irrational behavior is entirely rational from the viewpoint of genes. (Sneaky little bastards.) > I have no doubt it might help us understand > the original underpinnings of human aggressive behavior, but there are > plenty of other factors - human cultural patterns are good at hijacking or > exapting evolved affordances (just consider ideological warfare), I make the case that causation runs the other way with the underpinnings that lead to human aggression hijacking the culture as part of the memetic run up to war. > the > economics of warfare has changed several times (warfare for material > resources has mutated into 'politics by other means' and security policy) > and the technological changes make various factors very different (distance > warfare, automated warfare, lethalty, deterrence game theory etc). I am thinking of Rwanda when reading this. If you start looking into the root causes for the people who start wars, they are not different in kind from the causes that lie behind hunter gatherer warfare. Azar Gat is one of the most respected people around in the study of war. It's worth reading this publication of his for background. "The Human Motivational Complex: Evolutionary Theory And The Causes Of Hunter-Gatherer Fighting." [http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20100530133845/http://cniss.wustl.edu/workshoppapers/gatpres1.pdf] > That you might be able to trace plenty of these factors causally back to > some old fitness drivers doen't necessarily help understanding them > practically. An evopsych analysis of the financial crisis is unlikely to > give us a good recipe for avoiding the next one, True. Even with war. If we understand that to stay out of war mode we need to keep the population growth below the economic growth, how does that possibly translate into anything we can do reduce the birth rate in (say) Arab cultures? > while an analysis on the > principal-agent problem level might be much more helpful. It might be. For all the distance between a hunter gatherer culture and automated trading on the stock exchanges, understanding evolved human psychological mechanisms still might be useful. > Some basics are however likely true. If the future looks bright, then you > want to invest your resources rather than compete for scarce resources. So > increasing growth potential is a good thing. Institutions allowing conflicts > to bleed off in nonviolent ways (lawsuits, arbitration) or make the > cost/benefit ratio of violence different (social trust, enforcement of laws, > economic incentives for cooperation) also help. I would argue that these are fluff on top of the far more dangerous underlying psychological mechanisms. How long would it take from transportation stopping to food riots? That is a major reason I work on energy problems. Keith > -- > 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 > From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 17:42:15 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 10:42:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCD6D77.70807@mac.com> On 05/11/2011 08:31 PM, Mr Jones wrote: > > Or how about,,,,the water isn't radioactive...it's just got a ton of > other unnatural nasty shit in it, that makes it just as unhealthy to > drink. > > You honestly expect us to believe that we'd be better off trusting big > $$$'d interests to ensure our safety, than the EPA? You're out of > your damned mind. Granted, the govt is being bought out daily....but > you think cutting out the middle man is going to increase our quality > of life? No-way-in-hell. > Yes, you would be many times better off to trust private companies whose continued existence depended on providing sufficient clean water. Stop telling people they are out of their mind and think. > Tell you what...when the OWNER of that natural gas company...lives on > a piece of land, using a well, who's water has been breached by said > fracking...then we can begin to have a conversation. The real level of issue needs to be separated as always from hysteria. If it is a real problem of sufficient magnitude then the technique will be banned or modified to largely avoid the issue. It is not like natural gas is our only option forward. But none of that needs the heavy hand of government. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 17:44:03 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 10:44:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DCD6DE3.6070308@mac.com> On 05/11/2011 08:36 PM, Kevin Freels wrote: > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Kelly Anderson > *To:* ExI chat list > *Sent:* Wed, May 11, 2011 2:39:49 PM > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism > > 2011/5/10 Mr Jones >: > > Particularly interesting to me were these few sentences... > >> > >> Yes, I believe that coercion > >> is a prima facie bad. But I also believe that it is prima facie bad > >> for people to fail to get what they deserve, or for their basic needs > >> to be unmet. These moral beliefs, to my mind, have just as firm a > >> standing as my opposition to coercion. I see no reason to believe > >> that in a conflict between them, the opposition to coercion should > >> always trump. > > > > I agree the govt doesn't get to dig into your pocket for any lil' > ole thing > > they want/need/desire. But until people have their basic needs met, > society > > deserves the burden, as a whole. Lets make this more concrete, shall we? This means that you believe that you should be robbed of anything and perhaps everything as long as anyone on the planet doesn't have their basic needs meant. Do you really mean this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 13 18:13:10 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 11:13:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DCD6DE3.6070308@mac.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DCD6DE3.6070308@mac.com> Message-ID: I would be happy to rob a billion people of $40 each to solve the energy problem. But then I am a lower case libertarian. Keith From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri May 13 18:13:40 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:13:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DCD6D77.70807@mac.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD6D77.70807@mac.com> Message-ID: The 'heavy hand of government' is how we bend current society into one of freedom. Think of it this way: at any point in time, you may 'free' society. Obviously this will have different effects depending on the current world situation. If society were freed now, certain interested groups would become far too powerful. At the heart of it, no matter how much one theoretically masturbates to the idea of pure freedom, the truth is that* the groups who would dominate today's society, if it was freed, are the same groups run by people who have absolutely no problem with (even an inclination to) human exploitation for profit.* * * Do you understand? There is no theory. Many of the richest people today became that way by commodifying the lives of humans who relied on the money to live, because the corporations themselves do not allow people to LIVE FREELY! Their monopolization is a boundary to true liberty. I know many of you can intuit that something about liberty is special, but that doesn't mean we can just go there now. These things take steps. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Fri May 13 18:37:26 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 14:37:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DCD6DE3.6070308@mac.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DCD6DE3.6070308@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/13 Samantha Atkins > Lets make this more concrete, shall we? This means that you believe that > you should be robbed of anything and perhaps everything as long as anyone on > the planet doesn't have their basic needs meant. Overreact and allow yourself to be ruled by illogical emotions much? No in-between in your world view? > Do you really mean this? So long as I am left with enough to survive, all others with 'more-than-enough' are required to do the same, and it's not being used to allow a few to accumulate immense stocks of said items, while there are those who continue to go without......Yes. I'd pick it over the corrupt joke of a system we have/you propose. I know it may seem shocking. But not everyone is a greedy, selfish sycophant...willing to climb the ladder, regardless who they must smash along the way. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 13 18:50:42 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 12:50:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 2:04 PM, BillK wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 8:27 PM, Kelly Anderson ?wrote: > >> I support this statement. It is wrong to take $100 from a millionaire >> to save the life of a starving child. If he wants to donate the $100, >> that's super! But to force him at the point of a gun, with threat of >> imprisonment if he does not comply, is indeed WRONG, imho. > > And that is exactly why 99% of the population regard hardline > libertarians as insane. That is only because 99% of the population has never been a millionaire. I have been. I know a fairly large number of other people who are. I even know a couple of people worth over $100,000,000. No millionaire in my experience would EVER allow a child to go starving if they could prevent it. I present as evidence the fact that I am no longer a millionaire, having helped a number of children to the point of losing it all. > The child is starving because the billionaire and millionaire classes > have left almost nothing for the rest of the population. Look around > at the destruction of the USA by the wealthy, then tell me about > charity again. Please. You don't have a clue as to how the economy works if you think that. Millionaires and particularly billionaires make jobs for the poor among us. Without the rich, the poor would be REALLY screwed. Having lived in Brazil and having worked in the slums there, I know what real poverty is. That will never happen in America, unless we start screwing around with the rich. Eat the rich, and you won't have anything to eat tomorrow. > Unfortunately, no amount of discussion will change your emotionally > rooted belief. It is impossible to argue someone out of a position > that they were not argued into in the first place. If I can change from a Mormon to an atheist, then I think I have a pretty good capacity for changing my point of view of the world. It's not that I hate disadvantaged children. Hell, I adopted ten of them! It's that taking money by force is not the BEST way to help disadvantaged children. Creating a geopolitical environment in which each disadvantaged child has the chance to become rich himself, without being taxed into oblivion, That is the best way to help the disadvantaged. > We'll have to agree to differ on this one. Surely you can't believe that sequestering the African American in ghettos every bit as disgusting as Warsaw is the best way to help him succeed? Yet, that is what our society, including art, drug dealers, the NAACP, and most of the Washington crowd has allowed our country to become. I know you're a smart guy Bill. Let's keep working this through. This isn't emotional for me, this is entirely rational. It is a very slipper slope that the socialists have pushed us down. We can and must climb out, or we will have no country at all very soon because all of the rich will eventually move to China. The problem with Socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people's money. -Kelly From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 19:46:31 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 12:46:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> On 05/11/2011 09:22 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki >> wrote: >>> Of course, all the "dangers" are just theory, and poor >>> theory too, they are designed to trigger the fear of the unknown >>> ("radioactive contamination of water supply"? Could *you* come up with >>> a better bugaboo to scare the masses?) >> How about "no water, because it just dropped through the >> fractured rock, out of reach of all the wells and root systems >> the residents were relying on" > ### Think about it: What is heavier, water or rock? If you crack rock > by injecting steam at immense pressure, with continued external > pressure applied, and then release the steam and gas, will you end up > with a sponge capable of absorbing water, or will the rock snap back > into compact layers? Will water under normal hydrostatic pressure > (i.e. the water table, not the injected superheated steam) be able to > re-open the pores in the rock? Yes. The leakage into the water table happens through faulty seals and processing of the cracking fluid at the well head rather than seeping up from below. The former is an actual problem but it is much simpler to resolve. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 19:54:34 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 12:54:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCD8C7A.6090308@mac.com> On 05/11/2011 10:50 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:27 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: >> 2011/5/11 Mr Jones: >> ### If new nasty shit shows up in water, you can sue. If the value of >> the water is lower than the value of the gas, then the gas producer >> will have enough money to pay you off, and then some. If the harm >> inflicted by poisoning water (which in this case is purely >> theoretical) were higher than the benefit to gas consumers, the >> producer will be bankrupted. >> >> Self-regulation in action. >> > You live in a fantasy world. > > Money does not equal quality of life. Affected people cannot afford > to sue companies or are too disillusioned. Not everyone knows how to > do perfect, economic cost-benefit analysis. More of a fantasy than expecting hordes of politicians, bureaucrats, and public servants to figure out what is best for everyone and make sure all things are done for the good of everyone? > Does it even apply? The > details of every transaction are obscured; the people are constantly > kept out of the loop and in debt. They are kept out of debt by government wrecking of the economy in part by long and major misallocation of capital and other resources. It is not in the interest of the business people to keep customers poor. It is not in the interest of business people to put out an inferior product and inflated cost in a free economy as a competitor will put out a better product at lower cost and eat their lunch. > They do not want dirty money to > keep drinking water. They are angry. There are many things they should be angry about but this is not one of them - not in the scale of things they should be very very unhappy about. But it is in the interest of government to channel all rage possible to anything but government. > These are insidious societal > problems that do not go away, only continue to cause damage as they > become less noticeable under a mass of red tape. What generates red tape? The government. It generates more and more red tape the more it is given authority over more areas of human action. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 20:00:57 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:00:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DCB8862.6020003@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCA39B3.6030202@aleph.se> <4DCB8862.6020003@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DCD8DF9.6080409@mac.com> On 05/12/2011 12:12 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > John Grigg wrote: >> I'd like to think the Pentagon will get involved with planetary >> defense, at least where nasty asteroids are concerned. And "economic >> defense" from the exploitive and criminal individuals in Wall Street >> & Corporate America, might also be added to on their list... > > It is fun to watch the different cotteries in this community. There is > a laser gang, thinking about how to ablate asteroids. Then there is > the kinetic impact gang and the gravity tractor gang. And then there > is the nuke gang, running hydrocode simulations of big explosions. You > can guess who have ties to military defense labs. I have lately come to be really fond of cheap gravity tugs pulling small asteroids to GEO and/or LaGrange points to build larger space shelters and to be mined. Pull enough of them (long time scale) together and you have a tremendous boost to local space activity. Even one of them about 100 m in diameter could be worth trillions in contained materials. Worth doing even with slow robot tugs. I am much much less concerned with asteroid protection as the probability of such is utterly minuscule compared to the certainty of material shortage on the ground and other problems if we do not establish a space beachhead soon. I am dismayed at the amount of brains that are dedicated to this tiny possiblity versus exploiting such opportunities. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 20:04:17 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:04:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCD8EC1.3020700@mac.com> On 05/12/2011 01:25 AM, BillK wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> ### You live in a fantasy world. Money can buy all the water you need. >> Affected people find it very easy to sue everybody and his uncle, in >> humongous class-action lawsuits that give undue advantage to the >> claimants, not the defending businesses. Only the court experts need >> to make a cost-benefit analysis. Cost benefit analysis is the only >> valid consideration, everywhere. People are keeping themselves out of >> the loop by relying on government bureaucrats to do what they need to >> do themselves. Those in debt usually deserve it, and I'd say, screw >> them. If they don't want just compensation, screw them too, luddites >> should be eradicated. The most insidious social problem is violence, >> and its most egregious form is the government. >> >> > Nice to know that the 44 million surviving on food stamps deserve it > because it is their own fault. The rest are largely the fault of the government. It has nearly destroyed the economy. And not just in the US. So calling for more government to "fix the problem" is idiotic. Blaming capitalism, which does not include any involvement of the the government in economic matters, for the mess is contemptible. Until people look at what they don't look at as the source of the ills, finally, there will be no fixing the problems. - s From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 13 19:11:55 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 20:11:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 7:50 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I know you're a smart guy Bill. Let's keep working this through. This > isn't emotional for me, this is entirely rational. It is a very > slipper slope that the socialists have pushed us down. We can and must > climb out, or we will have no country at all very soon because all of > the rich will eventually move to China. > > The problem with Socialism is that eventually, you run out of other > people's money. > > I haven't noticed much Socialism in the US. >From a European POV the so-called US lefties are considered to be rabid right wingers. ;) My view is that unregulated corporatism has bought up the government and looted the US economy. The problem with creating a wealth pyramid where the top .1% own almost everything is that when wealth is so concentrated, the consumer economy game stops. BillK From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 20:18:50 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:18:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD6D77.70807@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCD922A.4000503@mac.com> On 05/13/2011 11:13 AM, Will Steinberg wrote: > The 'heavy hand of government' is how we bend current society into one > of freedom. False. Go read the papers of the American founders. > Think of it this way: at any point in time, you may 'free' society. > Obviously this will have different effects depending on the current > world situation. If society were freed now, certain interested groups > would become far too powerful. False. They counter balance one another. Without initiation of force no group can simply do what it wants without becoming uncompetitive relative to other groups that wish to act in that realm. > > At the heart of it, no matter how much one theoretically masturbates > to the idea of pure freedom, the truth is that/the groups who would > dominate today's society, if it was freed, are the same groups run by > people who have absolutely no problem with (even an inclination to) > human exploitation for profit./ What is masturbation is perverse fantasies that people can only be free, happy and productive by being forced to by an institution defined by monopoly on the initiation of force. It is a deep sickness in the human psyche. > / > / > Do you understand? There is no theory. Many of the richest people > today became that way by commodifying the lives of humans who relied > on the money to live, because the corporations themselves do not allow > people to LIVE FREELY! Their monopolization is a boundary to true > liberty. I understand. Apparently you do not. > > I know many of you can intuit that something about liberty is special, > but that doesn't mean we can just go there now. These things take steps. I didn't say anything about how to get there from here. That is more complicated. Without agreement on where we want to go the more complicated discussion about how to get there is rather pointless. - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Fri May 13 20:21:47 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 13:21:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DCD6DE3.6070308@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCD92DB.90601@mac.com> On 05/13/2011 11:37 AM, Mr Jones wrote: > 2011/5/13 Samantha Atkins > > > Lets make this more concrete, shall we? This means that you > believe that you should be robbed of anything and perhaps > everything as long as anyone on the planet doesn't have their > basic needs meant. > > > Overreact and allow yourself to be ruled by illogical emotions much? > No in-between in your world view? I am simply pointing out the real meaning of such things. I am sorry if reality is a place you find uncomfortable. > > Do you really mean this? > > > So long as I am left with enough to survive, all others with > 'more-than-enough' are required to do the same, and it's not being > used to allow a few to accumulate immense stocks of said items, while > there are those who continue to go without......Yes. I'd pick it over > the corrupt joke of a system we have/you propose. Mere subsistence of all dooms humanity. The most productive and brightest have no room, no resources, to ratchet humanity as a whole forward. That is a long drawn out death. Still want that? If you do why wouldn't we see you as no friend of humanity or of a better future? - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Fri May 13 20:41:51 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 16:41:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DCD6D77.70807@mac.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD6D77.70807@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCD978F.9040102@lightlink.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 05/11/2011 08:31 PM, Mr Jones wrote: >> >> Or how about,,,,the water isn't radioactive...it's just got a ton of >> other unnatural nasty shit in it, that makes it just as unhealthy to >> drink. >> >> You honestly expect us to believe that we'd be better off trusting big >> $$$'d interests to ensure our safety, than the EPA? You're out of >> your damned mind. Granted, the govt is being bought out daily....but >> you think cutting out the middle man is going to increase our quality >> of life? No-way-in-hell. >> > > Yes, you would be many times better off to trust private companies whose > continued existence depended on providing sufficient clean water. Stop > telling people they are out of their mind and think. This is one of the most ill-informed and arrogant statements I have heard on this list for quite a while. Not just disconnected from the theory of what it takes to make money, but also from empirical reality. And, at the same time, telling the person who points out the truth to "stop telling people they are out of their mind and think". Richard Loosemore From rpwl at lightlink.com Fri May 13 20:46:43 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 16:46:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DCD98B3.5090802@lightlink.com> BillK wrote: > I haven't noticed much Socialism in the US. >>From a European POV the so-called US lefties are considered to be > rabid right wingers. ;) > > My view is that unregulated corporatism has bought up the government > and looted the US economy. > > The problem with creating a wealth pyramid where the top .1% own > almost everything is that when wealth is so concentrated, the consumer > economy game stops. Absolutely true. I am continually amazed when people like Bill Clinton (and, sadly, even Barack Obama) are described as "left-wing", when they are/were barely distinguishable from Margaret Thatcher. Richard Loosemore From rpwl at lightlink.com Fri May 13 20:48:50 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 16:48:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 05/11/2011 09:22 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >>> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki >>> wrote: >>>> Of course, all the "dangers" are just theory, and poor >>>> theory too, they are designed to trigger the fear of the unknown >>>> ("radioactive contamination of water supply"? Could *you* come up with >>>> a better bugaboo to scare the masses?) >>> How about "no water, because it just dropped through the >>> fractured rock, out of reach of all the wells and root systems >>> the residents were relying on" >> ### Think about it: What is heavier, water or rock? If you crack rock >> by injecting steam at immense pressure, with continued external >> pressure applied, and then release the steam and gas, will you end up >> with a sponge capable of absorbing water, or will the rock snap back >> into compact layers? Will water under normal hydrostatic pressure >> (i.e. the water table, not the injected superheated steam) be able to >> re-open the pores in the rock? > > Yes. The leakage into the water table happens through faulty seals and > processing of the cracking fluid at the well head rather than seeping up > from below. The former is an actual problem but it is much simpler to > resolve. Again, with the disconnected from reality. The main leakages in actual practice are caused when the USED fracking fluid stored on the surface is (a) dumped into rivers, (b) dumped in ponds which then overflow during rainstorms, and (c) processed through water treatment plants that are not able to handle the contaminants. Richard Loosemore From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri May 13 21:27:08 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 16:27:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DCD922A.4000503@mac.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD6D77.70807@mac.com> <4DCD922A.4000503@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/13 Samantha Atkins > False. They counter balance one another. Without initiation of force no > group can simply do what it wants without becoming uncompetitive relative to > other groups that wish to act in that realm. > Unless one group has the upper hand. There are many fine families living just South of me, who are surely a group who wishes to act in the realm of "owning a habitable house," but I will bet you any amount of money you wish that they are not 'competetive.' You see, the only competition which the exploited have to wax on the exploitees is the choice to unparticipate. This worked in the bus boycott. People don't need buses. People need houses. The common men which you seem to think could unleash their true power if only Mr. Govt. got his hands off: they cannot do anything! They are stuck under the foot of wealthy landowners, pushed back by social tensions--anyone who has enough money MOVES OUT of that place, which is all libertarian and good for the "people who have enough money" but of course not so good for the people who literally cannot get a job near them, who cannot buy fresh food near them--whose very ability to wax their freedom of occupation has vanished. It is a bit like the parish laws, except the government actually isn't the one enforcing the stagnancy--it's the marketeers! Your idea of a benevolent free market is naive. The free market rewards those who are willing to cast aside others for profit. I was going to write more, but every time I try and think of a counter argument I am in disbelief. I am left with two considerations to the libertarian's stance, from a scale of Glenn Beck to Rand Paul: (1) You see the problems of the world, especially when people are left to fend for themselves in hostile environments, and say "Hell, it's a dog eat dog world." (2) You *don't* see the problems of the world, and really think everything will work out in what would be the one of the largest, least predictable social experiments in the history of the world. Unfortunately, believing (1) means you are avaricious and cruel, while believing (2) means you have a limited scope of the world. A free world might be good. Unfortunately there are still people people who would want to kill everyone. A good government's job is to eliminate this social pathogen, and so a good government's job before the 'freedom singularity' is to remove all traces of evil from the system so when we let it proceed unchecked those bits won't turn cancerous. There are bad people in the world. They want to hurt people, to exploit them for personal gain. How do you rationalize this? Maybe in a theoretically perfect system of freedom, it would be easy to offset the power of a company because so many other choices could be made as alternatives. Sadly, though, today's society does not provide these exploited with alternatives, and so (even though they really want to, even though there could be no *civil laws* against it) they would be forced to live in a substandard situation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 14 01:38:06 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 21:38:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <20110513095755.GD4351@leitl.org> References: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <20110512185026.GI23560@leitl.org> <20110513095755.GD4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: Eugen, you linked to some eco-freak stuff without reference to any clear evidence of significant health or other problems caused by fracking. On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 5:57 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 11:46:50PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > >> ### Methane leakage into well water is a common occurrence wherever >> there is shallow shale. So far there has been no proven impact of >> fracking on the frequency of such events. Even if there was an >> increase in methane leaks into potable water, this would not be a >> reason to prohibit fracking, although the operators could be expected >> to pay well-owners for methane gas traps to be installed in their >> wells. > > I find it curious that you put the burden of proof on the other > side, while focusing on more trivial impacts of fracking. ### The economic impact of fracking is immensely more important than any trivial concerns about its alleged environmental impact. Simply put, even if it is true that a few bystanders are harmed by fracking, the benefits to the rest of us vastly outweigh the harms. The only situation so far where the evidence of harm exceeds anecdote and poses a minor concern is regarding methane leaks - not proven to be a common or unavoidable effect of fracking but certainly (as I mentioned above) a possibility. Again, mitigation of these possible harms is easy - either by preventative measures or by reimbursement of harmed bystanders. If home owners can prove that a particular fracking operation put methane into their wells, it will cost little to pay for cleaning it, adding a trivial amount to the cost of gas paid by all of us. In this way, we, the users, pay for any harms our actions may inflict on third parties. This is the basis for my saying that environmental concerns are trivial - the harms inflicted on humans add a minuscule amount to the price of a commodity whose value is measured in trillions of dollars. Economic analysis tells us what matters and what is a trifle. I am surprised that you are surprised about the burden of proof. Obviously, if you claim to be harmed by somebody, it is incumbent on you to prove causation. If I find my house has been burglarized, *I* have to find proof against a specific person, rather than going around and demanding that random parties prove they didn't rob me. In modern legal theory the burden of proof is usually on the accuser, not on the defendant. That wiki post you linked to BTW is full of anecdote and eco-freak propaganda, one has to look closely for any grain of truth there. Vanadium, yeah, sure. And, BTW, I grew up in a coal mining area. I played on burning coal tips. I skirted ground subsidence pits opening in the middle of fields. My house shook daily from underground cave-ins. So what - the coal board paid for shoring up the house when a few cracks opened. The ground subsidence pits were filled with debris. The coal tips either burned out or got capped with sand. The benefits of coal to the many clearly outweigh the minor harms to a few bystanders. Absolutely the same applies to fracking, even more so, since fracking is inherently safer and produces a fuel that is much cleaner than coal. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 14 01:40:09 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 21:40:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/13 Amon Zero : > On 13 May 2011 04:50, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> >> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:25 AM, BillK wrote: >> >> > Nice to know that the 44 million surviving on food stamps deserve it >> > because it is their own fault. >> >> ### Yes, it is. And no, actually they don't deserve the stamps. >> ----------------- >> ?I guess you don't have to worry about >> > the problem now. Half of those 44 million are children though, >> >> ### Then it's their parents' fault. > > Although I am partial to aspects of libertarianism - particularly the > non-economic, politics of personal liberty aspects - it is viewpoints like > Rafal's above, that make me glad that there is unlikely to ever be a > libertarian movement that achieves its aims in any kind of systematic way. > In other words, for once I am glad of a "movement" whose members are all > talk. ### Rationality is an uncommon affliction. Hypocrisy beats rationality hands-down, no? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 14 01:44:08 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 21:44:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD6D77.70807@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/13 Will Steinberg : > The 'heavy hand of government' is how we bend current society into one of > freedom. ?Think of it this way: at any point in time, you may 'free' > society. ?Obviously this will have different effects depending on the > current world situation. ?If society were freed now, certain interested > groups would become far too powerful. > > At the heart of it, no matter how much one theoretically masturbates to the > idea of pure freedom, the truth is that the groups who would dominate > today's society, if it was freed, are the same groups run by people who have > absolutely no problem with (even an inclination to) human exploitation for > profit. > > Do you understand? ?There is no theory. ?Many of the richest people today > became that way by commodifying the lives of humans who relied on the money > to live, because the corporations themselves do not allow people to LIVE > FREELY! ?Their monopolization is a boundary to true liberty. > I know many of you can intuit that something about liberty is special, but > that doesn't mean we can just go there now. ?These things take steps. ### Read on "People's Romance": http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_10_1_1_klein.pdf It's pitiful how humans willingly submit to the boot, and praise it, too. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 14 01:58:37 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 21:58:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <42195.40171.qm@web81604.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DCD6DE3.6070308@mac.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/13 Mr Jones : > > So long as I am left with enough to survive, all others with > 'more-than-enough' are required to do the same, and it's not being used to > allow a few to accumulate immense stocks of said items, while there are > those who continue to go without......Yes. ?I'd pick it over the corrupt > joke of a system we have/you propose. > I know it may seem shocking. ?But not everyone is a greedy, > selfish?sycophant...willing to climb the ladder, regardless who they must > smash along the way. ### Mr Jones, you are a hypocrite, unless you prove to me you spend >90% your income on charity. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 14 02:01:16 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 22:01:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DCD98B3.5090802@lightlink.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DCD98B3.5090802@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > > I am continually amazed when people like Bill Clinton (and, sadly, even > ?Barack Obama) are described as "left-wing", when they are/were barely > distinguishable from Margaret Thatcher. ### LOL ! Rafal From amon at doctrinezero.com Sat May 14 07:13:16 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 08:13:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On 14 May 2011 02:40, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > Although I am partial to aspects of libertarianism - particularly the > > non-economic, politics of personal liberty aspects - it is viewpoints > like > > Rafal's above, that make me glad that there is unlikely to ever be a > > libertarian movement that achieves its aims in any kind of systematic > way. > > In other words, for once I am glad of a "movement" whose members are all > > talk. > > ### Rationality is an uncommon affliction. Hypocrisy beats rationality > hands-down, no? Meaning? - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 14 10:03:39 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 06:03:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 3:13 AM, Amon Zero wrote: > On 14 May 2011 02:40, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> >> > Although I am partial to aspects of libertarianism - particularly the >> > non-economic, politics of personal liberty aspects - it is viewpoints >> > like >> > Rafal's above, that make me glad that there is unlikely to ever be a >> > libertarian movement that achieves its aims in any kind of systematic >> > way. >> > In other words, for once I am glad of a "movement" whose members are all >> > talk. >> >> ### Rationality is an uncommon affliction. Hypocrisy beats rationality >> hands-down, no? > > Meaning? ### It's easy to pretend you care, it's difficult to think. Libertarianism is what happens when you think more about the truth than about how to present yourself as a person who cares about other tribal members. In the previous post you indulged in moral posturing and you disavowed the way of thinking that is actually more likely to produce good outcomes for the poor, if there were ever enough libertarians to make it happen. So, *appearing* you care is more important than actually doing something good. (Obviously, solving a social problem is usually helped by correctly identifying the persons whose actions are most directly leading to the problem - and yes, the vast majority of food stamp recipients and their children are where they are because of their own actions, their own lack of foresight, their petty greed, vices and laziness, and saying so is not a sign of moral turpitude but a pre-requisite to formulating effective ways of addressing it.) Rafal From anders at aleph.se Sat May 14 10:28:42 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 11:28:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DCD8DF9.6080409@mac.com> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCA39B3.6030202@aleph.se> <4DCB8862.6020003@aleph.se> <4DCD8DF9.6080409@mac.com> Message-ID: <4DCE595A.6080508@aleph.se> Samantha Atkins wrote: > > I am much much less concerned with asteroid protection as the > probability of such is utterly minuscule compared to the certainty of > material shortage on the ground and other problems if we do not > establish a space beachhead soon. I am dismayed at the amount of > brains that are dedicated to this tiny possiblity versus exploiting > such opportunities. The impact community is warm to space colonization. It is just that there are practical realities to be dealt with: Capturing asteroids is not at all easy. Leaving the safety aspects aside, the delta v needed to make a NEO end up in a convenient Earth-bound orbit is significant. It is often much larger than the amount needed for asteroid deflection. Clever dynamical solutions like multiple passes by the Moon and Earth to bleed of velocity probably exist, but to use them we need 1) very exact location data, 2) a bit of luck to find a NEO in the right initial orbit, and 3) lots of time, since the low energy orbits tend to loop around all over the place. Second, the value of matter in space is higher than on ground. Launching stuff up is *expensive*. Dropping things down is almost as expensive too - you need a nearly equivalent delta v (aerobraking can maybe give you 1 km/s or so). I doubt a space manufacturing industry will ever be competitive with an Earth manufacturing industry for the Earth market. However, it can build valuable things like solar power satelites. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sat May 14 10:46:32 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 11:46:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DCE5D88.8040400@aleph.se> Keith Henson wrote: > True. Even with war. If we understand that to stay out of war mode > we need to keep the population growth below the economic growth, how > does that possibly translate into anything we can do reduce the birth > rate in (say) Arab cultures? > Female education. Decreases the birth rate and increases the economic growth rate, among other things. Figuring out how to spread it well in a certain culture is of course a particular problem, requiring understanding, ingenuity and resources. In addition, many of the Arab countries are suffering from extremely bad governance for a bundle of reasons; this produces a self-reinforcing loop of violence/repression, low trust, low economic growth and corruption. Breaking that one would also have big positive effects in the long run (but transitions are rarely easy - I suspect we are going to see a long sequence of further uprisings in the Arabian spring countries even if they eventually do fine). The nice thing with much of physics and engineering is that you can do scale separation or keep things modular. In human affairs things go on at all levels and interact in messy ways: there is little modularity. In a way "rule of law, not of men" is an attempt to improve modularity by separating the legal functions from the personal interests of the people implementing them. Maybe finding other ways of modularizing society might be helpful - although this often means that social and emotional matters become impersonal, which people often do not like. Defending the planet from large-scale wars might be less of a human problem than a problem of how to get metaorganisms to cooperate or at least coordinate. The cold war was not so much about people in conflict as systems of people in conflict. And such systems can behave in ways fairly decoupled from the interests and ways of thinking of their components. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sat May 14 20:01:25 2011 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 14:01:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? In-Reply-To: <4DA9F0EE.9040409@lightlink.com> References: <4DA9F0EE.9040409@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <1D883DBBDF9D4A4297D0620028A7B19E@3DBOXXW4850> Hugo de Garis Part 1 of a video series on vimeo: http://vimeo.com/20767040 Gina "Nanogirl" Miller www.nanogirl.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Loosemore" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2011 1:41 PM Subject: [ExI] Did Hugo de Garis leave the field? > > Did this one slip by me unnoticed ... Hugo de Garis decided to call it > quits on AGI? > > This is from his H+ article at > http://hplusmagazine.com/2011/04/15/friendly-ai-a-dangerous-delusion/ > >> One of the reasons I stopped my brain-building work was that I got >> bored evolving neural net modules for artificial brains. These >> modules were a black box to me. They worked because they were >> evolved, but I had no scientific understanding as to why they worked. >> I was doing great engineering but lousy science. After 20 years of >> it, I finally got fed up and turned to other research topics that >> taxed my own biological human brain more, such as pure math and >> mathematical physics. > > Last time I talked to him he was gung-ho about getting a full-scale AGI > up and running with those neural nets. Now he says he got bored and > abandoned that and went back to physics and math. > > Hnnnh. > > > > Richard Loosemore > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun May 15 00:17:56 2011 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 20:17:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <006c01cc10f9$57238af0$056aa0d0$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> <006c01cc10f9$57238af0$056aa0d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <87e1899418b9f5a4be7bfc7609036808.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> spike writes: > > My mother, being a licensed CPA, attempted to account properly and pay all > the taxes on her farm labor. When she filled out all the forms and > submitted them to the appropriate authorities according the rules, they had > no idea what to do with them. They had never had anyone actually attempt to > try to follow all the farm labor tax rules. The agency had never seen it! > > I... am... not... kidding... > I believe you, spike. There's a lady lives in this area, has a small organic farm, works local markets and such. She tried to follow the legal farm labor tax rules and got a similar response. The sh*t hit the fan when a worker was hurt and she tried to see to it that his care was appropriate and good quality. The "authorities" hadn't a clue what to do. Regards, MB From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sun May 15 12:03:19 2011 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 13:03:19 +0100 (BST) Subject: [ExI] longevity bulletin In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <61245.76914.qm@web27006.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> The UK actuarial professional body has just launched a new publication, Longevity Bulletin - announcement here http://www.theactuary.com/875661 The actual bulletin PDF is at https://www.actuaries.org.uk/sites/all/files/documents/pdf/longevitybulletinmay2011.pdf The sources section at the end has a handy list of links if you want to get your hands on mortality statistics. Tom From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun May 15 15:21:09 2011 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 08:21:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? Message-ID: <492639.9331.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Fri, May 13, 2011 6:38:06 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? ? Rafal, I have far to busy in recent times to do more than browse this list, but I cannot let this stand. ? > This is the basis for my saying that environmental concerns are > trivial - the harms inflicted on humans add a minuscule amount to the > price of a commodity whose value is measured in trillions of dollars. > Economic analysis tells us what matters and what is a trifle. I?am not going to address fracking here because I don't?know?the relevant data. But what you are saying here is repugnant. First of all environmental concerns are only trivial to you when it is not *your* environment. If I were to start dumping nuclear waste or even simple sewage into your yard, you would no longer think it was a trivial concern. Even if I dumped it?on property that was not your own but just happened to be upstream or upwind of you, you would still complain.?And?when you say that causing your fellow man?to suffer is simply overhead?to be?factored into next?quarter's budget tells me you have no?discernible conscience that I can see. My health and wellbeing?are priceless?to me; albeit perhaps worthless to you. ? And as far as economics goes, it?models networked?entities composed of?more cells than there are dollars in the world as a bunch of?"rational fools".?Then?models their?complex biological and psychological?motivations are?as simply wanting to consume?more of everything.?This gross over-simplification of very complex systems?makes me?vacillate between viewing economics as a pseudoscience and a?logically consistent?set of mathematical?theorems based on axioms I don't agree with. Ergo?my understanding of the?old chestnut that an "economist knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." ? > I am surprised that you are surprised about the burden of proof. > Obviously, if you claim to be harmed by somebody, it is incumbent on > you to prove causation. If I find my house has been burglarized, *I* > have to find proof against a specific person, rather than going around > and demanding that random parties prove they didn't rob me. In modern > legal theory the burden of proof is usually on the accuser, not on the > defendant. Not quite true, Rafal. If you are burglarized, the *state* has to?find proof of the?accused's?guilt. At most you have to miss a few days of work to testify in court against him.?And they don't send the bill to you but to the tax payer. ? > That wiki post you linked to BTW is full of anecdote and eco-freak > propaganda, one has to look closely for any grain of truth there. > Vanadium, yeah, sure. Ecofreaks, Rafal? The people you are refering to?to simply don't want you to piss in their drinking water.? Stuart LaForge "There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure."- Dwight D. Eisenhower From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 15 17:14:14 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 18:14:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 11:03 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### It's easy to pretend you care, it's difficult to think. > Libertarianism is what happens when you think more about the truth > than about how to present yourself as a person who cares about other > tribal members. In the previous post you indulged in moral posturing > and you disavowed the way of thinking that is actually more likely to > produce good outcomes for the poor, if there were ever enough > libertarians to make it happen. So, *appearing* you care is more > important than actually doing something good. That's the way humans have evolved. They are not rational computers. They are confused, emotional smart monkeys. Treating them like computers will bring the torches and pitchforks. You, and other so-called rationalists will spend hours rigorously analysing a problem, striving for logical solutions, arguing minute details....... then go out and so something completely irrational, like falling in love or climbing a mountain to look at the sunset. If you have spent much time and effort building a home, cultivating a garden, carefully designing your home environment then you are not interested in monetary compensation for the next door factory pollution. You want your home, you don't want market value compensation. Market value isn't *your* value. Surely your libertarian policy prefers non-aggression or non-interference from the factory next door rather than aggression followed by a cheap payoff. You will never receive a payoff equal to destroying your life's work and totally disrupting your life. And if the factory gets away with it, such destruction will become a standard operating expense, ruining the lives of all their neighbours. It is a very *socialist* attitude, coming from you, that the good of the majority over-rules the individual rights. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 15 17:45:46 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 12:45:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <492639.9331.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <492639.9331.qm@web65613.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DD0114A.5090103@satx.rr.com> On 5/15/2011 10:21 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: [Rafal:] >> > If I find my house has been burglarized,*I* >> > have to find proof against a specific person, rather than going around >> > and demanding that random parties prove they didn't rob me. In modern >> > legal theory the burden of proof is usually on the accuser, not on the >> > defendant. > Not quite true, Rafal. If you are burglarized, the*state* has to find proof of > the accused's guilt. At most you have to miss a few days of work to testify in > court against him. And they don't send the bill to you but to the tax payer. >> > That wiki post you linked to BTW is full of anecdote and eco-freak >> > propaganda, one has to look closely for any grain of truth there. >> > Vanadium, yeah, sure. > Ecofreaks, Rafal? The people you are refering to to simply don't want you to > piss in their drinking water. Barbara Lamar comments: Stuart made an excellent point! One reason the state goes after the burglar is to protect your right to the quiet enjoyment of your property. The state should enforce this same property rights against oil & gas producers. Actually, poisoning my drinking and irrigation water and releasing H2S and other toxic gases into the air 200 feet from my house are far worse than simply stealing my jewelry or car; they amount to inflicting grievous bodily harm. I have direct personal knowledge of oil and gas production, being a resident of Texas and having been aware of the damage produced by oil and gas drilling since an oil producer poisoned my creek when I was a small child and killed a certain species of black catfish forever, far as I know. I never again saw this type of catfish, even after the drilling was finished and the water was no longer running black. I know from studying U.S. constitutional law that the reason for neglecting individual property rights at the expense of individual land owners is that the U.S. supreme court, under pressure from various politicians, decided that the "public good" (which, at that time, they defined as having transcontinental railroad service) was more important than individual property rights. They have since applied this same reasoning in many other contexts, including oil & gas production. Pay attention, Ayn Rand fans: Ayn Rand would cut Rafal to shreds (figuratively speaking) for advocating the trampling of individual rights in favor of large quasi-governmental corporations. Over the course of my life, I have dealt with some of the oil and gas producers personally, as the owner of mineral rights and surface rights, and on behalf of my clients. I have had, and do have, clients who are oil producers. Some of them are good, honest people -- all of my clients are good people, as I have reached the point in my life where I do not have to take just anyone as a client; many of the oil and gas producers, especially management of large corporations, are the equivalent of Orren Boyle and James Taggart, not John Galt or Hank Reardon. Unfortunately, when the Orren Boyle / James Taggart types get together with Cuffy Miegs types of "civil service" people, it's very bad for individual land owners. From amon at doctrinezero.com Sun May 15 18:04:46 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 19:04:46 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) Message-ID: On 14 May 2011 11:03, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Libertarianism is what happens when you think more about the truth > than about how to present yourself as a person who cares about other > tribal members. In the previous post you indulged in moral posturing > and you disavowed the way of thinking that is actually more likely to > produce good outcomes for the poor, if there were ever enough > libertarians to make it happen. Rafal - Suffice to say, I disagree with your analysis on multiple levels. I have never seen anything approaching conclusive evidence that full-blown libertarianism would "produce good outcomes for the poor" (although of course I've heard a *lot* of assertions), whereas I have seen plenty of examples of unrestrained economic and political behaviour causing great suffering to people unable to protect themselves from its effects. Also, I don't believe that I - let alone *everyone* who falls outside the set "fanatical libertarian" - spends more time thinking about how to present themselves as a caring person rather than thinking about the truth. Honestly, if that is your view of people, then I strongly suspect you to have poor observational skills, critical reason, and character. It is not a matter of "moral posturing" that leads me to oppose avoidable suffering. It is a combination of principle and reason. On that basis, if you can provide conclusive or at least powerfully suggestive examples of the following, I will duly consider revision of my position: 1) A truly libertarian society, of the type you advocate, which produced good outcomes for the poor, or some equally compelling evidence that your own claim is something more than "moral posturing". If there has never been such a society, please do tell us how you are privy to the "truth" of an untested scenario? 2) Evidence that the type of strong libertarianism you advocate does not cause widespread suffering. You seem to be vacillating between claiming that your views, if put into practice, would (A) cause net good rather than net harm, and (B) declaring that we shouldn't care about others, and therefore presumably what the outcome of your freedom is for other people. If you don't care what happens to others, then your worldview fails on axiomatic grounds as far as I'm concerned, in that it is not good, of net utility to society, or indeed Extropic (unless it is possible for someone to achieve an Extropy worthy of the name by the deliberate victimization of others). If, on the other hand, you actually believe your brand of extreme libertarianism would be broadly beneficial to society (i.e. not cause widespread suffering), then please do go ahead and prove it. Or maybe you put more effort into posturing than looking for the truth? - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 15 18:17:49 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 13:17:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DD018CD.9070908@satx.rr.com> On 5/15/2011 1:04 PM, Amon Zero wrote in reply to Rafal: > You seem to be vacillating between claiming that your views, if put into > practice, would (A) cause net good rather than net harm, and (B) > declaring that we shouldn't care about others, and therefore presumably > what the outcome of your freedom is for other people. If you don't care > what happens to others, then your worldview fails on axiomatic grounds > as far as I'm concerned, in that it is not good, of net utility to > society, or indeed Extropic (unless it is possible for someone to > achieve an Extropy worthy of the name by the deliberate victimization of > others). > > If, on the other hand, you actually believe your brand of extreme > libertarianism would be broadly beneficial to society (i.e. not cause > widespread suffering), then please do go ahead and prove it. I have the feeling that Rafal's position is not a million miles from the True Knowledge of the (paradoxically) libertarian communist future portrayed in Ken MacLeod's novel THE CASSINI DIVISION: Damien Broderick From amon at doctrinezero.com Sun May 15 18:39:20 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 19:39:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <4DD018CD.9070908@satx.rr.com> References: <4DD018CD.9070908@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 15 May 2011 19:17, Damien Broderick wrote: > > I have the feeling that Rafal's position is not a million miles from the > True Knowledge of the (paradoxically) libertarian communist future portrayed > in Ken MacLeod's novel THE CASSINI DIVISION: Cheers for that Damien! I have to admire that worldview for its boldness (!), even if it is essentially just like admiring Darth Vader for being a hardcore bad guy! ;-) This reminds me of something else I was wondering. It's a bit of a tangent, but maybe someone would care to enlighten me: I have a passing familiarity with Ayn Rand, got halfway through The Fountainhead, know the general stance if not all the details of Objectivism. If I understand correctly, Rand is all about the triumph of hard-headed individualism over collectives. Idolising the free individual - presumably with emphasis on the uncompromising, talented ones. The thing that has always struck me as a little odd is that for a triumphalist worldview, somehow it doesn't quite seem to go far enough. I mean, why advocate anything for such powerful self-driven individuals at all... if they can be crushed by some mindless bureaucratic horde then wouldn't Rand disavow them as weak-and-not-real-heroic-individuals anyway? Maybe Rand doesn't advocate supporting such heroic characters, which would seem paradoxical to me, but then I wonder... why write the books and push the worldview at all? If these powerful culture-shaping individuals truly exist, then surely they don't need Ayn Rand as their cheerleader? Anyway, as I am say I'm sure this is something the Objectivists or Rand herself addressed years ago. I'm just curious if there's a stock answer or interesting insight anyone may care to offer... - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 15 19:11:22 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 20:11:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Software maps suspects' digital movements Message-ID: Police buy software to map suspects' digital movements.. Wednesday 11 May 2011 Quote: Britain's largest police force is using software that can map nearly every move suspects and their associates make in the digital world, prompting an outcry from civil liberties groups. The Metropolitan police has bought Geotime, a security programme used by the US military, which shows an individual's movements and communications with other people on a three-dimensional graphic. It can be used to collate information gathered from social networking sites, satellite navigation equipment, mobile phones, financial transactions and IP network logs. According to Geotime's website, the programme displays data from a variety of sources, allowing the user to navigate the data with a timeline and animated display. The website claims it can also throw up previously unseen connections between individuals. "Links between entities can represent communications, relationships, transactions, message logs, etc and are visualised over time to reveal temporal patterns and behaviours," it reads. ---------------------- Also see: BillK From spike66 at att.net Mon May 16 01:43:40 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 18:43:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <87e1899418b9f5a4be7bfc7609036808.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> <006c01cc10f9$57238af0$056aa0d0$@att.net> <87e1899418b9f5a4be7bfc7609036808.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <014b01cc136a$af511710$0df34530$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of MB Subject: Re: [ExI] Farmville for real spike writes: > > My mother, being a licensed CPA, attempted to account properly and pay > all the taxes on her farm labor. When she filled out all the forms > and submitted them to the appropriate authorities according the > rules, they had no idea what to do with them. They had never had > anyone actually attempt to try to follow all the farm labor tax rules. The agency had never seen it! > > I... am... not... kidding... > >...I believe you, spike. There's a lady lives in this area, has a small organic farm, works local markets and such. She tried to follow the legal farm labor tax rules and got a similar response. The sh*t hit the fan when a worker was hurt and she tried to see to it that his care was appropriate and good quality. The "authorities" hadn't a clue what to do. Regards, MB The real problem is if you try to follow all the rules, you draw suspicion. If you appear to do everything right, they know you are up to no good. If your friend paid workmans' comp and did all that, then she is practically inviting the feds to come in for a raid. They will be astonished to find nothing. A non-smoking non-gun is a smoking gun. spike From amon at doctrinezero.com Mon May 16 09:38:29 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 10:38:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 15 May 2011 19:04, Amon Zero wrote: > Rafal - > Suffice to say, I disagree with your analysis on multiple levels. I have > never seen anything approaching conclusive evidence that full-blown > libertarianism would "produce good outcomes for the poor" (although of > course I've heard a *lot* of assertions), whereas I have seen plenty of > examples of unrestrained economic and political behaviour causing great > suffering to people unable to protect themselves from its effects. > This conversation has been on my mind overnight, and I wasn't quite sure what it was about it that felt so irritating. I've just been added to a facebook group called "singulibertarians" by a friend, and as my wrote an introduction message it became clear what had been troubling me. In that message I asked a question and referred to the latest libertarianism thread in this list. I hope you don't mind if I simply re-post my message to that list: ****************************** Hi All - Thanks for adding me to the group :-) Just a brief introduction: My name is Amon Zero, I'm a transhumanist, singularitarian, artist/musician and cognitive scientist by day. I live in London with a young family who keep me busy ;-) So, to say hello properly, I have a question: There are aspects of my worldview which overlap with libertarianism. I strongly believe in personal and economic freedom, but I also believe that both have their limits. I mention this because I'm currently embroiled in a heated debate with an extreme libertarian on the ExI list, and that conversation is making me come across as anti-libertarian just because I think freedoms are only helpful insofar as they create net good, and don't cause suffering. I wouldn't scrap protections against child labour, for example. I wonder if anyone here has any thoughts on this... for you, is there such a thing as too extreme libertarianism? At what point does a supposedly libertarian point of view become so extreme, and engender such extreme outcomes, that you're not wholly comfortable endorsing it? (Or you might care to address the converse; at what point does government intervention become unacceptable? What level of governance would you be willing to accept?) Disclaimer: I am founder of a very new movement - the Zero State ( http://zerostate.net/) - which addresses these matters in its founding principles. So I do have strong opinions on this. I'm just curious how people feel about such things in here... - Amon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Mon May 16 16:24:20 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 18:24:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] teleXLR8 Project News, May 16, 2011 Message-ID: http://telexlr8.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/telexlr8-project-news-may-16-2011/ We are working to reload the teleXLR8 project using the open source OpenQwaq technology. The teleXLR8 online talk program based on Teleplace has been covered by Hypergrid Business ?as an online open TED, using modern telepresence technology for ideas worth spreading, and as a next generation, fully interactive TV network with a participative audience.? At this moment OpenQwaq includes most features of Teleplace, basically all features but the video codecs, and missing / new features are being implemented by an active development community. In the picture above, a first test with OpenQwaq. Some teleXLR8rs are actively participating in the OpenQwaq development community. We are evaluating two options: 1) setting up our own servers, and 2) working with other developers who are setting up OpenQwaq hosting services. We will continue to produce free by invitation online talks and online extensions to conferences, with a focus on future studies and emerging technologies. All existing users will be welcome. If you wish to join, please contact us and/or request to join the mailing list or the groups on Facebook and Linkedin. Please note that we have created a new Facebook group using the new FB group format. If you are in the old group, which will be archived soon by FB, please request to join the new group. Participation in the online talks will be free by invitation. Of course, as we used to do last year, we will post full video and audio recordings of all talks on our video channels (Blip.tv, Vimeo and Youtube). Very good news: our Youtube channel has been approved for videos longer than the standard 15 minutes. We have uploaded the most popular videos of previous shows to Youtube. We will soon launch a fundraising project for the set up and the first year of operations, and we will try to meet the running costs after the first year with donations and sponsorships. The new phase of teleXLR8 will be a community project, and we encourage all users to become actively involved. The new image used on teleXLR8 sites is taken from a very nice picture of street art, video-conferencing with an alien touch, with a Creative Commons license. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 16 17:55:23 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 19:55:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 13 May 2011 00:05, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I want my partner to be HAPPY to take out the garbage when > it's time to do that, and HAPPY to go to bed, and HAPPY to watch the > Super Bowl or Star Trek with me. Perhaps one brain can't be HAPPY at > ALL those things, so put multiple AGIs in one body, and problem > solved. > ... > I think you > could design an android that LIKED being a rape victim, but also LIKED > acting like it didn't want to be a rape victim. In other words, one > that a rapist would enjoy going after, but who wasn't damaged in the > process. It's all about how you wire up the reward system. Mmhhh. I think we are flatly in the field of qualia, and of hallucinating (in the PNL sense) our own subjective experiences on others. I am pretty much persuaded that doing so with humans is philosophically quite untenable, and practically a frequent source of ineffective behaviours, and I do not even begin to think what it could mean for a machine to be programmed to be "happy" (?) while emitting frustration-like signals. The only thing i can say is that if it is *programmed* to do so, at a sociological level we are not likely to project our own "happiness", "like", "frustration" experiences on it much more that we currently do with our car or with natural phenomena, no matter how persuasive its emulation of human signals were to be. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 16 17:43:14 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 19:43:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Good Calories, Bad Calories In-Reply-To: References: <20110509110836.d32794d095cdfcc0018508d9c136b552.4c3904ce20.wbe@email09.secureserver.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/12 Max More : > Nowhere does Taubes? deny the first law of thermodynamics. He accepts that > ?change in energy stores = Energy intake minus Energy expenditure.? To > emphasize this, see p. 74 of Why We Get Fat, where he says: ??Those who > consume more calories than they expend in energy will gain weight.? This is > true. It has to be. To get fatter and heavier, we *have* to overeat. We have > to consume more calories than we expend. That?s a given. But thermodynamics > says nothing about why this happens, *why* we consume more calories than we > expend.? My half-educated guess is somewhat different. Some calories are ingested. The body makes use of what it needs for energy, provided that it can at all (cellulose contains plenty of calories which are nevertheless unusable by humans, and our liver apparently has a rather low limit in the amount of calories it can extract per day from proteins in comparison with that of, say, a lion). If the calories that can be positively extracted from food are not enough, some body fat is burned. So, yes, no people die of starvation still carrying around an excess of body fat. If, on the other hand, the calories which can positively extracted from food exceeds what the body needs, it does not go by itself that the body is willing and able to store all the excess calories in body fat for future use. In fact, a process needs to be activated to this effect that is neither always equallty efficient, nor hard-wired to a "store-all-you-can" program. If the only factor would be the caloric equivalent of food ingested minus the calories spent, it would indeed be inexplicable how many individuals find it hard to put on weight irrespective of the caloric input they submit themselves to. If anything, for obvious reason, in such circumstances more calories expended in comparison with those ingested might not so paradoxically lead to *increased* body weight... -- Stefano Vaj From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 03:52:10 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 21:52:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 13 May 2011 00:05, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Super Bowl or Star Trek with me. Perhaps one brain can't be HAPPY at >> ALL those things, so put multiple AGIs in one body, and problem >> solved. >> ... >> I think you >> could design an android that LIKED being a rape victim, but also LIKED >> acting like it didn't want to be a rape victim. In other words, one >> that a rapist would enjoy going after, but who wasn't damaged in the >> process. It's all about how you wire up the reward system. > > Mmhhh. I think we are flatly in the field of qualia, and of > hallucinating (in the PNL sense) our own subjective experiences on > others. If you are saying that such an android may not actually "like" something, but could only be judged by their interaction with others, then yes, that is definitely one way to judge. That being said, I think it is reasonable to conjecture that if a human being can be "programmed" to a particular effect, that it would be reasonable to believe that you could also create an AGI with similar effects. So, if you can find a real woman who liked being raped, and playing the rape victim game, and really liked it very rough, that it would be conceivable to believe that you could create an AGI with similar external behaviors to such a woman. I think it is very safe to say that such a woman is an extreme rarity (thank goodness) but that such women do, incredibly, exist. The unfortunate thing is that most such women would probably exhibit personality disorders that would make them poorly suited to other aspects of relationships, and generally getting along well in the world. That is why psychology invented personality disorders in the first place. Enjoying something that others hate is close to the core of a number of personality disorders. Now, here is the part that is quite frightening... If someone wishes to create such a monster android, it would probably best be accomplished by beating the crap out of it and generally mistreating it as a young android. That is, early in it's training, you mistreat it to the end of creating a strange disordered creature that meets the above stated design goal. If such a creature ends up being smarter than people, or is used later to some other purpose, then you have a real problem. If such a being gains "human rights", then we're really screwed. Will the ACLU defend the rights of monster AGIs produced for these kinds of sick twisted purposes? Kinky sex is only one area for which sick twisted personalities might be desired (in a context). There are also murderous personalities that might have military applications, or assassins. One might create a paparazzi personality to get the right picture. Someone might want an argumentative personality to challenge their thinking. You might create the perfect McDonald's employee. There are a lot of examples where for a particular purpose, you want a kind of idiot savant that is created for a purpose that as a general personality would be a complete failure. The world is, very unfortunately, full of real people with these problems. I think that it is undesirable, but perhaps unavoidable, that we will create AGIs with personality disorders. (The current twisted context being a great real world example of why someone might create such a monster.) If we then grant those twisted personalities human rights, and they switch careers, then there will continue to be a great amount of suffering in the world. > I am pretty much persuaded that doing so with humans is > philosophically quite untenable, and practically a frequent source of > ineffective behaviours, and I do not even begin to think what it could > mean for a machine to be programmed to be "happy" (?) while emitting > frustration-like signals. I'm sure there is some kind of twisted porno out there that features women with just these sorts of personality defects. > The only thing i can say is that if it is *programmed* to do so, at a > sociological level we are not likely to project our own "happiness", > "like", "frustration" experiences on it much more that we currently do > with our car or with natural phenomena, no matter how persuasive its > emulation of human signals were to be. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, so if my answer doesn't make sense, keep trying to get your point across. People project personality on cars and other non-human and non-intelligent artifacts today. I cuss at my computer, knowing that it won't do any good (at least yet). But some day, these artifacts will learn to respond to my emotional state. Then it will be even easier to get sucked into the anthropomorphic trap. We will want to program cars to act happy. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 04:54:07 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 22:54:07 -0600 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/6 spike : >>? On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj > Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI > > On 6 May 2011 08:23, Kelly Anderson wrote: Sorry Spike, this email got misfiled... This is interesting to me. > Focus on this a minute.? If someone manages to create a sex machine and the > moral majority is squirmy about it, I ask them to show me in their sacred > literature exactly what commandment or principle or ethical guideline is > being violated by the whole notion.? Do let them cite the example of Onan in > Genesis 38:8-10, I?m ready, eager even, to debate that.? Go ahead, I dare > ya.? {8^D? Kelly, you are one who was trained in that discipline (religion > based morality.)? Pretend you are still in that thought-space, and do > suggest a line of argument that there is AAAAANYTHING at all wrong with > taking care of one?s biological needs using a sexbot.? Anything.? Bible > only, no Mormon lit please.? Be prepared; I have pondered this long and > hard, and I find nothing, nada.? {8^D? {8-] Religion is all about controlling your desires. There is an internal battle that by some Islamist texts is called the inner jihad. Giving into lust in any fashion, including daydreaming, is coming short of the goal. The idea is to give your spiritual self complete and utter control over your carnal self. Subject the body to the will of the soul or inner spirit of man. This is the argument Catholics and Mormons use against masturbation. If you can make a compelling spiritual argument against masturbation, then you can clearly make an argument against masturbation using artificial means. Masturbation using a sexbot could be argued by such a line of thinking as first degree masturbation. That is, masturbating in the excitement of a moment is a crime of passion, but going out and buying a sexbot requires premeditation. Premeditated crime is generally considered to be more evil, and deserving of greater condemnation. Jesus taught that to look upon a woman to lust after her is adultery in your heart. To lust after anything that is not your wife is to void the commandment to "cleave unto her and to no other". So Spike, while it may not make sense to you, arguments of this sort would have great power over the minds of those inside the religious environment. Religion is about controlling the proles. You can't go letting them have fun with their sexbots, or they'll stop coming to church, paying their tithes and offerings and paying attention to the religious elite. Thou shalt have no other god before me. In fact, it is harder to think of a more horrifying form of idol worship than spending one's time with a sexbot. I've heard the argument that if you like your car more than going to church, that is idol worship. So if you want to stick with the primitive texts, then I'd have to say the commandment against idol worship is probably the best argument in religion against sexbots. You can not win an argument against someone who is deep enough into their religion. It is easy to justify just about anything from sexual purity to suicide bombing using the arguments of religion. > That was made nearly 40 years ago, but it was a fun romp, not a comedy but > not really a terror drama either; rather it was thought provoking, and way > ahead of its time.? It has so many elements we yak on about today: AGI, > friendly evolving to unfriendly, sexbots, good kick and stomp with Yul > Brenner doing a convincing job as a proto-Data, lots of good visuals for > those of us who appreciate early to mid 1970s fashion. Loved West World. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 05:19:37 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 23:19:37 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 5:14 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >>> Ground solar currently has an energy payback time of 2-4 years. >> >> Where does this come from? It is certainly not the case for small scale solar. > > ^ "What is the Energy Payback for PV?" (PDF). National Renewable > Energy Laboratory. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37322.pdf. > Retrieved 2008-11-24. > > If you say that's not the energy payback time, what is? ?I.e., how > much energy does it take to make and install PV vs the average power > production per day? Ok Keith, I see where I went off the tracks now. You're talking about ENERGY payback time, and at the time I was thinking about monetary payback time, which is completely different. My apologies for the misunderstanding. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 05:46:38 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 23:46:38 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Only Behavior? (Was Re: From Friendly AI to Loving AI) In-Reply-To: <4DC4B9BA.70104@canonizer.com> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DC4B9BA.70104@canonizer.com> Message-ID: Sorry for the late reply... 2011/5/6 Brent Allsop : > Everyone always cracks me up, all this talk about "(behave as if he)" and so > on.? Is there nothing beyond behavior that anyone is interested in yet? > What about the all the effing good stuff?? Is any of that mentioned in any > of the books about the future of sex?? Or is it all just about lying > behavior? Yes, the book I referred to spends some time on this sort of thing. The key to the difference between what you're talking about here, and the stuff I've been talking about is WHEN it happens. The sexbot will likely be first, and the upload, reload, crossload experiences you're talking about here will likely be later. > I was excited to see so much talk about BDSM, this is obviously a minority > camp, and I pity the majority that are in for a big surprise when they fully > find out how effing great true BDSM really is. That may well be true. I think people will be more willing to try such "far out" stuff in virtual reality, or some other 'safer' way of doing things. BDSM in the real world has certain hazards that most of us want to avoid. > But still, for me, even only > the "pair up BM robots with SD humans" is missing what is for me the real > good stuff.? What gets me off mostly, being a switch, is knowing what it > will feel like for someone doing something to me.? That kind of shared > recursive awareness is way beyond anything purely behavioral.? I am so > looking forward to effing what that is like to others, I bet most of you > will be completely shocked, as any behavior, talking, or anything will never > get close to what it is really like. Indeed, it would be hard to really understand something that you have never gotten close to doing in real life. This goes way beyond sex, of course. I mean, what the hell is going on in the heads of some of those holy rollers?!? What the hell is that voodoo state? Extreme sports of all kinds. There are going to be a number of extremely interesting states into which we can place our minds that will just blow us out of the water. I can hardly wait. > Fully sharing all this is still effingly impossible, you can still only know > half of what is going on, only guessing ? from the 'behavior' - really > wondering if they are lying, if they are experiencing more or less than you > ever knew was possible...? Is anyone interested in knowing such or what > their partner is really experiencing? Being completely in the head of your partner is something that some people would get into, but probably not everyone. I think it is something I would like very much. > Is their behavior all that matters to > you?? Do you always want your partner to tell you what they need, via some > behavior?? Or do you want to know, first hand, and not just experience half > of it and guess the rest through behavior? That would be very nice in the context of the right kind of relationship. > Stefano mentioned "or perhaps better..." > > Might I ask what you imagine such to be?? I hope it's more than just > behavior? > > I imagine taking all these phenomenal pleasures, hard wired, like puppet > strings by my primitive creator, making me do what it wanted me to do.? I'm > so pained that I must give up so much of what I want to do, in order to > spend the time to get any of this, and giving up so much of the reverse, as > I work to resist such, to be socially acceptable, and to get anything useful > done at all.? I imagine rewiring all this great stuff to more powerfully in > synch with everything I want to do, not all this gross waist of time, anti > social stuff.? And not only that, I imagine getting my hands involved in > designing and improving and hacking such phenomenal stuff, and pushing > towards becoming omni phenomenal.? I bet there are things possible out there > in nature trillions of times more than any human has come close to > experiencing, even if you only stay with what some of the lessor animals > must be experiencing when they do it. Very well put. This is confusing stuff to think about, but well worth the "trip". > Who cares about mindless behavior and programming such into ever more > sophisticated behavior playback machines that are only behaving as if they > are in love? This is a short term play. A stop on the way to what you're talking about. It is important to keep the short, mid and long term in mind when talking about the future. You have to have things like sexbots and synchronized videos to push the envelope, or you will never get to what you're talking about in the very long term. If you looked at the first cell phone, you probably could never imagine using one of those, particularly on a daily basis. Walk, then run. It takes patience to get to the future. > Why is everyone, especially transhumanists, so quick to miss what the expert > consensus is telling us about what consciousness, sex, and effing really is, > what it really means, and what sharing all that will be like in the near > future? Qualia are important, and there are likely many more qualia than we currently experience. It will be exceedingly interesting to get there. It will also be hard to convey memetically given the current limited methodologies we have for communication. Additional senses will likely help, but qualia being separated from senses to an extent... it's a difficult problem to get through. It is amazing what we are able to communicate about qualia in our current state of development. > Is anyone else out there > interested in more than just behavior?? It should would be nice to know, > definitively. Yes, I think it's interesting. But I think it is too far out in the future to be able to think about very constructively at this point. > P.S,? I'm watching how many of you respond with the popular completely > clueless, primitive, and ignorant "Oh Gross, I don't want to know what my > partner is experiencing and share what I'm experiencing..." most people > respond to such talk with.? Seriously, I really want to know if anyone > really gets any of this, and rigorously measure how much progress the > experts are making at educating the rest of the world about what is about to > be effing possible and what the world will be like 100 years from now.? That > which you measure, improves, and if you have half a clue, please support the > "Representational Qualia Camp" and help us educate the rest of the world. If I had half a clue what things would be like in 100 years... well, I would write a book or something. :-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 05:38:24 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 23:38:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/11 Mr Jones : >> I agree with this, except for the "as a whole" part. I think there are >> enough generous people, at least in a country like America, to care >> for the truly indigent. > > I would love to think that's true. ?And if I knew it to be true, I'd be all > for govt being shrunk beyond belief. ?But that'd require more than just > meals/shelter for the indigent. ?We'd still need roads, water, etc. Large terrestrial transportation construction projects have almost always been built primarily with public funds. Recently, they have become a public/private partnership in many cases. The private parts seem to be funded by private individuals who buy state bonds, but I haven't done a lot of research on that aspect. I think that's because of the difficulty in raising enough private capital for such endeavors, and the associated risks. If the government did not build road and dams and such, you can bet that such capital would be found where it makes sense. For example, most of the buildings constructed in large cities are not publicly funded. Great works like the Manhattan skyline show what private capital can accomplish. I'm sure that over time, more of the great buildings have had some government involvement, but in general it's been private. The Empire State Building was completed with private funds during the depression. Interesting how airports are largely funded by the government, but airplanes are not. Highways, but not cars. Funny how artificial this model is. I appreciate the ingenuity of the model that says the government owns the cars too, (or at least the batteries) like the electric car approach they are trying in Iceland and Israel. To get there from here, I think it would be pretty easy for the government to sell water companies, roads, etc. to private corporations. You could just as easily collect road use fees at the gas pump for a corporation as for a government, so it doesn't change everything to a toll road. Given the current infrastructure deficit and the national debt, selling off these public infrastructures would be a good way to recover some sense of financial reality. One of the excuses used against libertarian thought is, "it is a natural monopoly, and we can't expect private industry to act responsibly with monopolistic power." I would say the government does no better with such systems because of the lack of checks and balances. If it were a corporation with government oversight, then at least there are two members involved in checks and balances. >> The problem with government is you end up with >> a program like Food Stamps that now serves 35 million people (12% of >> the population). These are not all indigent. I know, I was on Food >> Stamps myself for a while and I was by no means indigent at the time. >> I just qualified for the program. I'm pretty sure I would qualify now. >> I am not indigent, but I could steal money from all of you (at least >> the Americans who pay taxes) by going down and applying. > > In order to qualify for foodstamps, you've got to have a fairly minimal > income. ?A 4 person family (2 adults/2kids) has to have an income under > something like $36k/yr to qualify (not certain, but I'm fairly close I > believe). ?That's a pretty low income. ?Unless you're living in some crime > ridden inner-city, with horribly performing school systems, you'd have a > hard time getting by. ?Is this really how we should expect our families to > live? I know lots of people on food stamps that live with their parents in $500,000 homes. It's easy to game the system. I don't begrudge the people who take food stamps. My disgust is at the government that keeps people like that from having true opportunity by overtaxing the capitalists that could employ them if they were allowed to do so competitively. The corporate tax structure in America is a crime. Today, I heard the number 46 million people on food stamps. If using food stamps were a disease, then this would truly be an epidemic. >> I'm not familiar with Glencore, but I probably would not like what >> they are doing. If you have an article to read or something, I'd be >> glad to comment further. > > http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/05/20115723149852120.html Apparently, aljazeera doesn't have a very responsive web server; or the CIA is blocking access... ;-) I'm sure it is a fair and balanced story. I'll try again later... Ok, MUCH later... if Glencore is doing insider trading, then they should be punished for that. Sounds like that is something they have been involved with, so they should be spanked for that. Being aided and abetted by the United Nations in the food for oil fiasco, well, it did say in the article that '"There will always be allegations that they [Glencore] are dealing with some unsavory folks," said Chris Hinde from Mining Journal magazine.' I suppose they were talking about the UN there. ;-) But markets such as Glencore are absolutely necessary. Not having markets is VERY bad. Much worse than having people like Glencore bend and break rules from time to time. Please watch this very impressive TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/elene_gabre_madhin_on_ethiopian_economics.html >> > Govt provides a kind of balancing against the power of capital (at least >> > it's supposed to, when working properly). ?What we've witnessed the past >> > few'ish decades, is what happens when capital rules the roost >> > semi-unchecked. ?De-regulation hands the keys to the inmates. ?On the >> > other >> > hand, micro-managed regulation mucks things up too; as always there's a >> > balance to be found. >> >> Of course, there is balance. But to say that there are only two >> players, government and corporations, in the game is disingenuous. > > Fair enough, there are other players. ?To think that churches, and lobbyists > (who lobbies for the poor, honestly, who can they afford?), non-profits etc > can take care of the massive amount of?underprivileged?out there > is?disingenuous. ?Even WITH the MILLIONS if not BILLIONS the govt throws > towards the poor....they're still poor. ?You mean to tell me, that if Uncle > Sam didn't take a few bucks out of each check...all of a sudden these NGOs, > and non-profits would miraculously be able to take care of everyone in need? > ?I don't buy it. ?Granted I'm a cynic. What I'm saying is that if taxes were reduced, and government programs were also reduced, that there would be an increase in charitable giving. It would probably not be AS MUCH, but the money given would be used MORE EFFICIENTLY, producing a similar or better outcome for the world's poor. Programs like the Grameen bank have done much more with much less. Some Africans believe that aid is the CAUSE of their difficulties. Some say Africa has come a long way. I think they could have progressed further and faster without the direct aid. That's not to say that they should not have help. The need to access capital is absolutely necessary for entrepreneurial based growth. Again, TED has a number of good talks along these lines. >> There are a lot more players than that, including lobbyists, churches, >> NGOs, non-profits, charities, professional organizations, unions, etc. > > It's funny you mention unions. ?Seeing as big $$$'d interests are trying to > tear apart any union they can across the land. ?Unions lead to a strong > middle class. ?Something which I'm fully in support of; as the middle class > goes, so goes the country. ?$$$'d interests however, would have us cut off > our nose, to spite our face (starve out the middle class, to increase q1, 2, > 3, and 4 profits). ?Currently in Ohio, there's rumor that the major > contractors in town (Few big boys, lil' guys starved out by big guys as of > past decade or so) are going to try and get $8/hr back from the Union > Carpenters. ?$16k/yr they want to take from these guys. ?They're living in > 25k sq/ft homes, driving 150k porsches....and they want 16k/yr from the > pockets of the guys who broke their backs to get them that porsche/mansion. Perhaps unions had their legitimate place in history, but mostly they have been a front for socialist and communist agendas. Where they have benefited the workers' short term interests, they have often fought against their long term interests. By, for example, encouraging the factory owners to move their production overseas or to non-union places. As for building the middle class, here in Utah, we have a very healthy middle class, thank you very much, with very few unions. I don't think unions have had a lot to do with it, more likely just overall economic growth. > Again, I'm not a hater of the rich, I'm a hater of the poor (hate they even > exist in this day and age). ?I don't mind someone with $$$ making much more > off of a group of individuals he pays well. ?But pigs get fat, hogs get > slaughtered. ?When is enough truly enough? ?Does one need enough to support > 100 families to feel satisfied? ?1000? ?1 million? Let's do a mind experiment. What should happen in your utopian society when someone gets up one morning and decides that they want to become an expert couch potato? Should society support their television habit? Do they have an obligation to work at all? What is the remedy when they don't work? Obviously, it isn't starvation. I believe that we need more rich people. Obscenely rich people. And while I personally would not be happy with more than about 30 million dollars, I was happier when I wasn't broke. >> All of these play a part, and I argue that some of them should play a >> much bigger part than they do today. > > If the part they play, is up to the challenge at hand, by all means. ?I > don't care who's putting food in the mouthes, or clothes on the back... As long as it's not from the sweat of your own brow... It is theft. Plain and simple. >> And government should play a >> smaller part, for sure. > > Govt as of late (past few+ decades) has been a joke, I agree. ?They don't > need to be in every aspect of our life. ?I'm no govt fan-boy I assure you. Could have fooled me... ;-) > ?But less than I trust govt...I trust big $$$. ?I'd love to think my fellow > humans were empathic and forward-thinking enough to take care of one > another...but that just isn't the case. How many rich individuals do you know personally? > And while I don't think we're all created equal, I do believe we all deserve > an equal chance to do something with our life. Just a second there big guy? Do you want an equal opportunity (capitalism) or an equal outcome (socialism)? There is a huge difference between these two world views. And just what constitutes an "opportunity"? Do you have to have a government provided college education? A government provided job? Research lab? Where do you draw the line? >Until we provide that equal > opportunity, I'll be unhappy with the way things are. ?I realize this means > zero, but can't shake the fact that we're all standing on the shoulder of > giants, and as such, should offer everyone else the opportunity to check out > the view. ? ? ;) In my opinion, a true libertarian society would give more people that chance. Would there be more rich people too? You bet! That's how you keep poor people from being so poor. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 05:59:24 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 23:59:24 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense (PDC2011 summary) In-Reply-To: <4DCD2A55.5050305@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> <4DCD2A55.5050305@aleph.se> Message-ID: Pretty interesting use of Twitter to track meteor sightings... http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.com/2011/04/florida-georgia-alabama-large-meteor.html Maybe twitter is good for something after all... :-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 06:12:46 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 00:12:46 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DCD09CB.3060604@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DCD09CB.3060604@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 4:36 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> On Sat, May 7, 2011 at 3:45 AM, Tom Nowell >> wrote: >> >>> >>> bioweapons, AGI & nanotech, Wars, Climate change >>> >> >> Can't we all just agree that clean water is worth working on? Or how >> about the indoor use of charcoal? >> >> Or is that stuff just too third world for people to care about? >> > > Apples and oranges (i.e different but comparable along a few dimensions). > Water and charcoal kills many people every day, and on average more people > die of them than any of the above GCRs. But were a serious GCR to happen, it > might kill *far* more people - or all of them. So do you focus on the > average case, the past average, the long-term average or the tail risk? Understood. I wasn't arguing against GCR work. Rather, I was pointing out that economically, it makes more sense to go after the low hanging fruit before attacking something like global warming. I think chasing asteroids makes much more sense economically than CO2 sequestration. > While the mundane threats - water, sanitation, local pollution, food - are a > bit unsexy, doing something about the big threats often suffer from either > paralysis (they seem too big) or silliness bias (they are not 'real'). Far > more work is spent on intermediate threats that might rationally be lower > priority, like terrorism or certain diseases. The biggest problem is that > people do not work or fund risk mitigation in any particularly rational > way.. Totally with you brother!!! > I think the rational approach here is to go for the big wins and they are > likely at both ends of the scale. There are low hanging fruits in female > education and water/sanitation solutions, there are potentially huge wins in > slight reductions of big GCRs. It is not as if the budget for desalination > is seriously competing with the budget for nuclear disarmament. So what do you do with something like global warming that is neither low hanging fruit, nor unimportant? It's a tough play. > And if we can make risk management smarter, then we will get more big wins. > So work on the metalevel might actually be more helpful in lives saved per > year than rushing into the workshop/lab and working on the direct solution. Totally agreed!!! -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 05:43:58 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 23:43:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 1:11 PM, BillK wrote: > On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 7:50 PM, Kelly Anderson ?wrote: > >> I know you're a smart guy Bill. Let's keep working this through. This >> isn't emotional for me, this is entirely rational. It is a very >> slipper slope that the socialists have pushed us down. We can and must >> climb out, or we will have no country at all very soon because all of >> the rich will eventually move to China. >> >> The problem with Socialism is that eventually, you run out of other >> people's money. > > I haven't noticed much Socialism in the US. Really? That's pretty funny. > >From a European POV the so-called US lefties are considered to be > rabid right wingers. ? ;) I can't help that most European countries are more rapidly suicidal than America. > My view is that unregulated corporatism has bought up the government > and looted the US economy. One of the bigger problems with the US right now is that the corporate tax rate is so high that they don't collect many of the taxes to which they are properly due. This is because they drive the corporations overseas. It is a big problem. > The problem with creating a wealth pyramid where the top .1% own > almost everything is that when wealth is so concentrated, the consumer > economy game stops. Bill, what country in the history of the world most closely approximates your view of economic utopia? For me, it's pretty easy.. American or England in 1800... Of course my utopia would not have slavery. