From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 00:10:11 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:10:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 6:55 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > I also wonder about the essential parts of emotional reaction to > situations. ?If during a depression one decides to selectively edit / > remove the ability to feel depressed (seems like a good idea, right?) > then later realizes that the creative introspection that came with the > depressed state is also no longer accessible, what is lost? I have found myself often wondering what is the cost to humanity of losing out on human suffering. The mainstream Christian view of heaven seems horribly boring to me, because without suffering, how can there be meaning? Where would literature, art, music and poetry be without the depressing side of those arts? I imagine that the music in heaven is horribly boring. No Nine Inch Nails or Tori Amos there baby... and what a loss. If we got rid of depression, anger, sadness, melancholy, fatigue, bitchiness, sarcasm, fear, inattentiveness, frustration, boredom and all the other wonderful negative emotions, could you really call what you ended up with human in any sense of the word? So what is lost if we reach a state of paradise on earth? Everything. Now, that doesn't mean things can't get better. When I think of the sorts of negative life experiences my great ... great grandparents suffered through, I can't compare that to "I lost all the songs on my MP3 player"... but the emotion is the same. So in the future, humans may complain about things that seem pretty inconsequential to us now (the peppermint scent emitting E Coli in my gut died, and now I have smelly farts) but the emotions will be the same for them. But get rid of the negative emotions altogether, and you really do have something that in a real way is inhuman. The most dangerous emotion to get rid of might be disgust. It is one of the most universal of emotions, and it is present in infants. It's hard wired. Without disgust, you would be like a leper, unable to keep any sort of basis for ethical thought. We are disgusted when someone steals from us, murders, rapes, etc. Without disgust, there would be no impetus to justice, and I fear then that we would lose a hell of a lot more than just the good art. Now, this isn't to say that all of our technology should have all of these emotions. I would be very unhappy if someone designed fatigue, boredom, inattentiveness, anger, etc. into the system that's going to drive my car around. But, if it makes the car happy and fulfilled to get me there safely, then I suppose I could live with that. :-) I don't care if my car's autonomous driving system lives in the hell that is the Christian heaven. -Kelly From pjmanney at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 00:00:15 2012 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:00:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] etextbooks In-Reply-To: References: <008201ccd7c5$024a1380$06de3a80$@att.net> <4F1AEBF2.9040004@moulton.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 5:15 PM, PJ Manney wrote: > On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 8:46 AM, F. C. Moulton wrote: >> Personally I think that discussion of Evolution should be introduced in >> an earlier grade. > > I absolutely agree. ?Please help take that up with all the state core > standards committees. BTW, The Fordham Foundation just did an analysis of US K-12 Science standards by state. California was the only state to receive an A (but District of Columbia did, too). Look at the map on page 6. Holy mother of Dog... http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC4QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edexcellencemedia.net%2Fpublications%2F2012%2F2012-State-of-State-Science-Standards%2F2012-State-of-State-Science-Standards-FINAL.pdf&ei=gn4oT_alHuqciQLLn429AQ&usg=AFQjCNErzfsipRdnu1QY3yRX3CAQgt3EYA&sig2=7aQfPOarzTzEFwc0Dz0v3Q So Spike? Consider yourself damned lucky to live in CA. And if you want to make it even better, get in there yourself and get active. PJ From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 1 06:13:23 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:13:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] etextbooks In-Reply-To: References: <008201ccd7c5$024a1380$06de3a80$@att.net> <4F1AEBF2.9040004@moulton.com> Message-ID: <003301cce0a8$9aa95d20$cffc1760$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of PJ Manney Subject: Re: [ExI] etextbooks On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 5:15 PM, PJ Manney wrote: > On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 8:46 AM, F. C. Moulton wrote: >> Personally I think that discussion of Evolution should be introduced in an earlier grade. > I absolutely agree. ?Please help take that up with all the state core standards committees. >...BTW, The Fordham Foundation just did an analysis of US K-12 Science standards by state. California was the only state to receive an A (but District of Columbia did, too). Look at the map on page 6. Holy mother of Dog... >...http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CC4Q FjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edexcellencemedia.net%2Fpublications%2F2012%2F2012 -State-of-State-Science-Standards%2F2012-State-of-State-Science-Standards-FI NAL.pdf&ei=gn4oT_alHuqciQLLn429AQ&usg=AFQjCNErzfsipRdnu1QY3yRX3CAQgt3EYA&sig 2=7aQfPOarzTzEFwc0Dz0v3Q >...So Spike? Consider yourself damned lucky to live in CA. And if you want to make it even better, get in there yourself and get active. PJ Actually I did that, and found it most frustrating. I went through and helped organize the school library as a volunteer. I was appalled at the criteria used to weed out books. I don't even want to get into that, but what I do want to get into is the absurdity of teaching materials chosen by state boards. Some states have relatively uniform culture (think Iowa and Kansas for instance) and others have so many different cultures, such a Florida and California. I have taken to introducing my son to the concepts I find most important, so I don't need to rely on the wimpy school texts. My son is in kindergarten. I suspect that education in general is on the verge of a major transformation that I hope will solve a lot of these kinds of problems, and that his class will be in the transition generation. The Stanford AI class convinced me that online learning is ready to go. We just need to drive it. spike From amon at doctrinezero.com Wed Feb 1 08:49:35 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 08:49:35 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 1 February 2012 00:10, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > If we got rid of depression, anger, sadness, melancholy, fatigue, > bitchiness, sarcasm, fear, inattentiveness, frustration, boredom and > all the other wonderful negative emotions, could you really call what > you ended up with human in any sense of the word? > > So what is lost if we reach a state of paradise on earth? Everything. As much as I agree that we'd have to be extremely careful when "engineering out" evolutionarily adaptive emotions (such as disgust), from my point of veering the statement above is veering into bona fide Luddo-Theological territory. My responses would be: A) So what if what is left isn't human? We're transhumanists, aren't we? B) Sorry to say it, but that sounds like religious hyperbole. One could just as easily say "nothing" (paradise may easily enough be defined as a state of good-without-exception) - these are essentially meaningless, deeply anti-practical statements whose only use is to argue for a "true path" as opposed to some form of perceived deviation. The fact of the matter is that when we feel happy, we don't imagine that we've somehow lost something because we aren't sad. So if we were motivated by shades of positive reinforcement rather than negative (to the extent that may prove possible without scuppering critical instinctive survival reactions), I doubt very much that there'd be a consensus that we had lost anything at all. (and FWIW, I personally think there'd still be a place for the likes of NIN or Tori Amos in that world! The "pain" they evoke is an artistic recreation, not real, individually felt pain at all, in my opinion). That's really beside the point anyway, I suppose, since reality is never some extreme fantasy scenario, but an unpredictable mess of consequences and practical considerations. It seems a little strange to see conversations on this list making the same kind of black-or-white, transhumanist-futures-good-or-bad dichotomy arguments that were common 25 years ago. Surely we can see that when technology changes human behaviour, the outcomes are never simplistic, and can therefore never easily be classified as all good or all bad? - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Wed Feb 1 08:50:14 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 08:50:14 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 1 February 2012 08:49, Amon Zero wrote: > On 1 February 2012 00:10, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> >> If we got rid of depression, anger, sadness, melancholy, fatigue, >> bitchiness, sarcasm, fear, inattentiveness, frustration, boredom and >> all the other wonderful negative emotions, could you really call what >> you ended up with human in any sense of the word? >> >> So what is lost if we reach a state of paradise on earth? Everything. > > > > As much as I agree that we'd have to be extremely careful when > "engineering out" evolutionarily adaptive emotions (such as disgust), from > my point of veering > Point of view, even! Apologies. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 11:07:21 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 04:07:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/1 Amon Zero : > On 1 February 2012 00:10, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> If we got rid of depression, anger, sadness, melancholy, fatigue, >> bitchiness, sarcasm, fear, inattentiveness, frustration, boredom and >> all the other wonderful negative emotions, could you really call what >> you ended up with human in any sense of the word? >> >> So what is lost if we reach a state of paradise on earth? Everything. > > As much as I agree that we'd have to be extremely careful when "engineering > out" evolutionarily adaptive emotions (such as disgust), from my point of > veering the statement above is veering into bona fide Luddo-Theological > territory. Believe me, mine is not a theological point of view. It is entirely practical. Think of leprosy. No pain and you lose your fingers. Pain is an essential part of not just human physiology, but all biological physiology. I suspect that if you get rid of physical and emotional pain, you won't have full AGI either. > My responses would be: > > A) So what if what is left isn't human? We're transhumanists, aren't we? I for one want whatever comes after us (or that we evolve into) to maintain an element of humanity (the ethical part, not necessarily the people themselves) in the sense that there are genuine emotions involved. I think it would be terrible to be replaced by emotionless logic machines like Watson. Transhumanist yes, but beware that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And what is the baby if not our emotions? Our ability to appreciate beauty? To love? Pure intelligence without this emotional landscape would be a kind of genocide in my opinion... we would have lost the best part of what we're about IMHO. For a concrete example, if machines never felt guilt, that could be very bad for everyone. That would be a machine with Antisocial Personality Disorder. I am personally very interested in making sure that our children (of either sort) don't grow up with personality disorders. > B) Sorry to say it, but that sounds like religious hyperbole. One could just > as easily say "nothing" (paradise may easily enough be defined as a state of > good-without-exception) - these are essentially meaningless, deeply > anti-practical statements whose only use is to argue for a "true path" as > opposed to some form of perceived deviation. Perhaps I was misunderstood... I don't think the technological future will be anything like the Christian heaven or paradise.... I think there will always be competition for limited resources. And that means there has to be some level of individual failure continuing into the future. > The fact of the matter is that when we feel happy, we don't imagine that > we've somehow lost something because we aren't sad. But if you had never experienced sad, how would you know the true "meaning" of happy? And would beings that did not have emotions be able to understand those of us who do know emotions? > So if we were motivated > by shades of positive reinforcement rather than negative (to the extent that > may prove possible without scuppering critical instinctive survival > reactions), I doubt very much that there'd be a consensus that we had lost > anything at all. (and FWIW, I personally think there'd still be a place for > the likes of NIN or Tori Amos in that world! The "pain" they evoke is an > artistic recreation, not real, individually felt pain at all, in my > opinion). I think there is plenty of room for NIN in the technological (real) future. Just not in the Christian heaven. I was pointing out the differences between the two. I don't think you can get rid of emotions and not screw up critical survival mechanisms. Without experiencing real pain, I think art would suffer. Survival would be threatened. I don't want the next step in human evolution to be less survival capable than us! > That's really beside the point anyway, I suppose, since reality is never > some extreme fantasy scenario, but an unpredictable mess of consequences and > practical considerations. Hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride. > It seems a little strange to see conversations on > this list making the same kind of black-or-white, > transhumanist-futures-good-or-bad dichotomy arguments that were common 25 > years ago. Surely we can see that when technology changes human behaviour, > the outcomes are never simplistic, and can therefore never easily be > classified as all good or all bad? I am not a black and white thinker by any means. I'm more of an optimist than a pessimist, for what that's worth, but I think there will be plenty of challenges in any future I can conceive of. I do think that humanity has an endowment for whatever comes next, and I think it would be a real tragedy if they didn't get most of the gifts that we have to give them. -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 12:05:56 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 13:05:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 1 February 2012 12:07, Kelly Anderson wrote: > I for one want whatever comes after us (or that we evolve into) to > maintain an element of humanity (the ethical part, not necessarily the > people themselves) in the sense that there are genuine emotions > involved. Let me put it this way, which I consider the inevitable H+ POV: we used to be (kind of) reptiles. Those reptilian ancestors may well have thought fondly of the importance of maintaining the core of reptilianity in their successors. After a fashion, we did, since we fully partake of that legacy. But we have also moved over. Including in "ethical" and "emotional" terms. To consider posthumanity in human terms is a contradiction... in terms. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amon at doctrinezero.com Wed Feb 1 12:57:54 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 12:57:54 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: <3D4BC048-2C09-403F-9DF7-095A29F99CBE@gmail.com> References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <3D4BC048-2C09-403F-9DF7-095A29F99CBE@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 1 Feb 2012, at 11:07, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > I am not a black and white thinker by any means. I'm more of an > optimist than a pessimist, for what that's worth, but I think there > will be plenty of challenges in any future I can conceive of. I do > think that humanity has an endowment for whatever comes next, and I > think it would be a real tragedy if they didn't get most of the gifts > that we have to give them You know, this may sound like a cop-out - hopefully the fact that it's heartfelt will make up for that - but I completely agree with everything you've said in reply. Good answer! ;-) My only caveat would be that, I know you were talking about Christian notions of heaven, but I think we need to be very careful about "hangovers" from monotheist thought (as Stefano might say) unduly influencing rational consideration of bio-engineering & Abolitionist ideas. All the Best- A -- *ZERO STATE* RADICAL DEMOCRATIC FUTURISM *http://zerostate.net* ** ** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Feb 1 14:23:42 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 06:23:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1328106222.36447.YahooMailClassic@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Kelly Anderson asked: > ... if you had never experienced sad, how would you know the true > "meaning" of happy? I call Bullshit on this. It's like saying "If you never knew Green, how would you ever know the true 'meaning' of Red?" Sad, Happy, Green, Red, don't have 'meanings' beyond the experiences themselves (and any significance that we secondarily attach to them, such as Red = Danger, etc.). They are just experiences, some more preferable than others (which is often an individual thing, overlaid on evolved responses). They don't derive any more or less significance by being compared to each other. So the only thing that makes sense is to say "If you've never been sad, can you be happy?". Suppose I invert your question, and say does sadness only derive 'meaning' from happiness? (In other words, can you only be sad if you've been happy?) Do you think it makes sense to say that if someone has never had any happiness in their lives, or very little, that makes their sadness somehow less significant than that of someone else who has been happy loads of times? If someone has had very little experience of pleasure, is whatever pain they experience therefore less painful than that experienced by a hedonist? (your example of a leper is a good example: Do lepers feel less pleasure than other people, purely because they feel less pain?) I say no, absolutely not. > And would beings that did not have emotions be > able to understand those of us who do know emotions? I can't really comment on the likelihood of 'beings without emotions', although I suspect it's not very, but in general, what you are saying here is "would beings incapable of X be able to understand other beings capable of X?". I think the answer is "Of course not", at least with regard to X. Is a cat capable of understanding my behaviour when I'm looking for the tin-opener? I know that the answer for at least one cat is a big "No". It can associate certain sequences of action and sounds with food, but that's a long way from understanding what I'm up to when looking for a tin-opener, and why I sometimes don't need one to produce food (it can't even understand the cat-flap, never mind ring-pull tins, although I may be dealing with a very dim animal here, even for a cat!) Seeing as almost all of our behaviour is driven by emotion, any being without an appreciation of emotions would likely find our behaviour incomprehensible. Ben Zabioc From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Feb 1 16:52:48 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 10:52:48 -0600 Subject: [ExI] FW: email from Hayles (Fwd: Re: Wrestling with Embodiment) Message-ID: <003f01cce101$edcddbd0$c9699370$@cc> Fyi. From: natasha at natasha.cc [mailto:natasha at natasha.cc] Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 2:41 AM To: spike; max at maxmore.com Subject: email from Hayles (Fwd: Re: Wrestling with Embodiment) Dear Natasha Vita-More, Thanks for your clarification. This makes perfect sense to me. With best wishes, Kate Hayles _____ From: "natasha at natasha.cc" To: nk_hayles at yahoo.com Cc: natasha at natasha.cc Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 4:56 AM Subject: Wrestling with Embodiment Dear Ms. Hayles, I never wrote or implied that you think think humans are disembodied. That would be a rather strange notion. I wrote that you assumed transhumanists support disembodiement based on your interpretation of Moravec. This issue or question then is whether or not transhumanists agree with, infer, or support disembodiment. The easy, quick answer is no. Disembodiement is not the view within the scope of transhumanism and is not the vision for the future human or person, no matter the form or substrate. I do not know Jeff Davis. I am aware he is on the Extropy email list. I think he either misquoted those of us on this thread or misinterpreted the contents of the thread, which is substantive and rich in views and heady arguments, but they all come out that it would not be possible to exist as a person and be disembodied. Kind regards, Natasha Natasha Vita-More -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 1 16:57:48 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 08:57:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328115468.44050.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Kelly Anderson > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 4:10 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment > > On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 6:55 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: >> I also wonder about the essential parts of emotional reaction to >> situations. ?If during a depression one decides to selectively edit / >> remove the ability to feel depressed (seems like a good idea, right?) >> then later realizes that the creative introspection that came with the >> depressed state is also no longer accessible, what is lost? I think the answer is implicit in your question. The fact you are "removing" it instead of adding it, tells you?the operation?is a loss of functionality. So whatever your emotional state is after the operation, it is guaranteed to be less complex with less information than before. ? > I have found myself often wondering what is the cost to humanity of > losing out on human suffering. The mainstream Christian view of heaven > seems horribly boring to me, because without suffering, how can there > be meaning? Where would literature, art, music and poetry be without > the depressing side of those arts? I imagine that the music in heaven > is horribly boring. No Nine Inch Nails or Tori Amos there baby... and > what a loss. I think it might go beyond mere considerations of "humanity" and the loss thereof. Every sentience suffers. As biologist, I recognize it in the face of everything with a face.?Even the greatest intellect primitive minds could imagine?i.e. *God* suffers. Numerous times in the Bible he is described as heartbroken, sad, jealous, angry, vengeful, or?otherwise emotionally?upset. Thus I think even?M Branes would feel the pangs of unrequited love or they would no longer qualify as minds.?This is because intelligence is inherently goal-seeking. Whether your goals are simple "find water" or complex "get elected to parliament", the disparity between ones perceived environment and ones desired environment produces emotional states as readouts?that have function of motivating one to either goal-tend or goal-seek. Just imagine if you would, that?Satan grants you one wish. Not wishing to do the Devil's work for him and in a well-intentioned?attempt to trick the?Devil into doing good,?you say, "End world hunger." Satan waves his magic wand and dissappears. Two weeks later people all over the?world start?contentedly dying from starvation, not having eaten once since you made your wish.?? > So what is lost if we reach a state of paradise on earth? Everything. Not if you reached a human paradise. Forget dreams of platonic perfection. That with the capacity to evolve?is?far preferable to?perfection for that which is perfect is, by definition, finished. Find a way to live so that both you and your neighbor can both be happy. > > Now, that doesn't mean things can't get better. When I think of the > sorts of negative life experiences my great ... great grandparents > suffered through, I can't compare that to "I lost all the songs on my > MP3 player"... but the emotion is the same. So in the future, humans > may complain about things that seem pretty inconsequential to us now > (the peppermint scent emitting E Coli in my gut died, and now I have > smelly farts) but the emotions will be the same for them. But get rid > of the negative emotions altogether, and you really do have something > that in a real way is inhuman. Not just inhuman, but mindless as well. And you don't need to directly edit your emotions for this. You simply have to give in to apathy. I remember once back when I was living in Los Angeles, one my car's starter died in a convenience store parking lot. I called my auto-club to get it towed to my mechanic. The clerk of the convenience store called a different tow company to come and impound the car for being parked in his lot long after the?posted 10 minutes. So it became a race between my tow truck and the clerk's tow truck. Needless to say, his tow truck arrived first. I tried to dissuade the?tow truck driver from towing my vehicle?by ?explaining my situation to him, that my tow truck was on its way. I even offered to pay *him* to take me to my mechanic and he refused all of this. Like a mindless robot doing his?job. Then?my only recourse??was inspired by Arthur Dent. I simply sat?down in front of my car so that he would have back his truck over my body to tow my car.?Apparently,?the realization?he would have to commit murder in order to "do his job"?finally snapped him out his?robot-trance. After this, he started to talk to me,?tried to help me get my car started, and generally kept me company until the auto-club arrived to take my car to the garage.? > The most dangerous emotion to get rid of might be disgust. It is one > of the most universal of emotions, and it is present in infants. It's > hard wired. Without disgust, you would be like a leper, unable to keep > any sort of basis for ethical thought. We are disgusted when someone > steals from us, murders, rapes, etc. Without disgust, there would be > no impetus to justice, and I fear then that we would lose a hell of a > lot more than just the good art. It would be ill-advised to lose any emotion?as you would lose complexity and intelligence as well. Instead, you should seek to develop new emotions, ones that don't yet have names. ? Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 18:42:49 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 11:42:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/1 Stefano Vaj : > On 1 February 2012 12:07, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> I for one want whatever comes after us (or that we evolve into) to >> maintain an element of humanity (the ethical part, not necessarily the >> people themselves) in the sense that there are genuine emotions >> involved. > > Let me put it this way, which I consider the inevitable H+ POV: we used to > be (kind of) reptiles. > > Those reptilian ancestors may well have thought fondly of the importance of > maintaining the core of reptilianity in their successors. I get your point, but of course they had no neo-cortex... :-) > After a fashion, we did, since we fully partake of that legacy. But we have > also moved over. Including in "ethical" and "emotional" terms. To consider > posthumanity in human terms is a contradiction... in terms. Fair enough Stephano. It's hard to argue with logic that tight. However, I still hope for a gradual evolution away from humanity, and I hope that whatever comes next retains the core of what is good about being a Sapiens. It is selfish of me to hope for this, and I recognize that... however, I'm still selfish... Also, I think we Sapiens maintain what is good about being a reptile. I am also very grateful for my inner fish and all my other ancestors. And the point of conversation that is potentially useful is to think about what is it about humanity that is worth trying to maintain into the next step... because we get to (initially) decide. My vote is that the richness of human emotions is a good thing to try and work into the next generation, with perhaps some tweaking. For example, if AGI has compassion, I'd like it to have super human compassion, maybe modeled on the Dali Lama... :-) If it's going to have intelligence, let it be super human intelligence, if it is going to have hate, maybe not so much hate. That sort of thing. But to get rid of hate altogether, to get rid of disgust, I think that would be a mistake as it would possibly impede long term survival. We have a lot to appreciate from our evolutionary endowment of emotions, and I'd hate for post humanity to not be in touch with their inner Sapien. As always, my major concern is that we don't create the next generation in a pathological personality disordered sort of way. It would be all to easy to do this, and it needs to be avoided or the whole shooting match will go down the crapper. This is an existential risk. I don't know if it's in the canonical list of existential risks, but it should be. We don't know enough about human psychology to know what personality disorders would result from a lack of emotion, but it's easy enough to imagine that it might have negative consequences. We only have one chance to get this right folks! Then it's out of our hands. -Kelly From tara at taramayastales.com Wed Feb 1 19:04:04 2012 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 11:04:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <31ABA279-CF2E-40B0-8339-AFFD4E0D4D98@taramayastales.com> I agree. Less hate would be nice. But I'm not sure less suffering, as such, is possible. Indeed, I believe that we humans (presently) suffer in ways that other animals cannot. We suffer in anticipation of pain, not just from pain itself, for instance. We suffer from subtle emotions like jealousy, guilt, and heartbreak. Emotional pain can be so intense that humans will hurt themselves physically to distract themselves from it. If transhumans are capable of even subtler and deeper emotions, will they not also be vulnerable to subtler and deeper anguish? Or perhaps cognitions that now leave us cold will be even more entwined with emotion (rather than less, as many seem to assume). Perhaps a transhuman will contemplate an unsolved math problem and weep; and upon solving it, feel ecstasy. Tara Maya The Unfinished Song: Initiate The Unfinished Song: Taboo The Unfinished Song: Sacrifice On Feb 1, 2012, at 10:42 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2012/2/1 Stefano Vaj : >> On 1 February 2012 12:07, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>> >>> I for one want whatever comes after us (or that we evolve into) to >>> maintain an element of humanity (the ethical part, not necessarily the >>> people themselves) in the sense that there are genuine emotions >>> involved. >> >> My vote is that > the richness of human emotions is a good thing to try and work into > the next generation, with perhaps some tweaking. For example, if AGI > has compassion, I'd like it to have super human compassion, maybe > modeled on the Dali Lama... :-) If it's going to have intelligence, > let it be super human intelligence, if it is going to have hate, maybe > not so much hate. That sort of thing. But to get rid of hate > altogether, to get rid of disgust, I think that would be a mistake as > it would possibly impede long term survival. We have a lot to > appreciate from our evolutionary endowment of emotions, and I'd hate > for post humanity to not be in touch with their inner Sapien. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 19:08:15 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 12:08:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: <1328115468.44050.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328115468.44050.