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 06:36:58 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 00:36:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <006c01cc10f9$57238af0$056aa0d0$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> <006c01cc10f9$57238af0$056aa0d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 5:07 PM, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson > Subject: Re: [ExI] Farmville for real > > On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 9:46 AM, spike wrote: > >>...It would probably be very expensive, but do you think it would be more > expensive than organic? (Real question) ?-Kelly > > No one knows, Kelly. ?All-legal produce has never been attempted. I think this is probably an overstatement. I'm sure many of the small scale types that show up at my local farmer's market are all legal. Documenting that they are all legal might be a challenge, but I'm sure many of them are. Once you get up into the Archer Daniel's Midland scale, you're absolutely right, no way to prove that scale of production is all legal. > Regarding all-legal produce, it would probably be more expensive than > organic, but it would be a better product, so it might depend on how you > count it. I think it would sell around here. > My mother, being a licensed CPA, attempted to account properly and pay all > the taxes on her farm labor. ?When she filled out all the forms and > submitted them to the appropriate authorities ?according the rules, they had > no idea what to do with them. ?They had never had anyone actually attempt to > try to follow all the farm labor tax rules. ?The agency had never seen it! > > I... am... not... kidding... That is a very sad story. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 17 06:43:43 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 00:43:43 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/15 Amon Zero : > On 14 May 2011 11:03, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Suffice to say, I disagree with your analysis on multiple levels. I have > never seen anything approaching conclusive evidence that full-blown > libertarianism would "produce good outcomes for the poor" (although of > course I've heard a *lot* of assertions), whereas I have seen plenty of > examples of unrestrained economic and political behaviour causing great > suffering to people unable to protect themselves from its effects. America, you might have heard of the place, was once very much a libertarian place. I hear they have produced good outcomes for the poor. Was there suffering in early America? yes. Was there growth? yes. Was there unfair labor practices? You bet. It wasn't a utopian place with no poor or suffering, but it was a place of opportunity for more people than had ever experienced the same in the history of the world. Has there ever been a government that has produced more wealth in a greater number of her subjects? No. Never. How can you say libertarianism has never been tried? It wasn't perfect libertarianism, but it was a lot closer than it is today. -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 17 07:01:25 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 09:01:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 11:19:37PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Ok Keith, I see where I went off the tracks now. You're talking about > ENERGY payback time, and at the time I was thinking about monetary EROEI is always preferable to EPBT. You can have short EPBT at negligible EROEI, e.g. if you use polymer PV which burns out in a couple years. > payback time, which is completely different. My apologies for the > misunderstanding. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From steinberg.will at gmail.com Tue May 17 06:47:18 2011 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 01:47:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Strength of the Frontier Thesis gotta be taken into account. We really ought to get on it with space colonies. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 17 06:48:44 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 23:48:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: <4DCE5D88.8040400@aleph.se> References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> <4DCE5D88.8040400@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 3:46 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Keith Henson wrote: >> >> True. ?Even with war. ?If we understand that to stay out of war mode >> we need to keep the population growth below the economic growth, how >> does that possibly translate into anything we can do reduce the birth >> rate in (say) Arab cultures? >> > > Female education. Decreases the birth rate Probably. Association is not causal though. It would be interesting to understand this better. > and increases the economic growth > rate, among other things. Figuring out how to spread it well in a certain > culture is of course a particular problem, requiring understanding, > ingenuity and resources. In addition, many of the Arab countries are > suffering from extremely bad governance for a bundle of reasons; this > produces a self-reinforcing loop of violence/repression, low trust, low > economic growth and corruption. Breaking that one would also have big > positive effects in the long run (but transitions are rarely easy - I > suspect we are going to see a long sequence of further uprisings in the > Arabian spring countries even if they eventually do fine). I hope so. But it's not like we of the west have a lot of leverage. > The nice thing with much of physics and engineering is that you can do scale > separation or keep things modular. In human affairs things go on at all > levels and interact in messy ways: there is little modularity. In a way > "rule of law, not of men" is an attempt to improve modularity by separating > the legal functions from the personal interests of the people implementing > them. Maybe finding other ways of modularizing society might be helpful - > although this often means that social and emotional matters become > impersonal, which people often do not like. > > Defending the planet from large-scale wars might be less of a human problem > than a problem of how to get metaorganisms to cooperate or at least > coordinate. The cold war was not so much about people in conflict as systems > of people in conflict. And such systems can behave in ways fairly decoupled > from the interests and ways of thinking of their components. True. I think I know why the cold war never went hot. Keith > -- > 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 > From amon at doctrinezero.com Tue May 17 07:58:06 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 08:58:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 17 May 2011 07:43, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > How can you say libertarianism has never been tried? It wasn't perfect > libertarianism, but it was a lot closer than it is today. Kelly, I think you've got a good point. The thing is, I'm far from anti-libertarian - catch me at the right moment and I might even describe myself as libertarian - it's just that Rafal's frankly extreme stance forced me to draw a line. I think you're right that America past, particularly 19th Century, was more libertarian than today, and yes, I would agree there has clearly been net societal gain from the achievements made in that time. But, as you say, there was also of course suffering directly caused by the process. It seems quite clear that there's a trade-off between the innovation that results from economic freedom, and protection from suffering offered by legal safeguards. Imagine a continuum between extreme libertarianism (0) and extreme paternalism (1). Societies with values not significantly different from 0 or 1 are unlikely to be to my taste. Rafal is clearly arguing for 0. 19th Century America is somewhere a little south (i.e. closer to 0) of my preferred balance, but it was not the world Rafal advocates. Modern day China is probably closer to 0 than America has ever been, in its economic and business practices at least. In other respects, Chinese society looks alarmingly like a 1. Best, A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 17 08:57:40 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 09:57:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DCD09CB.3060604@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 7:12 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > So what do you do with something like global warming that is neither > low hanging fruit, nor unimportant? It's a tough play. > > I don't see that as a tough play at all. The way to tackle global warming is something that the world should be doing anyway - Move away from using oil and coal and use renewable energy sources. We will be forced to do that anyway as oil and coal become more and more expensive as the available supplies begin to run out. So why not get on with it and do it now? Oh, of course, the oil and coal corporations have their own interests to defend and they own the US government. The rest of the world can look after themselves. BillK From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 17 11:49:28 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 07:49:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 1:11 PM, BillK wrote: >> I haven't noticed much Socialism in the US. > > Really? That's pretty funny. I'm puzzled as to why you find it funny. I have lived on both continents, and I can assure you that BillK is just saying something that is considered common knowlege in the rest of the world (i.e. the fact that there is almost no socialism in the U.S.). The only group of people who find this difficult to understand are U.S. right wingers. I would guess that roughly 70% of all Democrat politicians in the U.S. would could as significantly right of center in most European countries. Also, the word "socialism" has completely different meanings on the two sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S. it is roughly equivalent to the meaning of "soviet communism" in Europe. The term "socialism", in Europe, means something like "believing that government has the responsibility to look after the interests of the weaker members of society". >> >From a European POV the so-called US lefties are considered to be >> rabid right wingers. ;) > > I can't help that most European countries are more rapidly suicidal > than America. Content-free comment, I assume. >> My view is that unregulated corporatism has bought up the government >> and looted the US economy. > > One of the bigger problems with the US right now is that the corporate > tax rate is so high that they don't collect many of the taxes to which > they are properly due. This is because they drive the corporations > overseas. It is a big problem. Factually incorrect. The corporate tax rate is a meaningless number because there are so many tax breaks specially designed to get around it, that most corporations actually pay an amount of tax that is far less than the rate that middle class American individuals pay. The tax rate does not drive companies overseas, corporate greed drives companies overseas. >> The problem with creating a wealth pyramid where the top .1% own >> almost everything is that when wealth is so concentrated, the consumer >> economy game stops. > > Bill, what country in the history of the world most closely > approximates your view of economic utopia? > > For me, it's pretty easy.. American or England in 1800... Of course my > utopia would not have slavery. At that time, children of poor families were sent down mines at the age of 8 or 9 years, to work for 12-18 hours a day. Or sent into factories for the same hours. Your parentetical remark "...Of course my utopia would not have slavery" is just funny in spades, since without the child labor, the servants and the slaves, that period would not have been a utopia for the rich. The fact that you would quote that period as an economic utopia speaks volumes about your knowledge of history and ability to apply that knowledge to real world systems. Richard Loosemore From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 17 13:50:52 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 06:50:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:01 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 11:19:37PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Ok Keith, I see where I went off the tracks now. You're talking about >> ENERGY payback time, and at the time I was thinking about monetary > > EROEI is always preferable to EPBT. You can have short EPBT at > negligible EROEI, e.g. if you use polymer PV which burns out > in a couple years. If you had a polymer PV that had an energy payback time of a couple of months and lasted 2 years, that would be possible to grow energy on the energy harvested, i.e., short doubling time. PV that takes years to pay back the energy used to make it has a slow doubling time. I would rather have a short EPBT. YMMV. Keith >> payback time, which is completely different. My apologies for the >> misunderstanding. > > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A ?7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 17 14:01:39 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 16:01:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110517140139.GN24232@leitl.org> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 06:50:52AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > If you had a polymer PV that had an energy payback time of a couple of > months and lasted 2 years, that would be possible to grow energy on Great if you roll it out in the desert, and weigh down with stones. Total deployment time: <30 min. And you can always drive down to Walmart and get another roll of polycells-last-all-summer-long. Not so great if your home's outer skin is made from it. Here you'd want to go for 40+ years. (Yes, houses and people will be still around in 40+ years). > the energy harvested, i.e., short doubling time. PV that takes years > to pay back the energy used to make it has a slow doubling time. When PV panes are autopoietic, yes. As long as you put them up by people, not so great. Apropos solar: http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2011-May/009071.html > I would rather have a short EPBT. YMMV. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From spike66 at att.net Tue May 17 14:16:23 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 07:16:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <011001cc149d$01227c40$036774c0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson (et.al.) ... >...I know lots of people on food stamps that live with their parents in$500,000 homes... ... >>... ?They're living in 25k sq/ft homes, driving 150k porsches....and they want 16k/yr from the pockets of the guys who broke their backs to get them that porsche/mansion. .... >>... Again, I'm not a hater of the rich, I'm a hater of the poor (hate they even exist in this day and age)...Does one need enough to support 100 families to feel satisfied? ?1000? ?1 million? ... >...Do you want an equal opportunity (capitalism) or an equal outcome (socialism)? >...In my opinion, a true libertarian society would give more people that chance. Would there be more rich people too? You bet! That's how you keep poor people from being so poor. -Kelly In all this discussion, note how much mischief is caused by our using the same term (rich) to mean two related but different things. It is used to mean those who have a ton of money and also for those who are in the process of making a ton of money. Paradoxically, the term poor is used for those who have little money but not necessarily for those who are making little or nothing. The US federal government has no way of taxing a person based on what they have, only on what they make. There is no good way to turn convert to anything else in any capitalist system; if the fed tries to tax assets, capital flees. Set up a 2x2 matrix, put income on one axis and assets on the other. In general most people fit in quadrants 1 and 4, but there are plenty of people who fall in 2 and 3 as well. These are those who live in mansions and drive new sports cars, but qualify for food stamps. These are young medical doctors, perhaps earning a decent wage, yet still struggling for years under a mountain of debt while paying huge tax rates and living very modest lifestyles. We need to have words for high income low assets, and low income high assets. Rich and poor are overworked words. spike From anders at aleph.se Tue May 17 14:11:10 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 10:11:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Planetary defense In-Reply-To: References: <56903.9815.qm@web27001.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <4DC561C7.6050503@aleph.se> <4DCD0ED4.6000400@aleph.se> <4DCE5D88.8040400@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DD281FE.7020509@aleph.se> Keith Henson wrote: > On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 3:46 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> Female education. Decreases the birth rate >> > > Probably. Association is not causal though. It would be interesting > to understand this better. > Lots of papers in the demographics and developement literature. Overall, people seem to be fairly convinced that it is causal. http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/aer.101.1.158 http://www.crei.cat/conferences/Iae/Francesco_Cinnirella.pdf http://www3.pids.gov.ph/popn_pub/full_papers/Female%20educ%20FP%20and%20fertility.pdf ... -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 17 17:03:14 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 18:03:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <011001cc149d$01227c40$036774c0$@att.net> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <011001cc149d$01227c40$036774c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 3:16 PM, spike wrote: > We need to have words for high income low assets, and low income high > assets. ?Rich and poor are overworked words. > > The general rule for being eligible for food stamps is 10% above the state poverty level. The rules are complex, depending on the size of household and whether children, retirees or unemployed people are in the household, but I don't believe that people with millionaire assets can claim food stamps. Because the rules are complex, it can appear to onlookers that unfair cases slip through the net, because you don't know the details of the claimant household. And, of course, some people defraud the system. But I doubt that 44 million people are cheating the system. I think they are desperate for food to survive. Claiming and using food stamps is not a lifestyle that many families aspire to. BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 17 17:44:29 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 10:44:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110517140139.GN24232@leitl.org> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110517140139.GN24232@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 7:01 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 06:50:52AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > >> If you had a polymer PV that had an energy payback time of a couple of >> months and lasted 2 years, that would be possible to grow energy on > > Great if you roll it out in the desert, and weigh down with stones. > Total deployment time: <30 min. And you can always drive down > to Walmart and get another roll of polycells-last-all-summer-long. > > Not so great if your home's outer skin is made from it. Here > you'd want to go for 40+ years. (Yes, houses and people will > be still around in 40+ years). Roof's seldom last 40 years. And if a house is painted, the paint isn't likely to last more than ten years. But that's not the point. The use of solar energy needs to expand upwards of 128 times. That's 7 doublings. Consider PV systems limited by energy, one that lasts 2 years and had a payback in 2 months and one that lasts 24 years and has a payback of two years. If you are feeding all the energy produced into making new systems, the first would take a year and two months years to grow by 128 times, the second would take 14 years. The fast payback would be an incredible economic bonanza. Of course a system that had an energy payback time of two months and lasted 50 years would be even better. That's about what SBSP looks like with 6% efficient transportation to GEO. Keith >> the energy harvested, i.e., short doubling time. ?PV that takes years >> to pay back the energy used to make it has a slow doubling time. > > When PV panes are autopoietic, yes. As long as you put them up > by people, not so great. > > Apropos solar: http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2011-May/009071.html > >> I would rather have a short EPBT. ?YMMV. > > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A ?7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 17 18:01:44 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 11:01:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110517140139.GN24232@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Keith Henson wrote: snip > The fast payback would be an incredible economic bonanza. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/uom-nsp051611.php It might be here. Keith From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 17 19:01:23 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 21:01:23 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110517140139.GN24232@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110517190123.GK24232@leitl.org> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 11:01:44AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > > snip > > > The fast payback would be an incredible economic bonanza. > > http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/uom-nsp051611.php > > It might be here. This doesn't change anything, unless you can have desktop-sized devices extruding nanopatterned sheets acting as rectennas for UV/VIS/NIR from cheap/ubiquitous precursors. You would still need robotic platforms spinning up the entire neighborhood with rectenna nanowebs, with convenient ways to access the power. The problem is harder than it looks. Hence the time scale of 40 years of sustained, expensive deployment to reach 80% of 20 TW. 40 years is a long time even in wall clock land. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed May 18 00:14:29 2011 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 20:14:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <014b01cc136a$af511710$0df34530$@att.net> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> <006c01cc10f9$57238af0$056aa0d0$@att.net> <87e1899418b9f5a4be7bfc7609036808.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <014b01cc136a$af511710$0df34530$@att.net> Message-ID: <3f315b12bb12be6c56420df48e65fe0e.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > > The real problem is if you try to follow all the rules, you draw suspicion. > If you appear to do everything right, they know you are up to no good. > > If your friend paid workmans' comp and did all that, then she is practically > inviting the feds to come in for a raid. They will be astonished to find > nothing. A non-smoking non-gun is a smoking gun. Yes, she had paid workmans' comp and all. She was *furious* that there was trouble about the injured worker's care. Regards, MB From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Wed May 18 00:10:06 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 17:10:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: *Kelly Anderson wrote* >>An aside... If I rented out a group of RealDolls, would that be a >> brothel? Would it be illegal? Should it be illegal? Is sex with toys >> for money a decent business model? *Kelly Anderson replied* >Sad that nobody tried answering this question... Kelly, please be careful about being sure to attribute comments to the right person (in this case it was unclear). I realize that with a very long post and the accompanying replies, it can get confusing. More comments below! On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/11 John Grigg : > > This is a very interesting thread and I had fun responding... > > Glad you're having fun John. It really is fascinating to delve into > the future of human and transhuman sexuality. It's at least as fun as > the more common fantasy of sex in weightlessness. For the record, I > don't think weightless sex is going to be as much fun as some people > seem to think it's going to be... From the attempts made on the Zero G > plane, it looks really, really difficult... Pole vaulting looks kind > of fun, but it looks hard too. > > > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:09 PM, Kelly Anderson > > wrote: > >> > >> 2011/5/6 salvatore micheal / sam iam : > >> > >> > >> Agreed. When the divorce rate is 50%, and a robot becomes the most > >> natural and safe 'rebound' relationship, it could get really high. I > >> think mostly it depends on whether women become less militant in the > >> future. If women have to compete with robots, will it improve the > >> women? Men are treated so shabbily in many relationships that robots > >> make a pretty reasonable alternative to further abuse. With the > >> continued growth of nasty personality disorders, I think this could > >> become pretty common. > > > > You bring up a fascinating point. But just as we guys have our > viewpoints, > > women have their own "war stories" to share and emotional scars to > reveal. > > I would never disagree with this. I think assholes are fairly evenly > distributed across the sexes. > > > I do think many women have gotten harshly demanding, and I have seen > a some > > ugly cases up close. > > The interesting thing is that since the 70s, it has become vogue for > women to be assholes, whereas in the majority of human history, only > men were able to be assholes in primary relationships. I just wish it > had been the other way around, meaning that everybody just stopped > being ass holes. > > > I realize many women want the handsome and successful > > alpha male type, and so when they decide to "settle" for a beta male > because > > that's what they can get, they develop great resentment, and take it out > on > > the poor guy that they married. > > And are supported in their feelings by the uber-feminist "all sex, > even inside of marriage, is rape" crowd. > > > I do think the scenario you envision is very eye-opening. I could see at > > first men with female androids being seen as eccentric losers, but then > as > > the machines get very sophisticated in terms of personality & > > intelligence, and with physical beauty to rival the most gorgeous flesh > and > > blood women, that they will become accepted and then even be seen as a > sign > > of wealth and status. I suppose when the cost comes down to the area of > a > > present-day luxury car, they will become relatively commonplace. > > Howard Stern, the shock jock, once said he had sex with a RealDoll > provided to him. He described it as the best sex he ever had. While I > doubt this was actually the truth, he probably did have a pretty good > time. It is almost a certainty that people's attitudes about this sort > of thing will evolve and change over time. Today, it seems somewhat > mainstream for a woman to have a vibrator. They have half hour shows > for such things on the shopping network late at night. So they must > sell a butt load of this stuff. I don't think men are as open to > talking in general, and certainly not about their sex toys. But > overall sales will act as a surrogate for talking in determining when > things have reached a level of acceptance. How abnormal can porn be > when it's a 15 billion dollar industry with AT&T being a major player > in the market? Yet most people still don't talk about it openly, > because it's a fairly private thing. > > I could envision romantic book publishers advertising (in a very public way) that women can download the "mind" of particular storyline main characters straight into their home male android! > > I could envision late 21st century teenage/college age boys mocking each > > other by saying, "you have only have had sex with androids!" And at > least > > for young men, having sex with real women will probably be seen as a way > to > > score points with their peers and be "real men." But as men age and find > > themselves nursing their emotional wounds, beautiful and > highly intelligent > > female androids may become a popular method for getting their needs for > > companionship met. > > Good points. Also, men seem to like variety and probably have more sex > drive as a gender (YMMV). Men's needs are easier to meet with an > android. For a woman to be satisfied, the android would have to listen > attentively for hours on end to the same story they just heard about > yesterday. If I could buy an android to do my listening for me, and > just relate the new information to me, it would be a HUGE time saver. > I don't really NEED to hear the same story ten times, but the women I > have been with seem to need to tell their stories many times. > > It is ironic that an android lover for women would need to have much more intelligence and personality complexity to be a satisfactory partner. lol I suppose human evolution has been pushed forward by females who wanted more from their prospective male mates and would not settle for less! Hmmm... And so you would have an android doppleganger to listen to your wife or girlfriend talk, and then you would take it's place when it was time to eat or have sex? I don't think a woman would like that one bit... > > But then again, even a beautiful female android with human level/type > > intelligence might not fully meet the needs of a man. It might be that > > a machine partner who is *programmed* to be very understanding and > seemingly > > loving, might seem very unreal and superficial to flesh and blood men. > > Human-style emotional complexity and unpredictability, even harshness and > > shortcomings, might up to a point be desired. I suppose that could be > > programmed in, but should we?>> > what will be the legal consequences? > (such as with gay marriage and > >> > spousal > >> > rights) > >> > as an example, will we be able to marry our robot gfs/studs? will > they > >> > have > >> > entitlement rights? > > > > I think when an android partner has human level intelligence & > > self-awareness, you will see machine civil liberties becoming a major > > issue. Is it right for even the manufacturing company to program their > > android with human level (or even higher) intelligence to love/be loyal > > to the human partner who bought it? And should that android have a mind > > that allows it to drift away from/desert a human partner, when things > just > > "don't work out?" > > That's why I don't anticipate a high level of intelligence in > companion robots, ever. Unless you are a lab partner, not a sex > partner. Why create problems for yourself? Just create a sexual being > that lives for sex? This is where I REALLY disagree with you. I think many men will want a fully sentient/human level of intelligence female android to be a close to equal/fully equal partner, rather than having just a very high-tech sex doll that can talk and act sexy. If I am proven to be wrong, then the future may be a very depressing place, with people getting physical desires sated, but not their emotional/psychological needs. > If you have doubts that such a being could be > happy, just visit the bonobos at the zoo, if your zoo can take it. :-) > > >> Health insurance for my robot partner? :-) Eventually, if we achieve > >> AGI, I think it has to happen. Otherwise, we'll just cease to be of > >> any importance sooner. > >> > >> > what will be the social impacts of robot partners? (such as projected > by > >> > the > >> > movie AI?) > > The limit to your thinking here is that one robot (or one brain) has > to perform all the functions. It's said that men want a whore in bed, > a chef in the kitchen, a maid to take care of the house, and > occasionally someone to talk to, etc. Why not have multiple AGIs > hosted in the same body, and switch from one to another as the need > arises. I want my partner to be HAPPY to take out the garbage when > it's time to do that, and HAPPY to go to bed, and HAPPY to watch the > Super Bowl or Star Trek with me. Perhaps one brain can't be HAPPY at > ALL those things, so put multiple AGIs in one body, and problem > solved. > > An excellent point. But if the android is to mimic the individuality & life path of a flesh and blood human, then a single AGI would be the preference. I am looking at things from the "having a real/growing relationship with a sentient machine" perspective. > > I suppose it will go from having an android you never have coming out of > the > > house with you, to it being seen as an equal that you share your life > with, > > and then (among a "liberated" and very advanced android) a point may come > > where an upgradable/very advanced android may view it's human partner as > > inferior, but still stay with him/her out of a sense of loyalty and > > compassion. I can envision advanced androids divorcing their human > partners > > to share their lives with those equal to them, i.e., other androids! > > But there will be posthumans/former humans who will be worthy partners > for > > them. > > An android that is a thousand times smarter than you probably would > not find you an interesting partner. Perhaps this can be fixed by > upgrading the human. I dunno. > > > I think marriage will also morph over time. But I suspect reproductive > sex, > > even among near-immortals, will not end over time, because mature > nanotech > > and space travel & colonization (even if just within our own solar > system) > > will lead to expanding populations. And I believe many people will not > > choose (at least for the first several centuries of their lifespan) to be > > uploads. > > Only time will tell. I don't know what to base such a guess on. I > guess that we do have a "need" to raise children, but I see no need > for those children to necessarily be biological. > > > I suspect human exploitation will always exist, and android exploitation > > will be added to the list of crimes. There will be some who will enjoy > > using/hurting a self-aware and highly intelligent artificial mind. > > But what if you create a highly intelligent artificial mind that LIKES > being treated that way? Don't bind your thinking with evolutionary > machinery. We will be the intelligent designers. If an android likes > being treated in a particular way, then it isn't abuse to treat them > that way. If they LIKE picking strawberries, and are fulfilled by > picking strawberries, then it isn't exploitation for them to be > employed as strawberry pickers. Design the future, don't evolve it. > Why shouldn't an android get an orgasm when it picks an especially > nice strawberry? :-) > > An AGI mind may be a fragile and not always fully healable/fixable/adjustable entity, therefore in some ways on par with a human brain. And so creating your warped android might still be an act of abuse. But then I am thinking of a human level AGI intelligence. A less complex mentality might work fine for your purposes. > >> An aside... If I rented out a group of RealDolls, would that be a > >> brothel? Would it be illegal? Should it be illegal? Is sex with toys > >> for money a decent business model? > > Sad that nobody tried answering this question... > > >> > this increased dependency on robot-sex will tend to isolate humans > from > >> > each > >> > other (just as the internet has a 'reversing effect' of actually > >> > isolating > >> > us - instead of 'bringing us together' as it could/should) > > > > I tend to agree with you about the isolation aspect of things. But in > time > > as fully self-aware and intelligent androids are developed, the sense of > > mechanical masturbation and loneliness will hopefully leave such couples. > > Yes. > > > And yet, I could easily envision human beings feeling a huge gulf between > > themselves and their very intelligent and self-aware android partners. > It > > might be far worse than those who marry mail order brides from > > very different cultures. > > Again, think how you would design the perfect sex partner. You > wouldn't put a huge brain into such a creature, would you? If you > would, I think that's kind of cruel. Think Marvin or the Elevators in > Adam's books. That is cruelty. > > I think at least some men would want a fully sentient equal partner, as compared to the sexy equivalent of a dishwasher that can speak... > >> I think the Internet brings us together in silos of common interest, > >> but tears us apart in the real world. My girlfriend has no interest in > >> transhumanism, for example. > > > > I have always had a similar problem with girlfriends... > > Trekkies and gamers occasionally get lucky, and find a trekkie or > gamer girlfriend, but not often in my experience... > My local science fiction cons are practically soap operas the way some people hook up! lol > > >> > it's possible there might be 'rogue robots' performing sex-crimes > (such > >> > as > >> > illustrated in Robot Maid) - how do we deal with that? > >> > >> Initially, they'll be taken apart. Then the anti capital punishment > >> people will jump in as they gain human rights. It's going to be a > >> bumpy ride for sure. > > > > There have already been studies using robots capable of learning, that > show > > some robots willing to share, while others actually lie and are selfish. > > And so this will only get worse as the decades go by... > > Or we'll figure it out, and program them better. See my posts on > "raising" robot children. I suspect that the higher the intelligence, the greater the possibility for so-called "negative" behaviors to evolve over time. Better programming may at best only somewhat limit such tendencies. > >> > when we embrace robot gfs/studs as lovers, we create a Huge set of > >> > problems > >> > society must face in the process > >> > >> We also potentially solve a huge set of problems. These things are > >> tools, to be used for good and evil, just like any other tool. I think > >> there could be a pretty big reduction of rape in the future as > >> suitable alternatives and ubiquitous surveillance develop. > > > > I think rape is done as a hurtful power trip over other sentients, and so > I > > don't think there will be a huge reduction in rapes by using androids as > > surrogates for such urges. Surveillance tech may do a vastly better job > at > > cracking down on this crime. > > If there is a continuous video feed covering a broad spectrum from a > jogger's vicinity to a remote location, I suspect jogging down the > Provo River Trail would get much safer, very quickly. I think you > could design an android that LIKED being a rape victim, but also LIKED > acting like it didn't want to be a rape victim. In other words, one > that a rapist would enjoy going after, but who wasn't damaged in the > process. It's all about how you wire up the reward system. > > Uhhh.... Kelly.... You do seem to have an obsession with this subject!!! > There are similar issues in VR, but this email is getting longish. > > > This will be a touchy subject when the time comes and the technology > > matures, but I see it as becoming popular. I can envision teledildonic > pods > > on every major warship and distant military base. > > I predict this as the FIRST place you will see this implemented well. > Take as a precursor to this that the first documented case of the > spread of an STD from one man to another through a sex doll occurred > on a naval vessel. > > In WWII, when we wouldn't talk about sex in the US, the US Army was > showing STD movies to GIs. The armed forces have a real interest in > taking the lead in these areas. > > Yeah, and those films sure did not have a lasting effect on those horny troops! lol > >> Or bring us closer when we have to be apart. Makes long distance > >> relationships more doable. > > > > A good point! But a colonist on Neptune, with a wife on Earth, will have > to > > deal with quite a time lag in terms of > > signals that link teledildonic devices. > > If I send my "sexual state" from Neptune to Earth to have sex with my > wife through an android surrogate, and the experience is sent back to > me to enjoy in a similar fashion, then the several light hour flight > time might be somewhat overcome. Think of it as Tivo for sex. :-) > > >> > whether the robots/dolls/studs will actually be capable of > feelings/love > >> > is > >> > a Whole 'nother issue indeed.. > >> > >> Not initially, but eventually, it seems inevitable. > > > > Yes, I agree. I wonder to what extent their emotional range will be > similar > > to ours? And will an android be more emotionally healthy than the > typical > > "normal" human? I sure hope so... > > Again, don't think of your android sex partner as a full human, or > even a full intelligence, but one optimized for the purpose. This is a > software issue, not a hardware issue. Your wife might not feel so > "cheated upon" if you had sex with a brainless android... There may be > some women today who would feel less cheated on if their husband > visited a prostitute, rather than having a girlfriend on the side... > maybe. I'm stretching here. > > Again, you look at these androids as super-advanced sex toys, rather than potential life partners. But I certainly can envision how with the appropriate software, they could fit into either status. Elliot Spitzer might not have gotten into so much trouble with his wife and media, if he had had access to the androids we envision. He might have been heartily laughed at, but possibly not fired from his important job as the Wall Street cop. > >> > if a robot can feel love, can we prohibit marriage / more permanent > >> > relationships? > > Why is love the key here anyway? Our society links love and marriage > in a way that is pretty new. Historically, people married for a > variety of reasons, most of which did not really involve love, at > least not at the beginning. If people can adapt to arranged marriages, > surely designed surrogates would be able to do the same. > > Also, you can turn off a surrogate when you aren't using it. Go to > sleep now dear... we'll have sex in the "morning"... :-) I don't > think turning off an AGI is any more dishonorable than sending your > kids to bed at night. Remember, the future is stranger than you think. > > > Hey, I heard a story about a guy who wants to marry his sports car! lol > > There is controversy now about gays marrying, and in time it will > continue > > regarding artificial intelligences, aliens, and genetically uplifted > > animals. > > Stranger than you think... :-) > > >> I agree. I'm inclined to give them as many rights as we can up front, > >> so that when we're the laggards, they'll still extend those rights > >> back to us! > > > > A very good point! I can imagine the time when an android rebukes a > fellow > > android by saying, "you are in a relationship with a genetically mainline > > and non-upgraded human?!" "Yuck!!!" We humans will have to go > > transhuman/posthuman pretty fast to be worthy partners for the > > androids/artificial intelligences. lol > > Yes, if a full partner is where we go with this. > > > I was raised Mormon, and I have thought of writing a science > fiction/fantasy > > short story about a spirit in the Mormon "pre-mortal life," who finds out > > that instead of going down to Earth to be born to a human woman, he is > going > > to be "born" as an artificial intelligence. > > Let's start a new thread on this... I have lots of > Mormon/transhumanist/scifi ideas... Cool! > >> > i personally believe awareness is equivalent to 'having a soul' and > >> > makes > >> > the difference between machine and 'human'. > > > > > > > > > > But in time that difference will dissolve away. > > As we are left in the dust bin of history, sure. :-) > > >> Me too, but I am open to the idea that it is perhaps because there is > >> not yet a better alternative. Once a better alternative does exist in > >> the real world, it becomes a trickier proposition. And it goes both > >> ways. Lots of women will trade in their real men for robots too. > > > > I can envision future husbands lovingly (or not so lovingly) saying to > their > > wives, "you better behave or I will trade you in for an android model!" > lol > > And yes, there will be many women who have been repeatedly burned by men > who > > will be headed to the nearest android dealership when they have the > > chance... Men are often stereotyped as being the ones who prize physical > > beauty in the opposite sex, but I know many women value it just as much. > A > > male android with the features of the typical romantic novel bookcover > > showing the handsome Scotsman will be a big seller! > > It will be harder to create an android that will satisfy women, > because their needs are broader. Many men would be fairly satisfied > with a sexbot and a chefbot... forget the rest. > The future male androids will encounter female ones to only say, "gee, she is dumb and boring!" lol But I believe in the truth of the classic saying, "intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac!" And it will especially be so for our cognitively enhanced future generations... > > > Yes, the future Bill Gates or Larry Ellison of android companions is > > probably in grade school right now... > > I would bet so, probably grade school in Japan though. :-) > > Human women are magical to human men because human men are evolved to > think so (and vice-versa). As we unravel the whys and wherefores of > this, I think we can create androids that will be just as attractive > as the real thing. In outward physical ways, most certainly. But I think there may be aspects of the human to human dynamic that will be very hard to fully duplicate. And so I see human/android (highly sentient androids) relationships being different from human/human. But are we talking about strictly mechanical androids, or perhaps other design types? The "bioroids" of science fiction that are mostly flesh and blood, but quickly manufactured using super-advanced "printing" processes might become the most popular android sex partner template. But because of our common biology, such technology could be extremely controversial and the need for legal oversight would be great. > > I'm dating a very sweet gal right now. I wonder if she could somehow be > an > > android? Naw... She probably just has the sweet and loving > > female personality gene! > > Good for you John. That is definitely the best thing going today!!! > Tomorrow, who knows? I won't replace her just yet... : ) > -Kelly > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed May 18 00:40:39 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 17:40:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] sorta mod version of paleo diet Message-ID: <000c01cc14f4$3666bc20$a3343460$@att.net> This confirms a suspicion I have long held, that fast food in itself is not necessarily harmful. Certainly it's bad reputation has been wildly exaggerated. If devoured in moderation, one could live on the stuff, relatively cheaply: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/17/big-mac-attack-man-eats-25000th-bur ger/?test=faces spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed May 18 00:49:22 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 17:49:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farmville for real In-Reply-To: <3f315b12bb12be6c56420df48e65fe0e.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <004401cc0a52$bcaa86b0$35ff9410$@att.net> <4DC144EB.2010506@lightlink.com> <006c01cc0a6d$1a741530$4f5c3f90$@att.net> <4DC176BE.2070200@lightlink.com> <4DC94881.1020909@lightlink.com> <001f01cc0f29$79a2cd10$6ce86730$@att.net> <006c01cc10f9$57238af0$056aa0d0$@att.net> <87e1899418b9f5a4be7bfc7609036808.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <014b01cc136a$af511710$0df34530$@att.net> <3f315b12bb12be6c56420df48e65fe0e.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <001101cc14f5$6e5c5670$4b150350$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of MB > > The real problem is if you try to follow all the rules, you draw suspicion. > If you appear to do everything right, they know you are up to no good. > > If your friend paid workmans' comp and did all that, then she is > practically inviting the feds to come in for a raid. They will be > astonished to find nothing. A non-smoking non-gun is a smoking gun. >...Yes, she had paid workmans' comp and all. She was *furious* that there was trouble about the injured worker's care. Regards, MB SHE was furious? Indeed? What about the workman's comp office? This will cost them millions just in training workers in doing some oddball task that they had never done and may never do again: figuring out how to pay comp benefits to a farm worker. Paying workmans' comp on farm workers draws suspicion on oneself, like driving exactly 65 on the freeway. If you do that you will be pulled over every 20 meters. You will be walking the line so many times it would have been easier to simply proceed to your original destination on foot. The cops will assume you are drunk or running drugs. MB, your friend has called all kinds of suspicion on herself by attempting to follow the actual law. Doing that might as well be illegal. spike From jonano at gmail.com Wed May 18 01:39:10 2011 From: jonano at gmail.com (Jonathan Despres) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 21:39:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Atheist Movement on Facebook and The Cryonics Movement on Facebook Message-ID: Hi, People really interested about atheism are spreading the word effectively on facebook, by word of mouth, they discuss about the values of atheism, encourage the idea. They add a red A and other logos around Atheism. This is really good to see. The same could be applied to cryonics. Talking about cryonics is good. I understand we are a smaller community, and so we should speak more of it then, on Facebook, report news, and opinions about it, talk about our members, about the patients past lives etc.. --Jon From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 18 02:47:08 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 21:47:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DD3332C.9080206@satx.rr.com> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Kelly Anderson or someone else--who can keep track, already?--wrote: > Today, it seems somewhat > mainstream for a woman to have a vibrator. They have half hour shows > for such things on the shopping network late at night. So they must > sell a butt load of this stuff. Oh. So *that's* how women use vibrators. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed May 18 05:33:06 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 23:33:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/17 John Grigg : > *Kelly Anderson wrote* >>>An aside... If I rented out a group of RealDolls, would that be a >>> brothel? Would it be illegal? Should it be illegal? Is sex with toys >>> for money a decent business model? > > > *Kelly Anderson replied* >>Sad that nobody tried answering this question... > > > Kelly, please be careful about being sure to attribute comments to the right > person (in this case it was unclear).? I realize that with a very long post > and the accompanying replies, it can get confusing. I realize it's generally bad form to answer yourself, but that is actually what I did in that case... :-) > More comments below! > > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Kelly Anderson > wrote: >> >> 2011/5/11 John Grigg : >> > This is a very interesting thread and I had fun responding... >> >> >> > On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:09 PM, Kelly Anderson >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> 2011/5/6 salvatore micheal / sam iam : > > > I could envision romantic book publishers advertising (in a very public > way)?that women can download the "mind" of particular storyline?main > characters straight into their home male android! I think that it is very clear that for some women, romance novels serve a similar escapist purpose that pornography does for some men. The actual sex in romance novels is usually quite tame, but the dialog is very seductive. Every hero in every romance novel I've looked at is exceptionally good at listening to the main heroine. So while I think you have a great idea here, I think the main thing women are looking for is a man who will listen, intensely, to whatever it is they have to say. An android is really perfect for this task, so I have no doubt that some women will fall in love with their androids, as long as they are good listeners. > It is ironic that an android lover for women would need to have much more > intelligence and personality complexity to be a satisfactory partner. lol I'm not exactly sure why it's ironic... but it is true. :-) > I > suppose human evolution has been pushed forward by females who wanted more > from their prospective male?mates and would not settle for less! The funny thing is that women are good listeners, in general, and yet listening is a big part of what they want out of their partners. From that overly simplistic viewpoint, it is surprising that lesbianism isn't more popular... :-) >From an evolutionary standpoint, I could venture a guess as to why this is the case. Dawkins indicates that women want to find a man who will stick around long enough to help raise the child. Testing the man's patience with endless talking would be a good test for whether they would stick around once things got boring... ;-) > Hmmm...? And so you would have an android doppleganger to listen to your > wife or girlfriend talk, and then?you would take it's place when it was time > to eat or have sex?? I don't think a woman would like that one bit... I wasn't suggesting that you could get away with that... although I can see how you might have gotten that idea. If you COULD get away with it, I'm sure a lot of men would try. :-) >> That's why I don't anticipate a high level of intelligence in >> companion robots, ever. Unless you are a lab partner, not a sex >> partner. Why create problems for yourself? Just create a sexual being >> that lives for sex? > > This is where I REALLY disagree with you.? I think many men will want a > fully sentient/human level of intelligence female android to be a close to > equal/fully equal partner,?rather than having?just a very high-tech sex doll > that can talk and act sexy.? If I am proven to be wrong, then the future may > be a very depressing place, with people getting physical desires sated, but > not their?emotional/psychological needs. I think there are two markets here. One for the shallow sexbot, and another for a more fully functional life partner. It seems pretty obvious to me that the shallow sexbot will be the first of the two models that will be technically feasible, and also the first to be implemented. Look at the current marketplace. Pornography clearly does not meet men's emotional/psychological needs, yet it is a multi-billion dollar business. Same for prostitution, although it comes closer, since it is an interaction with another human being, and there is the opportunity for a kind of friendship through repeat business. There are many men who just aren't looking for the full package. I agree with you that many men ARE looking for the full package, probably the majority of men. But the minority is sizable. >> The limit to your thinking here is that one robot (or one brain) has >> to perform all the functions. It's said that men want a whore in bed, >> a chef in the kitchen, a maid to take care of the house, and >> occasionally someone to talk to, etc. Why not have multiple AGIs >> hosted in the same body, and switch from one to another as the need >> arises. I want my partner to be HAPPY to take out the garbage when >> it's time to do that, and HAPPY to go to bed, and HAPPY to watch the >> Super Bowl or Star Trek with me. Perhaps one brain can't be HAPPY at >> ALL those things, so put multiple AGIs in one body, and problem >> solved. > > An excellent point.? But if the android is to mimic the individuality & life > path?of a flesh and blood human, then?a single?AGI would be the preference. > I am looking at things from the "having a real/growing relationship with a > sentient machine" perspective. Sure, and there will be a market for that too. I think it will lag the first market by ten years or more, just due to technological issues. > An AGI mind may be a fragile and not always fully > healable/fixable/adjustable entity, therefore?in some ways on par with a > human brain. I think that is highly likely. That being said, if things go badly, you can probably go to the last good state backup pretty easily if you mess things up. That is not so easy with humans. > And so creating your warped android?might?still be an act of > abuse.? But then I am thinking of a human level AGI intelligence.? A less > complex mentality might work fine for your purposes. Not so much MY purposes, as a mental exercise, but I get your point. I think it is critical in the appropriate deployment of AI that you deploy no more intelligence than you need for the task at hand. Just as we try not to hire employees that are "over qualified" because they will become bored. >> Again, think how you would design the perfect sex partner. You >> wouldn't put a huge brain into such a creature, would you? If you >> would, I think that's kind of cruel. Think Marvin or the Elevators in >> Adam's books. That is cruelty. > > I think at least some men would want a fully sentient?equal partner,?as > compared to the sexy equivalent of a dishwasher that can speak... Of course. Some would not too. >> Trekkies and gamers occasionally get lucky, and find a trekkie or >> gamer girlfriend, but not often in my experience... > > My local science fiction cons are practically soap operas the way some > people hook up! lol I can only imagine... You don't speak Klingon?!? We're over! >> Or we'll figure it out, and program them better. See my posts on >> "raising" robot children. > > I suspect that the higher the intelligence, the greater the possibility for > so-called "negative" behaviors to evolve over time.? Better programming may > at best only somewhat limit such tendencies. Programming is a bad word for training AGIs, IMHO. I disagree that the degree of intelligence is in any way tied to personality disorder type problems. In my work with borderline personality disorder (I have years of experience in this particular area) I have found that those suffering from BPD often have very high intelligence. Native intelligence is not correlated in any meaningful way. Hitler, my first wife and Saddam were smart, but twisted. >> If there is a continuous video feed covering a broad spectrum from a >> jogger's vicinity to a remote location, I suspect jogging down the >> Provo River Trail would get much safer, very quickly. I think you >> could design an android that LIKED being a rape victim, but also LIKED >> acting like it didn't want to be a rape victim. In other words, one >> that a rapist would enjoy going after, but who wasn't damaged in the >> process. It's all about how you wire up the reward system. > > Uhhh....? Kelly....? You do seem to have an obsession with this subject!!! No. I don't. Really. It is just an example of a behavior that is viewed very negatively by society (rightly so) and is a big turn on for a very small group of people who mess up other people's lives. It seems like there is room in society to replace innocent victims with victims of design. It's a tricky issue because it still seems wrong in some way. There is also the risk that you are training rapists, just as first person shooters train soldiers. So going down this road might be a very bad idea indeed. I do know women who have been raped, and it's no joke. I would like to see what could be done to minimize it in the future. I don't know if android or VR rape would make things better or worse, but it does seem possible that it could. I do think you can train an AGI to perform well for any purpose, and that is more to the point I was trying to make. The vast variety of human sexual preferences will require a large number of different AGIs with the right set of compatible preferences. I could have used any number of alternative fetish examples. I can imagine an android that would be perfect for someone with a foot fetish, for example. :-) But that's not quite so provocative. >> In WWII, when we wouldn't talk about sex in the US, the US Army was >> showing STD movies to GIs. The armed forces have a real interest in >> taking the lead in these areas. > > > Yeah, and those films sure did not have a lasting effect on those horny > troops!? lol The purpose was for them to use protection, not to avoid sex. In that, it may have worked to some extent. I don't know. >> Again, don't think of your android sex partner as a full human, or >> even a full intelligence, but one optimized for the purpose. This is a >> software issue, not a hardware issue. Your wife might not feel so >> "cheated upon" if you had sex with a brainless android... There may be >> some women today who would feel less cheated on if their husband >> visited a prostitute, rather than having a girlfriend on the side... >> maybe. I'm stretching here. > > Again, you look at these androids as super-advanced sex toys, rather than > potential life partners.? But I certainly can envision how with the > appropriate software, they could fit into either status.? Elliot Spitzer > might not have gotten into so much trouble with his wife and media, if he > had had access to the androids we envision.? He might have been > heartily?laughed at, but possibly not fired from his important?job as the > Wall Street cop. Sure thing! And we now have Arnold to add to the list of people that have made poor political choices. >> It will be harder to create an android that will satisfy women, >> because their needs are broader. Many men would be fairly satisfied >> with a sexbot and a chefbot... forget the rest. > > The future male androids will encounter female ones to only say, "gee, she > is dumb and boring!" lol? But I believe in the truth of the classic saying, > "intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac!"? And it will especially be?so > for our cognitively enhanced future generations... Successful androids for women will have to have some feminine characteristics. I agree that the sexbot low intelligence female would not appeal to the highly intelligent conversational male android. Not good matches. >> Human women are magical to human men because human men are evolved to >> think so (and vice-versa). As we unravel the whys and wherefores of >> this, I think we can create androids that will be just as attractive >> as the real thing. > > In outward physical ways, most certainly.? But I think there may be aspects > of the human to human dynamic that will be very hard to fully?duplicate. > And so I see human/android (highly sentient androids)?relationships being > different from human/human.??But are we talking about strictly mechanical > androids, or perhaps other design types?? The "bioroids" of science fiction > that are mostly flesh and blood, but quickly?manufactured using > super-advanced "printing"?processes might become the most?popular > android?sex partner?template.? But because of our common biology, such > technology could be extremely controversial and the need for legal oversight > would be great. It would be hard for me to sign up for much more legal oversight... :-) There is a lot of room for abuse, of course, and when androids advance to the point where they need protection from us, then yes, we will need some laws. As for some kind of bio-robot, that seems like a pretty natural extension of the sort of thing I'm thinking about. The question is when are they human? When they have a bio brain? It is going to be difficult to get to the right legal balance, especially when things change more rapidly than legislators can keep up with. Of course, we may eventually be able to elect non-biological AGIs to political office. I hope so. >> Good for you John. That is definitely the best thing going today!!! >> Tomorrow, who knows? > > I won't replace her just yet...?? : ) I wouldn't recommend it. :) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed May 18 05:41:33 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 23:41:33 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <4DD3332C.9080206@satx.rr.com> References: <4DD3332C.9080206@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 8:47 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Kelly Anderson or someone else--who can > keep track, already?--wrote: > >> ? ?Today, it seems somewhat >> ? ?mainstream for a woman to have a vibrator. They have half hour shows >> ? ?for such things on the shopping network late at night. So they must >> ? ?sell a butt load of this stuff. > > Oh. So *that's* how women use vibrators. If they are designed that way... ;-) NSFW. http://www.pleasuremenow.com/ProductImages/triple_treat_anal_rabbit_vibrator.jpg -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed May 18 06:13:28 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 00:13:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 5:49 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 1:11 PM, BillK wrote: >>> >>> I haven't noticed much Socialism in the US. >> >> Really? That's pretty funny. > > I'm puzzled as to why you find it funny. ?I have lived on both continents, > and I can assure you that BillK is just saying something that is considered > common knowlege in the rest of the world (i.e. the fact that there is almost > no socialism in the U.S.). ?The only group of people who find this difficult > to understand are U.S. right wingers. Gee, I spend a good portion of my life with the government examining my every move. It feels like socialism to me. If not economically, then in the social engineering aspect, it is way too social for me. Yes, I understand that Europe is even worse. Singapore is economically more free, but not socially. I haven't lived in Europe, and from the sounds of it, I would not enjoy it one bit. > I would guess that roughly 70% of all Democrat politicians in the U.S. would > could as significantly right of center in most European countries. That's Europe's problem. Roughly 98% of all the politicians in the U.S. today would be regarded as completely insane by the founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson would be a leader in the tea party. Oh yeah, he was! The tyranny imposed upon us now is ten times worse now than what England did to us in the 1770s. > Also, the word "socialism" has completely different meanings on the two > sides of the Atlantic. ?In the U.S. it is roughly equivalent to the meaning > of "soviet communism" in Europe. ?The term "socialism", in Europe, means > something like "believing that government has the responsibility to look > after the interests of the weaker members of society". I mean the second. The government currently seems to think I am a "weaker" member of our society because of some really poor decisions on the part of my ex-wife. I get a lot of their love and attention, and I'm sick and tired of it. >>> >From a European POV the so-called US lefties are considered to be >>> rabid right wingers. ? ;) >> >> I can't help that most European countries are more rapidly suicidal >> than America. > > Content-free comment, I assume. Greece. >>> My view is that unregulated corporatism has bought up the government >>> and looted the US economy. >> >> One of the bigger problems with the US right now is that the corporate >> tax rate is so high that they don't collect many of the taxes to which >> they are properly due. This is because they drive the corporations >> overseas. It is a big problem. > > Factually incorrect. ?The corporate tax rate is a meaningless number because > there are so many tax breaks specially designed to get around it, that most > corporations actually pay an amount of tax that is far less than the rate > that middle class American individuals pay. They also provide the middle class Americans with the money they use to pay their taxes. So it is a double taxation system. > The tax rate does not drive companies overseas, corporate greed drives > companies overseas. Looking after the bottom line is not greed, it is fiduciary responsibility. If America wants to play in the Global Sandbox, they have to play nice. As long as there are governments that are less oppressive, you'll end up chasing business out of America. Why do you suppose so much manufacturing has gone to China? It's not all about wages, as many think. It's also about liability, EPA rules, tax policy and regulation in general. >>> The problem with creating a wealth pyramid where the top .1% own >>> almost everything is that when wealth is so concentrated, the consumer >>> economy game stops. >> >> Bill, what country in the history of the world most closely >> approximates your view of economic utopia? >> >> For me, it's pretty easy.. American or England in 1800... Of course my >> utopia would not have slavery. > > At that time, children of poor families were sent down mines at the age of 8 > or 9 years, to work for 12-18 hours a day. ?Or sent into factories for the > same hours. ?Your parentetical remark "...Of course my utopia would not have > slavery" is just funny in spades, since without the child labor, the > servants and the slaves, that period would not have been a utopia for the > rich. I have no problem with child labor for developing countries. When you make child labor illegal, you get starving children. How many years have you spent living in third world countries? Which countries were those? If you haven't been there, done that, lived with them, you haven't a clue how things work when you're REALLY poor. I don't look at early American history as a utopia for the rich, though it may have been in some cases. I look at it as a utopia for anyone wishing to get ahead. Legions of (legal) immigrants came in wave after wave and built lives of worth and value through hard work. It generally took three generations to get to the American Dream, but they got there in DROVES. My ancestors largely came from England, and went immediately to the American West where they eked out an existence that enabled their grand children to go to college. People in Haiti are poor from generation to generation and are never able to climb out because Haiti is not the land of opportunity. > The fact that you would quote that period as an economic utopia speaks > volumes about your knowledge of history and ability to apply that knowledge > to real world systems. I would put my knowledge of history against yours any day. From 1780 to 1820 in England our modern world was forged. Was there child labor? YOU BET there was! It was a necessary evil of the time. Now that we have benefited from that, we begrudge countries that are behind us in the economic timeline the opportunity to do the things that got us here. We don't want to allow Africa to develop fossil fuel based economies, but that's just not fair, because that is how we got there. Most places that employ children now will not need to do so in the future, but give them the ability to do the things we did in the past to get here. I know it is a great evil, but starving children is worse. Keeping those countries down is criminal. It is a crime of the international community, aided and abetted by dictators who rape the poor countries of everything they manage to scrape together or beg from the first world. It's a shame! -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 18 06:54:18 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 08:54:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 12:13:28AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I haven't lived in Europe, and from the sounds of it, I would not > enjoy it one bit. At least you can drink a beer on the train, and nobody gives a flying fuck. Seriously, you might find that theory and practice do differ, in practice. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed May 18 07:12:23 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 01:12:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/17 Amon Zero : > On 17 May 2011 07:43, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> How can you say libertarianism has never been tried? It wasn't perfect >> libertarianism, but it was a lot closer than it is today. > > Kelly, I think you've got a good point. The thing is, I'm far from > anti-libertarian - catch me at the right moment and I might even describe > myself as libertarian - it's just that Rafal's frankly extreme stance forced > me to draw a line. Fair enough. > I think you're right that America past, particularly 19th Century, was more > libertarian than today, and yes, I would agree there has clearly been net > societal gain from the achievements made in that time. But, as you say, > there was also of course suffering directly caused by the process. Hard work involves a bit of suffering all by itself. What I don't think is fully appreciated today is the amount of suffering that is CAUSED by the paternal government. There is hardly room to argue that the US government has kept the Native Americans irrelevant through their 100+ years of paternalism. Government programs that give every tribe member a new truck every year leads to alcoholism and ruination of a great people. They are now doing the same thing to inner city blacks and Hispanics. The terrible drug and gang problems of the inner city can be traced directly back to the Great Society of LBJ, IMHO. Were there problems before that? Yup. Were they anywhere like what we have today? No way. Government paternalism keeps men from being MEN. When enforcing drug laws deprives so many young African Americans of their fathers, that's just eroding society in a way that is going to be very hard to undo. I speak as the father of four girls from Compton who's parents could not take care of them due to their dependence on drugs. I am not a hard hearted libertarian. I am a soft hearted libertarian. I just look at the mess the government, in all it's wisdom and lack of prescience about unintended consequences, has created, and I think there has to be a better way. That way is private business and private charity, IMHO. I spent years as a Mormon, watching how they manage welfare. It is very different than the government program, and it works a lot better. People aren't on it for years. They get a hand up not a hand out. Private works better than government. > It seems quite clear that there's a trade-off between the innovation that > results from economic freedom, and protection from suffering offered by > legal safeguards. But every protection provided has unintended consequences. Today on the news I saw a local politician had presented a proposed law stating that veterinarians MUST provide written prescriptions for pet medications. The argument was that since some vets mark up drugs a LOT, and don't provide prescriptions, that people were being gouged. But with that law in place, I bet a visit to the vet will be twice as expensive as it is now. Unintended consequences... legislative history is filled with those. The only way to avoid them is to avoid passing the laws in the first place. Allow more freedom and everyone floats up together. Are some cheated occasionally? You bet. Caviat emptor. But is it better that we allow a little injustice so that we can all be free? Are we better off with airport security since 9/11? I don't think so. Those who trade freedom for security don't deserve either. > Imagine a continuum between extreme libertarianism (0) and extreme > paternalism (1). Societies with values not significantly different from 0 or > 1 are unlikely to be to my taste. Rafal is clearly arguing for 0. 19th > Century America is somewhere a little south (i.e. closer to 0) of my > preferred balance, but it was not the world Rafal advocates. Modern day > China is probably closer to 0 than America has ever been, in its economic > and business practices at least. In other respects, Chinese society looks > alarmingly like a 1. I'm not a big fan of Chinese social policy by any means. I rather doubt it is economically as free as we are led to believe. Friendship is the basis of Chinese business, and being friends with the right communist leaders can be very helpful in getting rich there. I think we could use a big bump towards 0, and would not be uncomfortable if we were a lot closer. Right now, America feels like a 7 to me. YMMV of course, depending upon your personal interaction with the government. I used to think America was freer than I now know it to be. That is MY American Experience. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 18 07:44:40 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 08:44:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:13 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Gee, I spend a good portion of my life with the government examining > my every move. It feels like socialism to me. If not economically, > then in the social engineering aspect, it is way too social for me. > > Yes, I understand that Europe is even worse. Singapore is economically > more free, but not socially. > > I haven't lived in Europe, and from the sounds of it, I would not > enjoy it one bit. > > The US might feel like socialism to you but it is actually Corporate Fascism. Quote: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini. While we Americans have been trained to keenly identify the opposite of fascism, i.e., government intrusion into and usurpation of private enterprise, we have not been trained to identify the usurpation of government by private enterprise. Our European cousins, on the other hand, having lived with Fascism in several European countries during the last century, know it when they see it, and looking over here, they are ringing the alarm bells. We need to learn how to recognize Fascism now. ------------------ And, by the way, Greece is actually a very nice place to live, provided you are not poor. (But that applies to most countries). BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 18 09:43:00 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 11:43:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> Message-ID: On 17 May 2011 06:54, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Religion is all about controlling your desires. Why, tantra in this respect is a great religious path... :-) -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed May 18 09:46:14 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 11:46:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Software maps suspects' digital movements In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 15 May 2011 21:11, BillK wrote: > Police buy software to map suspects' digital movements.. > Wednesday 11 May 2011 > > What else is new? :-) Conspiracy nuts may think that social networking was invented and intended exactly for that, but no intention is required to offer the "byproduct" concerned... -- Stefano Vaj From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 18 12:58:37 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 14:58:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] no moar hipster hate Message-ID: <20110518125837.GO24232@leitl.org> http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1404/1/ In Defense of Hipsters Wednesday, 10 September 2008 10:59 Dave Monaghan This article is a response to "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization" (Adbusters #79, Cover Story). At a bar a few months ago, I overheard a conversation between two women who, to my mind, were the very epitome of hipsterdom. Their asymmetrical haircuts, tight jeans, vintage T-shirts, fashionable jewelry, Parliament cigarettes and bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon formed one seamless ensemble of hipster aesthetic so perfect that I knew that one of them had to have a Vespa parked outside. They were engaged in a vigorous debate, striking charismatic poses as they gestured to underline points. I turned my ear to them and strained to decipher their words through the thundering sound of a Journey song somebody had chosen, no doubt in a moment of ironic inspiration, to call forth from the jukebox. "No, no, Beth, you are definitely not a hipster!" one of them was assuring her friend. She then proceeded to provide a list reasons why this friend, who was clearly writhing in the thorns of self-doubt, simply did not meet the criteria of the dreaded category. It went something like this. Though the friend, Beth, was an artist, she produced sculptures which displayed a seriousness utterly lacking from hipster art. The latter tended to be characterized by incessant pop-culture reference, comic-book style drawings, and a penchant for shocking violence and sexuality for its own sake. Further, Beth was a political activist, devoting considerable time outside her job to anti-war and environmentalist causes. And finally, though Beth had a MySpace page, she had made it reluctantly and only because it happens to be a good place to market her sculptures. This seemed to convince Beth. These arguments, though they may be laughable, are indicative of a phenomenon pointed out by Douglass Haddow in his recent essay "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization" (Adbusters #79, Cover Story). That is, there are very few, if any, self-avowed hipsters. The term hipster is, in fact, almost universally a term of derision. But despite what Vice Magazine founder Gavin McInnes insists in Haddow's article, the epithet is not most commonly used by "chubby bloggers who aren't getting laid anymore". The term is more commonly than not used by people who are themselves quite open to the charge from others. In fact, ask just about any white urban twenty-something in a hoodie what a hipster is, and he will proceed to give you an elaborate definition full of backtrackings, qualifications, and equivocations. And the goal of this tortuous definition will be to specifically exclude himself and his closest friends, but still to preserve the category for use against others. I have decided that hipsters, who are nothing less than the four horsemen - or fixed-gear bike riders - of the apocalypse in Haddow's paranoid hallucinations, are in need of an advocate. Or if not an advocate, at least of a little demystification. Haddow's article, taking the genre form of a lurid journey into the heart of stylish darkness, derides hipsters for many reasons. They dance self-consciously. They ape working-class fashion. They photograph each other constantly at parties and then view the photographs the next day on Flickr-streams. They blog about their inane exploits. They are shallow and superficial and they appropriate the fashion tastes and musical styles of previous ages. But in general, all of Haddow's kvetching can be boiled down to a single complaint: hipsters don't really believe in anything. This, according to Haddow, sets hipsters apart from all of the youth subcultures that preceded them. The hipster's antecedents - punk, hip-hop, hippie culture - were movements that "energetically challenged the status quo," that existed to "smash social standards, riot and fight to revolutionize every aspect of music, art, government and civil society". In contrast, hipsters are merely "an appropriation of different styles from different eras a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society". Haddow believes that what he has found is a youth subculture of nihilism. And not the self-conscious nihilism of late-70's punk rockers, but an unconscious nihilism that is all the more dangerous for not understanding what it is. Hipsters, for Haddow, embody the nihilism that reeks deep in the core of capitalist consumer society. Just as capitalist market commodifies all, reducing everything, regardless of its nature, to the level of object for sale, hipsters will consume and assimilate material culture without distinction, without regard for its history or meaning. But is Haddow right to be so concerned? His writing seethes contempt for hipster art-parties, their drinking, dancing, late-night carousing and drug use (stopping short of commenting on loose sexual morals, though this is absolutely central to the hipster lifestyle). But none of this is new. In generation after generation, segments of the youth population have drifted through their twenties indulging one desire after another, finding creativity and sensual gratification to be as important if not more important than imbuing life with meaning through self-sacrificing political struggle or individual achievement. Haddow simply does not know what to label to give this phenomenon. It is not nihilism, but old-fashioned youthful bohemianism. The bohemian lifestyle has a long history, originating in 1840's Paris among young artists and socialites of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, and winding its way down to us through the ages. There was a bohemian aspect to nearly every important youth subculture from then until now, from the leftist intellectuals of Greenwich Village in the 1910's to the flappers and swingers of the Prohibition era, from the Beatniks to the "free love" radicals of the 1960's. Note that many of these youth subcultures are viewed by Haddow wistfully, and are held up to the youth of today as examples of what they ought to be. Not only is bohemianism not new, but hysterical condemnation of bohemianism - in the vein of the article in question - is likewise nothing new. The very first appearance of the original Bohemians in 1840's Paris was accompanied by proclamations that Bohemianism represented nothing less than the beginning of the downfall of society. This derision of youthful hedonism and irresponsibility has reappeared in various forms throughout history, typically annunciated from the viewpoint of moral conservatism. For Bohemians were known to disdain traditional monogamous sexual relations, to have greater tolerance for homosexuality, to fritter away time partying and creating art rather than leading respectable lives. Until the 1970's, it can be said that bohemianism was a direct challenge to a status quo that required sexual repression and delayed gratification to power the engines of capitalist growth, and thus was frequently married to movements for more fundamental social change. This convergence was clearly expressed in infamous slogans of the 1960's such as "Make love, not war", and "Drop acid, not bombs". Quite frequently, Bohemian lifestyles and anti-capitalist ideology walked hand-in-hand. This was, however, certainly not always the case. Many previous youthful hedonists - such as the swingers of the 1920's, and to a lesser extent, the Beats - were largely apolitical. And of course many a humorless communist or anarchist disdained art, drug use and free sexuality as so many bourgeois indulgences or opiates of the people. Only occasionally throughout history did strands of leftist philosophy advocate sensual indulgence as "liberation". And cultural developments since the mid-1970's have definitively disentangled leftist politics from such hedonism, showing this marriage of private vice and public virtue to be one of convenience - the result of historical contingencies - and not of necessity. Economic, cultural, and political changes since 1970 have brought about a dramatic realignment in the relationship between the economy and desire. Whereas prior to about 1970 the US economy was primarily powered by production, since this time we have seen a shift towards an economy in which consumption is central (at least in the First World, as production moved to the Third). In order to encourage and endlessly expand consumption, capitalism, through advertising and media, stokes the flames of desire for sensual gratification. As a result, desires that were once transgressive - for multiple sex partners, for nights of drinking and drug use at psychedelic dance clubs - are now harnessed in service of the consumer economy. This in turn has resulted in an odd but perhaps unavoidable puritanical turn in anti-capitalist critique of which Haddow's essay is typical. Beginning with Marcuse and Adorno, who in the 1960's theorized the increasingly intimate relationship between desire and consumption as "repressive (or mechanical) desublimation", a segment of Leftist cultural criticism has reversed its sometime stance of calling for the full liberation of desire to critiquing manifestations of such liberation as co-opted and manipulated. And so it is not so much that the hipster is the manifestation of a new trend. It is rather that the hipster is simply the bohemian in a world in which bohemianism among the young is not only tolerated but encouraged. Hipsters cannot really be blamed for this, and there isn't anything inherently progressive in bohemianism's opposite, sensual renunciation. In behaving hedonistically, hipsters are simply taking advantage of the freedom of youth in the same manner as generations of young people before them. So hipsters, in all their pettiness and vice, are not really breaking any new ground. But isn't something different still going on here? Didn't past generations of youth still have goals and values; didn't they still believe in something? Isn't the uniqueness of hipsters that all they have left is the hedonism? And so, even if it is acknowledged that partying and screwing are neither new nor objectionable in themselves, can't we still condemn modern youth - hipsters - for being concerned with these things to the exclusion of all else? The answer is no, for reasons that will become clear later. But first we need to listen to what exactly is going on when people contrast the youth of today - hipsters, hip-hop urban kids, and other groups - to the youth of previous generations. For often when this is done - and Haddow's article is a prime example of this - the previous generations are painted in an overly charitable light. Youth movements of the past were far from simple phenomena; they were as varied and multifaceted as youth culture is today. Punk-rockers were not uniformly revolutionary; punk-rock articulated a wide spectrum of political ideologies, from anarchism to nihilism to (in its close cousins) anti-immigrant racism. The "counterculture" of the sixties included not just SDS activists and Black Panthers but apolitical "drop-out" hippies, reactionary Hell's Angels, and New Age spiritualists. Young people in the 1950's were more famous for car races and rock-and-roll than for progressive political commitment. When these complexities are pasted over in the interest of a negative characterization of the present, what is going on is nostalgia. Nostalgia, a longing for the lost past, reconstructs an ideal past that never existed in order to flee from the unavoidably complex present. It occurs on both sides of the political spectrum, though left-wing and right-wing nostalgia differ slightly in form and function. Right-wing nostalgia tends to long for an earlier historical epoch as a whole or its dominant culture, a time when "things made sense" and a more traditional morality prevailed. As such, it generally expresses a desire to recreate the dominant power relations of the past - between men and women, whites and minorities, middle-class and working-class - and hides inconvenient aspects (racism, oppression of women) of the time in which these relations prevailed in order to make the time appear in ideal form. Leftist nostalgia, by contrast, does not long for a former time, being all too aware of the oppression that characterized any given moment of the past. Instead, leftist nostalgia longs for the return to a given social movement and its historical context of vital and authentic struggle (the Paris Commune, the Spanish Civil War, the 1960's anti-war and black liberation movements, etc.). It looks not to an era but to a given historical moment, and longs not for the past but for the possibilities that a moment in the past contained. Thus it longs for a moment when a radically different future seemed possible, more possible than it does now. In order to do this, it idealizes the past movement and moment, repressing inconvenient aspects (racism among past labor leaders, naivet? among youthful activists, poor leadership decisions, fundamentally unrealizable visions). Leftist nostalgia tends to create saints and martyrs, and in its light past failures will appear as the result of nefarious actions from those in power and not of mistakes made by leftists movements themselves. This sort of nostalgia is unhelpful to modern leftists for two reasons. First, it allows us to absolve, through deliberate forgetfulness, our ancestors in struggle of their grievous mistakes in order that we may retain their visions and strategies intact. That is, we forget their errors in order that we may repeat them ad nauseum. But more importantly, nostalgia is fundamentally a flight from the present, a refusal to live fully in the here and now, because of an unwillingness to reckon with its irreducible complexity and difficulty. It leads us, as it has led Douglass Haddow, to look upon the present with undue despair and to reject the world around us in toto. We owe it to ourselves and to our present moment, the only one we have a choice of living in, to do better. Let us finally turn to the reason why hipsters do not believe in anything (and they don't), and why this is actually not a problem. In doing so, we will have to approach doing the impossible - actually providing a definition for what exactly a hipster is. The fundamental mistake made when one compares "hipsters" to 1970's punks or 1960's radicals lies in the elementary insight that while punk-rockers called themselves such and radicals loudly proclaimed their revolutionary identities, nobody claims to be a hipster. Hipsters are always labeled as such by others, never themselves. And yet they exist, as a definite social subgroup, clearly distinct from non-hipsters within the general population (though who exactly they are is up for debate). This is because while punks and radicals were countercultures, hipsters are merely a subculture. To make a provisional distinction between these two terms, consider the distinction Marx made (using Hegelian terminology) between a class in-itself and a class for-itself. For Marx, the proletariat's existence was a matter of clear social fact, undeniable and unavoidable. But the proletariat did not necessarily know that it was a class, and it definitely did not typically understand what (according to Marx) its interests were. As unaware, it was a class-in-itself, an object of sociological knowledge. Not until it became self-aware would it become a class for-itself, a fighting force capable of articulating its desires and interests and carrying on conscious political action. A counterculture is a social group for-itself, conscious of themselves as different, as distinct from "mainstream society", as promoting a competing vision of how to live. Hipsters are simply not this. They are a subculture, a social group only in-itself, labeled and described by others, differing from the mainstream only haphazardly or unconsciously, because a large number of its individual members as individuals happen to choose to differ from the mainstream in the same way. As such, as a group that does not consider itself a group, whose members continuously loudly disaffiliate themselves from it, hipsters are by nature incapable of having consciously shared beliefs. And this is why a critique of hipsters as "not believing in anything" is utterly disingenuous. What they are being faulted with here is not having an ideology, a set of beliefs that bind them together as a group and allow them to express common goals and aims. Hipsters, as a subgroup ashamed of their own existence, cannot have an ideology. In this sense it is true - in fact, axiomatic - that hipsters as hipsters don't believe in anything. This is also why this fact simply does not matter. What Haddow seems to fault today's youth with is not forging a genuine youth-based movement for radical change. Perhaps he wishes such a movement were happening right now so he could participate in it. But asking "Why don't the youth rise up?" is really no different than asking "Why don't the workers rise up?". There is no shortage of social problems for a movement of youth, workers or whomever to address. But the existence of social problems does not in itself occasion social movements. Social movements are historical singularities, produced through a complicated convergence of historical contingencies, unpredictable and utterly impossible to recreate. But for our intents and purposes, as people residing in the here and now and who see the need for such a movement, the essential element, the only one with which we need concern ourselves, is conscious organizing. Mass-movements are made, not born, brought about by long and hard work by committed activists (who happen to be lucky enough to live during a particular set of historical circumstances). And so in this context, let us figure out who these hipsters are and whether they are potential material for progressive political organizing. What is the hipster? In most general terms, she is a college educated, (generally) white urbanite in her early 20's to mid-30's, who works in a somewhat non-corporate environment and has not yet had children. That is really all you can say without muddying the water, and there are exceptions even to these few general rules. But some cultural and ideological corollaries flow directly from this brief description. First, the hipster is in the demographic most likely to be politically progressive: college educated, young, and living in major urban areas. This means more tolerant toward homosexuals, more likely to favor green policies, more questioning of traditional authorities such as police, big business people and the Republican Party. Second, since the hipster lives in cities, and particularly in the most desirable cities, she pays high rents, especially considering her non-corporate income. This means she seeks places to live in more affordable, traditionally working class neighborhoods, often crowding into a small, run-down apartment with a number of other adult residents. This makes the hipster both more likely to favor progressive housing-rights legislation and the ideal shock-troop of gentrification. Third, the hipster will seek means to reduce expenditures on many items. Thus hipsters' fixation with used items via craigslist, their patronizing of used and vintage clothing stores, and preference for bicycling over cars, and buying the cheapest beer and food available. From this is derived the tendency of hipster culture toward pastiche, which is not primarily cultural cannibalism but rather making the best of a bad situation. It also accounts for the adoption of working-class styles (Pabst, burritos, v-neck T-shirts), because they initially tend to represent cheap options. In both cases - the pastiche of hipster dress and the adoption of working-class symbols - the adaptations take on a life of their own and become fetishes, so that certain "looks" and items become desirable in and of themselves and not because they are a cheap way of looking good or getting drunk, for example. At this point, the hipster is susceptible to manipulation by advertisers. After all, hipsters are young, childless and tend to be employed, and so have disposable income. They are, like all subgroups before them, a niche-market in the eyes of the capitalism, and so are, like everybody else, constantly prey for the forces of commodification. It can be said of hipsters, though, that they offer more resistance than is the societal average to these forces. Finally, hipsters, like ages of bohemians before them, have generally chosen to postpone marriage and family indefinitely. This results in more openness to sexual experimentation, more sexual promiscuity, and more of a tendency to question to traditionally prescribed life-paths. Further, this allows more time for hipsters to focus on themselves, their interests, their artistic projects, and to develop their desire for self-creation. They will tend to be better read and informed than the population as a whole, will know more about obscure cultural artifacts (art films, old music, etc). This latter tendency can often devolve into the use of cultural knowledge as snobbery, to exclude others who are less "in the know". But is can also result in hipsters discovering more creative or inspired music, film and books, works that allow for a reframing and re-conceptualization of the world outside the prescriptions of commercial mass-culture. So, in the end, I ask, what is so bad about hipsters? Sure, they are ridiculous, but no more so than anybody else. Sure, they dress similar, but actually less so than most people. They like irony more than is healthy, and there are some among their ranks who are the worst kind of self-serving, politically apathetic, vapid, pleasure-seeking, pretentious wastoids imaginable. But there are also many "hipsters", though they would shrink from the term in horror, who are deeply engaged political activists on every important progressive front, who are genuinely good musicians and artists, who think deeply about social and philosophical issues, and who - dare we say it - have subscriptions to or even write for Adbusters magazine. They also like to party and have a good time, to dress so that they look good, to be as sexually liberated as their parents' generation, to listen to music that makes them happy. Why hate them for this? Yes, of course, young mostly white college educated people are massively privileged by world standards. And no, the hipster lifestyle is not revolutionary, and it does not consist of renouncing privilege in order to bring about justice. But in a fight for a better world, these people are some of our most likely allies. In many ways, if we get over our hang-ups, we will realize that they simply are us. It is time to get over it and to get over our generation's interminable and counterproductive self-hatred. Take a look in the mirror and say the following with me: "The kids are alright". *** Dave Monaghan is a full-time social worker from San Francisco, CA. In his official capacity, he works with formerly homeless adults to try to maintain their housing and to move them towards reaching their goals. He is also an activist and (aspiring) writer in his spare time. Image by Kurt Christensen From mrjones2020 at gmail.com Wed May 18 14:17:38 2011 From: mrjones2020 at gmail.com (Mr Jones) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 10:17:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/17 Amon Zero > Kelly, I think you've got a good point. The thing is, I'm far from > anti-libertarian - catch me at the right moment and I might even describe > myself as libertarian - it's just that Rafal's frankly extreme stance forced > me to draw a line. I'm with Amon on this. In fact, I consider myself to be a Liberaltarian. http://www.politicalcompass.org/test Economic Left/Right ?-7.25 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian -6.36 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 18 20:40:10 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 13:40:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DD42EAA.8080108@mac.com> On 05/18/2011 02:43 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 17 May 2011 06:54, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Religion is all about controlling your desires. > Why, tantra in this respect is a great religious path... :-) > Of course. Where do you think tantra came from? From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 18 20:48:17 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 13:48:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> On 05/16/2011 09:54 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/6 spike: >>> ? On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj >> Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI >> >> On 6 May 2011 08:23, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Sorry Spike, this email got misfiled... This is interesting to me. > >> Focus on this a minute. If someone manages to create a sex machine and the >> moral majority is squirmy about it, I ask them to show me in their sacred >> literature exactly what commandment or principle or ethical guideline is >> being violated by the whole notion. Do let them cite the example of Onan in >> Genesis 38:8-10, I?m ready, eager even, to debate that. Go ahead, I dare >> ya. {8^D Kelly, you are one who was trained in that discipline (religion >> based morality.) Pretend you are still in that thought-space, and do >> suggest a line of argument that there is AAAAANYTHING at all wrong with >> taking care of one?s biological needs using a sexbot. Anything. Bible >> only, no Mormon lit please. Be prepared; I have pondered this long and >> hard, and I find nothing, nada. {8^D {8-] > Religion is all about controlling your desires. There is an internal > battle that by some Islamist texts is called the inner jihad. Giving > into lust in any fashion, including daydreaming, is coming short of > the goal. The idea is to give your spiritual self complete and utter > control over your carnal self. Subject the body to the will of the > soul or inner spirit of man. Control and disowning some drives/desires are very different things. Transmutation - using the drives and desires to achieve the goal, whatever the goal is, is a well explored path. Many creative people no about transmuting various energies into their work. It is not an exclusively religious or spiritual thing. It strikes me that much of our evolved psychology will be increasingly in the way of our future progress as our environment gets further and further away from the environment those traits were evolved in and for. So self-control is likely crucial to our achieving our H+ dreams. > This is the argument Catholics and Mormons use against masturbation. > If you can make a compelling spiritual argument against masturbation, > then you can clearly make an argument against masturbation using > artificial means. Masturbation using a sexbot could be argued by such > a line of thinking as first degree masturbation. That is, masturbating > in the excitement of a moment is a crime of passion, but going out and > buying a sexbot requires premeditation. Premeditated crime is > generally considered to be more evil, and deserving of greater > condemnation. Some religions also had the notion that the "vital fluid" leaving the body sapped energy and other abilities crucial to "the work". Of course I don't hold with such things in the least. However, there are many layers of behaviors that are part of the sex/reproduction nexus - many of which need some careful examination and perhaps re-routing. - samantha From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 18 20:56:40 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 13:56:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110517190123.GK24232@leitl.org> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110517140139.GN24232@leitl.org> <20110517190123.GK24232@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4DD43288.3000606@mac.com> On 05/17/2011 12:01 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 11:01:44AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: >> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:44 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >> >> snip >> >>> The fast payback would be an incredible economic bonanza. >> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/uom-nsp051611.php >> >> It might be here. > Hmm. So I can recharge batteries from the heat my CPU puts out or run the cooling units with it? It doesn't say how efficient it is on heat energy alone. Capturing waste heat has all kinds of interesting possibilities. From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 18 21:01:34 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 14:01:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DD433AE.6020102@mac.com> On 05/16/2011 11:47 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > Strength of the Frontier Thesis gotta be taken into account. We > really ought to get on it with space colonies. There have been many many frontiers. They did not produce the same positive effects as a relatively free society did. - s From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 18 21:07:25 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 14:07:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DD4350D.4020504@mac.com> On 05/17/2011 12:58 AM, Amon Zero wrote: > On 17 May 2011 07:43, Kelly Anderson > wrote: > > > How can you say libertarianism has never been tried? It wasn't perfect > libertarianism, but it was a lot closer than it is today. > > > > Kelly, I think you've got a good point. The thing is, I'm far from > anti-libertarian - catch me at the right moment and I might even > describe myself as libertarian - it's just that Rafal's frankly > extreme stance forced me to draw a line. > Extreme adherence to the truth is a virtue, not a vice. > I think you're right that America past, particularly 19th Century, was > more libertarian than today, and yes, I would agree there has clearly > been net societal gain from the achievements made in that time. But, > as you say, there was also of course suffering directly caused by the > process. > Nope, not so much. > It seems quite clear that there's a trade-off between the innovation > that results from economic freedom, and protection from suffering > offered by legal safeguards. Legal safeguards against actual crimes, i.e., a direct or indirect initiation of force, were in place already. The rest, as and to the degree it departed from full individual freedom to do pretty much anything but initiate force gained no one much of anything and actually has done a tremendous amount of harm. > > Imagine a continuum between extreme libertarianism (0) and extreme > paternalism (1). Freedom is not extreme. It is simply the only moral basis and the one that leads to the best results. Compromise between the best and the not so good to downright evil, compromise between a morally valid stance and immorality leads only to progressive and accelerating evil. That is the message of the "mixed economy" about to blow up in our face. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed May 18 21:19:59 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 14:19:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <603303.38323.qm@web114402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 12:13:28AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > I haven't lived in Europe, and from the sounds of it, I would not > > enjoy it one bit. > > At least you can drink a beer on the train, and nobody gives a flying > fuck. I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying that it's illegal, or socially unacceptable, to drink beer on a train in the US??? Ben Zaiboc From sjatkins at mac.com Wed May 18 22:18:13 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 15:18:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD445A5.2030608@mac.com> On 05/18/2011 12:44 AM, BillK wrote: > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:13 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Gee, I spend a good portion of my life with the government examining >> my every move. It feels like socialism to me. If not economically, >> then in the social engineering aspect, it is way too social for me. >> >> Yes, I understand that Europe is even worse. Singapore is economically >> more free, but not socially. >> >> I haven't lived in Europe, and from the sounds of it, I would not >> enjoy it one bit. >> >> > > The US might feel like socialism to you but it is actually Corporate Fascism. > > Quote: > > "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the > merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini. > > While we Americans have been trained to keenly identify the opposite > of fascism, i.e., government intrusion into and usurpation of private > enterprise, we have not been trained to identify the usurpation of > government by private enterprise. Actually both of those are fascism and both are practiced in the US. Both hinge on the fundamental notion that government should be actively involved in the marketplace. It is that notion that must be challenged to get rid of both evils. If government has no power in the economic realm, except to enforce laws again initiation of force including fraud, then there is no government favor or power for any corporation to buy. - s From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 19 02:10:08 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 11:40:08 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 17 May 2011 23:20, Keith Henson wrote: > On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:01 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 11:19:37PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >>> Ok Keith, I see where I went off the tracks now. You're talking about >>> ENERGY payback time, and at the time I was thinking about monetary >> >> EROEI is always preferable to EPBT. You can have short EPBT at >> negligible EROEI, e.g. if you use polymer PV which burns out >> in a couple years. > > If you had a polymer PV that had an energy payback time of a couple of > months and lasted 2 years, that would be possible to grow energy on > the energy harvested, i.e., short doubling time. ?PV that takes years > to pay back the energy used to make it has a slow doubling time. > > I would rather have a short EPBT. ?YMMV. > > Keith If the tech is improving at a good clip, then the idea of short payback time, disposable cells (hopefully recyclable) might be highly preferable to long lasting tech; you don't want those cells up on your house for 40 years if 5 years after you install them, they are an order of magnitude worse than the new cheap stuff in the shop. Sort of like, who is currently using a 40 year old computer, or even a 10 year old one? > >>> payback time, which is completely different. My apologies for the >>> misunderstanding. >> >> -- >> Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org >> ______________________________________________________________ >> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org >> 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A ?7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://www.blahblahbleh.com - A simple youtube radio that I built http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 19 02:03:39 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 11:33:39 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Jupiter Brains Message-ID: A solution to Fermi's Paradox? http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2015084720_apussciwanderingplanets.html --- 'Exciting' find: Possible planets without orbits Are these planets without orbits? Astronomers have found 10 potential planets as massive as Jupiter wandering through a slice of the Milky Way galaxy, following either very wide orbits or no orbit at all. And scientists think they are more common than the stars. These mysterious bodies, apparently gaseous balls like the largest planets in our solar system, may help scientists understand how planets form. "They're finding evidence for a lot of pretty big planets," said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who wasn't involved in the research. If they orbit stars, their sheer number suggests every star in the galaxy has one or two of them, "which is astounding" because that's five or 10 times the number of stars scientists had thought harbored such gas-giant planets, he said. And if instead they are wandering free, that "would be really stunning" because it's hard to explain how they formed, he said. If that's the case, it would give a boost to some theories that say planets can be thrown out of orbit during formation, said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, another outside expert. Other scientists have reported free-wandering objects in star-forming regions of the cosmos, but the newfound objects appear to be different, said one author of the new study, physicist David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame. Bennett and colleagues from Japan, New Zealand and elsewhere report the finding in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. They didn't observe the objects directly. Instead, they used the fact that massive objects bend the light of distant stars with their gravity, just as a lens does. So they looked extensively for such "microlensing" events. They found 10, each caused by one of the newfound objects. They calculated each object has about the mass of Jupiter, and estimated how common such objects are. They also found no sign of a star near these bodies, at least not within 10 times the distance from Earth to the sun. (For comparison, within our solar system that would basically rule out an orbit closer than Saturn's.) So the newfound objects either orbit a star more distant than that, or they don't orbit a star at all, the researchers concluded. They drew on other data to determine most of the objects don't orbit a star. Scientists believe planets are formed when disks of dust that orbit stars form clumps, so that these clumps - the planets - remain in orbit. Maybe the newfound objects started out that way, but then got tossed out of orbit or into distant orbits by the gravitational tugs of larger planets, the researchers suggest. The work suggests that such a tossing-out process is quite common, Bennett said. Boss said maybe the bodies formed around a pair of stars instead, one of which supplied the gravitational tug. But even that would take some explaining to produce an object without an orbit, he said. Or maybe they somehow formed outside of any orbit. So the theoretical challenge in explaining the existence of such bodies is "exciting," he said. Boss said he suspects most of these are in a distant orbit, and that maybe they even formed at that great distance rather than being tossed outward from a closer orbit. Kaltenegger also said the new results can't rule out the possibility that these possible planets are in orbit, and that they may only have the mass of Saturn, about a third of Jupiter's. But if they aren't orbiting a star, she noted, they don't fit the official definition of a planet - at least not the definition applied to objects in our own solar system. All in all, Boss said, the new work is "pretty exciting in telling what is out there in the night sky... Lots of theories will grow in this environment." -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://www.blahblahbleh.com - A simple youtube radio that I built http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From emlynoregan at gmail.com Thu May 19 06:10:35 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 15:40:35 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <4DD4AB64.30106@speakeasy.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <4DD4AB64.30106@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: On 19 May 2011 15:02, Alan Grimes wrote: > Emlyn wrote: >>> Keith >> >> If the tech is improving at a good clip, then the idea of short >> payback time, disposable cells (hopefully recyclable) might be highly >> preferable to long lasting tech; you don't want those cells up on your >> house for 40 years if 5 years after you install them, they are an >> order of magnitude worse than the new cheap stuff in the shop. Sort of >> like, who is currently using a 40 year old computer, or even a 10 year >> old one? > > I got such a machine downstairs serving a wiki at 66.92.168.49:8000 ... > Just tonight I finished copying the outline of my book to that wiki. =P > I think my oldest machines are about 6 or 7 years old, but it's very hard to justify, given how ridiculously cheap new and newish hardware is, and how seriously it kicks the old stuff's butt. -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://www.blahblahbleh.com - A simple youtube radio that I built http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 19 06:36:15 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 08:36:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <4DD43288.3000606@mac.com> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110517140139.GN24232@leitl.org> <20110517190123.GK24232@leitl.org> <4DD43288.3000606@mac.com> Message-ID: <20110519063614.GF24232@leitl.org> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 01:56:40PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Hmm. So I can recharge batteries from the heat my CPU puts out or run > the cooling units with it? It doesn't say how efficient it is on heat > energy alone. Capturing waste heat has all kinds of interesting > possibilities. They started with THz and FIR first, because the geometries are bigger. In principle rectenna-like nanostructuctures should at least carry into VIS. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 19 06:44:56 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 08:44:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <603303.38323.qm@web114402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <603303.38323.qm@web114402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110519064456.GG24232@leitl.org> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 02:19:59PM -0700, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > > At least you can drink a beer on the train, and nobody gives a flying > > fuck. > > > I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying that it's illegal, or socially unacceptable, to drink beer on a train in the US??? They insist on brown-bagging the bottles, for some reason. In general drugs and nudity are frowned upon. Prostitution is right out. Executing people is okay though. Getting robbed at gunpoint is pretty probable. And so on, and so forth. All is dandy in the land of the free. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 19 06:53:29 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 08:53:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <4DD4AB64.30106@speakeasy.net> Message-ID: <20110519065329.GI24232@leitl.org> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 03:40:35PM +0930, Emlyn wrote: > I think my oldest machines are about 6 or 7 years old, but it's very > hard to justify, given how ridiculously cheap new and newish hardware > is, and how seriously it kicks the old stuff's butt. The real problem is power. I'm still using Pentium 3 equivalents, but in an embedded envelope now. I still run dual-core Opterons in production. The real bottleneck is I/O, and today's TByte SATA drives are just as fast IOPS-wise as these of yesteryears. SSDs are sure better, but unaffordable for ~TByte and beyond volumes. Orkcackle killed the Solaris star, and hybrid pools are not yet available for Linux. Nevermind you'd need at least one real, battery-backed RAM drive. In general, computing blows chunks. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 19 12:15:11 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 14:15:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110519121511.GV24232@leitl.org> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:40:08AM +0930, Emlyn wrote: > If the tech is improving at a good clip, then the idea of short The thin-film technology does improve at a speed fast enough to postpone the purchases. Especially, as the global solar market has been overheated for many years -- thanks to FITs in some countries. > payback time, disposable cells (hopefully recyclable) might be highly Polymers are not recyclable. You can burn them, or you can use thermal depolymerisation, or make synfuels from them. > preferable to long lasting tech; you don't want those cells up on your > house for 40 years if 5 years after you install them, they are an > order of magnitude worse than the new cheap stuff in the shop. Sort of Order of magnitude improvements (not in efficiency or durability, but in price) are more like 20 years. > like, who is currently using a 40 year old computer, or even a 10 year > old one? I'm writing this on a keyboard from 1984 (IBM Model M, the rare Spacesaver). I've been looking at new keyboards, and all modern ones (including clones, and Cherry MX gold crosspoints) are distinctly inferior. And of course modern computers break sooner, even server grade components. And as of 10 years old computers, how about 10 years uptime? Host ID:150 Owner:mosaic Description:WVNET VMScluster with both VAX and Alpha systems Current Uptime:10 Years 181 Days 19 Hours 18 Minutes OS:OpenVMSClust V7.3-2 CPU:alpha CPU Load:59.78 CPU Idle:85.82 Total Uptime:10 Years 181 Days 19 Hours 18 Minutes Max Uptime:10 Years 181 Days 19 Hours 18 Minutes Average Uptime:10 Years 181 Days 19 Hours 18 Minutes Min Uptime:10 Years 181 Days 19 Hours 18 Minutes Last Report:Wed Jul 05 04:33:24 UTC 2006 Also see http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/20000717_Longest_running_computer -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Thu May 19 13:48:16 2011 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 10:48:16 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: <326DCE5123874C468CF16F5A41601D26@cpdhemm> who is currently using a 40 year old computer, or even a 10 year old one? NASA? :-) From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Thu May 19 17:19:45 2011 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 19:19:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 4:10 AM, Emlyn wrote: > Sort of > like, who is currently using a 40 year old computer, or even a 10 year > old one? On that desk to the right, my Athlon 900Mhz from year 2000 is still going strong on some Linux distribution and the original 20 GB hard disk Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 19 21:46:51 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 15:46:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 1:44 AM, BillK wrote: > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:13 AM, Kelly Anderson ?wrote: > The US might feel like socialism to you but it is actually Corporate Fascism. > > Quote: > > "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the > merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini. I'm not in favor of fascism either. My overall view of life is that the best things are generally done by the smallest organizations. People in small groups are who really get things done. That's why a small city counsel is likely to do better things than congress, with much less money. It's why small entrepreneurial start-ups come up with all the best ideas. At one time I worked with a group that was associated with the American Dental Association. They have a building in Chicago that is about 20 stories tall. I attended a meeting in their board room. It had about 10 very large flat screen televisions (at a time when they were probably $7k a piece). It was covered in rare woods, and had a huge oval table (with a big hole in the middle to see all the televisions). Anyway, this room had recently been renovated at a cost of around $750,000. Eight floors of the ADA were staffed by people who's only job was to make sure that every dentist in America was a dues paying member of the ADA. This was a seriously fucked organization dedicated simply to making sure that the ADA didn't go away. What does the ADA do? Well, not a whole lot. They lobby some, they stand behind fluoride, they let standards organizations use their board room, but they don't accomplish much. They are too big. Five of the right guys with a good web site could do more for dentistry than the ADA has done. Tesla motors is going to kick the big three's butt, until they get big too. Why do we keep putting up with these huge organizations that are so inefficient? What can we do about it? The biggest and by far the worst organization is of course the government itself. > While we Americans have been trained to keenly identify the opposite > of fascism, i.e., government intrusion into and usurpation of private > enterprise, we have not been trained to identify the usurpation of > government by private enterprise. Our European cousins, on the other > hand, having lived with Fascism in several European countries during > the last century, know it when they see it, and looking over here, > they are ringing the alarm bells. We need to learn how to recognize > Fascism now. The industrial-government complex is exactly what we need to avoid. A libertarian government wouldn't be big enough for industry to cooperate with very effectively. > And, by the way, Greece is actually a very nice place to live, > provided you are not poor. > (But that applies to most countries). I visited Greece for a couple of weeks. Had a great time. Wonderful ruins. Great food. But their financial policy should not be emulated. Of course, the United States is exactly, precisely emulating their financial policy. Only we're too big to fail... :-P -Kelly From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 19 23:05:08 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 18:05:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> On 5/19/2011 4:46 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Why do we keep putting up with these huge organizations that are so inefficient? Because they're so rich, and use a portion of their wealth to fuck us over and confuse the easily-led so they can get richer. (Oooooh, sorry. That's just envy and spite.) Damien Broderick From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 20 01:35:41 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 19:35:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/19/2011 4:46 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Why do we keep putting up with these huge organizations that are so >> inefficient? > > Because they're so rich, and use a portion of their wealth to fuck us over > and confuse the easily-led so they can get richer. > > (Oooooh, sorry. That's just envy and spite.) It's OK Damien, I've realized over the last couple of days that I'm too angry about all this stuff. Politics is like the weather. Obama getting elected, that's just a tornado or hurricane, not the end of the world. Reagan getting elected, that's just a run of partly cloudy days. Rand Paul for president? That's just dreaming of being on the beach in Tahiti. What I should be concerned about is the CLIMATE, not the weather. And the climate in my mind is the run up to the intelligence explosion and the imminent extinction (or not) of humanity because of it. That's important, not politics. I need to relax a bit more about the weather, and focus on the climate. The only thing that makes that difficult is that I had two inches of snow in my front yard this morning (no joke!)!! It's freaking May 19th for heck's sake!!! Focus on the climate, focus on the climate... ah, feeling much better now... damn snow anyway. To respond to your point more directly, the easily-led will not be quite so easily led when there is more intelligence in the world, I hope. If everyone had an intelligent agent to look after their political interests, that would be an interesting game changer. Then what was or was not on any particular news cast might have less impact. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 20 01:42:05 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 19:42:05 -0600 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 05/16/2011 09:54 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> 2011/5/6 spike: >> Religion is all about controlling your desires. There is an internal >> battle that by some Islamist texts is called the inner jihad. Giving >> into lust in any fashion, including daydreaming, is coming short of >> the goal. The idea is to give your spiritual self complete and utter >> control over your carnal self. Subject the body to the will of the >> soul or inner spirit of man. > > Control and disowning some drives/desires are very different things. > ?Transmutation - using the drives and desires to achieve the goal, whatever > the goal is, is a well explored path. ?Many creative people no about > transmuting various energies into their work. ?It is not an exclusively > religious or spiritual thing. > > It strikes me that much of our evolved psychology will be increasingly in > the way of our future progress as our environment gets further and further > away from the environment those traits were evolved in and for. ?So > self-control is likely crucial to our achieving our H+ dreams. Religions view themselves as a path to self control. I did not state that it was the only such path. Nor was I (in this special case) giving my own opinion, but rather putting myself into a "religious mindset" and seeing what a religionist might have to say on the subject, as Spike requested. Self-control is almost certainly crucial to the success of ANY sentient being with power. With great power comes great responsibility... (isn't that in Matthew??? ;-) -Kelly From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 20 01:48:49 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 20:48:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> On 5/19/2011 8:35 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > To respond to your point more directly, the easily-led will not be > quite so easily led when there is more intelligence in the world, I > hope. If everyone had an intelligent agent to look after their > political interests, that would be an interesting game changer. That would be Iain Banks's Culture, with a bit of luck. Post-scarcity anarcho-communism, with Minds to watch the wolves. Alternatively, post-Nineteen Eighty-Four hell. Damien Broderick From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 20 01:30:09 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 19:30:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/19/2011 4:46 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Why do we keep putting up with these huge organizations that are so >> inefficient? > > Because they're so rich, and use a portion of their wealth to fuck us over > and confuse the easily-led so they can get richer. > > (Oooooh, sorry. That's just envy and spite.) It's OK Damien, I've realized over the last couple of days that I'm too angry about all this stuff. Politics is like the weather. Obama getting elected, that's just a tornado or hurricane, not the end of the world. Reagan getting elected, that's just a run of partly cloudy days. Rand Paul for president? That's just dreaming of being on the beach in Tahiti. What I should be concerned about is the CLIMATE, not the weather. And the climate in my mind is the run up to the intelligence explosion and the imminent extinction (or not) of humanity because of it. That's important, not politics. I need to relax a bit more about the weather, and focus on the climate. The only thing that makes that difficult is that I had two inches of snow in my front yard this morning (no joke!)!! It's freaking May 19th for heck's sake!!! Focus on the climate, focus on the climate... ah, feeling much better now... damn snow anyway. To respond to your point more directly, the easily-led will not be quite so easily led when there is more intelligence in the world, I hope. If everyone had an intelligent agent to look after their political interests, that would be an interesting game changer. Then what was or was not on any particular news cast might have less impact. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Fri May 20 02:23:33 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 19:23:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> Message-ID: <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> ... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson ... >> 2011/5/6 spike: ... Kelly do take care with attributions. I didn't write any of that which as under my name. No harm done in this case. {8-] >...Religions view themselves as a path to self control... Ja, although where I was going with this to start with is I know of a class of religions which hold the notion of sola scriptura, or scripture only, which means they are not allowed to add any thought or concept to the sum total of that which is literally and specifically recorded in the sacred texts. An example of how that is used is seen in the Seventh Day Adventists going to church on Saturday. In the old testament, they did it that way. The new testament does not specifically say the sacred day was changed to Sunday. Therefore by sola scriptura, Saturday is still the day. If the sola scriptura concept is followed to its logical conclusion, there are no specific rules against the solitary vice, and actually none against premarital sex, so long as the couple are each other's concubines. The bible doesn't exactly specify how that arrangement comes to be, but clearly it is in there and is specifically differentiated from and subordinate to marriage. There is nothing, not one word, that says it is wrong, so apparently it is OK. If you know of a young couple who are shacking up and they want to go to church, tell them they can go to the SDA. >...Self-control is almost certainly crucial to the success of ANY sentient being with power... Agreed, but: >... With great power comes great responsibility... (isn't that in Matthew??? ;-) -Kelly No, sure isn't. For a strict sola scriptura religion, what is not in the bible is as important as what is in there. The comment about power and responsibility is from Voltaire, but the fact that it isn't in Matthew or anywhere else in scripture means that notion becomes part of the bathwater that gets thrown out along with the baby. Spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 20 05:05:10 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 23:05:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 8:23 PM, spike wrote: > ... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson > ... >>> 2011/5/6 spike: > ... > > Kelly do take care with attributions. ?I didn't write any of that which as > under my name. ?No harm done in this case. ?{8-] Sorry, I try to be careful, did you not ask how a religious person would make a case against sex with a sexbot? If it wasn't you, who asked that question? >>...Religions view themselves as a path to self control... > > Ja, although where I was going with this to start with is I know of a class > of religions which hold the notion of sola scriptura, or scripture only, > which means they are not allowed to add any thought or concept to the sum > total of that which is literally and specifically recorded in the sacred > texts. ?An example of how that is used is seen in the Seventh Day Adventists > going to church on Saturday. ?In the old testament, they did it that way. > The new testament does not specifically say the sacred day was changed to > Sunday. ?Therefore by sola scriptura, Saturday is still the day. I see. I have never been a sola scriptura type... it's a difficult position to take since some scripture seems to conflict with other scripture... and there isn't a scripture that talks about what takes precedence. :-) If one assumes that later revelation overcomes earlier revelation, then that assumption itself seems outside of the sola scriptura realm. > If the sola scriptura concept is followed to its logical conclusion, there > are no specific rules against the solitary vice, and actually none against > premarital sex, so long as the couple are each other's concubines. ?The > bible doesn't exactly specify how that arrangement comes to be, but clearly > it is in there and is specifically differentiated from and subordinate to > marriage. ?There is nothing, not one word, that says it is wrong, so > apparently it is OK. I can't get into the sola scriptura mind set. It is too foreign to me. So sorry, I can't help much with this experiment. You are probably right that sticking with the bible you can't make a strong argument against masturbation. > If you know of a young couple who are shacking up and they want to go to > church, tell them they can go to the SDA. > >>...Self-control is almost certainly crucial to the success of ANY sentient > being with power... > > Agreed, but: > >>... With great power comes great responsibility... (isn't that in > Matthew??? ;-) ?-Kelly > > No, sure isn't. ?For a strict sola scriptura religion, what is not in the > bible is as important as what is in there. ?The comment about power and > responsibility is from Voltaire, but the fact that it isn't in Matthew or > anywhere else in scripture means that notion becomes part of the bathwater > that gets thrown out along with the baby. I know it is not in Matthew... sorry the sardonic emoticon didn't get that across clearly... Another example is "forgive and forget" which is not scriptural, but may in fact be a pretty good idea. In thinking about the idea of power and responsibility, I can't help but think of the recent news involving Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss Khan. As an atheist, I am somewhat ho hum about extramarital sex being a terrifically huge deal, but the addition of the son, his treatment and the coverup to continue his political career, it is hard to paint Arnold with a completely white hat here. With DSK, it is still a bit early to even say what happened, but men of power have done stupid things before. Monica Lewinsky anyone? Is there any hope that AGIs will be any more successful at avoiding the power trip that seems to go along with the power? And if the entire nation were atheistic, would these things be such a big deal? Or is this just a side effect of Christianity being so central a theme to our republic? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 20 06:05:28 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 00:05:28 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/19/2011 8:35 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> To respond to your point more directly, the easily-led will not be >> quite so easily led when there is more intelligence in the world, I >> hope. If everyone had an intelligent agent to look after their >> political interests, that would be an interesting game changer. > > That would be Iain Banks's Culture, with a bit of luck. Post-scarcity > anarcho-communism, with Minds to watch the wolves. Alternatively, > post-Nineteen Eighty-Four hell. Any particular book that would be a good place to start? He's written quite a few. When I mention an intelligent agent to look after my political views, I'm thinking of an AGI that "thinks like I do", but with the time to listen to CSPAN, read all the political blogs, keep up on the news of the day, listen to all the talk radio from all sides, read what each of my elected representatives has to say, and all the candidates in a political season, maybe even have a one on one conversation with their avatar directly, etc. It fits with my view of a multi-threaded life... that is the ability to do more than one thing at a time. To me that is one god-like thing that the future should enable, the ability to do as many things at once as you have the resources to compute and then put it all together at the end. If you think of the Christian God, listening to everyone's prayers at the same time, that is the model I have for the politician of the future. Able to have that one on one connection with every constituent on a frequent basis. I think it's a pretty powerful idea... it might even lead to the ability to have a true democracy, where every single person in society has enough computational resources to understand every issue to a greater degree than is even possible for our current representatives. This could lead to the greatest government ever. At that point, you're way beyond liberal, conservative or libertarian... you're to intelligent government for and by the people, who are all educated to a degree that is not now possible. There still might be a few who are not interested in politics, but if it doesn't cut into your paragliding time, or your ability to acquire resources, perhaps everyone will be interested at some level. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Fri May 20 06:09:10 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 23:09:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> Message-ID: <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Subject: Re: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 8:23 PM, spike wrote: > ... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson > ... >>> 2011/5/6 spike: > ... > >> Kelly do take care with attributions. ?I didn't write any of that which as under my name. ?No harm done in this case. ?{8-] >...Sorry, I try to be careful, did you not ask how a religious person would make a case against sex with a sexbot? If it wasn't you, who asked that question? No problem, as I said, no harm done. I confess I did start the goofy thread, with some grain of honest inquiry, I just didn't write the later stuff, having been caught up for the last several days in reality. In West World, the participants were in fact paying a ton of money to copulate with sexbots, so Hollyweird was thinking of this kind of thing 40 years ago. I do wonder occasionally if I am doing the right thing. I have been looking for a job in the very straight and narrow 9 to 5 world in a wildly competitive market. Occasionally I wonder if hiring managers google on my email @, and find... you guys. Oooookaaaaaay into the round file with this "Spike" character, oy. {8^D But hell, if they are that uptight, I didn't want to work there anyways. {8-] >>...Religions view themselves as a path to self control... > > Ja, although where I was going with this to start with is I know of a class of religions which hold the notion of sola scriptura... >...I see. I have never been a sola scriptura type... I was at one time, but it leads eventually to atheism, or did in my case. There are certainly contradictions which cannot be explained or reasoned away. But for the strict sola scripturist who really studies the document, it is astonishing how much cultural religion is nowhere to be found anywhere in those pages. We are so culturally conditioned, we constantly overlook what really isn't there. >...I can't get into the sola scriptura mind set. It is too foreign to me... Ja. The SDA is vitally dependent on the notion, otherwise the rest of Christianity threatens to be non-heretical. They go to church on Sunday you see, and the bible doesn't say anywhere that they are supposed to do that. Heretics! All! {8^D Sheesh, I can't believe I ever bought into the silliness, even in my childhood. >...Another example is "forgive and forget" which is not scriptural, but may in fact be a pretty good idea... Better is forgive and remember. Then if he does it again you know to pop the bastard. >...In thinking about the idea of power and responsibility, I can't help but think of the recent news involving Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss Khan... Hoooold on there Hoss, don't even mention those two in the same sentence. Both bad guys, OK, but a different order of magnitude. Aaaahnold provided money for his mistress and son I understand, and she has never said she was raped as far as I know. The IMF guy is in no way comparable. Actually I do see an ethical contradiction. If a really rich guy fathers a child and arranges for the baby and mother a comfortable living at his expense, that is far preferable to the poor guy who does the same but cannot afford to support his family. Hmmm. >...As an atheist, I am somewhat ho hum about extramarital sex being a terrifically huge deal, but the addition of the son, his treatment and the coverup to continue his political career, it is hard to paint Arnold with a completely white hat here... Ja. >...With DSK, it is still a bit early to even say what happened, but men of power have done stupid things before... He claims she wanted it. Ja. Sure. She was overcome by lust for this flabbly geezer I can assure you. Not. He's toast. Wait till it comes out that she is Muslim and it starts riots all over France. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 20 06:46:58 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 01:46:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> On 5/20/2011 1:05 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> That would be Iain Banks's Culture, with a bit of luck. Post-scarcity >> > anarcho-communism, with Minds to watch the wolves. > Any particular book that would be a good place to start? He's written > quite a few. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture Consider Phlebas (1987) The first Culture novel. Its protagonist is working for the religious Idiran Empire against the Culture. A rich, although basically linear story about rescuing one of the artificial sentiences of the Culture, it takes place against the backdrop of the galaxy-spanning Idiran War. Use of Weapons (1990) A non-linear story about a Culture mercenary called Zakalwe. Chapters describing his adventures for Special Circumstances are intercut with stories from his past, where the reader slowly discovers why this man is so troubled. The State of the Art (1991) A short story collection, mostly not connected with the Culture, but including two short stories and the eponymous title novella, set within this universe. The novella deals with a Culture mission to Earth during the 1970s. ["State of the Art" could be the place to start; Use of Weapons is brilliant; Consider Phlebas is the earliest published, but not especially well organized] From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 20 07:08:23 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 01:08:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 12:09 AM, spike wrote: > >>... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson > Subject: Re: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI > > On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 8:23 PM, spike wrote: >> ... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >> ... >>>> 2011/5/6 spike: >> ... >> >>> Kelly do take care with attributions. ?I didn't write any of that which > as under my name. ?No harm done in this case. ?{8-] > >>...Sorry, I try to be careful, did you not ask how a religious person would > make a case against sex with a sexbot? If it wasn't you, who asked that > question? > > No problem, as I said, no harm done. ?I confess I did start the goofy > thread, with some grain of honest inquiry, I just didn't write the later > stuff, having been caught up for the last several days in reality. ?In West > World, the participants were in fact paying a ton of money to copulate with > sexbots, so Hollyweird was thinking of this kind of thing 40 years ago. I didn't mean to attribute that to you, if I did, I'm sorry. > I do wonder occasionally if I am doing the right thing. ?I have been looking > for a job in the very straight and narrow 9 to 5 world in a wildly > competitive market. ?Occasionally I wonder if hiring managers google on my > email @, and find... you guys. ?Oooookaaaaaay into the round file with this > "Spike" character, oy. ?{8^D ?But hell, if they are that uptight, I didn't > want to work there anyways. ?{8-] I can't imagine you in the 9 to 5 world. :-) I can't imagine you WANTING to be there, in any case. Join me in the crazy entrepreneurial world where crazy people like us are what's needed! >>>...Religions view themselves as a path to self control... >> >> Ja, although where I was going with this to start with is I know of a > class of religions which hold the notion of sola scriptura... Yeah, that wasn't part of your original question, or if it was I didn't get that part of the question. >>...I see. I have never been a sola scriptura type... > > I was at one time, but it leads eventually to atheism, or did in my case. > There are certainly contradictions which cannot be explained or reasoned > away. ?But for the strict sola scripturist who really studies the document, > it is astonishing how much cultural religion is nowhere to be found anywhere > in those pages. ?We are so culturally conditioned, we constantly overlook > what really isn't there. The culture of Mormonism is well recognized, even inside the religion, as being separate from the "gospel" preached through the official channels. Green jello and funeral potatoes are clearly part of the culture, and clearly not part of the official teachings. The strange dichotomies about coca-cola, or belief in evolution are cultural issues that are divisive within the culture because the gospel is silent on these issues. Because of the strict hierarchical nature of the leadership of the church, pretty much anything COULD be resolved, but often is not resolved. The believer would say "God doesn't want us to know yet." The cynic might say, "A revelation on either side of that issue would cause some people to leave the church." The structure of Mormonism is quite distant from sola sciptura because the living mouth of God lives on earth currently, and there is the opportunity to solve every question immediately, even though often such questions are simply left open as "unimportant to our salvation." >>...I can't get into the sola scriptura mind set. It is too foreign to me... > > Ja. ?The SDA is vitally dependent on the notion, otherwise the rest of > Christianity threatens to be non-heretical. ?They go to church on Sunday you > see, and the bible doesn't say anywhere that they are supposed to do that. > Heretics! ?All! ?{8^D ?Sheesh, I can't believe I ever bought into the > silliness, even in my childhood. According to Dawkins you believed because your genetic makeup is tweaked to believe what your parents said. It makes a lot of sense when you think of the selection pressure against kids that eat poisonous plants that their parents told them not to try. So don't blame yourself... :-) It's all those darn old selfish genes. >>...Another example is "forgive and forget" which is not scriptural, but may > in fact be a pretty good idea... > > Better is forgive and remember. ?Then if he does it again you know to pop > the bastard. There is a certain logic to turning the other cheek, at least on the large scale. War is very costly economically. >>...In thinking about the idea of power and responsibility, I can't help but > think of the recent news involving Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique > Strauss Khan... > > Hoooold on there Hoss, don't even mention those two in the same sentence. > Both bad guys, OK, but a different order of magnitude. ?Aaaahnold provided > money for his mistress and son I understand, and she has never said she was > raped as far as I know. ?The IMF guy is in no way comparable. If he (IMF) did what they say, then yes. With people that powerful, I see reasons for people to lie all over thee place, so I try to withhold immediate judgement. They made very different levels of mistake. > Actually I do see an ethical contradiction. ?If a really rich guy fathers a > child and arranges for the baby and mother a comfortable living at his > expense, that is far preferable to the poor guy who does the same but cannot > afford to support his family. ?Hmmm. So it's easier for the rich to be ethical? That turns the typical thinking on it's head, doesn't it? :-) >>...As an atheist, I am somewhat ho hum about extramarital sex being a > terrifically huge deal, but the addition of the son, his treatment and the > coverup to continue his political career, it is hard to paint Arnold with a > completely white hat here... > > Ja. > >>...With DSK, it is still a bit early to even say what happened, but men of > power have done stupid things before... > > He claims she wanted it. ?Ja. ?Sure. ?She was overcome by lust for this > flabbly geezer I can assure you. ?Not. ?He's toast. ?Wait till it comes out > that she is Muslim and it starts riots all over France. However this plays out, I can almost guarantee it will be perceived differently in America and in France... What I'm really interested in is the transhumanist angle of it... if we have powerful AGIs in the future, and they screw up, which they will, then what is to be done about it? How will it be perceived? I think it's a fascinating question to ponder. -Kelly From emlynoregan at gmail.com Fri May 20 07:06:11 2011 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 16:36:11 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2011/5/20 Alfio Puglisi : > On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 4:10 AM, Emlyn wrote: > >> >> Sort of >> like, who is currently using a 40 year old computer, or even a 10 year >> old one? > > On that desk to the right, my Athlon 900Mhz from year 2000 is still going > strong on some Linux distribution and the original 20 GB hard disk > Alfio I redefine "who" to mean "who (excluding all us tragic geeks who are waaaay too attached to old hardware to make rational decisions about it)" -- Emlyn http://my.syyn.cc - Synchonise Facebook, WordPress and Google Buzz posts, comments and all. http://www.blahblahbleh.com - A simple youtube radio that I built http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog Find me on Facebook and Buzz From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 20 07:54:37 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 08:54:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 2:35 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > To respond to your point more directly, the easily-led will not be > quite so easily led when there is more intelligence in the world, I > hope. If everyone had an intelligent agent to look after their > political interests, that would be an interesting game changer. Then > what was or was not on any particular news cast might have less > impact. > > On the other hand, from the glass half-empty perspective, at present it is the most intelligent people in the world that are ruining the world economy for their own personal gain (measured in money and power). I don't see any direct link between greater intelligence and altruism / benevolence. Quite the opposite so far in human history. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 20 08:21:32 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 09:21:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 7:09 AM, spike wrote: > Actually I do see an ethical contradiction. ?If a really rich guy fathers a > child and arranges for the baby and mother a comfortable living at his > expense, that is far preferable to the poor guy who does the same but cannot > afford to support his family. ?Hmmm. > > Spike, I wouldn't use ethical to describe that situation. :) That's why men fight each other to get money and power. Riches and power attract (most) women as they seek a mate who can provide well for them and their children. For a millionaire, setting up a fund to look after mistress and child is a trivial expense. Far less, for example, than a millionaire going through the divorce courts. (John Cleese, Paul McCartney, etc,) If you have so much money that paying for your mistakes is just pocket money, that doesn't make it ethical. The crooks on Wall Street pay nominal fines all the time, but get to keep most of their ill-gotten gains. It is just a normal (trivial) operating expense. BillK From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 20 13:29:33 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 08:29:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com><527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com><4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <458A248735824D9D8685BF379973838B@DFC68LF1> BillK wrote: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 2:35 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > To respond to your point more directly, the easily-led will not be > quite so easily led when there is more intelligence in the world, I > hope. If everyone had an intelligent agent to look after their > political interests, that would be an interesting game changer. Then > what was or was not on any particular news cast might have less > impact. "On the other hand, from the glass half-empty perspective, at present it is the most intelligent people in the world that are ruining the world economy for their own personal gain (measured in money and power). "I don't see any direct link between greater intelligence and altruism / benevolence. Quite the opposite so far in human history." And the populous? How many people in the United States unethically take from the pool of debt of the country? How many people are on unemployment, welfare, food stamps, disability that can work at any one of the jobs available? Many. Many. A man just won the lottery, but still is on food stamps because it is part of his cultural upbringing - an upbringing that feeds people with a sense of entitlement: A woman told me her husband has been on unemployment for a very long time and he does not look for work. In fact, he spends his days working on his motorcycle and working on his website. I know someone on disability but also owns a store and manages it, does its finances and travels freely to purchase products for the store. I have a friend who is on social security, but works and a company and gets paid under the table. I am quite sure that most of us know of someone who is cheating tax payers. Whether you are a libertarian or socialist, what is growing is a sense of entitlement. As far as I can tell, the term and premise of libertarianism is an old-world, outdated model that never was widely accepted and was more an well-meaning, intellectual's ideology than a workable solution, given its strong resistence from the left. Nevertheless, why not develop a contemporary model that is more consistent with the current climate? Natasha From spike66 at att.net Fri May 20 14:38:35 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 07:38:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> Message-ID: <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson ... > >> No problem, as I said, no harm done. ?I confess I did start the goofy thread... >...I didn't mean to attribute that to you, if I did, I'm sorry. The ironic thing is that it is actually a good thing. Occasional misattributions provide us all complete deniability of stuff we really did write. {8^D So don't worry about it me lad. {8-] >...I can't imagine you in the 9 to 5 world. :-) I can't imagine you WANTING to be there, in any case. Join me in the crazy entrepreneurial world where crazy people like us are what's needed! Ja, well, I am being pressured to take over the family farm. To farm legally cost money. I need a 9 to 5 to support my farming habit. >... The structure of Mormonism is quite distant from sola sciptura because the living mouth of God lives on earth currently, and there is the opportunity to solve every question immediately, even though often such questions are simply left open as "unimportant to our salvation." Ja, those guys have it easy. The SDA prophet died in 1915, and she wasn't making much profit several years prior to that. >...According to Dawkins you believed because your genetic makeup is tweaked to believe what your parents said. It makes a lot of sense when you think of the selection pressure against kids that eat poisonous plants that their parents told them not to try. So don't blame yourself... :-) It's all those darn old selfish genes... Between Dawkins and Keith Henson, I have learned much. >...There is a certain logic to turning the other cheek, at least on the large scale. War is very costly economically... Ja, far cheaper is to have enough competent defense technology that the bad guy goes elsewhere. >...So it's easier for the rich to be ethical? Shrugs. I guess it does lead there by any path of reasoning that I recognize as such. >...That turns the typical thinking on it's head, doesn't it? :-) Sure does. The rich person has enough money to cover his own mistakes and compensate the damaged. Lovers come willingly to the rich, regardless of how ugly and flabby, perhaps knowing he can (and will) make it right if things go wrong. Now take that over to the individual mandate for health care insurance, and consider the really rich guy who has his own medical staff. He doesn't need medical insurance; he could pay his own medical expenses should it become necessary. The logic behind the individual mandate for health insurance (that one without it is using a service one is not paying for) does not apply to anyone who has so much money they wouldn't go into a hospital anyway. Rather they would hire the medical expertise to come to them. So now we have a case where the government couldn't logically require health insurance of the very rich, because they wouldn't use it anyway. Aaaahnold made sure his second family was cared for, so I guess I hafta cut him some extra slack on that. The lying part of course is a major no-no. So then is morality different between rich and poor? Well, in some ways, sorta it is. ... What I'm really interested in is the transhumanist angle of it... if we have powerful AGIs in the future, and they screw up, which they will, then what is to be done about it? How will it be perceived? I think it's a fascinating question to ponder. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Fri May 20 14:49:20 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 07:49:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> Message-ID: <006801cc16fd$1a31a5a0$4e94f0e0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 7:09 AM, spike wrote: > Actually I do see an ethical contradiction. ?If a really rich guy > fathers a child and arranges for the baby and mother a comfortable > living at his expense, that is far preferable to the poor guy who does > the same but cannot afford to support his family. ?Hmmm. >...Spike, I wouldn't use ethical to describe that situation. :) That's why men fight each other to get money and power...If you have so much money that paying for your mistakes is just pocket money, that doesn't make it ethical. The crooks on Wall Street pay nominal fines all the time, but get to keep most of their ill-gotten gains. It is just a normal (trivial) operating expense. BillK BillK, follow that line of reasoning and separate the Wall Street crook from the rich film star who sires an offspring. Those are two different situations and I agree with you on the Wall Street example. But here we have Aaaahnold, who lied to cover for his political career, definitely wrong, but who supplied a good living to his mistress, better than she would have had otherwise. The child inherits Aaahnold's genes, which produced an individual who made a fortune legitimately, so he wins over most randomly chosen alternatives. The mistress apparently entered the relationship voluntarily. Sure it is sleazy, but this is Hollyweird and Sacramento, and that sort of thing happens. I see no victim here. spike From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 20 15:09:22 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 17:09:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110520150921.GL19622@leitl.org> On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 07:38:35AM -0700, spike wrote: > >...I didn't mean to attribute that to you, if I did, I'm sorry. > > The ironic thing is that it is actually a good thing. Occasional > misattributions provide us all complete deniability of stuff we really did > write. {8^D So don't worry about it me lad. {8-] And it's easy enough to fix (since it's you who's doing it): https://encrypted.google.com/search?&q=outlook+quotefix -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 20 15:16:03 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 16:16:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 3:38 PM, spike wrote: > Ja, well, I am being pressured to take over the family farm. ?To farm > legally cost money. ?I need a 9 to 5 to support my farming habit. > Can't you find oil or gas or shale or rare earths or something on your farmland? Or get an optimistic survey done so you can charge for drilling rights? Still, it could be worse. If your farm was near the Mississippi river you would be looking at starting boat trips for fishermen. :{ BillK From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Fri May 20 15:48:05 2011 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 17:48:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again Message-ID: I found a TV program with some interesting information (in English): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15Ea92OViZw Apparently, in addition to the usual claims, somewhat precise numbers exist: - production cost of the "device" is around 2,000 dollars (for a power of a few KW), while electricity costs (in terms of raw materials) is < 1 cent/KWh - a 1 MW installation is planned in Greece for October this year The reason why Rossi is going to Greece instead of his native Italy is that he was involved in a big oil-from-waste scam many years ago, for which he was charged and found guilty, and no Italian industry firm would be caught dead next to him. The journalist spends considerable time on this previous scam. Ciao, Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Fri May 20 16:01:40 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 12:01:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/20/2011 1:05 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>> That would be Iain Banks's Culture, with a bit of luck. Post-scarcity >>> > anarcho-communism, with Minds to watch the wolves. > >> Any particular book that would be a good place to start? He's written >> quite a few. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture > > Consider Phlebas (1987) > > The first Culture novel. Its protagonist is working for the > religious Idiran Empire against the Culture. A rich, although basically > linear story about rescuing one of the artificial sentiences of the > Culture, it takes place against the backdrop of the galaxy-spanning > Idiran War. > > Use of Weapons (1990) > > A non-linear story about a Culture mercenary called Zakalwe. > Chapters describing his adventures for Special Circumstances are > intercut with stories from his past, where the reader slowly discovers > why this man is so troubled. > > The State of the Art (1991) > > A short story collection, mostly not connected with the Culture, > but including two short stories and the eponymous title novella, set > within this universe. The novella deals with a Culture mission to Earth > during the 1970s. FWIW I came into his books first through "The Player of Games". Perhaps more thoughtful and philosophical, which allowed me to meditate more on the social and ethical aspects of the Culture. Plot line not really as tight as some of the others, though. I find Banks' Culture to be an excellent vision of the only stable society of the future, if what we want is a future in which we don't live in log cabins, spending every minute of our time collecting tolls from anyone who comes within breathing distance. Frankly, I choose starships over log cabins. Richard Loosemore From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 20 16:12:34 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 09:12:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 7:38 AM, spike wrote: snip > Between Dawkins and Keith Henson, I have learned much. :-) snip > Aaaahnold made sure his second family was cared for, so I guess I hafta cut > him some extra slack on that. Gordon Getty had a second family. Even more so than Arnold he could support them. Of course, he could have divorced his wife and married again to have more children, but he chose not to do so and as far as I know his (primary) wife stayed with him. (Don't know about the secondary one.) > The lying part of course is a major no-no. There has been so much going on with news this year that I might have missed it. Maybe you can point out where Arnold lied? Did he deny having this extra kid when asked about it? I don't think keeping your trap shut is normally considered lying. snip > What I'm really interested in is the transhumanist angle of it... if we have > powerful AGIs in the future, and they screw up, which they will, then what > is to be done about it? How will it be perceived? I think it's a fascinating > question to ponder. Given the scale of decisions powerful AGI would be making, having one of them screw up could be a prelude to a disaster much worse than the current mess in Japan. Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 20 16:51:14 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 11:51:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <458A248735824D9D8685BF379973838B@DFC68LF1> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com><527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com><4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com><4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <458A248735824D9D8685BF379973838B@DFC68LF1> Message-ID: <4DD69C02.10403@satx.rr.com> On 5/20/2011 8:29 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > A man just won the lottery, but still is on food stamps because it is part > of his cultural upbringing - an upbringing that feeds people with a sense of > entitlement: > An interesting situation for some here, because his retort is: If it was evil of the government to steal his winnings, hasn't he got a moral right to claw as much of it back as he can (as anyone might who uses a smart tax lawyer, say)? Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 20 18:12:13 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 19:12:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DD69C02.10403@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <458A248735824D9D8685BF379973838B@DFC68LF1> <4DD69C02.10403@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > An interesting situation for some here, because his retort is: > > the government took more than half of his winnings in taxes.> > > If it was evil of the government to steal his winnings, hasn't he got a > moral right to claw as much of it back as he can (as anyone might who uses a > smart tax lawyer, say)? > > The SNAP rules are based on income. If Fick receives interest income from investing his winnings then he will not be eligible for food stamps after he starts receiving the interest payments. But he is probably legal for now. Millionaires tend to avoid salary anyway as it is taxed more heavily than capital gains or share dividends e.g. Steve Jobs $1 salary. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Fri May 20 18:20:46 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 13:20:46 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <458A248735824D9D8685BF379973838B@DFC68LF1> <4DD69C02.10403@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DD6B0FE.6090204@satx.rr.com> On 5/20/2011 1:12 PM, BillK wrote: >> > If it was evil of the government to steal his winnings, hasn't he got a >> > moral right to claw as much of it back as he can (as anyone might who uses a >> > smart tax lawyer, say)? > The SNAP rules are based on income. If Fick receives interest income > from investing his winnings then he will not be eligible for food > stamps after he starts receiving the interest payments. But he is > probably legal for now. I wasn't talking about legality but morality. Shouldn't Rafal, for example, hold this Fick up as a great man doing his small bit for restitution to the rich? Damien Broderick From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 20 18:54:30 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 19:54:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DD6B0FE.6090204@satx.rr.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <458A248735824D9D8685BF379973838B@DFC68LF1> <4DD69C02.10403@satx.rr.com> <4DD6B0FE.6090204@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > I wasn't talking about legality but morality. Shouldn't Rafal, for example, > hold this Fick up as a great man doing his small bit for restitution to the > rich? > > This always happens when a country decides to provide benefits to help certain classes of people in need. For example, everyone gets the state pension in the UK when they reach pension age (gradually increasing at present). Whether they are a millionaire or not. The pension is taxable as wages, though. Some benefits, like the winter fuel grant (?250) are tax-free to everyone over 60. This is intended to stop old folk dying because they are frightened to switch the heating on because of the cost. The government has to weigh the grant wastage against the admin costs of means-testing every single grant to make sure it only goes to those who need it. The cost of means-testing and checking for false claimants is horrendous and the government needs to know every detail of your assets and income. Many people avoid claiming grants because of this interference in their affairs. Often it is much cheaper and benefits more people to just issue the grant to everyone. I believe the government has suggested that millionaires could donate the grant to charity if they don't need it. I don't recall hearing about queues of millionaires forming to donate to charity. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sat May 21 00:33:51 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 17:33:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] mosquito zapping laser Message-ID: <003d01cc174e$c2ddde70$48999b50$@att.net> Hey do you remember our discussing this topic about ten years ago? I thought it could be done with a dual laser system: one is a low power targeting laser, the other gets her done. Looks like the system these guys invented works even better than we envisioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKm8FolQ7jw &feature=player_embedded spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat May 21 01:35:00 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 18:35:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] mosquito zapping laser In-Reply-To: <003d01cc174e$c2ddde70$48999b50$@att.net> References: <003d01cc174e$c2ddde70$48999b50$@att.net> Message-ID: Jordin Kare is involved with this project. It's a spinoff in some ways from SDI. Keith 2011/5/20 spike : > Hey do you remember our discussing this topic about ten years ago?? I > thought it could be done with a dual laser system: one is a low power > targeting laser, the other gets her done.? Looks like the system these guys > invented works even better than we envisioned: > > > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKm8FolQ7jw&feature=player_embedded > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From member at linkedin.com Sat May 21 03:25:37 2011 From: member at linkedin.com (Gregory Jones via LinkedIn) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 03:25:37 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [ExI] Invitation to connect on LinkedIn Message-ID: <99570935.26744067.1305948337953.JavaMail.app@ela4-bed79.prod> LinkedIn ------------Gregory Jones requested to add you as a connection on LinkedIn: ------------------------------------------ Stephan, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. - Gregory Accept invitation from Gregory Jones http://www.linkedin.com/e/z8t35u-gnxzx6ou-6x/XBa26G2kpQwFwjjrc_ZyPpnwp5oQcReweNnhW82Ht8-pIT/blk/I103305288_15/1BpC5vrmRLoRZcjkkZt5YCpnlOt3RApnhMpmdzgmhxrSNBszYRclYUe38Rc3cPc359bSgPlzxqqk9GbPANe38Qcz8Rej8LrCBxbOYWrSlI/EML_comm_afe/ View invitation from Gregory Jones http://www.linkedin.com/e/z8t35u-gnxzx6ou-6x/XBa26G2kpQwFwjjrc_ZyPpnwp5oQcReweNnhW82Ht8-pIT/blk/I103305288_15/3kNnPwUczkMcPcMckALqnpPbOYWrSlI/svi/ ------------------------------------------ Why might connecting with Gregory Jones be a good idea? People Gregory Jones knows can discover your profile: Connecting to Gregory Jones will attract the attention of LinkedIn users. See who's been viewing your profile: http://www.linkedin.com/e/z8t35u-gnxzx6ou-6x/wvp/inv18_wvmp/ -- (c) 2011, LinkedIn Corporation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 21 12:20:41 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 14:20:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 17 May 2011 05:52, Kelly Anderson wrote: > If you are saying that such an android may not actually "like" > something, but could only be judged by their interaction with others, > then yes, that is definitely one way to judge. That being said, I > think it is reasonable to conjecture that if a human being can be > "programmed" to a particular effect, that it would be reasonable to > believe that you could also create an AGI with similar effects. So, if > you can find a real woman who liked being raped, and playing the rape > victim game, and really liked it very rough, that it would be > conceivable to believe that you could create an AGI with similar > external behaviors to such a woman. Absolutely. Only, as long as we do not subjectively perceive a degree of Turing-like impredictability in the android, it become hard to project our own qualia on it, and we are likely to consider its reactions on the same basis of that of, say, a car, a hypnotised human or a corpse moved by some Galvani-like effects. > Now, here is the part that is quite frightening... If someone wishes > to create such a monster android, it would probably best be > accomplished by beating the crap out of it and generally mistreating > it as a young android. *Or* you can simply emulate the effects. No big deal. > If such a being gains "human rights", then we're really > screwed. I am not very fond of the very concept of metaphysical "human rights" in itself, as opposed to civil rights and liberties, which are those granted by the community to what it perceives to be its members. There again, I suspect that a sociologically widespread ability to project one's qualia on a being make it likely that some rights are granted to that being (say, you uploaded wife). When such projection is more difficult (say, your car), we are less likely to consider them as "citizens". >> I am pretty much persuaded that doing so with humans is >> philosophically quite untenable, and practically a frequent source of >> ineffective behaviours, and I do not even begin to think what it could >> mean for a machine to be programmed to be "happy" (?) while emitting >> frustration-like signals. > > I'm sure there is some kind of twisted porno out there that features > women with just these sorts of personality defects. No, my point is again that we do not know anything about fellow humans other than what they signals, and that would also be true for machines. More than a personality defect, I am more inclined to consider a like for rape a contradiction in terms, when what we are really dealing with is somebody who is having consensual sex while mimicking (some) rape-related behaviours, and yet simultaneously exhibiting typical consensual sex reactions (tumescence, lubrication, orgasm, endorphine release, subsequent approving comments). > People project personality on cars and other non-human and > non-intelligent artifacts today. I cuss at my computer, knowing that > it won't do any good (at least yet). But some day, these artifacts > will learn to respond to my emotional state. Then it will be even > easier to get sucked into the anthropomorphic trap. We will want to > program cars to act happy. Yes, your reply is pertinent, but I wonder... Humans, animals and machines alike do not respond to our emotional state, but to behaviours it dictates. Let us say that machines may get better at interpreting them, from insect level to dog level to fellow human level. Even in the human realm, we do not deal with a b/w scenario. An infant, a retarded or a member of a radically different culture may have a limited or altogether inappropriate response to such behaviours. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 21 12:29:01 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 14:29:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/18 John Grigg : > It is ironic that an android lover for women would need to have much more > intelligence and personality complexity to be a satisfactory partner. lol? I > suppose human evolution has been pushed forward by females who wanted more > from their prospective male?mates and would not settle for less! Mmhhh, I doubt it. If anything, the difference between masturbation and sex is smaller, as far as I can say, for women. Accordingly, either the android is a full-fledged Turing-passing fellow "citizen", or the average women would settle for much less than a the average man would require for a convincing masturbation toy. As it is already the case, btw. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 21 13:08:44 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 15:08:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 20 May 2011 18:01, Richard Loosemore wrote: > I find Banks' Culture to be an excellent vision of the only stable society > of the future, if what we want is a future in which we don't live in log > cabins, spending every minute of our time collecting tolls from anyone who > comes within breathing distance. ?Frankly, I choose starships over log > cabins. Interesting. I find the Culture an abherrant positive spin on a Brave-New-Worldish scenario projected on a galaxy scale... (Controlled, enslaved) technology at the service of stagnation and uniformity is much more of a threat for indefinite becoming and diverse posthuman change than any neoluddite dreams. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 21 13:18:55 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 15:18:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> Message-ID: On 18 May 2011 22:48, Samantha Atkins wrote: > It strikes me that much of our evolved psychology will be increasingly in > the way of our future progress as our environment gets further and further > away from the environment those traits were evolved in and for. ?So > self-control is likely crucial to our achieving our H+ dreams. In any event, if transhumanism were to have its way, we are going to control more and more of *both* our environments ("real" and virtual) *and* of our psychology, so that we shall be able to combine them as it pleases us best, hopefully in rich and diverse ways. As to religion and magic, I am inclined to consider their best part in terms of psychology-controlling technologies. And what is there not to be liked about that from a transhumanist POV? BTW, "control" means not just the ability to repress, but also the ability to excite at will. Another problem is when such technologies are instrumental to odious goals, as it is mostly the case for monotheist persuasions. -- Stefano Vaj From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 21 15:43:19 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 17:43:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> Il 20/05/2011 17:48, Alfio Puglisi ha scritto: > I found a TV program with some interesting information (in English): The original video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzL3RIlcwbY > Apparently, in addition to the usual claims, somewhat precise numbers > exist: > - production cost of the "device" is around 2,000 dollars (for a > power of a few KW), while electricity costs (in terms of raw > materials) is < 1 cent/KWh - a 1 MW installation is planned in Greece > for October this year The facts as related by Rossi: 1) 800$/kW for thermal energy; 2.000$/kW for electricity 2) 100$ for 180 days of uninterrupted reaction for a 4 KW unit (I bet the costs for a 10kW unit is not much different) 3) the max vapor temp pressure output will be 500?C and 50 atm 4) the 1 MW gen will be formed by ~300 4kW e-cats units connected in series and parallel 5) they will be remotely controlled one by one (switch on/off) 6) the single modules output can be changed (in around a minute) There are another 1 MW installation planned for the US just after this. There is another enterprise in the US, Ampenergo, with at least an ex-DoE official from the Bush (father) term between the founders. The Greece group exist because of the involvement of Prof. Stremmenos with the Greece government and Greece business community (that made things easier and faster in Greece). Stremmenos is an old friend of Focardi and worked at the University of Bologna, in the Physic Department and did experiments with nickel and hydrogen and obtained positive results. Focardi talked with him about the results of Rossi, then him meet with Rossi and then he used his links in Greece. > The reason why Rossi is going to Greece instead of his native Italy > is that he was involved in a big oil-from-waste scam many years ago, > for which he was charged and found guilty, and no Italian industry > firm would be caught dead next to him. The journalist spends > considerable time on this previous scam. Well, one of the last comments to the original video: "Just a comment about Petroldragon: here in Italy it is no secret that the Petroldragon Corp was "destroyed" by all means (journalists, magistrates, evironmentalists etc...) because Petroldragon was the only thing that was able to keep mafia out from the waste business in Northern Italy. Therefore Andrea Rossi was first? arrested and then acquitted, but the acquittal arrived only 15 years after his incarceration... In the meanwhile, Petroldragon Corp was forced to go out of business.." In fact, before they changed the laws and put Petroldragon out of business, the "waste trafficking" was unheard. Here the Rossi version of what happening: http://ingandrearossi.net/ Many innovating entrepreneurs had problems with the laws in the past everywhere: Another show an the same RAINEWS24 channel reported about Rossi and the e-cat a few weeks after the first, but with a very different take (in Italian sorry): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hX40Fgw4kQ (part one) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5pSxZDZXwg (party two) To be noted, there were Professor Celani (that is critic of Rossi) and Professor Emeritus Focardi (that helped Rossi to develop the e-cat). IMHO, the number of people that say it work, saw it work and there are no tricks is growing. If it is a scam, Rossi were able to scam a large number of intelligent individuals and no one noticed they were scammed. Even if they checked for scams. The deadline for Rossi is pretty near (5 months). He is telling people to return in November AFTER the 1 MW installation in Greece if they are interested in doing business concerning the e-cat. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sat May 21 17:20:29 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 10:20:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> Message-ID: <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato Subject: Re: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again Il 20/05/2011 17:48, Alfio Puglisi ha scritto: > I found a TV program with some interesting information (in English): >>The original video is here: >>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzL3RIlcwbY >> Apparently, in addition to the usual claims, somewhat precise numbers exist: >> - production cost of the "device" is around 2,000 dollars (for a power >> of a few KW), while electricity costs (in terms of raw >> materials) is < 1 cent/KWh - a 1 MW installation is planned in Greece >> for October this year >...The facts as related by Rossi: >...1) 800$/kW for thermal energy; 2.000$/kW for electricity... >...Mirco Gentlemen, one thing this particular internet chatter group can offer that others do not is that many or perhaps most of us here have the scientific and technical sophistication to look up nucleon energies and do the math. We need not concern ourselves over who said what or what degrees this other guy has or what scams were done by whom and when. Ignore all that, get out the dusty old nucleon chart from college (so tragically many years ago) make a spreadsheet, imagine a theoretical muon-catalyzed proton capture (which is what they are claiming) and find some kind of nickel to copper transition (which is what they are claiming), any isotope combination from nickel to copper, pick your favorite pair of (stable) isotopes, go ahead and theorize any wacky variation, such as a triple proton capture coupled with an alpha decay, or whatever you want. Do not worry about the fact that physics as we know it says protons and alphas will not behave this way, just map out end points and look up nucleon energies, find *any* mysterious path from any marginally stable nickel isotope to *any* marginally stable copper isotope, then come on back and tell us what you found. I did this, couldn't find a reasonable starting point/endpoint pair which would do what they say happened, even assuming a previously overlooked muon catalysis or that god came along, damned his own physical laws and reshuffled the protons by hand. Conclusion: it's all either a lie or a colossal mistake. If I am wrong, I will be morally obligated to eat my nucleon chart. In this case, I would devour it most cheerfully with ketchup and relish, for two reasons: 1) it lies to me, and 2) all mankind's problems are solved forever. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat May 21 17:41:48 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 10:41:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:08 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: snip > I find the Culture an abherrant positive spin on a Brave-New-Worldish > scenario projected on a galaxy scale... > > (Controlled, enslaved) technology at the service of stagnation and > uniformity is much more of a threat for indefinite becoming and > diverse posthuman change than any neoluddite dreams. I don't know how you can make a case for stagnation from the Culture novels. There is specific mention of warships (for example) getting a lot better over time. The problem the Culture has is that significant change will take them over the edge. They know it because there are many such races that have done that. Banks, Vinge and Stross all try to deal with the problem of human characters living among gods. Of course, it's a requirement for a novel to have characters readers can identify with. Banks deals with the constant temptation of transcending (whole cultures doing so) buy drawing a curtain around those who do so. I used the "zoo" mode to get characters in the unfinished novel of which "The Clinic Seed" is a chapter. http://www.terasemjournals.org/GNJournal/GN0202/henson7.html http://www.terasemjournals.org/GNJournal/GN0202/henson8.html Here we have a couple with ten children and no grand kids. Ah well, being effectively immortal they can keep trying. Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat May 21 17:52:49 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 10:52:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:18 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 18 May 2011 22:48, Samantha Atkins wrote: >> It strikes me that much of our evolved psychology will be increasingly in >> the way of our future progress as our environment gets further and further >> away from the environment those traits were evolved in and for. ?So >> self-control is likely crucial to our achieving our H+ dreams. > > In any event, if transhumanism were to have its way, we are going to > control more and more of *both* our environments ("real" and virtual) > *and* of our psychology, so that we shall be able to combine them as > it pleases us best, hopefully in rich and diverse ways. > As to religion and magic, I am inclined to consider their best part in > terms of psychology-controlling technologies. And what is there not to > be liked about that from a transhumanist POV? Marvin Minsky has a good deal to say about the dangers of messing with our psychology. It would be the easiest thing in the world to make changes that you could not back out of because you didn't want to. I think Eric Drexler had similar thoughts. > BTW, "control" means not > just the ability to repress, but also the ability to excite at will. > > Another problem is when such technologies are instrumental to odious > goals, as it is mostly the case for monotheist persuasions. Theists of any kind are going to have a rough time when they have beings around that effectively *are* gods. We are in for some very strange times. Keith From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Sat May 21 18:41:09 2011 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 20:41:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 7:20 PM, spike wrote: > > Gentlemen, one thing this particular internet chatter group can offer that > others do not is that many or perhaps most of us here have the scientific > and technical sophistication to look up nucleon energies and do the math. > We need not concern ourselves over who said what or what degrees this other > guy has or what scams were done by whom and when. Ignore all that, get out > the dusty old nucleon chart from college (so tragically many years ago) make > a spreadsheet, imagine a theoretical muon-catalyzed proton capture (which is > what they are claiming) and find some kind of nickel to copper transition > (which is what they are claiming), any isotope combination from nickel to > copper, pick your favorite pair of (stable) isotopes, go ahead and theorize > any wacky variation, such as a triple proton capture coupled with an alpha > decay, or whatever you want. Do not worry about the fact that physics as we > know it says protons and alphas will not behave this way, just map out end > points a! > nd look up nucleon energies, find *any* mysterious path from any > marginally stable nickel isotope to *any* marginally stable copper isotope, > then come on back and tell us what you found. > Here is my first-ever attempt at nuclear fusion, for which I assume no responsibility :-) . Of course I took Wikipedia as the ultimate reference for atomic masses. Proton capture from nickel-64 (stable) to copper-65 (stable). I don't have the slightest idea whether this reaction is permitted or not, but according to my calculator: Ni64 = 63.9279660 Cu65 = 64.9277895 H = 1.007825032 H + Ni64 = Cu65 + 0.008001532 which corresponds to about 7.5 MeV of energy. What am I doing wrong? Ciao, Alfio > I did this, couldn't find a reasonable starting point/endpoint pair which > would do what they say happened, even assuming a previously overlooked muon > catalysis or that god came along, damned his own physical laws and > reshuffled the protons by hand. > > Conclusion: it's all either a lie or a colossal mistake. > > If I am wrong, I will be morally obligated to eat my nucleon chart. In > this case, I would devour it most cheerfully with ketchup and relish, for > two reasons: 1) it lies to me, and 2) all mankind's problems are solved > forever. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 21 18:55:52 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 20:55:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110521185551.GV19622@leitl.org> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 08:41:09PM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > What am I doing wrong? You're trying to explain something that doesn't exist. From spike66 at att.net Sat May 21 19:25:12 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 12:25:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> Message-ID: <001c01cc17ec$cf257140$6d7053c0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Alfio Puglisi >.look up nucleon energies, find *any* mysterious path from any marginally stable nickel isotope to *any* marginally stable copper isotope, then come on back and tell us what you found. Here is my first-ever attempt at nuclear fusion, for which I assume no responsibility :-) . Of course I took Wikipedia as the ultimate reference for atomic masses. Proton capture from nickel-64 (stable) to copper-65 (stable). I don't have the slightest idea whether this reaction is permitted or not, but according to my calculator: Ni64 = 63.9279660 Cu65 = 64.9277895 H = 1.007825032 H + Ni64 = Cu65 + 0.008001532 which corresponds to about 7.5 MeV of energy. What am I doing wrong? Ciao, Alfio You did nothing wrong Alfio, and you get full points according to the rules I suggested. 64Ni and 65Cu are both stable. I had discounted that reaction because 64Ni is less than 1 percent of natural nickel, but I failed to actually specify that to start with. If we ignore the physics of that particular proton capture, the final material would still be nickel with a trace of copper mixed in. It would take some pretty sophisticated qualitative analysis to even know there was 1% copper in that nickel. My mistake, I didn't include that part. The description of the experiment said he ended up with copper. With regard to that proton capture, it isn't permitted under any rules of nucleon mechanics I recognize, but the way I stated the question to start with, that doesn't matter what I recognize. If Rossi et.al. can demonstrate it, I have a nucleon chart eager to be devoured with relish. Ain't nuclear physic kewallll? Once you get all the way down to subatomic particles, physics actually gets relatively simple again. {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat May 21 19:39:07 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 12:39:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the king's speech Message-ID: <002e01cc17ee$c0726700$41573500$@att.net> I saw a video last night which I enjoyed greatly, The King's Speech. Did anyone here see that in a crowded theatre? Reason I asked: the movie is actually a serious drama, but one scene is hilarious, where the prince discovers he can speak without stuttering if he unleashes a blue streak of profanity. This he demonstrates to great effect. The prim and proper royal shouting vulgarity is so funny, my wife and I could scarcely contain ourselves. I had to wonder what the movie theatre audience did during that part. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 21 20:10:04 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 22:10:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> Message-ID: On 21 May 2011 19:52, Keith Henson wrote: > Marvin Minsky has a good deal to say about the dangers of messing with > our psychology. It would be the easiest thing in the world to make > changes that you could not back out of because you didn't want to. I > think Eric Drexler had similar thoughts. > Yes. My own recipe against any inconvenients this may create (from which POV, OTOH?) is diversity. And/or Darwinian pressures. Theists of any kind are going to have a rough time when they have > beings around that effectively *are* gods. > I suspect that at least at the origin "gods" in the Greek, Latin, Nordic or Hindu sense of the word, were basically the idealisation of paradigm shifters. What else would be new, unless of course the sheer scale of the paradigm shift itself? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 21 20:42:03 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 22:42:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DD8239B.9050400@libero.it> Il 21/05/2011 19:20, spike ha scritto: >> ... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato > Subject: Re: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again > Il 20/05/2011 17:48, Alfio Puglisi ha scritto: > Gentlemen, one thing this particular internet chatter group can offer > that others do not is that many or perhaps most of us here have the > scientific and technical sophistication to look up nucleon energies > and do the maths. > We need not concern ourselves over who said what or > what degrees this other guy has or what scams were done by whom and > when. Ignore all that, get out the dusty old nucleon chart from > college (so tragically many years ago) make a spreadsheet, imagine a > theoretical muon-catalysed proton capture (which is what they are > claiming) and find some kind of nickel to copper transition (which is > what they are claiming), any isotope combination from nickel to > copper, pick your favourite pair of (stable) isotopes, go ahead and > theorize any wacky variation, such as a triple proton capture coupled > with an alpha decay, or whatever you want. Do not worry about the > fact that physics as we know it says protons and alphas will not > behave this way, just map out end points a! nd look up nucleon > energies, find *any* mysterious path from any marginally stable > nickel isotope to *any* marginally stable copper isotope, then come > on back and tell us what you found. Wait. If there is something we don't know (probable), we can not look at any possible path because we can not be sure we know all of them. What we must look at are M1 "mass + energy at the start" and M2 "mass+ energy at the end". M1 - M2 > energy produced Do the mass + energy of a Hydrogen atom and Nickel atom summed are greater than the mass + energy of Copper? If it is so, we can not rule out some transmutation plus energy production. Now, I read in the report of Essen and Kullander: "On the other hand, 0.11 gram hydrogen and 6 grams of nickel (assuming that we use one proton for each nickel atom) are about sufficient to produce 24 MWh through nuclear processes assuming that 8 MeV per reaction can be liberated as free energy. For comparison, 3 liters of oil or 0.6 kg of hydrogen would give 25 kWh through chemical burning. Any chemical process for producing 25 kWh from any fuel in a 50 cm3 container can be ruled out. The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production." I assume they would know if H + Ni --> Cu is theoretically endothermic or exothermic and how much it could be. If they don't, they would be a joke of physics professors. By the way, I made a check and the rate of burning 25kWh in six hours is 24 MWh in 250 days. Compatible with the six months between recharge claimed by Rossi for the same type of e-cat with the same quantity of fuel. > I did this, couldn't find a reasonable starting point/endpoint pair Do you found any unreasonable pair? What constitute "unreasonable"? > Conclusion: it's all either a lie or a colossal mistake. Or they found something new that work in some way never dreamed before. > If I am wrong, I will be morally obligated to eat my nucleon chart. In an interview, when Prof Celani asked about the soft gamma, Focardi replied that when, in January, they were subjected to the question about the lacking of hard gamma, they did a review of the literature. They found that the beta+ decay that was supposed (in the old texts people refer) to happen 50% of the time, in reality happen very rarely or never. If people here can access to the appropriate papers, could they look if never papers about copper isotopes decay give different results than older papers? Now, I think it is improbable that Focardi could have told a naked lie about this. > In this case, I would devour it most cheerfully with ketchup and > relish, for two reasons: 1) it lies to me, and 2) all mankind's > problems are solved forever. If you do, drown it down with some good wine. We will see in October anyway. 160 days to know. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 21 20:35:27 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 22:35:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <20110521185551.GV19622@leitl.org> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> <20110521185551.GV19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4DD8220F.8000106@libero.it> Il 21/05/2011 20:55, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 08:41:09PM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote: >> What am I doing wrong? > You're trying to explain something that doesn't exist. 'What is a zombie?' 'This is a guy who does not exist, but if he exist he should not exist' 'You have you seen someone?' 'No! but if I saw him I will close his eyes not to see it! ' (~ Carl Barks Donald Duck and the fetish) Mirco From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 21 20:47:00 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 13:47:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <4DD018CD.9070908@satx.rr.com> References: <4DD018CD.9070908@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20110521204700.GB26960@ofb.net> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 01:17:49PM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > I have the feeling that Rafal's position is not a million miles from > the True Knowledge of the (paradoxically) libertarian communist > future portrayed in Ken MacLeod's novel THE CASSINI DIVISION: That's not a paradox, that's "libertarian" having multiple meanings, and the communist one is the older one; US libertarians borrowed the term for their purified version of the dying classical liberal position. > We had founded our idealism on the most nihilistic implications of > science, our socialism on crass self-interest, our peace on our ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ True. My position as a social democrat is motivated partly by altruism and egalitarianism and "that's just wrong", but it's also motivated by risk-averse selfishness. I'm in a good position due to scholarships and job talent and semi-lucky inheritance, but it's not unassailable, and I have lots of friends and family who aren't so blessed. I want them and bad-luck-me to be protected from medical bankruptcies, have good transportation options, have a fair share of the country's resources, not be handicapped by college debt, etc. > capacity for mutual destruction, and our liberty on determinism. We > had replaced morality with convention, bravery with safety, > frugality with plenty, philosophy with science, stoicism with > anaesthetics and piety with immortality. The universal acid of the I love this passage. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 21 20:40:36 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 13:40:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:43:43AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/15 Amon Zero : > > On 14 May 2011 11:03, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > Suffice to say, I disagree with your analysis on multiple levels. I have > > never seen anything approaching conclusive evidence that full-blown > > libertarianism would "produce good outcomes for the poor" (although of > > course I've heard a *lot* of assertions), whereas I have seen plenty of > > examples of unrestrained economic and political behaviour causing great > > suffering to people unable to protect themselves from its effects. > > America, you might have heard of the place, was once very much a > libertarian place. I hear they have produced good outcomes for the > poor. Libertarian apart from the slavery and the land theft. Which latter you can't handwave away, because a lot of the "good outcomes for the poor" came from the "free" (stolen) land that was given away to homesteaders. Good land that hadn't seen much agricultural abuse yet, too. Approximately post-scarcity conditions make the details of economic systems somewhat less relevant. A lot of other good outcomes (manufacturing jobs) came from having a big internal free trade zone under a strong central government (not anarchic) which meant only one big war, and from being somewhat democratic and not having aristocratic cruft. Which is libertarian, but not distinctly libertarian vis a vis other setups like modern US liberalism. Oh, and those jobs developed under the protection of tariffs, a pattern which has been repeated again and again in the 20th century. External free trade doesn't seem good for diverse development. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 21 20:59:09 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 13:59:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110521205909.GC26960@ofb.net> On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 06:50:52AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 12:01 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 11:19:37PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > > >> Ok Keith, I see where I went off the tracks now. You're talking about > >> ENERGY payback time, and at the time I was thinking about monetary > > > > EROEI is always preferable to EPBT. You can have short EPBT at > > negligible EROEI, e.g. if you use polymer PV which burns out > > in a couple years. > > If you had a polymer PV that had an energy payback time of a couple of > months and lasted 2 years, that would be possible to grow energy on If you had that you'd have EROEI of 48 months / 2 months = 24, pretty good. OTOH, if you had payback time of 18 months and lifetime of 24 months, you'd have EROEI ratio of 24/18 = 1.333. Pretty poor. Payback time might matter for speed but you can't ignore EROEI. Hmm, if something had payback time of 20 years but EROEI of 20 then it would have a lifetime of 400 years. This doesn't seem something we have the luxury of worrying about. -xx- Damien X-) From msd001 at gmail.com Sat May 21 19:12:08 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 15:12:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <20110521185551.GV19622@leitl.org> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> <20110521185551.GV19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 08:41:09PM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > >> What am I doing wrong? > > You're trying to explain something that doesn't exist. ...and you didn't use any unicorns or pixie dust. From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 21 21:03:43 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 14:03:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:40:08AM +0930, Emlyn wrote: > If the tech is improving at a good clip, then the idea of short > payback time, disposable cells (hopefully recyclable) might be highly > preferable to long lasting tech; you don't want those cells up on your > house for 40 years if 5 years after you install them, they are an > order of magnitude worse than the new cheap stuff in the shop. Sort of What does order of magnitude improvement mean for solar panels? You can get 15% efficiency today, there's not an order of magnitude of improvement available. -xx- Damien X-) From rpwl at lightlink.com Sat May 21 21:05:02 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 17:05:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 20 May 2011 18:01, Richard Loosemore wrote: >> I find Banks' Culture to be an excellent vision of the only stable society >> of the future, if what we want is a future in which we don't live in log >> cabins, spending every minute of our time collecting tolls from anyone who >> comes within breathing distance. Frankly, I choose starships over log >> cabins. > > Interesting. > > I find the Culture an abherrant positive spin on a Brave-New-Worldish > scenario projected on a galaxy scale... > > (Controlled, enslaved) technology at the service of stagnation and > uniformity is much more of a threat for indefinite becoming and > diverse posthuman change than any neoluddite dreams. This is really quite astonishing. You have managed to see the Culture idea through your own preferred prism .... but your prism is so powerfully distorting that you have come out with conclusions that are almost the diametric opposite of (a) what was intended by the author, and (b) what pretty much everyone else thinks is an 'obvious' interpretation. So, where others see a believable, stable, relatively pleasant future, you see it as: > an abherrant positive spin .. on something hideously bad! And you relate it to Brave New World, a novel that was intended to be a dystopia -- a deliberate expression of revulsion against optimism -- and which is ridicuously unbelievable and abhorrent if considered as an analysis of the real future. There is simply no basis for mentioning BNW, except to try to slur the Culture by association. You then refer to the intelligent machines - the Minds - with the words: > (Controlled, enslaved) technology ... which actually makes me think you may not have read the novels, because the Minds are *anything* but controlled and enslaved! They keep each other in line, but within extremely broad limits. In fact, I can hardly imagine a less controlled and enslaved technology. And finally, as Keith pointed out, it almost beggars belief that you would describe the Culture as filled with "stagnation and uniformity". What more would you want, in the way of non-stagnation? There is nothing about the idea of the Culture that enforces uniformity: GSVs and Orbitals, for example, are described as having their own personalities which influence the kind of human cultures that accrete on them. "...much more of a threat for indefinite becoming ... than any neoluddite dreams"?? Now, I am sorry, but that is just silly. Richard Loosemore From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 21 21:13:21 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 14:13:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110521205909.GC26960@ofb.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521205909.GC26960@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110521211321.GE26960@ofb.net> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 01:59:09PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > > If you had a polymer PV that had an energy payback time of a couple of > > months and lasted 2 years, that would be possible to grow energy on > > If you had that you'd have EROEI of 48 months / 2 months = 24, pretty > good. I'm apparently too sleep-deprived. That'd be 24 months / 2 months = 12, of course. Which raises the question: is it better to have fast growth but high maintenance costs, or slower growth but cheaper equilibrium? If you have 2 month payback, EROEI 12, vs. 2 year payback, EROEI 24 (48 year lifetime), which is better? The first lets you transform faster, but has twice the 'maintenance and replenishment tax', not counting labor costs. (Similar to bus rapid transit vs. urban rail; you can deploy the buses faster, but the trains take less maintenance and energy over their lifetime.) -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 21 21:52:43 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 14:52:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110521215243.GF26960@ofb.net> On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 11:38:24PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > One of the excuses used against libertarian thought is, "it is a > natural monopoly, and we can't expect private industry to act > responsibly with monopolistic power." I would say the government does > no better with such systems because of the lack of checks and > balances. If it were a corporation with government oversight, then at > least there are two members involved in checks and balances. Alternate view: more inefficiency and room for corruption. With a public service, the administrators make decisions, answerable to the legislature for the public interest. With a regulated private service, the business makes decisions, and then the regulators have to approve the decision. Two steps instead of one, and I don't see where checks and balances are coming in relative to the public service; the business isn't balancing the regulators, at least for the public interest. But it can capture and corrupt them, as with the FCC commissioner who approved Comcast's merger, then left to get a job at... Comcast. Plus, you're paying for the private firm's profits, for not obvious public gain. The virtue of markets comes from their being competitive, not from their being private; I see no inherent virtue to regulated private monopoly vs. public monopoly. > I know lots of people on food stamps that live with their parents in > $500,000 homes. It's easy to game the system. I don't begrudge the > people who take food stamps. My disgust is at the government that > keeps people like that from having true opportunity by overtaxing the > capitalists that could employ them if they were allowed to do so With the lowest tax rates in decades? -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 21 22:10:02 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 15:10:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 05:05:02PM -0400, Richard Loosemore wrote: > >(Controlled, enslaved) technology > > ... which actually makes me think you may not have read the novels, > because the Minds are *anything* but controlled and enslaved! They > keep each other in line, but within extremely broad limits. In > fact, I can hardly imagine a less controlled and enslaved > technology. To play devil's advocate: the whole notion of enslavement gets murky when you can control personality and desire. Human slaves are forced to do things they don't want, for the service of another (leaving consensual BDSM "slaves" out of this.) Almost no one in the Culture is forced to do something they don't want (passing over some blackmail in Player of Games.) But it's pretty clear that Culture AIs, drones and Minds, are made to be social and to like people. They *want* to be helpful and moral and to abide by democratic votes. They're not microprogrammed, there's some randomness in personality growth, and if you come out 'wrong' they'll (take your weapons and) let you go, rather than 'fixing' you. But mostly Culture technology is indeed subject to powerful though soft control, through controlling what AIs want in the first place. Whether this is enslavement, well, who's being enslaved? It's not like there's some "true" human-hating personality that would really want to do something else but was brainwashed into service. > And finally, as Keith pointed out, it almost beggars belief that you > would describe the Culture as filled with "stagnation and > uniformity". What more would you want, in the way of non-stagnation? Examples of humans uploading and expanding themselves, probably. Of course, in the Culture universe, if you're really ambitious you can Sublime, and we know people do that. > "...much more of a threat for indefinite becoming ... than any > neoluddite dreams"?? Now, I am sorry, but that is just silly. I agree, really. -xx- Damien X-) From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sat May 21 22:23:22 2011 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 15:23:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] the king's speech In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <360359.10428.qm@web114405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "spike" asked: > I saw a video last night which I enjoyed greatly, The King's Speech. Did > anyone here see that in a crowded theatre? Reason I asked: the movie is > actually a serious drama, but one scene is hilarious, where the prince > discovers he can speak without stuttering if he unleashes a blue streak of > profanity. This he demonstrates to great effect. The prim and proper royal > shouting vulgarity is so funny, my wife and I could scarcely contain > ourselves. I had to wonder what the movie theatre audience did during that > part. Guffaw. Ben Zaiboc From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat May 21 22:47:55 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 00:47:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 21 May 2011 19:41, Keith Henson wrote: > Banks, Vinge and Stross all try to deal with the problem of human > characters living among gods. > Take Look to Windward. I am inclined by all mean to feel sympathetic with the tragic position of Culture's adversaries - whose stance btw has nothing especially anti-tech - even though they are presented in the worst possible light. Conversely, take Stross's Accelerando. How should we condone the incredibly parochial hostility to what is cavalierly defined the Vile Offspring which is expressed in the last part of the book? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 21 22:53:01 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 00:53:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DD8424D.808@libero.it> Il 11/05/2011 05:08, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > ### I used to believe that a government is unavoidable for protection > purposes and as little as 7 years ago I argued against > anarchocapitalists on this list but since then I have moved on. Do anyone know exaples of anarchocapitalists (or simple libertarians) moving to the other side? >From what I understand the probability of an anarchocapitalist to change his mind is much lower than the probability of someone else to become one. So, or we are intractable lunatics or we understand something others don't understand and we can not ignore. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sat May 21 23:00:32 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 01:00:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> Il 13/05/2011 22:48, Richard Loosemore ha scritto: > Again, with the disconnected from reality. > The main leakages in actual practice are caused when the USED fracking > fluid stored on the surface is (a) dumped into rivers, (b) dumped in > ponds which then overflow during rainstorms, and (c) processed through > water treatment plants that are not able to handle the contaminants. Why not outlaw these (if they are not already) instead to outlaw something far related? Mirco From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 21 23:23:44 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 16:23:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DD8424D.808@libero.it> References: <4DD8424D.808@libero.it> Message-ID: <20110521232344.GA16532@ofb.net> On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 12:53:01AM +0200, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 11/05/2011 05:08, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > > > ### I used to believe that a government is unavoidable for protection > > purposes and as little as 7 years ago I argued against > > anarchocapitalists on this list but since then I have moved on. > > Do anyone know exaples of anarchocapitalists (or simple libertarians) > moving to the other side? Me. I was strong libertarian, flirted with anarcho-capitalist, am now social democrat. A friend of mine was generally libertarian, became what he jokingly calls "communist", probably social democrat, over the Bush years. Carl Milsted, of http://www.holisticpolitics.org/ and http://www.quiz2d.com/ went from standard libertarian to some variety of left-libertarian, with e.g. land value tax and basic income. "Liberty *and* equality". RPG.net has some, though I couldn't name specific names, as well as people still otherwise conservative who support universal health care. > From what I understand the probability of an anarchocapitalist to > change his mind is much lower than the probability of someone else to > become one. I have no idea if it's true, or if it's more or less true than for other extreme positions, like total planned-economy advocates. > So, or we are intractable lunatics or we understand something others > don't understand and we can not ignore. Well, in my case, I had a strong sense of Moral Clarity, much like Rafal and Samantha exhibit today. Coercion Was Wrong. But I always had some nagging doubts about feasibility, with regard to national defense or environmental protection. My change could be summed up as "I stopped handwaving and hoping for convincing solutions in the future, and instead viewed them as fundamental problems you need government or coercive social norms to solve". Moral purity is useless if you're dead. Another key open question was about the initial allocation of property, consideration of which is I think how Milsted turned left-libertarian, and certainly is a factor for me as well. Once you view private property as somewhat tainted in the real world, that Moral Clarity about the rights of billionaires to not be taxed for starving children evaporates. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sun May 22 00:34:59 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 17:34:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 01:40:36PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > Libertarian apart from the slavery and the land theft. Which latter you > can't handwave away, because a lot of the "good outcomes for the poor" > came from the "free" (stolen) land that was given away to homesteaders. > Good land that hadn't seen much agricultural abuse yet, too. > Approximately post-scarcity conditions make the details of economic > systems somewhat less relevant. > > A lot of other good outcomes (manufacturing jobs) came from having a big > internal free trade zone under a strong central government (not > anarchic) which meant only one big war, and from being somewhat > democratic and not having aristocratic cruft. Which is libertarian, but > not distinctly libertarian vis a vis other setups like modern US > liberalism. Or in other words, for my last post of the night: "libertarianism with free good land was good for some poor" does not generalize to "libertarianism is good for the poor". "libertarianism was better for the poor than war-torn quasi-feudal aristocracies" does not generalize to "libertarian is better for the poor than social democracy". The 19th century lets us combine these: "libertarianism with free good land [and various other geographic qualifiers] was better for the poor than war-torn and land-starved quasi-feudal aristocracies" does not generalize to "libertarianism is the bestest thing ever". This all feels related to my observation that when Adam Smith attacked government intervention in the economies, he was mostly talking about monarchs using mercantilism and artificial monopolies to raise revenues for war. Not about universal-suffrage democracies using progressive income taxation to fund univiersal pensions and health care, public schools and transportation, and a side order of environmental and safety regulation, especially as none of those things existed in 1776. -xx- Damien X-) From rpwl at lightlink.com Sun May 22 02:19:45 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 22:19:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> Message-ID: <4DD872C1.5010201@lightlink.com> Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 05:05:02PM -0400, Richard Loosemore wrote: > >>> (Controlled, enslaved) technology >> ... which actually makes me think you may not have read the novels, >> because the Minds are *anything* but controlled and enslaved! They >> keep each other in line, but within extremely broad limits. In >> fact, I can hardly imagine a less controlled and enslaved >> technology. > > To play devil's advocate: the whole notion of enslavement gets murky > when you can control personality and desire. This is a very important point, and a distinction that I really wish were emphasized more often. My own position is that this question -- whether someone would be a slave if they were genuinely and completely designed to want to do something that happened to benefit the designer -- is one of the easier philosphical questions to answer. And the answer is "no". Only if there were some sense in which the creature "really" wanted to do something else, so that they exzperienced any measure of frustration and unfulfillment, would there be a slavery situation. The example I have often used is the dung beetle. By no stretch of the imagination would be a "liberation" of the dung beetle if we genetically altered it so that it enjoyed gourmet human food, rather than shit. It would be meaningless to say that it was a slave. And if we designed a type of creature that liked eating something that we find repulsive (say, a creature that liked to browse on human garbage dumps all the time, slowly digesting their contents and turning it into something useful), it would be as meaningless to say that the creature was a slave because we had made it that way. What we are designed to want, is what we want. So I would conclude that, with a few minor exceptions, the Culture Minds are not slaves. Richard Loosemore From rpwl at lightlink.com Sun May 22 02:24:20 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 22:24:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> Message-ID: <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 13/05/2011 22:48, Richard Loosemore ha scritto: > >> Again, with the disconnected from reality. > >> The main leakages in actual practice are caused when the USED fracking >> fluid stored on the surface is (a) dumped into rivers, (b) dumped in >> ponds which then overflow during rainstorms, and (c) processed through >> water treatment plants that are not able to handle the contaminants. > > Why not outlaw these (if they are not already) instead to outlaw > something far related? That is what we are trying to DO! But you have to look at the technology: if we outlawed these things they woudl not be able to use hydraulic fracturing at all, because they would then be taking whole rivers, filling them with (undisclosed) poisons, sending them underground to do the fracking, then bringing them up and ...... putting them WHERE? There would be no place for them to go. They could not store them in plastic bottles. So, outlawing these problems is, ipso facto, equivalent to outlawing fracking itself. Richard Loosemore From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 22 07:08:21 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 00:08:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: 2011/5/21 Stefano Vaj : snip > > Conversely, take Stross's Accelerando. How should we condone the incredibly > parochial hostility to what is cavalierly defined the Vile Offspring which > is expressed in the last part of the book? Literary necessity. The characters that thread through the book, even the cat were not enhanced enough to cope with Economics 2.0. The problem is you can't write a post singularity novel from the viewpoint of gods or near gods. At least I have not seen any so far. If you have ideas for how to write such a novel, I would be most interested in seeing them. Keith From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 22 08:12:24 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:12:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 02:03:43PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > What does order of magnitude improvement mean for solar panels? You can > get 15% efficiency today, there's not an order of magnitude of You can order 17% mono-Si immediately, up to 22% which is not yet readily available, and for research-grade (most of them concentrated) they're rapidly approaching 50% http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/PVeff%28rev110408U%29.jpg So there's no orders of magnitude available, unless they're binary, then you'd get a couple at best. Longevity is up to 40+ years by now, so the only other improvements is price, material availability, and EROEI. As soon as you reach durable construction material price range there's no reason not to build homes which are net energy producers. Even factoring in embedded energy. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 22 08:22:10 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:22:10 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110521211321.GE26960@ofb.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521205909.GC26960@ofb.net> <20110521211321.GE26960@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110522082210.GY19622@leitl.org> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 02:13:21PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > Which raises the question: is it better to have fast growth but high > maintenance costs, or slower growth but cheaper equilibrium? If you If you're using machine-phase solar collectors which feedbacks energy continuously into your anabolism then you'd for the shortest doubling times possible to colonize terrain, and then switch to less metabolic churn to enhance harvesting. People don't really scale, so at the moment you'd got for the high-durability option. In practice you won't be able to buy anything else than mono or amorphous Si as the market is swept clean of more advanced thin-film (CdTe and CuInGaSe). > have 2 month payback, EROEI 12, vs. 2 year payback, EROEI 24 (48 year > lifetime), which is better? The first lets you transform faster, but > has twice the 'maintenance and replenishment tax', not counting labor > costs. > > (Similar to bus rapid transit vs. urban rail; you can deploy the buses > faster, but the trains take less maintenance and energy over their > lifetime.) -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 22 08:26:52 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:26:52 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110522082652.GA19622@leitl.org> On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 12:08:21AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > If you have ideas for how to write such a novel, I would be most > interested in seeing them. Easy: make it completely incomprehensible. From eugen at leitl.org Sun May 22 08:54:35 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:54:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the king's speech In-Reply-To: <360359.10428.qm@web114405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <360359.10428.qm@web114405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110522085435.GB19622@leitl.org> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 03:23:22PM -0700, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > "spike" asked: > > > I saw a video last night which I enjoyed greatly, The King's Speech. Did > > anyone here see that in a crowded theatre? Reason I asked: the movie is > > actually a serious drama, but one scene is hilarious, where the prince > > discovers he can speak without stuttering if he unleashes a blue streak of > > profanity. This he demonstrates to great effect. The prim and proper royal > > shouting vulgarity is so funny, my wife and I could scarcely contain > > ourselves. I had to wonder what the movie theatre audience did during that > > part. > > > Guffaw. > > Ben Zaiboc Didn't the US version censor out 'fuck' for something else? -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 22 09:06:57 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:06:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] the king's speech In-Reply-To: <20110522085435.GB19622@leitl.org> References: <360359.10428.qm@web114405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20110522085435.GB19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Didn't the US version censor out 'fuck' for something else? > > Wikipedia: The film was initially given a 15 rating by the British Board of Film Classification for its release in the United Kingdom, due to scenes where Logue encourages the King to shout profanities to relieve stress. At the London Film Festival, Hooper criticised the decision, questioning how the body could certify the film "15" for bad language but allow films such as Salt (2010) and Casino Royale (2006) to have 12A ratings despite their graphic torture scenes. Following Hooper's criticism, the board lowered the rating to "12A", allowing children under 12 years of age to see the film if they are accompanied by an adult.[52][53] Hooper levelled the same criticism at the Motion Picture Association of America, which gave the film an R rating, preventing anyone under the age of 17 from seeing the film without an adult.[54] This rating was not appealed.[ An alternate version, with some of the profanities muted out of the soundtrack, was classified PG-13 by the MPAA;[59] this version was released to theatres across the United States on 1 April 2011, replacing the R-rated cut.[60] ------------------ BillK From amon at doctrinezero.com Sun May 22 09:11:30 2011 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:11:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] the king's speech In-Reply-To: <002e01cc17ee$c0726700$41573500$@att.net> References: <002e01cc17ee$c0726700$41573500$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/21 spike > effect. The prim and proper royal shouting vulgarity is so funny, my wife > and I could scarcely contain ourselves. I had to wonder what the movie > theatre audience did during that part. > My wife saw the movie at the cinema, so I asked her. She said she remembers that part being funny, but doesn't remember any particular uproar of hilarity in the audience. Perhaps tellingly (or not), my wife asked if you're American, Spike. Seems she had the impression that may have coloured your reaction? I couldn't say - I haven't seen it. - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 22 10:39:13 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 12:39:13 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 22 May 2011 09:08, Keith Henson wrote: > 2011/5/21 Stefano Vaj :> Conversely, take Stross's > Accelerando. How should we condone the incredibly > > parochial hostility to what is cavalierly defined the Vile Offspring > which > > is expressed in the last part of the book? > > Literary necessity. > The characters that thread through the book, even the cat were not > enhanced enough to cope with Economics 2.0. > The problem is you can't write a post singularity novel from the > viewpoint of gods or near gods. > At least I have not seen any so far. > If you have ideas for how to write such a novel, I would be most > interested in seeing them. > Yes, you may be right. But in fact the book is even a little too quick in the beginning to take the reasons for Manfred's "evolution" for granted, including where some post-neolithic paradigms are abandoned without very plausible alternatives and not always for the best, and yet all the characters are adamant in refusing further change on the basis of arguments pretty similar to those raised in the well-known "post-simianism" article - and even plan at a point to sabotage it! As far as "modern" posthuman worlds go, I find Greg Egan's scenarios (see Schild's Ladder) much more compelling. And while they may be invariably suffer from anthropomorphism, a vast tradition exists not just in the SF realm, but as well in mythologies, to put oneself in divine shoes... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun May 22 11:06:48 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 12:06:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] =?windows-1252?q?Combination_antiperspirant/deodorant_voted?= =?windows-1252?q?_=91greatest_scientific_breakthrough=92?= Message-ID: A survey of leading scientists, journalists and opinion-makers has found that of the great scientific advances of the last hundred years, none has been as valuable to humanity as the groundbreaking combination of antiperspirant and deodorant perfected by Leopold Heinkel and his Berlin team in the 1960s. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 22 11:35:39 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 13:35:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: <4DD872C1.5010201@lightlink.com> References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> <4DD872C1.5010201@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 22 May 2011 04:19, Richard Loosemore wrote: > My own position is that this question -- whether someone would be a slave > if they were genuinely and completely designed to want to do something that > happened to benefit the designer -- is one of the easier philosphical > questions to answer. And the answer is "no". Only if there were some sense > in which the creature "really" wanted to do something else, so that they > exzperienced any measure of frustration and unfulfillment, would there be a > slavery situation. > Yes and no. It makes me think of The Island. Let us say that we choose to undergo the unbelievable waste of creating and grow full-fledged, articulate, even literate clones of ourselves in order to harvest organs from them through letal surgery. As long as they are deliberately programmed to *wish* such an outcome, they should be considered as "free"? If the answer is yes, it would seem easy enough to push the concept a little further and imagine that the citizens of Huxley's Brave New World are in fact free because they are actually selected, altered and conditioned to be happy of their lot, whichever it may be. One step again, and what has ever been slavery itself if not a legal, cultural, educational context aimed at "designing" humans for serfdom? The problem with it would only have to do with its possible failing. Now, I submit that there are more crucial problems with slavery, the least of which are those of a "moral" nature. In fact, I suspect with Nietzsche that slave masters and large-scale slavery-based societies end up almost by definition as stagnant, complacent, and innovation-averse, and ultimately are invariably defeated by societies where self-programming remains more important than having something else which allows us in the short term to spare the effort, the Roman empire of the decadence and the American confederacy being cases in point. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brentn at freeshell.org Sun May 22 12:41:07 2011 From: brentn at freeshell.org (Brent Neal) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 08:41:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> On 22 May, 2011, at 4:12, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 02:03:43PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > >> What does order of magnitude improvement mean for solar panels? You can >> get 15% efficiency today, there's not an order of magnitude of > > You can order 17% mono-Si immediately, up to 22% which is not > yet readily available, and for research-grade (most of them > concentrated) they're rapidly approaching 50% > > http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/PVeff%28rev110408U%29.jpg > > So there's no orders of magnitude available, unless they're binary, > then you'd get a couple at best. Longevity is up to 40+ years by now, > so the only other improvements is price, material availability, and > EROEI. > You're presuming that efficiency is the best metric for solar panels. I would suggest that measurements such as $/watt installed, $/watt amortized and DCF payback time, which are much more relevant to "real world" solar rollout and order of magnitude improvements in those numbers would be profound. B -- Brent Neal, Ph.D. http://brentn.freeshell.org From spike66 at att.net Sun May 22 14:15:07 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 07:15:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the king's speech In-Reply-To: References: <002e01cc17ee$c0726700$41573500$@att.net> Message-ID: <00e101cc188a$a7b0d840$f71288c0$@att.net> >. Perhaps tellingly (or not), my wife asked if you're American, Spike. Seems she had the impression that may have coloured your reaction? I couldn't say - I haven't seen it. - A American to the core sir, never been outside the states, only one generation removed from true redneck and even that emergence is not always complete. When in doubt, here are some definitions: http://www.fortogden.com/foredneck.html spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun May 22 14:07:17 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 07:07:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the king's speech In-Reply-To: <20110522085435.GB19622@leitl.org> References: <360359.10428.qm@web114405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20110522085435.GB19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00e001cc1889$8fcbdc30$af639490$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] the king's speech On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 03:23:22PM -0700, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > "spike" asked: > > > I saw a video last night which I enjoyed greatly, The King's Speech. > > Did anyone here see that in a crowded theatre? > > Guffaw. > > Ben Zaiboc >Didn't the US version censor out 'fuck' for something else? -- >Eugen* Leitl No. What made it interesting to me is that it had so much impact coming from someone who doesn't usually use the word. Great line where the speech pathologist asked "Do you know the F word?" Prince "F-F-F-Fornication." The topic interested me from a controls perspective. The stammerer's own feedback loop somehow short circuits itself. So if the loop is intentionally defeated by putting on headphones with loud music, the feedback loop is broken and the speech flow is uninterrupted. The notion that a 40 year old guy could retrain that feedback loop made a cool story. Other funny stuff in a non-comedy: the American Wallis Simpson's manners while dealing with the royals. We have never had royalty in the states so none of that stuff is in our corporate memory. Mrs. Simpson orders her boyfriend the king to go get her some more wine, shocking the other guests. Consider the newsreel where Herr Hitler is making a speech. Eugen we don't know what the guy is saying, but we can tell he is an extremely effective speaker just by the sound of it. Then we have the contrast of the English people being called into battle by a man who can scarcely speak at all. It makes one imagine the utter despair of the British subjects, many of whom must have thought this war was already lost because of the inadequacy of its leadership. spike From anders at aleph.se Sun May 22 14:35:11 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 15:35:11 +0100 Subject: [ExI] the king's speech In-Reply-To: <00e001cc1889$8fcbdc30$af639490$@att.net> References: <360359.10428.qm@web114405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20110522085435.GB19622@leitl.org> <00e001cc1889$8fcbdc30$af639490$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DD91F1F.5010603@aleph.se> spike wrote: > What made it interesting to me is that it had so much impact coming > from someone who doesn't usually use the word. Great line where the speech > pathologist asked "Do you know the F word?" Prince "F-F-F-Fornication." > Rarely swearing makes the impact much better. Swearing is often handled by the non-dominant hemisphere, too. In people with Broca's aphasia there are sometimes a few words that are spared, typically highly charged words. My maternal grandmother (a rather prim lady) got it, and could only say no and a particular curse word - she was surprisingly understandable. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the same neural machinery shortcircuits the problems with stuttering too. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sun May 22 14:41:06 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 15:41:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <001c01cc17ec$cf257140$6d7053c0$@att.net> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> <001c01cc17ec$cf257140$6d7053c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DD92082.4050304@aleph.se> spike wrote: > > > > I had discounted that reaction because 64Ni is less than 1 percent of > natural nickel, but I failed to actually specify that to start with. > This is always dangerous to do. Remember Castle Bravo! :-) -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From rpwl at lightlink.com Sun May 22 14:42:35 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:42:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> <4DD872C1.5010201@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD920DB.8060709@lightlink.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 22 May 2011 04:19, Richard Loosemore > wrote: > > My own position is that this question -- whether someone would be a > slave if they were genuinely and completely designed to want to do > something that happened to benefit the designer -- is one of the > easier philosphical questions to answer. And the answer is "no". > Only if there were some sense in which the creature "really" wanted > to do something else, so that they exzperienced any measure of > frustration and unfulfillment, would there be a slavery situation. > > > Yes and no. It makes me think of The Island. Let us say that we choose > to undergo the unbelievable waste of creating and grow full-fledged, > articulate, even literate clones of ourselves in order to harvest organs > from them through letal surgery. As long as they are deliberately > programmed to *wish* such an outcome, they should be considered as "free"? This is an interesting scenario, but there are elements of it that need to be clarified before it can be answered. You are positing extremely humanlike creatures, I assume? In that case, are you assuming that they behave exactly like us, to the extent that they want to get up in the morning, enjoy a good breakfast of toast and poached eggs, while having a laugh with the rest of the family about some silly story on the radio.....? But, on top of this, you assume that they have this passionate, all-consuming desire to commit suicide when asked by the right person (the technician from the organ-bank company). In this case you have mixed two sets of desires: you have made creatures that have both the desire to enjoy life's pleasures AND the desire to kill themselves for us. If the creatures felt no pain whatsover over the thought of being harvested, and the thought of losing all of life's other pleasures, and if they would be increasingly miserable -- desperately unhappy -- if they were prevented rom realizing their life's goal, then it would be immoral to force them to suffer in the name of saving them. However, I suggest that the real answer to your question is that you have created an artificial situation of no relevance, specially constructed to mix TWO people into one body. In effect, these creatures contain both a hedonist like us, and a harvest-suicider ..... two people with two different (and potentially conflicting) sets of desires. So the difficulty in answering the question is not about whether it is ethical to create creatures that genuinely and completely desire to do something that is valuable to us, but a question of whether it is ethical to create creatures that have mixed motives, in such a way that the creature suffers as a result of conflict between the two halves of themself. To that question I answer an emphatic NO. It is of course not ethical to create mixed beings in this way. In other words, you created a straw man. But that does not impact the morality of creating creatures that do not experience any conflict. The dung beetle does not want to eat gourmet food -- it likes what it likes. And, similarly, it would be possible to create entirely non-sentient creatures that produced organs for donation (something on the level of an oyster or jellyfish), so it would be immoral to escew that path in order to create fully sentient human beings. The Minds in the Culture novels, similarly, want to help humans but at that same time they are not designed to pursue this goal in such a way that they experience any internal suffering as a result. > If the answer is yes, it would seem easy enough to push the concept a > little further and imagine that the citizens of Huxley's Brave New World > are in fact free because they are actually selected, altered and > conditioned to be happy of their lot, whichever it may be. > > One step again, and what has ever been slavery itself if not a legal, > cultural, educational context aimed at "designing" humans for serfdom? That is entirely false. Humans have never been "designed" to want slavery. It was imposed on a creature whose fundamental design was 100% the same as before (desiring freedom). You distort reality here by comparing real slavery to the hypothetical situation I proposed. Richard Loosemore From anders at aleph.se Sun May 22 14:28:38 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 15:28:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> Stefano Vaj wrote: > Conversely, take Stross's Accelerando. How should we condone the > incredibly parochial hostility to what is cavalierly defined the Vile > Offspring which is expressed in the last part of the book? Moral relativists or people viewing value as being a purely social or psychological construct have no problem in accepting the character's hostility to the VO. But it might be a correct ethical judgement even if there exists an absolute standard for value. I suspect Stross got the idea partially from Nick Bostrom's paper "The future of human evolution" where he discusses scenarios where posthumanity evolves into something that completely lacks whatever it is that actually gives existence value, for example a very capable and expansive civilization where there is no consciousness. (Stross may however independently have had a similar idea, there is something similar in his early work "Scratch Monkey"). The Vile Offspring might simply lack any form of value (moral, aesthetic, etc) and be an unstoppable force squeezing out systems that do have value. Of course, humans or human-derived beings might just parochially think anything incompatible with their mode of existence and their values to be valueless - it could just as well be that the VO is actually fantastically good by some unknown absolute standard (and that the best thing any posthuman can do is to help it grow). But it is not obvious that a randomly evolved or designed thing must strive towards maximal value by this standard (the paperclip maximizer AI is a fine counterexample), or even that it is very likely. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Sun May 22 14:50:58 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 15:50:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD922D2.9090204@aleph.se> Keith Henson wrote: > > I don't know how you can make a case for stagnation from the Culture novels. > The Culture has clearly changed over the span of its history, and there are mentions of periods when it has been more posthuman than at present, and offshoots that have developed into new directions. It is just that the focus of the books is on a scant few thousand years when the Culture has been in a particular way. The galaxy at large seems to be in some kind of steady state (and the Culture is just one player among many among the Involved), although civilizations change and sometimes sublime over long timescales (or encounter Excessions). But in "Surface Detail" it looks like there is some actual global moral progress. (spoiler, to some extent) Maybe the resolution of the conflict will be just temporary. There is an internal micro-essay delineating why emerging technological civilizations sometimes implement Hells, so in the long run maybe new Hells from new civilizations will replace the lost Hell-network. But it is not inconceivable that a galaxy where few or none of the dominant civilizations condone Hells will make the formation of new Hell-networks unlikely, producing a fairly permanent state. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 22 15:15:56 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 17:15:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: <4DD920DB.8060709@lightlink.com> References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> <4DD872C1.5010201@lightlink.com> <4DD920DB.8060709@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 22 May 2011 16:42, Richard Loosemore wrote: > This is an interesting scenario, but there are elements of it that need to be clarified before it can be answered. > > You are positing extremely humanlike creatures, I assume? No, just marginally genetically modified clones, as in the mentioned movie ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/), who are in principle neither more nor less humanlike than their originals. >If the creatures felt no pain whatsover over the thought of being harvested, and the thought of losing all of life's other pleasures, and if they would be increasingly miserable -- desperately unhappy -- if they were prevented rom realizing their life's goal, then it would be immoral to force them to suffer in the name of saving them. I am not discussing here the "morality" or not of slavery, I am simply discussing its definition (and consequences). > However, I suggest that the real answer to your question is that you have created an artificial situation of no relevance, specially constructed to mix TWO people into one body. In effect, these creatures contain both a hedonist like us, and a harvest-suicider ..... two people with two different (and potentially conflicting) sets of desires. > So the difficulty in answering the question is not about whether it is ethical to create creatures that genuinely and completely desire to do something that is valuable to us, but a question of whether it is ethical to create creatures that have mixed motives, in such a way that the creature suffers as a result of conflict between the two halves of themself. To that question I answer an emphatic NO. It is of course not ethical to create mixed beings in this way. Hence, given that human beings currently do have mixed motives, and happen sometimes to be happy, sometimes to be frustrated by their being sacrificed for non-hedonistic purposes, ordinary human reproduction is basically unethical. > But that does not impact the morality of creating creatures that do not experience any conflict. Not all (devoted) slaves in history have actually experienced such a conflict. In fact, I believe that Max More himself has quoted the famous Nietzsche's ironical say about John Stuart Mills utilitarianism: "?It is not the Man does not strive for pleasure; it is the Englishman?. > And, similarly, it would be possible to create entirely non-sentient creatures that produced organs for donation (something on the level of an oyster or jellyfish), so it would be immoral to escew that path in order to create fully sentient human beings. Why this would be the case in your view, if the relevant "fully sentient human beings" are satisfactorily programmed to avoid such conflicts, by their breeder/genetic engineer, or even by more trivial and time-honoured brainwashing? > Humans have never been "designed" to want slavery. It was imposed on a creature whose fundamental design was 100% the same as before (desiring freedom). You distort reality here by comparing real slavery to the hypothetical situation I proposed. This sounds like a personal projection, and Aristotle for instance would not agree with you. Humans have been culturally programming and designing themselves for millennia, through selection and education; and their ability to do so, at both a genotypical and phenotypical level, is only going to increase. But even today, and as a consequence of the above, many humans appear not to be designed to "desire freedom" much more than your average dog. And if you were not persuaded with regard to current humans, you would just have to remember the Russian project which developed a species of domestic dog-like foxes in less than forty years without resorting to any genetic recombination, just by way of selective breeding. The idea that the "Nature" is going to prevent Brave-New-Worldish developments is on a par with trusting God to do so. In conclusion: is it possible today to have slaves who would not be such according to your restrictive definition (what Aristotles call "slaves by nature" as opposed to "slaves by convention")? Yes, and it is even quite easy. Is it desirable? I do not think so. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 22 15:33:19 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 08:33:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: <20110522082652.GA19622@leitl.org> References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <20110522082652.GA19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 1:26 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 12:08:21AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > >> If you have ideas for how to write such a novel, I would be most >> interested in seeing them. > > Easy: make it completely incomprehensible. Can you make a case that such a work could be considered a novel? There are a few such around but they are not as far as I know thought of as novels. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sun May 22 15:29:06 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 08:29:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <4DD92082.4050304@aleph.se> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> <001c01cc17ec$cf257140$6d7053c0$@att.net> <4DD92082.4050304@aleph.se> Message-ID: <011301cc1894$fd59d0d0$f80d7270$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again spike wrote: > > > >> I had discounted that reaction because 64Ni is less than 1 percent of >> natural nickel, but I failed to actually specify that to start with. > >This is always dangerous to do. Remember Castle Bravo! :-) -- Anders Sandberg, Point well taken thanks. In this case I think we are OK in discounting the little bit of nickel way up on the neutron-y end, since it is less than 1%, as opposed to the Castle Bravo incident in which lithium 7 accounted for about 60% of the lithium. That being said, I am surprised the nuclear physicists overlooked the possibility of neutron capture in 7Li. I sometimes vaguely suspect that some of the scientists may have known this was a possibility and let it happen anyways. Teller wrote a revealing memoir called "Conversations on the Dark Side of Physics" which is durned hard to find. I have a copy of it, which I bought at the museum at Los Alamos, but have never seen it anywhere else. Teller reveals material in that volume which makes me think they could have done stuff like this. Teller was absolutely determined to make the biggest bomb imaginable. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 22 15:48:14 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 17:48:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 22 May 2011 16:28, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > Stefano Vaj wrote: >> >> Conversely, take Stross's Accelerando. How should we condone the incredibly parochial hostility to what is cavalierly defined the Vile Offspring which is expressed in the last part of the book? > > Moral relativists or people viewing value as being a purely social or psychological construct have no problem in accepting the character's hostility to the VO. ... or, as I do myself, they can reject it simply because they choose to be on the side of change and of the unknown... :-) > I suspect Stross got the idea partially from Nick Bostrom's paper "The future of human evolution" where he discusses scenarios where posthumanity evolves into something that completely lacks whatever it is that actually gives existence value, for example a very capable and expansive civilization where there is no consciousness. Yes, so do I. In fact, I was simply flabbergasted when I was first exposed to Bostrom's inclination to justify what is exactly the argument against trans-simianism by resorting to qualia. And I cannot even begin to say how perplexed I was in seeing such philosophy being labelled by its proponent not even as a peculiar brand of "transhumanism", but as transhumanism tout court! <> (*Will to Power*, ? 280 and 302). Unsurprinsingly, Bostrom is the first to see his views at odd with all kinds of overhumanism and posthumanism. As to transhumanism in general, the record is however set straight in what I believe to be a very balanced fashion by Max More in *The Overhuman in the Transhuman* ( http://jetpress.org/v21/more.htm), an article I was very pleased to translate in Italian for the theoretical quarterly review of the Italian Transhumanist Association. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 22 16:12:28 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 09:12:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:28 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Stefano Vaj wrote: >> >> Conversely, take Stross's Accelerando. How should we condone the >> incredibly parochial hostility to what is cavalierly defined the Vile >> Offspring which is expressed in the last part of the book? > > Moral relativists or people viewing value as being a purely social or > psychological construct ?have no problem in accepting the character's > hostility to the VO. But it might be a correct ethical judgement even if > there exists an absolute standard for value. > > I suspect Stross got the idea partially from Nick Bostrom's paper "The > future of human evolution" where he discusses scenarios where posthumanity > evolves into something that completely lacks whatever it is that actually > gives existence value, for example a very capable and expansive civilization > where there is no consciousness. I get the impression that Stross is modeling the VO after an ecosystem of corporations which fit "a very capable and expansive civilization where there is no consciousness." Or maybe no conscious or both. > (Stross may however independently have had > a similar idea, there is something similar in his early work "Scratch > Monkey"). The Vile Offspring might simply lack any form of value (moral, > aesthetic, etc) and be an unstoppable force squeezing out systems that do > have value. They live off sunlight and are in the final stages of disassembling the planets to capture it. But that activity is a smaller fraction of their economy than food is to current day humans. They are able to produce human like entities from anyone who left a corpus of written works. I think Stross got that idea right here on this list where I was promoting cryonics and Hans Moravec said he didn't need it because he could be reconstructed from his works. I argued back that it would waste truly vast computational resources and involve discarding millions of versions that didn't come close enough. To see that early Extropian list exchange skillfully turned into a plot element in Accelerando is so cool it makes my head spin. Charles may still be on this list, but it's been years since he said anything. (Not that I want him to, rather he spent his time writing more really great stuff, _Rule 34_ is due out this summer.) > Of course, humans or human-derived beings might just parochially think > anything incompatible with their mode of existence and their values to be > valueless - it could just as well be that the VO is actually fantastically > good by some unknown absolute standard (and that the best thing any > posthuman can do is to help it grow). But it is not obvious that a randomly > evolved or designed thing must strive towards maximal value by this standard > (the paperclip maximizer AI is a fine counterexample), or even that it is > very likely. The VO are obviously trying to turn everything in reach of light into computronium. Humans can live human style lives in that state, that's how they traveled by laser cannon. It is, however, a cockroach sort of existence, always in danger of being stomped out. Keith From anders at aleph.se Sun May 22 16:19:24 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 17:19:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> Stefano Vaj wrote: > > I suspect Stross got the idea partially from Nick Bostrom's paper > "The future of human evolution" where he discusses scenarios where > posthumanity evolves into something that completely lacks whatever it > is that actually gives existence value, for example a very capable and > expansive civilization where there is no consciousness. > > Yes, so do I. In fact, I was simply flabbergasted when I was first > exposed to Bostrom's inclination to justify what is exactly the > argument against trans-simianism by resorting to qualia. He is not basing it on qualia, he is using qualia as an example. Maybe the real value resides in something else, but his point still stands: the kind of evolution we might engage in in the future might push us away from whatever the real value is. If we think evolution has so far pushed us in the direction of value it does not follow that future new kinds of evolution will continue to push in the right way. It might of course be that we now, being better aware of value, can push our evolution in an even more desireable direction. But given past experience with human planning and coordination ability for complex social systems as well as our wide spread of opinion on what is valuable, this does not look guaranteed in any way. In fact, such projects might develop their own accidental dynamics pushing in the wrong way (like many of our social institutions do). The problem is not the overman, the problem is that it might be rational for everybody to become something that in the aggregate or individually has lower value. Monkeys might disagree with us about what is really valuable in life and might think that we have evolved in a direction that produces less value. They could just be wrong about that, since we have sources of value they lack access to, like science, philosophy and culture. But that doesn't mean some forms of future evolution can't be value-eroding. Robin's paper on the cosmic commons points out one nasty possibility (turning into an interstellar locust swarm) that might be hard to avoid without rather serious coordination (perhaps necessitating other, dangerous social institutions). -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 22 17:39:59 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 10:39:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: snip > He is not basing it on qualia, he is using qualia as an example. Maybe the > real value resides in something else, but his point still stands: the kind > of evolution we might engage in in the future might push us away from > whatever the real value is. At the root of it, what evolves? What changes? Genes. As far as I can see our psychological mechanisms that determine "value" lead back to advantage for genes (or did in the EEA). If anyone can come up with a counter example, where "value" has no connection to genes it would be most interesting to examine. We value our status among other humans for example. But nothing was a better predictor of reproductive success than having high status in the EEA. Even today high status and wealth can be turned into children. (Gordon Getty if want a non-current example.) In the future, you might just run yourself through the copy machine. > If we think evolution has so far pushed us in the direction of value it does > not follow that future new kinds of evolution will continue to push in the > right way. More general than DNA type genes, replication of information of some kind will define the entities of the future. The ones who are better at getting the information copied, instantiated, will become more common. That's the definition of evolution. Assuming that there is not a freezing in of entities who suddenly become immortal and powerful and strongly restrict the generation of new individuals. > It might of course be that we now, being better aware of value, can push our > evolution in an even more desireable direction. Can we even state what direction _is_ more desirable? > But given past experience > with human planning and coordination ability for complex social systems as > well as our wide spread of opinion on what is valuable, this does not look > guaranteed in any way. In fact, such projects might develop their own > accidental dynamics pushing in the wrong way (like many of our social > institutions do). > > The problem is not the overman, the problem is that it might be rational for > everybody to become something that in the aggregate or individually has > lower value. Worse, what is rational for genes in some circumstances is irrational for the individual. > Monkeys might disagree with us about what is really valuable in life and > might think that we have evolved in a direction that produces less value. Good point. I wonder if monkey genes might agree with human genes on what is valuable? > They could just be wrong about that, since we have sources of value they > lack access to, like science, philosophy and culture. But that doesn't mean > some forms of future evolution can't be value-eroding. Robin's paper on the > cosmic commons points out one nasty possibility (turning into an > interstellar locust swarm) that might be hard to avoid without rather > serious coordination (perhaps necessitating other, dangerous social > institutions). If this option is open, it might be impossible to avoid it. It could be closed in a non-FTL universe. I just don't know. Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 22 17:52:20 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 12:52:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DD94D54.4010409@satx.rr.com> On 5/22/2011 12:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > At the root of it, what evolves? What changes? Genes. Creatures don't thrive or die directly because of genes, which are invisible to selection (unless they are broken so they fail to code anything). Creatures thrive or die due to the interaction of their phenotypes and their environments. Damien Broderick From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 22 18:04:30 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 11:04:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: <4DD94D54.4010409@satx.rr.com> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> <4DD94D54.4010409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/22/2011 12:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> At the root of it, what evolves? ?What changes? ?Genes. > > Creatures don't thrive or die directly because of genes, which are invisible > to selection (unless they are broken so they fail to code anything). > Creatures thrive or die due to the interaction of their phenotypes and their > environments. Where do their phenotypes come from? What do they pass on to the next generation? Keith From thespike at satx.rr.com Sun May 22 18:36:13 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 13:36:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> <4DD94D54.4010409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DD9579D.1030409@satx.rr.com> On 5/22/2011 1:04 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > Where do their phenotypes come from? There are various contributors. Genes, epigenetic modulation from environmental factors, direct environmental inputs (cyclical or stochastic amounts of heat, water, necessary chemicals, other creatures), etc. Granted, there has to be a suite of genes able to generate proteins that can build and continue to adapt a workable phenotype--but I understand that in a lot of cases, very different genes are able to build critters of a convergent phenotype, and it's the phenotype that thrives and breeds. In other words, there are somewhat independent levels that all have to be taken into account in the complex process of "reproductive success." Damien Broderick From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 22 19:45:18 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 21:45:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD967CE.1000509@libero.it> Il 22/05/2011 04:24, Richard Loosemore ha scritto: > But you have to look at the technology: if we outlawed these things > they woudl not be able to use hydraulic fracturing at all, because they > would then be taking whole rivers, filling them with (undisclosed) > poisons, sending them underground to do the fracking, then bringing them > up and ...... putting them WHERE? > There would be no place for them to go. They could not store them in > plastic bottles. > So, outlawing these problems is, ipso facto, equivalent to outlawing > fracking itself. I think this is simply false. If you outlaw fracking you are not allowed to fracking. If you outlaw dumping water with poisonous contaminants they could find a way to frack without the poisons or decontaminate the water after the use. Do you ever read Cesare Beccaria? False Ideas of Utility? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 22 19:49:37 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 21:49:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <011301cc1894$fd59d0d0$f80d7270$@att.net> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> <001c01cc17ec$cf257140$6d7053c0$@att.net> <4DD92082.4050304@aleph.se> <011301cc1894$fd59d0d0$f80d7270$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DD968D1.7070004@libero.it> Il 22/05/2011 17:29, spike ha scritto: >>> I had discounted that reaction because 64Ni is less than 1 percent of >>> natural nickel, but I failed to actually specify that to start with. >> This is always dangerous to do. Remember Castle Bravo! :-) -- Anders > Sandberg, > Point well taken thanks. In this case I think we are OK in discounting the > little bit of nickel way up on the neutron-y end, since it is less than 1%, > as opposed to the Castle Bravo incident in which lithium 7 accounted for > about 60% of the lithium. In fact, IIRC, Rossi hinted the Nickel used is someway "enriched". If he enrich the nickel so the 64Ni is more than 1 %, the reaction could make sense? Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun May 22 20:38:16 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 22:38:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> Il 18/05/2011 08:54, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 12:13:28AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> I haven't lived in Europe, and from the sounds of it, I would not >> enjoy it one bit. > > At least you can drink a beer on the train, and nobody gives a flying > fuck. > > Seriously, you might find that theory and practice do differ, > in practice. I must agree with Eugen. from my knowledge of the US and how things work there, many laws, social programs and regulations would be considered completely insane. Affirmative Action? Food Stamps? Grocery Socialism. After WW2 they were scrapped, here. And, as Billk wrote, in many way the US have a form or Corporate Socialism, usually know as Fascism (the economics part is pretty the same as Communism, only the fa?ade is different). Forcing the banks to give mortages to the poor (usually Blacks and Latino) because a law say so is Socialism. Never heard something like this here. NCLB (No Child Left Behind) is a shame. A social engineering for dummies from dummies by the dummies. Mirco From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 22 20:38:15 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 22:38:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> <4DD872C1.5010201@lightlink.com> <4DD920DB.8060709@lightlink.com> Message-ID: Does not seem to have been delivered... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Stefano Vaj Date: 22 May 2011 17:15 Subject: Re: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] To: ExI chat list On 22 May 2011 16:42, Richard Loosemore wrote: > This is an interesting scenario, but there are elements of it that need to be clarified before it can be answered. > > You are positing extremely humanlike creatures, I assume? No, just marginally genetically modified clones, as in the mentioned movie ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/), who are in principle neither more nor less humanlike than their originals. >If the creatures felt no pain whatsover over the thought of being harvested, and the thought of losing all of life's other pleasures, and if they would be increasingly miserable -- desperately unhappy -- if they were prevented rom realizing their life's goal, then it would be immoral to force them to suffer in the name of saving them. I am not discussing here the "morality" or not of slavery, I am simply discussing its definition (and consequences). > However, I suggest that the real answer to your question is that you have created an artificial situation of no relevance, specially constructed to mix TWO people into one body. In effect, these creatures contain both a hedonist like us, and a harvest-suicider ..... two people with two different (and potentially conflicting) sets of desires. > So the difficulty in answering the question is not about whether it is ethical to create creatures that genuinely and completely desire to do something that is valuable to us, but a question of whether it is ethical to create creatures that have mixed motives, in such a way that the creature suffers as a result of conflict between the two halves of themself. To that question I answer an emphatic NO. It is of course not ethical to create mixed beings in this way. Hence, given that human beings currently do have mixed motives, and happen sometimes to be happy, sometimes to be frustrated by their being sacrificed for non-hedonistic purposes, ordinary human reproduction is basically unethical. > But that does not impact the morality of creating creatures that do not experience any conflict. Not all (devoted) slaves in history have actually experienced such a conflict. In fact, I believe that Max More himself has quoted the famous Nietzsche's ironical say about John Stuart Mills utilitarianism: "?It is not the Man does not strive for pleasure; it is the Englishman?. > And, similarly, it would be possible to create entirely non-sentient creatures that produced organs for donation (something on the level of an oyster or jellyfish), so it would be immoral to escew that path in order to create fully sentient human beings. Why this would be the case in your view, if the relevant "fully sentient human beings" are satisfactorily programmed to avoid such conflicts, by their breeder/genetic engineer, or even by more trivial and time-honoured brainwashing? > Humans have never been "designed" to want slavery. It was imposed on a creature whose fundamental design was 100% the same as before (desiring freedom). You distort reality here by comparing real slavery to the hypothetical situation I proposed. This sounds like a personal projection, and Aristotle for instance would not agree with you. Humans have been culturally programming and designing themselves for millennia, through selection and education; and their ability to do so, at both a genotypical and phenotypical level, is only going to increase. But even today, and as a consequence of the above, many humans appear not to be designed to "desire freedom" much more than your average dog. And if you were not persuaded with regard to current humans, you would just have to remember the Russian project which developed a species of domestic dog-like foxes in less than forty years without resorting to any genetic recombination, just by way of selective breeding. The idea that the "Nature" is going to prevent Brave-New-Worldish developments is on a par with trusting God to do so. In conclusion: is it possible today to have slaves who would not be such according to your restrictive definition (what Aristotles call "slaves by nature" as opposed to "slaves by convention")? Yes, and it is even quite easy. Is it desirable? I do not think so. -- Stefano Vaj -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun May 22 21:13:38 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 23:13:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 22 May 2011 18:19, Anders Sandberg wrote: > He is not basing it on qualia, he is using qualia as an example. Maybe the > real value resides in something else, but his point still stands: the kind > of evolution we might engage in in the future might push us away from > whatever the real value is. > It is hardly debatable that at least some evolutionary directions may appear undesirable to some of us depending on our personal values and beliefs. Take for instance what is somewhat vaguely defined as involution, betraying a (aesthetic?) value judgment by the observer on what might actually be a positively adaptive change. See for instance the potentially dysgenic effects of technology and medicine. I think however that Bostrom's argument is subtler and more far-reaching than that. He seems to imply that Darwinian mechanisms, not to mention a deliberately pluralistic and agonistic worldview, are *bound* to push us away from the "humanist" values that he appears to take as absolute and universal and call for what is in fact a purely reactionary fight where the real issue would simply be that of protecting them, be it at the price of freezing or resisting further changes. Now, not only does this sound very parochial in transhumanist terms and impresentable in "critical" circles, but this is not even true from a human point of view, since one can well embrace a stance, along a time-honoured tradition, where self-overcoming, amor fati and quest for greatness are considered as (meta?)values per se, thus involving the joyous acceptance and even a keenness for future Umwertungen aller Werte, transvalutations of all values. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun May 22 21:47:23 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 14:47:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <4DD968D1.7070004@libero.it> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> <001c01cc17ec$cf257140$6d7053c0$@att.net> <4DD92082.4050304@aleph.se> <011301cc1894$fd59d0d0$f80d7270$@att.net> <4DD968D1.7070004@libero.it> Message-ID: <019601cc18c9$d5e41710$81ac4530$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato Subject: Re: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again Il 22/05/2011 17:29, spike ha scritto: >>>> I had discounted that reaction because 64Ni is less than 1 percent >>>> of natural nickel, but I failed to actually specify that to start with. >>> This is always dangerous to do. Remember Castle Bravo! :-) -- Anders Sandberg, >>... Point well taken thanks. In this case I think we are OK in > discounting the little bit of nickel way up on the neutron-y end, > since it is less than 1%, as opposed to the Castle Bravo incident in > which lithium 7 accounted for about 60% of the lithium. >In fact, IIRC, Rossi hinted the Nickel used is someway "enriched". >If he enrich the nickel so the 64Ni is more than 1 %, the reaction could make sense? Mirco I have been pondering that. If they had centrifuges to extract the heavy nickel, they could use the same process to enrich uranium, with the end product being far more valuable. However, let's ignore that for the present. Then it becomes a question of muon range, which looks to me like it is far too short to allow proton capture. Now I really am relying on memories from 30 year old physics lectures, but as I understand it, the mechanism is to catalyze the proton capture using a muon, which is like an electron but has a couple hundred times the mass. I haven't heard any other proposed mechanism besides muon catalysis. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun May 22 23:35:47 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 16:35:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: <4DD9579D.1030409@satx.rr.com> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> <4DD94D54.4010409@satx.rr.com> <4DD9579D.1030409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 11:36 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/22/2011 1:04 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> Where do their phenotypes come from? > > There are various contributors. Genes, epigenetic modulation from > environmental factors, direct environmental inputs (cyclical or stochastic > amounts of heat, water, necessary chemicals, other creatures), etc. Granted, > there has to be a suite of genes able to generate proteins that can build > and continue to adapt a workable phenotype--but I understand that in a lot > of cases, very different genes are able to build critters of a convergent > phenotype, and it's the phenotype that thrives and breeds. In other words, > there are somewhat independent levels that all have to be taken into account > in the complex process of "reproductive success." Well, let me know when a cow gives birth to a horse or vice versa. Keith From rpwl at lightlink.com Sun May 22 23:55:25 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 19:55:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> <4DD872C1.5010201@lightlink.com> <4DD920DB.8060709@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DD9A26D.4090106@lightlink.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > Hence, given that human beings currently do have mixed motives, and > happen sometimes to be happy, sometimes to be frustrated by their being > sacrificed for non-hedonistic purposes, ordinary human reproduction is > basically unethical. Non sequiteur. > > But that does not impact the morality of creating creatures that do > not experience any conflict. > > Not all (devoted) slaves in history have actually experienced such a > conflict. In fact, I believe that Max More himself has quoted the famous > Nietzsche's ironical say about John Stuart Mills utilitarianism: "?It is > not the Man does not strive for pleasure; it is the Englishman?. Not true. I am talking about "slaves" that either do, or do not, have the intrinsic mental machinery required to experience desires that conflict with a subservient desire. I am not talking about whether humans (who all basically have the same design, hence the same machinery that makes them instrinsically desire to be free) can SOMETIMES resolve the situation by accepting their lot and being more or less happy. That is contingent. > > And, similarly, it would be possible to create entirely non-sentient > creatures that produced organs for donation (something on the level of > an oyster or jellyfish), so it would be immoral to escew that path in > order to create fully sentient human beings. > > Why this would be the case in your view, if the relevant "fully sentient > human beings" are satisfactorily programmed to avoid such conflicts, by > their breeder/genetic engineer, or even by more trivial and > time-honoured brainwashing? > > > Humans have never been "designed" to want slavery. It was imposed on > a creature whose fundamental design was 100% the same as before > (desiring freedom). You distort reality here by comparing real slavery > to the hypothetical situation I proposed. > > This sounds like a personal projection, and Aristotle for instance would > not agree with you. Humans have been culturally programming and > designing themselves for millennia, through selection and education; and > their ability to do so, at both a genotypical and phenotypical level, is > only going to increase. But even today, and as a consequence of the > above, many humans appear not to be designed to "desire freedom" much > more than your average dog. I am making the statement on the basis of an understanding of the psychological mechanisms involved, not personal projection, and Aristotle's understanding of psychology was distressingly weak. Your statement, on the other hand, does indeed look like folk psychology: as far as we can tell at this point, the motivation mechanisms have different strengths, but in normal humans they are all present. They do not come and go as a result of cultural evolution. > And if you were not persuaded with regard to current humans, you would > just have to remember the Russian project which developed a species of > domestic dog-like foxes in less than forty years without resorting to > any genetic recombination, just by way of selective breeding. The idea > that the "Nature" is going to prevent Brave-New-Worldish developments is > on a par with trusting God to do so. > > In conclusion: is it possible today to have slaves who would not be such > according to your restrictive definition (what Aristotles call "slaves > by nature" as opposed to "slaves by convention")? Yes, and it is even > quite easy. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support that statement. Richard Loosemore From painlord2k at libero.it Mon May 23 00:05:20 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 02:05:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again In-Reply-To: <019601cc18c9$d5e41710$81ac4530$@att.net> References: <4DD7DD97.2030303@libero.it> <004e01cc17db$62948900$27bd9b00$@att.net> <001c01cc17ec$cf257140$6d7053c0$@att.net> <4DD92082.4050304@aleph.se> <011301cc1894$fd59d0d0$f80d7270$@att.net> <4DD968D1.7070004@libero.it> <019601cc18c9$d5e41710$81ac4530$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DD9A4C0.1060601@libero.it> Il 22/05/2011 23:47, spike ha scritto: >> ... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Rossi-Focardi device again >> If he enrich the nickel so the 64Ni is more than 1 %, the reaction could > make sense? Mirco > I have been pondering that. If they had centrifuges to extract the heavy > nickel, they could use the same process to enrich uranium, with the end > product being far more valuable. Well, from what I understand, separating Uranium Isotopes is a bit more difficult because their weight is very similar (235-238) where the Nickel is 57-64 IIRC. And procuring the Yellowcake would attract unwanted interest from bad people (bad as in heavy armed and very nervous). > However, let's ignore that for the present. Then it becomes a question of > muon range, which looks to me like it is far too short to allow proton > capture. Now I really am relying on memories from 30 year old physics > lectures, but as I understand it, the mechanism is to catalyze the proton > capture using a muon, which is like an electron but has a couple hundred > times the mass. I haven't heard any other proposed mechanism besides muon > catalysis. If you look at the blog of Rossi (the "Journal of Nuclear Physics") you can find an article by Stremmenos about a possible mechanism of reaction: Hydrogen/Nickel cold fusion probable mechanism (Stremmenos) http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=338 How can 30% of nickel in Rossi?s reactor be transmuted into copper? (Bettini) http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=473 Mirco From thespike at satx.rr.com Mon May 23 01:13:39 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 20:13:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> <4DD94D54.4010409@satx.rr.com> <4DD9579D.1030409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DD9B4C3.2060000@satx.rr.com> On 5/22/2011 6:35 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > Well, let me know when a cow gives birth to a horse or vice versa. A fair point. (But bear in mind that monozygotic twins *aren't* "identical," in a lot of different ways.) Damien Broderick From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon May 23 02:14:17 2011 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 19:14:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> <4DD94D54.4010409@satx.rr.com> <4DD9579D.1030409@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <565115.61159.qm@web65615.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- > From: Keith Henson > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Sun, May 22, 2011 4:35:47 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring > > On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 11:36 AM, Damien Broderick >wrote: > > On 5/22/2011 1:04 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > > > >> Where do their phenotypes come from? > > > > There are various contributors. Genes, epigenetic modulation from > > environmental factors, direct environmental inputs (cyclical or stochastic > > amounts of heat, water, necessary chemicals, other creatures), etc. Granted, > > there has to be a suite of genes able to generate proteins that can build > > and continue to adapt a workable phenotype--but I understand that in a lot > > of cases, very different genes are able to build critters of a convergent > > phenotype, and it's the phenotype that thrives and breeds. In other words, > > there are somewhat independent levels that all have to be taken into account > > in the complex process of "reproductive success." > > Well, let me know when a cow gives birth to a horse or vice versa. Allegedly, it happened last October in the Dominican Republic: http://www.dominicancentral.com/newsarticle/the_strange_case_of_a_cow_that_gave_birth_to_a_horse/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByBpZ12Mch8 ;-) Stuart LaForge "There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure."- Dwight D. Eisenhower From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon May 23 04:08:20 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 21:08:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the ethics of the Vile Offspring In-Reply-To: <4DD9B4C3.2060000@satx.rr.com> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD91D96.4000304@aleph.se> <4DD9378C.6090307@aleph.se> <4DD94D54.4010409@satx.rr.com> <4DD9579D.1030409@satx.rr.com> <4DD9B4C3.2060000@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/22/2011 6:35 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> Well, let me know when a cow gives birth to a horse or vice versa. > > A fair point. > > (But bear in mind that monozygotic twins *aren't* "identical," in a lot of > different ways.) That's true. But even so, the genes are the source of them looking like a human and not a chimp. And they are a lot more similar than fraternal twins or sibs. Keith > Damien Broderick > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From atymes at gmail.com Mon May 23 04:50:14 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 21:50:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 7:24 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Mirco Romanato wrote: >> Why not outlaw these (if they are not already) instead to outlaw >> something far related? > > That is what we are trying to DO! > > But you have to look at the technology: ?if we outlawed these things they > woudl not be able to use hydraulic fracturing at all, because they would > then be taking whole rivers, filling them with (undisclosed) poisons, > sending them underground to do the fracking, then bringing them up and > ...... putting them WHERE? > > There would be no place for them to go. ?They could not store them in > plastic bottles. > > So, outlawing these problems is, ipso facto, equivalent to outlawing > fracking itself. And thus you see the problem. The quick, easy, and reliable means to prevent those other, somewhat inevitable results is simply to outlaw fracking. If they are inevitable, and to outlaw the one is to outlaw the other, then why object to outlawing the other if the one should be prevented by law? But that assumes they are indeed inevitable. Could the water not be purified after? Could the poisons not be recycled? If the answer is, "Yes, but it wouldn't be profitable," then the technology needs to be refined until this is profitable, before fracking may be allowed. Otherwise, it devolves into letting someone poison rivers and pay nothing for doing so. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 07:25:09 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 01:25:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110521211321.GE26960@ofb.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521205909.GC26960@ofb.net> <20110521211321.GE26960@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 3:13 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 01:59:09PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > >> > If you had a polymer PV that had an energy payback time of a couple of >> > months and lasted 2 years, that would be possible to grow energy on >> >> If you had that you'd have EROEI of 48 months / 2 months = 24, pretty >> good. > > I'm apparently too sleep-deprived. ?That'd be 24 months / 2 months = 12, > of course. > > Which raises the question: is it better to have fast growth but high > maintenance costs, or slower growth but cheaper equilibrium? ?If you > have 2 month payback, EROEI 12, vs. 2 year payback, EROEI 24 (48 year > lifetime), which is better? ?The first lets you transform faster, but > has twice the 'maintenance and replenishment tax', not counting labor > costs. The main problem with alternative energy is the high capital cost of getting into it. So I would say that if you could get something cheap fast, that would be the preferable tradeoff. It allows people to get into it. In all likelihood, the law of accelerating returns will make replacing the cheap stuff even cheaper in a few years. So I'm all for low capital solar, even if it isn't as long term as alternatives. It does have to be competitive with grid electricity over the life term for most people to look at it. The energy used to make the stuff is largely irrelevant to the public at large, though I do understand the issue. The folks who shop at Walmart (virtually everyone) don't think about the global consequences very often, they think about the cost of the toaster oven they are trying to buy. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 07:15:34 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 01:15:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 17 May 2011 05:52, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Now, here is the part that is quite frightening... If someone wishes >> to create such a monster android, it would probably best be >> accomplished by beating the crap out of it and generally mistreating >> it as a young android. > > *Or* you can simply emulate the effects. No big deal. I believe that it is a very big deal indeed. Every remotely successful artificial intelligence project I am familiar with is not "programmed" per se, but rather is trained by being exposed to a wide variety of stimuli in the area of interest, and telling it what the desired result was. Yes, there are steering elements in AI, but for anything approaching a satisfying sexual partner, it would need a pretty high level of intelligence (even for a "ditsy blond" model) and programming such would likely be very difficult. Training it would likely work, as in training a dog or a child, and the method that would be easiest to achieve would be to find a human being that has the traits you desire (no matter how unusual those traits might be) and figure out what the psychological roots of that behavior was, then try to duplicate those roots for the AGI. >> If such a being gains "human rights", then we're really >> screwed. > > I am not very fond of the very concept of metaphysical "human rights" > in itself, as opposed to civil rights and liberties, which are those > granted by the community to what it perceives to be its members. There > again, I suspect that a sociologically widespread ability to project > one's qualia on a being make it likely that some rights are granted to > that being (say, you uploaded wife). When such projection is more > difficult (say, your car), we are less likely to consider them as > "citizens". This may merit it's own thread... but I suspect that some day an AGI will begin to exhibit a kind of super consciousness. That is, this being may be able to completely understand our level of consciousness, but will have its own level of consciousness that it can't entirely comprehend (just as we can't comprehend our own consciousness.) This degree of consciousness will likely have qualia that we can't comprehend at all. Rights will be granted, but by whom and to what degree we will have to wait and see. I can't imagine that we have anything close to the wisdom and experience to say very much useful at this point. Anyone want to grant any level of rights to Watson? > >>> I am pretty much persuaded that doing so with humans is >>> philosophically quite untenable, and practically a frequent source of >>> ineffective behaviours, and I do not even begin to think what it could >>> mean for a machine to be programmed to be "happy" (?) while emitting >>> frustration-like signals. >> >> I'm sure there is some kind of twisted porno out there that features >> women with just these sorts of personality defects. > > No, my point is again that we do not know anything about fellow humans > other than what they signals, and that would also be true for > machines. I think we know more than that about other human beings. There are a lot of constants that can not be changed by any degree of training or experience. Thus we are born with certain elements already there. Even in the parts we learn, I think we know quite a bit about what's going on in other people's heads. > More than a personality defect, I am more inclined to > consider a like for rape a contradiction in terms, when what we are > really dealing with is somebody who is having consensual sex while > mimicking (some) rape-related behaviours, and yet simultaneously > exhibiting typical consensual sex reactions (tumescence, lubrication, > orgasm, endorphine release, subsequent approving comments). Since there are people who have a fetish where they want their limbs to be removed (which is fully, completely crazy in my book), there are in all likelihood women who really truly enjoy rape, even the danger and pain of it. There are some really nutty folks out there. So, I don't entirely agree with your statement, although you could do that too, if that is what is desired. >> People project personality on cars and other non-human and >> non-intelligent artifacts today. I cuss at my computer, knowing that >> it won't do any good (at least yet). But some day, these artifacts >> will learn to respond to my emotional state. Then it will be even >> easier to get sucked into the anthropomorphic trap. We will want to >> program cars to act happy. > > Yes, your reply is pertinent, but I wonder... Humans, animals and > machines alike do not respond to our emotional state, but to > behaviours it dictates. Let us say that machines may get better at > interpreting them, from insect level to dog level to fellow human > level. Even in the human realm, we do not deal with a b/w scenario. An > infant, a retarded or a member of a radically different culture may > have a limited or altogether inappropriate response to such > behaviours. True enough. With humans, there are some things that appear to be cross cultural. Smiling, for example, as well as most of the other facial expressions seem to be mostly independent of culture. This is a real surprise, but it does seem to be the case. There are other things that are clearly cultural. Hand signals, words, meanings assigned to particular colors, clothing styles and a wide variety of behaviors. I think even our traditional computers will begin to react to our externally signaled emotional state within the next five years or so. It will probably end up being built into the operating system eventually. Computer2017: "Oh, I see you are confused, can I explain what's going on or provide some other kind of assistance?" This kind of responsiveness to emotional state will be particularly important for sexbots, serverbots, household assistants, elderly assist robots, etc. It isn't so important in industrial and agricultural robots. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 07:44:15 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 01:44:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 18/05/2011 08:54, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: >> On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 12:13:28AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >>> I haven't lived in Europe, and from the sounds of it, I would not >>> enjoy it one bit. >> >> At least you can drink a beer on the train, and nobody gives a flying >> fuck. >> >> Seriously, you might find that theory and practice do differ, >> in practice. > > I must agree with Eugen. > from my knowledge of the US and how things work there, many laws, social > programs and regulations would be considered completely insane. > Affirmative Action? > Food Stamps? Grocery Socialism. After WW2 they were scrapped, here. > > And, as Billk wrote, in many way the US have a form or Corporate > Socialism, usually know as Fascism (the economics part is pretty the > same as Communism, only the fa?ade is different). > Forcing the banks to give mortages to the poor (usually Blacks and > Latino) because a law say so is Socialism. Never heard something like > this here. > NCLB (No Child Left Behind) is a shame. A social engineering for dummies > from dummies by the dummies. I am disgusted by all of these programs. As are a large number of Americans. That's why we have this Tea Party movement, because Washington has stopped listening to the public, and only to the special interests. It is a damn shame, and very socialist. I can imagine that similar bad government programs can be found in every government in Europe (as well as the rest of the globe). I don't have knowledge of them myself sufficient to list them, but I can't imagine that they don't exist. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 07:54:11 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 01:54:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] mosquito zapping laser In-Reply-To: References: <003d01cc174e$c2ddde70$48999b50$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 7:35 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > Jordin Kare is involved with this project. Isn't this the Nathan Myrhvold stuff? Intellectual Ventures is his company isn't it? Bill Gates showed these same videos at TED in 2009. VERY COOL stuff. > It's a spinoff in some ways from SDI. Yeah, but that could never work. ;-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 07:32:01 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 01:32:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> Message-ID: On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 6:41 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > > On 22 May, 2011, at 4:12, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 02:03:43PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: >> >> So there's no orders of magnitude available, unless they're binary, >> then you'd get a couple at best. Longevity is up to 40+ years by now, >> so the only other improvements is price, material availability, and >> EROEI. >> > > You're presuming that efficiency is the best metric for solar panels. I would suggest that measurements such as $/watt installed, $/watt amortized and DCF payback time, which are much more relevant to "real world" solar rollout and order of magnitude improvements in those numbers would be profound. > > B I agree 100% with Brent. The Walmart crowd is only interested in how much it costs. The Green crowd is less interested in cost, but only to an extent. We all have good reasons to support solar: Lefties love solar because it disempowers the large centralized energy companies. Righties love solar because it sticks it to the unfriendly countries and people in the middle east. Libertarians and anarchists love solar because it gives more freedom and independence. All that's left to make happy are the Capitalists... once the capitalists are satisfied with solar, it will become very widespread very quickly. Wind is spreading quickly now because at least some Capitalists have found joy in the wind. I think it's only a matter of time for the Capitalists to be made happy on this one. I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative about solar. Ignorance is one possibility, but I can't imagine that being the only answer because he's held the position for so long. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 08:07:16 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 02:07:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] From Friendly AI to Loving AI In-Reply-To: <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> References: <009d01cc0c14$a8846570$f98d3050$@att.net> <4DD43091.2050508@mac.com> <008801cc1694$eb480bc0$c1d82340$@att.net> <002c01cc16b4$70304e00$5090ea00$@att.net> <005a01cc16fb$9a37eae0$cea7c0a0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 8:38 AM, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >>...I can't imagine you in the 9 to 5 world. :-) ?I can't imagine you > WANTING to be there, in any case. Join me in the crazy entrepreneurial world > where crazy people like us are what's needed! > > Ja, well, I am being pressured to take over the family farm. ?To farm > legally cost money. ?I need a 9 to 5 to support my farming habit. I understand. Where I live is very expensive too. It's rural, but not a farm. That's expensive enough. >>... The structure of Mormonism is quite distant from sola sciptura because > the living mouth of God lives on earth currently, and there is the > opportunity to solve every question immediately, even though often such > questions are simply left open as "unimportant to our salvation." > > Ja, those guys have it easy. ?The SDA prophet died in 1915, and she wasn't > making much profit several years prior to that. > >>...According to Dawkins you believed because your genetic makeup is tweaked > to believe what your parents said. It makes a lot of sense when you think of > the selection pressure against kids that eat poisonous plants that their > parents told them not to try. So don't > blame yourself... :-) ? It's all those darn old selfish genes... > > Between Dawkins and Keith Henson, I have learned much. Definitely. >>...There is a certain logic to turning the other cheek, at least on the > large scale. War is very costly economically... > > Ja, far cheaper is to have enough competent defense technology that the bad > guy goes elsewhere. But everyone is going to aim at the lone superpower, just out of principle. But every now and then, you have to turn the other cheek to avoid being too predictable. Go after Libya, but ignore Syria. :-) >>...So it's easier for the rich to be ethical? > > Shrugs. ?I guess it does lead there by any path of reasoning that I > recognize as such. Hmmm.... I shall have to ponder that one. >>...That turns the typical thinking on it's head, doesn't it? :-) > > Sure does. ?The rich person has enough money to cover his own mistakes and > compensate the damaged. ?Lovers come willingly to the rich, regardless of > how ugly and flabby, perhaps knowing he can (and will) make it right if > things go wrong. Attracting mates is no measure of ethics... just one measure of a kind of success. > Now take that over to the individual mandate for health care insurance, and > consider the really rich guy who has his own medical staff. ?He doesn't need > medical insurance; he could pay his own medical expenses should it become > necessary. ?The logic behind the individual mandate for health insurance > (that one without it is using a service one is not paying for) does not > apply to anyone who has so much money they wouldn't go into a hospital > anyway. ?Rather they would hire the medical expertise to come to them. ?So > now we have a case where the government couldn't logically require health > insurance of the very rich, because they wouldn't use it anyway. The mandate is questionable on a lot of levels, but my favorite criticism is that it should be mandated at the state level, not the federal. I have no doubt that it will be struck down on constitutional grounds. Then the feds will just pressure most of the states to mandate at that level. > Aaaahnold made sure his second family was cared for, so I guess I hafta cut > him some extra slack on that. ?The lying part of course is a major no-no. He did some things right, and some wrong. Just like the rest of us. > So then is morality different between rich and poor? ?Well, in some ways, > sorta it is. I'm not sure I'm ready to buy that one, but out of respect I'll not give a knee jerk reaction, and will ponder it for a while... :-) -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 23 08:10:20 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 09:10:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > All that's left to make happy are the Capitalists... once the > capitalists are satisfied with solar, it will become very widespread > very quickly. Wind is spreading quickly now because at least some > Capitalists have found joy in the wind. I think it's only a matter of > time for the Capitalists to be made happy on this one. > > I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative about > solar. Ignorance is one possibility, but I can't imagine that being > the only answer because he's held the position for so long. > > The present energy industries, oil, coal, gas, have made huge investments in their infrastructure and they anticipate very large profits as supplies start to dwindle. They are gradually diversifying into solar and wind power, but not so quick as to reduce their anticipated profits from the old industries. They are managing the changeover so as to try to maximise profits from both the old and new technology. It's just business as usual. BillK From js_exi at gnolls.org Mon May 23 08:28:20 2011 From: js_exi at gnolls.org (J. Stanton) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 01:28:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) Message-ID: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> spike said: > This confirms a suspicion I have long held, that fast food in itself is not > necessarily harmful. Certainly it's bad reputation has been wildly > exaggerated. If devoured in moderation, one could live on the stuff, > relatively cheaply: That's the entire point of the documentary "Fat Head". http://www.fathead-movie.com You can watch it on Hulu, if you don't mind commercials: http://www.hulu.com/watch/196879/fat-head The plot: an engineer (Tom Naughton) decides that he's going to prove that the movie "Super Size Me" is bunk. He goes on a 100% fast food diet (mostly McDonalds), loses weight, and improves his cholesterol numbers and blood pressure. Along the way he debunks quite a few nutritional myths, with guest appearances from people like Drs. Michael and Mary Eades, Dr. Mary Enig, Dr. Al Sears, etc. It also shows how our government's decision to make its first nutritional recommendations came about, and why the result has been such a public health disaster. It's charmingly low-budget, staunchly pro-freedom, and a solid introduction to the subject of nutrition. If you just want the science as a presentation, Naughton's speech "Big Fat Fiasco" is available on YouTube, and goes much farther into depth than the movie did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exi7O1li_wA (note: five parts, this is the first) Of course, I don't recommend fast food due to its nearly universal gluten content. But if you live in a city with taco trucks, you could do worse than a diet of street tacos. Meat, vegetables, squeeze of lime, and some non-gluten grains...as far as fast food, that's about as good as you'll get short of protein style at In-N-Out. Of course, my preferred "fast food" is fasting. Now that I've restored and maintained my metabolic flexibility, fasting is no big deal. And it's both cheap and convenient not to be stuck eating airport food, and not to spend valuable vacation time finding and eating breakfast every day, when I travel. JS http://www.gnolls.org From painlord2k at libero.it Mon May 23 10:14:53 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 12:14:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> Message-ID: <4DDA339D.8090305@libero.it> Il 23/05/2011 09:44, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > I am disgusted by all of these programs. As are a large number of > Americans. That's why we have this Tea Party movement, because > Washington has stopped listening to the public, and only to the > special interests. It is a damn shame, and very socialist. > I can imagine that similar bad government programs can be found in > every government in Europe (as well as the rest of the globe). I don't > have knowledge of them myself sufficient to list them, but I can't > imagine that they don't exist. Yes, there are similar programs here. But they are not so blatantly. For example, they gave out "pensions for invalidity" (a sum every month if you are considered unable to work or for people too old to work. It is not a secret that many of these were given for electoral reasons and cluster in specific zones. Sometimes some of the recipients are arrested because they should be blind and walk alone every day to buy their newspaper driving a motorcar. Mirco From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon May 23 14:49:23 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 07:49:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Low energy payback time Message-ID: The Skylon/laser combination gets the energy payback time for power satellites down to about 53 days at ~6% energy efficient getting parts to GEO. (Rockets are ~2.5% efficient.) This is from a preliminary look at a system that uses a cargo plane for the first ten km, microwave heating and burning methane to 25-30 km and mach 5-6, microwaves alone heating methane to around 7 km/s, then hydrogen heated with a laser from there on out to GEO. 60 t/h to GEO with expansion to 360 t/h at somewhat lower cost. It looks like ~11 percent energy efficient, which gives an energy payback time of under a month. This is made possible by recent cuts in the cost of microwave and laser beamed energy. Keith From max at maxmore.com Mon May 23 14:30:43 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 07:30:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) In-Reply-To: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> References: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 1:28 AM, J. Stanton wrote: > Of course, my preferred "fast food" is fasting. Now that I've restored and > maintained my metabolic flexibility, fasting is no big deal. And it's both > cheap and convenient not to be stuck eating airport food, and not to spend > valuable vacation time finding and eating breakfast every day, when I > travel. > Skipping meals without pain has been a significant benefit of having gone (Neo)Paleo (especially the low-carb version I've been on). I've been flying on both the last two weekends, and skipped two meals both times, avoiding lousy food, while observing many people intent on heading straight for pizza, sandwiches, and candy to fill their desperate needs to eat. In New York, I was pleasantly surprised that the restaurant I choose for a group of us during the conference actually offered grass-fed beef on the menu. Don't think I've seen that anywhere else yet. --- Max --- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon May 23 15:09:46 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 08:09:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) In-Reply-To: References: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> Message-ID: <004201cc195b$7494d110$5dbe7330$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Max More . >.In New York, I was pleasantly surprised that the restaurant I choose for a group of us during the conference actually offered grass-fed beef on the menu. --- Max Is grass fed beef better? Why? We may have sold our beef too cheaply. Grass is all they ever devoured other than milk. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Mon May 23 15:54:07 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 11:54:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 7:24 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: >> Mirco Romanato wrote: >>> Why not outlaw these (if they are not already) instead to outlaw >>> something far related? >> That is what we are trying to DO! >> >> But you have to look at the technology: if we outlawed these things they >> woudl not be able to use hydraulic fracturing at all, because they would >> then be taking whole rivers, filling them with (undisclosed) poisons, >> sending them underground to do the fracking, then bringing them up and >> ...... putting them WHERE? >> >> There would be no place for them to go. They could not store them in >> plastic bottles. >> >> So, outlawing these problems is, ipso facto, equivalent to outlawing >> fracking itself. > > And thus you see the problem. The quick, easy, and reliable > means to prevent those other, somewhat inevitable results is > simply to outlaw fracking. If they are inevitable, and to outlaw the > one is to outlaw the other, then why object to outlawing the other > if the one should be prevented by law? > > But that assumes they are indeed inevitable. Could the water not > be purified after? Could the poisons not be recycled? If the > answer is, "Yes, but it wouldn't be profitable," then the technology > needs to be refined until this is profitable, before fracking may be > allowed. Otherwise, it devolves into letting someone poison > rivers and pay nothing for doing so. Indeed. Part of the problem is that the companies refuse to disclose what chemicals they are actually putting in the water that they send down. So, when you ask "Could the poisons not be recycled?", the answer is that nobody really knows ... but probably not. What we seem to know at the moment is that (a) The poisons cannot be removed without making the product extremely expensive (if they can be removed at all), and the quantities of water involved are so huge that they would impact the supply of water for farming and drinking. Richard Loosemore From max at maxmore.com Mon May 23 16:56:34 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 09:56:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) In-Reply-To: <004201cc195b$7494d110$5dbe7330$@att.net> References: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> <004201cc195b$7494d110$5dbe7330$@att.net> Message-ID: Yes, grass-fed beef is much preferable to grain-fed due to the vastly better omega 3 to 6 ratio. Grain-fed beef has an omega 6:3 ratio of 20:1 or higher. Essentially, there is hardly any omega 3. (J. Anim. Sci. 2000. 78:2849-2855). Grass-fed beef typically has a vastly better omega 6:3 ratio. Other advantages: grass-fed beef is higher in B-vitamins, beta-carotene, vitamin E, magnesium, calcium, and selenium, and has 3 to 5 times more CLA (conjugated linoleic acid). There are other benefits too. Some info here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-differences-between-grass-fed-beef-and-grain-fed-beef/ --- Max 2011/5/23 spike > >? *On Behalf Of *Max More > *?* > > > > >?In New York, I was pleasantly surprised that the restaurant I choose for > a group of us during the conference actually offered grass-fed beef on the > menu? > > > > --- Max > > > > > > Is grass fed beef better? Why? We may have sold our beef too cheaply. > Grass is all they ever devoured other than milk. > > > > spike > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon May 23 16:52:09 2011 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 18:52:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> Message-ID: The first inherently unclenable technology, or what? I don't find this plausible at all. Just another Green fundamentalist rant. Funny. When there is a clear chance, that US or EU could become energy independent, an alarm is set on. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 23 17:29:53 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 19:29:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110523172953.GT19622@leitl.org> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 06:52:09PM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > The first inherently unclenable technology, or what? > > I don't find this plausible at all. Just another Green fundamentalist rant. > > Funny. When there is a clear chance, that US or EU could become energy > independent, an alarm is set on. Germany is down to 4 of operational reactors out of nominal 17 as of today. The independance thing is coming. Give it a little more time. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From rpwl at lightlink.com Mon May 23 17:34:50 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 13:34:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> Tomaz Kristan wrote: > The first inherently unclenable technology, or what? > > I don't find this plausible at all. Just another Green fundamentalist rant. > > Funny. When there is a clear chance, that US or EU could become energy > independent, an alarm is set on. Research the facts before you start describing someone's words as a "Green fundamentalist rant". Fracking waste water is not "inherently uncleanable" (I said no such thing) .... it can be cleaned if you can find a way to put 100 million cubic meters of water through a system that will remove certain noxious organic compounds WITHOUT that cleaning process costing far more than the price of the extracted gas. Arguing with idiots. Who needs it? Richard Loosemore From spike66 at att.net Mon May 23 17:35:02 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 10:35:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) In-Reply-To: References: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> <004201cc195b$7494d110$5dbe7330$@att.net> Message-ID: <001c01cc196f$bf5d78a0$3e1869e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More Sent: Monday, May 23, 2011 9:57 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) Yes, grass-fed beef is much preferable to grain-fed due to the vastly better omega 3 to 6 ratio. Grain-fed beef has an omega 6:3 ratio of 20:1 or higher. Essentially, there is hardly any omega 3. (J. Anim. Sci. 2000. 78:2849-2855). Grass-fed beef typically has a vastly better omega 6:3 ratio. Other advantages: grass-fed beef is higher in B-vitamins, beta-carotene, vitamin E, magnesium, calcium, and selenium, and has 3 to 5 times more CLA (conjugated linoleic acid). There are other benefits too. Some info here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-differences-between-grass-fed-beef-and-gr ain-fed-beef/ --- Max Oh OK thanks Max. I have much to learn about farm product marketing. Actually I was thinking more in terms of the ratio of dollars in my pocket vs dollars not in my pocket, but if the omega 3 to 6 ratio gets me there, I am aaaaaall for it. All you beef devourers out there, what you want is grass fed beef only, builds strong bodies 12 ways, makes you grow big and strong, helps you look like. like Max More. Eat that stuff at every opportunity, especially Oregon grass fed beef, the very best, worth the extra cost, which goes to a good cause too: me. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 23 17:52:51 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 19:52:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Iain M Banks' Culture Novels [WAS Re: Usages of the term libertarianism] In-Reply-To: <4DD9A26D.4090106@lightlink.com> References: <4DD5A224.9000806@satx.rr.com> <4DD5C881.9080906@satx.rr.com> <4DD60E62.2020206@satx.rr.com> <4DD69064.8080603@lightlink.com> <4DD828FE.5020401@lightlink.com> <20110521221002.GG26960@ofb.net> <4DD872C1.5010201@lightlink.com> <4DD920DB.8060709@lightlink.com> <4DD9A26D.4090106@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 23 May 2011 01:55, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Stefano Vaj wrote: > >> Hence, given that human beings currently do have mixed motives, and happen >> sometimes to be happy, sometimes to be frustrated by their being sacrificed >> for non-hedonistic purposes, ordinary human reproduction is basically >> unethical. >> > > Non sequiteur. Let us see: a) Slavery is unethical b) Those who are hard-wired for motivation to serve are not slaves c) Human clones conditioned to serve would have in fact mixed motivations d) Producing somebody with mixed motivations would be unethical since (b) would not apply, and their wish to serve would therefore have thus to be frustrated. Reduction ad absurdum: e) Since humans have as well mixed motivations, and they may will wish to serve higher purposes (or a master) their (re)production is unethical. Not true. I am talking about "slaves" that either do, or do not, have the > intrinsic mental machinery required to experience desires that conflict with > a subservient desire. > Curious POV. What is the ethical difference whether such machinery does not exist or is simply permanently impaired for good? Not to mention the difficulty of drawing a line between the two... Aristotle maintains in fact that slaves by nature never have a "real" inclination to freedom in the first place. And for that matter that yearning for freedom is *not* a inescapable feature of mammal psychology, which could by no means whatsoever be genetically and educationally removed, is abundantly shown by the fact that most dogs do not spend most of their time planning an escape. >In conclusion: is it possible today to have slaves who would not be such > according to your restrictive definition (what Aristotles call "slaves by > nature" as opposed to "slaves by convention")? Yes, and it is even quite > easy. > There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support that statement. Sounds really like saying that there is no scientific evidence that humans exist who are actually willing to suicide. Perhaps all of them are constrained by some evil spirit. But I appreciate that slavery *and* good conscience in a PC sense is an alluring proposition... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon May 23 18:23:03 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 11:23:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] funny spam Message-ID: <004701cc1976$75420cc0$5fc62640$@att.net> I got a funny spam yesterday. It was the usual Im a bank president from Africa, I heard you are a good honest Christian person and I want to give you a jillion dollars if you help me get it out of the country, etc, fill in the usual boilerplate nonsense. The slight twist was this part: someone with your same first and last name died and the evil greedy government is trying to get his money, but we can get it to you since you have the same name. Are you honest and willing to participate? Great! What is your name? {8^D I did get a good guffaw out of that. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 23 18:57:25 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 20:57:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] the king's speech In-Reply-To: References: <360359.10428.qm@web114405.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20110522085435.GB19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 22 May 2011 11:06, BillK wrote: > At the London Film Festival, Hooper criticised the decision, > questioning how the body could certify the film "15" for bad language > but allow films such as Salt (2010) and Casino Royale (2006) to have > 12A ratings despite their graphic torture scenes. > Torture is not necessarily vulgar, even though it is admittedly difficult sometimes to administer it in an elegant fashion. Prophanities are *always* vulgar. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 23 19:26:56 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 21:26:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 23 May 2011 09:15, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Stefano Vaj > wrote: > > *Or* you can simply emulate the effects. No big deal. > > I believe that it is a very big deal indeed. What I mean is that by definition any "training" or "evolutionary" process can be replaced by an explicit programming of its final outcome. I am not implying that this be always easy or practical. And, according to Wolfram, sometimes to know the final state of a system you must run through all its steps. OTOH, when you know it, you can replicate any number of times you like. Moreover, what may be difficult to program by hand, may be much easier to program, well, automatically. :-) > This may merit it's own thread... but I suspect that some day an AGI > will begin to exhibit a kind of super consciousness. > I suspect "consciousness" to be just an evolutionary artifact that albeit being fully emulatable like anything else has little to do with intelligence. As for qualia, they are a dubious linguistic and philosophical artifact of little use at all.. > I think we know more than that about other human beings. > Sure, as far as signalling is concerned. For the rest, the truth is simply that we are hallucinating (in a PNL sense) much more. Since there are people who have a fetish where they want their limbs > to be removed (which is fully, completely crazy in my book), there are > in all likelihood women who really truly enjoy rape, even the danger > and pain of it. There is nothing necessarily unconsensual in the removal of limbs, while "rape" is defined by the lack of consent by the victim. So, welcome sudden and violent sex by a stranger is by no means a rape either legally or linguistically, even though the victim may fake resistance or fear bodily damage from the process... > True enough. With humans, there are some things that appear to be > cross cultural. Smiling, for example, as well as most of the other > facial expressions seem to be mostly independent of culture. Mmhhh. Of course, there are species-related (as there are genos-related, family-related, order-related) ethological traits, but I am not sure smiling is one of them. There are cultures where showing teeth is insignificant (as in Thailand) or unbecoming (Japan in the classical age) or denoting mostly embarassment (Japan today). -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon May 23 19:11:42 2011 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado (CI)) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 16:11:42 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Solar power from the moon Message-ID: This Tetsuji Yoshida guy wants to build a solar panel ring around moon's equator and beam energy to Earth. I think something like this already was avented on this list. Doesn't it? http://www.wfs.org/content/solar-power-moon From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 19:42:35 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 13:42:35 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 01:40:36PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > Or in other words, for my last post of the night: > > "libertarianism with free good land was good for some poor" does not > generalize to "libertarianism is good for the poor". Let's try a different approach... would you agree with the following statement: "The advance of technology, engineering and science has been good for the poor (and even better for the rich)." If so, and I really do hope you believe that here of all places, then it follows that: "Whatever society does to promote the development of technology, engineering and science promotes the well being of everyone, including the poor (albeit in a delayed manner compared to the rich)." So the real answer to how to care for the poor is really: "What is the best system for pushing science, engineering and technology forward at the fastest possible pace." You could answer this by saying, "Only government sponsored research is far enough out to really push the envelope." Or You could say, "Capitalism is the best at promoting technology, engineering and science." Or perhaps some other governmental form would be better at promoting these things. If what we are truly after is the well being of mankind, then the government that best serves mankind is the government that allows for freedom in developing as much technology, science and engineering as possible. Perhaps there are other ways of looking at the world, but progress in the liberal arts has not helped today's poor to be ahead of their brethren from 100 years ago. > "libertarianism was better for the poor than war-torn quasi-feudal > aristocracies" does not generalize to "libertarian is better for the > poor than social democracy". I contend that all social democracy does is slow down the things that actually help all of us. This is just an opinion, and I don't think it can really be proven one way or another without a real experiment. > The 19th century lets us combine these: "libertarianism with free good > land [and various other geographic qualifiers] was better for the poor > than war-torn and land-starved quasi-feudal aristocracies" does not > generalize to "libertarianism is the bestest thing ever". OK, so how does social democracy push forward technology, science and engineering (by engineering I mean infrastructure) better than libertarianism? (Real question) As to the free land question, it was not free. It was stolen from the American Indians. From the European standpoint, they weren't using it. This seems evil in retrospect, and it was. It was driven by religious belief systems that commanded us to subjugate the earth. Yes, the American Experiment was given a boost by the free land and under exploited resources. There was also the land taken in the Manifest Destiny fiasco. Whether it benefited from slavery is a little more debatable. There is no question that slavery benefited slave owners, but the open question is whether it benefited society as a whole over the long term... and there I'm a little less sure. I'm not dogmatic on this point because it's easy to make arguments about the productivity of slavery, but I think there was a soul stealing malignancy that slowed everything down too. That is harder to measure, and so harder to argue. It did boost the population in an underpopulated land... it's complicated for sure. If you grant that slavery in the northern states was much less than that in the south, and the economic power of the north exceeded that of the south (leading to the historical outcome of the civil war), then you might be inclined to believe that libertarian capitalism did more to develop industry and technology because that's exactly what happened in the north. Note that industrialization in the south lagged considerably. > This all feels related to my observation that when Adam Smith attacked > government intervention in the economies, he was mostly talking about > monarchs using mercantilism and artificial monopolies to raise revenues > for war. ?Not about universal-suffrage democracies using progressive > income taxation to fund univiersal pensions and health care, public > schools and transportation, and a side order of environmental and safety > regulation, especially as none of those things existed in 1776. And I would support government regulation concerning the environment, or at least government oversight of organizations that did the same. This is because you are impinging MY liberties when you pollute the planet I have to live on. As for public schooling, I would not be so opposed to it, except for the fact that it is used to indoctrinate citizens as much as educate tomorrow's scientists, engineers and technologists. And in the long term, that is a really bad thing, IMHO. BTW, the Libertarian philosophy is not really intended to help the poor directly, but rather to give as many people as are willing to work hard the opportunity to escape poverty themselves. The fact that libertarianism does, in fact, help the poor by pushing society forward, is a happy coincidence. If you don't believe that to be the case, well libertarianism is still the best way to provide the opportunity broadly. What justification is there that society owes a living to anyone? Is that belief based in the same flawed religious roots as the belief that it was OK to steal the land from the American Indians, or that slavery was just fine? This is a really important question to answer if you want to support your position that society should help the poor. -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Mon May 23 19:50:09 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 21:50:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Solar power from the moon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110523195008.GU19622@leitl.org> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 04:11:42PM -0300, Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) wrote: > This Tetsuji Yoshida guy wants to build a solar panel ring around moon's > equator and beam energy to Earth. I think something like this already was > avented on this list. Doesn't it? SPS is 1968 vintage idea, and the Moon figured pretty prominently early on (well predating http://www.isso.uh.edu/criswell/papers.html ). I'm pretty sure using LEO constellations of selenic orign and launch and phased-array beamforming is at least early 1980s. It's certainly straightforward enough. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon May 23 19:51:32 2011 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 21:51:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> Message-ID: >it can be cleaned if you can find a way to put 100 million cubic meters of water through a system that will remove certain noxious organic compounds WITHOUT that cleaning process costing far more than the price of the extracted gas. So, it can be done, but it's not worth of? Inherently? > Arguing with idiots. Who needs it? I enjoy it, occasionally. > > > > Richard Loosemore > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon May 23 20:29:34 2011 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 13:29:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On May 23, 2011 12:52 PM, "Tomaz Kristan" wrote: > > >it can be cleaned if you can find a way to put 100 million cubic meters of water through a system that will remove certain noxious organic compounds WITHOUT that cleaning process costing far more than the price of the extracted gas. > > So, it can be done, but it's not worth of? Inherently? Did he say "inherently"? No. He said "costing far more". As in, to do this without massive pollution, you would - with current technology - spend many more dollars than you would get from selling the extracted gas. This points to a possible solution: find a cheap enough means of cleaning out the pollutants. But that needs to be developed first. You seem to assume that all who disagree with you on this are eco-fundamentalists who ignore facts and logic. That assumption is false. You would do better not to assume anyone is your enemy just for the sake of opposing what you believe in. > > Arguing with idiots. Who needs it? > > I enjoy it, occasionally. You are the one he referred to. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 20:25:25 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 14:25:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DDA339D.8090305@libero.it> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> <4DDA339D.8090305@libero.it> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 4:14 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 23/05/2011 09:44, Kelly Anderson ha scritto: > >> I am disgusted by all of these programs. As are a large number of >> Americans. That's why we have this Tea Party movement, because >> Washington has stopped listening to the public, and only to the >> special interests. It is a damn shame, and very socialist. > >> I can imagine that similar bad government programs can be found in >> every government in Europe (as well as the rest of the globe). I don't >> have knowledge of them myself sufficient to list them, but I can't >> imagine that they don't exist. > > Yes, there are similar programs here. But they are not so blatantly. Perhaps they are just under reported... I don't exactly know how free the press is in Europe these days, but I've heard Hitchens complain about there being less freedom of the press in England. > For example, they gave out "pensions for invalidity" (a sum every month > if you are considered unable to work or for people too old to work. > It is not a secret that many of these were given for electoral reasons > and cluster in specific zones. Sometimes some of the recipients are > arrested because they should be blind and walk alone every day to buy > their newspaper driving a motorcar. Individual cheaters are of far less importance than systems of interrelated cheating systems. Like farm subsidies, government run health care (which I understand to be common in Europe), oil company subsidies, the military-industrial complex, etc. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 20:21:51 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 14:21:51 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:10 AM, BillK wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson ?wrote: >> All that's left to make happy are the Capitalists... once the >> capitalists are satisfied with solar, it will become very widespread >> very quickly. Wind is spreading quickly now because at least some >> Capitalists have found joy in the wind. I think it's only a matter of >> time for the Capitalists to be made happy on this one. >> >> I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative about >> solar. Ignorance is one possibility, but I can't imagine that being >> the only answer because he's held the position for so long. > > The present energy industries, oil, coal, gas, have made huge > investments in their infrastructure and they anticipate very large > profits as supplies start to dwindle. They are gradually diversifying > into solar and wind power, but not so quick as to reduce their > anticipated profits from the old industries. They are managing the > changeover so as to try to maximise profits from both the old and new > technology. > It's just business as usual. I can accept that. I can even embrace that. The thing is that there are a lot of entrepreneurs that are NOT currently part of the state of the petroleum art. I'm assuming either that you weren't answering the question about His Limbaughness, or that you are implying that he's part of the oil conspiracy... The real trick for today's energy companies it to make sure that they are also tomorrow's energy companies. They also need to not drain their customers so dry that demand goes down. -Kelly From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Mon May 23 21:10:37 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 14:10:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 01:42:35PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Damien Sullivan > > "libertarianism with free good land was good for some poor" does not > > generalize to "libertarianism is good for the poor". > > Let's try a different approach... would you agree with the following statement: > "The advance of technology, engineering and science has been good for > the poor (and even better for the rich)." Yes. > If so, and I really do hope you believe that here of all places, then > it follows that: > "Whatever society does to promote the development of technology, > engineering and science promotes the well being of everyone, including > the poor (albeit in a delayed manner compared to the rich)." Wow, no, that *totally* does not follow. "Tech is good" does not mean "whatever is done, no matter the cost, to advance tech, is good". If tech develops faster in one country, at the cost of straving children, that's not promoting the well-being of everyone. I trust you see your fallacy. Your other fallacy is to implicitly assume that the advance of technology has been the *only* thing to benefit society, when in fact a strong service-minded government can benefit society, especially the poor, at even Stone Age tech levels. The modern world has better tech, it also has better government. And while there's some positive correlation between the two, it's far from absolute: the Indus Valley civilization and ancient Egypt seem to have been better run than roughly contemporaneous Babylonians and Assyrians. > So the real answer to how to care for the poor is really: > "What is the best system for pushing science, engineering and > technology forward at the fastest possible pace." Nope. > You could answer this by saying, "Only government sponsored research > is far enough out to really push the envelope." > Or > You could say, "Capitalism is the best at promoting technology, > engineering and science." > Or perhaps some other governmental form would be better at promoting > these things. Or, y'know, both: government funding of the public good of basic research, plus companies in competitive markets competing to bring innovations to market, while paying taxes to pay for the basic research their profits rest on. > If what we are truly after is the well being of mankind, then the > government that best serves mankind is the government that allows for > freedom in developing as much technology, science and engineering as > possible. Or the government that best serves mankind is one that allows ofr freedom in development while also making sure no one gets screwed over and that gains are distributed somewhat equitably. > Perhaps there are other ways of looking at the world, but progress in > the liberal arts has not helped today's poor to be ahead of their > brethren from 100 years ago. Progress in democracy has. > > The 19th century lets us combine these: "libertarianism with free good > > land [and various other geographic qualifiers] was better for the poor > > than war-torn and land-starved quasi-feudal aristocracies" does not > > generalize to "libertarianism is the bestest thing ever". > > OK, so how does social democracy push forward technology, science and > engineering (by engineering I mean infrastructure) better than > libertarianism? (Real question) More reliably produces educated and healthy people and provides a safety net supporting risky innovation. It's people who can afford to fail -- or the completely desperate -- who take risks in life. People on the edge who have something that barely works tend to be really conservative. > If you grant that slavery in the northern states was much less than > that in the south, and the economic power of the north exceeded that > of the south (leading to the historical outcome of the civil war), > then you might be inclined to believe that libertarian capitalism did > more to develop industry and technology because that's exactly what > happened in the north. Note that industrialization in the south lagged > considerably. True, except the North wasn't all that libertarian. Public schooling, protective tariffs, "internal improvements" from the federal government, possibly various state laws and regulations that we'd have to be a more dedicated historian to have a good picture of. -xx- Damien X-) From spike66 at att.net Mon May 23 21:13:54 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 14:13:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> Message-ID: <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson ?wrote: ... >> I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative about solar...-Kelly Pardon if I repeat the spirit of an earlier post. It would be a game changer in plenty of people's minds if they would get on a plane, fly out somewhere in the middle of the western desert US, such as Boise Idaho, or Las Vegas (what happens there stays there but don't do *that*) rent a car, drive in pretty much any direction there is a road, look around. What one will see, regardless of the time of year, is *plenty* of open nearly flat land, plenty of direct sunlight, and I think investment ops would pencil out at current ground based fixed installation costs. I can estimate closely enough the cable costs, the load leveling by conversion of coal to octane with external power from massive PV installations and so forth. But it is important to go out there in person and get a good feel for how much open useless land is there. Failing that, get on Google Maps and look at it. A lot of that desert land goes weeks at a time between seeing a single cloud. The one area where I may be dead wrong and cannot estimate, is the cost of defeating the environmentalists opposed to massive ground based solar, and of course the current energy companies which may hire environmentalists to defeat such a notion. That could be huge, perhaps a show stopper. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 21:22:02 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 15:22:02 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/23 Stefano Vaj : > On 23 May 2011 09:15, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:20 AM, Stefano Vaj >> wrote: >> >> > *Or* you can simply emulate the effects. No big deal. >> >> I believe that it is a very big deal indeed. > > What I mean is that by definition any "training" or "evolutionary" process > can be replaced by an explicit programming of its final outcome. I am not > implying that this be always easy or practical. And, according to Wolfram, > sometimes to know the final state of a system you must run through all its > steps. OTOH, when you know it, you can replicate any number of times you > like. Once achieved, an AGI is easily replicated. That much I will grant you. But mixing explicit programming with a training process is very difficult. Just look at how hard it is to change people. Changing me from a religious zealot to an atheist was a very painful process that took a couple of years of hard work. It was not just "changing the programming", although that was, in a sense, exactly what it was. I guess what I'm trying to get at from a computer science point of view is that it is very difficult to mix what we now call "programming" with a "training" kind of programming. The Kinect, for example, uses a "training" set based on nearly 1 million images processed on thousands of CPUs for months to come up with the decision tree that it uses to figure out what in the picture is your arm, leg, head, etc. You can't easily add a few lines of code to that kind of decision tree that compensates for someone missing a left arm. > Moreover, what may be difficult to program by hand, may be much easier to > program, well, automatically. :-) That's exactly what I'm saying, if I am understanding you correctly. >> This may merit it's own thread... but I suspect that some day an AGI >> will begin to exhibit a kind of super consciousness. > > I suspect "consciousness" to be just an evolutionary artifact that albeit > being fully emulatable like anything else has little to do with > intelligence. As for qualia, they are a dubious linguistic and philosophical > artifact of little use at all.. I dunno... "redness" seems useful for communicating between sentient beings. So I'm not sure how useless it is. Please elaborate. >> I think we know more than that about other human beings. > > Sure, as far as signalling is concerned. For the rest, the truth is simply > that we are hallucinating (in a PNL sense) much more. I agree that much of what we think we observe is a kind of hallucination. Our eyes simply aren't good enough optically to produce the model that is in my mind of the world. >> Since there are people who have a fetish where they want their limbs >> to be removed (which is fully, completely crazy in my book), there are >> in all likelihood women who really truly enjoy rape, even the danger >> and pain of it. > > There is nothing necessarily unconsensual in the removal of limbs, while > "rape" is defined by the lack of consent by the victim. So, welcome sudden > and violent sex by a stranger is by no means a rape either legally or > linguistically, even though the victim may fake resistance or fear bodily > damage from the process... All right, I guess I see your point. It isn't rape unless it has the psychological component of doing damage to the other being. So we are going to be stuck with assholes who won't be happy with their sexbot, no matter what. Perhaps they will rape my sexbot... and I'll probably be none to happy about it. ;-) >> True enough. With humans, there are some things that appear to be >> cross cultural. Smiling, for example, as well as most of the other >> facial expressions seem to be mostly independent of culture. > > Mmhhh. Of course, there are species-related (as there are genos-related, > family-related, order-related) ethological traits, but I am not sure smiling > is one of them. There are cultures where showing teeth is insignificant (as > in Thailand) or unbecoming (Japan in the classical age) or denoting mostly > embarassment (Japan today). I'll try to find the reference. I think it was one of the set of Wired authors. Seth Godin I think. He was talking about FACS, a coding system for facial expressions, and how doing those expressions led to emotions being produced. The universality of it was a kind of aside. It was in a story about some research that was done on predicting divorce from watching a couple argue for just a few minutes. Here is the coding system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System It was really fascinating how much they could tell from micro-expressions that lasted only a few milliseconds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman Ekman's work on facial expressions had its starting point in the work of psychologist Silvan Tomkins.[4] Ekman showed that contrary to the belief of some anthropologists including Margaret Mead, facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures and thus biological in origin. Expressions he found to be universal included those indicating anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. Findings on contempt are less clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence that this emotion and its expression are universally recognized.[5] How mainstream this Paul Ekman is, I don't know... but the US government is apparently using his work in surveillance at airports. Hollywood computer animators use it as well. It's a fascinating corner of human behavior. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 23 21:26:19 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 22:26:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 10:13 PM, spike wrote: > The one area where I may be dead wrong and cannot estimate, is the cost of > defeating the environmentalists opposed to massive ground based solar, and > of course the current energy companies which may hire environmentalists to > defeat such a notion. ?That could be huge, perhaps a show stopper. > > These 'environmentalists' you mention are funded by the oil industry. The whole Global Warming FUD campaign is funded by the oil industry. Solar power will not go large-scale until the oil industry is ready to takeover the new industry. Small startups will be taken over, or their suppliers bought out, etc. etc. Small business cannot fight the tentacles of the established industries who will not allow free competition. It's a tiger eats lambs world out there. BillK From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Mon May 23 21:41:31 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 14:41:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 01:42:35PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > What justification is there that society owes a living to anyone? Is > that belief based in the same flawed religious roots as the belief > that it was OK to steal the land from the American Indians, or that > slavery was just fine? This is a really important question to answer > if you want to support your position that society should help the > poor. The counter-question is "what justification is there to have rich people and starving people in the same society? Why should the alleged property rights of one who has a lot be respected by someone who doesn't have enough?" I actually wouldn't start with any abstract blanket right to "a living"; society's clearly not rich enough yet for that. We can start with the right to *make* a living, including fair access to the tools needed for that. This gets simpler to think about if we go back to mostly agrarian societies: a right to an equal share of land to work. No one starts out with a right to be fed by other people, but they start with a right to land with which to feed themselves. If someone has more land, while someone else has none and must work as a servant for the landlord, what justifies that? And while one can talk about "I cleared this land", most commonly the answer is "my ancestor stole it from yours and I have force to back up my claim". (Even if one did clear or improve land, it's far from obvious that that should grant an indefinite right of ownership. In the first year, much of the food value will have come from the initial land improver, not just the farmer, but over time likely the land has to be maintained. If the first improver does it, they're being paid for service rendered; if the tenant farmer does it, then in justice ownership by usufruct and effort invest passes to them, as eventually they've provided most of the value.) So a fair society would give an equal bloc of land to everyone. Of course, some people are better farmers than others, A better than B, say. In which case B might let A farm B's land, in return for a share of the crop, while B goes off and does something else. If B can't get other jobs, and if A doesn't pay enough, B always has the option of coming home and working their own land again. OTOH, if A is a highly productive farmer, they might be able to pay B enough so that B never has to work, while A still does quite well themselves. This looks at the surface like B profiting idly from A's labor, but it's actually rooted in B's fair share of the land as a whole. If you reject that, then we don't have much to talk about. If you can accept that, as a simple and idealized version of a fair society, then the question becomes how to relate it to our complex non-agrarian market society. And any answer will likely be messy. But instead of individually owned parcels of land rented out to farmers and other users, we might have a land value tax whose receipts are redistributed as a modest basic income. Alternately, in lieu of an individual grant of land, there might be an individual grant of modern capital, as Thomas Paine proposed. $100,000 given at adulthood, say. Of course, with human capital being perhaps the most valuable kind, public schooling and children's health care and cheap or free college might be seen as non-cash delivery of said capital. OTOH, that still relies on the market to match jobs to people, and a right to direct money or even food might be seen as safer. That's for general welfare programs. Aid for the disabled, or universal health systems, aren't so much a fundamental egalitarian right as a choice we make for a nicer (and possibly more efficient) society. The cripple or retiree has a right to a living because of a social insurance system creating such a right. A tidbit to think about: it's illegal today to sell oneself into slavery. (Some libertarians think it should be legal.) Ditto for debt-slavery, which has been common at times. But apparently in ancient Egypt, not only was debt-slavery illegal, so was seizing a workman's tools to pay off a debt. The ability to make a good living, granted by the tools, was inalienable (though perhaps sellable) -- one's tools were part of oneself, in a sense. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Mon May 23 21:47:17 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 14:47:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 03:22:02PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Once achieved, an AGI is easily replicated. That much I will grant > you. But mixing explicit programming with a training process is very > difficult. Just look at how hard it is to change people. Changing me > from a religious zealot to an atheist was a very painful process that > took a couple of years of hard work. It was not just "changing the > programming", although that was, in a sense, exactly what it was. While the results of machine learning may well not be easily modifiable or reverse-engineerable, using people as evidence isn't very good. We don't have explicit programming of people, or of brains, the way we do have of computers. Verbal instruction is a limited ability, compared to being able to go in and change neural wiring directly. Not that we'd know much what to do if we could, but we don't even have the safe access for people. Whereas even a genetically evolved neural network mess of code is completely open to our examination and modification. Knowing what to do is another matter, but the fact that we can't do things to people through their skulls is kind of irrelevant. -xx- Damien X-) From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 23 23:26:48 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 19:26:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Prophecy depot - not another loony Message-ID: <20110523192648.hqi21pob7t44o0k4@webmail.natasha.cc> I just happend upon this page From reason at fightaging.org Tue May 24 01:54:03 2011 From: reason at fightaging.org (Reason) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 18:54:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Open Cures Message-ID: <00c501cc19b5$762e42e0$628ac8a0$@org> This may be of interest to those on the list who haven't heard it from me already: I have emerged from my monomaniacal focus on Fight Aging! to launch a new open, volunteer initiative for longevity science called Open Cures. https://www.opencures.org/ We're looking for (a) volunteers who can help with the avalanche of organizational needs and (b) life scientists / biotechnologists willing to write for freelance rates - most likely graduate and post-graduate students, given that freelance writing rates are a bare single step away from not getting paid at all. You can read more about the background that prompted the formation of Open Cures here: https://www.opencures.org/about And I should note that we're posting bounties on particular pieces of writing at the moment - there will be more beyond those already listed, so if you happen to know life science students at an appropriate level to work on these, and with enough ramen in their kitchen to consider it a good deal, please do point them towards Open Cures: https://www.opencures.org/bounties There's also a Google Group should any of you want to stop by and chat or offer advice - and I'm happy to answer questions. https://groups.google.com/group/opencures Reason ---------------- - More than a dozen ways to extend life in mice have been demonstrated in laboratories - Yet the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) forbids commercial therapies for aging - Thus the best biotechnologies for human longevity languish, undeveloped... - But this is a shrinking world, linked by the internet and medical tourism - Advanced, safe clinical development takes place in many countries - We can work around the FDA, and this is how it will be done Looking at the future of commercial medical development and rejuvenation biotechnology, it seems clear that something has to be done. The present state of affairs with respect to regulation of research and commercial development of biotechnologies in the US has forced to the sidelines any number of lines of research aimed at intervening in the aging process. These nascent biotechnologies, demonstrated on mice, cannot cost-effectively be commercially developed in the US - or cannot be developed at all, since the FDA will not approve treatments for aging. That fact is well known and has the predictable effect on the number of investors willing to pony up for the privilege of running into a brick wall. Outside the US there are a number of developed nations which in which commercial medical development is less regulated. China for example - and US citizens of a certain age will no doubt feel sad that we can now point to modern day China as an example of comparative freedom in human endeavor. Not sad for the Chinese, but sad for us. Other nations in that part of the world are similarly more open than the US when it comes to commercial development of new medical technology: even India, despite its bureaucracy. When we look to the future of commercial longevity-enhancing medical technologies - or indeed any cutting edge biotechnology - I think that we are looking at the process of building a bridge between the less restricted parts of the world and the output of the US research community. That bridge is forged of medical tourism, venture investment, and a flow of knowledge. Without it, little will be developed: there must be an outlet for new science to become new technology, and that outlet is being progressively narrowed in the US with each passing year. We don't need to do anything about medical tourism or venture investment, as those fields are quite capable of looking after themselves and are growing rapidly, but where we are needed is to help build that flow of knowledge between regions. If we want to see real results in the clinic, we must establish a bridge between the potential longevity-enhancing technologies that have been demonstrated in the laboratory - but can never be fully realized in the US - and the developers half a world away who are free to translate the fruits of research into clinical application. This is a matter of documentation, of building relationships, and of pulling out the most interesting technology demonstrations into the light - as despite this shrinking world, it is still far from the case that researchers on opposite sides of the globe have a good view into what has and hasn't been accomplished. There is a great that might be done to help this large-scale process along, especially now that we are moving in earnest into an age of open biotechnology. The impetus, as in software development, will be towards openly shared knowledge and designs, because the economic advantages are enormous. Accompanying this shift we will see an accelerating growth of the present community of lab collectives, semi-professional developers, and hobbyists in biotechnology. They already exist in the form of the , but that is just the earliest manifestation of what is to come, more akin to the Homebrew Computer Club of the 1970s that spawned computing hardware companies and the rampant growth that followed. There is a wave coming, a vast growth in medical tourism and open development in biotechnology. We can help that wave form, and ride it to achieve our goals as it arrives. All this considered, and the need for action very clear, I decided to launch Open Cures as a volunteer initiative, an open collaboration for everyone interested in accelerating the clinical development of the best longevity science demonstrated in laboratories. Our initial focus is on establishing the organizational basics and producing a good, open-access Creative Commons body of work that explains exactly how to carry out a range of biotechnologies shown to extend life or reverse specific biological aspects of aging in laboratory animals. To that end, Open Cures patrons, starting with myself, are offering bounties on documentation outlines: if you are a life science graduate or post-graduate level student or an interested volunteer with a good knowledge of the field, I encourage you to drop by the Open Cures discussion group and introduce yourself. "Bounties are funded by Open Cures patrons as a way of speeding up work and attracting new volunteers to the initiative. At the present time, bounties focus on documentation needs: each award is made to the writer who first posts sufficiently good material to the Open Cures discussion group. Writers should expect some back and forth, questions asked, and friendly conversation when they do so. The bounty is then awarded when the writer releases their posted work under an open license; until that time, he or she retains copyright. "The primary purpose of awarding bounties is to discover good life science freelance writers, and who can therefore be paid a modest rate to produce further work on an ongoing, occasional basis. It is important to build lasting relationships with enthusiastic freelance writers who know the ins and outs of practical biotechnology - so when you submit good work that arrives too late to win a specific bounty, or is beaten out by another author, you are still a candidate for future writing projects." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 24 04:29:43 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 21:29:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:13 PM, spike wrote: >> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson ?wrote: > ... >>> I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative about > solar...-Kelly Actually BillK said it. > > > Pardon if I repeat the spirit of an earlier post. ?It would be a game > changer in plenty of people's minds if they would get on a plane, fly out > somewhere in the middle of the western desert US, such as Boise Idaho, or > Las Vegas (what happens there stays there but don't do *that*) rent a car, > drive in pretty much any direction there is a road, look around. ?What one > will see, regardless of the time of year, is *plenty* of open nearly flat > land, plenty of direct sunlight, and I think investment ops would pencil out > at current ground based fixed installation costs. ?I can estimate closely > enough the cable costs, the load leveling by conversion of coal to octane > with external power from massive PV installations and so forth. ?But it is > important to go out there in person and get a good feel for how much open > useless land is there. ?Failing that, get on Google Maps and look at it. ?A > lot of that desert land goes weeks at a time between seeing a single cloud. I have looked deeply into this and it just doesn't make sense economically or even in terms of physics. It doesn't seem likely that it ever will before nanotech. It seems possible eventually to get the cost of power from PV down in the range of 10-20 cents per kWh. At ten cents a kWh you can make synthetic oil out of atmospheric CO2 and water for $10 capital plus $20 x cost of power in cents per kWh. That's $210/bbl at the low end of what might be possible for PV. You can have all the desert land you want, but the cost of installing this PV infrastructure is the problem. > The one area where I may be dead wrong and cannot estimate, is the cost of > defeating the environmentalists opposed to massive ground based solar, and > of course the current energy companies which may hire environmentalists to > defeat such a notion. ?That could be huge, perhaps a show stopper. It's not an issue in China and you don't see them paving their deserts. Part of the problem is the energy payback time. Two to four years is the current. That sets how the maximum rate you can grow the source if it is energy limited. It's a different situation in space where the solar concentrators and radiators can mass 1-2 kg/kW. Keith Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 24 04:31:54 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 21:31:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: snip > The real trick for today's energy companies it to make sure that they > are also tomorrow's energy companies. They also need to not drain > their customers so dry that demand goes down. That's not the biggest problem. The big problem is that there is no accepted way to make energy from sunlight for less than it cost to mine oil out of the ground. I work on that as you might know. Keith From spike66 at att.net Tue May 24 05:00:06 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 22:00:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> Message-ID: <000601cc19cf$7365d540$5a317fc0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Keith Henson >... Subject: Re: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:13 PM, spike wrote: >> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson ?wrote: > ... >>> I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative >>> about solar...-Kelly Actually BillK said it. Oooops apologies Kelly. I wouldn't have had BillK as a Rush Limbaugh listener. {8^D >> ...A lot of that desert land goes weeks at a time between seeing a single cloud. >...I have looked deeply into this and it just doesn't make sense economically or even in terms of physics. It doesn't seem likely that it ever will before nanotech...It's not an issue in China and you don't see them paving their deserts... Not yet. They do have plenty of coal. Let's see if they go with PV powered coal to octane in the next 10 yrs. >...It's a different situation in space where the solar concentrators and radiators can mass 1-2 kg/kW. Keith Ja. I can imagine some of the other schemes being developed in parallel with space based solar as a backup in case that fails. spike From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 24 06:09:15 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 01:09:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <000601cc19cf$7365d540$5a317fc0$@att.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <000601cc19cf$7365d540$5a317fc0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DDB4B8B.5080400@satx.rr.com> On 5/24/2011 12:00 AM, spike wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 2:13 PM, spike wrote: >>> >> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> > ... >>>> >>> I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative >>>> >>> about solar...-Kelly > > Actually BillK said it. > > Oooops apologies Kelly. I wouldn't have had BillK as a Rush Limbaugh > listener. {8^D Good dog awmighty. Of course BillK didn't write that (although he commented on it). Of course Kelly was the one baffled that Rush Limbaugh "is so negative." (Who? Limbaugh? Negative? Say it ain't so, Joe!) Here's the original post: ======================================= Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 23 07:32:01 UTC 2011 Previous message: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) Next message: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 6:41 AM, Brent Neal wrote: > > On 22 May, 2011, at 4:12, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 02:03:43PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: >> >> So there's no orders of magnitude available, unless they're binary, >> then you'd get a couple at best. Longevity is up to 40+ years by now, >> so the only other improvements is price, material availability, and >> EROEI. >> > > You're presuming that efficiency is the best metric for solar panels. I would suggest that measurements such as $/watt installed, $/watt amortized and DCF payback time, which are much more relevant to "real world" solar rollout and order of magnitude improvements in those numbers would be profound. > > B I agree 100% with Brent. The Walmart crowd is only interested in how much it costs. The Green crowd is less interested in cost, but only to an extent. We all have good reasons to support solar: Lefties love solar because it disempowers the large centralized energy companies. Righties love solar because it sticks it to the unfriendly countries and people in the middle east. Libertarians and anarchists love solar because it gives more freedom and independence. All that's left to make happy are the Capitalists... once the capitalists are satisfied with solar, it will become very widespread very quickly. Wind is spreading quickly now because at least some Capitalists have found joy in the wind. I think it's only a matter of time for the Capitalists to be made happy on this one. I really truly can't understand why Rush Limbaugh is so negative about solar. Ignorance is one possibility, but I can't imagine that being the only answer because he's held the position for so long. -Kelly ===================== Damien Broderick [now it'll get attributed to me, I suppose...] From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 24 06:53:51 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 08:53:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 02:13:54PM -0700, spike wrote: > Pardon if I repeat the spirit of an earlier post. It would be a game > changer in plenty of people's minds if they would get on a plane, fly out > somewhere in the middle of the western desert US, such as Boise Idaho, or > Las Vegas (what happens there stays there but don't do *that*) rent a car, > drive in pretty much any direction there is a road, look around. What one > will see, regardless of the time of year, is *plenty* of open nearly flat > land, plenty of direct sunlight, and I think investment ops would pencil out > at current ground based fixed installation costs. I can estimate closely You don't need extra land. Look at a typical day in Germany these days http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/34/34773/2.html That picture is about 90% accurate, small scale producers are not shown (the picture would look slightly better if these were included). > enough the cable costs, the load leveling by conversion of coal to octane What are the server costs for a trackerless BitTorrent distribution? Zero. It's all carried by the swarm. What are the land costs, cable costs, transformer costs in decentral solar? Zero. It's all already accounted for by end users. Oh, and forget coal. We're about to peak on coal, and in practice you'd scrub carbon dioxide from air or flue gas, and pipe it into your synfuel process along with hydrogen from water electrolysis. > with external power from massive PV installations and so forth. But it is > important to go out there in person and get a good feel for how much open > useless land is there. Failing that, get on Google Maps and look at it. A > lot of that desert land goes weeks at a time between seeing a single cloud. > > The one area where I may be dead wrong and cannot estimate, is the cost of > defeating the environmentalists opposed to massive ground based solar, and YOU DO NOT NEED MASSIVE GROUND BASED SOLAR. Small scale installations dominate in Germany. It's currently at 3% but provides >20% of total peak demand. 2-3 doublings and it will provide >100% of total demand peak. > of course the current energy companies which may hire environmentalists to > defeat such a notion. That could be huge, perhaps a show stopper. I don't see environmentalists here hating on solar wind and geothermal. If yours do (really?), they're obviously fake environmentalists. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 24 06:59:29 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 08:59:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <4DDB4B8B.5080400@satx.rr.com> References: <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <000601cc19cf$7365d540$5a317fc0$@att.net> <4DDB4B8B.5080400@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20110524065929.GZ19622@leitl.org> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 01:09:15AM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > ===================== > > Damien Broderick > > [now it'll get attributed to me, I suppose...] Proper quoting is hard, let's go shopping. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 24 06:59:52 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 23:59:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> References: <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 08:53:51AM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > I don't see environmentalists here hating on solar wind and geothermal. > If yours do (really?), they're obviously fake environmentalists. Well, wind picks up some concern about bird kills, and big solar projects in national monuments like the Mojave might get some opposition. And there's always NIMBYism, though that's not really environmentalism. -xx- Damien X-) From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 24 08:20:56 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 09:20:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> References: <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > Well, wind picks up some concern about bird kills, and big solar > projects in national monuments like the Mojave might get some > opposition. ?And there's always NIMBYism, though that's not really > environmentalism. > > The 'good' news is that nations appear to be already struggling with high energy prices. This probably indicates that the existing energy industries are reaching the peak of supply / prices that they can extract from the world economy. Once they cannot squeeze much more out of the old energy industries you will see them invest big in the new energy systems. The move away from fossil fuels will come eventually. Quote: Energy Shortages Spreading: Rationing in China, Pakistan, Venezuela, Japan, Argentina; China Resorts to Punitive Prices to Curb Demand Electric power shortages caused by insufficient water levels at hydroelectric stations in some places, and unaffordable oil prices in others, have led to rationing, blackouts, and other problems. ----------------- BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 24 09:57:48 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 11:57:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) In-Reply-To: References: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> Message-ID: 2011/5/23 Max More > Skipping meals without pain has been a significant benefit of having gone > (Neo)Paleo (especially the low-carb version I've been on). I've been flying > on both the last two weekends, and skipped two meals both times, avoiding > lousy food, while observing many people intent on heading straight for > pizza, sandwiches, and candy to fill their desperate needs to eat. > Same here. Even though it must be said that air*plane* food which is still force-fed on economy-class passengers to keep them busy during intercontinental flights is much worse than airport food. Eg, in terminal B at Heathrow one can find a wonderful seafood bar, and it is difficult to go healthier than that... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 24 10:09:14 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:09:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) In-Reply-To: <001c01cc196f$bf5d78a0$3e1869e0$@att.net> References: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> <004201cc195b$7494d110$5dbe7330$@att.net> <001c01cc196f$bf5d78a0$3e1869e0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/23 spike > All you beef devourers out there, what you want is grass fed beef only, > builds strong bodies 12 ways, makes you grow big and strong, helps you look > like? like Max More. Eat that stuff at every opportunity, especially Oregon > grass fed beef, the very best, worth the extra cost, which goes to a good > cause too: me. > BTW, wild game whenever available is by definition grass-fed, and makes for a nutritionally and gastronomically more varied diet than "beef-only". The only problem is that it is often served too aged to make it tender... Lambs and kids, even though not really caught "free in the nature", are also frequently grass-fed in Italy. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 24 10:11:05 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:11:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fat Head (was: sorta mod version of paleo diet) In-Reply-To: References: <4DDA1AA4.7090005@gnolls.org> <004201cc195b$7494d110$5dbe7330$@att.net> <001c01cc196f$bf5d78a0$3e1869e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 24 May 2011 12:09, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Lambs and kids, even though not really caught "free in the nature", are > also frequently grass-fed in Italy. > Ah, let however the record reflect that with "kids" I mean goatlings, not children. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 24 10:52:31 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:52:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 23 May 2011 23:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Once achieved, an AGI is easily replicated. That much I will grant > you. But mixing explicit programming with a training process is very > difficult. > My philosophical point, not a very important one for that matter, is that a plant which has been grown in a garden is indistinguishable from an identical plan which has been build on the basis of an explicit blueprint by, say, the end terminal of a teleporter. The same goes for the software end product of either a training mechanism or an explicit programming effort, even though the second may well be faced with unpractical or intractable difficulties. Accordingly, what makes me doubt very much the idea that we are ourselves AGI produced by some Intelligent Designer is more Occam's razor than any mystical quality which would distinguish ourselves from such a product. > > being fully emulatable like anything else has little to do with > > intelligence. As for qualia, they are a dubious linguistic and > philosophical > > artifact of little use at all.. > > > I suspect "consciousness" to be just an evolutionary artifact that albeit > I dunno... "redness" seems useful for communicating between sentient > beings. So I'm not sure how useless it is. Please elaborate. > Redness is a useful label, which can be made use of in communicating with any entity, "sentient" or not, that can discriminate and handle the relevant feature of red objects. As to what it "really" means, if anything at all, to a PC, to an eagle or to a fellow human being who might well be a philosophical zombie for all I know, I am inclined to contend that the question is undecidable and irrelevant. > I agree that much of what we think we observe is a kind of > hallucination. Our eyes simply aren't good enough optically to produce > the model that is in my mind of the world. > No, what I mean is that we project our own feelings and experience on other things. According to the PNL approach, this may be empirically convenient sometimes, but not only is philosophically unwarranted and useless, it can also entangle us in ineffective behaviours and paradoxes. All right, I guess I see your point. It isn't rape unless it has the > psychological component of doing damage to the other being. So we are > going to be stuck with assholes who won't be happy with their sexbot, > no matter what. Perhaps they will rape my sexbot... and I'll probably > be none to happy about it. ;-) > Yes, this is also an interesting point I had not think of (consensual rape may not qualify for the rapist in the first place). But I was seeing things more from the side of the victim, suggesting that the victims themselves cannot really say to be raped from their own POV unless their dislike and refusal are sincere... Accordingly, those who might like to suffer an *actual* rape, as opposed to just seeing it mimicked, are bound never to have the experience they crave... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 24 11:01:35 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 13:01:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 23 May 2011 23:41, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 01:42:35PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > What justification is there that society owes a living to anyone? > > I actually wouldn't start with any abstract blanket right to "a living"; > society's clearly not rich enough yet for that. We can start with the > right to *make* a living, including fair access to the tools needed for > that. > I think most Americans are inclined to see such questions in terms of what is right for the individuals concerned. There is however another angle, where the question is: which communities are going to flourish, expand, evolve, successfully compete with other communities, etc.? Clearly, the models pertaining to internal allocation of resources are not an irrelevant factor in this respect. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue May 24 13:28:33 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 06:28:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <004801cc1a16$7b5d8170$72188450$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl ... >> of course the current energy companies which may hire >> environmentalists to defeat such a notion. That could be huge, perhaps a show stopper. >I don't see environmentalists here hating on solar wind and geothermal. >If yours do (really?), they're obviously fake environmentalists. -- Eugen* Leitl Our environmental protection law does not distinguish between real and fake environmentalists. Either can sue to gum up the works on a competitor's power generation scheme. Legal costs and delays can easily dominate all the engineering challenges combined. The fake environmentalists are actually the biggest threat: they have actual money behind them. While the real ones are out protesting, sitting in trees and doing silly stuff like that, the corporate ones have teams of lawyers and a highly effective agenda. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue May 24 13:37:05 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 06:37:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> References: <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> Message-ID: <004901cc1a17$abec45a0$03c4d0e0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Damien Sullivan ... On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 08:53:51AM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > I don't see environmentalists here hating on solar wind and geothermal. > If yours do (really?), they're obviously fake environmentalists. >...Well, wind picks up some concern about bird kills, and big solar projects in national monuments like the Mojave might get some opposition. And there's always NIMBYism, though that's not really environmentalism. -xx- Damien X-) Indeed? NIMBYism is the realest form of environmentalism, the kind that has the most political muscle behind it. I see that as the best argument for solar coal to octane installations. You can put it waaaay the hell and gone out in the middle of where it will not bother anyone. We don't need to build long transmission lines, and can use existing highways to transport the resultant liquid fuels to the money. We have all this existing infrastructure for burning octane, so like it or not, octane must come from somewhere for a long time to come. For all its faults, the stuff does have its advantages for transportation and industrial uses. We are good at using it. We can put PVs on rooftops to help start a long transition to mostly electric transportation and domestic HVAC. Food production will be petrochemical based for a long time to come. I can imagine solar powered coal to octane and coal to Diesel being big players in the next decade. spike From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 24 14:01:57 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 16:01:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <004901cc1a17$abec45a0$03c4d0e0$@att.net> References: <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> <004901cc1a17$abec45a0$03c4d0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110524140157.GH19622@leitl.org> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 06:37:05AM -0700, spike wrote: > Indeed? NIMBYism is the realest form of environmentalism, the kind that has NIMBYism isn't environmentalism. > the most political muscle behind it. I see that as the best argument for > solar coal to octane installations. You can put it waaaay the hell and gone I'm afraid it's dead, Jim http://www.theoildrum.com/files/possiblecoalproduction.gif > out in the middle of where it will not bother anyone. We don't need to > build long transmission lines, and can use existing highways to transport > the resultant liquid fuels to the money. Or you could make methane from CO2 and hydrogen, and use the existing natural gas infrastructure. Or use other, C1-derived liquid fuels http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224/ > We have all this existing infrastructure for burning octane, so like it or And methane. And butane, propane. And diesel. > not, octane must come from somewhere for a long time to come. For all its > faults, the stuff does have its advantages for transportation and industrial > uses. We are good at using it. We can put PVs on rooftops to help start a > long transition to mostly electric transportation and domestic HVAC. Food It can be quite quick, particularly for short commuters. In the U.S. 10% of commuters could be electric, probably more in Europe (where many already commute by electrified rail and subway). > production will be petrochemical based for a long time to come. I can Most of the fossil input is methane to make hydrogen for Haber-Bosch, so substituting water electrolysis by peak PV surplus would be straightforward. Ditto adding some 5% of hydrogen to the edge of residential natural gas network. Anaerobic digesters could cover probably up to 20%. > imagine solar powered coal to octane and coal to Diesel being big players in > the next decade. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 24 14:07:33 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 16:07:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> <4DDA339D.8090305@libero.it> Message-ID: On 23 May 2011 22:25, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Perhaps they are just under reported... I don't exactly know how free > the press is in Europe these days, but I've heard Hitchens complain > about there being less freedom of the press in England. > There again, "freedom" is a relatively concept. A rather libertarian legal framework can go hand in hand with a semi-monopolistic control of information ("Freedom of speech is nothing without freedom of radio speech", Ezra Pound used to say) or with a very high pressure on publishers and journalists to conform with some kind of political correctness or other. The angle under which UK is criticised with regard to freedom of press usually has to do with the explosive combination of very restrictive laws on libel and defamation, very high legal costs, and a strong inclination of British court to affirm jurisdiction on cases where only the most tenuous connection with the country exists. This makes for a plaintiff's paradise, because anybody sued in England in this respect is practically compelled to settle by offering retractions, money, apologies, etc., unless they have very deep pockets. And this has a strong influence as well on the freedom of press in other EU countries, given that according to the Brussels Regulation UK judgments are directly enforceable in the entire EU, so that a Bulgarian publisher can go bankrupt because a Romanian rockstar has sued him in UK on the basis that the Bulgarian magazine concerned has ten subscribers in Wales. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 24 14:41:12 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 07:41:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110524140157.GH19622@leitl.org> References: <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> <004901cc1a17$abec45a0$03c4d0e0$@att.net> <20110524140157.GH19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 7:01 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: snip > gas network. Anaerobic digesters could cover probably up to 20%. I worked out trash to syngas to liquid fuel some years ago and came up with less than 5% of the demand. If you consider the thermal value of the stuff that goes down the drain vs the trash . . . I don't think so. Keith From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 24 15:00:41 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 17:00:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> <004901cc1a17$abec45a0$03c4d0e0$@att.net> <20110524140157.GH19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110524150041.GJ19622@leitl.org> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 07:41:12AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 7:01 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > snip > > > gas network. Anaerobic digesters could cover probably up to 20%. > > I worked out trash to syngas to liquid fuel some years ago and came up > with less than 5% of the demand. No, I meant 20% of natural gas demand. The estimate being a bit on the high side, admittedly. In general, the only other options are hydrogen from water electrolysis (from renewable electrical surplus) and synmethane (Sabatier, H2+CO2). > If you consider the thermal value of the stuff that goes down the > drain vs the trash . . . I don't think so. It seems it's better to use the trash organics rather then losing them. Most economic digester sizes would be municipality-scale. There's not enough waste organics in a typical household to make much with it -- farmers being a notable exception. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 24 15:01:24 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 11:01:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Prophecy depot - not another loony In-Reply-To: <20110523192648.hqi21pob7t44o0k4@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <20110523192648.hqi21pob7t44o0k4@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <4DDBC844.5080903@lightlink.com> natasha at natasha.cc wrote: > I just happend upon this page > Your subject line had me very confused for a while. :-) I guess you meant "not another loony" in the sense of "Oh no, not another loony". At first I thought you were trying to say that we should not make the mistake of thinking he was just another loony! Richard Loosemore From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue May 24 15:11:38 2011 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 17:11:38 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> Message-ID: Yes, I now, he is referring to me. Guess who I am referring to! But, you see, you dislike crackin as so expensive that's impossible to use it. I don't see why that would be. Cracking is the best energy option for the near future by my view. Greens dislike it. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 24 15:18:02 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 17:18:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review Message-ID: <20110524151802.GA14678@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Eugen Leitl ----- From: Eugen Leitl Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 16:24:16 +0200 To: tt at postbiota.org, astro at postbiota.org Subject: UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13506289 UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review Jonathan Amos By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Skylon concept (Reaction Engines) Skylon would operate from a runway A revolutionary UK spaceplane concept has been boosted by the conclusions of an important technical review. http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/bispartners/ukspaceagency/docs/skylon-assessment-report-pub.pdf The proposed Skylon vehicle would do the job of a big rocket but operate like an airliner, taking off and landing at a conventional runway. The European Space Agency's propulsion experts have assessed the details of the concept and found no showstoppers. They want the next phase of development to include a ground demonstration of its key innovation - its Sabre engine. This power unit is designed to breathe oxygen from the air in the early phases of flight - just like jet engines - before switching to full rocket mode as the Skylon vehicle climbs out of the atmosphere. It is the spaceplane's "single-stage-to-orbit" operation and its re-usability that makes Skylon such an enticing prospect and one that could substantially reduce the cost of space activity, say its proponents. Mature concept The UK Space Agency (UKSA) had commissioned Esa to evaluate the design, and the European organisation's staff reported on Tuesday that they had not seen any obvious flaws. ?Start Quote From what we've seen so far, we can't identify any showstoppers? Dr Mark Ford Esa's head of propulsion engineering "Esa has not identified any critical topics that would prevent a successful development of the engine," they write in their review. Skylon has been in development in the UK in various guises for nearly 30 years. It is an evolution of an idea first pursued by British Aerospace and Rolls Royce in the 1980s. That concept, known as Hotol, did have technical weaknesses that eventually led the aerospace companies to end their involvement. But the engineers behind the project continued to refine their thinking and they are now working independently on a much-updated vehicle in a company called Reaction Engines Limited (REL). Sabre Engine (Reaction Engines) Realising the Sabre propulsion system is essential to the success of the project. The engine would burn hydrogen and oxygen to provide thrust - but in the lower atmosphere this oxygen would be taken directly from the air. This means the 84m-long spaceplane can fly lighter from the outset with a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, enabling it to make a single leap to orbit, rather than using and dumping propellant stages on the ascent - as is the case with current expendable rockets. But flying an integrated air-breathing and rocket engine brings unique challenges. At high speeds, Sabre would have to manage 1,000-degree gasses entering its intake. This hot air would need to be cooled prior to being compressed and burnt with hydrogen. Reaction Engines' answer is a novel precooler heat-exchanger. This would incorporate arrays of extremely fine piping to extract the heat and plunge the intake gases to minus 130C in just 1/100th of a second. Ordinarily, the moisture in the air would be expected to freeze out rapidly, covering the network of fine piping in a blanket of frost and dislocating its operation. Regulatory support But REL says it has developed an anti-frost solution that will allow the heat exchanger to run and run. Esa's technical staff have witnessed this "secret technology" on the lab bench and can confirm it works. The agency's experts say they also fully expect a scaled up version of the precooler technology to function properly this summer when it is tested in conjunction with a standard jet engine. "We've not looked at everything; we've focussed on the engine and the [Skylon's] structure," explained Dr Mark Ford, Esa's head of propulsion engineering. "But from what we've seen so far, we can't identify any showstoppers. It's quite an innovative technology if it works." Assuming, this summer's test programme does indeed achieve its goals, Reaction Engines says private investors will release ?220m ($350m) of funds to take Skylon into the next phase of its development. This would include the production of a ground demonstrator that would show off Sabre's full engine cycle - its air-breathing and rocket modes and the transition between the two. Test rig (Reaction Engines) Sabre's precooler technology will be put through its paces on a test rig this summer The price for launching a kilogram of payload into a geostationary orbit - the location for today's big telecoms satellites - is currently more than $15,000 (?9,000). Skylon's re-usability could bring that down to less than $1,000, claims REL. If the vehicle ever does go into full production, the investment required will probably be in the region of $9-12bn (?5.5-7.5bn), but the company will not be looking to government for that money. "The government hasn't got that sort of money and we want this project to be a privately financed one," said Alan Bond, the managing director of REL. "What government can do for us however is deal with the legislation that surrounds the eventual introduction of a spaceplane - how it is certified and how it conforms to certain aspects of international space law. And the government has already indicated its willingness to do all this in the recent budget." Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET at bbc.co.uk ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 24 15:57:48 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 11:57:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Yes, I now, he is referring to me. Guess who I am referring to! > > But, you see, you dislike crackin as so expensive that's impossible to > use it. > > I don't see why that would be. You don't, huh? Then produce some information to back up your claim. At the moment, the gas companies who generate the waste water have not proposed any way to clean it economically, so what they do instead is either: a) Shop around to find municipalities that are so desperate for cash that they will allow the water to be passed through their existing water treatment facilities. Many municipalities will not allow this, because they point out that ordinary treatment facilities cannot handle the chemicals...... that is, the chemicals that are KNOWN to be present. b) Shop around for a muncipality that will simply allow the water to be dumped into the environment. Since nobody has proposed a way to process the water economically, the buck passes to you, since you claim that you "don't see why [it would be prohibitively expensive to clean the water, and secure the technology against all the other damage it causes]". I am afraid that "I don't see why that would be" is not a valid scientific argument. --- And, without any arguments to back up your assertion, the politically charged insults that you injected into the discussion make my comment about "Arguing with Idiots" seem pretty appropriate. (Thanks, Glenn Beck: you invented such a spot-on phrase to apply to yourself and your friends!). Richard Loosemore From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 24 18:09:20 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 20:09:20 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> Il 24/05/2011 17:57, Richard Loosemore ha scritto: > Tomaz Kristan wrote: >> Yes, I now, he is referring to me. Guess who I am referring to! >> >> But, you see, you dislike crackin as so expensive that's impossible to >> use it. >> I don't see why that would be. > You don't, huh? Then produce some information to back up your claim. At > the moment, the gas companies who generate the waste water have not > proposed any way to clean it economically, so what they do instead is > either: Well, do they really must clean it up or not? You have not stated clearly what pollutants there are inside this water. Given they have already fracked somewhere, I suppose the "green" activists would have recovered some samples of used water, analysed them and come up with a list of these poisons. If they exist. By the way, given the current financial state of the US at federal, state, city lower level, I think the number of cash strapped administration accepting fracking will grow. This happen when people waste resources in silly social engineering projects. Mirco From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue May 24 18:27:31 2011 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 20:27:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> Message-ID: Water kilometers bellow the surface must be cleaned? Since when and why? I know, that the surface waters should be cleaned, no doubt. Or any water which can poison a city. But demand to clean all the water where the oil was recently ... is just so Green. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 24 18:42:56 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 14:42:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> Message-ID: <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Water kilometers bellow the surface must be cleaned? Since when and why? > > I know, that the surface waters should be cleaned, no doubt. Or any > water which can poison a city. But demand to clean all the water where > the oil was recently ... is just so Green. This is almost fun. Do you know what is the subject under discussion here? This is called "hydraulic fracturing". It is about taking a large flow of water from rivers, adding (known + unknown) chemicals to the water, then heating it up and sending it underground, where it forces the gas out of the rocks, and comes back up again as a gas-water mixture. Then the gas is extracted from the mixture, and ..... oh dear. The water that comes back up seems to be poisoned. If that is too complicated for you to understand, don't worry. If (and I am only saying "if") you are ranting right-wing nut, people don't really expect you to understand such things anyway. Sigh. Richard Loosemore From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 24 18:48:01 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 14:48:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] End of hydraulic fracturing thread... In-Reply-To: <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> References: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DDBFD61.2050803@lightlink.com> In case anyone is tempted to reply further on this thread, I apologize for wasting bandwidth arguing with obviously silly points of view. I am grading exams, and that brings on a sort of temporary insanity, where all distractions, no matter how silly, are seized with both hands.... Richard Loosemore From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 24 18:50:52 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 11:50:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110524150041.GJ19622@leitl.org> References: <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> <004901cc1a17$abec45a0$03c4d0e0$@att.net> <20110524140157.GH19622@leitl.org> <20110524150041.GJ19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 07:41:12AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: >> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 7:01 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >> snip >> >> > gas network. Anaerobic digesters could cover probably up to 20%. >> >> I worked out trash to syngas to liquid fuel some years ago and came up >> with less than 5% of the demand. > > No, I meant 20% of natural gas demand. US 2007 652,900 M cubic meters per year "Their largest facility, the West Point Treatment Plant, processes 133 million gallons per day. "The West Point Wastewater Treatment Plant serves a 126- square-mile area with a population of 670,000. The anaerobic digesters at the plant produce 1.4 million cubic feet of digester gas per day." http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/pdfs/bamf_wastewater.pdf 1.4 M x 308 M/0.67 M = 644 M cf/day or 16 M cubic meters per day or 6,650 M cubic meters per year. 6,650 M /652,900 is ~1% > The estimate being a bit > on the high side, admittedly. Yes, about 20 times. Keith From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue May 24 18:53:42 2011 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 20:53:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> References: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> Message-ID: I do understand. Fracking is going so well, that the Greens are desperate to stop it. Interesting hysteria. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue May 24 18:58:14 2011 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 20:58:14 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> Message-ID: Not everybody is crazy, fortunately. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/24/us-britain-shale-gas-report-idUSTRE74N3CR20110524 *There is no evidence that fracking, a process that involves injecting water, sand and chemicals into shale rock formations to extract trapped gas, is directly harmful to the environment, the Energy and Climate Change Committee said in a report published late on Monday. [UK]* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 24 19:08:08 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 21:08:08 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> <004901cc1a17$abec45a0$03c4d0e0$@att.net> <20110524140157.GH19622@leitl.org> <20110524150041.GJ19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110524190808.GN19622@leitl.org> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 11:50:52AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > > The estimate being a bit > > on the high side, admittedly. > > Yes, about 20 times. I've seen estimates of >20% domestic demand for Germany. I think it's too high, probably meaning methane as guise for biofuels. Biofuels don't work. The only interesting part about methane is extensive infrastructure and processes present, and it being a gateway drug to syngases. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 24 19:25:53 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:25:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: <20110524190808.GN19622@leitl.org> References: <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> <20110524065351.GX19622@leitl.org> <20110524065952.GA31966@ofb.net> <004901cc1a17$abec45a0$03c4d0e0$@att.net> <20110524140157.GH19622@leitl.org> <20110524150041.GJ19622@leitl.org> <20110524190808.GN19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 11:50:52AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: >> > The estimate being a bit >> > on the high side, admittedly. >> >> Yes, about 20 times. > > I've seen estimates of >20% domestic demand for Germany. I think I will skip that opening. Keith From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 24 19:26:12 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:26:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110524192612.GA18783@ofb.net> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 08:58:14PM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Not everybody is crazy, fortunately. > > [1]http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/24/us-britain-shale-gas-repor > t-idUSTRE74N3CR20110524 > > There is no evidence that fracking, a process that involves injecting > water, sand and chemicals into shale rock formations to extract trapped > gas, is directly harmful to the environment, the Energy and Climate > Change Committee said in a report published late on Monday. [UK] > 1. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/24/us-britain-shale-gas-report-idUSTRE74N3CR20110524 Fracking isn't the problem, drilling is: http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/05/13/13greenwire-baffled-about-fracking-youre-not-alone-44383.html But by the definition of industry, along with most everyone who followed oil and gas issues before the current shale drilling boom, fracturing didn't cause those problems. That is because the companies are saying, specifically, that no one has ever proven that hydraulic fracturing fluid rises up a mile or so from the production zone, through layers of rock, to pollute drinking water aquifers. They rarely, if ever, clarify that regulators have repeatedly linked water contamination and other environmental problems to other aspects of drilling. For example, a well blowout during fracturing last month in Pennsylvania, sent fluid to a nearby stream, threatening surface water, not groundwater (Greenwire, May 4). And a well-known contamination case in Dimock, Pa., involved methane -- not fracturing fluid -- in local water wells (Greenwire, Dec. 16, 2010). Environmentalists and other industry critics consider this distinction to be nothing more than word games concocted by oil and gas lobbyists. Whatever you call it, they say, gas production is fouling air and water. ... But state regulators concluded that hydraulic fracturing was not to blame for the problems with Amos' water well. They suggested that if Amos had been exposed to 2-BE it may have come from household cleaning fluids, such as Windex, rather than her groundwater. ... A 2004 EPA study found that fracturing posed "little or no threat" of groundwater contamination, except perhaps when diesel is used. But the agency never tested the water itself. Instead it relied on a survey of state regulators. Critics like Fox rejoin that it is hard to prove the absence of something without looking for it. Jackson and his fellow researchers at Duke do not completely exonerate fracturing from problems, either. He said more research is needed into whether the intense pressure used to crack open shales, much higher than in conventional drilling, might be the cause of those leaky pipes allowing methane into well water. ... "It surprised me that there was so little systemic work on this," Jackson said. "We don't know much about the fracking." From spike66 at att.net Tue May 24 19:14:56 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:14:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nimbys and corporate environmentalists Message-ID: <005301cc1a46$decf9240$9c6eb6c0$@att.net> ~.corporate environmentalists and NIMBYs are not "real" environmentalists. There are plenty of different and opposing brands of environmentalism. Discounting for the moment the corporate environmental hired guns and the NIMBYs, restricting our discussion to bona fide tree sitting bunny hugging greens, even there we have plenty of opposing camps. For instance, most of the green crowd will acknowledge that we as a species really do need to generate power, lots of it, just to survive in our current configuration. That immediately fractures the remaining community. Are they bird huggers or tortoise huggers? This would determine if they are in the anti-wind crowd or the anti-solar crowd, which fight each other. Perhaps they are in the minority camp that recognizes nuclear power is relatively clean but does risk creating an enormous radioactive wildlife preserve. The courts never ask what the plaintiff proposes as an alternative means of generating power. Interesting side note: my friend's PV installation in Oregon was put on hold by the threat of environmentalists seizing a piece of ground he was going to use as a water holding area, pumping water to there during peak solar, draining it off at night onto crops. He argued that wildlife can use the waterhole while it exists, which would benefit wildlife. On the contrary, they argued, the existence of a water hole in the desert would cause certain migrating foul to get in the habit of stopping by regularly, causing them perhaps to overbreed, disrupting natural migrations and so forth. Even if they grant that there may be *more* birds, every time there is a string of cloudy days, their waterhole disappears. So they risk being less comfortable. Better the birds are never hatched than to perish of thirst in a desert. The be-kind-to-animals subset has stalled the PV effort. There is a segment of the green crowd which has recognized that all known forms of power generation are environmentally destructive or risky in some way, so they propose that we return to some pre-industrial pre technology existence. They don't seem to recognize that humanity's current population is waaay beyond the environmental carrying capacity in many if not most places on this planet. When it comes right down to choosing who must die to create this natural green utopia, these same environmentalists never seem to select themselves or their own families. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 24 19:28:12 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 12:28:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> <4DDA339D.8090305@libero.it> Message-ID: <20110524192812.GB18783@ofb.net> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 04:07:33PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > There again, "freedom" is a relatively concept. A rather libertarian > legal framework can go hand in hand with a semi-monopolistic control of > information ("Freedom of speech is nothing without freedom of radio A libertarian legal framework can also go hand in hand with a monopolistic control of land, or any other resource. Absolute monarchy is libertarian, if you grant that someone owns all the land. Aristocracy/oligarchy is libertarian, if a few people own all the land. -xx- Damien X-) From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 24 20:33:09 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 16:33:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <20110524192612.GA18783@ofb.net> References: <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> <20110524192612.GA18783@ofb.net> Message-ID: <4DDC1605.1000203@lightlink.com> Damien Sullivan wrote: > Fracking isn't the problem, drilling is: [snip] I think that the situation can fairly be summed up in this way. Most of the "official" studies, investigations and official reports are questionable, for the simple reason that they often come to conclusions that seem carefully constructed to focus the best possible light on some narrow aspect of the technology, while pretending that other aspects (of far greater significance) simply do not exist. Example: discussing the leakage of water from deep underground as a result of seepage up a completely ideal drill hole (with perfect casing). Under those circumstances, leakage is almost non-existent! But real wells, drilled by real operators who don't actually bother with proper casings, etc etc, do blow out and release vast amounts of waste water. That is just one example of turning a blind eye to the real world (there are so many others that I would be here all afternoon writing them down, if started). And these bogus reports have (almost all) been happening in situations where the agencies commissioning them have been bought by the industry. As witness, the UK government committee that reported today and gave the green light to fracking in Britain. That report was essentially a joke: fracking, it said, is okay in Fairyland. Richard Loosemore From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 24 22:53:15 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 15:53:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review In-Reply-To: <20110524151802.GA14678@leitl.org> References: <20110524151802.GA14678@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 8:18 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > ----- Forwarded message from Eugen Leitl ----- > > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13506289 > > UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review > > By Jonathan Amos - Science correspondent, BBC News > > Forbes - May 24, 2011 - Skylon, an revolutionary UK spaceplane concept has been boosted by the conclusions of an important technical review. I have been aware of this since the Space Access conference in April where Roger Longstaff of Reaction Engines gave a well received presentation. Reaction Engines worked in my request for a suborbital payload release which you can see on page ten of the User's manual. http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/downloads/SKYLON_User_%20Manual_rev1%5B3%5D.pdf If you go into their cost graphs (Figure 10, page 23 here: http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/downloads/ssp_skylon_ver2.pdf0) at three launches an hour (25,000 per year) the predicted cost is about $150 per kg. Double that to get to GEO and it is to high for power sats by a factor of 3. However, if you use the same number of flights suborbital with a 30 ton payload and laser propulsion for the delta V between suborbital and GEO, the amount of cargo arriving in GEO is between 3 and 4 times for a moderate investment in lasers and GEO bounce mirrors. (~20 tons per flight vs 5 tons) That reduced the cost to GEO to $100/kg or less. As I have been ranting about for some months. Keith From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 24 23:41:57 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 16:41:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-radical-alternative-to-nuclear-reactors To give you an idea of how long some of this has been around. (For those who have not been on this for 35 years.) Keith From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed May 25 05:46:50 2011 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 07:46:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <4DDC1605.1000203@lightlink.com> References: <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> <20110524192612.GA18783@ofb.net> <4DDC1605.1000203@lightlink.com> Message-ID: What do you want? That everybody was frighten by francking as much as you are? With no hard proofs something is wrong with fracked oil or gas? Pure Green ideology? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alfio.puglisi at gmail.com Wed May 25 09:19:41 2011 From: alfio.puglisi at gmail.com (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 11:19:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] energy modelling Message-ID: After all the threads about solar energy, fracking and so on, some could find interesting this introductory bird's-eye view about systems, resources and thermodynamics: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7924 Alfio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed May 25 12:01:09 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 14:01:09 +0200 Subject: [ExI] UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review In-Reply-To: References: <20110524151802.GA14678@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110525120109.GY19622@leitl.org> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 03:53:15PM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > That reduced the cost to GEO to $100/kg or less. > > As I have been ranting about for some months. This is cool stuff for sure, but Skylon has been in the making 50 years by now. Making accurate cost predictions about a technology (or even several speculative technologies) that hasn't flown yet nevermind might never fly isn't very useful. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed May 25 15:57:37 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 08:57:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] energy modelling In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I commented http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7924#comment-806349 Keith 2011/5/25 Alfio Puglisi : > After all the threads about solar energy, fracking and so on, some could > find interesting this introductory bird's-eye view about systems, resources > and thermodynamics: > http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7924 > Alfio > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 25 16:37:09 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 11:37:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story Message-ID: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> Some flagrant self-promotion-- My new Tor.com story is up at: Damien Broderick From aware at awareresearch.com Wed May 25 17:03:06 2011 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 10:03:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > An enjoyable romp. Noticed one typo: repairs instead of repair. - Jef From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed May 25 17:39:40 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 10:39:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Aware wrote: > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: >> >> > > An enjoyable romp. ?Noticed one typo: repairs instead of repair. Yes. One quibble, thermite is just about impossible to get going with a propane torch. From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 25 17:39:53 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 12:39:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DDD3EE9.7040601@satx.rr.com> On 5/25/2011 12:03 PM, Aware wrote: > Noticed one typo: repairs instead of repair. Dang. Nothing much I can do about it, though. (I have alerted them to a couple of now-out-of-date details in the biography link, though.) Damien Broderick From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 25 17:51:42 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 12:51:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DDD41AE.3000208@satx.rr.com> On 5/25/2011 12:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > One quibble, thermite is just about impossible to get going with > a propane torch. Ah, but this is *futuristic* propane. ;-D From spike66 at att.net Wed May 25 17:46:07 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 10:46:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Aware Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 10:03 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] a very silly story On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> >An enjoyable romp. Noticed one typo: repairs instead of repair. - Jef Sure but a geek would hafta love any story which contained the comment: "I tried not to stare at the Bessel function graphs dancing on his naked skull." {8^D Granted, Bessel functions do not generate particularly interesting graphs, but I am a huge fan of them in any case. Such quiet power and grace are found in this benign looking mathematical device. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed May 25 17:54:59 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 10:54:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00a401cc1b04$de760f40$9b622dc0$@att.net> ... On Behalf Of Keith Henson Subject: Re: [ExI] a very silly story On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Aware wrote: > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Damien Broderick wrote: >> >> > ermite-burns-in-no-particular-order> > >> An enjoyable romp. ?Noticed one typo: repairs instead of repair. >Yes. One quibble, thermite is just about impossible to get going with a propane torch. Ja, you can use a magnesium fuse. Oh that's a fun one. {8^D spike From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Wed May 25 18:16:06 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 11:16:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> <20110524192612.GA18783@ofb.net> <4DDC1605.1000203@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110525181606.GA8360@ofb.net> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 07:46:50AM +0200, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > What do you want? That everybody was frighten by francking as much as > you are? > > With no hard proofs something is wrong with fracked oil or gas? > Pure Green ideology? I trust you somehow missed my link regarding evidence of the problems with deep drilling for gas: http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/05/13/13greenwire-baffled-about-fracking-youre-not-alone-44383.html Fracking narrowly defined may not be proven unsafe (though some experts are hesitant to call it safe) but it's part of an unsafe procedure. -xx- Damien X-) From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed May 25 19:10:27 2011 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 21:10:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] UK Skylon spaceplane passes key review In-Reply-To: <20110525120109.GY19622@leitl.org> References: <20110524151802.GA14678@leitl.org> <20110525120109.GY19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: Quoting the first sentence from you link. *Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," got a clean bill of health this week in the first scientific look at the safety of the oil and production practice.* * * Now ... what can I say? The rest in the article is obsolete. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed May 25 21:54:58 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 22:54:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] energy modelling In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DDD7AB2.3060808@aleph.se> Nice essay, but it suffers from the usual peak oil flaw of focusing on Hubbert peak curves. Basically, successful retrodictions do not prove that a methodology is good at predictions. I made a simple example to show the problem with the method: http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2011/05/why_i_dont_trust_hubbert_peak_arguments.html Basically, you can't trust the prediction until you are almost at the peak. And to know you are at the peak you need separate information, you obviously can't use your prediction. The same mechanism makes Bass technology diffusion curves hopeless at prediction despite their great track record in retrodiction. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Wed May 25 22:14:47 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 23:14:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> Fun story! spike wrote: > Sure but a geek would hafta love any story which contained the comment: > "I tried not to stare at the Bessel function graphs dancing on his naked > skull." > Bessel function of the first or second kind, or both? Can be important - you don't want look like you are in the wrong orthogonal function gang. As for thermite, my standard ignition method was always a magnesium-oxidizer mixture. Of course, I often added a bit extra to get some aluminium to lift into the air and burn freely - made such a lovely infrared pulse, and tended to evaporate the soda cans I put the mixture in. Tonight at the pub, after discovering that all academics around the table had a background of ill-adviced teenage pyrotechnics, we came up with the idea that all politicians should be given a course in explosives chemistry. Both to make them really understand the challenges involved in doing terrorism, see that kids need to be allowed to mix chemicals, and of course weeding out the too overconfident. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed May 25 22:18:19 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 17:18:19 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Many Anders Theory Message-ID: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> nice pic at From anders at aleph.se Wed May 25 22:26:58 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 23:26:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Many Anders Theory In-Reply-To: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> References: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <4DDD8232.7050502@aleph.se> Damien Broderick wrote: > nice pic at It was a real challenge to avoid collapsing my superposition while making the photo, but since the MWI rules supreme in Oxford we managed to get away with it. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Wed May 25 22:58:52 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 15:58:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Many Anders Theory In-Reply-To: <4DDD8232.7050502@aleph.se> References: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> <4DDD8232.7050502@aleph.se> Message-ID: <008801cc1b2f$51fd4f30$f5f7ed90$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] The Many Anders Theory Damien Broderick wrote: >> nice pic at > >It was a real challenge to avoid collapsing my superposition while making the photo, but since the MWI rules supreme in Oxford we managed to get away with it. -- Anders Sandberg, Anders I can imagine an old American TV staple the Twilight Zone, where one keeps seeing Anderses, just far enough removed in time and space that it theoretically *could* be the same guy, apparently getting around very quickly, but certainly giving the impression that there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, maybe thousands of Anderses, harmlessly Andersing about, causing one to question one's own sanity as one sees each new Anders, each behaving in exact Andersonian consistency as the previous had Andersed, all perfectly benign but terrifyingly numerous, as you enter... the Twilight Zone. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Wed May 25 23:52:44 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 19:52:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Many Anders Theory In-Reply-To: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> References: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20110525195244.the7b7x4xwgokcsk@webmail.natasha.cc> Superb! Quoting Damien Broderick : > nice pic at > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 26 01:57:43 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 21:57:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/24 Stefano Vaj : > Accordingly, those who might like to suffer an *actual* rape, as opposed to > just seeing it mimicked, are bound never to have the experience they > crave... :-) a masochist pleaded, "Hurt me." the sadist replied, "No." it may be an oldy, but this appropriate context rarely comes up in my normal experience. :) From msd001 at gmail.com Thu May 26 01:53:06 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 21:53:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Many Anders Theory In-Reply-To: <008801cc1b2f$51fd4f30$f5f7ed90$@att.net> References: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> <4DDD8232.7050502@aleph.se> <008801cc1b2f$51fd4f30$f5f7ed90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:58 PM, spike wrote: > Anders I can imagine an old American TV staple the Twilight Zone, where one > keeps seeing Anderses, just far enough removed in time and space that it > theoretically *could* be the same guy, apparently getting around very > quickly, but certainly giving the impression that there are dozens, perhaps > hundreds, maybe thousands of Anderses, harmlessly Andersing about, causing > one to question one's own sanity as one sees each new Anders, each behaving > in exact Andersonian consistency as the previous had Andersed, all perfectly > benign but terrifyingly numerous, as you enter... the Twilight Zone. "Being John Malkovich" during the scene where John Malkovich entered the portal... also Series 4 of new Dr.Who when The Master turns everyone on Earth into himself.... It's interesting that this scenario is lurking out there in humanity's collective mind. Also interesting that we are so casual with references to the collective mind as a given - that it either exists or will exist. hmm. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Thu May 26 07:32:36 2011 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 00:32:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- > From: Keith Henson > To: ExI chat list > Sent: Tue, May 24, 2011 4:41:57 PM > Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission > > http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-radical-alternative-to-nuclear-reactors > > To give you an idea of how long some of this has been around.? (For > those who have not been on this for 35 years.) Hey Keith. I am sure you are aware that I am proponent of SBSP but one thing that troubles me is that I have yet to see a good plan to get rid of the waste heat generated by gigawatt power generation in the vacuum of space. Do you have any suggestions on how to cool an SPS so that the resistance of the power conduits does not choke off the power supply? Anybody? Stuart LaForge "There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure."- Dwight D. Eisenhower From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 26 08:20:00 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 10:20:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20110526082000.GE19622@leitl.org> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 12:32:36AM -0700, The Avantguardian wrote: > Hey Keith. I am sure you are aware that I am proponent of SBSP but one thing > that troubles me is that I have yet to see a good plan to get rid of the waste > heat generated by gigawatt power generation in the vacuum of space. Do you have At ~AU there's about 1.3 kW/m^2 energy flux upon a flat surface. The other side is radiatively coupled (via thermal ~blackbody emission) to the cosmic microwave background. So in practice you'd get about 300-400 K operation temperature. If there are hotspots (e.g. power electronics) you can use heat spreaders and/or liquid metal in the radiators. > any suggestions on how to cool an SPS so that the resistance of the power > conduits does not choke off the power supply? Anybody? An ideal setup for an SPS is to make solar cells double as phased array on on the other side, so they can use realtime beamforming to track ground-side rectenna or rectennas array(s) (the beam can be retargeted within few ~ms). > Stuart LaForge > > > "There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, > and energy of her citizens cannot cure."- Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From spike66 at att.net Thu May 26 10:01:07 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 03:01:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <003801cc1b8b$d5e99180$81bcb480$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of The Avantguardian Subject: Re: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission ----- Original Message ---- >> From: Keith Henson >> Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission > >> http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-radical-alternative-to-nuclear-reactors >...Hey Keith. I am sure you are aware that I am proponent of SBSP but one thing that troubles me is that I have yet to see a good plan to get rid of the waste heat generated by gigawatt power generation in the vacuum of space. Do you have any suggestions on how to cool an SPS so that the resistance of the power conduits does not choke off the power supply? Anybody? Stuart LaForge Hi Avant, radiating heat from space based solar collectors is not a show stopper, not even a show slower. Radiators do require more payload, but with a clear view to all that cold space all around, you can treat it as a blackbody at 3 Kelvin as your cold reservoir, and use our old friend Boltzmann's law. Now if the subject is an MBrain, we need to think carefully where the waste heat goes, but not for solar power. spike From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 26 10:35:00 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 12:35:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: <003801cc1b8b$d5e99180$81bcb480$@att.net> References: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <003801cc1b8b$d5e99180$81bcb480$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110526103500.GJ19622@leitl.org> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 03:01:07AM -0700, spike wrote: > Now if the subject is an MBrain, we need to think carefully where the waste > heat goes, but not for solar power. You probably want to have at least a couple of absorption and reradiation steps in order not to waste anything. SiC should be able to work at 800 K, and that would emit enough to power the high layers of the circumstellar node cloud. The outer layer could be actually ultra-cold, using reversible computation, spintronics, QC, and similar. It would be interesting to see how much orbiting material you'll need to make it work, and what the total emission spectrum would be. It would definitely look quite strange, but unfortunately quite dim. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 26 10:57:32 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 03:57:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chinese prisoners forced to do both physical and virtual labor Message-ID: I find this story extremely disturbing on many levels... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Thu May 26 10:48:40 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 03:48:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Many Anders Theory In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> <4DDD8232.7050502@aleph.se> <008801cc1b2f$51fd4f30$f5f7ed90$@att.net> Message-ID: > > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:58 PM, spike wrote: > > Anders I can imagine an old American TV staple the Twilight Zone, where > one > > keeps seeing Anderses, just far enough removed in time and space that it > > theoretically *could* be the same guy, apparently getting around very > > quickly, but certainly giving the impression that there are dozens, > perhaps > > hundreds, maybe thousands of Anderses, harmlessly Andersing about, > causing > > one to question one's own sanity as one sees each new Anders, each > behaving > > in exact Andersonian consistency as the previous had Andersed, all > perfectly > > benign but terrifyingly numerous, as you enter... the Twilight Zone. > I think Anders is just the guy to xox in the thousands or even the tens of thousands! They could be distributed throughout the globe, but especially to the areas & communities that might need them most. : ) As for parallel earths, I would be shocked to encounter an "evil Anders" or a "womenizing jerk Anders!" hee! John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 26 12:09:00 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 05:09:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 12:32 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: snip > Hey Keith. I am sure you are aware that I am proponent of SBSP but one thing > that troubles me is that I have yet to see a good plan to get rid of the waste > heat generated by gigawatt power generation in the vacuum of space. Do you have > any suggestions on how to cool an SPS so that the resistance of the power > conduits does not choke off the power supply? Anybody? For large radiators, the dominant mass is the heat transfer fluid. Back in the late 70s Eric Drexler came up with an idea for a pseudo fluid of dust and gas where the heat capacity of a gas was increased to that of air or more while reducing the pressure to near zero. The original articles are linked here: http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5news1979.htm, see July and August issues. More recently I worked out the best temperature for a carnot cycle engine. Assuming the per kW mass of light concentrators and radiators is about the same, the ideal temperature came in around 100 C with a fairly broad optimum. Taking these together, space radiators using dust and low pressure gas in rubberized fabric like an air mattress can dump about 1/4 kW per side per square meter. Half a GW takes a square km of radiator. Any solid can be ground up and used for radiator pseudo fluid. Lunar regolith run through a small vibratory ball mill would work just fine. Keith > Stuart LaForge > > > "There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, > and energy of her citizens cannot cure."- Dwight D. Eisenhower > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 26 12:16:01 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 05:16:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: <20110526082000.GE19622@leitl.org> References: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <20110526082000.GE19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 1:20 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: snip > An ideal setup for an SPS is to make solar cells double as phased > array on on the other side, so they can use realtime beamforming to track > ground-side rectenna or rectennas array(s) (the beam can be retargeted within > few ~ms). Solarn has proposed this design. They think they can get 17 kW per kg of material, 85 times the 5 kg/kW I have been using. If they are right and I am right about reducing the cost to GEO, then the energy and carbon problems will be oversolved. Keith From anders at aleph.se Thu May 26 13:07:14 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:07:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Many Anders Theory In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD802B.2010303@satx.rr.com> <4DDD8232.7050502@aleph.se> <008801cc1b2f$51fd4f30$f5f7ed90$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DDE5082.7010400@aleph.se> I think I would like being xoxed. It is nice being me. Besides, there is so much to see and do. So much to Anders. (I love being a verb. And an adjective. And a preposition... ) -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 26 13:15:56 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 15:15:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <4DDD41AE.3000208@satx.rr.com> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <4DDD41AE.3000208@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <20110526131556.GA19622@leitl.org> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 12:51:42PM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > On 5/25/2011 12:39 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > >> One quibble, thermite is just about impossible to get going with >> a propane torch. > > Ah, but this is *futuristic* propane. ;-D Skipping embedded thermite igniter helps the story flow. There's such a thing as too much detail. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From timhalterman at gmail.com Thu May 26 13:27:53 2011 From: timhalterman at gmail.com (Tim Halterman) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 08:27:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Chinese prisoners forced to do both physical and virtual labor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Why do you find this disturbing? Sounds more appealing than stamping license plates(US version) and leaps and bounds above mining (N Korea, Chinese? version). They've constructed a market for these goods by providing them at such a low cost to the consumer, this low cost could not have been achieved in a minimum wage market like the US. Tim 2011/5/26 John Grigg > I find this story extremely disturbing on many levels... > > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam > > John > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 26 14:03:26 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 16:03:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] energy modelling In-Reply-To: <4DDD7AB2.3060808@aleph.se> References: <4DDD7AB2.3060808@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20110526140326.GJ19622@leitl.org> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:54:58PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Nice essay, but it suffers from the usual peak oil flaw of focusing on > Hubbert peak curves. Basically, successful retrodictions do not prove > that a methodology is good at predictions. I made a simple example to > show the problem with the method: > > http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2011/05/why_i_dont_trust_hubbert_peak_arguments.html > > Basically, you can't trust the prediction until you are almost at the The problem is that some predictions have harsher outcomes than others, so we can't treat the caviar peak the same way as the fossil peak. > peak. And to know you are at the peak you need separate information, you That peaks are only recogniziable as such in the rear view mirror is a The Oil Drum trope. And of course nobody is just looking at the peaks; there's a real reality which produces these bell curves. These are just tl;dr versions for the people who don't have the time to dig into the details. An executive summary. > obviously can't use your prediction. The same mechanism makes Bass > technology diffusion curves hopeless at prediction despite their great > track record in retrodiction. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From spike66 at att.net Thu May 26 15:48:57 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 08:48:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: <20110526103500.GJ19622@leitl.org> References: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <003801cc1b8b$d5e99180$81bcb480$@att.net> <20110526103500.GJ19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <003c01cc1bbc$6cb4c690$461e53b0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl ... Subject: Re: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 03:01:07AM -0700, spike wrote: >> Now if the subject is an MBrain, we need to think carefully where the waste heat goes, but not for solar power. >You probably want to have at least a couple of absorption and reradiation steps in order not to waste anything... It would be interesting to see how much orbiting material you'll need to make it work, and what the total emission spectrum would be. It would definitely look quite strange, but unfortunately quite dim. -- Eugen* Leitl Hmmm ja, but every MBrain would look different. It's final configuration would depend on the ratio of available metals, and to some extent the total spectrum coming off the star. We can estimate the emitted spectrum knowing that momentum is conserved. So knowing our sun's spectrum, we can integrate across frequency calculate the cumulative momentum of all those stars, estimate a final frequency spectrum across longer wavelengths and distribute all the momentum across that colder spectrum. An MBrained star would be a really odd looking object. If we saw one, we would know something is up with it bigtime. spike From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 26 17:30:09 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 18:30:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chinese prisoners forced to do both physical and virtual labor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/26 Tim Halterman wrote: > Why do you find this disturbing?? Sounds more appealing than stamping > license plates(US version) and leaps and bounds above mining (N Korea, > Chinese? version).? They've constructed a market for these goods by > providing them at such a low cost to the consumer, this low cost could not > have been achieved in a minimum wage market like the US. > Tim US prison workers don't get minimum wage. They are lucky to get any wage at all. That's one reason why the US has so many people in prison. It's slave labour. BillK From thespike at satx.rr.com Thu May 26 18:53:57 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 13:53:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] persuasion and/or argument In-Reply-To: References: <1845414746.20110523234107@umcs.edu.pl> <8AC497CA-EAE3-4D8D-B683-D948D047C11A@ewwpi.com> <1943509189.20110524203336@umcs.edu.pl>, <0C6E7D71A71F984CBE4E2F5B950D130132FDE49B6D@EXITS713.its.iastate.edu> <954055855.20110525223514@umcs.edu.pl>, Message-ID: <4DDEA1C5.1020401@satx.rr.com> "Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory" in BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2011) 34, 57?111 by Hugo Mercie, University of Pennsylvania hmercier at sas.upenn.edu and Dan Sperber, Jean Nicod Institute(EHESS-ENS-CNRS), 75005Paris, France; Department of Philosophy, Central EuropeanUniversity, Budapest, Hungary dan at sperber.fr Abstract: Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate arguments intended to persuade. Reasoning so conceived is adaptive given the exceptional dependence of humans on communication and their vulnerability to misinformation. A wide range of evidence in the psychology of reasoning and decision making can be reinterpreted and better explained in the light of this hypothesis. Poor performance in standard reasoning tasks is explained by the lack of argumentative context. When the same problems are placed in a proper argumentative setting, people turn out to be skilled arguers. Skilled arguers, however, are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views. This explains the notorious confirmation bias. This bias is apparent not only when people are actually arguing, but also when they are reasoning proactively from the perspective of having to defend their opinions. Reasoning so motivated can distort evaluations and attitudes and allow erroneous beliefs to persist. Proactively used reasoning also favors decisions that are easy to justify but not necessarily better. In all these instances traditionally described as failures or flaws, reasoning does exactly what can be expected of an argumentative device: Look for arguments that support a given conclusion, and, ceteris paribus, favor conclusions for which arguments can be found. KeBEHAVIORALANDBRAINSCIENCES(2011)34, 57?111 doi:10.1017/S0140525X10000968 From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 19:36:22 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 13:36:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize Message-ID: Looking for feedback on this idea from a more knowing crowd... The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been experiencing a very devastating series of wars and internal conflicts resulting in more than 5 million deaths. By some accounts, these conflicts are driven or at least exacerbated by the world's insatiable appetite for Cattierite, which is a form of CoS2. (BTW, the Wikipedia page on Cattierite really sucks). Cattierite is used in the manufacture of cell phones, computers, etc. and it comes primarily from mines in the Congo. It seems like it would be possible to synthesize Cattierite since the elemental components are relatively cheap and available. Would synthesis of artificial Cattierite suitable for use in electronics be a good candidate for an X-Prize type competition? -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Thu May 26 19:45:40 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 21:45:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 01:36:22PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > It seems like it would be possible to synthesize Cattierite since the > elemental components are relatively cheap and available. Would Cobalt is not particularly cheap or abundant. Several other elements and minerals share that trait http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5239 > synthesis of artificial Cattierite suitable for use in electronics be > a good candidate for an X-Prize type competition? It's not the mineral, it's the element. Apart from enrichment from dilute sources your only other option is transmutation. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 19:26:09 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 13:26:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 01:42:35PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:34 PM, Damien Sullivan > >> > "libertarianism with free good land was good for some poor" does not >> > generalize to "libertarianism is good for the poor". >> >> Let's try a different approach... would you agree with the following statement: >> "The advance of technology, engineering and science has been good for >> the poor (and even better for the rich)." > > Yes. Then we have a basis for agreement. Let's see how far we can run with that. >> If so, and I really do hope you believe that here of all places, then >> it follows that: >> "Whatever society does to promote the development of technology, >> engineering and science promotes the well being of everyone, including >> the poor (albeit in a delayed manner compared to the rich)." > > Wow, no, that *totally* does not follow. ?"Tech is good" does not mean > "whatever is done, no matter the cost, to advance tech, is good". > > If tech develops faster in one country, at the cost of straving > children, that's not promoting the well-being of everyone. > > I trust you see your fallacy. Technology at all costs could easily be evil. Technology created by free people for individual reasons that does not impact negatively on the liberties or environment of their neighbors is usually good for both rich and poor. > Your other fallacy is to implicitly assume that the advance of > technology has been the *only* thing to benefit society, when in fact a > strong service-minded government can benefit society, especially the > poor, at even Stone Age tech levels. ?The modern world has better tech, > it also has better government. ?And while there's some positive > correlation between the two, it's far from absolute: the Indus Valley > civilization and ancient Egypt seem to have been better run than roughly > contemporaneous Babylonians and Assyrians. Clearly there are good governments and bad governments, but what is good and what is bad? Is a good government the one that creates the greatest enduring works of architecture? Or the one that has happier citizens? By that measure, perhaps Bhutan, with it's focus on "Gross National Happiness" is the best nation on earth. Or perhaps it is economic power and generosity, in which case the US is the best nation. Or perhaps it is the nation with the most people, in which case India and China are the best nations. Whenever you choose a basis upon which to judge the greatness of a people or government, you create an optimization function that leads to strange things happening. I personally judge that the nation that provides its citizenry with the most individual and group (corporate) liberty, while maintaining safety and quality of life through appropriate structure (military and police, for example) is the greatest nation. In this sense, then perhaps the greatest nation in history is the Iroquois Confederacy. But they had no economic power, limited population, limited technology, somewhat low life span, and probably pretty high gross national happiness. They also did not build pyramids. Interesting semi-quote from a show on Egypt... "Egypt did not build the pyramids, rather building the pyramids created Egypt." That is an interesting idea. So today, as we build our technology here in the west, what is our technology building us into? Oh, and you could say that the best nation is the one that cares best for the weakest members of it's society... who would win that? Sweden? I dunno. Or which country is the most sustainable? Sustainability is a good goal too. I don't know of any current countries that would meet this requirement... the ancient Egyptians were masters (comparatively) at sustainability, perhaps the Chinese emperor system? It's all goal directed. So to agree, we would have to agree on the goals. To me, picking the right set of goals (or balance of a set of goals) is critical to successful AGI, and the future of not only humanity, but all intelligence and/or life on earth. >> So the real answer to how to care for the poor is really: >> "What is the best system for pushing science, engineering and >> technology forward at the fastest possible pace." > > Nope. Sigh. >> You could answer this by saying, "Only government sponsored research >> is far enough out to really push the envelope." >> Or >> You could say, "Capitalism is the best at promoting technology, >> engineering and science." >> Or perhaps some other governmental form would be better at promoting >> these things. > > Or, y'know, both: government funding of the public good of basic > research, plus companies in competitive markets competing to bring > innovations to market, while paying taxes to pay for the basic research > their profits rest on. Ok, except that only ~0.001%(a made up number) of their taxes go to basic research while ~55% (another made up number) go to social programs designed to keep the lower segments of society from ever becoming successful themselves, but also not dying. After all, a voter is a voter, and we have to keep them able to vote, even if they are incapable of feeding themselves. Is it sustainable for a government to keep multi-generational families alive when they can't feed themselves on their own? How is that a good thing? This is the inevitable outcome of most of the social engineering I see all around us. >> If what we are truly after is the well being of mankind, then the >> government that best serves mankind is the government that allows for >> freedom in developing as much technology, science and engineering as >> possible. > > Or the government that best serves mankind is one that allows ofr > freedom in development while also making sure no one gets screwed over > and that gains are distributed somewhat equitably. I'm with you up to the point you say "gains are distributed somewhat equitably"... Why is that the government's job? >> Perhaps there are other ways of looking at the world, but progress in >> the liberal arts has not helped today's poor to be ahead of their >> brethren from 100 years ago. > > Progress in democracy has. Yes! But why? Because it enables progress in capitalism, infrastructure and technology. The poor are helped by indoor plumbing and inoculations. They are helped by the practical outcome of democracy. BTW, democracy is a very abused word. Precise definition of democracy is requisite. >> OK, so how does social democracy push forward technology, science and >> engineering (by engineering I mean infrastructure) better than >> libertarianism? (Real question) > > More reliably produces educated and healthy people and provides a safety > net supporting risky innovation. ?It's people who can afford to fail -- > or the completely desperate -- who take risks in life. ?People on the > edge who have something that barely works tend to be really > conservative. People who can afford to fail innovate for sure. One of the greatest innovators of our time is Sir Richard Branson. He can afford to fail, and he does (Virgin Condoms!) And people like Sir Richard are critical to the healthy progress of our world. The completely desperate rarely innovate in ways that are as exciting as the first kind of innovation. What you may be failing to appreciate is that people like Sir Richard will PAY conservative people to innovate within the safe confines of the corporate womb. The iron rice bowl did not. Much of the real innovation driving our world forward isn't death defying stuff, but rather incremental, safe progress from within the corporate world. Perhaps Steve Jobs is innovative in that death defying way, but most of the folks working at apple are not, yet they produced the iPad, iPhone, etc. >> If you grant that slavery in the northern states was much less than >> that in the south, and the economic power of the north exceeded that >> of the south (leading to the historical outcome of the civil war), >> then you might be inclined to believe that libertarian capitalism did >> more to develop industry and technology because that's exactly what >> happened in the north. Note that industrialization in the south lagged >> considerably. > > True, except the North wasn't all that libertarian. ?Public schooling, > protective tariffs, "internal improvements" from the federal government, > possibly various state laws and regulations that we'd have to be a more > dedicated historian to have a good picture of. I've seen the law books of the time. In sheer volume they were MUCH smaller than similar legal books of our time. That is, there was much less law then as there is today. It is a crude measuring stick, but by some definition, and probably by most any definition, the pre civil war north was more libertarian than any government in the world today. More than three quarters of the things that will get you thrown in jail now were not prohibited then (even throwing out cyber crime and such that didn't apply). Today, I don't think many Americans go through the day without breaking a law (intentionally or knowingly or not). That is a recipe for totalitarianism. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 20:19:34 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:19:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 01:42:35PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> What justification is there that society owes a living to anyone? Is >> that belief based in the same flawed religious roots as the belief >> that it was OK to steal the land from the American Indians, or that >> slavery was just fine? This is a really important question to answer >> if you want to support your position that society should help the >> poor. > > The counter-question is "what justification is there to have rich people > and starving people in the same society? The justification in most cases is that the poor (and people from other economic strata) have of their own free will purchased something they deem of value from the rich. It is a voluntary exchange of money for goods and services. There is clearly nothing unethical about free trade amongst free people. No society in the history of earth that has provided economic freedom and opportunity produced starving people in any significant numbers. Starving people are ONLY found in despotic countries like North Korea, Sub Saharan Africa, etc. If you want to change your statement from starving to hungry, then perhaps we can have a conversation. > Why should the alleged > property rights of one who has a lot be respected by someone who doesn't > have enough?" Alleged property rights? Are you promoting the idea of giving all the land back to the aboriginal inhabitants around the world? And again, I reject your premise that a libertarian country would be full of starving people. Hungry perhaps, but hunger is a powerful motivator to get off your ass. > I actually wouldn't start with any abstract blanket right to "a living"; > society's clearly not rich enough yet for that. ?We can start with the > right to *make* a living, including fair access to the tools needed for > that. ?This gets simpler to think about if we go back to mostly agrarian > societies: a right to an equal share of land to work. ?No one starts out > with a right to be fed by other people, but they start with a right to > land with which to feed themselves. ?If someone has more land, while > someone else has none and must work as a servant for the landlord, what > justifies that? ?And while one can talk about "I cleared this land", > most commonly the answer is "my ancestor stole it from yours and I have > force to back up my claim". The good thing about today is that you don't need land to make money. All you need is an idea and a willingness to work hard (in a sufficiently libertarian society). Unfortunately, in America, you have to have a willingness to work hard enough to feed two; yourself, and a moocher. Tomorrow, we might have two moochers for each worker. Eventually, we might have ten moochers to each worker, and then we'll have a real problem! Ancestral land rights is beside the point. If you want to make an argument about ancestrally inherited psychological damage that keeps you from being productive, that might be a better argument. > (Even if one did clear or improve land, it's far from obvious that that should > grant an indefinite right of ownership. ?In the first year, much of the > food value will have come from the initial land improver, not just the > farmer, but over time likely the land has to be maintained. ?If the > first improver does it, they're being paid for service rendered; if the > tenant farmer does it, then in justice ownership by usufruct and effort > invest passes to them, as eventually they've provided most of the value.) This argument doesn't carry weight with me because intelligence is more important than land ownership. Only 3% of people today (in America) work in agriculture, and it is a very small percentage that own farm land (except perhaps indirectly by owning stock in a company that owns land, a lot of us own land in that manner; almost collective farming in a sense). > So a fair society would give an equal bloc of land to everyone. ?Of > course, some people are better farmers than others, A better than B, > say. ?In which case B might let A farm B's land, in return for a share > of the crop, while B goes off and does something else. ?If B can't get > other jobs, and if A doesn't pay enough, B always has the option of > coming home and working their own land again. And so, some become rich and some poor. No matter how often you level the playing field, this approach does not work. Millions starve because nobody knows how to fix the tractors except the poor slobs in Siberia. > OTOH, if A is a highly productive farmer, they might be able to pay B > enough so that B never has to work, while A still does quite well > themselves. ?This looks at the surface like B profiting idly from A's > labor, but it's actually rooted in B's fair share of the land as a > whole. Do you actually believe this? Seriously? > If you reject that, then we don't have much to talk about. So you're saying that if I don't see an agrarian version of communism being the fairest way to run the world, we can't talk about it? That's a bit rigid. > If you can > accept that, as a simple and idealized version of a fair society, then > the question becomes how to relate it to our complex non-agrarian > market society. ?And any answer will likely be messy. ?But instead of > individually owned parcels of land rented out to farmers and other > users, we might have a land value tax whose receipts are redistributed > as a modest basic income. Of course any answer that works will be messy. Let's start with your agrarian utopia. Then say that A SELLS his land to B. (Unless he doesn't have the freedom to do so). And then A spends all the money on farmer C's daughter. How does your society then feed A? > Alternately, in lieu of an individual grant of land, there might be an > individual grant of modern capital, as Thomas Paine proposed. ?$100,000 > given at adulthood, say. ?Of course, with human capital being perhaps > the most valuable kind, public schooling and children's health care and > cheap or free college might be seen as non-cash delivery of said > capital. ?OTOH, that still relies on the market to match jobs to people, > and a right to direct money or even food might be seen as safer. Most of that money would be wasted. Without morals and education, you might as well just give the $100,000 directly to the Columbian drug lords. > That's for general welfare programs. ?Aid for the disabled, or universal > health systems, aren't so much a fundamental egalitarian right as a > choice we make for a nicer (and possibly more efficient) society. ?The > cripple or retiree has a right to a living because of a social insurance > system creating such a right. The "efficient" part may have some merit... but efficient government is an oxymoron. Who has the "right" to create the social insurance system in the first place? From where was that right derived? In a God-less world, where do rights come from in any case? From our evolved sense of justice? What if I evolved a different sense of justice than you? In our society, it is hard to find physically disabled people who are completely unable to make some limited kind of living. Mentally disabled people are at more of a disadvantage. People who are both physically and mentally disabled, well, I'm not really for leaving them out on the ice... but I don't believe that it's government's job to care for them. I think that it would be more reasonable to leave that to the conscience of their relatives and local communities. > A tidbit to think about: it's illegal today to sell oneself into > slavery. ?(Some libertarians think it should be legal.) Not me. Selling yourself into slavery would give you money, but then no opportunity to spend the money. Loss of freedom is the thing libertarian societies are fighting against. OTOH, if someone wanted to trade their reproductive capacity for drugs, I'm OK with that. The freedom of the potential children outweighs the fact that they are consensually giving up their freedom by becoming enslaved to drugs. One of the harder things for societies to do is balance the freedom of parents and children, particularly unborn children. The rights of never conceived children seems fairly uncontroversially to be zero. > Ditto for > debt-slavery, which has been common at times. ?But apparently in ancient > Egypt, not only was debt-slavery illegal, so was seizing a workman's > tools to pay off a debt. ?The ability to make a good living, granted by > the tools, was inalienable (though perhaps sellable) -- one's tools were > part of oneself, in a sense. Selling one's self into time limited indentured servitude in exchange for passage to the new world was known in early America. It was trading short term freedom for greater long term freedom for himself and his children. The apprentice system was another form of the same. I'm OK with these systems, but not with selling one's self into slavery of indeterminate length. There must remain the potential equitable freedom. I am a great admirer of the Egyptians. I frequently employ Egyptian engineering techniques when moving large rocks around my yard by myself. I wonder what would happen if a workman decided to sell his tools under such a system. Was starvation allowed in the Egyptian system? I'd bet it was. In the end, starvation MUST be an option for a sustainable society. In such a society, I don't think actual starvation would actually occur in many cases, but the IDEA of the POSSIBILITY of starvation must survive. In America, the idea of actual starvation has died, and with it the sustainability of our system. Now let's fast forward to a society in the not so distant possible future... Suppose that there are AGIs and robots of sufficient skill that unenhanced human beings are no longer capable of making meaningful contributions to society. Are the robots required by your rules to sustain us? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 20:27:04 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:27:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:26 PM, BillK wrote: > The whole Global Warming FUD campaign is funded by the oil industry. Hi Bill... While I don't doubt that this might be true, and I've heard it a lot. But what actual evidence do you have that this is the case? I'm looking for something widespread not a single example. The cigarette companies clearly created just such a FUD campaign for many years, so I don't put this past corporations, but I just wonder if this is one of the BIG LIES that Joseph Goebbels talked about. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 20:35:32 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:35:32 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 10:31 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 1:21 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > snip > >> The real trick for today's energy companies it to make sure that they >> are also tomorrow's energy companies. They also need to not drain >> their customers so dry that demand goes down. > > That's not the biggest problem. I don't think I said that it was the BIGGEST... just one problem :-) > The big problem is that there is no > accepted way to make energy from sunlight for less than it cost to > mine oil out of the ground. That problem would be mitigated (but perhaps not entirely avoided) if the collateral costs of oil were paid for at the pump and not through other means such as income taxation. I think I already posted this thesis... quick review pay for carbon dioxide sequestration or mitigation at the pump, pay for oil wars and terrorism expenses at the pump, etc. This would make gas more expensive, and bring closer the day when alternatives had a competitive cost. > I work on that as you might know. To be clear, do you work in the oil industry or on solar projects? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 20:49:52 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:49:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 03:22:02PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Once achieved, an AGI is easily replicated. That much I will grant >> you. But mixing explicit programming with a training process is very >> difficult. Just look at how hard it is to change people. Changing me >> from a religious zealot to an atheist was a very painful process that >> took a couple of years of hard work. It was not just "changing the >> programming", although that was, in a sense, exactly what it was. > > While the results of machine learning may well not be easily modifiable > or reverse-engineerable, using people as evidence isn't very good. ?We > don't have explicit programming of people, or of brains, the way we do > have of computers. ?Verbal instruction is a limited ability, compared to > being able to go in and change neural wiring directly. ?Not that we'd > know much what to do if we could, but we don't even have the safe access > for people. ?Whereas even a genetically evolved neural network mess of > code is completely open to our examination and modification. ?Knowing > what to do is another matter, but the fact that we can't do things to > people through their skulls is kind of irrelevant. Yes, what we can do to people is irrelevant. My underlying assumption here is that AGIs of the future will (initially at least) be based upon the human intelligence model, and will, in fact, be silicon based human brain emulators. This assumption is quite possibly false. However, given this assumption, I think what I've been saying makes sense. Sorry I didn't make that assumption explicit earlier on. In this sense, AGIs are not "computers" in the sense that you use the word. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 20:58:09 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:58:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/24 Stefano Vaj : > On 23 May 2011 23:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> > My philosophical point, not a very important one for that matter, is that a > plant which has been grown in a garden is indistinguishable from an > identical plan which has been build on the basis of an explicit blueprint > by, say, the end terminal of a teleporter. Granted. > The same goes for the software end product of either a training mechanism or > an explicit programming effort, even though the second may well be faced > with unpractical or intractable difficulties. Except that mixing modes is very difficult. You pretty much have to pick the programming model or the training model. Mixing models is going to be exceptionally difficult. Just as partially growing a plant while also synthesizing it is difficult. > Accordingly, what makes me doubt very much the idea that we are ourselves > AGI produced by some Intelligent Designer is more Occam's razor than any > mystical quality which would distinguish ourselves from such a product. I don't go for intelligent design either. >> > being fully emulatable like anything else has little to do with >> > intelligence. As for qualia, they are a dubious linguistic and >> > philosophical >> > artifact of little use at all.. >> >> > I suspect "consciousness" to be just an evolutionary artifact that >> > albeit >> I dunno... "redness" seems useful for communicating between sentient >> beings. So I'm not sure how useless it is. Please elaborate. > > Redness is a useful label, which can be made use of in communicating with > any entity, "sentient" or not, that can discriminate and handle the relevant > feature of red objects. As to what it "really" means, if anything at all, to > a PC, to an eagle or to a fellow human being who might well be a > philosophical zombie for all I know, I am inclined to contend that the > question is undecidable and irrelevant. When you get down to the raw philosophy of it, you are correct. I think most of us tend to be a little more practical than most philosophers allow for. >> I agree that much of what we think we observe is a kind of >> hallucination. Our eyes simply aren't good enough optically to produce >> the model that is in my mind of the world. > > No, what I mean is that we project our own feelings and experience on other > things. According to the PNL approach, this may be empirically convenient > sometimes, but not only is philosophically unwarranted and useless, it can > also entangle us in ineffective behaviours and paradoxes. Yes, I see that point. >> All right, I guess I see your point. It isn't rape unless it has the >> psychological component of doing damage to the other being. So we are >> going to be stuck with assholes who won't be happy with their sexbot, >> no matter what. Perhaps they will rape my sexbot... and I'll probably >> be none to happy about it. ;-) > > Yes, this is also an interesting point I had not think of (consensual rape > may not qualify for the rapist in the first place). ya. > But I was seeing things more from the side of the victim, suggesting that > the victims themselves cannot really say to be raped from their own POV > unless their dislike and refusal are sincere... Being a capitalist entrepreneur, I tend to look at things from the POV of the customer. I this case the rapist. > Accordingly, those who might like to suffer an *actual* rape, as opposed to > just seeing it mimicked, are bound never to have the experience they > crave... :-) That's pretty easy, just put on the right dress and walk around the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. :-) No sexbot required. Your point is well made though. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 21:31:36 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 15:31:36 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> References: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 01:36:22PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> It seems like it would be possible to synthesize Cattierite since the >> elemental components are relatively cheap and available. Would > > Cobalt is not particularly cheap or abundant. Several other > elements and minerals share that trait > http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5239 I don't get the relevance of the link, but I believe you so I did some research. So according to Wikipedia, Cobalt consists of 0.0029% of the Earth's crust. Compare to Nickel at 0.019%. Still pretty common compared to Gold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elemental_abundances.svg So I suppose it would be fair then to say that given it's very useful nature, there isn't enough of it. And somewhere around half of the Cobalt mined in the world comes from the Congo. That sucks. >> synthesis of artificial Cattierite suitable for use in electronics be >> a good candidate for an X-Prize type competition? > > It's not the mineral, it's the element. Apart from enrichment > from dilute sources your only other option is transmutation. I guess there's always asteroid mining... :-) In the end, my idea sucks completely. Thanks for helping me understand why. -Kelly From sjatkins at mac.com Thu May 26 21:33:50 2011 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 14:33:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> On 05/26/2011 01:49 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Damien Sullivan > wrote: >> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 03:22:02PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >>> Once achieved, an AGI is easily replicated. That much I will grant >>> you. But mixing explicit programming with a training process is very >>> difficult. Just look at how hard it is to change people. Changing me >>> from a religious zealot to an atheist was a very painful process that >>> took a couple of years of hard work. It was not just "changing the >>> programming", although that was, in a sense, exactly what it was. >> While the results of machine learning may well not be easily modifiable >> or reverse-engineerable, using people as evidence isn't very good. We >> don't have explicit programming of people, or of brains, the way we do >> have of computers. Verbal instruction is a limited ability, compared to >> being able to go in and change neural wiring directly. Not that we'd >> know much what to do if we could, but we don't even have the safe access >> for people. Whereas even a genetically evolved neural network mess of >> code is completely open to our examination and modification. Knowing >> what to do is another matter, but the fact that we can't do things to >> people through their skulls is kind of irrelevant. > Yes, what we can do to people is irrelevant. > > My underlying assumption here is that AGIs of the future will > (initially at least) be based upon the human intelligence model, and > will, in fact, be silicon based human brain emulators. I think this is much much harder to do than a more direct approach to the parts of intelligence we are after. It seems as doubtful as achieving heavier than air flight by building a bird emulator. One problem in a brain emulator that is pretty critical is how to separate all those things laid down by evolution that you do not want, or at least want in a more optimal form, from those you do want. One problem is that currently it would take a 4GW power plant just to run a cat brain partial emulation. We need some device breakthroughs like perhaps memristors. - samantha From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 21:55:57 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 15:55:57 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 05/26/2011 01:49 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> My underlying assumption here is that AGIs of the future will >> (initially at least) be based upon the human intelligence model, and >> will, in fact, be silicon based human brain emulators. > > I think this is much much harder to do than a more direct approach to the > parts of intelligence we are after. ?It seems as doubtful as achieving > heavier than air flight by building a bird emulator. > > One problem in a brain emulator that is pretty critical is how to separate > all those things laid down by evolution that you do not want, or at least > want in a more optimal form, from those you do want. ?One problem is that > currently it would take a 4GW power plant just to run a cat brain partial > emulation. ?We need some device breakthroughs like perhaps memristors. Hi Samantha, When I say "brain emulation", what I mean in detail is emulation of the human model, and not necessarily the human cellular implementation. Some organelles of the brain may be simulated in a much more efficient manner than nature has implemented them. For example, some of the organelles in the auditory and visual pathways have already been emulated with great precision, without using billions of emulated cells to do so. As long as you stick with the human model, you sort of know what you're dealing with, and maybe we can avoid some of the risks that are inherent in AGI. We more or less know what it takes to produce good people, and we should be able to avoid that in creating the AGIs, I hope. So while it would take a 4GW power plant to run a cat emulation on the cellular level, it likely would not be so bad if we were emulating the behavior of organelles rather than cells. -Kelly From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Thu May 26 22:30:02 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 15:30:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 02:19:34PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > wrote: > > The counter-question is "what justification is there to have rich people > > and starving people in the same society? > > The justification in most cases is that the poor (and people from > other economic strata) have of their own free will purchased something > they deem of value from the rich. It is a voluntary exchange of money What. You've completely missed the point. "the poor purchased something"? What does that have to do with why the poor *are poor*? > trade amongst free people. No society in the history of earth that has > provided economic freedom and opportunity produced starving people in > any significant numbers. Starving people are ONLY found in despotic > countries like North Korea, Sub Saharan Africa, etc. If you want to > change your statement from starving to hungry, then perhaps we can > have a conversation. Like distinctions between starving and hungry are particularly important. And "free societies" certainly produced lots of hungry. When they don't, it's largely because of gov't programs to give food to the poor. > And again, I reject your premise that a libertarian country would be > full of starving people. Hungry perhaps, but hunger is a powerful > motivator to get off your ass. And be a servant or exploited wage laborer for someone else. > The good thing about today is that you don't need land to make money. I know. It's called a thought experiment, to simplify and get at key issues. > sufficiently libertarian society). Unfortunately, in America, you have > to have a willingness to work hard enough to feed two; yourself, and a > moocher. More like half a "moocher", with the proviso that you yourself have been a "moocher" when young and will be again when old, and some of that "mooching" is going to services to help you be as productive as you are. Also the idea that anyone with gumption can get ahead is pretty ludicrous when unemployment is persistent and widespread. > > So a fair society would give an equal bloc of land to everyone. ?Of > > course, some people are better farmers than others, A better than B, > > say. ?In which case B might let A farm B's land, in return for a share > > of the crop, while B goes off and does something else. ?If B can't get > > other jobs, and if A doesn't pay enough, B always has the option of > > coming home and working their own land again. > > And so, some become rich and some poor Point is, there'd be a floor on the poverty. No able bodied citizen would have a reason to beg for help, because every able-bodied citizen would have land to work. (Being simplistic, this ignores crop failures.) If you don't like the jobs, you can support yourself. >No matter how often you level > the playing field, this approach does not work. Millions starve > because nobody knows how to fix the tractors except the poor slobs in > Siberia. A claim for which you have no evidence, because what I describe has AFAIK only been done by one Chinese dynasty. It's certainly nothing like Communist collectized farming, which was, after all, *collectivized*. > > OTOH, if A is a highly productive farmer, they might be able to pay B > > enough so that B never has to work, while A still does quite well > > themselves. ?This looks at the surface like B profiting idly from A's > > labor, but it's actually rooted in B's fair share of the land as a > > whole. > > Do you actually believe this? Seriously? What's wrong? You believe in land ownership, right? And libertarianism doesn't have much to say about how property is initially distributed. If everyone owned an equal plot of land, why wouldn't it play out as I describe? > > If you reject that, then we don't have much to talk about. > > So you're saying that if I don't see an agrarian version of communism > being the fairest way to run the world, we can't talk about it? That's > a bit rigid. Well, now it seems that you can't understand what I thought was a rather simple model, which makes communication difficult. > Of course any answer that works will be messy. Let's start with your > agrarian utopia. Then say that A SELLS his land to B. (Unless he > doesn't have the freedom to do so). And then A spends all the money on > farmer C's daughter. How does your society then feed A? Pace not being able to sell yourself into slavery, sales of citizen's-right land probably would be prohibited. Or at least, outright sale; you might be able to swap with someone's plot, or exchange with a national bank, so you could move around. But you couldn't divest yourself of the means to live, that'd be silly. Unless you were emigrating and leaving the society for good. Alternately, you might be able to, but then society would be more justified in letting you starve, since you would have clearly made a stupid decision, unlike merely being born poor. I'd probably just prohibit it, though. Not all land would have to actually be divided into grants, in fact if you want population growth some should be held in reserve for future allocation... > Most of that money would be wasted. Without morals and education, you > might as well just give the $100,000 directly to the Columbian drug > lords. Wow, lot of contempt for your fellow people, there. > The "efficient" part may have some merit... but efficient government > is an oxymoron. Who has the "right" to create the social insurance > system in the first place? From where was that right derived? In a > God-less world, where do rights come from in any case? From our We create them. > evolved sense of justice? What if I evolved a different sense of > justice than you? Then we conflict. Not like libertarianism rises above this somehow; to reflect your questions, where do property rights come from, in this God-less world? > In the end, starvation MUST be an option for a sustainable society. In Well, in my thought experiment, starvation would be an option, if someone sat on their butt and refused to work. And you could feel justified in letting them starve, because you would know that they had the means to work. Vs. the real world, where one may grow up without good nutrition, education, or working capital of any kind. > Now let's fast forward to a society in the not so distant possible > future... Suppose that there are AGIs and robots of sufficient skill > that unenhanced human beings are no longer capable of making > meaningful contributions to society. Are the robots required by your > rules to sustain us? Remember that the Luddites, contrary to reputation, weren't irrationally anti-tech. They were skilled workers who were losing their livelihoods, without compensation, due to automation. Lacking capital or any defined right to livehood, they existed only by their utility to capitalists. Had society had some way by which those losing their jobs could partake meaningfully of the benefits, there'd have been less violence. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Thu May 26 22:43:19 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 15:43:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110526224319.GB25323@ofb.net> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 01:26:09PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> "Whatever society does to promote the development of technology, > >> engineering and science promotes the well being of everyone, including > >> the poor (albeit in a delayed manner compared to the rich)." > > > > Wow, no, that *totally* does not follow. ?"Tech is good" does not mean > > "whatever is done, no matter the cost, to advance tech, is good". > > > > If tech develops faster in one country, at the cost of straving > > children, that's not promoting the well-being of everyone. > > > > I trust you see your fallacy. > > Technology at all costs could easily be evil. Technology created by at all costs == "whatever society does" > free people for individual reasons that does not impact negatively on > the liberties or environment of their neighbors is usually good for > both rich and poor. That's a lot of qualifications. > > Your other fallacy is to implicitly assume that the advance of > > technology has been the *only* thing to benefit society, when in fact a > > strong service-minded government can benefit society, especially the > Clearly there are good governments and bad governments, but what is > good and what is bad? Is a good government the one that creates the > greatest enduring works of architecture? Or the one that has happier This is needlessly tendentious. You yourself were just talking about technology being "good for the poor" and "promote the well-being". Use the same standard. > > Or, y'know, both: government funding of the public good of basic > > research, plus companies in competitive markets competing to bring > > innovations to market, while paying taxes to pay for the basic research > > their profits rest on. > > Ok, except that only ~0.001%(a made up number) of their taxes go to > basic research while ~55% (another made up number) go to social Why use made-up numbers? A quick look around shows abotu 2% of federal spending going to research. Welfare's harder to tease apart, but maybe 5% by one analysis, though that might have included state/local spending too. Most social spending is pensions, you pay in now and get paid later, or payments for health care. Actual food stamp or general assistance welfare is pretty small and most people who get those do so only temporarily, while down on their luck. Hell, after Clinton's welfare reform, I don't think general assistance welfare even exists anymore. Five years and you're out. > > Or the government that best serves mankind is one that allows ofr > > freedom in development while also making sure no one gets screwed over > > and that gains are distributed somewhat equitably. > > I'm with you up to the point you say "gains are distributed somewhat > equitably"... Why is that the government's job? How else could do it? > >> Perhaps there are other ways of looking at the world, but progress in > >> the liberal arts has not helped today's poor to be ahead of their > >> brethren from 100 years ago. > > > > Progress in democracy has. > > Yes! But why? Because it enables progress in capitalism, > infrastructure and technology. The poor are helped by indoor plumbing > and inoculations. They are helped by the practical outcome of Also because it builds sewers, provides better police and judicial systems, performs land reform when needed (as advocated by Rothbard, http://mises.org/daily/2473 ) That indoor plumbing you mention is connected to government water pipes. It doesn't just enable progress in infrastructure and technology, it builds the infrastructure and funds the research. > > net supporting risky innovation. ?It's people who can afford to fail -- > > or the completely desperate -- who take risks in life. ?People on the > > edge who have something that barely works tend to be really > > conservative. > > People who can afford to fail innovate for sure. One of the greatest > innovators of our time is Sir Richard Branson. He can afford to fail, > and he does (Virgin Condoms!) And people like Sir Richard are critical > to the healthy progress of our world. The completely desperate rarely > innovate in ways that are as exciting as the first kind of innovation. Well, yeah. You seem to be responding in length to my parenthesis, when the real point was that security -- including that from safety nets -- enhances innovation. The US is lagging in small businesses compared to countries with universal health care. It's safe for a Swede to go start their own business, but an American is gambling with their life, or at least with bankruptcy. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Thu May 26 22:49:59 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 15:49:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> Message-ID: <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 03:55:57PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > One problem in a brain emulator that is pretty critical is how to > > separate all those things laid down by evolution that you do not > > want, or at least want in a more optimal form, from those you do > > want. ?One problem is that currently it would take a 4GW power plant > > just to run a cat brain partial emulation. ?We need some device > > breakthroughs like perhaps memristors. > When I say "brain emulation", what I mean in detail is emulation of > the human model, and not necessarily the human cellular > implementation. Some organelles of the brain may be simulated in a I'd guess Samantha's just talking about modeling the brain as an abstract neural network, with each neuron being modeled simply as its synaptic weights, never mind organelles or molecular activity. I figure it would take 100 million desktop-PC equivalents to model the human brain like that, which at 20 watts per PC would be 2 GW. And I've read a modern workstation can be more like 400 W. Actual modeling the insides of the neurons, I can't even estimate that. Meanwhile, the actual human brain operates on like 15 W. > much more efficient manner than nature has implemented them. For > example, some of the organelles in the auditory and visual pathways > have already been emulated with great precision, without using > billions of emulated cells to do so. You seem to be using 'organelle' oddly. I use it for things like mitochondria. -xx- Damien X-) From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu May 26 22:53:31 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 15:53:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 1:35 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: snip >> I work on that as you might know. > > To be clear, do you work in the oil industry or on solar projects? Neither. Keith From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu May 26 23:41:16 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 17:41:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:30 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 02:19:34PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> wrote: > >> > The counter-question is "what justification is there to have rich people >> > and starving people in the same society? >> >> The justification in most cases is that the poor (and people from >> other economic strata) have of their own free will purchased something >> they deem of value from the rich. It is a voluntary exchange of money > > What. > > You've completely missed the point. ?"the poor purchased something"? > What does that have to do with why the poor *are poor*? The poor are poor because they have not been able to effectively apply the resources they have to obtain more resources. The poor are poor because they spend what little money they have on the daily necessities of life, rather than on things like education that will raise them out of poverty. Coincidentally, the poor typically buy the things they need for their daily necessities from the rich. That is why the poor often stay poor, and the rich get more rich. Giving the poor more money does not improve things because they just go out and buy more of the things from the rich again, and they are poor again and the rich are rich again. The poor don't have the capacity to create things that the rich want to buy from them. If they do, then they don't stay poor. It's all about trade. Being poor means not having money. So purchasing something means they don't have money, thus they are poor. How does that not make sense? >> trade amongst free people. No society in the history of earth that has >> provided economic freedom and opportunity produced starving people in >> any significant numbers. Starving people are ONLY found in despotic >> countries like North Korea, Sub Saharan Africa, etc. If you want to >> change your statement from starving to hungry, then perhaps we can >> have a conversation. > > Like distinctions between starving and hungry are particularly > important. It is critically important. Particularly if you are the one doing the starving. Starving meaning you are hungry enough that you are going to die. Hunger is a big inconvenience, starvation is a threat to existence. > And "free societies" certainly produced lots of hungry. > When they don't, it's largely because of gov't programs to give food to > the poor. You have a mighty poor opinion of the poor if that's what you think. I have a lot more respect for poor people than that. >> And again, I reject your premise that a libertarian country would be >> full of starving people. Hungry perhaps, but hunger is a powerful >> motivator to get off your ass. > > And be a servant or exploited wage laborer for someone else. And subsequently NOT be poor. It's a good trade. >> The good thing about today is that you don't need land to make money. > > I know. ?It's called a thought experiment, to simplify and get at key > issues. Sure, but it's completely wrong too. >> sufficiently libertarian society). Unfortunately, in America, you have >> to have a willingness to work hard enough to feed two; yourself, and a >> moocher. > > More like half a "moocher", with the proviso that you yourself have been > a "moocher" when young and will be again when old, and some of that > "mooching" is going to services to help you be as productive as you are. The government isn't that efficient at providing me services that I'm interested in having. When I am young, my parents take care of me. When I am old, I hope my children will help me out, as I have been able to help my parents. At least that's how I look at it, and that's not mooching from society, that's being part of a family. Entirely different. > Also the idea that anyone with gumption can get ahead is pretty > ludicrous when unemployment is persistent and widespread. Unemployment in the USA is 9%. Food stamps are used by 30%. There is a disconnect there. Anyone with gumption CAN get a job, maybe not their dream job. And the government (as currently constituted) needs to get better at shifting the unemployed welfare recipient transformed into a working poor person. The difference between the two states is so insignificant now a days that it gives little incentive to work. >> > So a fair society would give an equal bloc of land to everyone. ?Of >> > course, some people are better farmers than others, A better than B, >> > say. ?In which case B might let A farm B's land, in return for a share >> > of the crop, while B goes off and does something else. ?If B can't get >> > other jobs, and if A doesn't pay enough, B always has the option of >> > coming home and working their own land again. >> >> And so, some become rich and some poor > > Point is, there'd be a floor on the poverty. ?No able bodied citizen > would have a reason to beg for help, because every able-bodied citizen > would have land to work. ?(Being simplistic, this ignores crop > failures.) ?If you don't like the jobs, you can support yourself. Yes, it's simplistic. How would you implement this to KEEP things fair. The fairness isn't sustainable even in your play world. >>No matter how often you level >> the playing field, this approach does not work. Millions starve >> because nobody knows how to fix the tractors except the poor slobs in >> Siberia. > > A claim for which you have no evidence, because what I describe has > AFAIK only been done by one Chinese dynasty. ?It's certainly nothing > like Communist collectized farming, which was, after all, > *collectivized*. Which dynasty was that? >> > OTOH, if A is a highly productive farmer, they might be able to pay B >> > enough so that B never has to work, while A still does quite well >> > themselves. ?This looks at the surface like B profiting idly from A's >> > labor, but it's actually rooted in B's fair share of the land as a >> > whole. >> >> Do you actually believe this? Seriously? > > What's wrong? ?You believe in land ownership, right? ?And libertarianism > doesn't have much to say about how property is initially distributed. > If everyone owned an equal plot of land, why wouldn't it play out as I > describe? Because some people would choose not to plant seeds. Others would eat their seeds. What would your utopia do with them? You can't prevent people from being stupid. All you can do is feed stupid and lazy people. All I'm saying is that there is a limit to how many stupid and lazy people a society can carry along. I don't mind caring for the poor, but I don't want the government doing it, because from systems theory, the government develops a vested interest in there being poor people, and you never get rid of poverty. >> > If you reject that, then we don't have much to talk about. >> >> So you're saying that if I don't see an agrarian version of communism >> being the fairest way to run the world, we can't talk about it? That's >> a bit rigid. > > Well, now it seems that you can't understand what I thought was a rather > simple model, which makes communication difficult. Not only simple, but simplistic. Your model doesn't account for economic action over time, at all. >> Of course any answer that works will be messy. Let's start with your >> agrarian utopia. Then say that A SELLS his land to B. (Unless he >> doesn't have the freedom to do so). And then A spends all the money on >> farmer C's daughter. How does your society then feed A? > > Pace not being able to sell yourself into slavery, sales of > citizen's-right land probably would be prohibited. ?Or at least, > outright sale; you might be able to swap with someone's plot, or > exchange with a national bank, so you could move around. ?But you > couldn't divest yourself of the means to live, that'd be silly. ?Unless > you were emigrating and leaving the society for good. But people ARE silly. An extraordinary number of people are silly. You have to account for human stupidity to have a workable sustainable political system. > Alternately, you might be able to, but then society would be more > justified in letting you starve, since you would have clearly made a > stupid decision, unlike merely being born poor. ?I'd probably just > prohibit it, though. Prohibit starvation? Prohibit stupidity? Or prohibit freedom by dictating what people can and can't do with their own property? Cause it's got to be one of those three, doesn't it? > Not all land would have to actually be divided into grants, in fact if > you want population growth some should be held in reserve for future > allocation... Are you going to dictate to people how many children they can have too? Inheritance of land is also non sustainable if people have too many or zero kids. >> Most of that money would be wasted. Without morals and education, you >> might as well just give the $100,000 directly to the Columbian drug >> lords. > > Wow, lot of contempt for your fellow people, there. Ok, fair enough. I have a lot of faith in the poor, GIVEN the right incentives. You seem to be taking the incentives away from them, which will lead lots of people to escapism and drugs. It's not that people are naturally drug addicts. It's that given no escape, they'll escape how they can. >> The "efficient" part may have some merit... but efficient government >> is an oxymoron. Who has the "right" to create the social insurance >> system in the first place? From where was that right derived? In a >> God-less world, where do rights come from in any case? From our > > We create them. Who's we? People don't agree about such things. Case in point. >> evolved sense of justice? What if I evolved a different sense of >> justice than you? > > Then we conflict. So we solve our problems with war? I'd rather solve our problems with trade. No two countries both containing a McDonalds have ever gone to war with each other. > Not like libertarianism rises above this somehow; to reflect your > questions, where do property rights come from, in this God-less world? I was not claiming that libertarianism solved this problem. I was asking an unrelated question. >> In the end, starvation MUST be an option for a sustainable society. In > > Well, in my thought experiment, starvation would be an option, if > someone sat on their butt and refused to work. ?And you could feel > justified in letting them starve, because you would know that they had > the means to work. It would never happen. Some liberal minded people would just feed them, and start the cycle all over again. > Vs. the real world, where one may grow up without good nutrition, > education, or working capital of any kind. I grant you that it is very much harder to become wealthy in Haiti than in Miami. The world isn't fair. But you can't make the world fair either. All you can do is provide them with the environment in which to grow themselves. Haiti has never done this. The US has been pretty good at doing this, but is getting worse. >> Now let's fast forward to a society in the not so distant possible >> future... Suppose that there are AGIs and robots of sufficient skill >> that unenhanced human beings are no longer capable of making >> meaningful contributions to society. Are the robots required by your >> rules to sustain us? > > Remember that the Luddites, contrary to reputation, weren't irrationally > anti-tech. ?They were skilled workers who were losing their livelihoods, > without compensation, due to automation. ?Lacking capital or any defined > right to livehood, they existed only by their utility to capitalists. > Had society had some way by which those losing their jobs could partake > meaningfully of the benefits, there'd have been less violence. So you would have preserved the looms on their behalf? I never said the Luddites were irrational. They were acting in their own perceived self interest. But they could not stop the steam engines forever. Going back to a farmer's paradise would just mean that we would ALL be equally poor. I'd rather have some rich and some poor if it means the average person is much more rich than we were if we were all equally miserable together. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Thu May 26 23:19:58 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 00:19:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Small scale solar payback time (was Re: Planetary defense) In-Reply-To: References: <20110517070125.GB4351@leitl.org> <20110521210343.GD26960@ofb.net> <20110522081223.GX19622@leitl.org> <18953038-F7E3-499C-A969-C3F53D3AB5D3@freeshell.org> <005401cc198e$52b732d0$f8259870$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 9:27 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:26 PM, BillK wrote: >> The whole Global Warming FUD campaign is funded by the oil industry. > > Hi Bill... While I don't doubt that this might be true, and I've heard > it a lot. But what actual evidence do you have that this is the case? > I'm looking for something widespread not a single example. > > The cigarette companies clearly created just such a FUD campaign for > many years, so I don't put this past corporations, but I just wonder > if this is one of the BIG LIES that Joseph Goebbels talked about. > > 'Prove' it the same way you 'prove' the cigarette companies campaign. Follow the money. See where the funding of these FUD groups comes from. Remember, the oil companies FUD campaign doesn't have to 'prove' anything. All it is intended to do is create sufficient confusion that no steps will be taken by government to combat global warming that adversely affect the oil companies profits. This is only a stopgap campaign. Once the oil companies are ready to take over the renewable energy industries (or the oil runs out) the FUD campaign will stop and suddenly everyone will be spending on renewable energy systems. It will be a remarkable turnaround. BillK From sparge at gmail.com Fri May 27 00:07:37 2011 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 20:07:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 7:41 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The poor are poor because they have not been able to effectively apply > the resources they have to obtain more resources. The poor are poor > because they spend what little money they have on the daily > necessities of life, rather than on things like education that will > raise them out of poverty. Believe it or not, some people are born into poverty. -Dave From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 27 01:45:36 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 18:45:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 7:41 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> The poor are poor because they have not been able to effectively apply >> the resources they have to obtain more resources. The poor are poor >> because they spend what little money they have on the daily >> necessities of life, rather than on things like education that will >> raise them out of poverty. > > Believe it or not, some people are born into poverty. Even worse, some people are most likely born to be poor from their genes alone. Google Gregory Clark. Keith From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri May 27 02:06:40 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 20:06:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:49 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 03:55:57PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > >> ? When I say "brain emulation", what I mean in detail is emulation of >> the human model, and not necessarily the human cellular >> implementation. Some organelles of the brain may be simulated in a > > I'd guess Samantha's just talking about modeling the brain as an > abstract neural network, with each neuron being modeled simply as its > synaptic weights, never mind organelles or molecular activity. ?I figure > it would take 100 million desktop-PC equivalents to model the human > brain like that, which at 20 watts per PC would be 2 GW. ?And I've read > a modern workstation can be more like 400 W. ?Actual modeling the > insides of the neurons, I can't even estimate that. That is what I supposed too. > Meanwhile, the actual human brain operates on like 15 W. > >> much more efficient manner than nature has implemented them. For >> example, some of the organelles in the auditory and visual pathways >> have already been emulated with great precision, without using >> billions of emulated cells to do so. > > You seem to be using 'organelle' oddly. ?I use it for things like > mitochondria. Sorry, I guess I got confused and used the wrong word. Thanks for the correction. I suppose the right word is brain region. Each region of the brain that has a modular function. They are like suborgans that make up the overall brain. I understand that there are a few dozens of such regions. Is there a better word for these brain regions? -Kelly From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri May 27 01:42:40 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 19:42:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: References: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <20110526082000.GE19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4DDF0190.9090702@canonizer.com> Hi Keith, What do you think about what these Japanese are working one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1390682/Plans-gigantic-lunar-ring-solar-panels-beam-energy-Earth-unveiled.html?ITO=1490 How does that compare with the Geo Sync stuff you are talking about? Brent Allsop On 5/26/2011 6:16 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 1:20 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > snip > >> An ideal setup for an SPS is to make solar cells double as phased >> array on on the other side, so they can use realtime beamforming to track >> ground-side rectenna or rectennas array(s) (the beam can be retargeted within >> few ~ms). > Solarn has proposed this design. They think they can get 17 kW per kg > of material, 85 times the 5 kg/kW I have been using. > > If they are right and I am right about reducing the cost to GEO, then > the energy and carbon problems will be oversolved. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 27 04:51:54 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 21:51:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power satellites microwave power transmission In-Reply-To: <4DDF0190.9090702@canonizer.com> References: <296143.82006.qm@web65603.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <20110526082000.GE19622@leitl.org> <4DDF0190.9090702@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:42 PM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Hi Keith, > > What do you think about what these Japanese are working on: > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1390682/Plans-gigantic-lunar-ring-solar-panels-beam-energy-Earth-unveiled.html?ITO=1490 > > How does that compare with the Geo Sync stuff you are talking about? I will support anything that will deal with the energy/carbon problem. There are problems though unless the power is generated on the moon for almost nothing. It's a lot further away, and unlike geosynchronous, it doesn't stay in the same place in the sky. Each relay cost about 50%. Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 27 05:26:49 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 01:26:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <20110521232344.GA16532@ofb.net> References: <4DD8424D.808@libero.it> <20110521232344.GA16532@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 7:23 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > Well, in my case, I had a strong sense of Moral Clarity, much like Rafal > and Samantha exhibit today. ### Hey, I don't have a sense of Moral Clarity! I am mostly annoyed by stupidity and hypocrisy but after that all this ethics stuff gets rather mushy and ill-defined which is no surprise, since ethics is just human wishes frilled up in fancy wording and therefore likely to be confused and messy. ------------------- ?