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:57 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- >> From: Kelly Anderson >> To: ExI chat list >> Cc: >> Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 4:10 PM >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment >> >> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 6:55 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: >>> I also wonder about the essential parts of emotional reaction to >>> situations. ?If during a depression one decides to selectively edit / >>> remove the ability to feel depressed (seems like a good idea, right?) >>> then later realizes that the creative introspection that came with the >>> depressed state is also no longer accessible, what is lost? > > I think the answer is implicit in your question. The fact you are "removing" it instead of adding it, tells you?the operation?is a loss of functionality. So whatever your emotional state is after the operation, it is guaranteed to be less complex with less information than before. > Excellent point! From an information POV, this is pretty hard to argue. Of course, greater complexity does not always mean better. Most of the animals on this planet are just complex enough to manage their niche. Only Sapiens seems to have hyperevolved out of a single niche (unless you consider the entire inhabitable region of the planet to be our niche). >> I have found myself often wondering what is the cost to humanity of >> losing out on human suffering. The mainstream Christian view of heaven >> seems horribly boring to me, because without suffering, how can there >> be meaning? Where would literature, art, music and poetry be without >> the depressing side of those arts? I imagine that the music in heaven >> is horribly boring. No Nine Inch Nails or Tori Amos there baby... and >> what a loss. > > I think it might go beyond mere considerations of "humanity" and the loss > thereof. Every sentience suffers. As biologist, I recognize it in the face of > everything with a face.?Even the greatest intellect primitive minds could > imagine?i.e. *God* suffers. Numerous times in the Bible he is described as > heartbroken, sad, jealous, angry, vengeful, or?otherwise emotionally?upset. And not just Jehovah, but also Zeus, Odin and the rest of the anthropomorphic gang. > Thus I think even?M Branes would feel the pangs of unrequited love or they would > no longer qualify as minds.?This is because intelligence is inherently goal-seeking. Is emotional intelligence required for goal-seeking? Probably not. Is it preferable? In my mind, yes. > Whether your goals are simple "find water" or complex "get elected to > parliament", the disparity between ones perceived environment and > ones desired environment produces emotional states as readouts?that > have function of motivating one to either goal-tend or goal-seek. Yes. > Just imagine if you would, that?Satan grants you one wish. Not wishing to do the Devil's work for him and in a well-intentioned?attempt to trick the?Devil into doing good,?you say, "End world hunger." Satan waves his magic wand and dissappears. Two weeks later people all over the?world start?contentedly dying from starvation, not having eaten once since you made your wish. > All of these devil and genie stories have this nugget of truth... be careful what you ask for, you might just get it. >> So what is lost if we reach a state of paradise on earth? Everything. > > Not if you reached a human paradise. Forget dreams of platonic perfection. That with the capacity to evolve?is?far preferable to?perfection for that which is perfect is, by definition, finished. Find a way to live so that both you and your neighbor can both be happy. > To my way of thinking "human paradise" is an oxymoron. I don't think there ever will be a way for all neighbors to get along. It's just against the laws of physics. There will always be competition and friction. We can get out of it for a while by developing energy sources faster than our population grows, but eventually, we'll run short of energy (in it's various forms). >> Now, that doesn't mean things can't get better. When I think of the >> sorts of negative life experiences my great ... great grandparents >> suffered through, I can't compare that to "I lost all the songs on my >> MP3 player"... but the emotion is the same. So in the future, humans >> may complain about things that seem pretty inconsequential to us now >> (the peppermint scent emitting E Coli in my gut died, and now I have >> smelly farts) but the emotions will be the same for them. But get rid >> of the negative emotions altogether, and you really do have something >> that in a real way is inhuman. > > Not just inhuman, but mindless as well. And you don't need to directly edit > your emotions for this. You simply have to give in to apathy. I remember > once back when I was living in Los Angeles, one my car's starter died in > a convenience store parking lot. I called my auto-club to get it towed to > my mechanic. The clerk of the convenience store called a different tow > company to come and impound the car for being parked in his lot long > after the?posted 10 minutes. > > So it became a race between my tow truck and the clerk's tow truck. > Needless to say, his tow truck arrived first. I tried to dissuade the?tow > truck driver from towing my vehicle?by ?explaining my situation to him, > that my tow truck was on its way. I even offered to pay *him* to take me > to my mechanic and he refused all of this. Like a mindless robot doing his?job. > > Then?my only recourse??was inspired by Arthur Dent. I simply sat?down > in front of my car so that he would have back his truck over my body to > tow my car.?Apparently,?the realization?he would have to commit murder > in order to "do his job"?finally snapped him out his?robot-trance. After this, > he started to talk to me,?tried to help me get my car started, and generally > kept me company until the auto-club arrived to take my car to the garage. I'm with Richard Dawkins on this one... I miss Douglas Adams too. >> The most dangerous emotion to get rid of might be disgust. It is one >> of the most universal of emotions, and it is present in infants. It's >> hard wired. Without disgust, you would be like a leper, unable to keep >> any sort of basis for ethical thought. We are disgusted when someone >> steals from us, murders, rapes, etc. Without disgust, there would be >> no impetus to justice, and I fear then that we would lose a hell of a >> lot more than just the good art. > > It would be ill-advised to lose any emotion?as you would lose > complexity and intelligence as well. Instead, you should seek to > develop new emotions, ones that don't yet have names. Yes, that will be nice, won't it? -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 19:22:56 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 12:22:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: <31ABA279-CF2E-40B0-8339-AFFD4E0D4D98@taramayastales.com> References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <31ABA279-CF2E-40B0-8339-AFFD4E0D4D98@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Tara Maya wrote: > I agree. Less hate would be nice. But not NO hate. Sometimes hate is useful. I hate Obama's policies, which gets me off my ass long enough to vote a (hopefully) better guy in... It provides incentive to activity. It probably has other uses too. > But I'm not sure less suffering, as such, is possible. That's also my argument. Look at what we're doing today... we're drugging many of our children into oblivion with Ritalin and such because they can't sit still for government indoctrination disguised as education. We're spending millions on anti-depressants and other mental modifiers like caffeine and alcohol. Not to mention illegal as well as illicit drugs. There is a basic human desire to get away from suffering as much as possible. Perhaps it is to our detriment. For example, if you have been unemployed for three years, have run out of unemployment insurance, and medicare is treating you for depression... then probably there is something wrong with the system. If you're unemployed you should be depressed. That emotion is what gets you off the couch and into the nearest Walmart applying for a job.* (* I really do love my new found inner curmudgeon. Getting older does have benefits.) So, as always, when we look into the future... we find we're already on the road to it. > Indeed, I believe that we humans (presently) suffer in ways that other > animals cannot. We suffer in anticipation of pain, not just from pain itself, > for instance. Thank you neo-cortex. > We suffer from subtle emotions like jealousy, guilt, and heartbreak. Emotional > pain can be so intense that humans will hurt themselves physically to distract > themselves from it. Although most commonly, this is a side effect of a personality disorder... :-) > If transhumans are capable of even subtler and deeper > emotions, will they not also be vulnerable to subtler and deeper anguish? Yes. Absolutely!!! And that will lead to more good art and literature that we probably wouldn't even understand. > Or perhaps cognitions that now leave us cold will be even more entwined > with emotion (rather than less, as many seem to assume). Perhaps a > transhuman will contemplate an unsolved math problem and weep; and > upon solving it, feel ecstasy. People (admittedly, somewhat weird people) have ecstasy upon solving math problems now. I know I feel joy when I get a particularly nasty piece of programming to work. -Kelly From amon at doctrinezero.com Wed Feb 1 19:37:13 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 19:37:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <31ABA279-CF2E-40B0-8339-AFFD4E0D4D98@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On 1 February 2012 19:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > If you're > unemployed you should be depressed. That emotion is what gets you off > the couch and into the nearest Walmart applying for a job.* > > (* I really do love my new found inner curmudgeon. Getting older does > have benefits.) > Uh, Kelly, I'm sure you were being glib there, but you do realise that's not how clinical depression generally works, right? It's not a motivator. If anything, it's a massive demotivator. Or to put it another way; it is a motivator - to have nothing to do with the situation that caused the depression. - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 1 19:34:52 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 11:34:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328115468.44050.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328124892.21245.YahooMailNeo@web164520.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Kelly Anderson > To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Wednesday, February 1, 2012 11:08 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment > > On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:57 AM, The Avantguardian > wrote: >> ----- Original Message ----- >>> From: Kelly Anderson >>> To: ExI chat list >>> Cc: >>> Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 4:10 PM >>> Subject: Re: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment > > Excellent point! From an information POV, this is pretty hard to > argue. Of course, greater complexity does not always mean better. Most > of the animals on this planet are just complex enough to manage their > niche. Only Sapiens seems to have hyperevolved out of a single niche > (unless you consider the entire inhabitable region of the planet to be > our niche). I can think of numerous creatures that have hyperevolved out of their niche. I have personally observed an entire population of very scrappy racoons thriving in the heart of the Los Angeles urban sprawl. They eat pigeons, garbage, dog food, that sort of thing. In any case, you would be suprised how often species change niches. The survivors do?at any rate. >>> So what is lost if we reach a state of paradise on earth? Everything. >> >> Not if you reached a human paradise. Forget dreams of platonic perfection. > That with the capacity to evolve?is?far preferable to?perfection for that which > is perfect is, by definition, finished. Find a way to live so that both you and > your neighbor can both be happy. >> > > To my way of thinking "human paradise" is an oxymoron. I don't > think > there ever will be a way for all neighbors to get along. It's just > against the laws of physics. There will always be competition and > friction. We can get out of it for a while by developing energy > sources faster than our population grows, but eventually, we'll run > short of energy (in it's various forms). Not likely. If my work on the hydrodynamics of space-time is accurate, it would mean the universe is nothing but energy in a myriad of forms. And if we?blow all our resources on fighting over the energy sources we understand instead of developing the ones we don't, we would have died of thirst in the middle of the ocean. That is a sad fate for me and my kind.? ? Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson? From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 20:29:59 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 13:29:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: <1328106222.36447.YahooMailClassic@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328106222.36447.YahooMailClassic@web114401.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Kelly Anderson asked: > >> ... if you had never experienced sad, how would you know the true >> "meaning" of happy? > > I call Bullshit on this. Sweet. I like an active conversation! Let's see what we can agree upon! > It's like saying "If you never knew Green, how would you ever know the true 'meaning' of Red?" Not exactly analogous because Green is not the opposite of Red. If, on the other hand, you said "If you don't know what UP is, your appreciation of DOWN is probably limited." then maybe that is not quite so full of shit. Happy and sad are opposites, and if you can't appreciate sad, then happy becomes the new base line. So if all you experience is happy. Then there are times when you are more happy, and times you are less happy. Less happy times might then be described as "sad". Now if I say I can see red and green but not xrays or radio waves, and apply that analogously to the happy-sad spectrum, then what you have is simply an optimist... :-) They would be somewhat sad-blind. They would still have to experience a continuum of emotions for the words to have any meaning. Can you or I really appreciate infrared or ultraviolet? Only in a limited way. > Sad, Happy, Green, Red, don't have 'meanings' beyond the experiences > themselves (and any significance that we secondarily attach to them, > such as Red = Danger, etc.). ?They are just experiences, some more > preferable than others (which is often an individual thing, overlaid on evolved > responses). ?They don't derive any more or less significance by being > compared to each other. ?So the only thing that makes sense is to say > "If you've never been sad, can you be happy?". Linguistics is all about the relationship of words to each other. Have you ever noticed that the dictionary uses words to define other words? Where do you start understanding? Everything in understanding words is related to experience, and to the words we have previously been exposed to. While you could give a machine the equivalent of some sort of endorphin rush of happiness... if they haven't had sadness, would they appreciate it as much? I think not. So they could have the tokens "happy" and "sad", but it might not have the same meaning to them as it does to us. In fact, they probably don't have absolutely identical meaning to you and I. > Suppose I invert your question, and say does sadness only derive 'meaning' from > happiness? (In other words, can you only be sad if you've been happy?) > Yes. When I have met people in Haiti and Brazil who have never experienced wealth, they are still glad to have a little money. But they don't understand what it's like not to have to worry about where your next meal comes from. Likewise, we have a hard time getting into the mind of people who are ALWAYS worried about where there next meal is going to come from. This different experience of the poverty-richness spectrum gives meaning to both parties, and makes it difficult for them to fully understand each other. Thankfully, the neo-cortex gives us the ability to run a little simulation, but it really isn't QUITE the same as actually having BEEN in abject poverty. > Do you think it makes sense to say that if someone has never had any happiness in their lives, or very little, that makes their sadness somehow less significant than that of someone else who has been happy loads of times? > No, it merely makes them less familiar with the subject. The saddest people I have ever met still have some happiness. But when your baseline is at a different place than mine, that makes the meaning of the words we use slightly different, at least to degree. If I put you into the life of any of 80% of the people on this planet, you would find yourself very sad, very quickly, because your baseline is different from theirs. You would probably not enjoy living in a favela, but some of the happiest people I've ever met live there. Different experience... leads to different feelings in the same context... leads to different definitions of the words. My ex-brother-in-law lives in a bed in an open air hospice in Singapore. He has no ability to walk or even move much due to a brittle bone disease. Yet, he experiences some happiness, for example, when we visited him he seemed happy about the fact. I would guess his life is not as happy as mine has been. He derives pleasure in different ways than we do. He has had to adapt to a sadder base line in his emotional life. Things that would make you and I very sad are simply part of his daily life. So, does "happy" and "sad" mean exactly the same thing to him and I? Not exactly. > If someone has had very little experience of pleasure, is whatever pain they experience therefore less painful than that experienced by a hedonist? (your example of a leper is a good example: Do lepers feel less pleasure than other people, purely because they feel less pain?) > Yes. Lepers feel less pleasure. Behavioral analysis of sexual dysfunction in Hansen's disease. Faulstich ME. Abstract Human sexual behavior is an interactive process including CNS, hormonal, and sex-gland activities. This process can be disrupted in males who have Hansen's disease if testicular atrophy occurs. Elevations of centrally mediated luteinizing hormone and deficient testosterone levels were found in a male with Hansen's disease whose insufficient erections were secondary to atrophic testes. Quasi-experimental (A-B) analysis provided evidence for the efficacy of testosterone treatment for such a condition. > I say no, absolutely not. Seriously, if you have severe nerve damage, you don't feel things, and many physically pleasurable activities are limited. My former girlfriend had fibromyalgia, and I can assure you that there were many pleasurable activities that she could not participate in. Now I am not in her life, and perhaps surprisingly, she is not very happy about that. >> And would beings that did not have emotions be >> able to understand those of us who do know emotions? > > I can't really comment on the likelihood of 'beings without emotions', > although I suspect it's not very, I think we agree on this point. Though it's probable that simple creatures don't have emotions... > but in general, what you are saying here is "would beings incapable of X > be able to understand other beings capable of X?". ?I think the answer >is "Of course not", at least with regard to X. What you're saying here is that being incapable of flying makes you unable to understand birds? Maybe I buy that to some extent. I don't think it rises to the level of being obvious though. > Is a cat capable of understanding my behaviour when I'm looking for the > tin-opener? ?I know that the answer for at least one cat is a big "No". > It can associate certain sequences of action and sounds with food, but > that's a long way from understanding what I'm up to when looking for a > tin-opener, and why I sometimes don't need one to produce food (it > can't even understand the cat-flap, never mind ring-pull tins, although I >may be dealing with a very dim animal here, even for a cat!) I'm sorry for your adventures in feline dysfunction... :-) > Seeing as almost all of our behaviour is driven by emotion, any > being without an appreciation of emotions would likely find our > behaviour incomprehensible. I think a very intelligent machine could have a book learning understanding of emotion without effing them... but that is different. I think they could understand us, even if they couldn't empathize fully. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 1 20:38:15 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 13:38:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: <1328124892.21245.YahooMailNeo@web164520.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328115468.44050.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328124892.21245.YahooMailNeo@web164520.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:34 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > I can think of numerous creatures that have hyperevolved out of > their niche. I have personally observed an entire population of very > scrappy racoons thriving in the heart of the Los Angeles urban sprawl. > They eat pigeons, garbage, dog food, that sort of thing. In any case, > you would be suprised how often species change niches. The >survivors do?at any rate. That's normal evolution, and to be expected. Hyperevolution requires memetics, or culture if you will. At least that's what I meant in this context. I don't think racoons have a very sophisticated culture, with language and libraries and such. >> To my way of thinking "human paradise" is an oxymoron. I don't >> think >> there ever will be a way for all neighbors to get along. It's just >> against the laws of physics. There will always be competition and >> friction. We can get out of it for a while by developing energy >> sources faster than our population grows, but eventually, we'll run >> short of energy (in it's various forms). > > Not likely. If my work on the hydrodynamics of space-time is accurate, > it would mean the universe is nothing but energy in a myriad of forms. > And if we?blow all our resources on fighting over the energy sources > we understand instead of developing the ones we don't, we would > have died of thirst in the middle of the ocean. That is a sad fate for me > and my kind. Mr. LaForge, give me more power!!! (Sorry, I've always wanted to say that... :-) In the long run, I would assume we have to deal with the heat death of the universe... in the short term, we have to deal with that pesky speed of light thing. We've beaten this topic pretty hard before... though not your particular approach to it. And, since matter IS energy, clearly there is a LOT of power out there, but not an infinite amount. There will always be some limit to growth, even though it might look rather infinite to us. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 1 20:41:49 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 12:41:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <31ABA279-CF2E-40B0-8339-AFFD4E0D4D98@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: <004301cce121$ec9219f0$c5b64dd0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson ... People (admittedly, somewhat weird people) have ecstasy upon solving math problems now... -Kelly _______________________________________________ Hey, I resemble that. {8^D How can one not feel ecstasy upon solving math problems? They are so cool! It's a math geek thing. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Thu Feb 2 00:13:28 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 17:13:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Abundance Message-ID: I found a book coming out very soon called "Abundance" by Peter Diamandas and Steven Kotler. The book sounds very interesting... probably along the lines of The Singularity is Near... (There is a chapter about Kurzweil) but perhaps more readable and with different specific applications. :-) http://www.abundancethebook.com/ Have any of you gotten an advanced copy? What do you think? Here is the first paragraph from the online preview: "These are turbulent times. A quick glance at the headlines is enough to set anybody on edge and?with the endless media stream that has lately become our lives?it?s hard to get away from those headlines. Worse, evolution shaped the human brain to be acutely aware of all potential dangers. As will be explored in later chapters, this dire combination has a profound impact on human perception: It literally shuts off our ability to take in good news." Seems like a good start to me. Here is the table of contents. PART ONE: PERSPECTIVE Chapter One Our Grandest Challenge 3 Chapter Two Building the Pyramid 12 Chapter Three Seeing the Forest Through the Trees 27 Chapter Four It?s Not as Bad as You Think 38 PART TWO: EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES Chapter Five Ray Kurzweil and the Go-Fast Button 51 Chapter Six The Singularity Is Nearer 59 PART THREE: BUILDING THE BASE OF THE PYRAMID Chapter Seven The Tools of Cooperation 77 Chapter Eight Water 85 Chapter Nine Feeding Nine Billion 100 PART FOUR: THE FORCES OF ABUNDANCE Chapter Ten The DIY Innovator 119 Chapter Eleven The Technophilanthropists 132 Chapter Twelve The Rising Billion 140 PART FIVE: PEAK OF THE PYRAMID Chapter Thirteen Energy 155 Chapter Fourteen Education 174 Chapter Fifteen Health Care 189 Chapter Sixteen Freedom 205 PART SIX: STEERING FASTER Chapter Seventeen Driving Innovation and Breakthroughs 217 Chapter Eighteen Risk and Failure 227 Chapter Nineteen Which Way Next? 236 Afterword: Next Step?Join the Abundance Hub 241 I'm looking forward to reading this... -Kelly From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu Feb 2 02:27:16 2012 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 21:27:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Losing out on human suffering (was Wrestling with Embodiment) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Feb 1, 2012, Kelly wrote: > Think of leprosy. No pain and you lose your fingers Here pain just serves as feedback. Other feedback mechanisms can be utilized to serve the same function in our hypothetical android, and I'd suggest they don't need to be aversive stimuli. Informational feedback (necessarily without feelings) should prove sufficient to prevent damage (such as to one's fingers). I'm thinking along the lines of those experimental self-directed cars that can avoid collisions. No pain required to prevent damage. Also, I'd submit that pleasure could be recognized as pleasure even in the absence of pain by comparing one pleasurable state relative to lesser pleasurable states one has experienced. That would be degrees of relative pleasure with an anchor being the absence of pleasure, which is not the same as the presence of pain. Thanks everyone for the stimulating conversation. -Henry From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Thu Feb 2 10:09:27 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 02:09:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <31ABA279-CF2E-40B0-8339-AFFD4E0D4D98@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: <1328177367.87217.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ________________________________ >From: Amon Zero >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Wednesday, February 1, 2012 11:37 AM >Subject: Re: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment > > >On 1 February 2012 19:22, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > >>If you're >>unemployed you should be depressed. That emotion is what gets you off >>the couch and into the nearest Walmart applying for a job.* Bullshit. Billionaires are unemployed as well. Employees have to pay income tax and billionaires don't want to. So they?remain unemployed and?pay capital?gains instead.?Billionaires aren't depressed. ? ? >Uh, Kelly, I'm sure you were being glib there, but you do realise that's not how clinical depression generally works, right? It's not a motivator. If anything, it's a massive demotivator. Or to put it another way; it is a motivator - to have nothing to do with the situation that caused the depression. Pull it together, Amon. Maybe you are depressed because you don't want a job and people are trying to force you to believe it is your only option. After I got fired in 2007, 5 1/2 months into the 6 month probationary period for a government job, I was furious. I had never been fired before in my life because I am the type to take pride in my work so I know it?was pure office politics. Then two weeks later, my stock portfolio dropped in value from $25,000 to less than $5000 overnight. Then I was scared. Then in the long months of being on unemployment and looking for jobs I *didn't* really want?while millions of others were looking for those same crappy jobs, made me depressed for a really long time. Then I realized something. Something fundamental: ? I was free. ? My whole life since the age of 16, I have labored loyaly for the profit of other men for a mere pittance of a share. All because I thought it was a small but *secure* income. In essence I had deluded myself into believing that the financial security of having a *job* was worth the sacrifice of crappy rewards of being another's bitch. ? I was wrong. Security, even when you feel it is but an?illusion.?It doesn't matter who you are, the universe or even another hairless ape can pull the rug out from underneath you *at any time*.? So why not risk being your own man? ? Since then I have started a company, written a patent application, I?am working on two?or three others. I am doing some interesting theoretical physics all while making ends meet by leasing a taxi cab?five nights a week. Don't get me wrong,?I had a higher standard of living being a well-paid slave, but I am enjoying being a broke businessman far more then I have ever had being an employee. I am living on the bleeding edge of capitalism and I am *loving* it. ? So my advice to you is forget finding a job. Find a way to make a living so that maybe someday?you can give other people jobs. ? ? Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From amon at doctrinezero.com Thu Feb 2 10:46:16 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 10:46:16 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: <1328177367.87217.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1327935010.25155.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <31ABA279-CF2E-40B0-8339-AFFD4E0D4D98@taramayastales.com> <1328177367.87217.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 2 February 2012 10:09, The Avantguardian wrote: > > So my advice to you is forget finding a job. Find a way to make a living > so that maybe someday you can give other people jobs. > By quirk of fate I wasn't talking about myself, but am currently setting sail into a vaguely similar situation, for some of the same reasons. And yes, it does feel liberating, I agree. Consider me pulled together, Stuart! ;-) - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu Feb 2 11:35:09 2012 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 06:35:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Losing out on human suffering (was Wrestling with Embodiment) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: BTW, there's a movie I saw recently that plays out the perils of eliminating all emotions in humans (via a medication that is taken daily), in case anyone is interested. It's called Equilibrium. I'm not saying I agree with its interpretation necessarily. I just thought people following this thread may want to check it out. -Henry From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Feb 3 10:53:51 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 03:53:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) Message-ID: On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 5:29 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: > The biogenesis people say that is because conditions on early earth?were different. > That is fine. But we can simulate early earth chemically in a lab. We get organics but > not life, not yet, *not once*, not after decades of trying. This is an extraordinary statement. It's the kind of stuff I read in second rate Creationist literature. I expect better of this list. Let's dive into the details for a bit. I've been studying this subject fairly deeply for about the last two months, so this is pretty fresh. I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm trying to learn what I can about the chemical origins of life. If I make any mistakes in this posting, hopefully they'll get corrected. First off, simulating RELEVANT environments of the early earth in the lab is extraordinarily difficult. Three of the environments in which early chemical evolution (pre RNA stuff that must have occurred) is hypothesized to have possibly happened are hydrothermal vents at the ocean floor, and/or deep within the crust of the earth assisted by minerals and/or inside crystalline structures in clay. (There are other hypothesis, but these three give a flavor for how diverse current lines of thinking are and how hard it is to follow the evidence or reproduce results in the lab.) Some simple steps may have occurred in deep space, which is equally difficult to simulate in lab conditions. The best vacuum we can produce is a thousand times as dense as the typical patch of space in a "dense" interstellar cloud. (Only an astronomer would consider a vacuum of this quality a "dense" cloud... LOL) Just simulating the pressures of the ocean floor or deep within the earth's crust in the lab is extraordinarily difficult. Keeping those pressures up for a long period of time is impossible. Keeping it up for the millions of years that the early earth had to work with (and needed) is obviously impractical. Doing so in the presence of the right minerals requires knowing what those would be, and we have no idea what those might be (if indeed minerals played an important roll at all -- but they probably did). Many simpler elements of life have been synthesized in the lab, such as most amino acids, lipids and simple cellular wall structures that are made of lipids, and a few other things have been synthesized in enough different ways that there is no doubt the early earth was full of these simple chemicals. There is a great hole in our understanding between these simple chemicals and replicative chemical systems with the hereditary memory and possibility of mutation that is required to get to life. But it seems very highly likely due to the situation on the surface of the earth at the time (Hadean Eon -- meteor and comet bombardment, bad for life on the surface) that whatever happened happened at very high temperatures and pressures. (This seems especially likely since life evolved in the first 100,000,000 years after the surface became semi-habitable, which was pretty darn fast in those days.) There are only a very small number of labs that can simulate these conditions. Robert Hazen's (Genesis - The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin) telling of his experiments at 2,000 atmospheres and 250 degrees C with pyruvate welded into gold capsules the size of a grain of rice are harrowing. This is NOT easy stuff to do, even with the most competent help in the world and lots of NASA money. Similarly, we do not have good enough computer simulations to determine what might go on chemically in such circumstances that way. We can't even fold protein with computers without using supercomputers or distributed mesh computing. In addition, we have no equipment capable of sorting out the kinds of replicative emergent games that are going on inside of clay. We just barely got DNA sequencing machines, and we KNOW that's important. There is no equipment that can analyze the crystals in clay at the level that would be required to truly follow that line of questioning. The production of life from chemicals is FAR too large a jump to have happened in one jump. There MUST have been an evolutionary system prior to RNA to jump start the system. But we have no clear idea of what that system might have looked like. Did it involve minerals deep in the earth's crust at high temperature and pressure? Who knows? But it might have. Or it may have been a small part of an extremely complex and unlikely set of circumstances occurring in a number of environments. Am I saying that Panbiogenesis is impossible? No, that's just another of a group of interesting theories floating around out there (joke intended)... Mr. Hazen's book is very interesting. And it points out that we are just about as clueless about the chemical origins of life as Newton was about Quantum Mechanics. I believe science will eventually figure it out. However, to criticize the current scientific community for not yet producing life in the lab