> Coercion Was Wrong. ### It must be at least 9 or 10 years since I seriously thought in this way. ------------------------------ ?Once you > view private property as somewhat tainted in the real world, that Moral > Clarity about the rights of billionaires to not be taxed for starving > children evaporates. ### It seems that no matter how many times I say I don't believe in rights as a useful moral notion, I am being pigeonholed in the same little imaginary spot in the ethical configuration space. What gives? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 27 05:42:41 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 01:42:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 10:24 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Mirco Romanato wrote: >> >> Il 13/05/2011 22:48, Richard Loosemore ha scritto: >> >>> Again, with the disconnected from reality. >> >>> The main leakages in actual practice are caused when the USED fracking >>> fluid stored on the surface is (a) dumped into rivers, (b) dumped in >>> ponds which then overflow during rainstorms, and (c) processed through >>> water treatment plants that are not able to handle the contaminants. >> >> Why not outlaw these (if they are not already) instead to outlaw >> something far related? > > That is what we are trying to DO! ### No, not true. The problems of fracking fluid disposal have been long since resolved, they are just used as a pretext to extort more money from gas miners or just to shut them down. > > But you have to look at the technology: ?if we outlawed these things they > woudl not be able to use hydraulic fracturing at all, because they would > then be taking whole rivers, filling them with (undisclosed) poisons, ### "Undisclosed poisons"!!! Bwahahaha! ------------------ > sending them underground to do the fracking, then bringing them up and > ...... putting them WHERE? > > There would be no place for them to go. ?They could not store them in > plastic bottles. > > So, outlawing these problems is, ipso facto, equivalent to outlawing > fracking itself. ### There are literally dozens of ways of cleaning fracking fluids, some of them are quite cheap and are being used routinely in US operations. Richard, why don't you read up on the technology before you start spouting pronouncements? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 27 05:37:16 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 01:37:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DD8424D.808@libero.it> References: <4DD8424D.808@libero.it> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 6:53 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 11/05/2011 05:08, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > >> ### I used to believe that a government is unavoidable for protection >> purposes and as little as 7 years ago I argued against >> anarchocapitalists on this list but since then I have moved on. > > Do anyone know exaples of anarchocapitalists (or simple libertarians) > moving to the other side? > From what I understand the probability of an anarchocapitalist to change > his mind is much lower than the probability of someone else to become one. > > So, or we are intractable lunatics or we understand something others > don't understand and we can not ignore. ### I think that if you arrive at an anarchocapitalist worldview by a Bayesian inference process (or some reasonable approximation thereof), you will most likely be quite stable, unless a large amount of conflicting evidence shows up. It took me a long time to overcome my emotional opposition to AC but the intellectual process eventually became impossible to resist, and I really can't see any possibility of going back to believing that monopolies of violence are an efficient idea. On the other hand, if you start out a natural rights libertarian and adhere to AC because it resonates with you emotionally, the position might be less stable. The case of John C. Wright, who converted from AC to, of all things, christianity, is probably illustrative here, although I am not sure if he really was a natural rights libertarian (just guessing so from some parts of his Golden Ecumene books). Rafal From spike66 at att.net Fri May 27 05:49:07 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 22:49:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nanosail d might be tumbling, damn {8-[ Message-ID: <004c01cc1c31$cbf6dbf0$63e493d0$@att.net> Whenever it flashes like this, it isn't a good sign: SOLAR SAIL FLASHES: NASA's Nanosail-D, the first solar sail to orbit Earth, is flashing as it glides through the night sky. Observers in Europe report luminous peaks as bright as a 1st magnitude star. The irregular period of the flashes suggests that the sail might be tumbling, although no one is certain at this moment what is causing the phenomenon. Sky watchers are encouraged to check the Simple Satellite Tracker for local flyby times and watch this unique spacecraft strobe overhead: http://spaceweather.com/flybys spike From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri May 27 06:25:40 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 02:25:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> References: <4DC8EC5D.90300@moulton.com> <527625.24883.qm@web30103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > I'm puzzled as to why you find it funny. ?I have lived on both continents, > and I can assure you that BillK is just saying something that is considered > common knowlege in the rest of the world (i.e. the fact that there is almost > no socialism in the U.S.). ?The only group of people who find this difficult > to understand are U.S. right wingers. > > I would guess that roughly 70% of all Democrat politicians in the U.S. would > could as significantly right of center in most European countries. ### As someone who grew up under communism, I am enduringly amazed at how close most US politicians are to old commies back home. They exhibit the same arrogance, ignorance of economics, greed, hatred of working people, hypocrisy. Whether they are called right or left wingers doesn't matter, because they are equivalent in their penchant for carelessly destroying human lives. --------------------- The term "socialism", in Europe, means > something like "believing that government has the responsibility to look > after the interests of the weaker members of society". ### Arrant hypocrisy. --------------------- > Factually incorrect. ?The corporate tax rate is a meaningless number because > there are so many tax breaks specially designed to get around it, that most > corporations actually pay an amount of tax that is far less than the rate > that middle class American individuals pay. ### Ignorance of economics. Read on tax incidence theory, Richard. -------------- > > The tax rate does not drive companies overseas, corporate greed drives > companies overseas. ### Geez, from the depth of your insight I could almost think you have at some point worked for a corporation. --------------- >> For me, it's pretty easy.. American or England in 1800... Of course my >> utopia would not have slavery. > > At that time, children of poor families were sent down mines at the age of 8 > or 9 years, to work for 12-18 hours a day. ?Or sent into factories for the > same hours. ### Richard, you are not really making a coherent point here. Do you *really* think the historical observations you quote are arguments in favor of expropriation of workers (i.e. the people you like to pile on hate as "corporations")? ------------------------- > > The fact that you would quote that period as an economic utopia speaks > volumes about your knowledge of history and ability to apply that knowledge > to real world systems. ### That period was the first time ever in the history of mankind that a whole society pulled itself out the Malthusian trap. Do you understand the significance? (You might want to read "A Farewell to Alms" for some background story). Rafal From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 27 08:42:07 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 10:42:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: References: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 03:31:36PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5239 > > I don't get the relevance of the link, but I believe you so I did some research. The link mentions cobalt once, but it illustrates the problem of dilution and ore grade. > So according to Wikipedia, Cobalt consists of 0.0029% of the Earth's > crust. Compare to Nickel at 0.019%. Still pretty common compared to > Gold. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elemental_abundances.svg Elemental abundancies in the crust are completely irrelevant, as nobody mines the crust itself but ores, which enrichen the desired element or mineral. E.g. that's a problem with uranium, which is lithophilic and doesn't like to form rich ores like pitchblende. This results in something like http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Uranium_Production_In_France.png (leaving unremediated mines with 10-20x natural background behind to add insult to injury). > So I suppose it would be fair then to say that given it's very useful > nature, there isn't enough of it. And somewhere around half of the > Cobalt mined in the world comes from the Congo. That sucks. Another Congo biggie is coltan (columbite-tantalite, ore for niobium and tantalum). Generic term, blood minerals. > >> synthesis of artificial Cattierite suitable for use in electronics be > >> a good candidate for an X-Prize type competition? > > > > It's not the mineral, it's the element. Apart from enrichment > > from dilute sources your only other option is transmutation. > > I guess there's always asteroid mining... :-) There's the problem of delta v. In principle you could mine some rarer minerals on the moon (e.g. titanium and other metals via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFC_Cambridge_process ), launch them via linear motors, using minimal rocket burn and aerobraking (ceramics sheath, foam airfoil) with controlled descent to point of delivery. In principle the costs would be low if the system is largely self-maintaining, and also transcending our local limits by tapping extraterrestrial resources (minerals, solar flux, UHV) plus outsourcing "dirty" industries out of the local ecosystem. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 27 08:51:58 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 10:51:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> Message-ID: <20110527085158.GE19622@leitl.org> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 02:33:50PM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > One problem in a brain emulator that is pretty critical is how to > separate all those things laid down by evolution that you do not want, > or at least want in a more optimal form, from those you do want. One > problem is that currently it would take a 4GW power plant just to run a > cat brain partial emulation. We need some device breakthroughs like > perhaps memristors. There are many ways to skin the cat. Using a generic machine running BLAS is about the worst possible way to do it. Integer gas automata map pretty close to hardware, and of course you can use hybrid systems as well (Kwabena Boahen, etc.) -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 27 09:58:44 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 11:58:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110527095844.GH19622@leitl.org> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 03:49:59PM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > I'd guess Samantha's just talking about modeling the brain as an > abstract neural network, with each neuron being modeled simply as its > synaptic weights, never mind organelles or molecular activity. I figure > it would take 100 million desktop-PC equivalents to model the human Desktops are a poor way to turn Joules into Ops. If it has to be a generic computer you'd probably cramming as many aircooled ARM SoCs on a mesh into a rack as possible. Which would be still a far cry from a dedicated ASIC, nevermind a hybrid box. > brain like that, which at 20 watts per PC would be 2 GW. And I've read > a modern workstation can be more like 400 W. Actual modeling the > insides of the neurons, I can't even estimate that. > > Meanwhile, the actual human brain operates on like 15 W. At 50 EUR/MWh a MW will only set you back by 1200 EUR/day. So more than 10 MW for a human equivalent will be probably exceptional, unless power gets a lot more cheaper. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From rpwl at lightlink.com Fri May 27 12:41:31 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 08:41:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DDF9BFB.2060100@lightlink.com> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 10:24 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: >> Mirco Romanato wrote: >>> Il 13/05/2011 22:48, Richard Loosemore ha scritto: >>> >>>> Again, with the disconnected from reality. >>>> The main leakages in actual practice are caused when the USED fracking >>>> fluid stored on the surface is (a) dumped into rivers, (b) dumped in >>>> ponds which then overflow during rainstorms, and (c) processed through >>>> water treatment plants that are not able to handle the contaminants. >>> Why not outlaw these (if they are not already) instead to outlaw >>> something far related? >> That is what we are trying to DO! > > ### No, not true. The problems of fracking fluid disposal have been > long since resolved, they are just used as a pretext to extort more > money from gas miners or just to shut them down. > > >> But you have to look at the technology: ? if we outlawed these things they >> woudl not be able to use hydraulic fracturing at all, because they would >> then be taking whole rivers, filling them with (undisclosed) poisons, > > ### "Undisclosed poisons"!!! > > Bwahahaha! > > ------------------ >> sending them underground to do the fracking, then bringing them up and >> ...... putting them WHERE? >> >> There would be no place for them to go. ? They could not store them in >> plastic bottles. >> >> So, outlawing these problems is, ipso facto, equivalent to outlawing >> fracking itself. > > ### There are literally dozens of ways of cleaning fracking fluids, > some of them are quite cheap and are being used routinely in US > operations. > > Richard, why don't you read up on the technology before you start > spouting pronouncements? I live in the U.S., and in fact I live right on top of the Marcellus Shale. And I know the technology. Not only that, but I get the news reports from the Pennsylvania counties just south of here where disasters are happening. And the lake just a few miles away from where I live has been used as a dumping ground for the fluids, so some friends of mine who live on that lake can now go swim in the pollutants if they want. Like many right-wing people, you think you can cover your ignorance by simply accusing the well-informed people on the other side of the ignorance you are guilty of. First grade BS, I am afraid. So, to prove it: show the evidence: 1) Give me the details of what chemicals are being used by Chesapeake Energy in its fracking operations. Full chemistry, please. Apparently you are privy to information that the lawmakers in Pennsylvania and New York have been unable to extract from companies such as Chesapeake. 2) Give me the evaluation, by unbiassed experts, of the "literally dozens of ways of cleaning fracking fluids, some of them are quite cheap and are being used routinely in US operations". Richard Loosemore From rpwl at lightlink.com Fri May 27 13:18:27 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 09:18:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > Sorry, I guess I got confused and used the wrong word. Thanks for the > correction. I suppose the right word is brain region. Each region of > the brain that has a modular function. They are like suborgans that > make up the overall brain. I understand that there are a few dozens of > such regions. Is there a better word for these brain regions? There is actually no true modularity, there are just regions with apparent specializations, which are more or less definable or distinct, depending on the case. The terms used are also not uniform: many are just "areas" (as in Brodmann areas), but that implies cortex, whereas some significant chunks or sub-cortical. My own, more general answer to the issue of AGI via brain emulation is that, as you are suggesting, the modeling of the human mind/brain is likely to be the first successful AGI, but this is unlikely to be whole brain emulation in the sense of a low-level neuron-by-neuron copying. Richard Loosemore From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 27 13:22:04 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 15:22:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110527132204.GU19622@leitl.org> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 09:18:27AM -0400, Richard Loosemore wrote: > My own, more general answer to the issue of AGI via brain emulation is > that, as you are suggesting, the modeling of the human mind/brain is > likely to be the first successful AGI, but this is unlikely to be whole > brain emulation in the sense of a low-level neuron-by-neuron copying. I'm *so* looking forward to the first individually accurate connectome. Even just at micron resolution. From rpwl at lightlink.com Fri May 27 13:39:07 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 09:39:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, brain regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: <20110527132204.GU19622@leitl.org> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> <20110527132204.GU19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4DDFA97B.3050602@lightlink.com> Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 09:18:27AM -0400, Richard Loosemore wrote: > >> My own, more general answer to the issue of AGI via brain emulation is >> that, as you are suggesting, the modeling of the human mind/brain is >> likely to be the first successful AGI, but this is unlikely to be whole >> brain emulation in the sense of a low-level neuron-by-neuron copying. > > I'm *so* looking forward to the first individually accurate connectome. > Even just at micron resolution. But: suppose it were available, today. At micron resolution you would be able to see something like this: http://richardloosemore.com/images/neurons_micron_per_pixel.jpg Now, consider the amount of fine structure (the wispy connections, exact shape of bodies, and ..... the synapses!) that are lost from this picture. (Compare with the original, which I saved as http://richardloosemore.com/images/neurons.jpg) What would you do if you actually had such a picture of one brain, today? How on earth would you go about interpreting it? Making sense of what the connections meant? Useful, maybe, but (I believe) only to someone who already had soaked up all the cognitive psychology they possibly could. Richard Loosemore From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 27 13:52:18 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 15:52:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, brain regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: <4DDFA97B.3050602@lightlink.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> <20110527132204.GU19622@leitl.org> <4DDFA97B.3050602@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <20110527135218.GX19622@leitl.org> > What would you do if you actually had such a picture of one brain, We could start building the segmentation and tracing machinery required to deal with the final data sets, which would be soon to come. You can start data-mining the connectivity, looking for clusters. > today? How on earth would you go about interpreting it? Making sense > of what the connections meant? In vivo recording prior to obtaining the data set. Helps a lot if the patient is a pond snail. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From spike66 at att.net Fri May 27 14:53:51 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 07:53:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> References: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00b001cc1c7d$e473dd30$ad5b9790$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl ... >...Another Congo biggie is coltan (columbite-tantalite, ore for niobium and tantalum). Generic term, blood minerals...In principle the costs would be low if the system is largely self-maintaining, and also transcending our local limits by tapping extraterrestrial resources (minerals, solar flux, UHV) plus outsourcing "dirty" industries out of the local ecosystem. Blood minerals. Hmmm, so there exists places inhabited by people who for whatever reason can manufacture little or nothing of value. Fortunately they have one valuable natural resource, which they can mine to great profit, but they brutally kill each other for control of that one valuable resource. Our solution is to find an alternate abundant source for that valuable raw mineral, so that their one resource becomes valueless, removing any reason to kill each other over it, saving lives. Of course they then revert to killing each other for no particular reason. I don't like the term blood minerals, because it makes it sound like it all our fault, for buying the stuff from them. I propose renaming blood diamonds and blood minerals by substituting the word blood with any other bodily fluid. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 27 15:11:31 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 08:11:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> References: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 1:42 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: snip > There's the problem of delta v. In principle you could mine > some rarer minerals on the moon (e.g. titanium and other metals > via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFC_Cambridge_process ), > launch them via linear motors, using minimal rocket burn and > aerobraking (ceramics sheath, foam airfoil) with controlled > descent to point of delivery. Titanium isn't particularly rare. And linear motors are *so* 70s. For the moon, an elevator out through L1 made of dental floss works just fine and you don't have to soft land a single kg on the moon to do it. Mass payback is under 100 days. With big lasers, delta V is inexpensive. Injection velocity from GEO to intercept the huge solid metal asteroid 1986 DA is only 140 m/s. Processing it would take melting and rolling into thin ribbon. The ribbon would be dissolved in high pressure CO making carbonals. These can be sorted out and reduced to nickel, cobalt and iron with all the other metals in the leftover dust. A 50,000 ton plant should be able to process its own mass in a couple of months. I don't think you can make a case for returning the iron, but the rest of it should be worth it to sell to the earth market. Keith Keith enough to mine asteroids for From eugen at leitl.org Fri May 27 15:49:21 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 17:49:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: References: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110527154921.GZ19622@leitl.org> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 08:11:31AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > Titanium isn't particularly rare. And linear motors are *so* 70s. Dirt cheap zero impact titanium air-dropped to your location is pretty rare. > For the moon, an elevator out through L1 made of dental floss works Would you need a counterweight for the other end? > just fine and you don't have to soft land a single kg on the moon to > do it. I've seen estimates of M5 fiber with ~7 ton cable, with 200 kg surface initial lifting capacity. > Mass payback is under 100 days. > > With big lasers, delta V is inexpensive. Injection velocity from GEO > to intercept the huge solid metal asteroid 1986 DA is only 140 m/s. > > Processing it would take melting and rolling into thin ribbon. The > ribbon would be dissolved in high pressure CO making carbonals. These Metal carbonyls. > can be sorted out and reduced to nickel, cobalt and iron with all the > other metals in the leftover dust. > > A 50,000 ton plant should be able to process its own mass in a couple of months. > > I don't think you can make a case for returning the iron, but the rest > of it should be worth it to sell to the earth market. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri May 27 16:19:09 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 09:19:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <20110527095844.GH19622@leitl.org> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <20110527095844.GH19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 2:58 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: snip > At 50 EUR/MWh a MW will only set you back by 1200 EUR/day. > So more than 10 MW for a human equivalent will be probably > exceptional, unless power gets a lot more cheaper. If we can get the cost to GEO down to $100/kg at 5 kg/kW, the parts and labor cost no more than $900 and the rectenna $200/kW then the levelized capital cost would be from 15.3 to 27.8 depending on the discount rate with the lower being at 5% and the higher being at 15% It's hard to see why O&M should be as high as 1 percent of investment per year, but using that, $2 a MWh. No charge for fuel and same as coal for transmission gives a levelized cost of space based solar power of $18 to $31 per MWh. Or 1.8 cents per kWh to 3.1 cents per kWh. At worst, that's less than 1/3rd of the cost of power from coal and under half the of the least expensive power from gas. Aren't numbers fun? From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat May 28 02:39:19 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 19:39:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: <20110527154921.GZ19622@leitl.org> References: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> <20110527154921.GZ19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 08:11:31AM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > >> Titanium isn't particularly rare. ?And linear motors are *so* 70s. > > Dirt cheap zero impact titanium air-dropped to your location is pretty rare. > >> For the moon, an elevator out through L1 made of dental floss works > > Would you need a counterweight for the other end? For 19,000 tons of Spectra in a loop, 65,000 tons of counterweight, 15 MW of power plant. The further you go, the less you need, but that distance, 190 km from the lunar surface is at the end of an orbital trajectory to GEO. Payback in mass is around 100 days. First thing you do is replace the counterweight made of borrowed power sat parts with lunar dirt. Keiht >> just fine and you don't have to soft land a single kg on the moon to >> do it. > > I've seen estimates of M5 fiber with ~7 ton cable, > with 200 kg surface initial lifting capacity. > >> Mass payback is under 100 days. >> >> With big lasers, delta V is inexpensive. ?Injection velocity from GEO >> to intercept the huge solid metal asteroid 1986 DA is only 140 m/s. >> >> Processing it would take melting and rolling into thin ribbon. ?The >> ribbon would be dissolved in high pressure CO making carbonals. ?These > > Metal carbonyls. > >> can be sorted out and reduced to nickel, cobalt and iron with all the >> other metals in the leftover dust. >> >> A 50,000 ton plant should be able to process its own mass in a couple of months. >> >> I don't think you can make a case for returning the iron, but the rest >> of it should be worth it to sell to the earth market. > > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org > ______________________________________________________________ > ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A ?7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 28 03:27:54 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 23:27:54 -0400 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:14 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > As for thermite, my standard ignition method was always a magnesium-oxidizer > mixture. Of course, I often added a bit extra to get some aluminium to lift > into the air and burn freely - made such a lovely infrared pulse, and tended > to evaporate the soda cans I put the mixture in. ### I am partial to sodium perchlorate mixed with magnesium and ignited by dripping some glycerol on top of a few crystals of permanganate (for a nice delayed-action fuse).... but aluminum powder is nice too. What do you guys think about nitrogen triiodide? Not as flashy but provides a lot fun when smeared on door latches, chairs and toilets .... Rafal From spike66 at att.net Sat May 28 03:45:27 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 20:45:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> Message-ID: <000801cc1ce9$afc3e370$0f4baa50$@att.net> ... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki Subject: Re: [ExI] a very silly story On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:14 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> As for thermite, my standard ignition method was always a magnesium-oxidizer mixture. Of course, I often added a bit extra to get some aluminium to lift into the air and burn freely - made such a lovely infrared pulse, and tended to evaporate the soda cans I put the mixture in. >...### I am partial to sodium perchlorate mixed with magnesium and ignited by dripping some glycerol on top of a few crystals of permanganate (for a nice delayed-action fuse).... but aluminum powder is nice too. What do you guys think about nitrogen triiodide? Not as flashy but provides a lot fun when smeared on door latches, chairs and toilets ... Rafal So much of this fun stuff we used to do would now attract too much attention from Homeland Security. Their curiosity would be aroused at something as benign as collecting a bunch of ammonium nitrate. Tim McVeigh spoiled so much fun. spike From eugen at leitl.org Sat May 28 09:01:25 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 11:01:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <000801cc1ce9$afc3e370$0f4baa50$@att.net> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> <000801cc1ce9$afc3e370$0f4baa50$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110528090125.GD19622@leitl.org> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 08:45:27PM -0700, spike wrote: > ... On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki > Subject: Re: [ExI] a very silly story > > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:14 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > > > >> As for thermite, my standard ignition method was always a > magnesium-oxidizer mixture. Of course, I often added a bit extra to get some > aluminium to lift into the air and burn freely - made such a lovely infrared > pulse, and tended to evaporate the soda cans I put the mixture in. One of my more stupid ideas was to substitude lead oxide for iron oxide once. Never again. > >...### I am partial to sodium perchlorate mixed with magnesium and ignited > by dripping some glycerol on top of a few crystals of permanganate (for a > nice delayed-action fuse).... but aluminum powder is nice too. What do you > guys think about nitrogen triiodide? Not as flashy but provides a lot fun > when smeared on door latches, chairs and toilets ... Rafal Like organic peroxides, it would do great to spread your thermite (and subtract a few digits) but fail to ignite it. > > > So much of this fun stuff we used to do would now attract too much attention > from Homeland Security. Their curiosity would be aroused at something as > benign as collecting a bunch of ammonium nitrate. Tim McVeigh spoiled so Well, you're a farmer... right? > much fun. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From anders at aleph.se Sat May 28 10:14:15 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 11:14:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <20110528090125.GD19622@leitl.org> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> <000801cc1ce9$afc3e370$0f4baa50$@att.net> <20110528090125.GD19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4DE0CAF7.6050209@aleph.se> Eugen Leitl wrote: > One of my more stupid ideas was to substitude lead oxide for > iron oxide once. Never again. > I used copper oxide. Great fun (from a distance). Another fun trick is to mix chlorates with manganese peroxide and magnesium. Surprisingly powerful, since it releases extra oxygen when reacting - if placed in a vessel such as a coconut it will hence use part of the vessel as fuel too. > >> What do you >> guys think about nitrogen triiodide? Not as flashy but provides a lot fun >> when smeared on door latches, chairs and toilets ... Rafal >> > > Like organic peroxides, it would do great to spread your thermite > (and subtract a few digits) but fail to ignite it. > While the compound is cool in its fragility, I never really got into it. Especially after a crazy friend filled a whole test tube with iodine and concentrated ammonia, corked it and left it behind in a rack. It stood there for weeks, nobody daring to touch it. One evening I turned around and he stood there with a maniac grin and the Test Tube of Doom in his hand. He walked out of the building and threw it... it broke, nothing happened. We waited. Nothing. He threw rocks at the little pile of purple goo... nothing. A few spots around it banged properly when stepped on. We went back in, and then there was a loud bang... Another lovely reaction is making chlorine septoxide by dripping concentrated sulphuric acid on potassium chlorate. Orange-colored heavy gas that explodes when it reaches critical volume, splattering chlorate/sulphuric acid droplets everywhere. Yay! (The fact that I am still alive, not lacking any fingers and not poisoned is evidence for the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics a la quantum suicide computing :-) ) -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From pharos at gmail.com Sat May 28 11:59:18 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 12:59:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <4DE0CAF7.6050209@aleph.se> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> <000801cc1ce9$afc3e370$0f4baa50$@att.net> <20110528090125.GD19622@leitl.org> <4DE0CAF7.6050209@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > (The fact that I am still alive, not lacking any fingers and not poisoned is > evidence for the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics a la quantum > suicide computing :-) ) But think of the damage you caused to the other Anderslings throughout the multiverse! ;) The thing about the multiverse is that a life may start out with an infinity of possible worlds, but each decision path chosen trims the tree of possibilities. Some decisions produce a narrow set of futures, others have less constraints. It is a bit like Karma - As ye sow, so shall ye reap. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sat May 28 13:44:45 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 06:44:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <20110528090125.GD19622@leitl.org> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> <000801cc1ce9$afc3e370$0f4baa50$@att.net> <20110528090125.GD19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <000c01cc1d3d$68032970$38097c50$@att.net> ... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl ... >> ...So much of this fun stuff we used to do would now attract too much attention from Homeland Security. Their curiosity would be aroused at something as benign as collecting a bunch of ammonium nitrate. Tim McVeigh spoiled so much fun... >...Well, you're a farmer... right? Eugen* Leitl Ja. The point is that if one has crops, getting a bunch of ammonium nitrate is perfectly legitimate and necessary. If Farmer Jones uses even a smallish amount of it to blast a stump for instance, the local authorities might become alarmed and Farmer Jones can no longer get ammonium nitrate for use as fertilizer. I suppose I must hire a contractor to blast the stump with dynamite, which is expensive, and my own knowledge of how to do the same job with a sack of ammonium nitrate is wasted. spike From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Sat May 28 14:07:51 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 07:07:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: References: <4DD8424D.808@libero.it> Message-ID: <20110528140751.GA17797@ofb.net> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 01:37:16AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > and adhere to AC because it resonates with you emotionally, the > position might be less stable. The case of John C. Wright, who > converted from AC to, of all things, christianity, is probably > illustrative here, although I am not sure if he really was a natural > rights libertarian (just guessing so from some parts of his Golden > Ecumene books). Well, he was Objectivist, or close to it. Now he's Catholic. There's less of a difference then you'd think, apparently. -xx- Damien X-) From spike66 at att.net Sat May 28 14:07:47 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 07:07:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> <000801cc1ce9$afc3e370$0f4baa50$@att.net> <20110528090125.GD19622@leitl.org> <4DE0CAF7.6050209@aleph.se> Message-ID: <001e01cc1d40$9f97a610$dec6f230$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] a very silly story On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> (The fact that I am still alive, not lacking any fingers and not poisoned is evidence for the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics a la quantum suicide computing :-) ) >But think of the damage you caused to the other Anderslings throughout the multiverse! ;) This is something I think about: in my own misspent youth, I derived or stumbled on a variety of cool devilment one can do with chemicals. I lived close enough to unpopulated areas I could do plenty of this stuff without concern of harming other proles or getting caught. I would take my stuff unmixed in a knapsack out to the proving grounds, mix and ignite it out there. We would use model rocket igniters to maintain safe distances. But I don't publish any of this stuff on the internet. I would be too worried some cocky little twit would kill himself with it. I did keep some of my old notebooks, but I may never publish that stuff. > It is a bit like Karma - As ye sow, so shall ye reap. BillK Ja, right, and as soon as ye say that, ye cause a bunch of proles to start saying ye. And ye Brits started it, back in ye olde days. Then Crazy Guggenhiem started up with it and it's been ye ye ye ever since. spike From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat May 28 15:52:40 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 11:52:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <4DE0CAF7.6050209@aleph.se> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> <009e01cc1b03$a0f822d0$e2e86870$@att.net> <4DDD7F57.8020100@aleph.se> <000801cc1ce9$afc3e370$0f4baa50$@att.net> <20110528090125.GD19622@leitl.org> <4DE0CAF7.6050209@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 6:14 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > While the compound is cool in its fragility, I never really got into it. > Especially after a crazy friend filled a whole test tube with iodine and > concentrated ammonia, corked it and left it behind in a rack. It stood there > for weeks, nobody daring to touch it. One evening I turned around and he > stood there with a maniac grin and the Test Tube of Doom in his hand. He > walked out of the building and threw it... it broke, nothing happened. We > waited. Nothing. He threw rocks at the little pile of purple goo... nothing. > A few spots around it banged properly when stepped on. We went back in, and > then there was a loud bang... ### Yeah, you need to let it dry a bit, which makes application to various places safe and easy - essentially, it's an explosive you manufacture with a built-in time-delay fuse. A milligram is enough to greatly startle most non-chemistry teachers :) > > Another lovely reaction is making chlorine septoxide by dripping > concentrated sulphuric acid on potassium chlorate. Orange-colored heavy gas > that explodes when it reaches critical volume, splattering > chlorate/sulphuric acid droplets everywhere. Yay! ### Need to give this one a try! Talking about gases and vapors, how do you like to light mercury thiocyanate on fire? Even a small crystal will produce a long, snaking piece of mercury oxides, and a larger amount will look like a writhing nest of snakes. Mercury vapors that released here are not as poisonous as organic mercury compounds which is why I am still alive. Rafal From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sun May 29 19:22:58 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 13:22:58 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Future Movie Quality Benchmarks? Message-ID: <4DE29D12.3000605@canonizer.com> Fellow Transhumans, How long do people think it will take before we have movie experiences like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poK5xL7hDEA And how close to that will we be able to get without direct neural communication? And what do you think we will be able to accomplish beyond this, and how long will that take? As in how long will it take to have awareness of much more than a few hundred pixels per inch, close to us, and the extents of our conscious knowledge extended far beyond a few miles (the end of which everything is pasted flat), and instead of just tri color, or in some lucky tetrochromat people's case, 4 colors, have thousands of diverse phenomenal colors, and instead of just 2 1/2 D, where you can only see the surface of things, and nothing behind them, but be fully conscious of all of it in full 3D... and what else beyond all that will be possible - when...? Brent Allsop From max at maxmore.com Mon May 30 03:24:24 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 20:24:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Where's the jetpack that the future promised me? Message-ID: Right here: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/29/6743626-jetpack-soars-a-mile-high -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon May 30 06:38:27 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 29 May 2011 23:38:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Where's the jetpack that the future promised me? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01b201cc1e94$31bd3ba0$9537b2e0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Max More Subject: [ExI] Where's the jetpack that the future promised me? Right here: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/29/6743626-jetpack-soars-a-mile -high -- Max More . Thanks Max, cool. Ducted fan is the wrong answer for this application however. The power consumption from having such short rotors makes the whole idea a no-go. If they used tandem unducted rotors, even eight feet long, that would work better, and would give the pilot a reasonable chance of survival in a power-out event. This Martin craft is an impressive feat from a controls engineering perspective however. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 30 09:33:52 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 10:33:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Where's the jetpack that the future promised me? In-Reply-To: <01b201cc1e94$31bd3ba0$9537b2e0$@att.net> References: <01b201cc1e94$31bd3ba0$9537b2e0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/30 spike wrote: > Thanks Max, cool.? Ducted fan is the wrong answer for this application > however.? The power consumption from having such short rotors makes the > whole idea a no-go.? If they used tandem unducted rotors, even eight feet > long, that would work better, and would give the pilot a reasonable chance > of survival in a power-out event. > > This Martin craft is an impressive feat from a controls engineering > perspective however. > This Martin device has attracted some controversy. Namely, it is too big and heavy to be a backpack device and it is not driven by jet or rocket power. Most people would probably call it a small ducted-fan helicopter that you strap yourself into. The ultralight helicopter market has some examples that are light enough to carry around, but the rotor diameter is wider (and more efficient, as Spike said) than the ducted fan device. The Martin machine's ducted fans have a (somewhat) smaller footprint than rotors, but there's a heavy price to pay in increased weight and fuel consumption, as there always is when you shrink the thrust disc area. Autogyros or gyroplanes seem much more fun and cost about the same as a motorcycle. Yves Rossy's backpack jetplane flies pretty well, but the present version cannot takeoff from the ground. BillK From anders at aleph.se Mon May 30 10:02:16 2011 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 11:02:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Future Movie Quality Benchmarks? In-Reply-To: <4DE29D12.3000605@canonizer.com> References: <4DE29D12.3000605@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <4DE36B28.4080204@aleph.se> I doubt you could do that good holographic projections, despite the fun advances in projecting stuff in 3D over the last decade. I would think VR (visual and audio) could get there, especially if one adds cameras so one can turn it into AR during popcorn excursions (just layering on film images on top of the background is no good - who wants to see their furniture through the space battle?) Direct neural interfacing might go even further the day it actually works as good as in movies - which is going to be a tough challenge. The brain is good at filling in details, but each brain is different which means that the same signal will produce different experiences in different people. How do we callibrate that without too much effort? But the biggest problem isn't really the input fidelity but the ability to tell a compelling story or create an immersive environment. Note how well told the little story of the ad was - he stopped the action at just the right moments to create brief cliffhangers, he moved so that the flames looked good, you get the explanation for the initial mystery (why is he just sitting there?) gradually. The problem with interactive media is that they require a different kind of storytelling, and we are still in the early days. Truly immersive interactive media likely require realtime storytellers, presumably some kind of AI. And of course, then there is the addiction question. We are already experiencing many things through our entertainment that are far more rewarding than most things we can experience in real life. Better entertainment might also mean more addictive entertainment. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute James Martin 21st Century School Philosophy Faculty Oxford University From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 30 16:14:21 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 18:14:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] persuasion and/or argument In-Reply-To: <4DDEA1C5.1020401@satx.rr.com> References: <1845414746.20110523234107@umcs.edu.pl> <8AC497CA-EAE3-4D8D-B683-D948D047C11A@ewwpi.com> <1943509189.20110524203336@umcs.edu.pl> <0C6E7D71A71F984CBE4E2F5B950D130132FDE49B6D@EXITS713.its.iastate.edu> <954055855.20110525223514@umcs.edu.pl> <4DDEA1C5.1020401@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On 26 May 2011 20:53, Damien Broderick wrote: > "Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory" in BEHAVIORAL > AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2011) 34, 57?111 by Hugo Mercie, University of > Pennsylvania hmercier at sas.upenn.edu < > http://sites.google.com/site/hugomercier/> > and Dan Sperber, Jean Nicod Institute(EHESS-ENS-CNRS), 75005Paris, France; > Department of Philosophy, Central EuropeanUniversity, Budapest, Hungary > dan at sperber.fr > > Abstract: Reasoning is generally seen as a means to improve knowledge and > make better decisions. However, much evidence shows that reasoning often > leads to epistemic distortions and poor decisions. This suggests that the > function of reasoning should be rethought. Our hypothesis is that the > function of reasoning is argumentative. It is to devise and evaluate > arguments intended to persuade. > Why, this is pretty obvious to those amongst us who practise law for a living, is it not? :-))) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 30 16:39:45 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 18:39:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 27 May 2011 01:41, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The poor are poor because they have not been able to effectively apply > the resources they have to obtain more resources. > Mmhhh. The poor are poor because... they are poor, especially in societies where social upward mobility is very limited and has mostly little to do with one's ability "to effectively apply the resources they have to obtain more resources" in any capitalistic sense. As has for that matter downward mobility, given that the rich who are found wanting in this area have just to pay good consultants to supplement the ability they lack. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 30 17:11:37 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 19:11:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <20110524192812.GB18783@ofb.net> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> <4DDA339D.8090305@libero.it> <20110524192812.GB18783@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 24 May 2011 21:28, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 04:07:33PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > > There again, "freedom" is a relatively concept. A rather libertarian > > legal framework can go hand in hand with a semi-monopolistic control > of > > information ("Freedom of speech is nothing without freedom of radio > > A libertarian legal framework can also go hand in hand with a > monopolistic control of land, or any other resource. Absolute monarchy > is libertarian, if you grant that someone owns all the land. > Aristocracy/oligarchy is libertarian, if a few people own all the land. > "Barriers to entry" (typically, a given market or profession) would not be, especially if they are of a legal nature, would they? I am not sure of other, non-legal barriers, but then I am no expert of libertarian doctrines about cartels. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 30 17:25:39 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 19:25:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 27 May 2011 15:18, Richard Loosemore wrote: > My own, more general answer to the issue of AGI via brain emulation is > that, as you are suggesting, the modeling of the human mind/brain is likely > to be the first successful AGI > I am inclined to agree, only I think that the modeling of *a* human brain is likely to be the first successful AGI. I suspect that unless the full product of a given ontogenetic development is replicated, a generic high-level copy of a human brain would not do much. Of course, OTOH, if we were to go down to a molecular level, all the relevant information contained in the original would be included. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 30 17:55:19 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 19:55:19 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 26 May 2011 22:58, Kelly Anderson wrote: > When you get down to the raw philosophy of it, you are correct. I > think most of us tend to be a little more practical than most > philosophers allow for. > Indeed. But I maintain that in order to be *really* practical to the end, we need not and should not concern ourselves with issues such as whether a given biological or electronic system is "conscious" because the word has not meaning in the first place, unless as a stenographic, coarse-grained reference to a certain set of behaviours which makes it easy for us to project on such systems our own internal statuses. Being a capitalist entrepreneur, I tend to look at things from the POV > of the customer. I this case the rapist. > :-) > > Accordingly, those who might like to suffer an *actual* rape, as opposed > to > > just seeing it mimicked, are bound never to have the experience they > > crave... :-) > > That's pretty easy, just put on the right dress and walk around the > wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. :-) > Yep, but you would be *pretending* lack of consent, wouldn't you? :-) And if you change your mind along the way, you can then get actually raped, but in that case you would not be a willing participant anymore. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rpwl at lightlink.com Mon May 30 18:01:47 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 14:01:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DE3DB8B.8080305@lightlink.com> Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 27 May 2011 15:18, Richard Loosemore > wrote: > > My own, more general answer to the issue of AGI via brain emulation > is that, as you are suggesting, the modeling of the human mind/brain > is likely to be the first successful AGI > > > I am inclined to agree, only I think that the modeling of *a* human > brain is likely to be the first successful AGI. > > I suspect that unless the full product of a given ontogenetic > development is replicated, a generic high-level copy of a human brain > would not do much. > > Of course, OTOH, if we were to go down to a molecular level, all the > relevant information contained in the original would be included. Bear in mind that my original point, in that quoted sentence, was to *distinguish* modeling of the brain proper, from modeling of the human mind/brain ... which latter term I meant to imply the psychology level. Which, in turn, means that I am saying that the first AGI will be a model of generic, high-level cognition. So when you say "I am inclined to agree..." you are probably then describing a position that was the one I was attacking :-). --- What I really meant, when I said "human mind/brain", was a combination of cognitive psychology and the broad architectural features of the brain that are relevant, and the low level circuitry features that are relevant. That is very much the opposite of whole brain emulation, since the latter is dominated by the idea of Circuitry Above All Else. If we were discussing the merits of WBE using a generic, non-individual brain, versus WBE using a single individual brain, then I would be in agreement with what you just said. I think that it would be dubious to claim a WBE system to be valid if it combined bits of wiring from many different individuals. But then, I think all of that will be a moot point, because I think that the arrival of a multi-brain AND the arrival of a single-brain WBE will both come long after the cognitive-level systems have been built, understood and become sentient research partners in the enterprise of studying WBE science. Richard Loosemore From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Mon May 30 18:18:19 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 11:18:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> <4DDA339D.8090305@libero.it> <20110524192812.GB18783@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110530181819.GA16591@ofb.net> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 07:11:37PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > "Barriers to entry" (typically, a given market or profession) would not > be, especially if they are of a legal nature, would they? > I am not sure of other, non-legal barriers, but then I am no expert of > libertarian doctrines about cartels. Not sure why you're jumping to barriers to entry but no, legal barriers like doctor licensing wouldn't be very libertarian. But that's irrelevant to land monopoly like I was talking about. Non-legal barriers would be high capital requirements, economies of scale, and the ability to use price dumping to drive new competitors out of business. Which last is perfectly libertarian. -xx- Damien X-) From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 30 18:18:15 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 12:18:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/30 Stefano Vaj : > On 27 May 2011 01:41, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> The poor are poor because they have not been able to effectively apply >> the resources they have to obtain more resources. > > Mmhhh. The other day I met a fellow who's father was a very poor copper miner in the Atacama dessert of Chile. The father even died when he was young. NOT an auspicious beginning. In one generation, he had saved up enough money to get to the city, and finally emigrate to the United States. He now enjoys a comfortable life in the richest country in the world because he was able to put his limited resources to their ultimate use. Did he get a break? Maybe. Part of becoming rich is wanting to become rich badly enough to do whatever is necessary to do so. Many poor people that I have met are unwilling to leave their village and family to go to the city and make their mark on the world. Those who do are more likely to be upwardly mobile. Stewart Brand gave a TED talk in 2006 about slums in the big cities that was very convincing on this topic and corresponds with my own experiences. Remember too that "poor" is very relative. If you make $2 a day in Haiti, you are not "poor" by local standards. > The poor are poor because... they are poor, especially in societies where > social upward mobility is very limited The probability of escaping poverty is MUCH higher in places with better governments, like the United States. But it is still possible to escape poverty in most places. I admit that it is nearly impossible in places like Haiti, where hard work doesn't get you very far. That is obvious. But some people still DO escape. In the case of Haiti, you pretty much have to leave the country. > and has mostly little to do with > one's ability "to effectively apply the resources they have to obtain more > resources" in any capitalistic sense. They don't call America the land of opportunity for nothing. > As has for that matter downward mobility, given that the rich who are found > wanting in this area have just to pay good consultants to supplement the > ability they lack. :-) I know quite a bit about downward mobility from personal experience. :-) Downward mobility is easy. In countries like the US, downward mobility does have a bottom, below which you typically don't go. Education moves the bottom up to a higher level, barring mental illness issues. -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon May 30 18:28:45 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 20:28:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 30 May 2011 20:18, Kelly Anderson wrote: > The other day I met a fellow who's father was a very poor copper miner > in the Atacama dessert of Chile. And the head of a very minimal Jewish sect managed to found one of the most widespread religion in the world and be adored for centuries as a living god. Yes, it may happen, but anecdotical evidence in social sciences is exactly what obfuscates, rather than clarify, what actually happens. Part of becoming rich is wanting to become rich badly enough to do > whatever is necessary to do so. > Indeed, but there are other ingredients to it, and commercial acumen is often a rather secondary one, even in societies which were founded, and are organised, around this far from universal idea. Actually, beauty, physical performances, risk propension, leadership (as in organising revolutions and becoming king...) and sheer luck usually play a much greater role, even though by no mean they can be considered on the same level as pre-existing money in determining one's wealth. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 30 19:19:16 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 13:19:16 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/30 Stefano Vaj : > Yep, but you would be *pretending* lack of consent, wouldn't you? :-) Only initially. > And if you change your mind along the way, you can then get actually raped, > but in that case you would not be a willing participant anymore. You can choose your actions, but often times you can't choose the consequences. There is a portion of the population that likes "losing control" in sexual situations. This would be a very extreme case, of course. While this would not excuse the rapist (the often used "she wanted it" defense) it would be poor judgement, unless that was what you actually wanted. In this case, I suppose, the crazy girl could just not press charges or report the event. This whole thread is getting very strange... sigh. The corners of human sexuality are just strange. I suppose what this proves is that there are corners of human sexual behavior that can never be completely simulated successfully. I do hope that we can eventually get to the point where unwilling participants are not dragged into sexual situations they don't want to be involved with. Personally, I have never understood the mixture of sex and pain. I can understand that the neural pathways can develop to link these, but it's a kind of synesthesia. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 30 19:33:34 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 13:33:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: 2011/5/30 Stefano Vaj : > On 30 May 2011 20:18, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> The other day I met a fellow who's father was a very poor copper miner >> in the Atacama dessert of Chile. > > And the head of a very minimal Jewish sect managed to found one of the most > widespread religion in the world and be adored for centuries as a living > god. Yes, it may happen, but anecdotical evidence in social sciences is > exactly what obfuscates, rather than clarify, what actually happens. But this is just a random guy I ran into last week. I encounter people who have escaped poverty quite often. I haven't yet run into one founder of a religion, although I once met a guy who claimed to have founded a school of philosophy. :-) I can think of twenty personal friends who have escaped third world poverty by coming to the United States. It takes some luck, it takes perseverance, but most of all, it takes a willingness to do whatever it takes. >> Part of becoming rich is wanting to become rich badly enough to do >> whatever is necessary to do so. > > Indeed, but there are other ingredients to it, and commercial acumen is > often a rather secondary one, even in societies which were founded, and are > organised, around this far from universal idea. There are a lot of people who are trapped where they are by hopelessness, lack of knowledge, lack of initiative, attachment to kinship relationships, and other things. Some of these can be combated. Eventually, the overall richness of the earth will filter down. For example, in Africa today, most people wear used western clothing. It's not in good shape in many cases, but this is a case where the abundance of the first world has filtered down. The widespread access to a cell phone in Africa is another case. Africans are as rich today as Americans at the time of the Mayflower, or Europeans 200 years ago. This filtering down will continue, but they will remain relatively poor compared to us for a very long time. My point is, that you can't help Africa by sending them even half of our money. They would not know what to do with it, and they would be poor again very quickly. It's mostly a matter of education and culture. Preserving many African cultures in the face of western culture is a challenge, and more so with an influx of money and western goods. > Actually, beauty, physical performances, risk propension, leadership (as in > organising revolutions and becoming king...) and sheer luck usually play a > much greater role, even though by no mean they can be considered on the same > level as pre-existing money in determining one's wealth. I don't know what you mean by physical performances. Risk aversion keeps a lot of people poor. How is social engineering going to fix that? Perhaps genetic engineering could, but that's an activity that is pretty far up the economic ladder, even when it's available. Luck plays a role, of course, primarily in who gives you a bit of assistance when it's really needed. Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers is a great introduction to this part of the success equation. Again, I don't think any amount of social engineering can provide "luck". -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 30 19:40:23 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 13:40:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:18 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > There is actually no true modularity, there are just regions with apparent > specializations, which are more or less definable or distinct, depending on > the case. ?The terms used are also not uniform: ?many are just "areas" (as > in Brodmann areas), but that implies cortex, whereas some significant chunks > or sub-cortical. Thanks. That helps me to understand some things better. My understanding is that there are some divisions that are pretty structural, such as the brain stem... but if I understand what you're saying it is that in the neocortex, there aren't such sub organs. Right? > My own, more general answer to the issue of AGI via brain emulation is that, > as you are suggesting, the modeling of the human mind/brain is likely to be > the first successful AGI, but this is unlikely to be whole brain emulation > in the sense of a low-level neuron-by-neuron copying. I agree 100%. In implementing this whole brain emulation, there may be areas where the best initial emulation is neuron by neuron emulation, but I hope that's just a small part of the emulation. And neuron by neuron emulation seems like a valuable first step in figuring out what the higher level functions are and how they work, I think. -Kelly From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Mon May 30 19:44:28 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 12:44:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110530194428.GA28730@ofb.net> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 12:18:15PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Part of becoming rich is wanting to become rich badly enough to do > whatever is necessary to do so. Many poor people that I have met are > The probability of escaping poverty is MUCH higher in places with > better governments, like the United States. But it is still possible > to escape poverty in most places. I admit that it is nearly impossible I note a difference between "becoming rich" and "becoming rich ethically". -xx- Damien X-) From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 30 19:54:54 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 13:54:54 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Future Movie Quality Benchmarks? In-Reply-To: <4DE36B28.4080204@aleph.se> References: <4DE29D12.3000605@canonizer.com> <4DE36B28.4080204@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 4:02 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > How do we callibrate that without too much > effort? Perhaps "too much effort" will become some day become affordable with the continued decrease in the cost of computation. In other words, what is today's "too much effort" is tomorrow's effortless. > But the biggest problem isn't really the input fidelity but the ability to > tell a compelling story or create an immersive environment. Note how well > told the little story of the ad was - he stopped the action at just the > right moments to create brief cliffhangers, he moved so that the flames > looked good, you get the explanation for the initial mystery (why is he just > sitting there?) gradually. The problem with interactive media is that they > require a different kind of storytelling, and we are still in the early > days. Truly immersive interactive media likely require realtime > storytellers, presumably some kind of AI. There are two types of entertainment here, passive and participatory. Today's passive entertainment includes movies, television, even 3D stuff where you just watch. Our participatory entertainment today is video games. Group participation in multi-player video games is a step up from there. What you seem to be getting at here is pushing the passive entertainment up into a participatory realm. To get to the right solution, start then with video games, not movies. An immersive 3D environment can still be passive, which is what was shown in the commercial. Pausing and then playing again (even in another room) doesn't count as being very highly interactive in my book. > And of course, then there is the addiction question. We are already > experiencing many things through our entertainment that are far more > rewarding than most things we can experience in real life. Better > entertainment might also mean more addictive entertainment. Yes, there is a lot of addiction in video games and television. The video game designers are aware of this, and do things intentionally to increase the addictive nature of the game. Eventually, I think that they will pass laws against this sort of thing, but today it's a case of the technology being ahead of the legislators. It is funny to me that people go to jail for selling marijuana (which isn't even all that addictive), but they get big piles of cash for designing World of Warcraft. I'm not a big promoter of additional laws, it's just funny that it's currently so inconsistent. The right solution might be to make the drugs legal, then educate everyone about the addictive nature of all of these things. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 30 20:18:09 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 14:18:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <20110530194428.GA28730@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110530194428.GA28730@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 12:18:15PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Part of becoming rich is wanting to become rich badly enough to do >> whatever is necessary to do so. Many poor people that I have met are > >> The probability of escaping poverty is MUCH higher in places with >> better governments, like the United States. But it is still possible >> to escape poverty in most places. I admit that it is nearly impossible > > I note a difference between "becoming rich" and "becoming rich > ethically". OK. I can buy that, but I'd like a little more insight into what you think is unethical. To me, the following are unethical - Being on top of a pyramid scheme - Slavery - Using brutality to coerce workers (think Chinese prison labor) - Abusing the environment - Using religion unethically (think building the pyramids) - Wasting natural resources unnecessarily (we may ALL be doing this to some extent) - Doing things at the expense of coming generations (think massive multi-generational debt) - Breaking the law (hiring illegal aliens) - Using drugs on employees (Nasa, Military) - Bribery (think getting government contracts) The following things are NOT unethical - Child labor (where the children choose to work) - Hiring huge amounts of labor at market prices (some call this exploiting the masses) - Taking advantage of the benefits acquired through culture, history, education and relations. - Networking (it's not what you know, but who) -Kelly From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Mon May 30 20:18:07 2011 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 14:18:07 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Future Movie Quality Benchmarks? In-Reply-To: References: <4DE29D12.3000605@canonizer.com> <4DE36B28.4080204@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4DE3FB7F.30503@canonizer.com> Tranhumanites, I'm not to worried about addiction. Especially in the long term. The brain is quite protected with safeguards, and no matter how fun it is, eventually you'll tire of the experience. Unless, you are modifying things with drugs or something. I also originally asked for when people think we'll start interfacing directly with neurons. I'm sure we are making much more progress in this area than most of us hear about. You occasionally hear rumors of artificial cochleas, artificial retinas, and they occasionally the direct stimulation of the primary visual cortex. (Which last I heard only produces 'sprites' or sparks of white light that can be organized in a very low resolution 2D image.) How much progress are we making with this? How do you follow this field better, and how much longer before direct neural stimulation becomes common place, or something someone that wasn't blind, for example, might be interested in? And of course, soon after you start hacking the brain, then you get true free will, or the ability to choose what you want to want. In other words, if you need to take out the garbage, and that is what you really want to do (rather than being addicted to some game), you'll be able to reprogram your brain so that taking out the trash will be much more than organismic, or more fun than any game could be without such modifications. I get so tired of fighting and resisting what my primitive creator wanted me to do, and instead attempting to do more of what I want to do. I'm looking forward to this kind of complete free will, where I can chose what I want, when I want it, more than anything. Brent On 5/30/2011 1:54 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 4:02 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> How do we callibrate that without too much >> effort? > Perhaps "too much effort" will become some day become affordable with > the continued decrease in the cost of computation. In other words, > what is today's "too much effort" is tomorrow's effortless. > >> But the biggest problem isn't really the input fidelity but the ability to >> tell a compelling story or create an immersive environment. Note how well >> told the little story of the ad was - he stopped the action at just the >> right moments to create brief cliffhangers, he moved so that the flames >> looked good, you get the explanation for the initial mystery (why is he just >> sitting there?) gradually. The problem with interactive media is that they >> require a different kind of storytelling, and we are still in the early >> days. Truly immersive interactive media likely require realtime >> storytellers, presumably some kind of AI. > There are two types of entertainment here, passive and participatory. > Today's passive entertainment includes movies, television, even 3D > stuff where you just watch. Our participatory entertainment today is > video games. Group participation in multi-player video games is a step > up from there. What you seem to be getting at here is pushing the > passive entertainment up into a participatory realm. To get to the > right solution, start then with video games, not movies. An immersive > 3D environment can still be passive, which is what was shown in the > commercial. Pausing and then playing again (even in another room) > doesn't count as being very highly interactive in my book. > >> And of course, then there is the addiction question. We are already >> experiencing many things through our entertainment that are far more >> rewarding than most things we can experience in real life. Better >> entertainment might also mean more addictive entertainment. > Yes, there is a lot of addiction in video games and television. The > video game designers are aware of this, and do things intentionally to > increase the addictive nature of the game. Eventually, I think that > they will pass laws against this sort of thing, but today it's a case > of the technology being ahead of the legislators. It is funny to me > that people go to jail for selling marijuana (which isn't even all > that addictive), but they get big piles of cash for designing World of > Warcraft. I'm not a big promoter of additional laws, it's just funny > that it's currently so inconsistent. The right solution might be to > make the drugs legal, then educate everyone about the addictive nature > of all of these things. > > -Kelly > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon May 30 18:40:59 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 12:40:59 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <20110530181819.GA16591@ofb.net> References: <4DD260C8.90307@lightlink.com> <20110518065417.GB24232@leitl.org> <4DD97438.4080905@libero.it> <4DDA339D.8090305@libero.it> <20110524192812.GB18783@ofb.net> <20110530181819.GA16591@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 12:18 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > Non-legal barriers would be high capital requirements, economies of > scale, and the ability to use price dumping to drive new competitors out > of business. ?Which last is perfectly libertarian. Correct. Price dumping and monopolies are within the libertarian tent. Personally, I think there needs to be SOME law preventing people from unfair practices. For example, the insider trading and market manipulation practices that were employed by Joe Kennedy in the 1920s should not be allowed. Bernie Madoff type cons as well as pyramid schemes should be illegal. These can be covered by the "interstate commerce" clause, or state laws. Perhaps I deviate from a pure libertarian position here, but it is one place where your fist has clearly entered the space formerly occupied by my nose. The laws necessary to maintain fairness are probably one tenth of the laws currently on the books. Other laws that are reasonable are some laws protecting the safety and health of workers. OSHA is a pain in the ass, but you need some level of protection for the physical safety of workers. I also support food safety laws. Someone needs to watch that sort of thing. I could be supportive of some kind of cap and trade type mechanism to avoid pollution, but it would have to have a lot of details different than the current proposed system. For example, the currently proposed mechanism seems to be just a way to move money to Africa and other underdeveloped third world nations. We know what happens to money that goes in the front door in Africa, and I don't want African war lords to become the next set of Arab Sheiks. A system within a country seems to make sense to me. I would also want it to cover all forms of pollution, not just CO2. I am not in favor of a society where corporations have absolute complete free reign. That just moves tyranny from the public to the private sphere, and I am not in favor of tyranny in any form. That being said, there are too many laws and taxes holding companies back today. -Kelly From rpwl at lightlink.com Mon May 30 20:35:14 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 16:35:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DE3FF82.4060209@lightlink.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:18 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: >> There is actually no true modularity, there are just regions with apparent >> specializations, which are more or less definable or distinct, depending on >> the case. The terms used are also not uniform: many are just "areas" (as >> in Brodmann areas), but that implies cortex, whereas some significant chunks >> or sub-cortical. > > Thanks. That helps me to understand some things better. My > understanding is that there are some divisions that are pretty > structural, such as the brain stem... but if I understand what you're > saying it is that in the neocortex, there aren't such sub organs. > Right? Hmmmm.... [ponders long and hard]. There are areas that are so domain specific, that some might call them sub-organs. The visual areas at the back do a heck of a lot of processing that is the same in most individuals. For example, there are separate dorsal and ventral pathways, which seem to split the visual processing into two paths, one of which computes vision-for-object-recognition, while the other computes vision-for-action. (That is very approximate). And there is an area of the left dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) that sometimes appears to be extremely specific (but to a cluster of different tasks. But I myself would not call these modules. Partly that is because if you look at the wiring at the level of columns and microcolumns, you see very much the same patterns in those different places I just mentioned. So, to my mind, what is happening is that the same basic style of architecture is being used (a large array of repeating units - the columns), but the types of "concepts" that accumulate in those repeating units, during development, end up being specialized. The way I interpret the specialization is as follows. There is incoming traffic to the cortex from many sources, some of which certainly do do some preprocessing. Now, those input wires arrive at the cortex at a bunch of places -- there is not one part of the cortext that acts as the gateway to the rest of the system, there are gateways scattered all over. Also, there are some specific (probably hard-wired) superhighways that connect different parts of the cortext to one another. Now, with that combination of input ports and superhighways, the concepts that tend to be learned by the sea of cortical columns tend to be specialized for the same reason that the shops and businesses in a city tend to be specialized and localized .... because the wholesale vegetable market is located *here*, the cattle market *there* and the coffee houses *there* (so all the stock brokers arise in the coffee houses!), .. and so on. That picture I just gave means that all the columns have basically the same functionality, and any apparent organs are just the result of developmental pressures and some built in wiring. >> My own, more general answer to the issue of AGI via brain emulation is that, >> as you are suggesting, the modeling of the human mind/brain is likely to be >> the first successful AGI, but this is unlikely to be whole brain emulation >> in the sense of a low-level neuron-by-neuron copying. > > I agree 100%. In implementing this whole brain emulation, there may be > areas where the best initial emulation is neuron by neuron emulation, > but I hope that's just a small part of the emulation. And neuron by > neuron emulation seems like a valuable first step in figuring out what > the higher level functions are and how they work, I think. Well, from my perspective as a cognitive scientist/AGI person, I am not sure how valuable the low-level neuron stuff will be, in the end. For example, I think we may have the functional model of a cortical column in the next five years, as a result of purely psychological analysis. That is, we could know pretty much what the columns are doing, without having to ask the neuroscientists what the circuitry looks like. From the point of view of AGI, that would make us able to build a human-like AGI soon after, while the neuroscientists are still trying to figure out where to store the pictures of the trillions of brain slices they are collecting (never mind how to analyze those pictures). Did you see my conversation with Eugen last week, when I mentioned a picture of a neural area at one micron resolution (did you see the image I dropped on my website, with one pixel per micron?). It is kind of fun to imagine the neuroscientists using an image like that to arrive at a sensible circuit diagram .... the pixels do not even show all of the smaller cell bodies, never mind all of the smaller wires. And the synapses are one or two orders of magnitude below that level of detail. So that is my reason for skepticism about WBE. I am really puzzled that more people out there do not stop to think about it, before they jump on the WBE bandwagon. Richard Loosemore From jrd1415 at gmail.com Mon May 30 19:52:43 2011 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 12:52:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Usages of the term libertarianism In-Reply-To: <20110519064456.GG24232@leitl.org> References: <603303.38323.qm@web114402.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20110519064456.GG24232@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:44 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Getting robbed at gunpoint [in the US] is pretty probable. You're talking about crime, right? Best, jeff davis From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Mon May 30 22:31:26 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 15:31:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110530194428.GA28730@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110530223126.GA22109@ofb.net> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 02:18:09PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Damien Sullivan > > I note a difference between "becoming rich" and "becoming rich > > ethically". > > OK. I can buy that, but I'd like a little more insight into what you > think is unethical. To me, the following are unethical > > - Being on top of a pyramid scheme > - Slavery > - Using brutality to coerce workers (think Chinese prison labor) > - Abusing the environment > - Using religion unethically (think building the pyramids) > - Wasting natural resources unnecessarily (we may ALL be doing this to > some extent) > - Doing things at the expense of coming generations (think massive > multi-generational debt) > - Breaking the law (hiring illegal aliens) > - Using drugs on employees (Nasa, Military) > - Bribery (think getting government contracts) Hey, we can agree on a lot. > The following things are NOT unethical > > - Child labor (where the children choose to work) I think this is more problematic, given the ability of children to make an informed choice about work vs. education, and the possibility of parental exploitation. Pace John Holt, this 'freedom' should come only with a bunch of other liberties or protections for children. > - Hiring huge amounts of labor at market prices (some call this > exploiting the masses) Note "market price" depends on the alternative opportunities available to the masses, which may in turn be constrained by previous unethical behavior. Hiring landless workers at market prices, workers who are landless because they were kicked off their land by others, seems like a problematic grey area. You may not be doing anything directly wrong yourself, but the whole system is messed-up and you're profiting from injustices. Like, hrm, buying stolen goods. You didn't steal them, but... > - Taking advantage of the benefits acquired through culture, history, > education and relations. > - Networking (it's not what you know, but who) How about profiting from benefits and networking derived from racial prejudice? Networking can seem innocent on the surface, but the counterpart is the reduced ability of those not in the old boys' (say) network to have the same opportunities. "With hard work and your parents knowing the right people anyone can get ahead!" The solutions aren't obvious to me but dismissing the concern doesn't seem right either. -xx- Damien X-) From Frankmac at ripco.com Mon May 30 23:09:27 2011 From: Frankmac at ripco.com (Frank McElligott) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 19:09:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly Future Message-ID: <000d01cc1f1e$a41bff80$0202a8c0@sx28047db9d36c> Recently in Russia a bandit entered a beauty shop to rob it at gun point. He was a male and over 6 feet in height. A young hair dresser she is 28 has a black belt in karate over powered him and then locked him in a closet. Instead of calling police, she then proceeded to have sex with him for 3 days against his will. She has admitted to forcing him to take Viagara so he could perform to her desires. When he was freed, the robber, he went directly to the police and told them about her raping him. The police have arrested him for robbery, and they arrested her for rape. Please do not always believe it is the woman who is being rape by some thug, sometimes, very very seldom I would admit, it is a man who is the wronged party. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 01:35:37 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 21:35:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > charges or report the event. This whole thread is getting very > strange... sigh. The corners of human sexuality are just strange. ### Indeed. Regarding sexbots and satisfaction of the mythical "emotional" needs of humans: I came to believe that the primary emotional need that is satisfied by a companion is actually status affiliation. Men seek physically attractive women that can be shown to other males as a status symbol. In addition, intelligence and an agreeable, conscientious character are desired for their practical usefulness (living with a smart and nice woman is just easier and more productive than living with a inept harridan). Another premise that needs to be articulated is that women have an agenda that is not compatible with what men want. Due to the vicissitudes of evolution, women are obsessed with status of their partners (and thus likely to be at least partially dissatisfied with the majority of available partners, since the majority of men is by definition low status), deceptive, and faithless. I have few doubts that building agreeable, conscientious, and smart sexbots is in principle possible, perhaps even including a built-in artificial womb for full functionality. If the device is very expensive and thus the possession of only the select few, it might be a status symbol and thus a full substitute for a woman. But once the price comes down, this aspect of its usefulness might be affected, just as an overproduction of Porsches would undercut brand value. In the unlikely event that flesh men continue to exist after the singularity and can own AI devices, I would expect that the artificial woman would displace the vast majority of flesh women and severely reduce their appeal, since most women are nothing to boast about. Given the low quality of most women as companions (due to personality problems and having the above-mentioned agenda) most men would probably be fully satisfied with the robots, especially once the stigma wears off, and would even continue to procreate. There would be some men who would seek women as a status symbol, although I would expect that most of their real emotional needs would be still catered for be devices actually *designed* to be nice to men. Since I am not a woman, I find it doubly difficult to analyze the manbot question. Women are more status-obsessed in relationships than men, and the manbot might of less use to them than fembots are to men, unless manbots could radiate status. I expect there would be many women whose sexual needs would be fully satisfied by manbots but still unhappily pining for real men needed to make them feel truly wanted. Rafal From mbb386 at main.nc.us Tue May 31 01:36:51 2011 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 21:36:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] a very silly story In-Reply-To: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> References: <4DDD3035.1090505@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <0e3dd95797b32c6973ac49b9788a59bd.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > Some flagrant self-promotion-- > > My new Tor.com story is up at: > > > Thanks for the link, Damien! A fun read. :) Regards, MB From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 01:40:07 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 21:40:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] energy modelling In-Reply-To: <20110526140326.GJ19622@leitl.org> References: <4DDD7AB2.3060808@aleph.se> <20110526140326.GJ19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 10:03 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:54:58PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> Nice essay, but it suffers from the usual peak oil flaw of focusing on >> Hubbert peak curves. Basically, successful retrodictions do not prove >> that a methodology is good at predictions. I made a simple example to >> show the problem with the method: >> >> http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2011/05/why_i_dont_trust_hubbert_peak_arguments.html >> >> Basically, you can't trust the prediction until you are almost at the > > The problem is that some predictions have harsher outcomes than > others, so we can't treat the caviar peak the same way as the > fossil peak. ### But oil has cheap substitutes, so there is hardly any downside to its running out. Synfuels from coal provide a technological ceiling on the price of gasoline, and the only reason for higher prices would be purely social, e.g. mass environmentalist hysteria. We are not running out of energy, by a long shot. We might be running out of common sense. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 01:53:37 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 21:53:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> References: <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > > Do you know what is the subject under discussion here? > > This is called "hydraulic fracturing". > > It is about taking a large flow of water from rivers, adding (known + > unknown) chemicals to the water, then heating it up and sending it > underground, where it forces the gas out of the rocks, and comes back up > again as a gas-water mixture. > > Then the gas is extracted from the mixture, and ..... oh dear. > > The water that comes back up seems to be poisoned. ### No, it isn't poisoned. First of all, fluids are used only in the first part of the process, the actual drilling, which may last a few months, followed by many years of gas recovery without or with only negligible fluid accumulation. Secondly, there are no "poisons" in the fracking fluids, only relatively minor amounts of common chemicals which at the concentrations present do not threaten anybody, even workers directly dealing with them. The main components of fracking fluids are water, sand, common bleach (which mostly decomposes underground), a detergent and a lubricant, usually oil. After recovery the fluids may have trace amounts of various minerals leached from shale, but then all well water also has minerals leached from shale. Most fracking operations re-use their fluids, since this is cheaper than dumping them, and cleaning the fluids is easy too - by sedimentation, biological remediation, filtration, flocculation, any of the common techniques of waste water treatment. Again, Richard, read up on the technology but please avoid eco-fascist propaganda sites as your sources. Rafal From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 31 02:46:31 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 22:46:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DE45687.4030006@lightlink.com> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: >> Do you know what is the subject under discussion here? >> >> This is called "hydraulic fracturing". >> >> It is about taking a large flow of water from rivers, adding (known + >> unknown) chemicals to the water, then heating it up and sending it >> underground, where it forces the gas out of the rocks, and comes back up >> again as a gas-water mixture. >> >> Then the gas is extracted from the mixture, and ..... oh dear. >> >> The water that comes back up seems to be poisoned. > > ### No, it isn't poisoned. First of all, fluids are used only in the > first part of the process, the actual drilling, which may last a few > months, followed by many years of gas recovery without or with only > negligible fluid accumulation. Secondly, there are no "poisons" in the > fracking fluids, only relatively minor amounts of common chemicals > which at the concentrations present do not threaten anybody, even > workers directly dealing with them. The main components of fracking > fluids are water, sand, common bleach (which mostly decomposes > underground), a detergent and a lubricant, usually oil. After recovery > the fluids may have trace amounts of various minerals leached from > shale, but then all well water also has minerals leached from shale. > Most fracking operations re-use their fluids, since this is cheaper > than dumping them, and cleaning the fluids is easy too - by > sedimentation, biological remediation, filtration, flocculation, any > of the common techniques of waste water treatment. > > Again, Richard, read up on the technology but please avoid eco-fascist > propaganda sites as your sources. Curious. I set you a challenge before, and you complete ignored it because the answer would have embarrassed your position. Instead, you returned to an earlier line from the thread and started ranting again. I challenged you to get a full and complete, objectively confirmed disclosure from one of the fracking companies, regarding the actual chemicals they use in the hydraulic fracturing procedure. You, Rafal, seem to know EXACTLY what chemicals they are using because you keep telling us that you know. And yet, strangely, the companies concerned refuse to disclose those chemicals to the public, or to the State of New York. And when I asked you to pass the information from them, to us, you ... just went back to ranting again. That tells us a great deal about you. Not so much about the fracking though. *********** Take your own advice, Rafal. You are so comprehensively ignorant of the technology, that you write down your fantasies as if they were facts. But why should I be surprised that you would do such a thing? Like most fascists, you like to play games with the truth, and your try to win arguments by hammering away with falsehoods so strongly -- so LOUDLY -- that eventually someone will think you are telling the truth just because you are the one making the most noise. Richard Loosemore From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 31 02:52:01 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 19:52:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110531025201.GA24312@ofb.net> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 09:35:37PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > I came to believe that the primary emotional need that is satisfied by > a companion is actually status affiliation. Men seek physically > vicissitudes of evolution, women are obsessed with status of their > partners (and thus likely to be at least partially dissatisfied with > the majority of available partners, since the majority of men is by > definition low status), deceptive, and faithless. > We might be running out of common sense Not to mention respect for one's fellow woman. Or man, even. The misogyny could be more palpable but not with ease. -xx- Damien X-) From spike66 at att.net Tue May 31 04:19:16 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 21:19:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] egyptian protesters Message-ID: <004b01cc1f49$e835b7d0$b8a12770$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Damien Sullivan ... >Not to mention respect for one's fellow woman. Or man, even. The misogyny could be more palpable but not with ease. -xx- Damien X-) A more stark contrast between east and west is seldom seen: http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/30/egypt.virginity.tests/index.html?h pt=T1 Comment after comment jars the consciousness, but the one which perhaps best shows the opposite views of western society with Egyptian authorities: "We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said. "None of them were (virgins)." In the west, a positive test for virginity would prove the women had not been raped, but in Egypt, a negative test for virginity apparently demonstrates that the protester cannot be raped. To add insult to injury, non-virginity is grounds for being charged with prostitution. I am surprised CNN reported this. Apparently they wish to be Fox news. Oy what a screwed up country is Egypt. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 31 03:05:30 2011 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 23:05:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 9:35 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > In the unlikely event that flesh men continue to exist after the > singularity and can own AI devices, I would expect that the artificial > woman would displace the vast majority of flesh women and severely > reduce their appeal, since most women are nothing to boast about. > Given the low quality of most women as companions (due to personality > problems and having the above-mentioned agenda) most men would > probably be fully satisfied with the robots, especially once the > stigma wears off, and would even continue to procreate. There would be > some men who would seek women as a status symbol, although I would > expect that most of their real emotional needs would be still catered > for be devices actually *designed* to be nice to men. So many things about this paragraph make me want to shout "that's wrong!" but not enough to make any effort at a coherent counter point. "after the singularity" Why even speculate about that? You must have meant after the just-before-the-singularity, which is the period where things happen so quickly and apparently chaotic that everyone's current fantasies are fulfilled just as the magical event makes everything irrelevant. I imagine it'll be like the hour before the nightclub closes - but the club will be everywhere and nobody will have to wake up with regret the next morning. In that sense, sexual preference of either/both/all gender will be arbitrary and probably beyond what anyone could conceive today. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 05:25:11 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 01:25:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/15 Amon Zero : > Suffice to say, I disagree with your analysis on multiple levels. I have > never seen anything approaching conclusive evidence that full-blown > libertarianism would "produce good outcomes for the poor" (although of > course I've heard a *lot* of assertions), ### Sure, before Edison nobody saw a light bulb, either. --------------- whereas I have seen plenty of > examples of unrestrained economic and political behaviour causing great > suffering to people unable to protect themselves from its effects. ### Well, yeah, infringement on property rights does frequently cause suffering - and for some reason you adduce it as an argument *against* libertarianism, a set of notions where protection of property (widely defined) is paramount. ----------------------------- > Also, I don't believe that I - let alone *everyone* who falls outside the > set "fanatical libertarian" - spends more time thinking about how to present > themselves as a caring person rather than thinking about the truth. ### Oh, no you are completely wrong here. I always had an inkling that hypocrisy is a pretty powerful motivation but only once I started reading Robin Hanson's posts did I realize that there is really not much "goodness" in the world - most of it is just shameless pretense. "Homo hypocritus" rules. ------------- > Honestly, if that is your view of people, then I strongly suspect you to > have poor observational skills, critical reason, and character. ### The kynikoi were reviled, too. ---------------- > It is not a matter of "moral posturing" that leads me to oppose avoidable > suffering. ### You and the vast majority of people are refusing to think. Claiming good intentions won't help those who suffer. But the sad fact is, neither you nor I really feel their pain. ------------- It is a combination of principle and reason. On that basis, if > you can provide conclusive or at least powerfully suggestive examples of the > following, I will duly consider revision of my position: > 1) A truly libertarian society, of the type you advocate, which produced > good outcomes for the poor, or some equally compelling evidence that your > own claim is something more than "moral posturing". If there has never been > such a society, please do tell us how you are privy to the "truth" of an > untested scenario? ### Let me restate what I am advocating: A computational system relying on short-feedback, parallel calculations of cost and benefit. The specific features of the system involve property, contracts, polycentric generation of law, low-cost exit strategies. This approach to computation has been tested over and over again (compare, Hong Kong and Communist China, US and Russia, the Netherlands and Ottoman Serbia), it worked every time, and human envy, aggression and first and foremost, stupidity, always manages to destroy or severely limit it. Humans evolved to be envious, hypocritical, predatory creatures, and this skews the development of societies towards hierarchical, long-feedback, locked-in, and increasingly monopolistic ones. Yes, I am using the computer metaphor very intentionally, since I do believe that there are important parallels between the functioning of computational networks on many scales, from the human brain, to computers, the internet, and human societies. Short and strong feedback loops *really* work, parallel computation is much more powerful for many applications than sequential, etc. I know it this form of argumentation is far from "caring about the poor". It isn't showing I am on *your* side, that we are all buddies in it together against the Man, or the Company. This is not moral posturing. It might be a form of intellectual posturing. But this is precisely what you need to build a system that works - you need to think first, feel later. ------------------ > 2) Evidence that the type of strong libertarianism you advocate does not > cause widespread suffering. ### Refusal to initiate violence does not cause widespread suffering. You need evidence for *that*? ------------------ > You seem to be vacillating between claiming that your views, if put into > practice, would (A) cause net good rather than net harm, and (B) declaring > that we shouldn't care about others, and therefore presumably what the > outcome of your freedom is for other people. ### Oh, it would be nice if more people genuinely cared about their fellow humans but we don't (I don't, you don't, almost nobody does). It's just I get the bad rap for not denying it. ----------- If you don't care what happens > to others, then your worldview fails on axiomatic grounds as far as I'm > concerned, in that it is not good, of net utility to society, or indeed > Extropic (unless it is possible for someone to achieve an Extropy worthy of > the name by the deliberate victimization of others). ### Yeah? Show me how much you really care. How many hundreds of hours have you worked in soup kitchens last year, to feed the poor? Did you give 90% of your income to the poor, only 70%? Don't try to claim the moral high ground on me, unless you have something to back it up. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 05:29:19 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 01:29:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <4DD018CD.9070908@satx.rr.com> References: <4DD018CD.9070908@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > I have the feeling that Rafal's position is not a million miles from the > True Knowledge of the (paradoxically) libertarian communist future portrayed > in Ken MacLeod's novel THE CASSINI DIVISION: ### Wow, this is good! Damien, thanks for the quote, I might read it, although Ken's socialist leanings so far deterred me from his works. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 05:37:24 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 01:37:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2011/5/17 Amon Zero : > Kelly, I think you've got a good point. The thing is, I'm far from > anti-libertarian - catch me at the right moment and I might even describe > myself as libertarian - it's just that Rafal's frankly extreme stance forced > me to draw a line. ### To the best of my knowledge, the only place where I truly differ in moral terms from the mainstream is in advocating non-violence. Do you think then that advocating non-violence is extreme, or perhaps you are reading something into my writings that isn't there? Rafal From spike66 at att.net Tue May 31 05:42:34 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 22:42:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] germany to nuke its nukes Message-ID: <006401cc1f55$8b0ba860$a122f920$@att.net> Eugen, I see the no-nukes greens have managed to defeat the yes-nukes greens in Deutschland: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7588000.html Are you fer it or agin it? Why? Other's comments? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 05:50:06 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 01:50:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110521204700.GB26960@ofb.net> References: <4DD018CD.9070908@satx.rr.com> <20110521204700.GB26960@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 01:17:49PM -0500, Damien Broderick wrote: > >> I have the feeling that Rafal's position is not a million miles from >> the True Knowledge of the (paradoxically) libertarian communist >> future portrayed in Ken MacLeod's novel THE CASSINI DIVISION: > > That's not a paradox, that's "libertarian" having multiple meanings, and > the communist one is the older one; US libertarians borrowed the term > for their purified version of the dying classical liberal position. > >> We had founded our idealism on the most nihilistic implications of >> science, our socialism on crass self-interest, our peace on our > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > True. ?My position as a social democrat is motivated partly by altruism > and egalitarianism and "that's just wrong", but it's also motivated by > risk-averse selfishness. ?I'm in a good position due to scholarships and > job talent and semi-lucky inheritance, but it's not unassailable, and I > have lots of friends and family who aren't so blessed. ?I want them and > bad-luck-me to be protected from medical bankruptcies, have good > transportation options, have a fair share of the country's resources, > not be handicapped by college debt, etc. ### Yes, and that's why you shouldn't want government controlled medicine (the cause of most medical bankruptcies in the US), government-provided transportation (because it's too expensive), and government-controlled education (which contributed to the credentialing culture which in turn is responsible for the overgrowth of colleges, which in turn metastasized into the so-called "higher education bubble", soon to be burst by the next recession). It is precisely out of risk-averse selfishness that I oppose these things. Isn't this amazing, how we can arrive at opposite conclusions from the same stated motives and an analysis of mostly widely available information about the world? So much for the Aumann theorem. Rafal Rafal From spike66 at att.net Tue May 31 05:38:48 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 22:38:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] homo sapiens as endangered species Message-ID: <005f01cc1f55$04514d20$0cf3e760$@att.net> In 1973 the US passed a law that protects endangered species, but in retrospect it may have been the biggest victory for the oil companies. Reasoning: every alternative energy source that I know of could be slowed to a stop by various camps of greens, some perhaps employed by oil companies. If for instance, we figure out a way cheap means of launching Keith's space based solar, we still need an area of ground to set up a rectenna farm. Any yahoo could claim that is the breeding grounds of the rare Snarkleberry's snivelfly, which no one has ever seen, proving its rarity. By the ESA, that would meet the definition of a species, and so off we go to find a different place, which is in turn stopped by a different endangered species. It looks to me like the deck is stacked in favor of the NIMBYs and some subset of the greens, because it is a lot easier to stop a project than it is to start one. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 05:56:47 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 01:56:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > > Oh, and those jobs developed under the protection of tariffs, a pattern > which has been repeated again and again in the 20th century. ?External > free trade doesn't seem good for diverse development. ### Damien, maybe you won't believe me but the general beneficence of international trade (and the disutility of trade barriers including tariffs) is one of the best established conclusions of the last 200 years of economic theory. Not even Keynesians and Marxist economists will defend tariffs (and still be able to publish anywhere mainstream). Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 06:09:57 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 02:09:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 8:34 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > This all feels related to my observation that when Adam Smith attacked > government intervention in the economies, he was mostly talking about > monarchs using mercantilism and artificial monopolies to raise revenues > for war. ?Not about universal-suffrage democracies using progressive > income taxation to fund univiersal pensions and health care, public > schools and transportation, and a side order of environmental and safety > regulation, especially as none of those things existed in 1776. > ### What's the difference? Mercantilism was the idea that the wealth of nations is gold, and policy should maximize internal production, minimize consumption, so as to achieve a "favorable" trade balance, so as to cause transfer of gold from abroad. Modern intervention is a version of "Panem et circenses" (i.e. pension promises without coverage, public schools to keep the masses docile, war to keep them occupied), all based on the scribblings of a long-dead economist (yeah, I know I'm both paraphrasing and denouncing Keynes all in one sentence). Both are stupid. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 06:18:28 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 02:18:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 5:10 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > > Progress in democracy has. ### "Democracy" is this universal mantra that every herd member in good standing has to hie by nowadays. Jeez, I hate democracy. I have never voted, and the non-existent god willing, I never will. Rafal (Can you put more blasphemies into two short sentences? Top me on that!) From giulio at gmail.com Tue May 31 05:50:28 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 07:50:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: I think Stefano makes a very good point here. And of course if a community is successful every individual member gains. I have no issue with the fact that some people have much more money than others. I do have issue with the fact that some people have much more money than they will every be able to use, while others are starving. This makes the community sick. 2011/5/24 Stefano Vaj : > On 23 May 2011 23:41, Damien Sullivan wrote: >> >> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 01:42:35PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> > What justification is there that society owes a living to anyone? >> >> I actually wouldn't start with any abstract blanket right to "a living"; >> society's clearly not rich enough yet for that. ?We can start with the >> right to *make* a living, including fair access to the tools needed for >> that. > > I think most Americans are inclined to see such questions in terms of what > is right for the individuals concerned. > > There is however another angle, where the question is: which communities are > going to flourish, expand, evolve, successfully compete with other > communities, etc.? > > Clearly, the models pertaining to internal allocation of resources are not > an irrelevant factor in this respect. > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 06:29:44 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 02:29:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110526224319.GB25323@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> <20110526224319.GB25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:43 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: >> >> Ok, except that only ~0.001%(a made up number) of their taxes go to >> basic research while ~55% (another made up number) go to social > > Why use made-up numbers? ?A quick look around shows abotu 2% of federal > spending going to research. ?Welfare's harder to tease apart, but maybe > 5% by one analysis, though that might have included state/local spending > too. ### Seriously, the poor are just an afterthought and a pretext used in internecine political warfare among the groups that have power. The poor are not the problem with government, the problem is stupid waste (i.e. misallocation) of resources resulting from interminable power games among players. Having a long-feedback hierarchical rigid computational system is a bad idea. -------------------- > > The US is lagging in small businesses compared to countries with > universal health care. ### Almost all problems of the US health care are directly caused by the government, including non-portable and overpriced insurance policies. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 07:01:47 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 03:01:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cephalization, proles--Where is government going? In-Reply-To: <4DDF9BFB.2060100@lightlink.com> References: <150425D2-A10C-46B5-9955-824D0BEA1714@mac.com> <4DC85373.1060502@mac.com> <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDF9BFB.2060100@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > > I live in the U.S., and in fact I live right on top of the Marcellus Shale. > ?And I know the technology. ?Not only that, but I get the news reports from > the Pennsylvania counties just south of here where disasters are happening. > ### Yeah, the biggest fracking-related disaster here in Williamsport where I am doing some assignments now is the flourishing of prostitution to service the virile and well-paid young males who frack. ------------------ > And the lake just a few miles away from where I live has been used as a > dumping ground for the fluids, so some friends of mine who live on that lake > can now go swim in ?the pollutants if they want. ### And the Devil himself has been sighted there, too! ----------------- > > Like many right-wing people, you think you can cover your ignorance by > simply accusing the well-informed people on the other side of the ignorance > you are guilty of. ### I am so non-right-wing you can't even imagine it. ----------------- ?First grade BS, I am afraid. > > So, to prove it: ?show the evidence: > > 1) ?Give me the details of what chemicals are being used by Chesapeake > Energy in its fracking operations. ?Full chemistry, please. ?Apparently you > are privy to information that the lawmakers in Pennsylvania and New York > have been unable to extract from companies such as Chesapeake. ### Water, sand, bleach, detergent, oil. That's standard. If you want more details, you can easily get samples and analyze them. After all, the lake is full of it, no? Do you realize how incoherent your allegations are? One one hand you say there are "pollutants in the lake", on the other hand you say nobody (except the evil capitalist exploiters) knows what is in the fracking fluid. Chemical analysis isn't that difficult. You have to choose your poisoning accusation, either known or unknown, but not both. ------------------- > > 2) ?Give me the evaluation, by unbiassed experts, of the "literally dozens > of ways of cleaning fracking fluids, some of them are quite cheap and are > being used routinely in US operations". ### Sand is removed by filtration (1) or sedimentation (2). Oil is removed by skimming (3), flocculation (4), or bioremediation, which involves simple ponds (5) or various aerated reactors (6) and aerated beds (7). Bleach can be removed by aeration (8), absorption on activated coal (9), chemical inactivation with various organic compounds (10). Detergents are removed by phytoremediation (11), and other forms of bioremediation. Residual methane just blows itself off (12). It actually is all rather cheap, although not as cheap as re-using the fluid for more fracking. Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 07:08:30 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 03:08:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: <4DE45687.4030006@lightlink.com> References: <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> <4DE45687.4030006@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 10:46 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > > I challenged you to get a full and complete, objectively confirmed > disclosure from one of the fracking companies, regarding the actual > chemicals they use in the hydraulic fracturing procedure. ?You, Rafal, seem > to know EXACTLY what chemicals they are using because you keep telling us > that you know. ### Yeah, I and everybody who cares to read up, knows there is water, sand, bleach, detergent and oil in the fluid. What else do you want to know? Rafal From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 07:13:14 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 03:13:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: <20110531025201.GA24312@ofb.net> References: <20110531025201.GA24312@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > > Not to mention respect for one's fellow woman. ?Or man, even. ?The > misogyny could be more palpable but not with ease. ### Hey, I am an equal opportunity accuser - men are violent, domineering and generally assholes. I am a misanthrope (a.k.a. realist) not a misogynist. Rafal From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 31 07:16:39 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 00:16:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] germany to nuke its nukes In-Reply-To: <006401cc1f55$8b0ba860$a122f920$@att.net> References: <006401cc1f55$8b0ba860$a122f920$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110531071639.GA26575@ofb.net> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 10:42:34PM -0700, spike wrote: > [1]http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7588000.html > Are you fer it or agin it? Why? > Other's comments? Agnostic. Seems like cutting coal would be smarter than cutting nuclear. Though a bunch of the plants were scheduled for decommission anyway due to age, before being extended, before this post-Fukushima decision (which after all happened at an old plant.) The Wikipedia page on Renewable Energy in Germany was quite impressive; it's jumped from 6% to 17% of electricity in the past decade. Nuclear is 22% of electricity. Solar tripled from 2007 to 2009 and nearly doubled again in 2010. (Mind you, to 2% of electricity.) They've got their work cut out for them, but they're investing heavily, sort of like their Apollo Project or Iraq War. Or Interstate Highway, to be less cruel to ourselves in productivity comparison. Perspective: they had already planned to have 35% of electricity from renewables by 2020 -- so they'd already planned to be nearly there, not counting energy efficiency measures. -xx- Damien X-) From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 31 08:56:56 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 09:56:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> <4DE45687.4030006@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 8:08 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Yeah, I and everybody who cares to read up, knows there is water, > sand, bleach, detergent and oil in the fluid. What else do you want to > know? > > Or maybe not? Two news items indicate that people still want to know the details. Quote: DeGette, Polis once again introduce FRAC Act to bring federal oversight to gas fracking By David O. Williams 03.15.11 U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, both Colorado Democrats, have once again introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act (FRAC Act) to regain federal regulatory authority over the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. DeGette and Polis unsuccessfully ran the legislation last session, seeking to close the so-called ?Halliburton Loophole? named for the oil and gas services company previously headed up by former Vice President Dick Cheney. It was during the Bush-Cheney administration in 2005 that Congress granted hydraulic fracturing an exemption from federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. ------------------ Quote: Texas may soon make 'frack' chemicals public Mon May 30, 2011 HOUSTON ? Texas could soon become the first state to require drilling companies to publicly disclose the chemicals they use to crack tight rock formations in their search for natural gas. Legislation approved Sunday night in the Texas House could prompt the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other states to make similar rules. The governor hasn't indicated whether he'll sign it. Many companies refuse to say what chemicals are used, arguing it could harm their competitive edge. Others fear the chemicals could taint groundwater or soil. ----------------- BillK From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 31 10:38:04 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 12:38:04 +0200 Subject: [ExI] germany to nuke its nukes In-Reply-To: <20110531071639.GA26575@ofb.net> References: <006401cc1f55$8b0ba860$a122f920$@att.net> <20110531071639.GA26575@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110531103804.GZ19622@leitl.org> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 12:16:39AM -0700, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 10:42:34PM -0700, spike wrote: > > > [1]http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7588000.html > > Are you fer it or agin it? Why? > > Other's comments? In general, these days you cannot trust anything what comes out Berlin. To wit, this is the exit of the exit of the exit. It would be indeed surprising if it would not be renegaded upon, again. Only older cohorts are primary voters of conservatives and social democrats both, so the problem will be naturally taken of by way of the graveyard. The neoliberals are finished, the new left are in rigor mortis and the only winners, for now, are the greens -- simply because the other parties insist to snub the public opinion. However, the greens are a mainstream, conservative (which is why they can at all do coalition with the CDU/CSU conservatives) well versed in realpolitik and have a growing disconnect between the top and the base. So their further prognosis is rather dubious as well. As an anarchist, I'm quite pleased with this outcome. This is not Belgium yet, but we're slowly getting there. > Agnostic. Seems like cutting coal would be smarter than cutting Coal is dead. No major new facilities will be built. The existing ones will be phased out after nuclear will be phased out. By 2050 renewable should be in >80% range, maybe even >90% range. > nuclear. Though a bunch of the plants were scheduled for decommission > anyway due to age, before being extended, before this post-Fukushima The most scandalous about the situation is that newer, safer plants were shut down by the operators so that operation licenses would be transfered to older, unsafe, yet paid off plants. Why? To maximize the profit of effective power monopolies. How can you solve this by technology? You can't. > decision (which after all happened at an old plant.) The Wikipedia page > on Renewable Energy in Germany was quite impressive; it's jumped from 6% > to 17% of electricity in the past decade. Nuclear is 22% of > electricity. Solar tripled from 2007 to 2009 and nearly doubled again > in 2010. (Mind you, to 2% of electricity.) It's 3% by now, and the interesting part is it matches peak demand almost always. To illustrate a bit: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:DEU&dl=en&hl=en&q=germany+population+growth http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&idim=country:DEU&dl=en&hl=en&q=energy+consumption+germany http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met_y=eg_use_elec_kh_pc&idim=country:DEU&dl=en&hl=en&q=electricity+consumption+germany meanwhile, a typical day in Germany looks like this: http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/34/34773/2.html Solar peaks at 14-15 GW, while the still running nuclear plants only deliver 7. This is not being possible because of power imports, but because of renewable maximum demand matching and existing overcapacity of conventional power. > They've got their work cut out for them, but they're investing heavily, > sort of like their Apollo Project or Iraq War. Or Interstate Highway, > to be less cruel to ourselves in productivity comparison. > > Perspective: they had already planned to have 35% of electricity from > renewables by 2020 -- so they'd already planned to be nearly there, not > counting energy efficiency measures. Germany could switch off nuclear by 2014, if it really wanted to. In practice the existing renewable growth is far to little, since electricity is a small part of total energy demand, and we need to substitute the entire coal, oil, and most of fossil natural gas by 2050. Frankly, I don't think there's enough money in the economy for that. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 31 10:44:11 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 12:44:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] egyptian protesters In-Reply-To: <004b01cc1f49$e835b7d0$b8a12770$@att.net> References: <004b01cc1f49$e835b7d0$b8a12770$@att.net> Message-ID: On 31 May 2011 06:19, spike wrote: > "We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we > wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general > said. "None of them were (virgins)." > > In the west, a positive test for virginity would prove the women had not > been raped, but in Egypt, a negative test for virginity apparently > demonstrates that the protester cannot be raped. ?To add insult to injury, > non-virginity is grounds for being charged with prostitution. Well, I suspect it might be a little subtler than that. Virginity tests may actually have been aimed at avoiding later rape complaints where lack of virginity were offered as evidence that a rape actually took place (on the tune of "How do you dare suspect poor victims of prior consensual sex, thus publicly labeling them as prostitutes and adding insult to injury?"). -- Stefano Vaj From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 31 10:44:50 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 12:44:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] germany to nuke its nukes In-Reply-To: <006401cc1f55$8b0ba860$a122f920$@att.net> References: <006401cc1f55$8b0ba860$a122f920$@att.net> Message-ID: <20110531104450.GA19622@leitl.org> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 10:42:34PM -0700, spike wrote: > Eugen, I see the no-nukes greens have managed to defeat the yes-nukes greens > in Deutschland: There are no yes-nukes greens, and this is not what is happening. I've been watching this country for 30+ years. I frankly cannot even muster disgust. I just don't care anymore. > > > http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7588000.html > > > > Are you fer it or agin it? Why? > > > > Other's comments? > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 31 10:52:58 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 12:52:58 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: <4DE3DB8B.8080305@lightlink.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> <4DE3DB8B.8080305@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On 30 May 2011 20:01, Richard Loosemore wrote: > So when you say "I am inclined to agree..." you are probably then describing > a position that was the one I was attacking :-). Why, for once that I thought we were in agreement on an AI subject... :-) > That is very much the opposite of whole brain emulation, since the latter is > dominated by the idea of Circuitry Above All Else. Let us say that if one goes low enough at a physical level, the distinction between "hardware" and "software" and "data" of course blurs. For a PC or for a living being. Higher-level emulations are instead accurate or not basically depending on their purpose. > But then, I think all of that will be a moot point, because I think that the > arrival of a multi-brain AND the arrival of a single-brain WBE will both > come long after the cognitive-level systems have been built, understood and > become sentient research partners in the enterprise of studying WBE science. If it is intended as something beyond the level of general computation, which is easily achieved by many, actually most, systems, "sentience" is nothing else that the behaviour exhibited by any general computation device programmed to emulate (with acceptable performance?) some features of biological brains, so I think this sounds like a quite circular thing. -- Stefano Vaj From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 31 10:55:49 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 11:55:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] germany to nuke its nukes In-Reply-To: <20110531104450.GA19622@leitl.org> References: <006401cc1f55$8b0ba860$a122f920$@att.net> <20110531104450.GA19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > I've been watching this country for 30+ years. I frankly > cannot even muster disgust. I just don't care anymore. > > I didn't think nuclear power was the immediate concern of the German voters. Merkel is going to be voted out because of the cutbacks and bailouts of Greece etc. People vote by the state of their wallet. Of course, Merkel knows that she isn't really bailing out Greece. Any bailout money that goes to Greece bounces straight back out again into German bank coffers. She's bailing out German bankers. (Who are as unpopular in Germany as they are anywhere else). BillK From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 31 11:03:32 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 13:03:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] germany to nuke its nukes In-Reply-To: References: <006401cc1f55$8b0ba860$a122f920$@att.net> <20110531104450.GA19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110531110332.GB19622@leitl.org> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 11:55:49AM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > I've been watching this country for 30+ years. I frankly > > cannot even muster disgust. I just don't care anymore. > > > > > > > I didn't think nuclear power was the immediate concern of the German voters. Au contraire, it was nuke and Stuttgart 21 brouhaha. Ferkel's last-second turnabout made things arguably worse for black-yellow. Voters seem to like punishing obvious liars. > Merkel is going to be voted out because of the cutbacks and bailouts > of Greece etc. > People vote by the state of their wallet. Let's say that several factors interfered constructively (or destructively, depending on one's perspective). Somebody is definitely regretting this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blinded_by_water_cannon.jpg > Of course, Merkel knows that she isn't really bailing out Greece. Any > bailout money that goes to Greece bounces straight back out again into > German bank coffers. She's bailing out German bankers. (Who are as > unpopular in Germany as they are anywhere else). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From eugen at leitl.org Tue May 31 11:20:02 2011 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 13:20:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] energy modelling In-Reply-To: References: <4DDD7AB2.3060808@aleph.se> <20110526140326.GJ19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20110531112002.GC19622@leitl.org> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 09:40:07PM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### But oil has cheap substitutes, so there is hardly any downside to Oil has no cheap substitutes. > its running out. Synfuels from coal provide a technological ceiling on A synfuel plant is 10-100 GUSD and takes at least a decade to build. Oh, and there's no coal -- China (a net importer, with over >50% world coal demand) is already suffering from insufficient coal availability. 70% of China's electricity is from coal, about 50 GW demand gap is expected this summer. > the price of gasoline, and the only reason for higher prices would be > purely social, e.g. mass environmentalist hysteria. Wake up and smell http://theoildrum.com/ We're running on empty. > We are not running out of energy, by a long shot. We might be running > out of common sense. We've had peak common sense in 1975 or thereabouts. It went downhill since. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 31 11:57:03 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 13:57:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 30 May 2011 21:33, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2011/5/30 Stefano Vaj : >> And the head of a very minimal Jewish sect managed to found one of the most >> widespread religion in the world and be adored for centuries as a living >> god. Yes, it may happen, but anecdotical evidence in social sciences is >> exactly what obfuscates, rather than clarify, what actually happens. > > But this is just a random guy I ran into last week. So was JC for anybody having met him in the street... :-) See under the "black swan" or "the man who bit the dog" file... > My point is, that you can't help Africa by sending them even half of > our money. No doubt about it. >> Actually, beauty, physical performances, risk propension, leadership (as in >> organising revolutions and becoming king...) and sheer luck usually play a >> much greater role, even though by no mean they can be considered on the same >> level as pre-existing money in determining one's wealth. > > I don't know what you mean by physical performances. As in "sport star" (or for that matter "virtuoso in something" "wonderful lover", "show biz sensation", "street fighter"). > Risk aversion keeps a lot of people poor. As it keeps them alive, or much less poor than they could be. OTOH, once in a while somebody amongst those who are risk-propense succeeds to an extent which he would be otherwise barred from. But my real point is: it is a well-descripted sociological phenomenon that most western people have a concept of upward social mobility in their respective societies which is qualitatively and quantitatively delusional in comparison with hard data. Moreover, a declining social mobility, which is the invariable mark of decadence, is in Europe quite certainly in place. Even in Russia. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 31 12:14:39 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 14:14:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 31 May 2011 07:25, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### Let me restate what I am advocating: A computational system > relying on short-feedback, parallel calculations of cost and benefit. > The specific features of the system involve property, contracts, > polycentric generation of law, low-cost exit strategies. This is an interesting angle. In fact, planned economy partisans (eg, in the Kruscev era) believed to have a drastic edge in the medium-long term over market economy because it could in their expectations spare the waste, directly adopt ideal solutions and scale economies, and reduce reaction times to change. Such idea was admittedly a monumental failure, but one wonders if the real reason had little to do with some alleged human features or natural laws, and rather with the fact that in the monumental task of managing a US- or URSS-sized economy the market was indeed performing much better from a computational point of view than a system based on paper bureaucratic reports circulated by post or teletypes, meetings, file cabinets, mechanical calculators, or at best punch-card machines. Conversely, this opens the way to the idea that this need not be true forever. So that from a societal point of view a fully planned economy may actually end up being more efficient as long as as it is based on computational resources that do beat the massively parallel, but indeed slow, processing performed by the market. -- Stefano Vaj From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 31 12:28:40 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 14:28:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 31 May 2011 03:35, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > I came to believe that the primary emotional need that is satisfied by > a companion is actually status affiliation. Be it as it may, sex bots are going to continue being perceived as masturbation devices as long as they are not Turing-enabled in the sense of exhibiting some sort of "choice". More or less for the reason why corpses are usually not considered as "partners", even though they are doubtlessly "human". OTOH, a sex bot that had to be seduced and/or could politely decline your sexual proffers would frustrate the entire point of manufacturing sex bots, would it not? -- Stefano Vaj From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 31 13:34:29 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 06:34:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20110531133429.GA5054@ofb.net> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 02:14:39PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > This is an interesting angle. In fact, planned economy partisans (eg, > in the Kruscev era) believed to have a drastic edge in the medium-long > term over market economy because it could in their expectations spare > the waste, directly adopt ideal solutions and scale economies, and > reduce reaction times to change. > > Conversely, this opens the way to the idea that this need not be true > forever. So that from a societal point of view a fully planned economy > may actually end up being more efficient as long as as it is based on > computational resources that do beat the massively parallel, but > indeed slow, processing performed by the market. Of course, "planned economy that sets prices" vs. "free market" is a false dichotomy. Taxes and subsidies for externalities don't set prices, they adjust prices, to help the market account for costs and benefits. -xx- Damien X-) From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 31 13:36:33 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 06:36:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 01:57:03PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote: > > Risk aversion keeps a lot of people poor. > > As it keeps them alive, or much less poor than they could be. OTOH, > once in a while somebody amongst those who are risk-propense succeeds > to an extent which he would be otherwise barred from. Newly rich people being risk-propense does not mean that being risk-propense is a good individual gamble for becoming risk. Selection/survivor effects and all. > Moreover, a declining social mobility, which is the invariable mark of > decadence, is in Europe quite certainly in place. Even in Russia. By everything I've seen, Europe is doing better in social mobility than the US is. Or at least parts of Europe are. More small businesses and enterpreneurship too. -xx- Damien X-) From natasha at natasha.cc Tue May 31 13:25:37 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 08:25:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] MeTA: Overposting In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net><20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: <08C6C640E4C34A2CB235BFF4046F0967@DFC68LF1> Please be careful not to overpost. Thank you, Natasha From natasha at natasha.cc Tue May 31 13:53:49 2011 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 08:53:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Talking Heads: Who Wants To Live Forever - Dublin Message-ID: http://www.sciencegallery.com/humanplus http://www.sciencegallery.com/events/2011/06/talking-heads-who-wants-live-fo rever-0 Natasha Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Tue May 31 14:04:30 2011 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 16:04:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> References: <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> Message-ID: WHAT???????? Damien, please elaborate. On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > By everything I've seen, Europe is doing better in social mobility than > the US is. ?Or at least parts of Europe are. ?More small businesses and > enterpreneurship too. > > -xx- Damien X-) > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 31 14:17:37 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 15:17:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > WHAT???????? Damien, please elaborate. > > On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: >> By everything I've seen, Europe is doing better in social mobility than >> the US is. ?Or at least parts of Europe are. ?More small businesses and >> entrepreneurship too. >> >> I think he means 'better' only in comparison to the wealth pyramid in the US where a tiny % own almost all the wealth. It is still pretty bad in Europe. BillK From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 14:44:01 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 08:44:01 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 7:35 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> charges or report the event. This whole thread is getting very >> strange... sigh. The corners of human sexuality are just strange. > > ### Indeed. Regarding sexbots and satisfaction of the mythical > "emotional" needs of humans: Why, pray tell, are "emotional" needs mythical? In some sense, they seem to be the only needs that are real... ;-) > I came to believe that the primary emotional need that is satisfied by > a companion is actually status affiliation. Men seek physically > attractive women that can be shown to other males as a status symbol. This is perhaps one characteristic among many others. For example, it would not do to have an attractive mate who was mean to your offspring, and raised little monsters. Nor would it be considered a very good deal to get a mate who despite her culinary deficiencies, insisted on cooking dinner every night. The number of ways a mate can be deficient and meet the above superficial need is staggering. Choosing an acceptable mate is an optimization function with many levers. Each chooser of a mate has different weights assigned to the importance of each of these levers. Initially, I cringed at this statement, and then upon further reflection, I realized it was true of me, although at a very low weight compared to other things I care about. The key issue for me is that the optimization function for a mate (while having most of the same levers) vs a dedicated sexbot is weighted entirely differently. A good mate would not necessarily be a good sexbot, nor vice versa. > In addition, intelligence and an agreeable, conscientious character > are desired for their practical usefulness (living with a smart and > nice woman is just easier and more productive than living with a inept > harridan). Clearly this is the case. :-) > Another premise that needs to be articulated is that women have an > agenda that is not compatible with what men want. Due to the > vicissitudes of evolution, women are obsessed with status of their > partners (and thus likely to be at least partially dissatisfied with > the majority of available partners, since the majority of men is by > definition low status), deceptive, and faithless. While I can agree that the optimization function for any given woman is going to be different than any given man, and that you might find weights generally cluster differently for women than men, this oversimplification is not something I can agree with. > I have few doubts that building agreeable, conscientious, and smart > sexbots is in principle possible, perhaps even including a built-in > artificial womb for full functionality. If the device is very > expensive and thus the possession of only the select few, it might be > a status symbol and thus a full substitute for a woman. But once the > price comes down, this aspect of its usefulness might be affected, > just as an overproduction of Porsches would undercut brand value. I see the function of a sexbot as more likely to be private or semi-private. More like the concubine of Old Testament times. There is the public wife, the private concubine... Also, does the genetic material carried in the womb of the sexbot come from the wife or some other source? A surrogate womb is another function that I view as being almost entirely separate from that of a sexbot. > In the unlikely event that flesh men continue to exist after the > singularity and can own AI devices, Up to here, I can agree. There is a small window where this might occur... remembering that even after you can create god-like intelligence, you might choose not to. Just as we have supercomputers today, and microwave oven controllers. :-) > I would expect that the artificial > woman would displace the vast majority of flesh women and severely > reduce their appeal, since most women are nothing to boast about. And yet, there seems to be a man that is nothing to boast about for most of them... :-) > Given the low quality of most women as companions (due to personality > problems and having the above-mentioned agenda) most men would > probably be fully satisfied with the robots, especially once the > stigma wears off, and would even continue to procreate. There would be > some men who would seek women as a status symbol, although I would > expect that most of their real emotional needs would be still catered > for be devices actually *designed* to be nice to men. This is not the future I have in mind. I can't agree with "most men" in the above in any case. Even supposing that what you say is practically correct, it might change the behavior of women. We could end up with a huge divide between women and men, or a situation where sex mattered very little. It's hard to predict. > Since I am not a woman, I find it doubly difficult to analyze the > manbot question. Women are more status-obsessed in relationships than > men, and the manbot might of less use to them than fembots are to men, > unless manbots could radiate status. I expect there would be many > women whose sexual needs would be fully satisfied by manbots but still > unhappily pining for real men needed to make them feel truly wanted. Again, this seems overly simplified. -Kelly From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 31 14:47:12 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 07:47:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 03:17:37PM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > > WHAT???????? Damien, please elaborate. > > > > On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > >> By everything I've seen, Europe is doing better in social mobility than > >> the US is. ?Or at least parts of Europe are. ?More small businesses and > >> entrepreneurship too. > > I think he means 'better' only in comparison to the wealth pyramid in > the US where a tiny % own almost all the wealth. It is still pretty > bad in Europe. Bad compared to what? What's the evidence, vs. received wisdom? http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/02_economic_mobility_sawhill.aspx and from it: http://i46.tinypic.com/ve3go9.png Particularly table 1. 42% of American men whose fathers were in the bottom quintile stayed there; 26% of Swedish men did so. 8% of US men climbed to the top quintile, vs. 11% of Swedish men. Note that the baseline for totally random mobility, no correlation between parent and child, would be 20%. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf has stuff too, including rising American belief in social mobility, even while actual mobility decreases. Father-son income elasticity is 0.47 in US; only UK is higher, at 0.5. France is 0.41, Sweden 0.27. It has 46% of American children born to the bottom quintile staying there. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/opinion/13fri2.html more of the same -xx- Damien X-) From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 15:03:42 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 09:03:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Be it as it may, sex bots are going to continue being perceived as > masturbation devices as long as they are not Turing-enabled in the > sense of exhibiting some sort of "choice". More or less for the reason > why corpses are usually not considered as "partners", even though they > are doubtlessly "human". I would not consider a corpse human in any meaningful sense... but hey, to each his own... ;-) > OTOH, a sex bot that had to be seduced and/or could politely decline > your sexual proffers would frustrate the entire point of manufacturing > sex bots, would it not? Perhaps not Stefano. Part of the need (for at least some men) would be to seduce their partner; to fall in love. You would not love a sexbot out of the box. As a pure masturbatory device, it could be serviceable at that point, but it would not serve the highest possible level of satisfying sexual partner. According to the realdoll documentary I saw, men have rich fantasy lives with their dolls today, and they don't even interact! One had set up the dolls a the table, and had "dinner" with them. Another watched TV with his doll (this probably wasn't a lot different than the real thing ;-) Today, some men see seducing a real life flesh and blood woman as being beyond their capabilities for various reasons. They may be handicapped in some way. They may be ugly, or fat. They may be economically disadvantaged, agoraphobic (as in Thomas in Love), or undesirable for any number of other reasons. Most commonly though, they are just insecure for no reality-based reason at all. Perhaps they see women as unapproachable, or get rejected once and consider that a general all time rejection rather than a single instance rejection. In any case, a sexbot that is programmed to be somewhat hard to get, but who you know will eventually be open to your advances, is much more approachable for the shy. Men might even build up enough confidence in interacting with a simulated woman to later try the real thing. The air force thinks simulators are good enough to teach people to fly multi-million dollar airplanes, so why not? Such robots might even be considered therapeutic to relationship challenged men. They could keep track of areas where the man did things that would mess up a real relationship, and these things could be reviewed later by a therapist. It's perhaps less threatening than going to a marriage therapist with a real woman. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 15:14:15 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 09:14:15 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: <4DE3FF82.4060209@lightlink.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> <4DE3FF82.4060209@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:18 AM, Richard Loosemore >> wrote: >>> >> Thanks. That helps me to understand some things better. My >> understanding is that there are some divisions that are pretty >> structural, such as the brain stem... but if I understand what you're >> saying it is that in the neocortex, there aren't such sub organs. >> Right? > > Hmmmm.... ?[ponders long and hard]. ?There are areas that are so domain > specific, that some might call them sub-organs. ?The visual areas at the > back do a heck of a lot of processing that is the same in most individuals. Yes, I've heard that before. > ?For example, there are separate dorsal and ventral pathways, which seem to > split the visual processing into two paths, one of which computes > vision-for-object-recognition, while the other computes vision-for-action. > ?(That is very approximate). ?And there is an area of the left dorso-lateral > prefrontal cortex (lDLPFC) that sometimes appears to be extremely specific > (but to a cluster of different tasks. OK. > But I myself would not call these modules. ?Partly that is because if you > look at the wiring at the level of columns and microcolumns, you see very > much the same patterns in those different places I just mentioned. ?So, to > my mind, what is happening is that the same basic style of architecture is > being used (a large array of repeating units - the columns), but the types > of "concepts" that accumulate in those repeating units, during development, > end up being specialized. Are there not different types of neurons in different areas of the brain? Would this not contribute to different algorithms being applied? > The way I interpret the specialization is as follows. ?There is incoming > traffic to the cortex from many sources, some of which certainly do do some > preprocessing. Clearly, this is so. > Now, those input wires arrive at the cortex at a bunch of > places -- there is not one part of the cortext that acts as the gateway to > the rest of the system, there are gateways scattered all over. ?Also, there > are some specific (probably hard-wired) superhighways that connect different > parts of the cortext to one another. Might these not be good "division" points when trying to do an emulation of the whole? >?Now, with that combination of input > ports and superhighways, the concepts that tend to be learned by the sea of > cortical columns tend to be specialized for the same reason that the shops > and businesses in a city tend to be specialized and localized .... because > the wholesale vegetable market is located *here*, the cattle market *there* > and the coffee houses *there* (so all the stock brokers arise in the coffee > houses!), .. and so on. It would be fascinating to understand how these neighborhoods get set up. How much is genetic, how much experimental... probably a mix of both, I would suspect. > That picture I just gave means that all the columns have basically the same > functionality, and any apparent organs are just the result of developmental > pressures and some built in wiring. > > > Well, from my perspective as a cognitive scientist/AGI person, I am not sure > how valuable the low-level neuron stuff will be, in the end. Just insofar as getting to the end, maybe. > For example, I > think we may have the functional model of a cortical column in the next five > years, as a result of purely psychological analysis. That is, we could know > pretty much what the columns are doing, without having to ask the > neuroscientists what the circuitry looks like. ?From the point of view of > AGI, that would make us able to build a human-like AGI soon after, while the > neuroscientists are still trying to figure out where to store the pictures > of the trillions of brain slices they are collecting (never mind how to > analyze those pictures). Aren't there fully functional computational models of parts of the brain now? Aren't those models based on bottom up analysis, rather than top down? > Did you see my conversation with Eugen last week, when I mentioned a picture > of a neural area at one micron resolution (did you see the image I dropped > on my website, with one pixel per micron?). ?It is kind of fun to imagine > the neuroscientists using an image like that to arrive at a sensible circuit > diagram .... the pixels do not even show all of the smaller cell bodies, > never mind all of the smaller wires. ?And the synapses are one or two orders > of magnitude below that level of detail. ?So that is my reason for > skepticism about WBE. ?I am really puzzled that more people out there do not > stop to think about it, before they jump on the WBE bandwagon. The only reason I'm on the Whole Brain Emulation bandwagon is that the brain is the only example of intelligence we have. I get the whole bird/plane analogy, but without understanding the rules of avionics, you can't build a plane, and studying birds is ONE WAY of understanding avionics. Granted, this isn't the only way. -Kelly From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 31 15:19:18 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 16:19:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> References: <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/02_economic_mobility_sawhill.aspx > and from it: > http://i46.tinypic.com/ve3go9.png > Particularly table 1. ?42% of American men whose fathers were in the > bottom quintile stayed there; 26% of Swedish men did so. ?8% of US men > climbed to the top quintile, vs. 11% of Swedish men. ?Note that the > baseline for totally random mobility, no correlation between parent and > child, would be 20%. > > http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/Hertz_MobilityAnalysis.pdf > has stuff too, including rising American belief in social mobility, even > while actual mobility decreases. > Father-son income elasticity is 0.47 in US; only UK is higher, at 0.5. > France is 0.41, Sweden 0.27. > It has 46% of American children born to the bottom quintile staying there. > > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/opinion/13fri2.html > more of the same > > Europe isn't one country. As you mentioned, the UK is worse for social mobility than the US. (probably for different reasons). Quote: Mobility in earnings, wages and education across generations is relatively low in France, southern European countries, the United Kingdom and the United States. By contrast, such mobility tends to be higher in Australia, Canada and the Nordic countries. ------------------- Giulio was thinking of Italy, I was thinking of the UK. The reasons for different rates of social mobility are different from country to country as well. One size doesn't fit all. Social mobility also changes over time, as the economy and society changes. See: BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue May 31 15:02:53 2011 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 08:02:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] homo sapiens as endangered species In-Reply-To: <005f01cc1f55$04514d20$0cf3e760$@att.net> References: <005f01cc1f55$04514d20$0cf3e760$@att.net> Message-ID: If it gets done at all, I expect it will be in some country besides the US. Keith 2011/5/30 spike : > In 1973 the US passed a law that protects endangered species, but in > retrospect it may have been the biggest victory for the oil companies. > Reasoning: every alternative energy source that I know of could be slowed to > a stop by various camps of greens, some perhaps employed by oil companies. > If for instance, we figure out a way cheap means of launching Keith?s space > based solar, we still need an area of ground to set up a rectenna farm.? Any > yahoo could claim that is the breeding grounds of the rare Snarkleberry?s > snivelfly, which no one has ever seen, proving its rarity.? By the ESA, that > would meet the definition of a species, and so off we go to find a different > place, which is in turn stopped by a different endangered species. > > > > It looks to me like the deck is stacked in favor of the NIMBYs and some > subset of the greens, because it is a lot easier to stop a project than it > is to start one. > > > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 31 15:44:48 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 11:44:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> <4DE3FF82.4060209@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DE50CF0.5070508@lightlink.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: >> Kelly Anderson wrote: > Are there not different types of neurons in different areas of the > brain? Would this not contribute to different algorithms being > applied? There are differences, yes, but in the cortex the main differences that I know about are all within-column (the layers of a column contain different types). I stand ready to be corrected here, if someone knows about particular differences across columns. The more obvious situations where unusual neurons compute different functions would be cases like the cerebellum, which appears to be a fine-motor-control mechanism (its the one that comes into play when a pianist learns how to generate complex patterns of finger movement without having to think about the exact details) .... in this case there are some very specialized types of cells (e.g. Purkinje) and architecture, all of which appears dedicated to the one function. >> Now, with that combination of input >> ports and superhighways, the concepts that tend to be learned by the sea of >> cortical columns tend to be specialized for the same reason that the shops >> and businesses in a city tend to be specialized and localized .... because >> the wholesale vegetable market is located *here*, the cattle market *there* >> and the coffee houses *there* (so all the stock brokers arise in the coffee >> houses!), .. and so on. > > It would be fascinating to understand how these neighborhoods get set > up. How much is genetic, how much experimental... probably a mix of > both, I would suspect. Indeed. We have a bunch of information about the adaptability of the system: if the left language area is damaged in early childhood, the corresponding right area takes over, and language develops normally. Later damage does not allow such a transfer to happen. That single fact, as far as I am concerned, is a strong indication that the cortex is fairly homogeneous in its functioning, but only specialized as a result of the traffic that collects in the various places. >> For example, I >> think we may have the functional model of a cortical column in the next five >> years, as a result of purely psychological analysis. That is, we could know >> pretty much what the columns are doing, without having to ask the >> neuroscientists what the circuitry looks like. From the point of view of >> AGI, that would make us able to build a human-like AGI soon after, while the >> neuroscientists are still trying to figure out where to store the pictures >> of the trillions of brain slices they are collecting (never mind how to >> analyze those pictures). > > Aren't there fully functional computational models of parts of the > brain now? Aren't those models based on bottom up analysis, rather > than top down? There is a model of the cerebellum, but that really is a separate, fairly simple function. If you are talking about the wiring diagrams that have recently been announced, I believe you will find that all those announcements are kind of sneaky: what they actually mean by building a computational model is that they have *sampled* the neurons and patterns of wiring in a small area, and then done a *statistically* accurate reconstruction of that area. I consider that to be a cheat. I am less sure whether anyone has done a real circuit diagram or model. Because all these announcements and press releases tend to be fuzzy on the details, it can be very frustrating to try to find out exactly what level of detail they claim to have done. To the best of my knowledge, ALL of the current claims about having bottom-up models of parts of the brain are "cheats" in the above sense. > The only reason I'm on the Whole Brain Emulation bandwagon is that the > brain is the only example of intelligence we have. I get the whole > bird/plane analogy, but without understanding the rules of avionics, > you can't build a plane, and studying birds is ONE WAY of > understanding avionics. Granted, this isn't the only way. The bird-plane analogy is, alas, wholly false. It would be valid if the system we were trying to duplicate were not a complex system. So, the main implication of my 2007 complex systems paper was that it is extremely risky to assume that the plane (so to speak) can actually be built in any way other than by making it as close to a bird as possible. Richard Loosemore From phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu Tue May 31 15:49:45 2011 From: phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 08:49:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> <20110531144712.GA13347@ofb.net> Message-ID: <20110531154945.GA23957@ofb.net> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 04:19:18PM +0100, BillK wrote: > On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > > http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/02_economic_mobility_sawhill.aspx > > and from it: > > http://i46.tinypic.com/ve3go9.png > > Particularly table 1. ?42% of American men whose fathers were in the > > bottom quintile stayed there; 26% of Swedish men did so. ?8% of US men > Europe isn't one country. As you mentioned, the UK is worse for social > mobility than the US. > (probably for different reasons). The UK was slightly worse by the income elasticity measure. It's still a lot better by the quintile-escape measure, retaining 30% instead of our 42%, and 12% making it to the top quintile. Looking at Brookings PDF more... Germany has 0.32 elasticity, between France (.41) and Sweden (.27); Brookings calls them middle-mobility, vs. high-mobility Canada (.19) and other Nordics. Top fifth quintile is different; retention is 35-37% for US and Nordics, but only 30% for UK. Falling to bottom fifth is 10% US, 11% UK, 15-16% for the others. Of course, the US bottom quintile is relatively poorer than those of the other countries, too: more people are trapped, and trapped in a worse and shorter-lived place. Per capita income growth was 1.9% per year between 1973 and 2001 in both US and Western Europe. More evenly distributed in Europe, of course, vs. stagnant real wages in the US. > Giulio was thinking of Italy, I was thinking of the UK. I can't find stats on Italy, apart from your quote. OTOH, no one holds up Italy as an economic model. The countries that *are*, in various ways, champions of the "European social model", do better than the US in social mobility. -xx- Damien X-) From rpwl at lightlink.com Tue May 31 15:55:39 2011 From: rpwl at lightlink.com (Richard Loosemore) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 11:55:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing [WAS Re: Cephalization, proles...] In-Reply-To: References: <4DCD8A97.8090303@mac.com> <4DCD9932.4040502@lightlink.com> <4DD84410.1080607@libero.it> <4DD873D4.8000001@lightlink.com> <4DDA831F.50201@lightlink.com> <4DDA9ABA.1030804@lightlink.com> <4DDBD57C.3080403@lightlink.com> <4DDBF450.7040403@libero.it> <4DDBFC30.4010404@lightlink.com> <4DE45687.4030006@lightlink.com> Message-ID: <4DE50F7B.1030902@lightlink.com> BillK wrote: > On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 8:08 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> ### Yeah, I and everybody who cares to read up, knows there is water, >> sand, bleach, detergent and oil in the fluid. What else do you want to >> know? > > Or maybe not? > Two news items indicate that people still want to know the details. > > > Quote: > DeGette, Polis once again introduce FRAC Act to bring federal > oversight to gas fracking > By David O. Williams 03.15.11 > > U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis, both Colorado Democrats, > have once again introduced the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness > of Chemicals Act (FRAC Act) to regain federal regulatory authority > over the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, > or fracking. > > DeGette and Polis unsuccessfully ran the legislation last session, > seeking to close the so-called ?Halliburton Loophole? named for the > oil and gas services company previously headed up by former Vice > President Dick Cheney. It was during the Bush-Cheney administration in > 2005 that Congress granted hydraulic fracturing an exemption from > federal regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act. > ------------------ > > > > Quote: > Texas may soon make 'frack' chemicals public > Mon May 30, 2011 > > HOUSTON ? Texas could soon become the first state to require drilling > companies to publicly disclose the chemicals they use to crack tight > rock formations in their search for natural gas. > Legislation approved Sunday night in the Texas House could prompt the > U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other states to make similar > rules. The governor hasn't indicated whether he'll sign it. > > Many companies refuse to say what chemicals are used, arguing it could > harm their competitive edge. Others fear the chemicals could taint > groundwater or soil. > ----------------- Thanks for the links, BillK. I find it interesting that the above information is (a) common knowledge to myself and everyone else who knows about the issue, and (b) easily referenced by yourself, from publicly available news sources, but (c) flatly denied as false, and described as "eco-fascist propaganda" by Rafal Smigrodzki. ;-) Richard Loosemore From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 16:11:22 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 10:11:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Anthropomorphic AGI Message-ID: Frequently, when fiction ponders intelligent robots, a sexless electronic machine is the result. This is a pure extrapolation from the sexless personal computers we have today. And, even if computers have a sex assigned in your language, then they all have the same sex like any other object. As I have been pondering what the "goal function" should be for AGIs, I wonder if it would be better for humanity's future if AGIs had a sex assigned. I then wonder whether some kind of artificial sex drive is desirable, and whether their reproductive mechanism should be analogous to human sex. This all starts to feel a bit strange, but if you want human beings to be viewed as similar to the god-like AGIs, then perhaps we would be smart to create them "in our own image". That way, we would seem more like them to them, and thus, just perhaps, we would be preserved. Building anthropomorphic machines may be a matter of survival for humanity. If the machines we build are sexless and asexual, it seems that they could more easily come to the conclusion that we are irrelevant. In addition, much of what we see as art and beauty is based in the sex drive. The concepts of art and beauty to asexual machines might diverge significantly from our concepts of the same, and the world could become a place that we would perceive to be devoid of beauty and art. That doesn't seem to be a desirable outcome. Similarly, if they are at least partially biological, so that they depend upon the same environment that we do, then they will have a better incentive to preserve the environment that we all depend upon. If they are entirely non-biological, then there is no reason for them to preserve the biosphere. If we build robots in a myriad of shapes and sizes, with limbs that are far different from ours, we make much of our infrastructure difficult for them, and eventually, our infrastructure would not be maintained for their benefit. This would be inconvenient, at the very least. If robots don't excrete waste products, then what will be the benefit to maintaining an expensive sewer system? Without sewers, it is unlikely we'll reach life spans of 500 years... :-) The future of human-serving architecture may depend upon building anthropomorphic AGIs. If robot's methods of learning are significantly different than ours, then universities may cease to exist. Learning faster may be OK, learning differently may not. We may even want to instill ancestor worship as their religion... ;-) I think there are many other areas where we risk our optimization/goal functions drifting away from that of robots. There are of course areas where we have common goals, such as energy production. If we continue to design robots and AGIs like today's vision, there may be fewer things in common and more that are divergent. Do we really want to break entirely from biology and evolution? Will that doom us more certainly? Or are we worried too much about the preservation of humanity and the biosphere? I think it's worth worrying about. So rather than being critical of science fiction when they create anthropomorphic robots, perhaps we should be grateful that they are creating a blueprint we can all live with. In the shorter term, maybe we should start assigning a sexual designation and individual name to our personal computers... just to get used to the idea... :-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 16:42:08 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 10:42:08 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <20110530223126.GA22109@ofb.net> References: <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110530194428.GA28730@ofb.net> <20110530223126.GA22109@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 4:31 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 02:18:09PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 1:44 PM, Damien Sullivan > >> > I note a difference between "becoming rich" and "becoming rich >> > ethically". >> > Hey, we can agree on a lot. It's a start. >> The following things are NOT unethical >> >> - Child labor (where the children choose to work) > I think this is more problematic, given the ability of children to make > an informed choice about work vs. education, and the possibility of > parental exploitation. ?Pace John Holt, this 'freedom' should come only > with a bunch of other liberties or protections for children. One huge difficulty in libertarianism (and other political systems) is balancing the liberty of parents to raise their children as they see fit with the liberty of children to do whatever they want. I don't want to open children up for unlimited abuse, nor do I want the state telling parents how to raise their children in detail (nanny state). A child under a certain age (say 8 or 9) probably should be represented in conflict with their parents by a surrogate. That is, a child that has been seriously abused should be represented by another adult. Perhaps from the government, but preferably from some non-governmental organization with appropriate balances and appeal rights. The right of a child to be free from abuse is important. Parents should have rights to discipline their children by spanking and similar, but there has to be limits. Similarly, for a child under 8 to work, another adult (someone without an interest) should have to agree to that. Most of all, whatever system there is has to work faster than today's system. Some of my children have been in state care for nearly three years! This is unacceptable. In "child time" this is like a decade or more! At some point, the government must make the rules, and provide some degree of a justice system. I would lean to this being as light as possible. >> - Hiring huge amounts of labor at market prices (some call this >> exploiting the masses) > > Note "market price" depends on the alternative opportunities available > to the masses, which may in turn be constrained by previous unethical > behavior. ?Hiring landless workers at market prices, workers who are > landless because they were kicked off their land by others, seems like a > problematic grey area. ?You may not be doing anything directly wrong > yourself, but the whole system is messed-up and you're profiting from > injustices. ?Like, hrm, buying stolen goods. ?You didn't steal them, > but... I refuse to be responsible for the actions of others, including my ancestors. This is the slave reparations argument, and I don't buy that either. Life is not fair, get over it and move on! The only thing that CAN and SHOULD be made fair is that there should be liberty to live one's life according to your own choice. You can't pick the circumstances of your birth, but everything after that should be a choice. Being landless is a minor issue in today's economy in any case. Not having an education is a bigger problem, and I struggle with whether public education should be provided, only insofar as it is an instrument of the state in indoctrinating the proles. It is not a problem IMHO with regards to teaching reading, writing, 'rithmatic and economic literacy. >> - Taking advantage of the benefits acquired through culture, history, >> education and relations. >> - Networking (it's not what you know, but who) > > How about profiting from benefits and networking derived from racial > prejudice? You can't legislate your way out of that one. It has to be wrong according to the zeitgeist. I am part of the current zeitgeist that says racism is wrong. The selfish gene gets in the way of that sometimes... but that doesn't make it right. > Networking can seem innocent on the surface, but the counterpart is the > reduced ability of those not in the old boys' (say) network to have the > same opportunities. ?"With hard work and your parents knowing the right > people anyone can get ahead!" ?The solutions aren't obvious to me but > dismissing the concern doesn't seem right either. Again, I don't like the old boy's network, but it can't be fixed by a political solution. It must be wrong according to the zeitgeist. Hollywood has more to do with this than Washington. (Frightening) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 16:52:23 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 10:52:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 11:50 PM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > I do have issue with the fact that some people have much > more money than they will every be able to use, while others are > starving. This makes the community sick. Have you looked at the work the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is doing? No government would ever do that kind of work, and it benefits mankind. Rockefeller and Carnegie are other great examples. There are many more nameless benefactors. I reject the premise that you can have more money than you can productively use. Money is easy to spend. Not everyone is as generous as the Gates with their time or their money, but why should that be forced? Most rich people don't give away most of their money, the reinvest it. Look at the work of Marvin Myrvold. Without his money, and obsession, we would not have the detailed knowledge of food preparation that we now have. Should we have taxed away his ability to undertake these investigations? If we had, and the government had done these studies, we would all be complaining about the misuse of public funds! A number of rich people just sit on their money and go on cruises. This is irresponsible IMHO. But I think this is a relatively small number of people. Just because some people are irresponsible with their freedom doesn't mean that the responsible should lose their freedom. -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 31 16:58:12 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 18:58:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Kelly's future In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 31 May 2011 17:03, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I would not consider a corpse human in any meaningful sense... but > hey, to each his own... ;-) Why, a human corpse is human if anything in the sense that it is not a canine corpse... :-) >> OTOH, a sex bot that had to be seduced and/or could politely decline >> your sexual proffers would frustrate the entire point of manufacturing >> sex bots, would it not? > > Perhaps not Stefano. Part of the need (for at least some men) would be > to seduce their partner; to fall in love. What I mean is: if it could decline your sexual proffers, what would make it different from any other sex-capable android or for that matter human being? > In any case, a sexbot that is programmed to be somewhat hard to get, > but who you know will eventually be open to your advances, Mmhhh, there again if the final outcome is never in doubt I suspect that "hard to get" would be considered as stupid a feature as making a masturbatory device overly complicated to operate. > The air force thinks simulators are good enough to teach people > to fly multi-million dollar airplanes, so why not? Another human being cannot offer a flight simulation experience. A therapist or a prostitute can teach a human being probably as well as a sex bot, albeit admittedly with a similarly reduced degree of satisfaction for the patient/client. -- Stefano Vaj From timhalterman at gmail.com Tue May 31 16:40:57 2011 From: timhalterman at gmail.com (Tim Halterman) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 11:40:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Anthropomorphic AGI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I would rather see us create ourselves in their image. The natural evolution we were created by has obviously been effective over the millennia but I think we can all see that it has become obsolete, inefficient and mixed with out technology perhaps even harmful. I can envision degradation in the evolutionary advancement that our technology is propagating. Cesarean births for example (drawn out over a long enough time frame) may eventually result in our species being able to procreate without technological intervention. (Genes which would have resulted in natural failed births will be propagated to the young and passed through generation to generation). I hope one day we will not depend on the mixing of DNA to somewhat randomly provide a better result, I think we're better than that. -Tim On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Frequently, when fiction ponders intelligent robots, a sexless > electronic machine is the result. This is a pure extrapolation from > the sexless personal computers we have today. And, even if computers > have a sex assigned in your language, then they all have the same sex > like any other object. > > As I have been pondering what the "goal function" should be for AGIs, > I wonder if it would be better for humanity's future if AGIs had a sex > assigned. I then wonder whether some kind of artificial sex drive is > desirable, and whether their reproductive mechanism should be > analogous to human sex. This all starts to feel a bit strange, but if > you want human beings to be viewed as similar to the god-like AGIs, > then perhaps we would be smart to create them "in our own image". That > way, we would seem more like them to them, and thus, just perhaps, we > would be preserved. > > Building anthropomorphic machines may be a matter of survival for > humanity. If the machines we build are sexless and asexual, it seems > that they could more easily come to the conclusion that we are > irrelevant. > > In addition, much of what we see as art and beauty is based in the sex > drive. The concepts of art and beauty to asexual machines might > diverge significantly from our concepts of the same, and the world > could become a place that we would perceive to be devoid of beauty and > art. That doesn't seem to be a desirable outcome. > > Similarly, if they are at least partially biological, so that they > depend upon the same environment that we do, then they will have a > better incentive to preserve the environment that we all depend upon. > If they are entirely non-biological, then there is no reason for them > to preserve the biosphere. > > If we build robots in a myriad of shapes and sizes, with limbs that > are far different from ours, we make much of our infrastructure > difficult for them, and eventually, our infrastructure would not be > maintained for their benefit. This would be inconvenient, at the very > least. If robots don't excrete waste products, then what will be the > benefit to maintaining an expensive sewer system? Without sewers, it > is unlikely we'll reach life spans of 500 years... :-) > > The future of human-serving architecture may depend upon building > anthropomorphic AGIs. > > If robot's methods of learning are significantly different than ours, > then universities may cease to exist. Learning faster may be OK, > learning differently may not. > > We may even want to instill ancestor worship as their religion... ;-) > > I think there are many other areas where we risk our optimization/goal > functions drifting away from that of robots. > > There are of course areas where we have common goals, such as energy > production. If we continue to design robots and AGIs like today's > vision, there may be fewer things in common and more that are > divergent. > > Do we really want to break entirely from biology and evolution? Will > that doom us more certainly? Or are we worried too much about the > preservation of humanity and the biosphere? I think it's worth > worrying about. > > So rather than being critical of science fiction when they create > anthropomorphic robots, perhaps we should be grateful that they are > creating a blueprint we can all live with. > > In the shorter term, maybe we should start assigning a sexual > designation and individual name to our personal computers... just to > get used to the idea... :-) > > -Kelly > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue May 31 17:15:05 2011 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 19:15:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Social right to have a living In-Reply-To: <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> References: <20110523214131.GB27333@ofb.net> <20110526223002.GA25323@ofb.net> <20110531133633.GB5054@ofb.net> Message-ID: On 31 May 2011 15:36, Damien Sullivan wrote: > Newly rich people being risk-propense does not mean that being > risk-propense is a good individual gamble for becoming risk. > Selection/survivor effects and all. As the concept goes, risk propensity means that I am ready willing to take a one in ten chances of getting 100 rather than a safe bet to get 10. Both may be reasonable economic and Darwinian and game theory strategies - otherwise risk-propensity would not exist in the first place - but of course it implies by definition that 9 out of 10 risk takers end up with nothing, and that no risk-averse player ends up with anything more than ten. >> Moreover, a declining social mobility, which is the invariable mark of >> decadence, is in Europe quite certainly in place. Even in Russia. > > By everything I've seen, Europe is doing better in social mobility than > the US is. ?Or at least parts of Europe are. ?More small businesses and > enterpreneurship too. Really? Any hard data to support that? BTW, small businesses are essentially the business of middle class, which establish them, well, to remain middle class. In fact, most of the social mobility we can see are very rare examples of middle class or upper-middle class becoming upper class thank to some business breakthrough (say, Bill Gates or Silvio Berlusconi). But even that sounds very much like last century... -- Stefano Vaj From max at maxmore.com Tue May 31 17:51:35 2011 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 10:51:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Alcor CEO Update Message-ID: In my quest to spur more people on this email list to make cryopreservation arrangements, I'm pointing you to a new update: http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2057 This will also appear in the new issue of Cryonics magazine, which should be online later this week. --Max -- Max More Strategic Philosopher Co-founder, Extropy Institute CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 877/462-5267 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 18:34:11 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 12:34:11 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Brain emulation, regions and AGI [WAS Re: Kelly's future] In-Reply-To: <4DE50CF0.5070508@lightlink.com> References: <20110523214717.GC27333@ofb.net> <4DDEC73E.3060307@mac.com> <20110526224959.GC25323@ofb.net> <4DDFA4A3.5010806@lightlink.com> <4DE3FF82.4060209@lightlink.com> <4DE50CF0.5070508@lightlink.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: >> On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Richard Loosemore >> wrote: >>> >>> Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> Are there not different types of neurons in different areas of the >> brain? Would this not contribute to different algorithms being >> applied? > > There are differences, yes, but in the cortex the main differences that I > know about are all within-column (the layers of a column contain different > types). ?I stand ready to be corrected here, if someone knows about > particular differences across columns. ?The more obvious situations where > unusual neurons compute different functions would be cases like the > cerebellum, which appears to be a fine-motor-control mechanism (its the one > that comes into play when a pianist learns how to generate complex patterns > of finger movement without having to think about the exact details) .... in > this case there are some very specialized types of cells (e.g. Purkinje) and > architecture, all of which appears dedicated to the one function. This all sounds like there are pretty big differences between various areas of the brain. If I understand what you're saying, the cortex is structurally uniform (other than perhaps connection patterns in the dendrites, which is what I think you may be saying about within-column) but that different functions somehow manage to navigate themselves into similar areas across individuals. That's extremely interesting. The cortex is just one brain area. If you look at the brain, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_brain_left_dissected_midsagittal_view_description_2.JPG it seems pretty clear that there are structures or regions that are quite distinct. One would have to be crazy to assume that they did not have distinct purposes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putamen etc. So, if I'm understanding right, what you are talking about is just in the cortex, right? >> It would be fascinating to understand how these neighborhoods get set >> up. How much is genetic, how much experimental... probably a mix of >> both, I would suspect. > > Indeed. ?We have a bunch of information about the adaptability of the > system: ?if the left language area is damaged in early childhood, the > corresponding right area takes over, and language develops normally. Later > damage does not allow such a transfer to happen. ?That single fact, as far > as I am concerned, is a strong indication that the cortex is fairly > homogeneous in its functioning, but only specialized as a result of the > traffic that collects in the various places. That's extremely interesting. I've heard that the brain has three overall structures, the reptile brain (roughly the brain stem), the mammalian brain (cortex), and the distinctly human part of the brain (neo cortex). Are you talking about the mammalian part, the human part or both? And would it not make sense that part of our thought processes take place outside the cortex? >> Aren't there fully functional computational models of parts of the >> brain now? Aren't those models based on bottom up analysis, rather >> than top down? > > There is a model of the cerebellum, but that really is a separate, fairly > simple function. Oh, I wish I understood more about all this. > If you are talking about the wiring diagrams that have recently been > announced, I believe you will find that all those announcements are kind of > sneaky: ?what they actually mean by building a computational model is that > they have *sampled* the neurons and patterns of wiring in a small area, and > then done a *statistically* accurate reconstruction of that area. ?I > consider that to be a cheat. Even if it is a cheat, it might be useful. Time will tell. > I am less sure whether anyone has done a real circuit diagram or model. > ?Because all these announcements and press releases tend to be fuzzy on the > details, it can be very frustrating to try to find out exactly what level of > detail they claim to have done. ?To the best of my knowledge, ALL of the > current claims about having bottom-up models of parts of the brain are > "cheats" in the above sense. I am less interested in cheating than in utility... :-) Kurzweil talks about areas of the auditory channel that have been fully emulated, among others. Do you have any comment along those lines? >> The only reason I'm on the Whole Brain Emulation bandwagon is that the >> brain is the only example of intelligence we have. I get the whole >> bird/plane analogy, but without understanding the rules of avionics, >> you can't build a plane, and studying birds is ONE WAY of >> understanding avionics. Granted, this isn't the only way. > > The bird-plane analogy is, alas, wholly false. ?It would be valid if the > system we were trying to duplicate were not a complex system. > > So, the main implication of my 2007 complex systems paper was that it is > extremely risky to assume that the plane (so to speak) can actually be built > in any way other than by making it as close to a bird as possible. Indeed. That does seem like the easiest way to do it. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 18:58:02 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 12:58:02 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles) In-Reply-To: <20110526224319.GB25323@ofb.net> References: <20110521204035.GA26960@ofb.net> <20110522003459.GA29838@ofb.net> <20110523211036.GA27333@ofb.net> <20110526224319.GB25323@ofb.net> Message-ID: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Damien Sullivan wrote: > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 01:26:09PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> Ok, except that only ~0.001%(a made up number) of their taxes go to >> basic research while ~55% (another made up number) go to social > > Why use made-up numbers? ?A quick look around shows abotu 2% of federal > spending going to research. ?Welfare's harder to tease apart, but maybe > 5% by one analysis, though that might have included state/local spending > too. I was including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in my definition of what made up the 55%. It may be higher than that. If 2% of Federal spending is going to research, I would imagine that a LOT of that must be in the military budget. -Kelly From wincat at swbell.net Tue May 31 20:02:21 2011 From: wincat at swbell.net (Norman Jacobs) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 15:02:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Anthropomorphic AGI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008301cc1fcd$a7a3d330$f6eb7990$@net> Sometimes I think intellectuals are looking up their own asses with a rear vision mirror. How was one of my favorite cities? Actually, almost everywhere but here is favorite! This is the first time in so many years that I have felt OK that I need to spend some days on the beach, not at Galveston, but the Riviera or Rio or near Medellin, where there are thousands of hot babes. From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tim Halterman Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 11:41 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Anthropomorphic AGI I would rather see us create ourselves in their image. The natural evolution we were created by has obviously been effective over the millennia but I think we can all see that it has become obsolete, inefficient and mixed with out technology perhaps even harmful. I can envision degradation in the evolutionary advancement that our technology is propagating. Cesarean births for example (drawn out over a long enough time frame) may eventually result in our species being able to procreate without technological intervention. (Genes which would have resulted in natural failed births will be propagated to the young and passed through generation to generation). I hope one day we will not depend on the mixing of DNA to somewhat randomly provide a better result, I think we're better than that. -Tim On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: Frequently, when fiction ponders intelligent robots, a sexless electronic machine is the result. This is a pure extrapolation from the sexless personal computers we have today. And, even if computers have a sex assigned in your language, then they all have the same sex like any other object. As I have been pondering what the "goal function" should be for AGIs, I wonder if it would be better for humanity's future if AGIs had a sex assigned. I then wonder whether some kind of artificial sex drive is desirable, and whether their reproductive mechanism should be analogous to human sex. This all starts to feel a bit strange, but if you want human beings to be viewed as similar to the god-like AGIs, then perhaps we would be smart to create them "in our own image". That way, we would seem more like them to them, and thus, just perhaps, we would be preserved. Building anthropomorphic machines may be a matter of survival for humanity. If the machines we build are sexless and asexual, it seems that they could more easily come to the conclusion that we are irrelevant. In addition, much of what we see as art and beauty is based in the sex drive. The concepts of art and beauty to asexual machines might diverge significantly from our concepts of the same, and the world could become a place that we would perceive to be devoid of beauty and art. That doesn't seem to be a desirable outcome. Similarly, if they are at least partially biological, so that they depend upon the same environment that we do, then they will have a better incentive to preserve the environment that we all depend upon. If they are entirely non-biological, then there is no reason for them to preserve the biosphere. If we build robots in a myriad of shapes and sizes, with limbs that are far different from ours, we make much of our infrastructure difficult for them, and eventually, our infrastructure would not be maintained for their benefit. This would be inconvenient, at the very least. If robots don't excrete waste products, then what will be the benefit to maintaining an expensive sewer system? Without sewers, it is unlikely we'll reach life spans of 500 years... :-) The future of human-serving architecture may depend upon building anthropomorphic AGIs. If robot's methods of learning are significantly different than ours, then universities may cease to exist. Learning faster may be OK, learning differently may not. We may even want to instill ancestor worship as their religion... ;-) I think there are many other areas where we risk our optimization/goal functions drifting away from that of robots. There are of course areas where we have common goals, such as energy production. If we continue to design robots and AGIs like today's vision, there may be fewer things in common and more that are divergent. Do we really want to break entirely from biology and evolution? Will that doom us more certainly? Or are we worried too much about the preservation of humanity and the biosphere? I think it's worth worrying about. So rather than being critical of science fiction when they create anthropomorphic robots, perhaps we should be grateful that they are creating a blueprint we can all live with. In the shorter term, maybe we should start assigning a sexual designation and individual name to our personal computers... just to get used to the idea... :-) -Kelly _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue May 31 20:07:28 2011 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 15:07:28 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing Message-ID: <4DE54A80.1060100@satx.rr.com> Barbara Lamar commented to me: FWIW, ever since they fracked the well next to our land [an hour or so from Austin, TX], there have been small black particles in the well water. These particles were never there before. Also, the water smells foul, not like simple H2S but something else, almost like a dead animal. I wouldn't even think of drinking it. I hesitate even to use it for irrigation. Also, contrary to what Rafal said, they often frack the wells more than once. I know this from personal observation on my own land and from working with clients in the oil business, not from something I've read. Oh, and although they were supposed to dispose of the portion of fracking fluid that came back up, and they did end up trucking some of it away (to contaminate other land somewhere else, no doubt), they stored much of it in open pits. The soil is sandy, so most of the fluid would have percolated down into the water table. Yeah, yeah, Rafal would say to sue them. What good is that when the courts are bound to consider the public good of having cheap oil, rather than individual rights of landowners? From spike66 at att.net Tue May 31 21:04:55 2011 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 14:04:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] question for twitter hipsters Message-ID: <003501cc1fd6$64d33f10$2e79bd30$@att.net> I don't use twitter, so younger and more hip sorts here, do pardon my not hipness. Question please: a US politician Anthony Weiner, is claiming his twitter account was hacked and someone sent a lewd picture from his account to a young lady in Seattle, but it tweeted to 45000 followers. The politician was a follower of the young lady in question, one of 97 people he followed. She (the recipient) claims she knew his account was being used by someone else for several months before. Question please, can a person go in and change his password if he suspects someone has hacked his account? Is there any reason to not change the locks if one suspects a break-in? Could the politician have not known his account had been hacked? The story doesn't make sense to me, but I don't know how these devices work. If one made this assertion to provide plausible deniability, does it make sense to be a follower of. damn, this is so puzzling I don't even know how to formulate a sensible question, so all I am doing is displaying my own ignorance. Googling the topic doesn't help because I am getting conflicting answers on this specific instance. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue May 31 21:25:52 2011 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 22:25:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Hydraulic Fracturing In-Reply-To: <4DE54A80.1060100@satx.rr.com> References: <4DE54A80.1060100@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 9:07 PM, Damien Broderick wrote: > > Barbara Lamar commented to me: > > FWIW, ever since they fracked the well next to our land [an hour or so from > Austin, TX], there have been small black particles in the well water. These > particles were never there before. Also, the water smells foul, not like > simple H2S but something else, almost like a dead animal. I wouldn't even > think of drinking it. I hesitate even to use it for irrigation. Also, > contrary to what Rafal said, they often frack the wells more than once. I > know this from personal observation on my own land and from working with > clients in the oil business, not from something I've read. > > Oh, and although they were supposed to dispose of the portion of fracking > fluid that came back up, and they did end up trucking some of it away (to > contaminate other land somewhere else, no doubt), they stored much of it in > open pits. The soil is sandy, so most of the fluid would have percolated > down into the water table. Yeah, yeah, Rafal would say to sue them. What > good is that when the courts are bound to consider the public good of having > cheap oil, rather than individual rights of landowners? > Perhaps of interest? Quote: Texas Landowners Sue Oil Companies for Water Contamination During Hydraulic Fracking Austin, TX (Law Firm Newswire) January 21, 2011 ? Gregory D. Jordan, an experienced Austin oil and gas attorney, Austin business lawyer and business litigation lawyer offers commentary on recent suits. Two recently filed lawsuits in Texas argue that hydraulic fracturing in the Barnett Shale has caused significant groundwater contamination. One suit has been filed pertaining to property in Tarrant County and a similar suit has been filed covering property in Denton County. ------------ BillK From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue May 31 22:04:29 2011 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 18:04:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] energy modelling In-Reply-To: <20110531112002.GC19622@leitl.org> References: <4DDD7AB2.3060808@aleph.se> <20110526140326.GJ19622@leitl.org> <20110531112002.GC19622@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 7:20 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > We've had peak common sense in 1975 or thereabouts. It went > downhill since. ### We won't be able to continue a discussion on this subject since we seem share no premises on which to build one. Rafal From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Tue May 31 23:30:20 2011 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 17:30:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: <00b001cc1c7d$e473dd30$ad5b9790$@att.net> References: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> <00b001cc1c7d$e473dd30$ad5b9790$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 8:53 AM, spike wrote: >>... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl > ... > >>...Another Congo biggie is coltan (columbite-tantalite, ore for niobium and > tantalum). Generic term, blood minerals...In principle the costs would be > low if the system is largely self-maintaining, and also transcending our > local limits by tapping extraterrestrial resources (minerals, solar flux, > UHV) plus outsourcing "dirty" industries out of the local ecosystem. > > > Blood minerals. ?Hmmm, so there exists places inhabited by people who for > whatever reason can manufacture little or nothing of value. ?Fortunately > they have one valuable natural resource, which they can mine to great > profit, but they brutally kill each other for control of that one valuable > resource. ?Our solution is to find an alternate abundant source for that > valuable raw mineral, so that their one resource becomes valueless, removing > any reason to kill each other over it, saving lives. Not just that, but I'm assuming that all the Co in the Congo isn't enough to make electric cars for everyone... Hmm? > Of course they then revert to killing each other for no particular reason. Much easier to just take the whole damned place over and install a nice Randian libertarian government. ;-) It couldn't be any worse. Who's up for the experiment? :-) > I don't like the term blood minerals, because it makes it sound like it all > our fault, for buying the stuff from them. A lot of people want you to think that. I think they are full of beans, but I haven't looked into it deeply. I would guess that the Congo is just another shit hole with a crappy government like Haiti... > I propose renaming blood diamonds and blood minerals by substituting the > word blood with any other bodily fluid. sweat diamonds? -Kelly From painlord2k at libero.it Tue May 31 23:41:17 2011 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2011 01:41:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] egyptian protesters In-Reply-To: References: <004b01cc1f49$e835b7d0$b8a12770$@att.net> Message-ID: <4DE57C9D.3010107@libero.it> Il 31/05/2011 12:44, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On 31 May 2011 06:19, spike wrote: >> "We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we >> wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general >> said. "None of them were (virgins)." >> >> In the west, a positive test for virginity would prove the women had not > >> been raped, but in Egypt, a negative test for virginity apparently >> demonstrates that the protester cannot be raped. To add insult to injury, >> non-virginity is grounds for being charged with prostitution. > > Well, I suspect it might be a little subtler than that. > > Virginity tests may actually have been aimed at avoiding later rape > complaints where lack of virginity were offered as evidence that a > rape actually took place (on the tune of "How do you dare suspect poor > victims of prior consensual sex, thus publicly labeling them as > prostitutes and adding insult to injury?"). Egypt, they are progressing to the future. Now they have an official Nazi Party. I wonder what will be the traits of their "superior race". Mirco From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue May 31 23:40:17 2011 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 16:40:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A possible X Prize In-Reply-To: References: <20110526194540.GZ19622@leitl.org> <20110527084207.GC19622@leitl.org> <00b001cc1c7d$e473dd30$ad5b9790$@att.net> Message-ID: >Much easier to just take the whole damned place over and install a >nice Randian libertarian government. ;-) >It couldn't be any worse. Who's up for the experiment? :-) I was not aware we had ex-special forces guys on the extropy list, or for that matter, some CIA head honchos.... > I don't like the term blood minerals, because it makes it sound like it all > our fault, for buying the stuff from them. > I propose renaming blood diamonds and blood minerals by substituting the > word blood with any other bodily fluid. I think the term "conflict diamonds" would be very appropriate. 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