the same way as it came about on the early earth plays into the hands of eager creationists and is grossly naive. A hydrogen atom is approximately 2.5 x 10^-11 meters (25 pm) in diameter. A water molecule is approximately 280 pm across. A cell membrane is 10 nm thick A clay particle is about 10^-6 m (micrometer) across. (you can see why figuring out their crystaline structure is hard) A typical Prokaryotic Cell is 250 micrometers across. See http://htwins.net/scale/ According to some estimates, there are about 12,000,000,000 atoms in a simple bacteria. Many of these are water, but a vast number of these cells are doing their job within highly complex structures. A simple amino acid like Lysine has 24 atoms. Constructing Lysine in the lab is easy. Constructing life is considerably harder. Take for example a virus. A typical virus contains around 600,000,000 atoms (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060826150954AASGjhh) ALL of which are involved in it's structure. A virus can't even do it's own metabolism, it has to hijack the metabolism of a real cell to reproduce. The point here is that getting from organic chemicals with less than 100 atoms (which is what has been produced in Stanley Miller type experiments). Or lipids with a molecular weight around 2000* to something with around 1,000,000,000 atoms, which would likely be the size of the simplest theoretically functional cell... is an extreme jump that requires some kind of emergent, evolutionary process. Or God. And I don't think science has had enough time to work on the problem to jump immediately to the God hypothesis. Stating this more carefully... The largest structure we have synthesized in the laboratory at this point is a very primitive cell-type wall built of lipids. No doubt, there are tens of millions of atoms that go into these structures, but they are extremely simple compared to a bacteria, and by no means do they approach reproducing life forms. They don't even approximate useful cell walls, as there are no holes... and even bacteria need to eat and poo. We have no mechanism yet to describe the production of proteins containing more than a paultry number of amino acids. Amino acids don't spontaneously form polymers without a lot of tricky assistance. I would be pretty darn impressed if we could show a plausible scenario for the spontaneous emergence of just the citric acid cycle. In conclusion, it is ridiculous to expect to observe abiogenesis directly in the lab. It is many trillions of times more likely that a chicken would spontaneously give birth to a dinosaur without assistance from Jack Horner! Nevertheless, there is enough of a lead to continue to investigate how abiogenesis could have occurred terrestrially. Even if you buy into panbiogenesis, life had to arise somewhere first, or "God Did It"(TM). The most interesting concept I've run into during these studies is emergence. Totally fascinating stuff that. -Kelly (*The molecular weight of E. coli lipid A is 1798.8, whereas that of the previously proposed (33, 34) R. etli CE3 lipid ... is predicted to be 2313.31) From pharos at gmail.com Fri Feb 3 11:43:01 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 11:43:01 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 10:53 AM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Stating this more carefully... The largest structure we have > synthesized in the laboratory at this point is a very primitive > cell-type wall built of lipids. No doubt, there are tens of millions > of atoms that go into these structures, but they are extremely simple > compared to a bacteria, and by no means do they approach reproducing > life forms. They don't even approximate useful cell walls, as there > are no holes... and even bacteria need to eat and poo. > > We have no mechanism yet to describe the production of proteins > containing more than a paultry number of amino acids. Amino acids > don't spontaneously form polymers without a lot of tricky assistance. > > I would be pretty darn impressed if we could show a plausible scenario > for the spontaneous emergence of just the citric acid cycle. > > In conclusion, it is ridiculous to expect to observe abiogenesis > directly in the lab. It is many trillions of times more likely that a > chicken would spontaneously give birth to a dinosaur without > assistance from Jack Horner! > > Nevertheless, there is enough of a lead to continue to investigate how > abiogenesis could have occurred terrestrially. Even if you buy into > panbiogenesis, life had to arise somewhere first, or "God Did It"(TM). > > The most interesting concept I've run into during these studies is > emergence. Totally fascinating stuff that. > Chemists Synthesize Artificial Cell Membrane ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) Chemists have taken an important step in making artificial life forms from scratch. Using a novel chemical reaction, they have created self-assembling cell membranes, the structural envelopes that contain and support the reactions required for life. ------ The real value of this discovery might reside in its simplicity. From commercially available precursors, the scientists needed just one preparatory step to create each starting lipid chain. ----------------------------- BillK From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Feb 3 16:46:12 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 08:46:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1328287572.72124.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ?----- Original Message ----- > From: Kelly Anderson > To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Friday, February 3, 2012 2:53 AM > Subject: Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: [ExI] Panbiogenesis) > > On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 5:29 AM, The Avantguardian > wrote: >> The biogenesis people say that is because conditions on early earth?were > different. >> That is fine. But we can simulate early earth chemically in a lab. We get > organics but >> not life, not yet, *not once*, not after decades of trying. > > This is an extraordinary statement. It's the kind of stuff I read in > second rate Creationist literature. I expect better of this list. > Let's dive into the details for a bit. I've been studying this subject > fairly deeply for about the last two months, so this is pretty fresh. > I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm trying to learn what I can about > the chemical origins of life. If I make any mistakes in this posting, > hopefully they'll get corrected. How is?that simple statement of fact in any way related to Creationist literature? If you find me one credible?reference?to or evidence of an?observed or induced abiogenesis event?*anywhere* this geologic eon and?I'll ask John Clark to pay you?that dollar he's been teasing Damien with all this time. > First off, simulating RELEVANT environments of the early earth in the > lab is extraordinarily difficult. Three of the environments in which > early chemical evolution (pre RNA stuff that must have occurred) is > hypothesized to have possibly happened are hydrothermal vents at the > ocean floor,? and/or deep within the crust of the earth assisted by > minerals and/or inside crystalline structures in clay. (There are > other hypothesis, but these three give a flavor for how diverse > current lines of thinking are and how hard it is to follow the > evidence or reproduce results in the lab.) There are microbiologists scouring the hydrothermal vents you speak of for extremophiles all the time. Believe me they finding a claymation cell down there would be front page news. Are you suggesting hydrothermal vents are significantly different in pressure, temperature, or chemical composition then as opposed to now? What was *special* about undersea hydrothermal vents then versus now? > Some simple steps may have occurred in deep space, which is equally > difficult to simulate in lab conditions. The best vacuum we can > produce is a thousand times as dense as the typical patch of space in > a "dense" interstellar cloud. (Only an astronomer would consider a > vacuum of this quality a "dense" cloud... LOL) Yes, now the universe doesn't qualify even as a?thin gruel. But once it was soup. ? > Just simulating the pressures of the ocean floor or deep within the > earth's crust in the lab is extraordinarily difficult. Keeping those > pressures up for a long period of time is impossible. Keeping it up > for the millions of years that the early earth had to work with (and > needed) is obviously impractical. Doing so in the presence of the > right minerals requires knowing what those would be, and we have no > idea what those might be (if indeed minerals played an important roll > at all -- but they probably did). Well we know what minerals are essential to life. Look on a Centrum label for?the gist of them. Why would a specific set of minerals then give rise to?new life? Why wouldn't those minerals do so now?? > Many simpler elements of life have been synthesized in the lab, such > as most amino acids, lipids and simple cellular wall structures that > are made of lipids, and a few other things have been synthesized in > enough different ways that there is no doubt the early earth was full > of these simple chemicals. Yes. It would have provided a feast for any?extra-terrestrial microbe upon landing here. > There is a great hole in our understanding between these simple > chemicals and replicative chemical systems with the hereditary memory > and possibility of mutation that is required to get to life. It really all boils down to entropy. Life is a self-sustaining biochemical cycle using the free-energy of food to shed entropy into the?rest of the universe starting with the food itself. It is a perfectly coordinated dance of thousands upon thousands of?molecules?each so complex that?computers have trouble simulating thir folding as you pointed out.??Here is?but a small cross section of the chemistry happening?in a whiteblood cell that triggers it to?crawl out?a capillary at the site of an infection.?Note that everything except the very beginning and very end?is happening inside the *one cell* and they don't even take you into the inner sanctum of the cell, the nucleus, where all the stuff with DNA?happens.. http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/6850.html See how the individual dead molecules look like they themselves are alive? Dancing in perfect yet unchoreographed?harmony? That's some *serious* negentropy. That's the challenge faced by scientists. It's like putting a bunch of Legos into a cement mixer and expecting the Taj Mahal to come out. > But it > seems very highly likely due to the situation on the surface of the > earth at the time (Hadean Eon -- meteor and comet bombardment, bad for > life on the surface) that whatever happened happened at very high > temperatures and pressures. (This seems especially likely since life > evolved in the first 100,000,000 years after the surface became > semi-habitable, which was pretty darn fast in those days.) There are > only a very small number of labs that can simulate these conditions. > Robert Hazen's (Genesis - The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin) > telling of his experiments at 2,000 atmospheres and 250 degrees C with > pyruvate welded into gold capsules the size of a grain of rice are > harrowing. This is NOT easy stuff to do, even with the most competent > help in the world and lots of NASA money. 2000 atmospheres is pretty harrowing but we can actually quite easily do 3,000,000 atm in a diamond cell press. Don't think that would help much though. You are welcome to try. Don't think he got any noteworthy results did he? I didn't say it was easy, I said it might be impossible in the modern era, except by nanotech. > Similarly, we do not have good enough computer simulations to > determine what might go on chemically in such circumstances that way. > We can't even fold protein with computers without using supercomputers > or distributed mesh computing. Why would computers be able to simulate, at least partially, a modern cell, but not an ancestral?"claymation" progenote? > In addition, we have no equipment capable of sorting out the kinds of > replicative emergent games that are going on inside of clay. We just > barely got DNA sequencing machines, and we KNOW that's important. > There is no equipment that can analyze the crystals in clay at the > level that would be required to truly follow that line of questioning. Clay does not reproduce to my knowledge. > The production of life from chemicals is FAR too large a jump to have > happened in one jump. There MUST have been an evolutionary system > prior to RNA to jump start the system. But we have no clear idea of > what that system might have looked like. Did it involve minerals deep > in the earth's crust at high temperature and pressure? Who knows? But > it might have. Or it may have been a small part of an extremely > complex and unlikely set of circumstances occurring in a number of > environments. But if it worked then why doesn't it work now? How come this meneral life doesn't yet exist somewhere? It is highly unlikely that mineral life and normal carbon based life would compete for the same resources or environment so where is it? It just decided to commit suicide because it was inferior or something? > Am I saying that Panbiogenesis is impossible? No, that's just another > of a group of interesting theories floating around out there (joke > intended)... Well at least you are keeping an open mind about it. After all, Panbiogenesis is more in line with the Copernican Principle than is terrestrial abiogenesis. After all if life is so damn hard to kick start, then it would exaggerate Earth's importance to insist it started here. Furthermore it is bound to piss off the Creationists because the Bible is the main source of the idea that the Earth is somehow special. I am saying, it isn't even the cradle of life. > Mr. Hazen's book is very interesting. And it points out that we are > just about as clueless about the chemical origins of life as Newton > was about Quantum Mechanics. I believe science will eventually figure > it out. > However, to criticize the current scientific community for not yet > producing life in the lab the same way as it came about on the early > earth plays into the hands of eager creationists and is grossly naive. It was more an observation than a criticism, but in way a scientist's job is to get criticized. That is part of the peer review process. And believe it or not, I am a certified peer when it comes to microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics. So let me know if you willing to?pay to get your dog cloned. ;-) > A hydrogen atom is approximately 2.5 x 10^-11 meters (25 pm) in diameter. > A water molecule is approximately 280 pm across. > A cell membrane is 10 nm thick > A clay particle is about 10^-6 m (micrometer) across. (you can see why > figuring out their crystaline structure is hard) > A typical Prokaryotic Cell is 250 micrometers across. > See http://htwins.net/scale/ We can take pretty?accurate pictures of nanometer scale protein molecules (1/1000th of a micrometer)?using X-ray cystallography, diffraction, NMR, and IR spectroscopy all the time. I seriously doubt any clay crystal could be anywhere near as complex?as a protein or DNA. ? > The point here is that getting from organic chemicals with less than > 100 atoms (which is what has been produced in Stanley Miller type > experiments). Or lipids with a molecular weight around 2000* to > something with around 1,000,000,000 atoms, which would likely be the > size of the simplest theoretically functional cell... is an extreme > jump that requires some kind of emergent, evolutionary process. Or > God. And I don't think science has had enough time to work on the > problem to jump immediately to the God hypothesis. What God hypothesis? Why do you have God on your mind? ? > Stating this more carefully... The largest structure we have > synthesized in the laboratory at this point is a very primitive > cell-type wall built of lipids. No doubt, there are tens of millions > of atoms that go into these structures, but they are extremely simple > compared to a bacteria, and by no means do they approach reproducing > life forms. They don't even approximate useful cell walls, as there > are no holes... and even bacteria need to eat and poo. > > We have no mechanism yet to describe the production of proteins > containing more than a paultry number of amino acids. Amino acids > don't spontaneously form polymers without a lot of tricky assistance. > > I would be pretty darn impressed if we could show a plausible scenario > for the spontaneous emergence of just the citric acid cycle. Ok. Imagine a low entropy universe with a lower fine structure constant. Atoms hold onto their?electrons more loosely because of this. Because electrons would easier to move from molecule to molecule,?all?chemical activation energies would be lower so many reactions that are not now spontaneous would be.?The citric acid cycle might have been able to proceed without catalysis, i.e. without enzymes. Likewise polymerases would not have been necessary as every possible polymer would have formed. Lipid bilayers?would have been spontaneously forming and?wrapping around random mixtures of enzymes and substrates. Then as over the aeons, the fine structure constant grew larger, electrons clung more strongly to their atoms. Only those compartmentalized spaces containing the right mixtures of catalysts, i.e. enzymes would have been able to continue the chemical reactions of life. Those compartments became cells, little time capsules containing information patterns that existed in a low?entropy universe. It is?just speculation at this point, but it seems plausible to me.?? > In conclusion, it is ridiculous to expect to observe abiogenesis > directly in the lab. It is many trillions of times more likely that a > chicken would spontaneously give birth to a dinosaur without > assistance from Jack Horner! Ok so lets do the math. Hazen says it took about 100 million years from end of the asteroidal bombardment to first life to show up. Dinosaurs first appeared 230 million years ago. The first?bird appeared about 150 million years ago, that means there were about 80 million years between?the dinosaur and the bird. So to go from?a?dinosaur to a bird is slightly more likely than?the abiogenesis event?Hazen assumed happened here on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. Yet to go from a bird to a dinosaur is a *trillion* times more likely than?the same thing?happening?in a lab? That sounds like Hazen is pulling numbers out of his ass. It doesn't even seem like Hazen's argument is consistent with itself let alone the scientific data. And negative?results are still?results.???? > Nevertheless, there is enough of a lead to continue to investigate how > abiogenesis could have occurred terrestrially. Even if you buy into > panbiogenesis, life had to arise somewhere first, or "God Did It"(TM). Well it might have happened almost everywhere back when everywhere was pretty small. > The most interesting concept I've run into during these studies is > emergence. Totally fascinating stuff that. Emergence *is* fascinating. Happy discovering. Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."- Hunter S. Thompson? From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 3 16:40:10 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 17:40:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 3 February 2012 11:53, Kelly Anderson wrote: > This is an extraordinary statement. It's the kind of stuff I read in > second rate Creationist literature. I expect better of this list. > Let's dive into the details for a bit. I've been studying this subject > fairly deeply for about the last two months, so this is pretty fresh. I can see that. Your stuff is pretty interesting. There is also an additional angle. One thing is to deliberately synthesise, say, a protein, DNA or even a cell. Another thing is to re-create what is believed to be the appropriate environment and wait for things to happen. Now, such simulations could never be accurate, if anything for reasons of *scale* and *time*, even if we do everything else right. After Lavoisier, we know for sure that abiogenesis is not a frequent, everyday phenomenon in a vial containing the appropriate elements, and we have no reason to suppose that it ever was. I was however impressed by Dawkins's *Ancestor's Tale *contention in that what is really hard is not to go from mineral to procaryotes, but from procaryotes to eucaryotes. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Feb 3 22:03:16 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 15:03:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 4:43 AM, BillK wrote: > Chemists Synthesize Artificial Cell Membrane > ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) > > > > Chemists have taken an important step in making artificial life forms > from scratch. Using a novel chemical reaction, they have created > self-assembling cell membranes, the structural envelopes that contain > and support the reactions required for life. > ------ > The real value of this discovery might reside in its simplicity. From > commercially available precursors, the scientists needed just one > preparatory step to create each starting lipid chain. Hi Bill, this is fun stuff. According to Hazen, David Deamer and Richard Pashley found lipids in the Murchison meteorite (which fell in Australia 1969), and when they isolated it, it naturally formed two layered spheres in water, just like cell membranes. This was apparently in 1988. While I'm sure this new work adds something to that of Deamer and Pashley, we have apparently known that cell membrane type spherical structures form spontaneously from lipids when there is just the right amount of agitation (not too much, not too little) of lipid containing water. When you see that a lipid is hydrophobic on one end and Hydrophilic on the other end, and that they tend to clump side to side, it's really easy to see how this spontaneous sphere construction happens. Anyway, the headline grabbing news of spontaneous cell wall generation is apparently decades old... From the article you sent, I couldn't quite make out what was new here, though I'm sure there is something. So while the entire cell might not have come from outer space, it is possible that the Lipids did. Along with the water, of course, and possibly a lot of amino acids as well. In the final analysis, everything came from space of course, but the fascinating part is how much of it came pre-assembed from space. Of course, if a whole cell is found inside of a meteor found on the surface of the moon, for example, then panbiogenesis will have a big boost. But all meteors get infected with life as soon as they hit the ground here. The nice thing about the Murchison was that it was recovered quickly enough to avoid too much contamination with organics from earth. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Feb 3 23:34:08 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 16:34:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: <1328287572.72124.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328287572.72124.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 9:46 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: > > ?----- Original Message ----- >> From: Kelly Anderson >> To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list >> Cc: >> Sent: Friday, February 3, 2012 2:53 AM >> Subject: Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: [ExI] Panbiogenesis) >> >> On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 5:29 AM, The Avantguardian >> wrote: >>> The biogenesis people say that is because conditions on early earth?were >> different. >>> That is fine. But we can simulate early earth chemically in a lab. We get >> organics but >>> not life, not yet, *not once*, not after decades of trying. >> >> This is an extraordinary statement. It's the kind of stuff I read in >> second rate Creationist literature. I expect better of this list. >> Let's dive into the details for a bit. I've been studying this subject >> fairly deeply for about the last two months, so this is pretty fresh. >> I'm not exactly an expert, but I'm trying to learn what I can about >> the chemical origins of life. If I make any mistakes in this posting, >> hopefully they'll get corrected. > > How is?that simple statement of fact in any way related to Creationist > literature? Creationists are always saying that the emergence of life was so immensely complex that it could not have possibly happened without God's hand. The panbiogenesis argument feeds these fanatics with quotes from scientists about how improbable the emergence of life is. Your statements about our ability to create the right conditions in the lab are vastly overstated, and the kind of thing that the creationist crowd would just eat up. Don't be surprised if you are quoted in creationist literature someday with statements like that. When making statements about life's origins, you always have to think in terms of two things, 1) What would this sound like out of context, and 2) How could this be misconstrued by a malicious creationist to make a plausible argument to the great unwashed masses. > If you find me one credible?reference?to or evidence of an?observed > or induced abiogenesis event?*anywhere* this geologic eon and?I'll > ask John Clark to pay you?that dollar he's been teasing Damien with > all this time. Not going to happen. We can assume that the same STEPS that took place in the prebiotic earth are taking place now, all the time, on earth. However, since there is bacterial life everywhere now, the results of these steps get eaten as food by the bacteria before scientists can put the pieces together, or before life can reemerge spontaneously. Just the efforts required to get a few deep earth cells from deep mines in South Africa are harrowing. We just don't have the equipment to figure out what's going on in the deep rocky earth. People are always saying that the oceans are the great unknown domain... and while that is true... long after we've figured out everything in the ocean, we still will have a long way to go in understanding the biological processes taking place in the deep crust of the earth. >> First off, simulating RELEVANT environments of the early earth in the >> lab is extraordinarily difficult. Three of the environments in which >> early chemical evolution (pre RNA stuff that must have occurred) is >> hypothesized to have possibly happened are hydrothermal vents at the >> ocean floor,? and/or deep within the crust of the earth assisted by >> minerals and/or inside crystalline structures in clay. (There are >> other hypothesis, but these three give a flavor for how diverse >> current lines of thinking are and how hard it is to follow the >> evidence or reproduce results in the lab.) > > There are microbiologists scouring the hydrothermal vents you > speak of for extremophiles all the time. I saw a nat geo video just yesterday where one of these guys was saying how difficult it was to visit the hydrothermal vents, and how the original find near the Galapogos was only then being visited for the second time, after 30 plus years. So NO, we do not scour these vents ALL THE TIME... we have no idea of the cycles of life that take place around vents. We just have a couple of snapshots, and the guy was saying, if you only saw trees in the winter, you would think trees didn't have leaves. Well, apparently, that is the level of understanding this guy thinks we have about the life cycles around vents. Extremophiles are already cellular forms of life. We're talking about prebiotic semi-living systems. >Believe me they finding a claymation cell down there would be front page >news. Are you suggesting hydrothermal vents are significantly different >in pressure, temperature, or chemical composition then as opposed to >now? Of course not. Don't be silly. >What was *special* about undersea hydrothermal vents then versus now? Now, they are covered with extremophiles, worms, crabs, etc. that eat the evidence. That's what's different now. >> Some simple steps may have occurred in deep space, which is equally >> difficult to simulate in lab conditions. The best vacuum we can >> produce is a thousand times as dense as the typical patch of space in >> a "dense" interstellar cloud. (Only an astronomer would consider a >> vacuum of this quality a "dense" cloud... LOL) > > Yes, now the universe doesn't qualify even as a?thin gruel. But once it was soup. Yup, long long ago. >> Just simulating the pressures of the ocean floor or deep within the >> earth's crust in the lab is extraordinarily difficult. Keeping those >> pressures up for a long period of time is impossible. Keeping it up >> for the millions of years that the early earth had to work with (and >> needed) is obviously impractical. Doing so in the presence of the >> right minerals requires knowing what those would be, and we have no >> idea what those might be (if indeed minerals played an important roll >> at all -- but they probably did). > > Well we know what minerals are essential to life. Look on a Centrum > label for?the gist of them. Why would a specific set of minerals then > give rise to?new life? Why wouldn't those minerals do so now? Ok, you aren't thinking along the lines I am. Think more of chemical reactions that might take place on the surface of subterranean crystalline structures. Those minerals could have acted as catalysts for early prebiotic reactions. That's Hazen's hypothesis, and it is just a guess at this point... but he has some interesting experimental evidence that more interesting things happen to organic molecules when there is a crystalline substructure that can support more regular growth of molecules. Think of the minerals as scaffolding that can be used to build up complex organic structures that could not form just floating around in water. It is a very interesting hypothesis. >> Many simpler elements of life have been synthesized in the lab, such >> as most amino acids, lipids and simple cellular wall structures that >> are made of lipids, and a few other things have been synthesized in >> enough different ways that there is no doubt the early earth was full >> of these simple chemicals. > > Yes. It would have provided a feast for any?extra-terrestrial microbe upon landing here. You are correct about that. LOL. Just don't get stuck on just one theory. We don't know enough to pick a winning theory at this point. Panbiogenesis is one theory among many. And it is too early to say that we even have the right theory in our bag of hypothesis at this point. This is bleeding edge science. Anybody who thinks they have all the answers at this point is sadly mistaken. Take Stanley Miller, for example... him and his students have been able to attract most of the NASA research money for abiogenesis research up to about a decade ago because they were the first to build amino acids, and their idea of the ocean of prebiotic soup has been the prevailing hypothesis for decades WITHOUT ANY REAL PROOF that is what happened. We NOW know that amino acids are formed in dozens of ways. Easily. Everywhere. If we get stuck on any hypothesis to that degree, it slow science down. This area is really different than most of science today because it is so young, and has learned so little about the subject matter. Working on prebiotic life today is like being Galileo or Newton. We're just barely getting started, and it is truly VERY exciting because it is such an unknown. >> There is a great hole in our understanding between these simple >> chemicals and replicative chemical systems with the hereditary memory >> and possibility of mutation that is required to get to life. > > It really all boils down to entropy. Doesn't everything? :-) > Life is a self-sustaining biochemical > cycle using the free-energy of food to shed entropy into the?rest of the > universe starting with the food itself. It is a perfectly coordinated dance > of thousands upon thousands of?molecules?each so complex that > computers have trouble simulating thir folding as you pointed out. Now you're sounding like you want to be quoted by creationists again... just a little. :-) But I get your point. >Here is?but a small cross section of the chemistry happening?in a > whiteblood cell that triggers it to?crawl out?a capillary at the site of > an infection.?Note that everything except the very beginning and > very end?is happening inside the *one cell* and they don't even > take you into the inner sanctum of the cell, the nucleus, where all >the stuff with DNA?happens.. > > http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/6850.html There was a TED speaker who noted about this animation that it was highly unrealistic. It's too slow, it doesn't get across the idea that being inside of a cell is a bit like being in a shooting gallery. But it is all likely to be explained through emergent prebiotic chemistry someday. We will NEVER be able to disprove panbiogenesis. We'll never be able to prove it either, though if we find similar life out there somewhere, it will be evidence... however you'll have to prove now that it didn't come from earth... reverse panbiogenesis... :-) > > > See how the individual dead molecules look like they themselves are > alive? Dancing in perfect yet unchoreographed?harmony? That's > some *serious* negentropy. That's the challenge faced by scientists. > It's like putting a bunch of Legos into a cement mixer and expecting > the Taj Mahal to come out. Now you ARE sounding like a creationist. Emergence will eventually show how all this could have happened. It may or may not have happened here first, but even if it happened somewhere else first, it had to happen first somewhere, right? So we should try and figure that out. >> But it >> seems very highly likely due to the situation on the surface of the >> earth at the time (Hadean Eon -- meteor and comet bombardment, bad for >> life on the surface) that whatever happened happened at very high >> temperatures and pressures. (This seems especially likely since life >> evolved in the first 100,000,000 years after the surface became >> semi-habitable, which was pretty darn fast in those days.) There are >> only a very small number of labs that can simulate these conditions. >> Robert Hazen's (Genesis - The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin) >> telling of his experiments at 2,000 atmospheres and 250 degrees C with >> pyruvate welded into gold capsules the size of a grain of rice are >> harrowing. This is NOT easy stuff to do, even with the most competent >> help in the world and lots of NASA money. > > 2000 atmospheres is pretty harrowing but we can actually quite > easily do 3,000,000 atm in a diamond cell press. Don't think > that would help much though. You are welcome to try. Not me. I'm no experimental scientist! > Don't think he got any noteworthy results did he? As a matter of fact, he has gotten noteworthy results. He's gotten enough results to attract serious NASA money, even though the Stanley Millerites fought against it at first. > I didn't say it was easy, I said it might be impossible in the >modern era, except by nanotech. I'm not sure what nanotech has to do with high temperatures and pressure... Maybe I missed your point. >> Similarly, we do not have good enough computer simulations to >> determine what might go on chemically in such circumstances that way. >> We can't even fold protein with computers without using supercomputers >> or distributed mesh computing. > > Why would computers be able to simulate, at least partially, a modern > cell, but not an ancestral?"claymation" progenote? Computers can only simulate simplistic models of modern cells. We can't simulate a cell at the atomic level.. see protein folding... You're being defensive now. >> In addition, we have no equipment capable of sorting out the kinds of >> replicative emergent games that are going on inside of clay. We just >> barely got DNA sequencing machines, and we KNOW that's important. >> There is no equipment that can analyze the crystals in clay at the >> level that would be required to truly follow that line of questioning. > > Clay does not reproduce to my knowledge. Ah, now here you are uninformed. This is cool stuff. James Ferris of Rensselaur Polytechnic Institute induced clays to act as scaffolds in the formation of RNA. John Desmond Bernal, Jack Szostak, Gustaf Arrhenius, Leslie Orgel and many others have done fascinating work in this area. The basic idea is this... Clay forms microscopic structures (see Graham Cairns-Smith 1988) that are sheet like, and layered. These can form in one of three directions that look a little like the surface of a silicon wafer... when wet clay gets on top of one of these layers, it's directions align with the clay underneath.. providing a rudimentary form of reproduction when they subsequently separate. "In two-dimensional crystal genes, information would be held as a pattern on one face of the crystal", Graham says. It's a wild hypothesis, but so is panbiogenesis... but if the right clay pattern could evolve, then it could provide the surface to catalyze the creation of complex RNA sequences. >> The production of life from chemicals is FAR too large a jump to have >> happened in one jump. There MUST have been an evolutionary system >> prior to RNA to jump start the system. But we have no clear idea of >> what that system might have looked like. Did it involve minerals deep >> in the earth's crust at high temperature and pressure? Who knows? But >> it might have. Or it may have been a small part of an extremely >> complex and unlikely set of circumstances occurring in a number of >> environments. > > But if it worked then why doesn't it work now? It does. But all the intermediates get eaten. We now have worms burrowing through all the clay in the world that might otherwise play these games. >How come this meneral life doesn't yet exist somewhere? >It is highly unlikely that mineral life and normal carbon based >life would compete for the same resources or environment so where >is it? It just decided to commit suicide because it was inferior >or something? It is slow. It is sensitive. In the energetic processes of life, from worms to microorganisms, there is no chance for it to do it's thing now a days. And in the lab, we don't have hundreds of millions of years to see what might happen. >> Am I saying that Panbiogenesis is impossible? No, that's just another >> of a group of interesting theories floating around out there (joke >> intended)... > > Well at least you are keeping an open mind about it. Of course I am. I never said it was ridiculous. However, to the normal man on the street, it sounds ridiculous. Picture a normal guy being approached by two Jehovah's Witnesses and being asked, "Do you think Occam's razor would say that it is more likely that life came drifting in from outer space, or that God Did It?" What's the answer going to be? Well, for a large majority of people, he God hypothesis sounds more rational. We have been trained by society norms to make fun of people like Dennis Kucinich. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSRWRbuMqyc Just remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To the guy on the street, panbiogenesis initally sounds like Dennis Kucinich. Do you really want to feed that? That gives the Witnesses the fuel they need to say, "See, science is more crazy than religion!" > After all, Panbiogenesis is more in line with the Copernican Principle > than is terrestrial abiogenesis. After all if life is so damn hard to kick > start, then it would exaggerate Earth's importance to insist it started >here. Furthermore it is bound to piss off the Creationists because the > Bible is the main source of the idea that the Earth is somehow special. > I am saying, it isn't even the cradle of life. And if we can prove it scientifically, then it would be a great step forward. Aside from that, we don't know that life is so damn hard to kick start. That is also a hypothesis. It may be relatively easy, given 100,000,000 years. :-) Remember, we all believe in evolution here, and you can't easily prove that in a lab either. >> Mr. Hazen's book is very interesting. And it points out that we are >> just about as clueless about the chemical origins of life as Newton >> was about Quantum Mechanics. I believe science will eventually figure >> it out. >> However, to criticize the current scientific community for not yet >> producing life in the lab the same way as it came about on the early >> earth plays into the hands of eager creationists and is grossly naive. > > It was more an observation than a criticism, but in way a scientist's job > is to get criticized. That is part of the peer review process. And believe > it or not, I am a certified peer when it comes to microbiology, immunology, > and molecular genetics. So let me know if you willing to?pay to get your > dog cloned. ;-) No thanks on the cloned dog. Though the pet dinosaur evolved from a chicken sounds kinda fun. (See last month's Wired Magazine) Scientist's job is to be criticized by other scientists, until the argument is over and a THEORY emerges, HOWEVER, this particular aspect of science (abiogenesis and evolution) has very important sociological, religious and political ramifications! We can't go spouting off about panbiogenesis and then complain when a born again christian or Mormon gets elected president and laws against transhumanist interests get passed. We bring it on ourselves when we espouse ideas that are viewed as so far out of the mainstream. >> A hydrogen atom is approximately 2.5 x 10^-11 meters (25 pm) in diameter. >> A water molecule is approximately 280 pm across. >> A cell membrane is 10 nm thick >> A clay particle is about 10^-6 m (micrometer) across. (you can see why >> figuring out their crystaline structure is hard) >> A typical Prokaryotic Cell is 250 micrometers across. >> See http://htwins.net/scale/ > > We can take pretty?accurate pictures of nanometer scale protein molecules > (1/1000th of a micrometer)?using X-ray cystallography, diffraction, NMR, > and IR spectroscopy all the time. I seriously doubt any clay crystal could > be anywhere near as complex?as a protein or DNA. No, but they present their own challenges in imaging. We're getting better at this stuff all the time. But it is hard to get research money to study the evolutionary crystal structures of clay. That's the kind of $1000 toilet seat story that ends up on the second page of the Wall Street Journal as a waste of the public's money. Again, it's very political in this area of science, and you can't lose sight of that. >> The point here is that getting from organic chemicals with less than >> 100 atoms (which is what has been produced in Stanley Miller type >> experiments). Or lipids with a molecular weight around 2000* to >> something with around 1,000,000,000 atoms, which would likely be the >> size of the simplest theoretically functional cell... is an extreme >> jump that requires some kind of emergent, evolutionary process. Or >> God. And I don't think science has had enough time to work on the >> problem to jump immediately to the God hypothesis. > > What God hypothesis? Why do you have God on your mind? Because it was my conversations with the Jehovah's Witnesses that led me to dive into this stuff more deeply. I realized I did not know enough to counter their arguments against abiogenesis, so I felt the need to go and educate myself. In other words, their creationist bull shit (the form of the argument, more than the argument itself) pissed me off and made me want to study more. >> Stating this more carefully... The largest structure we have >> synthesized in the laboratory at this point is a very primitive >> cell-type wall built of lipids. No doubt, there are tens of millions >> of atoms that go into these structures, but they are extremely simple >> compared to a bacteria, and by no means do they approach reproducing >> life forms. They don't even approximate useful cell walls, as there >> are no holes... and even bacteria need to eat and poo. >> >> We have no mechanism yet to describe the production of proteins >> containing more than a paultry number of amino acids. Amino acids >> don't spontaneously form polymers without a lot of tricky assistance. >> >> I would be pretty darn impressed if we could show a plausible scenario >> for the spontaneous emergence of just the citric acid cycle. > > Ok. Imagine a low entropy universe with a lower fine structure constant. Atoms hold onto their?electrons more loosely because of this. Because electrons would easier to move from molecule to molecule,?all?chemical activation energies would be lower so many reactions that are not now spontaneous would be.?The citric acid cycle might have been able to proceed without catalysis, i.e. without enzymes. Likewise polymerases would not have been necessary as every possible polymer would have formed. Lipid bilayers?would have been spontaneously forming and?wrapping around random mixtures of enzymes and substrates. Then as over the aeons, the fine structure constant grew larger, electrons clung more strongly to their atoms. Only those compartmentalized spaces containing the right mixtures of catalysts, i.e. enzymes would have been able to continue the chemical reactions of life. Those compartments became cells, little time capsules containing information > ?patterns that existed in a low?entropy universe. I don't think I'm interested in speculating on the evolution of life in alternative universes. You change the universal constants like that, and you probably go messing up other stuff. > It is?just speculation at this point, but it seems plausible to me. > >> In conclusion, it is ridiculous to expect to observe abiogenesis >> directly in the lab. It is many trillions of times more likely that a >> chicken would spontaneously give birth to a dinosaur without >> assistance from Jack Horner! > > Ok so lets do the math. Sure, I'm good with math... as long as you don't start throwing up equations... LOL >Hazen says it took about 100 million years from end of the asteroidal bombardment >to first life to show up. Yes. Though there is the possibility of a few extra tens of millions of years underground for things to have gotten started before coming top side. But that is a minor point. >Dinosaurs first appeared 230 million years ago. Following you so far. > The first?bird appeared about 150 million years ago, that means there were > about 80 million years between?the dinosaur and the bird. So to go from?a > dinosaur to a bird is slightly more likely than?the abiogenesis event?Hazen > assumed happened here on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. Yet to go from a > bird to a dinosaur is a *trillion* times more likely than?the same thing > happening?in a lab? Actually, I said going from a bird back to a dinosaur... atavistic de-evolution is more likely than abiogenesis. I'll stick with that. >That sounds like Hazen is pulling numbers out of his ass. Sorry, that number came out of MY ass, not his! Let's be very clear about the anal genealogy of this particular number. :-) > It doesn't even seem like Hazen's argument is consistent with > itself let alone the scientific data. And negative?results are still?results. Look. Once you get the DNA rolling, changing one animal into another is relatively simple, just change the genes. The initial abiotic evolution of life from chemistry was likely VERY complex, involving a number of intermediate processes... Or maybe it was simple. Nobody knows. >> Nevertheless, there is enough of a lead to continue to investigate how >> abiogenesis could have occurred terrestrially. Even if you buy into >> panbiogenesis, life had to arise somewhere first, or "God Did It"(TM). > > Well it might have happened almost everywhere back when everywhere was pretty small. I'm not sure how the universe being small and hot makes the evolution of life more probable... but maybe. >> The most interesting concept I've run into during these studies is >> emergence. Totally fascinating stuff that. > > Emergence *is* fascinating. Happy discovering. Oh yeah. And Hazen is the best I've found so far at explaining emergence. I really want to go into a quiet room and think deeply about emergence. I think there is something there that is awaiting a genius like Benoit Mandelbrot or Charles Darwin to make it completely obvious to the rest of us. I think there is a collective moment of "DUH!" in our future on this subject. I think some day, many of us will be thinking along the lines of T.H. Huxley when we think of emergence... My reflection when I first made myself master of the central idea of the Origin was, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that." - Thomas Henry Huxley -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Feb 4 00:47:54 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 17:47:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/3 Stefano Vaj : > On 3 February 2012 11:53, Kelly Anderson wrote: >> This is an extraordinary statement. It's the kind of stuff I read in >> second rate Creationist literature. I expect better of this list. >> Let's dive into the details for a bit. I've been studying this subject >> fairly deeply for about the last two months, so this is pretty fresh. > > I can see that. Your stuff is pretty interesting. Thanks. I've been reading and thinking a lot about it. > There is also an additional angle. There always is. :-) > One thing is to deliberately synthesise, say, a protein, DNA or even a cell. > > Another thing is to re-create what is believed to be the appropriate > environment and wait for things to happen. > > Now, such simulations could never be accurate, if anything for reasons of > *scale* and *time*, even if we do everything else right. After Lavoisier, we > know for sure that abiogenesis is not a frequent, everyday phenomenon in a > vial containing the appropriate elements, and we have no reason to suppose > that it ever was. Yes. Absolutely. > I was however impressed by Dawkins's Ancestor's Tale contention in that what > is really hard is not to go from mineral to procaryotes, but from > procaryotes to eukaryotes. If you measure the times involved, then clearly Dawkins is correct. >From chemicals to prokaryotes took somewhere between 100 and 150 million years.... and to get from prokaryotes to eukaryotes took from 400 to 900 million years (depending on who's dates you use). Plus, if you believe in Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns, since there was preexisting technology, it should have gone faster rather than slower, further indicating that it was a much more complex transition. On the other hand, it might have simply taken that long for the oxygen levels to rise to the point that Eukaryotic life could be sustained... (though it may be the case that there are anaerobic eukaryotes, but I'm not aware of them). My point is, that there may have been other reasons aside from complexity that account for the delay. I've heard that it took a billion years+ for the stromatolites to terraform the earth's atmophere... -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 4 12:24:30 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 13:24:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4 February 2012 01:47, Kelly Anderson wrote: > 2012/2/3 Stefano Vaj : > I was however impressed by Dawkins's Ancestor's Tale contention in that > what > > is really hard is not to go from mineral to procaryotes, but from > > procaryotes to eukaryotes. > > If you measure the times involved, then clearly Dawkins is correct. > From chemicals to prokaryotes took somewhere between 100 and 150 > million years.... and to get from prokaryotes to eukaryotes took from > 400 to 900 million years (depending on who's dates you use). > In principle, since there is no real reason why one philogenesis should be similar to another, it could also be a peculiar direction of terrestrial biology, much more so than marsupials for Australia. In other words, some kind or another of procaryotes could in be pretty frequent in the universe, while eucaryotes may just not be "required". This, irrespective of how much procaryotes species can be diverse and interesting and evolutionary successful, would be a quite boring and bleak scenario from our own perspective... :-/ -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat Feb 4 14:22:23 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 15:22:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> On Sat, Feb 04, 2012 at 01:24:30PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: > In principle, since there is no real reason why one philogenesis should be > similar to another, it could also be a peculiar direction of terrestrial > biology, much more so than marsupials for Australia. It is completely impossible to tell how typical or atypical our origin and history are without having access to at least one, preferably multiple samples which originated outside of common causal origin. The solar system is probably insufficient, unless we have clear evidence of multiple independant origins within this very system (improbable due to crosscontamination). > In other words, some kind or another of procaryotes could in be pretty > frequent in the universe, while eucaryotes may just not be "required". > > This, irrespective of how much procaryotes species can be diverse and > interesting and evolutionary successful, would be a quite boring and bleak > scenario from our own perspective... :-/ Right, we're looking for someone we can relate to, or at least look upward to. From max at maxmore.com Sat Feb 4 16:06:13 2012 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 09:06:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Small moves in commercial space Message-ID: Watch the videos too. http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/04/10313965-small-moves-in-commercial-space -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Feb 4 18:51:18 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 10:51:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The Political Origins of Life In-Reply-To: References: <1328287572.72124.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328381478.1636.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ---- Original Message ----- > From: Kelly Anderson > To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Friday, February 3, 2012 3:34 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) ? >> How is?that simple statement of fact in any way related to Creationist >> literature? > > Creationists are always saying that the emergence of life was so > immensely complex that it could not have possibly happened without > God's hand. The panbiogenesis argument feeds these fanatics with > quotes from scientists about how improbable the emergence of life is. Just because the Creationists say something, does not automatically?make it false. Especially if they are quoting a scientist.?What is false is not that their assertion that life is complex,?but that a *diety* is required?for such complexity to exist. These people simply have not truly seen the complexity of the universe the way I have.?But many of these same people believe in a?diety that is completely described by?the Bible. For them God is shield against having to think about complexity and complex?situations. Thus they are able to blithely attribute everything to God and thereby absolve themselves of the knowledge of?and the responsibilty for the effects they cause. Effects ranging from unwanted teen pregnacy to catastrophes on the scale of "It's a shame God saw fit to take all dem black folk.", sayeth the?foreman who built the levy in New Orleans.? Contemplate that for a minute:?There are people who believe that the 1.2 MB of text contained in the Bible completely describes the creator of the universe when that same believer's genetic code would take about?2.9 GB (gigabytes not gigabases) for both sets of chromosomes to be written in a book. The believer is almost 2500 times more complex than?all known data regarding?the God he worships. But then... there are the untold masses that profess to *believe* but haven't even completely read the book they profess to believe in. Talk about sheep. You spoke of?being pissed at?Jehova's Witnesses. You really want to mess with the mind of a missionary? Simply read the particular?book they bandy about, preferably before your first meeting with them. Then?challenge them to a bible trivia game taking turns asking each other questions about their?text.?Beat them at the trivia?game. Then, when they?"pop the question", tell them you enjoy the taste of blood far?too much join their church. I seriously doubt they will ever bother you again. Works for most religions actually. ;-) >> See how the individual dead molecules look like they themselves are >> alive? Dancing in perfect yet unchoreographed?harmony? That's >> some *serious* negentropy. That's the challenge faced by scientists. >> It's like putting a bunch of Legos into a cement mixer and expecting >> the Taj Mahal to come out. > > Now you ARE sounding like a creationist. Emergence will eventually > show how all this could have happened. It may or may not have happened > here first, but even if it happened somewhere else first, it had to > happen first somewhere, right? So we should try and figure that out. A creationist? Really? To be honest creation in some sense is not *entirely* ruled out as a hypothesis in my mind. But if a being really did create this universe. The universe as the hubble telescope or an atomic force microscope sees it, then that being would be insulted by?the Bible's?depictions of him. The creator of all that grandeur and sophistication coupled with such subtlety and raw power?is written as an abusive mysogynist alcoholic father with a nuclear arsenal and a weather control device.?Who then?plans the?Roman execution of his son, to vent his rage so that he?doesn't?erase?the souls of all humanity, after they are dead,?for acting exactly how he genetically?programmed?humanity to behave. Whilst this book?commands us to behave otherwise??Seriously? God as a poorly-written James Bond Villain? God, if such a?being existed, could not possibly be a sadist who paradoxically loves you whilst fitting your physical decreptitude, and often messy and even painful?demise, into his plan for you. Only so that 200 years hence, less than one orbit?of the outer planets, nobody but the most studious of your?descendants, Mormons, and if you are lucky, historians,?will know you ever existed.??I hope he loves you at least as much he loved his son. Poor bastard. Poor deluded suckers. > Of course I am. I never said it was ridiculous. However, to the normal > man on the street, it sounds ridiculous. Picture a normal guy being > approached by two Jehovah's Witnesses and being asked, "Do you think > Occam's razor would say that it is more likely that life came drifting > in from outer space, or that God Did It?" What's the answer going to > be? Well, for a large majority of people, he God hypothesis sounds > more rational. We have been trained by society norms to make fun of > people like Dennis Kucinich. > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSRWRbuMqyc > > Just remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary > evidence. To the guy on the street, panbiogenesis initally sounds like > Dennis Kucinich. Do you really want to feed that? That gives the > Witnesses the fuel they need to say, "See, science is more crazy than > religion!" The truth is always stranger than fiction and the bible is not even good fiction. I will be true to my nature in this life and truth is part of my nature. > No, but they present their own challenges in imaging. We're getting > better at this stuff all the time. But it is hard to get research > money to study the evolutionary crystal structures of clay. That's the > kind of $1000 toilet seat story that ends up on the second page of the > Wall Street Journal as a waste of the public's money. Again, it's very > political in this area of science, and you can't lose sight of that. Well I don't blame them. As much "ooh and awe" factor the truth about the origins of life might have,?it would be of little practical value. Especially in a society that is a one-trick energy pony. ? >> What God hypothesis? Why do you have God on your mind? > > Because it was my conversations with the Jehovah's Witnesses that led > me to dive into this stuff more deeply. I realized I did not know > enough to counter their arguments against abiogenesis, so I felt the > need to go and educate myself. In other words, their creationist bull > shit (the form of the argument, more than the argument itself) pissed > me off and made me want to study more. Ok cool. I understand now that some of the content of my theory may have conflicted with your antiviral software. Sorry for the confusion. If the Witnesses continue to pester you, at least perform the final step of my algorithm above. Cheers. :-) ? Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 4 19:23:17 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 20:23:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 4 February 2012 15:22, Eugen Leitl wrote: > It is completely impossible to tell how typical or atypical our > origin and history are without having access to at least one, > preferably multiple samples which originated outside of common causal > origin. You are certainly right, but we are here in the field of educated guesses... :-) > The solar system is probably insufficient, unless we have clear > evidence of multiple independant origins within this very > system (improbable due to crosscontamination). > So, if we find procaryotes on Mars, you think we should assume it is a terrestrial contamination? :-/ Right, we're looking for someone we can relate to, or at least > look upward to. > We could look upward to procaryotes in terms of sheer numbers, but, yes, we are somewhat more interesting. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 01:41:32 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 20:41:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Political Origins of Life In-Reply-To: <1328381478.1636.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328287572.72124.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328381478.1636.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 1:51 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: them. Then?challenge them to a bible trivia game taking turns asking each other questions about their?text.?Beat them at the trivia?game. Then, when they?"pop the question", tell them you enjoy the taste of blood far?too much join their church. I seriously doubt they will ever bother you again. Works for most religions actually. ;-) It "works" on vegetarians too. From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 04:03:55 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 21:03:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Political Origins of Life In-Reply-To: <1328381478.1636.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328287572.72124.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328381478.1636.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 11:51 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: > ---- Original Message ----- >> From: Kelly Anderson >> To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list >> Cc: >> Sent: Friday, February 3, 2012 3:34 PM >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) > >>> How is?that simple statement of fact in any way related to Creationist >>> literature? >> >> Creationists are always saying that the emergence of life was so >> immensely complex that it could not have possibly happened without >> God's hand. The panbiogenesis argument feeds these fanatics with >> quotes from scientists about how improbable the emergence of life is. > > Just because the Creationists say something, does not automatically?make it false. Clearly! One of my favorite quotations is from Hitler. I never attribute it until people say, yeah, I like that quote... because once you say WHO said it, the WHAT of it gets muddied. As if Hitler didn't say anything that was right and insightful. So yes, I agree. > Especially if they are quoting a scientist. What you may not be aware of is how they often (nearly always) quote scientists out of context. For example, here is a quote of Richard Dawkins: "This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction." from the preface of The Selfish Gene. Do you think Richard Dawkins thought he was writing science fiction, really? He was making a point. But the creationist who quoted it made it seem like Dawkins KNEW evolution was a farce. > What is false is not that their assertion that life is complex,?but that a *diety* is > required?for such complexity to exist. But it is not so complex that it COULDN'T have evolved right here. Or are you of the opinion that panbiogenesis is the only answer? > These people simply have not truly seen the complexity of the universe the way I have. >?But many of these same people believe in a?diety that is completely described by?the > Bible. For them God is shield against having to think about complexity and complex?situations. > Thus they are able to blithely attribute everything to God and thereby absolve themselves > of the knowledge of?and the responsibilty for the effects they cause. You'll get no arguments from me there. > Effects ranging from unwanted teen pregnacy to catastrophes on the scale of "It's a > shame God saw fit to take all dem black folk.", sayeth the?foreman who built the levy in New Orleans. Yeah, it's pretty sad. > Contemplate that for a minute:?There are people who believe that the 1.2 MB of text > contained in the Bible completely describes the creator of the universe when that > same believer's genetic code would take about?2.9 GB (gigabytes not gigabases) > for both sets of chromosomes to be written in a book. The believer is almost 2500 >times more complex than?all known data regarding?the God he worships. Not to defend the religious, but much of our beliefs (physics) can be written in a dozen equations. That is certainly more condensed than the Bible. So brevity is not equal to falsity. Complexity isn't everything. Having simple rules that can give rise to complexity is where emergence comes from, and perhaps that is everything. > But then... there are the untold masses that profess to *believe* but haven't even > completely read the book they profess to believe in. Have you read Origin of Species all the way through? Just curious. I have. I've also read the Bible all the way through, and the Book of Mormon, and a bunch of other books. Haven't made it through the Koran yet... :-) > Talk about sheep. You spoke of?being pissed at?Jehova's Witnesses. You really > want to mess with the mind of a missionary? Simply read the particular?book they > bandy about, preferably before your first meeting with them. Then?challenge them > to a bible trivia game taking turns asking each other questions about their?text. >?Beat them at the trivia?game. Then, when they?"pop the question", tell them you > enjoy the taste of blood far?too much join their church. I seriously doubt they will > ever bother you again. Works for most religions actually. ;-) I'm note interested in chasing them off. That's too easy... ;-) >>> See how the individual dead molecules look like they themselves are >>> alive? Dancing in perfect yet unchoreographed?harmony? That's >>> some *serious* negentropy. That's the challenge faced by scientists. >>> It's like putting a bunch of Legos into a cement mixer and expecting >>> the Taj Mahal to come out. >> >> Now you ARE sounding like a creationist. Emergence will eventually >> show how all this could have happened. It may or may not have happened >> here first, but even if it happened somewhere else first, it had to >> happen first somewhere, right? So we should try and figure that out. > > A creationist? Really? Yes. This is exactly the argument that they use. Nearly word for word. > To be honest creation in some sense is not *entirely* ruled out as a > hypothesis in my mind. But if a being really did create this universe. I am open to the idea that what I perceive as the universe is just a simulation and that I am also a simulation. Not sure that's exactly the same thing you're saying, but I can't disprove that. In that case, then someone did create the universe. But I don't equate that person with God. > The universe as the hubble telescope or an atomic force microscope > sees it, then that being would be insulted by?the Bible's?depictions of him. > The creator of all that grandeur and sophistication coupled with such > subtlety and raw power?is written as an abusive mysogynist alcoholic father > with a nuclear arsenal and a weather control device.?Who then?plans the > Roman execution of his son, to vent his rage so that he?doesn't?erase?the > souls of all humanity, after they are dead,?for acting exactly how he genetically > programmed?humanity to behave. Whilst this book?commands us to behave > otherwise??Seriously? God as a poorly-written James Bond Villain? It is a bit far fetched... but it's easy to get caught up in that kind of belief system. It is very hard to escape as well. I know this from personal first hand experience. I was a practicing Mormon until about 4 years ago. But to leave the door open to some other diety, I'm not willing to sell my soul again. Not at this point. > God, if such a?being existed, could not possibly be a sadist who paradoxically > loves you whilst fitting your physical decreptitude, and often messy and even > painful?demise, into his plan for you. Only so that 200 years hence, less than > one orbit?of the outer planets, nobody but the most studious of your?descendants, > Mormons, and if you are lucky, historians,?will know you ever existed.??I hope > he loves you at least as much he loved his son. Poor bastard. Poor deluded suckers. And yet, the flow of memes through me, and to you, will still have an effect on the world. It may not be a great effect, but if there are enough people with good memes, the cumulative effect will be profound. I am sending a boy to school in Africa. I'm going to change his family tree forever. His great-grandchildren will likely owe there existence to me, though they may not know my name or even his. Such is the nature of life. And yet, my belief system is that everyone will remember everyone from this age. Some of our digital footprints may last as long as the pair at Laetoli. >> Of course I am. I never said it was ridiculous. However, to the normal >> man on the street, it sounds ridiculous. Picture a normal guy being >> approached by two Jehovah's Witnesses and being asked, "Do you think >> Occam's razor would say that it is more likely that life came drifting >> in from outer space, or that God Did It?" What's the answer going to >> be? Well, for a large majority of people, he God hypothesis sounds >> more rational. We have been trained by society norms to make fun of >> people like Dennis Kucinich. >> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSRWRbuMqyc >> >> Just remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary >> evidence. To the guy on the street, panbiogenesis initally sounds like >> Dennis Kucinich. Do you really want to feed that? That gives the >> Witnesses the fuel they need to say, "See, science is more crazy than >> religion!" > > The truth is always stranger than fiction and the bible is not even good > fiction. I will be true to my nature in this life and truth is part of my nature. To be infidels to scientific truth only requires a lack of care in how we use our words. They will be hijacked and used as tools for the other side if we do not exercise this care. >> No, but they present their own challenges in imaging. We're getting >> better at this stuff all the time. But it is hard to get research >> money to study the evolutionary crystal structures of clay. That's the >> kind of $1000 toilet seat story that ends up on the second page of the >> Wall Street Journal as a waste of the public's money. Again, it's very >> political in this area of science, and you can't lose sight of that. > > Well I don't blame them. As much "ooh and awe" factor the truth about > the origins of life might have,?it would be of little practical value. Especially > in a society that is a one-trick energy pony. I don't see understanding the true origin of life as having no economic value. If, as I think it would, it decreased the devotion of time and energy towards religion... it would free that time up for other, possibly more productive, applications of people's time. >>> What God hypothesis? Why do you have God on your mind? >> >> Because it was my conversations with the Jehovah's Witnesses that led >> me to dive into this stuff more deeply. I realized I did not know >> enough to counter their arguments against abiogenesis, so I felt the >> need to go and educate myself. In other words, their creationist bull >> shit (the form of the argument, more than the argument itself) pissed >> me off and made me want to study more. > > Ok cool. I understand now that some of the content of my theory may > have conflicted with your antiviral software. Sorry for the confusion. If > the Witnesses continue to pester you, at least perform the final step > of my algorithm above. Cheers. :-) I will continue to entertain them until they tire of me. At least that way, they won't spend their time on those with weaker minds... lol... besides, it's fun. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 04:17:44 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 21:17:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/4 Stefano Vaj > On 4 February 2012 01:47, Kelly Anderson wrote: > >> 2012/2/3 Stefano Vaj : > > > I was however impressed by Dawkins's Ancestor's Tale contention in that >> what >> > is really hard is not to go from mineral to procaryotes, but from >> > procaryotes to eukaryotes. >> >> If you measure the times involved, then clearly Dawkins is correct. >> From chemicals to prokaryotes took somewhere between 100 and 150 >> million years.... and to get from prokaryotes to eukaryotes took from >> 400 to 900 million years (depending on who's dates you use). >> > > In principle, since there is no real reason why one philogenesis should be > similar to another, it could also be a peculiar direction of terrestrial > biology, much more so than marsupials for Australia. > > In other words, some kind or another of procaryotes could in be pretty > frequent in the universe, while eucaryotes may just not be "required". > Eukaryotes are not themselves required... however, to get the kind of reproductive fidelity required for large multicellular organisms, you do need to protect the replicating molecules in a nucleus from the bombardment of atoms whizzing about inside the cell. There may be processes similarly protected within the mitochondria and other cellular organelles. Anyway, for large creatures, organelles at least are probably a requirement, for our kind of life anyway. This, irrespective of how much procaryotes species can be diverse and > interesting and evolutionary successful, would be a quite boring and bleak > scenario from our own perspective... :-/ > > A universe full of prokaryotes would not be worth exploring, if that's what you mean. :-) -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 04:20:23 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 21:20:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 7:22 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, Feb 04, 2012 at 01:24:30PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: > >> In principle, since there is no real reason why one philogenesis should be >> similar to another, it could also be a peculiar direction of terrestrial >> biology, much more so than marsupials for Australia. > > It is completely impossible to tell how typical or atypical our > origin and history are without having access to at least one, > preferably multiple samples which originated outside of common causal > origin. The solar system is probably insufficient, unless we have clear > evidence of multiple independant origins within this very > system (improbable due to crosscontamination). If the life were sufficiently different, say not DNA or RNA based, then it would probably be sufficient to rule out cross contamination. >> In other words, some kind or another of procaryotes could in be pretty >> frequent in the universe, while ?eucaryotes may just not be "required". >> >> This, irrespective of how much procaryotes species can be diverse and >> interesting and evolutionary successful, would be a quite boring and bleak >> scenario from our own perspective... :-/ > > Right, we're looking for someone we can relate to, or at least > look upward to. Good, you read that the same way I did... :-) -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 04:51:29 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 21:51:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2012/2/4 Stefano Vaj : > On 4 February 2012 15:22, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >> The solar system is probably insufficient, unless we have clear >> evidence of multiple independant origins within this very >> system (improbable due to crosscontamination). > > ?So, if we find procaryotes on Mars, you think we should assume it is a > terrestrial contamination? :-/ According to one hypothesis, Mars was inhabitable prior to earth being so, and that life may have come here from there. Not exactly intelligent panspermia, but at least another of MANY hypothesis. We do have meteorites that we believe have come from Mars that were found in Antarctica. If it does take more than 100,000,000 million years to build prokaryotes, that would be one somewhat plausible scenario. That gives you a bit more time, especially considering that first life was almost certainly independent of the necessity of sunlight. Question... we have found martian rocks in Antarctica. Have we found moon rocks there too? Seems more probable, but I've never heard of such a thing. ... some time later... that Mr. Google is a smart fellow... http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lunar/moon_meteorites.htm Seems the answer is yes, but strangely moon meteors are apparently not more common than mars meteors. There are about 150 of them known, and many have fascinating stories. One is even believed to have come from the moon in the last several hundred years. That's pretty cool to this ex-Hoosier. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 05:14:46 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 22:14:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > Question... we have found martian rocks in Antarctica. Have we found > moon rocks there too? Seems more probable, but I've never heard of > such a thing. ... some time later... that Mr. Google is a smart > fellow... > http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lunar/moon_meteorites.htm > Seems the answer is yes, but strangely moon meteors are apparently not > more common than mars meteors. There are about 150 of them known, and > many have fascinating stories. One is even believed to have come from > the moon in the last several hundred years. That's pretty cool to this > ex-Hoosier. Bad form replying to myself, but this is just TOO COOL... at least to me... Apparently, in 2009, the Cook Islands released a $5 coin that actually embedded a piece of one of these lunar asteroids. It commemorates the 40th anniversary of the US landing on the moon and the 50th anniversary of the russians orbiting the dark side of the moon with Luna III. So you can buy an actual piece of the moon in one of these... sorry, as kelly coin guy, I just have to bring up a coin connection when there is one. Sadly, it's not cheap.. LOL. Here is the actual coin, for sale on Ebay. http://bit.ly/y0PD7s They have other coins with pieces of asteroids in them too... including, one from a martian meteorite: http://bit.ly/AF1eIN This one's cheaper... lol And a meteor that hit Europe in the late 1800s, perhaps more... Sorry, just had to share... -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 5 06:44:44 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 22:44:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00e701cce3d1$a5913a10$f0b3ae30$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2012 9:15 PM On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>... That's pretty cool to this ex-Hoosier. >...Bad form replying to myself, but this is just TOO COOL... at least to me... - Kelly _______________________________________________ NO! It isn't bad form. I have heard this comment in various places regarding forum protocol, but I disagree and invite rebuttal. If you post something, then think of something else on the topic even better, hey that happens all the time. Does to me. You may reply to yourself before anyone else has posted anything. No harm no foul. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 5 06:47:15 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2012 22:47:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00e801cce3d1$ffb0d230$ff127690$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2012 9:15 PM On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: >>... That's pretty cool to this ex-Hoosier. >...Bad form replying to myself, but this is just TOO COOL... at least to me... - Kelly _______________________________________________ >...NO! It isn't bad form. I have heard this comment in various places regarding forum protocol, but I disagree and invite rebuttal. If you post something, then think of something else on the topic even better, hey that happens all the time. Does to me. You may reply to yourself before anyone else has posted anything. No harm no foul. Spike And furthermore! It is OK to post back immediately with another thought, even if you changed your mind and contradict what you just wrote! No harm there either. Perfectly proper and allowable. We don't use up any ink here, or slay any perfectly good trees. Watch your number of posts per day, but replying to yourself is fine. Play ball! spike From eugen at leitl.org Sun Feb 5 09:34:35 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 10:34:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20120205093435.GT7343@leitl.org> On Sat, Feb 04, 2012 at 09:20:23PM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > It is completely impossible to tell how typical or atypical our > > origin and history are without having access to at least one, > > preferably multiple samples which originated outside of common causal > > origin. The solar system is probably insufficient, unless we have clear > > evidence of multiple independant origins within this very > > system (improbable due to crosscontamination). > > If the life were sufficiently different, say not DNA or RNA based, Yes, this is what I meant by "outside of common causal origin". Though elemental abundancies would still have an impact, albeit a much smaller one. There's sufficient variation out there so that would only have a small effect, less than an order of magnitude probably. > then it would probably be sufficient to rule out cross contamination. We haven't found a single instance of a shadow biosphere yet on this planet, so probably any crosscontamination would wipe out the weaker biosphere. As a corollary, anything we'll find on Europa or elsewhere will be our close relative, biochemically. > >> In other words, some kind or another of procaryotes could in be pretty > >> frequent in the universe, while ?eucaryotes may just not be "required". > >> > >> This, irrespective of how much procaryotes species can be diverse and > >> interesting and evolutionary successful, would be a quite boring and bleak > >> scenario from our own perspective... :-/ > > > > Right, we're looking for someone we can relate to, or at least > > look upward to. > > Good, you read that the same way I did... :-) Even if nobody is out there this is still plenty of real estate ready for taking -- especially, if there's no prior owner. Extremophiles don't really count as such, though they may beget such gigayears downstream. From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 10:26:02 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 10:26:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: <20120205093435.GT7343@leitl.org> References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> <20120205093435.GT7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > We haven't found a single instance of a shadow biosphere yet on > this planet, so probably any crosscontamination would wipe out > the weaker biosphere. As a corollary, anything we'll find on Europa > or elsewhere will be our close relative, biochemically. > Well, there is Archaea as well as Prokaryote and they appear to have evolved separately. It is still speculative, of course. Some claim a common precurser. How eukaryotes evolved is also speculative as they may have bits of both lines incorporated. Still early days in finding how life evolved. BillK From eugen at leitl.org Sun Feb 5 11:15:04 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 12:15:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: <20120204142223.GY7343@leitl.org> <20120205093435.GT7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20120205111504.GV7343@leitl.org> On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 10:26:02AM +0000, BillK wrote: > On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 9:34 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > We haven't found a single instance of a shadow biosphere yet on > > this planet, so probably any crosscontamination would wipe out > > the weaker biosphere. As a corollary, anything we'll find on Europa > > or elsewhere will be our close relative, biochemically. > > > > > Well, there is Archaea as well as Prokaryote and they appear to have > evolved separately. I'm referring to the advent (or external panspermic contamination) of first autocatalytic sets on the prebiotic Earth. As the first ones burned through the prebiotic chemistry soup within subgeological time (subsequent accretion by meteor infall would have been negligible) the window for the advent for another, unrelated one was very short (probably < It is still speculative, of course. Some claim a common precurser. They're based on lipids, carbohydrates, DNA, RNA and proteins -- and even a common genetic code, so they definitely have a common origin. Independently emerged life would be very unlikely to resemble us down to minute details, despite emerging from virtually identical prebiotic ursoup. > How eukaryotes evolved is also speculative as they may have bits of > both lines incorporated. > > Still early days in finding how life evolved. What we need is prebiotic molecular fossils, which will be hard to find, as oldest rocks are only 4.04 GYears (Acasta gneiss, Canada). Zircons are slightly older, but sterilized via tectonic subduction. Our best chances would be to look on the outskirts of the solar system, which is unlikely to be so completely contaminated by life as to erase the original chemistry -- whatever infalling samples we have do seem to corroborate that story. There might be also pristine, albeit degraded by age, samples of early life preserved in space ices ejected by impacts floating around in the solar system. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun Feb 5 12:25:00 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 04:25:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The Political Origins of Life In-Reply-To: References: <1328287572.72124.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328381478.1636.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328444700.44641.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ?----- Original Message ----- > From: Kelly Anderson > To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Saturday, February 4, 2012 8:03 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] The Political Origins of Life > What you may not be aware of is how they often (nearly always) quote > scientists out of context. For example, here is a quote of Richard > Dawkins: > "This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction." > from the preface of The Selfish Gene. > Do you think Richard Dawkins thought he was writing science fiction, > really? He was making a point. But the creationist who quoted it made > it seem like Dawkins KNEW evolution was a farce. Well that's on Dawkins. He himself wrote the preface. A preface is something of an explanation or apology on behalf of the author for having written something. Dawkins made the mistake of apologizing in advance for writing the truth. As if the searing light of the truth?itself could not burn away falsehood of its own merits. Perhaps he is just too much of an English gentleman to crush his opposition. I, on the otherhand, being a crude American, have no such qualms. > >> What is false is not that their assertion that life is complex,?but that a > *diety* is >> required?for such complexity to exist. > > But it is not so complex that it COULDN'T have evolved right here. Or > are you of the opinion that panbiogenesis is the only answer? In the sense that a scientist these days has to?"spin-doctor" the importance?of his or her own research,?yes, I am firmly in my own camp so to speak. Am I so certain that my theory will withstand the test of time and empirical testing? Well as Eugen pointed out,?no?Bayesian, or any kind of statistician really, can make any?judgement about one occurance of anything. One of something?does not qualify as a sample unless you?have something to compare it to.?? > Yeah, it's pretty sad. > >> Contemplate that for a minute:?There are people who believe that the 1.2 MB > of text >> contained in the Bible completely describes the creator of the universe > when that >> same believer's genetic code would take about?2.9 GB (gigabytes not > gigabases) >> for both sets of chromosomes to be written in a book. The believer is > almost 2500 >> times more complex than?all known data regarding?the God he worships. > > Not to defend the religious, but much of our beliefs (physics)? can be > written in a dozen equations. That is certainly more condensed than > the Bible. So brevity is not equal to falsity. Complexity isn't > everything. Having simple rules that can give rise to complexity is > where emergence comes from, and perhaps that is everything. Ah, the equations are simple but the inputs and outputs to those equations are often doubly complex (i.e. both "complicated" and involving the square-root of negative one). For example very few?analytic solutions to the general relativity field equations exist and the rest are so complex they must be simulated on a computer. The same is true of numerous equations in physics such as the?Lane-Emden equation and the Navier-Stokes equation. The Navier-Stokes equation is particularly interesting because for years now?a foundation has been offering a million dollar prize for a mathematical explanation of?how it works. It is very important?because it is the equation that describes the weather,?amongst many other phenomenon. It can only be solved?analytically for very special cases. The rest of the time it must be simulated on a computer. So what I am saying is that your "brief equations" can literally give rise to chaos!? Mwahahaha! Ahem... Sorry. >> But then... there are the untold masses that profess to *believe* but > haven't even >> completely read the book they profess to believe in. > > Have you read Origin of Species all the way through? Just curious. I > have. I've also read the Bible all the way through, and the Book of > Mormon, and a bunch of other books. Haven't made it through the Koran > yet... :-) It amongst other works were part of the assigned reading for a history of science class I took at university. So yes I have read it completely but I doubt I have contemplated it in Darwin's voice to the degree that Spike has for example because I learned most of the same material in condensed form in textbooks. > >>>> See how the individual dead molecules look like they themselves are >>>> alive? Dancing in perfect yet unchoreographed?harmony? That's >>>> some *serious* negentropy. That's the challenge faced by > scientists. >>>> It's like putting a bunch of Legos into a cement mixer and > expecting >>>> the Taj Mahal to come out. >>> >>> Now you ARE sounding like a creationist. Emergence will eventually >>> show how all this could have happened. It may or may not have happened >>> here first, but even if it happened somewhere else first, it had to >>> happen first somewhere, right? So we should try and figure that out. >> >> A creationist? Really? > > Yes. This is exactly the argument that they use. Nearly word for word. Really? Do they realize that the?Bible, word-for-word,?would come out of that cement?mixer billions of times?more often than even the?lowliest worm? Mark my words. Creationists who wield complexity arguments do so like straw-men wielding fire. They do so only at arms length and will turn tail and run at the first sign that you might turn that fire back on them.??? ? > It is a bit far fetched... but it's easy to get caught up in that kind > of belief system. It is very hard to escape as well. I know this from > personal first hand experience. I was a practicing Mormon until about > 4 years ago. People?can be caught up in any belief system whatsoever. Just ask Keith. And it is far harder to escape from a belief system you are born into then than one you get caught up in. Not without alienating yourself from the people you love. ? > But to leave the door open to some other diety, I'm not willing to > sell my soul again. Not at this point. Well then maybe you should shut the door and lock it. Jesus himself said his second coming would be as "a thief in the night". So if he is real, he will find a way in. > And yet, the flow of memes through me, and to you, will still have an > effect on the world. It may not be a great effect, but if there are > enough people with good memes, the cumulative effect will be profound. > > I am sending a boy to school in Africa. I'm going to change his family > tree forever. His great-grandchildren will likely owe there existence > to me, though they may not know my name or even his. Such is the > nature of life. Then you are living a more enlightened life than most. > And yet, my belief system is that everyone will remember everyone from > this age. Some of our digital footprints may last as long as the pair > at Laetoli. That is a beautiful thought.? >> The truth is always stranger than fiction and the bible is not even good >> fiction. I will be true to my nature in this life and truth is part of my > nature. > > To be infidels to scientific truth only requires a lack of care in how > we use our words. They will be hijacked and used as tools for the > other side if we do not exercise this care. Oh I have chosen my words carefully. It is the creationists that should have chosen their words more carefully. ? > I don't see understanding the true origin of life as having no > economic value. If, as I think it would, it decreased the devotion of > time and energy towards religion... it would free that time up for > other, possibly more productive, applications of people's time. I never thought of that. Henceforth I give all of you?free-license?to use my?ideas to try to cleanse the minds of the infected. Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson? From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 15:00:16 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 15:00:16 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Political Origins of Life In-Reply-To: <1328444700.44641.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328287572.72124.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328381478.1636.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328444700.44641.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 12:25 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > Well then maybe you should shut the door and lock it. Jesus himself said his second coming > would be as "a thief in the night". So if he is real, he will find a way in. > Tut! You're doing exactly what the creationists do. Quoting out of context and misinterpreting! 'thief in the night' is used several times in the New Testament. It means 'sudden and unexpected'. Nothing to do with sneaking about like a thief. It was commonly used to encourage the faithful in the Early Church. "No one knows the day or hour when these things will happen" etc. so you better be on your best behavior. And, by the way, Jesus and Paul were mistaken. They expected the Second Coming within a generation. And it didn't happen. The Church arrived instead. Jesus reportedly said, Matthew 24:34: "..This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." Luke 9:26-27: " But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God." But, of course, Jesus may not actually have said that. These gospel sayings were written down much later by early church followers of Paul and they wrote down what suited their beliefs (and left out lots of inconvenient stuff). BillK From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun Feb 5 14:58:48 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 06:58:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The Political Origins of Life Message-ID: <1328453928.83301.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > Have you read Origin of Species all the way through? Just > curious. I > have. I've also read the Bible all the way through, and the > Book of > Mormon, and a bunch of other books. Haven't made it through > the Koran > yet... :-) Oh, well done, that man!? Read all the way through the book of mormon? I laughed so much that I had to put it down for fear of doing myself a mischief. I never finished the koran for the opposite reason (nausea). You have a strong stomach, sir. Props. Ben Zaiboc From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 16:55:51 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 17:55:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/5 Kelly Anderson > A universe full of prokaryotes would not be worth exploring, if that's > what you mean. :-) > This sounds like eukaryote chauvinisme to me, but, hey, it is difficult to escape our biases in this area. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Feb 5 17:04:14 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 18:04:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Political Origins of Life In-Reply-To: <1328453928.83301.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328453928.83301.YahooMailClassic@web114417.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 5 February 2012 15:58, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > I never finished the koran for the opposite reason (nausea). > Really? I found it somewhat fascinating, but quickly turning to... boring. Besides the ideological angle the Q'ran cannot bear comparison much more than the Bible to the tradition that delivered us the Iliad, the Mahabharatha, the Edda or the Beowulf. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kryonica at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 08:59:58 2012 From: kryonica at gmail.com (Kryonica) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 08:59:58 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Drinking Message-ID: This morning on BBC news "too much drinking" is once more all the rage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16869618 Does anyone know how well founded scientifically is all this talk about for instance increased risk of mouth cancer if one glass of wine regularly turns into two or three? I get suspicious with these general statements (after being repeatedly reminded by Anders that they have to be taken with a pinch of salt and that one must always have a look at the real scientific article behind them), and all the more so because I like my red wine and have read elsewhere (on the BBC!) that it is good for me :-/ The BBC article is full of very sweeping statements indeed that would require some expert reading to sort the wheat from the chaff. From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon Feb 6 13:39:20 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 05:39:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> BillK jested: > But, of course, Jesus may not actually have said that ... Presumably this was said in jest, and it did make me laugh, but I'm now wondering how many people, on this list and elsewhere, that are not religious, actually believe there was a Jesus. I don't mean believe in Jesus as in 'this guy who totally existed, was the son of some god or other', but in the sense of believing there was a single person that these stories are based on. I'd have thought it patently obvious that Jesus is a kind of King Arthur or Robin Hood figure, a composite myth from many stories over a long period of time. There is absolutely no historical evidence for such a figure (afaik, please correct me if I'm wrong on that. With references, obviously!). "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur may not have actually lived at Camelot" to me. Am I in a minority? Ben Zaiboc From amon at doctrinezero.com Mon Feb 6 15:09:20 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 15:09:20 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 6 February 2012 13:39, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > BillK jested: > > > But, of course, Jesus may not actually have said that ... > > Presumably this was said in jest, and it did make me laugh, but I'm now > wondering how many people, on this list and elsewhere, that are not > religious, actually believe there was a Jesus. > > I don't mean believe in Jesus as in 'this guy who totally existed, was the > son of some god or other', but in the sense of believing there was a single > person that these stories are based on. I'd have thought it patently > obvious that Jesus is a kind of King Arthur or Robin Hood figure, a > composite myth from many stories over a long period of time. There is > absolutely no historical evidence for such a figure (afaik, please correct > me if I'm wrong on that. With references, obviously!). > > "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur may > not have actually lived at Camelot" to me. Am I in a minority? > > Ben Zaiboc > It's a fine point, and one I agree with. However, as I've noted here before, implying some person is fictional tends to make believers and unbelievers alike sense that the person must in some way be less valuable than if they'd been "real". What this means is that some believers may understand it to be true that the historical Jesus is a composite character at best, but would feel uneasy about acknowledge the fact, lest it imply that Jesus is thereby devalued. Me, I have no problem with the greatest teachers being partially or wholly fictitious. It works for Pythagoras, so why not Jesus? Hell, fictional & composite characters could be the chosen people of Greg Egan's "God Who Makes No Difference". Although I suppose He is their antithesis. He's a god that exists but might as well not, whereas the likes of Jesus or Robin Hood have tangible effects in our world regardless of whether they ever actually existed at all... - A -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kryonica at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 16:27:24 2012 From: kryonica at gmail.com (Kryonica) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 16:27:24 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: One author on the subject that I like to read (or listen to in Audiobooks) is Bart Ehrmann. He tackles this question in two books I have read, Jesus Apocalyptic Prophet, and Misquoting Jesus. There most probably was a rabbi Jesus at the time who preached the imminent arrival of a Jewish Messiah. This in Judea and Palestine around 20-30 CE. But he was not unique: there were many rabbis preaching this message in some form or other; he did not preach that he himself was the Messiah, only that the Jews should repent, that is conform to the Jewish law, the Torah, in preparation for the arrival of this Messiah, which was some kind of heavenly being sent by God to Israel that would alter the history of that land. Jesus seems to have annoyed the authorities, both Jewish and Roman, because he excited the crowds and the Roman occupants were keen that order be maintained in the rather explosive Palestine. What seems likely to have happened is that he created trouble in the Temple during the Passover and that the Romans did away with a few trouble makers at that particularly explosive time of the year - a bit like the First of May today. Jesus was one of the "bad guys", was tried (a trial typically took a couple of minutes in this case, he was not a Roman citizen), crucified and dumped in a mass grave after a few days hanging on the cross among others who for some reason or other ( mostly political, that is rising up against Roman authority) had met a similar fate. Again, there was nothing unusual about this, crucifixions were pretty common in the Roman provinces as a means to discourage uprisings. And then, after his death, the surviving disciples followed by the fathers of the Church went to work and the result became a growing body of interpretations and elaborations that grew more and more fanciful with time until he had a virgin mother, was the son of god, died to save the whole world, was himself the Messiah he announced and even rose from the dead and ascended to heaven etc. It took about 200 years to formulate the Christian belief and a further 200 to ban all the heresies. So there likely was a guy called Jesus but he was nothing like he is presented in the Christian religion. That is why historians of the bible are not much liked by believers: they demolish the illusion! On 6 Feb 2012, at 15:09, Amon Zero wrote: > On 6 February 2012 13:39, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > BillK jested: > > > But, of course, Jesus may not actually have said that ... > > Presumably this was said in jest, and it did make me laugh, but I'm now wondering how many people, on this list and elsewhere, that are not religious, actually believe there was a Jesus. > > I don't mean believe in Jesus as in 'this guy who totally existed, was the son of some god or other', but in the sense of believing there was a single person that these stories are based on. I'd have thought it patently obvious that Jesus is a kind of King Arthur or Robin Hood figure, a composite myth from many stories over a long period of time. There is absolutely no historical evidence for such a figure (afaik, please correct me if I'm wrong on that. With references, obviously!). > > "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur may not have actually lived at Camelot" to me. Am I in a minority? > > Ben Zaiboc > > > It's a fine point, and one I agree with. However, as I've noted here before, implying some person is fictional tends to make believers and unbelievers alike sense that the person must in some way be less valuable than if they'd been "real". What this means is that some believers may understand it to be true that the historical Jesus is a composite character at best, but would feel uneasy about acknowledge the fact, lest it imply that Jesus is thereby devalued. > > Me, I have no problem with the greatest teachers being partially or wholly fictitious. It works for Pythagoras, so why not Jesus? > > Hell, fictional & composite characters could be the chosen people of Greg Egan's "God Who Makes No Difference". Although I suppose He is their antithesis. He's a god that exists but might as well not, whereas the likes of Jesus or Robin Hood have tangible effects in our world regardless of whether they ever actually existed at all... > > - 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 amon at doctrinezero.com Mon Feb 6 16:39:18 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 16:39:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/6 Kryonica > > So there likely was a guy called Jesus but he was nothing like he is > presented in the Christian religion. That is why historians of the bible > are not much liked by believers: they demolish the illusion! > I don't blame them. This Jesus is *boring*. Can't he be undead or a cyborg or something? ;-) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kryonica at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 17:15:42 2012 From: kryonica at gmail.com (Kryonica) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 17:15:42 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1468B08F-67CB-4F45-BB45-8460E3C6E25F@gmail.com> Well he is pretty undead as it is now, ascended to heaven and waiting to come back. As for his cyborg qualities, he was enhanced by being made able to work all sorts of miracles, including curing the lame (stem cell spinal treatment), turning water into wine (advanced biochemistry) and raising the dead (full body repair in anticipation of Cryonics). So yes, the fathers of the Church pretty much turned him from a dullard into an accomplished undead cyborg of his day ;-) I wonder if they realise how transhumanist was their enterprise? On 6 Feb 2012, at 16:39, Amon Zero wrote: > 2012/2/6 Kryonica > > So there likely was a guy called Jesus but he was nothing like he is presented in the Christian religion. That is why historians of the bible are not much liked by believers: they demolish the illusion! > > > I don't blame them. This Jesus is *boring*. Can't he be undead or a cyborg or something? ;-) > _______________________________________________ > 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 amon at doctrinezero.com Mon Feb 6 17:21:47 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 17:21:47 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: <1468B08F-67CB-4F45-BB45-8460E3C6E25F@gmail.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1468B08F-67CB-4F45-BB45-8460E3C6E25F@gmail.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/6 Kryonica > Well he is pretty undead as it is now, ascended to heaven and waiting to > come back. As for his cyborg qualities, he was enhanced by being made able > to work all sorts of miracles, including curing the lame (stem cell spinal > treatment), turning water into wine (advanced biochemistry) and raising the > dead (full body repair in anticipation of Cryonics). So yes, the fathers > of the Church pretty much turned him from a dullard into an accomplished > undead cyborg of his day ;-) I wonder if they realise how transhumanist > was their enterprise? > I'm pretty sure the Cathars did... they were convinced he was a hologram! And no, that one isn't a joke. I seem to remember that their phrase was "body of light", and they meant it quite literally. One of the various 'discussion points' which didn't endear them to the Church. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 18:08:56 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 19:08:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 6 February 2012 14:39, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur may > not have actually lived at Camelot" to me. Am I in a minority? > Someone called Arthur or Arcturus or something like that probably lived one time or another, and if and when we decide to identify him as *the* historical Arthur behind the legend, it probably becomes a sensible questione. The same goes for a Joshua from Nazareth who was involved in some religious turmoil at the beginning of our era. Only, it becomes quite arbitrary to decide which Mr. Jones working in the banking sector in Manhattan during the eighties we are referring to... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gsantostasi at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 18:17:54 2012 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 12:17:54 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I'm convinced Jesus is a myth. One of the best scholars to have discussed this in depth is Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus. See also the documentary the God that was not there. Giovanni On 2/6/12, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 6 February 2012 14:39, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > >> "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur may >> not have actually lived at Camelot" to me. Am I in a minority? >> > > Someone called Arthur or Arcturus or something like that probably lived one > time or another, and if and when we decide to identify him as *the* > historical Arthur behind the legend, it probably becomes a sensible > questione. > > The same goes for a Joshua from Nazareth who was involved in some religious > turmoil at the beginning of our era. Only, it becomes quite arbitrary to > decide which Mr. Jones working in the banking sector in Manhattan during > the eighties we are referring to... :-) > > -- > Stefano Vaj > From kryonica at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 18:50:07 2012 From: kryonica at gmail.com (Kryonica) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 18:50:07 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <9784FA0B-4BA6-4B7E-8658-377111C46B16@gmail.com> The existence of one Joshua of Nazareth is mentioned by people who had no interest in promoting the Christian religion, see Bart Ehrman on Jesus Apocalyptic prophet, like f i Flavius Josephus. Moreover it is pretty hard to construct such a set of myths and beliefs about someone totally invented and have his contemporaries believe in it.. Such idolatry generally begins with a charismatic guy who dies, and then people begin to tell stories about him. On 6 Feb 2012, at 18:17, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > I'm convinced Jesus is a myth. One of the best scholars to have > discussed this in depth is Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus. See > also the documentary the God that was not there. > Giovanni > > > On 2/6/12, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> On 6 February 2012 14:39, Ben Zaiboc wrote: >> >>> "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur may >>> not have actually lived at Camelot" to me. Am I in a minority? >>> >> >> Someone called Arthur or Arcturus or something like that probably lived one >> time or another, and if and when we decide to identify him as *the* >> historical Arthur behind the legend, it probably becomes a sensible >> questione. >> >> The same goes for a Joshua from Nazareth who was involved in some religious >> turmoil at the beginning of our era. Only, it becomes quite arbitrary to >> decide which Mr. Jones working in the banking sector in Manhattan during >> the eighties we are referring to... :-) >> >> -- >> Stefano Vaj >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From gsantostasi at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 19:02:22 2012 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 13:02:22 -0600 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: <9784FA0B-4BA6-4B7E-8658-377111C46B16@gmail.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <9784FA0B-4BA6-4B7E-8658-377111C46B16@gmail.com> Message-ID: Jesus was a very popular name at that time. Also as you mentioned possible candidates for an historical Jesus mentioned by historical documents are decades away from the time Jesus of xianity is said to have lived. There is a passage in Josephus that mentions Jesus from Nazareth the cristos but it has been proven to be a forgery done by xians monks in the middle ages. Jesus historical weight is as much as that of Heracles. Giovanni On 2/6/12, Kryonica wrote: > The existence of one Joshua of Nazareth is mentioned by people who had no > interest in promoting the Christian religion, see Bart Ehrman on Jesus > Apocalyptic prophet, like f i Flavius Josephus. Moreover it is pretty hard > to construct such a set of myths and beliefs about someone totally invented > and have his contemporaries believe in it.. Such idolatry generally begins > with a charismatic guy who dies, and then people begin to tell stories about > him. > On 6 Feb 2012, at 18:17, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > >> I'm convinced Jesus is a myth. One of the best scholars to have >> discussed this in depth is Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus. See >> also the documentary the God that was not there. >> Giovanni >> >> >> On 2/6/12, Stefano Vaj wrote: >>> On 6 February 2012 14:39, Ben Zaiboc wrote: >>> >>>> "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur >>>> may >>>> not have actually lived at Camelot" to me. Am I in a minority? >>>> >>> >>> Someone called Arthur or Arcturus or something like that probably lived >>> one >>> time or another, and if and when we decide to identify him as *the* >>> historical Arthur behind the legend, it probably becomes a sensible >>> questione. >>> >>> The same goes for a Joshua from Nazareth who was involved in some >>> religious >>> turmoil at the beginning of our era. Only, it becomes quite arbitrary to >>> decide which Mr. Jones working in the banking sector in Manhattan during >>> the eighties we are referring to... :-) >>> >>> -- >>> Stefano Vaj >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Feb 6 18:57:45 2012 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 10:57:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus In-Reply-To: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328554665.48445.YahooMailNeo@web160605.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> I'm kind of agnostic on this issue (of Jesus as a once existing real person, though one without any miraculous powers), but I lean toward there being no single individual -- that the Jesus stories, even the ones in the Gospels, are more likely amalgams of many traditions. I feel the same might be true for some other religious figures. Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kryonica at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 18:44:37 2012 From: kryonica at gmail.com (Kryonica) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 18:44:37 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <984FF7DD-CCB4-430A-A650-3971BFE517C4@gmail.com> Yes, except that Joshua of Nazareth was probably more charismatic than the average Mr Jones of his days, and that is why the guys around him who believed in him went berserk when they killed him - especially as it probably happened quite unexpectedly and quite quickly: he went to the Temple on some business, was arrested, tried and died. Same would go for guys like Alexander the Great and Napoleon, they made their mark on people around them. "Saint" Paul btw has a lot to answer for when it comes to turning Joshua from a Rabbi who preached the Messiah to the Messiah he was preaching... On 6 Feb 2012, at 18:08, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 6 February 2012 14:39, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur may not have actually lived at Camelot" to me. Am I in a minority? > > Someone called Arthur or Arcturus or something like that probably lived one time or another, and if and when we decide to identify him as *the* historical Arthur behind the legend, it probably becomes a sensible questione. > > The same goes for a Joshua from Nazareth who was involved in some religious turmoil at the beginning of our era. Only, it becomes quite arbitrary to decide which Mr. Jones working in the banking sector in Manhattan during the eighties we are referring to... :-) > > -- > Stefano Vaj > _______________________________________________ > 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 dan_ust at yahoo.com Mon Feb 6 19:07:58 2012 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 11:07:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328555278.57291.YahooMailNeo@web160605.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> On Monday, February 6, 2012 1:17 PM Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > I'm convinced Jesus is a myth. One of the best scholars to have > discussed this in depth is Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus. See > also the documentary the God that was not there. There's a vast literature aside from Price (and someone else mentioned Bart Ehrman, who I also recommend along with Dennis R. MacDonald) that calls into question the existence of a single individual who all these tales relate back too -- even if one removes the miraculous context. One could spend decades studying the arguments pro and con, but there's no knockdown argument for his existence as an actual historical figure. Of course, most people back then lived and died without leaving a trace in the historical, literary, religious, or archaeological record. But the strange thing about Jesus is many of the stories attributed to him seem to have been around before he was supposedly alive. Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 19:00:35 2012 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 17:00:35 -0200 Subject: [ExI] RES: The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <011b01cce501$9f330230$dd990690$@gmail.com> I'm convinced Jesus is a myth. One of the best scholars to have discussed this in depth is Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus. See also the documentary the God that was not there. And also Richard Carrier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOGebAEOU2g From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 6 19:21:37 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 11:21:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: <984FF7DD-CCB4-430A-A650-3971BFE517C4@gmail.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <984FF7DD-CCB4-430A-A650-3971BFE517C4@gmail.com> Message-ID: <003c01cce504$8c5803b0$a5080b10$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kryonica Subject: Re: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) Yes, except that Joshua of Nazareth was probably more charismatic than the average Mr Jones of his days. Kryonica Ja, but what's with the notion of always having the dull average guy being called Jones? The Joneses typically stay ahead of most of the neighborhood, giving rise to the popular comment "Keeping up with the Joneses." This makes it tough to stay ahead when one is a Jones, with eeeeeverybody out to keep up. I go with the notion that Jesus was a composite character. Imagine we wrote a composite character made of all the regular posters on ExI-chat, with a union set of our areas of expertise, our attitudes, our everything. Like the Jesus composite, she would be one hell of a guy, ja? They might still be talking about us a couple thousand years later. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 19:14:02 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 19:14:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Presumably this was said in jest, and it did make me laugh, but I'm now wondering how many people, > on this list and elsewhere, that are not religious, actually believe there was a Jesus. > > I don't mean believe in Jesus as in 'this guy who totally existed, was the son of some god or other', > but in the sense of believing there was a single person that these stories are based on. ?I'd have thought it > patently obvious that Jesus is a kind of King Arthur or Robin Hood figure, a composite myth from many stories > over a long period of time. ?There is absolutely no historical evidence for such a figure > (afaik, please correct me if I'm wrong on that. ?With references, obviously!). > > Not everything I say is meant to be in jest. :) In this case it was just keeping my options open. The search for the historical Jesus has occupied vast numbers of scholars over the centuries. Yeshua was a very popular name for Jewish sons as every family wanted their son to be the Messiah who fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies. So there were many 'Yeshua' rabbis, preachers and rebel leaders during those tumultuous years. The Jesus Seminar has estimated that only about 20% of the sayings attributed to Jesus could possibly have been said by him. Of course, their methodology has been widely criticised. But, considering his background as a Jewish rabbi, even a radical rabbi, it seems obvious to me that Jesus would have no time for all the Greek theology that Paul preached to his Greek audience. Jesus preached in Aramaic to a Jewish audience and was much more 'down-to-earth' than Pauline theology. The gospels were written in Greek, for a Greco / Roman audience after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and the Jewish followers of Yeshua scattered. So, for what it's worth, my opinion is that there was a popular Jewish rabbi / rebel leader called Yeshua, but little of what he taught his Jewish followers can be found in the New Testament writings. BillK From kryonica at gmail.com Mon Feb 6 20:36:03 2012 From: kryonica at gmail.com (Kryonica) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 20:36:03 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <2B9355C8-93F8-4E0C-9BBF-9671983ADFA7@gmail.com> Yes that is also what I have gathered from my readings on this topic. On 6 Feb 2012, at 19:14, BillK wrote: > But, considering his background as a Jewish rabbi, even a radical > rabbi, it seems obvious to me that Jesus would have no time for all > the Greek theology that Paul preached to his Greek audience. Jesus > preached in Aramaic to a Jewish audience and was much more > 'down-to-earth' than Pauline theology. The gospels were written in > Greek, for a Greco / Roman audience after Jerusalem was destroyed by > the Romans in 70 AD and the Jewish followers of Yeshua scattered. > > So, for what it's worth, my opinion is that there was a popular Jewish > rabbi / rebel leader called Yeshua, but little of what he taught his > Jewish followers can be found in the New Testament writings. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 6 21:03:20 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 13:03:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The Existence of Jesus (FICTION) References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328562200.59773.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Ben Zaiboc > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Cc: > Sent: Monday, February 6, 2012 5:39 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) > > BillK jested: > >> But, of course, Jesus may not actually have said that ... > "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King > Arthur may not have actually lived at Camelot" to me.? Am I in a minority? In the spirit of the lunatic that the creationists will make me out to be, allow me to offer the following joke to entertain those you who grokk: You all know that?I am an atheist, but it so happens that an upload of one of my descendants, who will at the time?live on Kepler 22b, one Stuart the XIVth.II Beta Version?will by chance, and boredom, become a Mormon. He later will apologize to me citing that since?he was?an upload,?*real* booze?wasn't an option for him anyway?and?a Mormon hawty's biggest errogenous zone?was?her mind, just like everyone else's. Furthermore he could marry as many of *those* as he wanted. Anyway, you get the drift and to cut a long story short,?I ended up forgiving him because none of this would?have happened if?Colorado hadn't?kicked out the FLDS in the 25th century?and forced?them to move to Kepler 22b. So like always, it was the governments fault. In any case,?by virtue?of the Mormon?Baptism by Proxy, not only will?the gates of heaven be open to me?after I die, but I also have complete recollection of my premortal existence in Heaven. And it so happens that one day, (which in Heaven is not saying much, because that is what Heaven is, one loooooooooooooong day), I got tired of getting beaten at chess by Einstein. So I got up and bid him a good day, which likewise in Heaven is not saying much, and took my leave of the man. I decided to go and hang with Jesus who actually was a fun guy to roll with. After all,?he liked the whores, and you never had to pay for sushi when he was around. I got up to the front door of the Heavenly Mansion?and got ready when to knock when I heard the most terrible ruckus from inside. And while I am not normally nosy, this was God and well to put it frankly when God speaks, you can't help but?overhear: "Dammit, son, you will do as you are told and?go to Earth!" "But, dad, I don't mind Earth but?why then and there!?! I hate the Romans! They enslave EVERYBODY! And why do I have to be a Jew? I mean can't I go to Greece or something? I like the?climate and the wine there."?? "It's because of my covenant with the Jew's, son." "What? You want me to go to the ghetto because of that stupid bet you made with Abraham? That he wouldn't whack his only son for you? Dad?!? We have talked about your gambling addiction! Einstein?might not?know you play dice with the universe but it won't be long before he figures it out. He's not stupid you know! And what's with?this sudden?obsession of yours?with betting on human behavior? I mean you got outstanding?bets with Satan regarding exactly how much of a tool Job is and?another bet going on with Abraham?about?the number of?straight guys in Sodom. And now this?!?" "Don't worry son, you will only have to be there for about 30 years or so." "Oh well that's not so bad. Then I get to go to Athens?" "No, then the Roman's crucify you." "Oh . . . wait, what?!? Are you fucking kidding me?" *Clap of thunder* "Mind your Language, Boy!" "But, Daaad,?you're talking about sending me down to Earth as a Jew just so that I can get nailed to?a tree by some?Romans. Being a Jew is bad enough but that's insane!" "No, son, they only nail common criminals to trees. Because you are my son, they will build a special contraption to nail you to. See, I got the designs right here. See that crossbeam? That's designed to keep you alive until I get done with my golf game.?When will that be? Oh, I am thinking?about sixish.?It depends on whether I make par or not but it doesn't matter because with the crossbeam you could hold out until morning, except for dehydration and stuff. But don't worry it won't come to that,?one of the Roman centurions on duty at the execution will suddenly?remember that his wife is cooking porkchops that night so he is going to shank you with a spear, so he can go home early." "But Dad!?! If I have to get executed, can't I get executed by the Athenians?" ? "Greeks, Romans, why would you care WHO executes you?" ? "Well Socrates says that in Athens, they execute you by making you drink a generous portion of wine laced with hemlock." ? "Now, listen, here young man! So long as you live in my mansion, my kingdom, or my universe you will live by MY rules! AM I UNDERSTOOD THAT I AM?!?" '"Yes, Dad." ? "GABRIEL! MICHAEL! Socrates no longer allowed on the premises! Capiche?" ? I heard the muffled flutter of wings and much ass-kissing. ? "But dad, if I?have to live?by your rules in Heaven and on Earth, that only leaves Satan's place." ? "Well I don't care what what you do when you are at your brother's." ? "Cool." ? "What?" ? [Authors Side Note: Satan smokes pot and most of the hottest?actresses in Hollywood end up at his place. Except for Angelina Jolie . .? She's STILL with Brad?Pitt.?] ? "Nothing. Nothing. Say does Mom know you plan to send me to Earth as a Jew just so that the Romans can kill me before I get a full beard?" ? "What? Nice try, son. But your mom is currently only nine years old and Gabriel thinks it would be creepy to tell anything about my intentions to knock her up for a few more years. He recommends waiting until?after she finds?some sucker to marry her so he can feed your non-job-getting ass." ? "Damn! Well ok, it looks like you got me by the short hairs there,?Dad. So what about the Holy Spirit?" "Yeah? And? What about the Holy Spirit?" Well do I get to take it with me? You know do the magic and stuff? You know chicks dig the bling!" "Yes, son, but only if you promise not to use the magic to get rich, hurt anyone, or keep yourself from getting your ass kicked." ? "Wait. WHAT? That's not fair! How do I ever get any chicks if I am broke, polite, AND wimpy?" ? "Well you could always conjure food." ? "What? What kind of ghetto bitch is going to do me for fried chicken?" ? "Mary Magdalene, here's a picture of her." ? "Well ok, I guess,?at least I won't die a complete virgin. Does she do anal?" ? *Several Thunderclaps* ? "OK OK Dad . . . I will go along with your stupid plan. But please stop,?no more lightning.?But I got to?know one more thing. Why?her for my mom? I mean why not a RICH Jewess I mean there are?plenty of?those." ? "Ahhh . . . but you see that is the beauty of my plan." ? "What, I don't get it?" ? "Well she is the great-great-great-great-great-great grand-daughter of King David. And King David is the great-great-great-great-great-great grand-son of . . ." ? "Gasp... ABRAHAM?!? You are sending me?YOUR ONLY SON?down to the armpit of the Roman Empire to get beaten, whipped, and CRUCIFIED by mouth-breathers?on a 'special' tree that you designed yourself; all so that you can fuck Abraham's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grand-daughter??All because you lost a bet with him that he would not?kill his only son for you . . .??and then . . .?but wait... He didn't actually kill his son! You stopped him! So maybe I am bit slow here but, one more time, why do I have to?DIE a poor Jew tortured to death by Romans?" ? "That's bullshit, son. I created?ALL the trees." ? "Wait what? That doesn't even answer my question! Sometimes you are IMPOSSIBLE to talk to! I could literally pray to you all day and it's like you aren't even listening!" ? "You want to know why, son? Because I?lost the lease on the Earth in my last bet to your brother. So now I have the mortgage to Heaven staked in a bet with Vishnu, that I will have more followers?than he by the end of the?22nd century. So?if you don't do this for me,?Son, then you and?EVERYBODY up here will have to move in with your brother." ? "Oooh. I can see how that would kill the?vibe of?Satan's pad. He wouldn't like it one bit. Ok, Dad, you win, I guess I will do it just this once . . . You know for the team. When do you want me to leave?" ? "Today." ? "Right, of course." ? "Hey Dad? I am gonna see what Stuart is up to ok?" ? "OK. Be back in time for supper." ? "Yes, Dad." ? Just then the door opened and I saw Jesus' face. He didn't seem his normal happy self. ? "Oh hey, Jesus, I was just stopping by to see if you wanted to hang? What's wrong?" ? "My Dad is sending me away to Earth to be a Jew for a while. I gotta learn carpentry and then ironically get nailed to a cross by the Romans for pissing off the wealthier Jews. You know the popular ones that get laid all the time." ? "Why is he doing that?" ? "Ooooh I'd rather not not talk about it. It's kind of sensitive. Family secret and all." ? "Oh, no problem. You know it could be worse? ? "How so?" ? "Well at least he's not?sending you to the Earth, to get executed by the Native Americans. They like to pour honey all over you and then tie you down?on an ant hill to slowly be eaten alive by ants." ? Jesus shuddered and then looked at me curiously, "Say, Stu, you ever read the Book of Mormon?" ? "No, why?" ? "Nothing, never mind." ?? ?"So when do you leave for Earth?" ? "Today." ? "What does that even mean?" ? "I don't know." ? "So what do you want to do now?" ? "Oh I was thinking we could stop by Hell and see what Satan is up to." ? "Sounds good to me. Let's roll." ? THE END ? Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From seculartranshumanist at gmail.com Tue Feb 7 02:17:58 2012 From: seculartranshumanist at gmail.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 21:17:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanism on gaming podcast Message-ID: I was interviewed on the Jennisodes gaming podcast in reference to my "Adventures Dark and Deep" RPG project, and worked in a couple of minutes on Transhumanism near the end of the interview. For those who are completists about such things, or want to hear me talk at length about what Dungeons and Dragons might have looked like if Gary Gygax had stayed with TSR past 1985, you can here the whole thing here: http://www.jennisodes.com/podcasts/adventures-dark-and-deep The transhumanism mentions begin around 45:00 or so. Joe From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Feb 7 13:17:47 2012 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 06:17:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Existence of Jesus (FICTION) In-Reply-To: <1328562200.59773.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328562200.59773.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Stuart, the phrase "throwing pearls before swine" came to mind as I read your effort at creative writing. Or perhaps "swine playing with pearls" would be more accurate. : ) If the story of Jesus is true in terms of him being an authentic historical/mere mortal figure, or especially some sort of real supernatural being, I certainly wish there were strong evidence for it. My very devout friends would say prayer and fasting, and a manifestation from the Holy Spirit, is the way to get an answer to these questions. But I admit to wanting angelic messengers showing up in my bedroom, in the middle of the day when I am wide awake. It would probably be even better if they showed up in the middle of a transhumanist conference, but then they might be viewed as visiting extraterrestrials who were only posing as angels! After her husband Stan died of cancer, Anne Rice decided to change direction and write a book series about the life of Christ. She spent an extended period of time reading everything she could on the subject of Jesus. Rice read books critical of the idea of him having even been just a historical figure, and then she next focused on tomes that supported the idea of him having been an actual man, or even divine. She says at the beginning, she expected the arguments against him to be far stronger, but in the end she claims the opposite was actually true. I realize Anne Rice is not an academic, but I suspect her research skills are very good. This is definitely worth reading... http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/anne-rice-atheist-christ/ She later had a falling out with institutional Christianity, but not her belief in Jesus... http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/antheabutler/3065/anne_rice_quits_christians,_still_dates_jesus _ I thought you were taking your story in the direction of the classic Mormon-created comic strip, that showed two time travelers appearing to a young and confused Joseph Smith, who mistakes them for God the Father and Jesus! But it turns out the two figures are grad students from the far future who are playing a prank! If you want to learn more about the Mormon subculture, buy a couple of Pat Bagley's award-winning collections... http://www.amazon.com/dp/0980140609/ref=wp_dp_24?ie=UTF8&qid=1328616631&sr=8-1-wp&ingressSource=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%2Fref%3Dwp%5Fbts%5F1%3Furl%3Dsearch-alias%253Daps%26field-keywords%3Dpat%2Bbagley%26x%3D15%26y%3D19 What is your source for knowledge about Mormonism? Were you raised in the Church? Or did you have friends who were members? I'm just curious. I used to think a Mormon would not be in the Oval Office within my lifetime, but it looks like I may soon be proven wrong. I do think Donny Osmond or Steve Young might have been better choices over the current option... lol I look forward to the day when historians and archaeologists have access to time scanners, both so we can settle these arguments, and to have some really kick-ass historical documentaries. But that won't be for awhile... 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URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Feb 7 18:24:57 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 19:24:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: <984FF7DD-CCB4-430A-A650-3971BFE517C4@gmail.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <984FF7DD-CCB4-430A-A650-3971BFE517C4@gmail.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/6 Kryonica > Yes, except that Joshua of Nazareth was probably more charismatic than the > average Mr Jones of his days, and that is why the guys around him who > believed in him went berserk when they killed him - especially as it > probably happened quite unexpectedly and quite quickly: he went to the > Temple on some business, was arrested, tried and died. > Yes, I am myself tentatively inclined to believe that in this sense he "existed". *B*ut my point was that once you know so little about the actual relationship between a given individual and the stories told a couple of centuries later about him (perhaps even merging memories related to different people to a well-established mythological legacy) the question of whether he existed does not really admit an answer, one way or for that matter another, because you do not even know, contrary to what is applicable to, say, Alexander the Great, who you are talking about. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 7 22:37:03 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 14:37:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] bees again Message-ID: <001b01cce5e9$03e6a690$0bb3f3b0$@att.net> A few weeks ago, the news came across the bee-watchers groups about apocephalus borealis, a fly that punches its eggs into the abdomen of a honeybee: http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_19666381 The story mentions the A. borealis was found in bees in every county in the SF bay area except Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. I live in Santa Clara, so I decided to collect dying bees to see if A. borealis larvae emerge. The first experiment concluded two weeks ago with an apparent negative: that one was a bumblebee. On the way back from my son's school today we found a dying honeybee, so experiment number 2 commences. This is an ideal citizen scientist activity. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed Feb 8 00:24:20 2012 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 19:24:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <001b01cce5e9$03e6a690$0bb3f3b0$@att.net> References: <001b01cce5e9$03e6a690$0bb3f3b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <905a719f5bf93a1086b93483a6dcf411.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> spike wrote: > The story mentions the A. borealis was found in bees in every county in the > SF bay area except Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. I live in Santa > Clara, so I decided to collect dying bees to see if A. borealis larvae > emerge. The first experiment concluded two weeks ago with an apparent > negative: that one was a bumblebee. On the way back from my son's school > today we found a dying honeybee, so experiment number 2 commences. > That's very interesting. I hope Isaac can appreciate the post-mortem examinations. :) It would have been nice if a grownup had taken time to do things like that with me. We have had unseasonably warm weather here, and some spring flowers are blooming. These are flowers that usually are filled with bees - early flowers are limited in number. So far this season I've seen *one* honeybee and several tiny native bees. The honeybee seemed confused by the flowers and did not appear to actually go into a bloom while I was watching, but circled and hovered and circled some more. :( The natives unhesitatngly went in there to do their thing. :) Regards, MB From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 8 01:00:02 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 17:00:02 -0800 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <905a719f5bf93a1086b93483a6dcf411.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <001b01cce5e9$03e6a690$0bb3f3b0$@att.net> <905a719f5bf93a1086b93483a6dcf411.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <003b01cce5fc$fd9dd380$f8d97a80$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of MB Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again spike wrote: >> The story mentions the A. borealis was found in bees in every county in the SF bay area except Santa Clara and San Mateo counties... >...That's very interesting. I hope Isaac can appreciate the post-mortem examinations... Part of having it made is knowing when you have it made. My son has no idea how lucky he is, not the vaguest clue. >... :) It would have been nice if a grownup had taken time to do things like that with me... As with most of us. We achieved a fraction of our potential, because so much of our time growing up was spent being babysat by the television. The content had approximately zero socially redeeming qualities back in those days. >...We have had unseasonably warm weather here, and some spring flowers are blooming... This is the warmest winter here I remember in 23 years. The global warming people may come through for us after all. If so, I take back every snarky comment. This has been a gorgeous winter. I hear it has been cold in Europe. >... So far this season I've seen *one* honeybee and several tiny native bees... Those tiny native bees are probably Nomia melanderi, if you are west of the Rockies in the US. Description: http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQyW67xBBOFJjMNAgeSQhaH_iTKooZXlwqXD V9gpiaV6TUphrNbDbxml1w This one is a digger, smaller than the familiar honeybee. http://www.ebeehoney.com/Pollination.html >.The honeybee seemed confused by the flowers and did not appear to actually go into a bloom while I was watching, but circled and hovered and circled some more. :( The natives unhesitatngly went in there to do their thing. :) Regards, MB Cool observation MB! I will mention it in my bee forum and reference you if you don't object. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 2764 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 8 01:07:06 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 17:07:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] granny's stoned again Message-ID: <004101cce5fd$fa4eb310$eeec1930$@att.net> Oh man, my grandmother would have been so much more pleasant to deal with had she been around for this development: http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/topvideos/2012/02/07/cm-medical-m arijuana-seniors.cnn-money I am generally against dope of any kind, but if the person is retired, life's decisions are behind them and they don't drive, I can think of exactly zero reasons to avoid smoking grass. spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 8 02:14:13 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 18:14:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] The Existence of Jesus (FICTION) In-Reply-To: References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328562200.59773.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328667253.31900.YahooMailNeo@web164518.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> >________________________________ >From: John Grigg >To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list >Sent: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 5:17 AM >Subject: Re: [ExI] The Existence of Jesus (FICTION) > > >Stuart, the phrase "throwing pearls before swine" came to mind as I read your effort at creative writing.? Or perhaps "swine playing with pearls" would be more accurate.? : )? If the story of Jesus is true?in terms of him being an?authentic?historical/mere mortal?figure,?or especially some sort of real?supernatural being, I certainly wish there were strong evidence for it.? My very?devout friends would say prayer and fasting, and a manifestation from the Holy Spirit, is the way to get an?answer to these questions.? But I admit to wanting angelic messengers?showing up in my bedroom, in the middle of the day when I am wide awake.???It would?probably be even better if they showed up in the middle of a transhumanist conference, but then?they?might be?viewed as visiting extraterrestrials who were only posing as angels!? ? John.?If there was a historically accurate Yeshua Ben Yoseph, I feel very sorry for him.?Mostly because the worst possible crime I can see that he?commited was perhaps suffering from?Schizophrenia. However from a philosophical standpoint,?I *disagree* with a lot of the things he said. For example, you will *never* see me turn the other cheek more than once. I run out cheeks, you run out chances. And while crucifixion is horrible, the romans may have crucified a million people or more all told. Have you ever heard of the Appian Way? ? In the aftermath of Spartacus'?slave rebellion, the Romans crucified *6000* men on a 120 mile stretch of road between Capua and Italy. In my opinion, those 6000 martyrs for freedom deserve more respect than a?schizophrenic who died on a?cross-shaped gibbet?talking to God. In any case in?the day where a horse was your fastest transportation, can you imagine travelling 120 miles surrounded by?decaying corpses hanging from?gibbets? ? I don't think you would want?angels in your bedroom. Angels are kind of like Gods hitmen. In the cannonical Bible, the?*most* innocuous?thing an angel ever did was announce?an embarrasing pregnancy that would lead to a crucifixion. The rest of the time they preside over turning cities into smoking craters, breaking people's hips, evicting squatters from paradise, that sort of thing. And these are supposedly the *good* ones. So yes, I would as soon see a paranoid SWAT team in my bedroom as angels. ? In regards to your question of where I get my Mormon knowledge from, some of my best friends are Mormons. And to be honest, I admire Mormonism in many respects, its a young vibrant religion currently in its prime. Its dogma, while no less silly in my opinion than any others, has a lot of marketing appeal. Stuff?like Jesus visiting the American continents, proxy baptism, premortal existence. So while I myself?would never?subscribe to Mormonism, if religions sold stock, I would certainly buy Mormon stock over say Catholic stock. Followers of the?blond-haired blue-eyed prophet may be the best buffer America has against the followers of the warrior-prophet?from the desert.?They certainly are every bit as fertile when it comes to average number of children per family. ? That being said,?Mormonism is still a mind-virus. God is the unneccessary hypothesis. To know yourself and to know the universe *is* to know God because there is nothing else. ? Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 8 02:39:17 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 18:39:17 -0800 Subject: [ExI] bees again In-Reply-To: <003b01cce5fc$fd9dd380$f8d97a80$@att.net> References: <001b01cce5e9$03e6a690$0bb3f3b0$@att.net> <905a719f5bf93a1086b93483a6dcf411.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <003b01cce5fc$fd9dd380$f8d97a80$@att.net> Message-ID: <004801cce60a$db88f870$929ae950$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 5:00 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again >... On Behalf Of MB Subject: Re: [ExI] bees again spike wrote: . >>... So far this season I've seen *one* honeybee and several tiny native bees... >Those tiny native bees are probably Nomia melanderi, if you are west of the Rockies in the US. Description: http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQyW67xBBOFJjMNAgeSQhaH_iTKooZXlwqXD V9gpiaV6TUphrNbDbxml1w >http://www.ebeehoney.com/Pollination.html This one is a digger, smaller than the familiar honeybee. spike On the other hand, you did specify tiny, and the melanderi are not all that much smaller than honeybees. But this guy is much smaller, less than half the size of a typical honeybee, the Megahilidae, or leafcutter bee: Description: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Leaf-cutter-bee.jpg /220px-Leaf-cutter-bee.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megachilidae I seldom see those around here, but they might be common where you are. MB, seldom a day goes by that I don't marvel at how lucky we are to live in the internet age. I remember all too well just twenty years ago spending 80 bucks for a really nice bee book. Today that book is practically useless: I can't do google searches in it. Part of having it made is knowing when you have it made. We do. Information which was so recently so hard to find and get, is now at our fingertips constantly. We are swimming in information, happier than pigs in the mud. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 2764 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 8158 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 03:05:15 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 20:05:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus (Was: Political Origins of Life) In-Reply-To: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:39 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > BillK jested: > >> But, of course, Jesus may not actually have said that ... > > Presumably this was said in jest, and it did make me laugh, but I'm now > wondering how many people, on this list and elsewhere, that are not religious, > actually believe there was a Jesus. I'm inclined to think there was an actual person named Jesus of Nazareth. He was the kind of guy that would not have gotten a lot of attention at the time, there were dozens of would be messiahs in Judea at the time, yet Josephus did (possibly) mention him. That's at least independent evidence that he existed, which is more than you really would expect for someone who really was destined to be obscure. What he actually did, of course, is an entirely different story. Yet, I think there is a rational basis to believe much of what was attributed to him was actually said by him. Of course, I'm not in the miracle crowd, but there wasn't much time for people to get their stories straight on that stuff, and there is a reasonably high degree of correlation in the four gospels (and some of the apocryphal stuff as well). > I don't mean believe in Jesus as in 'this guy who totally existed, was the son > of some god or other', but in the sense of believing there was a single person > that these stories are based on. ?I'd have thought it patently obvious that Jesus > is a kind of King Arthur or Robin Hood figure, a composite myth from many > stories over a long period of time. ?There is absolutely no historical evidence > for such a figure (afaik, please correct me if I'm wrong on that. ?With references, > obviously!). See Titus Flavius Josephus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus >From Historicity of Jesus... "Although a few scholars have questioned the existence of Jesus as an actual historical figure, some scholars involved with historical Jesus research believe his existence, but not the supernatural claims associated with him, can be established using documentary and other evidence. Most contemporary scholars agree that Jesus was a Jew who was regarded as a teacher and healer, that he was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman Prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, on the charge of sedition against the Roman Empire." > "Jesus may not have actually said that" sounds very like "King Arthur may not > have actually lived at Camelot" to me. ?Am I in a minority? I think there is quite a difference (in terms of the evidence) between Jesus and Arthur. Arthur was first mentioned in Historia Brittonum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_Brittonum Key here is that this first mention (written perhaps around 830, nearly 300 years after Arthur's alleged death) proclaims Arthur to be a battle leader being "with" the Kings, and not a king himself. The earliest documents talking about Jesus, on the other hand, are somewhat consistent with the story we still have today. So Jesus doesn't have the problem of the story of what he did changing over time to the same extent as Arthur. Arthur is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or named in any surviving manuscript written between 400 and 820. Jesus is mentioned once in the writings of Josephus. James, the brother of Jesus, is mentioned in Josephus in such a way that most serious scholars do not doubt the veracity of that particular passage. So if James was a real historical figure, then why not his brother? People like Alexander the Great and Xerces are exactly the kind of people that you would expect historians to pay attention to IN THEIR DAY. So, of course, we have no debate over figures like these. But people who became important only because of their ideas and much later than their life time, are more suspect. Homer is a great example of this. Many people don't think he was real, and at least a few scholars even think Homer might have been a female (though the reason escapes my memory at the moment). The Gospel of Mark is assumed to have been written around 70 AD. And the Q document was thought to have been assembled around 50 AD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_document Since there were living witnesses to the actual events by those dates, one can assume that the truth wasn't stretched beyond recognition. While not a believer, the historicity of the bible since the time of David and Solomon is not too bad for a 2000-2500 year old document. Much of what was thought to be legend has been affirmed by archaeology. Before David's time, it is likely a fabrication. Job is generally recognized by scholars to be the oldest book (when it was written, not the time it was written about) in the canonical Bible. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 03:41:18 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 20:41:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:59 AM, Kryonica wrote: > This morning on BBC news "too much drinking" is once more all the rage: > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16869618 > > Does anyone know how well founded scientifically is all this talk about for instance increased risk of mouth cancer if one glass of wine regularly turns into two or three? ?I get suspicious with these general statements (after being repeatedly reminded by Anders that they have to be taken with a pinch of salt and that one must always have a look at the real scientific article behind them), and all the more so because I like my red wine and have read elsewhere (on the BBC!) that it is good for me :-/ ?The BBC article is full of very sweeping statements indeed that would require some expert reading to sort the wheat from the chaff. > I understand that even a little alcohol does increase the incidence of breast cancer, but I can't point to the specific research. However, it was reinforced recently by my girl friend's doctor (while getting a mammogram). There is a lot of anti-alcohol sentiment where I live (Utah), so it is difficult to separate out what is real and what is not. Drinking while pregnant, even in relatively small amounts does increase the chances of FAS for the fetus. That's not a fun one. I don't think anyone would argue for large amounts of alcohol. That clearly does liver damage and lots of other bad stuff. Had a friend of a friend die last week from that stuff. There are of course the reports that the antioxidants in red wine helping the French. The question is whether you could get antioxidants some other way... and I don't think we know a lot about the health hazards of just a little alcohol. There are some indications that longevity is better in people who never use any alcohol, but since the people in those studies also didn't typically smoke, it's hard to draw a very strong conclusion. I normally don't drink, though I've had a few in the last year. Tried red wine once. Did not like it. Probably won't try it again. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 03:50:44 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 20:50:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The existence of Jesus In-Reply-To: <1328555278.57291.YahooMailNeo@web160605.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <1328535560.11902.YahooMailClassic@web114418.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1328555278.57291.YahooMailNeo@web160605.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/6 Dan : > On Monday, February 6, 2012 1:17 PM Giovanni Santostasi > wrote: >> I'm convinced Jesus is a myth. One of the best scholars to have >> discussed this in depth is Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus. See >> also the documentary the God that was not there. > > There's a vast literature aside from Price (and someone else mentioned Bart > Ehrman, who I also recommend along with Dennis R. MacDonald) that calls into > question the existence of a single individual who all these tales relate > back too -- even if one removes the miraculous context. One could spend > decades studying the arguments pro and con, but there's no knockdown > argument for his existence as an actual historical figure. Of course, most > people back then lived and died without leaving a trace in the historical, > literary, religious, or archaeological record. But the strange thing about > Jesus is many of the stories attributed to him seem to have been around > before he was supposedly alive. You make a lot of good points here. I, for one, wouldn't expect knockdown evidence. It is difficult to say anything for sure about an obscure occurrence in an obscure corner of the world 2000 years ago. Certainly Jesus was not the first person to teach many of the things he taught. If that's what you are referring to... though I don't see that as proof of anything except that perhaps Jesus was a bit of a plagiarist. The anti-plagiarist sentiment is a rather new thing on the ethical scene, so it's hard to fault him for that. Most religious teachers are plagiarists, and unapologetically so. If you are teaching the "truth", and you repeat the truth as you heard it from someone else, that's not a bad thing, in the eyes of those who believe that truth. If you are referring to stories about Jesus, as opposed to stories Jesus told, I'd be interested in hearing more about that. I'm not dogmatic on this topic. I just see no convincing reason to doubt that he existed. What would be the reason for making it up? Why would the story be made up so rapidly? (as opposed to Arthur who's story evolved over a period of many centuries) And solidify so quickly? Most individuals who's existence is now doubted had their story evolve over a longer period of time than Jesus. -Kelly From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 01:59:39 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 20:59:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Then and still Now (was Re: bees again) Message-ID: 2012/2/7 spike > As with most of us. We achieved a fraction of our potential, because so > much of our time growing up was spent being babysat by the television. The > content had approximately zero socially redeeming qualities back in those > days. > And it has more now?!? Honestly, I don't feel that for all of our exponential increase in the rate of change that things are all that much different. I will admit that my own apathy may be accelerating at a rate equal to our rate of change. It seems we should be much closer to all the wondrous things promised to me during my childhood. Computers were supposed to delivering immersive VR by now. To hell with the flying cars cliche, we should be flying at the speed of thought (minus lightspeed latencies) through a multiverse of our own creation(s). What do we actually have? Another bloated OS release to support the next bloated software release that drives the next hardware purchase to keep our productivity constant. I could type 90 words a minute in 1986. I might be able to type 90 words a minute now, but now I can do it while streaming video of a talking dog. (that's progress) In 1988 we made fun of christmas modemers partly because we were jealous of their 9600 baud rate, partly because the n00bs didn't understand the hard-won nerd culture. That nerd culture has been supplanted by the mainstream. Yeah sure, there's probably several variations of nerd subculture still out there - perhaps I've just moved on from being part of those groups. The technology has made it possible to be more of the same as we've always been. The details may be 30+ years different, but people's "trending" feels the same. Sorry Spike, this rant really is out of nowhere (at least I changed the subject line). I considered discarding rather than sending, but I wondered if anyone else shares this nagging sense... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 04:22:53 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 21:22:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Buying Stock in Mormonism (was Re: The Existence of Jesus (FICTION)) Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 7:14 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > In regards to your question of where I get my Mormon knowledge from, some > of my best friends are Mormons. And to be honest, I admire Mormonism in many > respects, its a young vibrant religion currently in its prime. Its dogma, while no > less silly in my opinion than any others, has a lot of marketing appeal. Stuff?like > Jesus visiting the American continents, proxy baptism, premortal existence. So > while I myself?would never?subscribe to Mormonism, if religions sold stock, I > would certainly buy Mormon stock over say Catholic stock. Followers of the > blond-haired blue-eyed prophet may be the best buffer America has against > the followers of the warrior-prophet?from the desert.?They certainly are every bit > as fertile when it comes to average number of children per family. I would also buy stock in Mormonism. Not just for the reasons you give, though they are excellent, but also because the strong hierarchical nature of the church allows for it to adapt rapidly in the face of change. It will be very hard for many religions to decide when a cyborg can be welcomed into the fold and receive the benefits of membership in the kingdom, but this won't be a problem for Mormons. Whatever the prophet says, well, that's what goes. With the changes I see coming over the next few decades, the Jehovah's Witnesses are going to have to adapt their story to "See, we told you there would be a paradise earth! and we're in it." The Mormons will just happily go ahead because of the built in adaptation of having a living prophet give revelation for current events. Other churches have to have schisms, and reorganizations to get radically different belief systems to fit new realities. So yes, I'm bullish on Mormonism. It's going to be around for a long time. Probably longer than Homo Sapiens, if my guess is right. There are a lot of here and now benefits to being a member of the church. The church welfare program, for one. The educational system for another. The rich social network that predates Facebook by 150 plus years. While the big payoff may be in the next world, it's good to be a Mormon. Except you have to believe a bunch of stuff that is a bit silly. Though not one bit more silly than what any other religious people believe. > That being said,?Mormonism is still a mind-virus. God is the unneccessary > hypothesis. To know yourself and to know the universe *is* to know God because > there is nothing else. Agreed. Now, for another point. The US electorate seems bound and determined that their candidates for President will be lilly white and unblemished by significant scandal. The Mormons tend to be able to produce that sort of candidate. Does that mean that we can expect a number of Mormon presidential candidates? I rather think so. And, if Romney gets elected, which I think is in the realm of probability... and he does a really good job... then there is no reason to doubt that we might get another one someday. I have a pet theory. Succinctly, that all presidential candidates have recently selected a "life insurance" candidate for vice president. Nobody in their right mind would assassinate George Bush Senior in order to get Dan Quayle in the oval office. Gore instead of Clinton? Cheney instead of Jr? Biden instead of Obama? (The last one may be a little stretch, but my theory goes back a while. Of course Biden would be pretty bad.) So who does Romney have to nominate for vice president so that some lunatic born again christian won't knock him off? How about John Huntsman? LOL. It will be interesting to see who his "life insurance policy" will be. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 8 04:59:53 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 20:59:53 -0800 Subject: [ExI] the 1 to 10 game, was: RE: Then and still Now (was Re: bees again) Message-ID: <006901cce61e$7fa922a0$7efb67e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 6:00 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Then and still Now (was Re: bees again) 2012/2/7 spike >>.As with most of us. We achieved a fraction of our potential, because so much of our time growing up was spent being babysat by the television. The content had approximately zero socially redeeming qualities back in those days. >.And it has more now?!? Honestly, I don't feel that for all of our exponential increase in the rate of change that things are all that much different.The details may be 30+ years different, but people's "trending" feels the same. .Sorry Spike, this rant really is out of nowhere (at least I changed the subject line). I considered discarding rather than sending, but I wondered if anyone else shares this nagging sense... Mike, go with me on this flight of fancy, a thought experiment please. Picture some area in life which you really care about, such as your favorite hobby or pastime, your foremost interest, your passion. If you are a foodie for instance, play this game. Imagine the worst possible world for a foodie (ignoring starvation for the purposes of this exercise) and assign that as 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. The beans and cold greasy tater tots they threw at you at summer camp is 1, that revolting tripe that you ate because that's what was there and you were starving, or perhaps those desiccated hotdogs that have been revolving for the past four days on the freeway gas station ZippyMart. That's 1. Now imagine the very best you can do if you have a ton of money: a standing army of the best chefs from all over the world, ready to fix you anything you want on demand, as often as you want, anytime day or night, a team of world class chefs working for you alone. Assign that as 9. That's the best you can do with today's tech with arbitrarily large amounts of money. Reserve 10 as whatever is better than that: you can have better food than we know how to make today, but you don't get fat. You like motorcycles? 1 is a rattly old moped that doesn't run right. 9 is a warehouse full of every bike ever made, all of them yours, exotics, monster-bikes, a collection that would put Jay Leno's to shame, a collection that would give you a major boner, that's 9. 10 is better than that, somewhere beyond current technology, but if you heard it described, you would get it and you would want it. The bikes go faster than anything today, but handle so well you never crash, and you ride like the wind. Other examples, suppose you are a connoisseur of feminine beauty. 1 is, well, use your imagination, and 9 is Hugh Hefner's life: willing an nubile beauties everywhere, as many as money can buy. 10 is better than that. An example of 10: you can have Ingrid Bergman in 1943 trim, or be on the receiving end of those loving gazes Julie Andrews gave Captain Von Trapp in 1964, or Kina Grannis in her current form, and neither your mate or their mates are bothered, for it's your thought experiment, and they don't care what you do in your own mind. So that's the game, pick your favorite thing in this life, or something you really care about, set 1 equal to terrible, 9 is as good as it gets today, and 10 is better. Nowthen, take your entire life and imagine going from 1 to 10 in that time span in that area which you really care about and is your passion. That would be defined as a damn good life, ja? That would be a life in which you have it made and you know it clap your hands. My passion in life has been learning stuff, access to information. Since I am one whose life passion and interest is information gathering, I am one of the fortunate few who has seen a 1 to 9 transition, but I can do one better. >From the point of view of just 20 years ago, my current world is a 10, because what I have right in front of me now is beyond anything I could have done in 1990, regardless of how much money I had, because we didn't have the web in those days. Earlier this evening when I started wondering about alternate pollinators, all I had to do is go into Google, type in alternate pollinators bees, and BOOM, everything I wanted to know is right there. I compare with my bee book, for which I traded a day's wage at that time, a very thick book filled with information it is, a fine book. But it is nothing compared to what I can find in seconds on the internet. Twenty years ago is fresh enough in my memory. I used to haunt libraries, just being an information pacman, browsing on random stuff. But now is so much better. So we don't have flying cars and high speed rail. No problem, I don't need to go anywhere anyways. What I want to do is right here. Mine has been a 1 to 10 life, and life is good. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 8 05:21:11 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 21:21:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006e01cce621$78d5f9a0$6a81ece0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson ... There are of course the reports that the antioxidants in red wine helping the French... -Kelly Kelly, I am assuming you saw this: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/01/11/red-wine-researcher-accused-falsify ing-data-on-health-benefits/ I haven't heard the rest of the story, but the health benefits of red wine are again being re-examined carefully. One of the major researchers reporting positive results has been accused of falsifying data. spike From bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Feb 8 10:44:52 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 02:44:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Then and still Now In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1328697892.95655.YahooMailClassic@web114403.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Mike Dougherty bemoaned: > Honestly, I don't feel that for > all of our > exponential increase in the rate of change that things are > all that much > different.? I will admit that my own apathy may be > accelerating at a rate > equal to our rate of change.? It seems we should be > much closer to all the > wondrous things promised to me during my childhood.? > Computers were > supposed to delivering immersive VR by now.? To hell > with the flying cars > cliche, we should be flying at the speed of thought (minus > lightspeed > latencies) through a multiverse of our own > creation(s).? What do we > actually have?? Another bloated OS release to support > the next bloated > software release that drives the next hardware purchase to > keep our > productivity constant. I could type 90 words a minute in > 1986.? I might be > able to type 90 words a minute now, but now I can do it > while streaming > video of a talking dog.? (that's progress)? In > 1988 we made fun of > christmas modemers partly because we were jealous of their > 9600 baud rate, > partly because the n00bs didn't understand the hard-won nerd > culture.? That > nerd culture has been supplanted by the mainstream.? > Yeah sure, there's > probably several variations of nerd subculture still out > there - perhaps > I've just moved on from being part of those > groups.???The technology has > made it possible to be more of the same as we've always > been.? The details > may be 30+ years different, but people's "trending" feels > the same. > > Sorry Spike, this rant really is out of nowhere (at least I > changed the > subject line).? I considered discarding rather than > sending, but I wondered > if anyone else shares this nagging sense... I can understand this, but don't agree. It just reminds me again of the old saying that people consistently greatly overestimate short-term change while greatly underestimating long-term change. Now you can argue what 'short-term' and 'long-term' mean! Ben Zaiboc From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 8 12:31:33 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 13:31:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Then and still Now (was Re: bees again) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20120208123133.GI7343@leitl.org> On Tue, Feb 07, 2012 at 08:59:39PM -0500, Mike Dougherty wrote: > 2012/2/7 spike > > > As with most of us. We achieved a fraction of our potential, because so > > much of our time growing up was spent being babysat by the television. The I didn't. Monochrome CRT and useless state propaganda programming will help you with that. Dead tree was the only thing. Assuming you could get it, which was hard enough. Stuff like library.nu or libgen were inconceivable by most but perhaps time-share operators who entered books by hand during idle hours, and spread it on punched cards, tape and magnetic tape. Providing a stimulating yet constructive environment of a kid is actually harder today for most people, due to absentee parenting. Most people now need two bread winners (and likely both pulling significant overtime if not multiple jobs) in the house to even break even. Multigenerational families under one roof are the exception, or even wages allowing one parent to say home to raise the kids. > > content had approximately zero socially redeeming qualities back in those > > days. > > > And it has more now?!? Honestly, I don't feel that for all of our > exponential increase in the rate of change that things are all that much There's no exponential increase, outside of a few usual suspect areas. Internet traffic is one of these, and here is a definite example where quantity doesn't translate into quality. Moar furry porn? Ack, ptui. > different. I will admit that my own apathy may be accelerating at a rate Apathetic? I'm just chronically angry at how we're pissing away resources decade after decade, while the window of opportunity is closing. With more experience you see more vanishing opportunities. Meanwhile, I could strangle the cheerfully chirruping linear semilog plot polyannas, telling us all is dandy, things are improving, and that your chocolate rations have increased from 100 to 80 grams. Gag me with a plunger. > equal to our rate of change. It seems we should be much closer to all the > wondrous things promised to me during my childhood. Computers were > supposed to delivering immersive VR by now. To hell with the flying cars Computers were supposed to deliver immersive VR by 1990. We've had people actually running around in Google glasses they're promising us Really! Soon!! NOW!!! at around the same time. > cliche, we should be flying at the speed of thought (minus lightspeed > latencies) through a multiverse of our own creation(s). What do we > actually have? Another bloated OS release to support the next bloated > software release that drives the next hardware purchase to keep our > productivity constant. I could type 90 words a minute in 1986. I might be You will be able to type less, because few people have mechanical keyboards these day. Rubber dome or -- heavensforbid -- short action chiclets will frustrate the best touch-typist. Try talking to normal people about the differences between Cherry MX blue, black red or brown, they're looking at you like you're a martian. > able to type 90 words a minute now, but now I can do it while streaming > video of a talking dog. (that's progress) In 1988 we made fun of > christmas modemers partly because we were jealous of their 9600 baud rate, > partly because the n00bs didn't understand the hard-won nerd culture. That > nerd culture has been supplanted by the mainstream. Yeah sure, there's Twatr or Fecesbook posters think they're geeks! My irony meter has just melted down. > probably several variations of nerd subculture still out there - perhaps > I've just moved on from being part of those groups. The technology has > made it possible to be more of the same as we've always been. The details > may be 30+ years different, but people's "trending" feels the same. I don't know where you are, but we used to have real industry 30 years ago. People were not software 'engineers' (snort!) but actual engineers building stuff than matters. Now aerospace is going going gone, so has chemistry, pharma just implodes, and don't get me started on the other stuff. Sure, computers are fast. But they'll no longer will be making them in Dresden. > Sorry Spike, this rant really is out of nowhere (at least I changed the > subject line). I considered discarding rather than sending, but I wondered > if anyone else shares this nagging sense... Very little nagging about that sense. It's more of a deafening roar of incoming 100 tons of shredded titanium, about to impact. From kryonica at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 13:27:15 2012 From: kryonica at gmail.com (Kryonica) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 13:27:15 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Chimp + Message-ID: The enhanced ape is here and it is smarter than we are! http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16832378 From amon at doctrinezero.com Wed Feb 8 13:42:02 2012 From: amon at doctrinezero.com (Amon Zero) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 13:42:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Urgent: Position paper on mitochondrial DNA donation Message-ID: Dear All - The Nuffield Council on Bioethics in the UK has issued a call for position papers on the ethics of donating mitochondrial DNA. This is an opportunity to express transhumanist sentiment to an official body who are paying attention. Fabio Albertario of the UK Transhumanist Association has started some notes toward a submission, and we would like to get constructive opinions from anyone who would like to offer them. Because time is short - the paper is sue later this month - we have set this up as a working section within the ZS wiki. This means that rather than entertaining the usual convoluted list conversations, people can cut to the chase and edit notes toward the document directly. Link to the wiki section is: * https://sites.google.com/site/metaspace25/3-position-statements/1-nuffield-bioethics-mitochondrial-donation * Using the wiki does not require ZS membership - this call has been sent out to the lists of various futurist lists of different flavours. If you haven't visited the wiki before, you will however need to request access (it's not fully public, so we have the option of throwing out random public trouble makers). I do hope you consider pitching in to make the transhumanist / futurist voice heard when it counts! Amon Kalkin on behalf of H+Action -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 16:28:44 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 17:28:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 8 February 2012 04:41, Kelly Anderson wrote: > There are some indications that > longevity is better in people who never use any alcohol, but since the > people in those studies also didn't typically smoke, it's hard to draw > a very strong conclusion. > On the anedoctical side, my grand-mother died at age 104, and for the last forty or fifty years or her life she did not drink any water. Red wine at meals, essentially, plus an occasional tea at 5 pm, say, once or twice a week. Very little other liquids, but those contained in food. Another individual who spent his entire life in Sardinia and died at 105+ reportedly had the same lifestyle . -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 16:32:55 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 16:32:55 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! Message-ID: Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are unbound to a host star in the Galaxy. We refer to these objects as nomads; in the literature a subset of these are sometimes called free-floating or rogue planets. Our estimate for the number of Galactic nomads is consistent with a smooth extrapolation of the mass function of unbound objects above the Jupiter-mass scale, the stellar mass density limit, and the metallicity of the interstellar medium. Complete pdf file =============== Can there really be up to 100,000 wandering planets for *every* star? That's a mind-boggling big number of planets. BillK From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 8 16:46:23 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 08:46:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Fw: Buying Stock in Mormonism (was Re: The Existence of Jesus (FICTION)) In-Reply-To: <1328719531.36321.YahooMailNeo@web164505.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328719531.36321.YahooMailNeo@web164505.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1328719583.28414.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > ----- Original Message ----- >> From: Kelly Anderson >> To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list > >> Cc: >> Sent: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 8:22 PM >> Subject: Buying Stock in Mormonism (was Re: [ExI] The Existence of Jesus > (FICTION)) >> ? >> I would also buy stock in Mormonism. Not just for the reasons you >> give, though they are excellent, but also because the strong >> hierarchical nature of the church allows for it to adapt rapidly in >> the face of change. It will be very hard for many religions to decide >> when a cyborg can be welcomed into the fold and receive the benefits >> of membership in the kingdom, but this won't be a problem for Mormons. > > If they let people wear bluetooth headsets in church, the cyborgs are are > already there. But your point of constant adaptability is well taken. > ? >> Whatever the prophet says, well, that's what goes. With the changes I >> see coming over the next few decades, the Jehovah's Witnesses are >> going to have to adapt their story to "See, we told you there would be >> a paradise earth! and we're in it." The Mormons will just happily > go >> ahead because of the built in adaptation of having a living prophet >> give revelation for current events. Other churches have to have >> schisms, and reorganizations to get radically different belief systems >> to fit new realities. So yes, I'm bullish on Mormonism. It's going > to >> be around for a long time. Probably longer than Homo Sapiens, if my >> guess is right. > > Potentially yes. Although why a 10 million year old being would believe in an > afterlife is beyond me. > ? >> There are a lot of here and now benefits to being a member of the >> church. The church welfare program, for one. The educational system >> for another. The rich social network that predates Facebook by 150 >> plus years. While the big payoff may be in the next world, it's good >> to be a Mormon. Except you have to believe a bunch of stuff that is a >> bit silly. Though not one bit more silly than what any other religious >> people believe. > > Can I borrow a million dollars? I will pay you back in?the next world,?when I > get my big payoff. I promise. ;-) > ? > ? > ? >>> That being said,?Mormonism is still a mind-virus. God is the > unneccessary >>> hypothesis. To know yourself and to know the universe *is* to know God >> because >>> there is nothing else. >> >> Agreed. >> >> Now, for another point. The US electorate seems bound and determined >> that their candidates for President will be lilly white and >> unblemished by significant scandal. The Mormons tend to be able to >> produce that sort of candidate. Does that mean that we can expect a >> number of Mormon presidential candidates? I rather think so. And, if >> Romney gets elected, which I think is in the realm of probability... >> and he does a really good job... then there is no reason to doubt that >> we might get another one someday. >> >> I have a pet theory. Succinctly, that all presidential candidates have >> recently selected a "life insurance" candidate for vice > president. >> Nobody in their right mind would assassinate George Bush Senior in >> order to get Dan Quayle in the oval office. Gore instead of Clinton? >> Cheney instead of Jr? Biden instead of Obama? (The last one may be a >> little stretch, but my theory goes back a while. Of course Biden would >> be pretty bad.) >> >> So who does Romney have to nominate for vice president so that some >> lunatic born again christian won't knock him off? How about John >> Huntsman? LOL. It will be interesting to see who his "life insurance >> policy" will be. >> > > I think?are right that?in general,?Mormons are electable. But please do not > construe my story as being some kind of subtle propaganda for Romney. I > don't dislike Romney, but Obama has not done a bad enough job or been > scandalized to the point I want to fire him. Hell by taking Bin Ladin out?the > way he did, he accomplished before the end of his first term what the Bush > administration could not do in two, in?theory that is. I mean were they even > trying? And while it can sometimes be annoying, practically every freeway and > major thoroughfare in town is under construction. So he is bringing work here to > Nevada, which is one of the hardest hit states of the recession and its > aftershocks. And often?elsewhere, I see little news stories that make me > optimistic that the economy is recovering a little bit at a time. He has been > good to veterans. Because of him, I will get mostly free healthcare because I > served my country even though I was not?involved in > the war du jour. > > And strangely, Obama reminds me of Theodore Roosevelt in that he is a populist > that seems to be really good at speaking softly and carrying a big stick. > Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 8 17:00:37 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 18:00:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20120208170037.GV7343@leitl.org> On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 05:28:44PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On the anedoctical side, my grand-mother died at age 104, and for the last > forty or fifty years or her life she did not drink any water. Red wine at > meals, essentially, plus an occasional tea at 5 pm, say, once or twice a > week. Very little other liquids, but those contained in food. > > Another individual who spent his entire life in Sardinia and died at 105+ > reportedly had the same lifestyle . Supercentenarians are a different breed than ordinary people. The more we look the more obvious it becomes. I'm not sure this can be packaged into a simple therapeutic (supercentenarian mimic) vector anytime soon, even should we know what makes them so different, which we don't. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 8 16:51:16 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 08:51:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1328719876.54714.YahooMailNeo@web164508.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: BillK > To: Extropy Chat > Cc: > Sent: Wednesday, February 8, 2012 8:32 AM > Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! > > Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy > > > > We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass > range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are > unbound to a host star in the Galaxy. We refer to these objects as > nomads; in the literature a subset of these are sometimes called > free-floating or rogue planets. Our estimate for the number of > Galactic nomads is consistent with a smooth extrapolation of the mass > function of unbound objects above the Jupiter-mass scale, the stellar > mass density limit, and the metallicity of the interstellar medium. > > Complete pdf file > http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.2687 That would be consistent with the MACHO?model of dark matter to explain the rotation curve of galaxies. ? Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 8 16:57:11 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 08:57:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <000001cce682$b40d76e0$1c2864a0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy >>...We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are unbound to a host star in the Galaxy... Complete pdf file =============== >...Can there really be up to 100,000 wandering planets for *every* star? That's a mind-boggling big number of planets...BillK _______________________________________________ It sure seems like there would be more than one nomad in orbit around the sun outside the orbit plane of the planets. We have Pluto/Charon which are thought to be Kuiper belt objects, that are out of the plane, but those are the only ones. If there are really that many nomads we should have several of them in the neighborhood, off the plane. I haven't done the calcs on this, but their notion might help explain the orbit velocity of stars as a function of distance from the center of the galaxy. The Strigari paper is very interesting and useful: their theory should be testable with current instrumentation using short timescale microlensing events. I hope they are right BillK: in the long run, more metal in the galaxy is a good thing. spike From kryonica at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 17:23:03 2012 From: kryonica at gmail.com (Kryonica) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 17:23:03 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3B9D5B33-A03B-4598-B23A-60EF553E9476@gmail.com> I like your grand-mother and am tempted to follow her recipe for longevity with wine and tea. Difficult though to avoid water with exercise and when temperatures are extreme - but then I suppose you grandmother did not exercise: it might have taken a few years off her life span ;-D On 8 Feb 2012, at 16:28, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On the anedoctical side, my grand-mother died at age 104, and for the last forty or fifty years or her life she did not drink any water. Red wine at meals, essentially, plus an occasional tea at 5 pm, say, once or twice a week. Very little other liquids, but those contained in food. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 18:22:52 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 19:22:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: <20120208170037.GV7343@leitl.org> References: <20120208170037.GV7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 8 February 2012 18:00, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Supercentenarians are a different breed than ordinary people. The more we > look the more obvious it becomes. I'm not sure this can be packaged into > a simple therapeutic (supercentenarian mimic) vector anytime soon, even > should we know what makes them so different, which we don't. > Yes. If a supercentenarian used to like to wear pink socks, the most we can tell is that pink socks are compatible with longevity. Mimics of single traits is certainly not guaranteed to deliver, and even if a factor actually plays some role in one's longevity, this might have simply to do with the expression of a different genetic endowment from your own. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Wed Feb 8 18:36:05 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 10:36:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1328726165.35763.YahooMailClassic@web114404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > From: "spike" > > >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson > ... > > There are of course the reports that the antioxidants in red > wine helping > the French... -Kelly > > > Kelly, I am assuming you saw this: > > http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/01/11/red-wine-researcher-accused-falsify > ing-data-on-health-benefits/ > > I haven't heard the rest of the story, but the health > benefits of red wine > are again being re-examined carefully.? One of the > major researchers > reporting positive results has been accused of falsifying > data. That 'French paradox' thing should have the status of an urban myth by now. It's never been about the wine, it's about the fact that the China study has been thoroughly debunked, yet people still continue to believe its message. It's no paradox that eating fatty food doesn't make you fat, and doesn't give you heart disease. You don't have to be French to prove it. You just have to stop being scared of dietary fat. And stop taking notice of the USDA. I don't think it's a stretch to say that they have actually caused the obesity epidemic. Ben Zaiboc From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 8 18:36:14 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 10:36:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: <000001cce682$b40d76e0$1c2864a0$@att.net> References: <000001cce682$b40d76e0$1c2864a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <000301cce690$89f9cb70$9ded6250$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy >>...We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the >>mass range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are unbound to a host star in the Galaxy... Complete pdf file =============== >>...Can there really be up to 100,000 wandering planets for *every* star? That's a mind-boggling big number of planets...BillK _______________________________________________ ... >...The Strigari paper is very interesting and useful: their theory should be testable with current instrumentation using short timescale microlensing events. I hope they are right BillK: in the long run, more metal in the galaxy is a good thing... spike _______________________________________________ WOW that Strigari et.al. paper is exciting! This is one of those rare opportunities where a model can be verified in a reasonably short time. The WFIRST is scheduled for launch in 2020: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Field_Infrared_Survey_Telescope Is this a great time to be alive or what? spike From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Wed Feb 8 19:11:03 2012 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 17:11:03 -0200 Subject: [ExI] RES: Planets galore! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <038c01cce695$6adebe80$409c3b80$@gmail.com> We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are unbound to a host star in the Galaxy. We refer to these objects as nomads; in the literature a subset of these are sometimes called free-floating or rogue planets. Our estimate for the number of Galactic nomads is consistent with a smooth extrapolation of the mass function of unbound objects above the Jupiter-mass scale, the stellar mass density limit, and the metallicity of the interstellar medium. This makes perfect sense to me. Considering that a star happens when enough gas is gathered in a sphere to ignite nuclear fusion, it makes sense that the amount of failed stars must be bigger than the amount of successful ones. They just couldn't gather enough gas. From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 8 19:13:34 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 11:13:34 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: <1328726165.35763.YahooMailClassic@web114404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328726165.35763.YahooMailClassic@web114404.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000d01cce695$c12959d0$437c0d70$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc >... >...It's no paradox that eating fatty food doesn't make you fat, and doesn't give you heart disease. You don't have to be French to prove it. You just have to stop being scared of dietary fat. And stop taking notice of the USDA. I don't think it's a stretch to say that they have actually caused the obesity epidemic. Ben Zaiboc Ben I think you are right. I come at this not from understanding diet theory, but rather from having stumbled onto an observation accidentally. Story: My bride and I hiked on the west side of Mount Rainier thrice on a stretch that requires three camping nights. First trip, carried too much food, so our packs were too heavy. Second trip, same trail, carried not quite enough, so we devoured the last crumb of our reserves the last day: dangerous. Third trip, summer 2003, we scored some back country permits, which lengthened the trip to four camping nights and increased the distance about 15 miles. We needed to lighten our packs, so we went with all freeze dried foods, which are zero fat. So for five days, we were burning calories like crazy, with sufficient calories but insufficient fat (insufficient as in zero.) On the last day of that trip only about 5 miles from the end of the trail, we came to a bunch of trees that had blown down across the path, creating an obstacle that ended up taking a couple hours to climb through. We had sufficient food reserves to camp a fifth night and hike out the next day, which would have been the safer way to go probably, but our craving for fat drove me to decide to clamber over the piles of trees (dangerous to do while tired) and hike out that evening. Our craving for fat overpowered our sense of reason, ordinarily very sound and cautious. I think this trait of craving fat has evolved into humans. If this is correct, it explains why so many weight losers fail: the dieter attempts a diet too low in fat, which creates a persistent craving which eventually overpowers all reason and the most iron clad willpower. Eons of evolution-selected instinct brutally crushes everything in its path, up to and including the will to live. An alternative would be a relatively high fat but low calorie diet: go ahead and eat your egg mcmuffin, but have only one. Then go ahead and eat a burger, but make it a small one, then stop! That's it, enough calories for that day. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Feb 8 21:01:03 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 15:01:03 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff Message-ID: <000601cce6a4$c50313c0$4f093b40$@cc> Has anyone read George Lakoff's writings on functionalism? His essay "Philosophy in the Flesh" is Brockman's The Mind: Leading Scientists Explore the Brain, dismisses functionalism as Putman's former interest, which he later dismissed and argued against. Lakoff claims that the mind is studied in terms of its cognitive functions independently of the brain and body. How can this be possible? If the mind is what the brain does (More) and the brain is an organ of the body, then how can Lakoff make this claim? It seems absurd to me and misleading. We have already discussed embodiment vs. disembodiment and the consensus is that we will exist in some type of system/substrate that can be seen or understood as a body (or new interpretation of body). If functionalism is the most appropriate position to take in this regard, why would functionalism claim to be devoid of a body? This brings us back to the annoying issue of disembodiment, which Lakoff claims to be the objective of and metaphor for neural computation. Natasha Natasha Vita-More PhD Researcher, Univ. of Plymouth, UK Chairman, Humanity+ Co-Editor, The Transhumanist Reader -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alito at organicrobot.com Thu Feb 9 00:06:15 2012 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:06:15 +1100 Subject: [ExI] Drinking In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F330DF7.6070100@organicrobot.com> On 02/08/12 14:41, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 1:59 AM, Kryonica wrote: >> This morning on BBC news "too much drinking" is once more all the >> rage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16869618 >> >> Does anyone know how well founded scientifically is all this talk >> about for instance increased risk of mouth cancer if one glass of >> wine regularly turns into two or three? I get suspicious with >> these general statements (after being repeatedly reminded by Anders >> that they have to be taken with a pinch of salt and that one must >> always have a look at the real scientific article behind them), and >> all the more so because I like my red wine and have read elsewhere >> (on the BBC!) that it is good for me :-/ The BBC article is full >> of very sweeping statements indeed that would require some expert >> reading to sort the wheat from the chaff. >> > > I understand that even a little alcohol does increase the incidence > of breast cancer, but I can't point to the specific research. > However, it was reinforced recently by my girl friend's doctor (while > getting a mammogram). > > There is a lot of anti-alcohol sentiment where I live (Utah), so it > is difficult to separate out what is real and what is not. > > Drinking while pregnant, even in relatively small amounts does > increase the chances of FAS for the fetus. That's not a fun one. > > I don't think anyone would argue for large amounts of alcohol. That > clearly does liver damage and lots of other bad stuff. Had a friend > of a friend die last week from that stuff. > > There are of course the reports that the antioxidants in red wine > helping the French. The question is whether you could get > antioxidants some other way... and I don't think we know a lot about > the health hazards of just a little alcohol. There are some > indications that longevity is better in people who never use any > alcohol, but since the people in those studies also didn't typically > smoke, it's hard to draw a very strong conclusion. > I thought the epidemiological studies about alcohol were relatively solid: light drinkers live longer than non-drinkers, and whether it is wine or beer or anything else doesn't make a difference. Higher odds of cancer, more than compensating lower odds of cardiovascular death. Meta-analysis reviews: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d671 (0.87x) http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/166/22/2437 (0.82x) http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2010/12/10/jech.2010.121830 None of this proves causation, and there are many suggested mechanisms of action not related to anti-oxidants. From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Feb 9 02:27:44 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 21:27:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff In-Reply-To: <000601cce6a4$c50313c0$4f093b40$@cc> References: <000601cce6a4$c50313c0$4f093b40$@cc> Message-ID: 2012/2/8 Natasha Vita-More : > We have already discussed embodiment vs. disembodiment and the consensus is > that we will exist in some type of system/substrate that can be seen or > understood as a body (or new interpretation of body).? If functionalism is > the most appropriate position to take in this regard, why would > functionalism claim to be devoid of a body? This brings us back to the > annoying issue of disembodiment, which Lakoff claims to be the objective of > and metaphor for neural computation. I would interpret the functionalism separation of brain and body to attempt to narrow the "mind" to computation of physical structures solely in and of the brain. Do the proponents of neural computation discount testosterone or adrenaline as body chemicals? Their impact on the brain is pretty profound - but is that because the body is the sensorimotor apparatus that the brain uses to interact with the world? If so, then wouldn't neurons-only be artificial in the same way that computer programs doing exactly as they are programmed to do is considered artificial intelligence or behavior? I'm thinking of the rat brain robots; they're neurons but without biological bodies. I think making this distinction between brain and body will be continuously redefined. It won't scale well as people end up sharing telepresence devices, projecting their concept of the self into new containers or conversely as "my" identity is running concurrently on multiple machines with multiple perspectives. This doesn't even need far-future technology to envision - several ustreams coming together form a sense of security around my stuff. To the extent that I am able to reach into those spaces either by awareness (read only) or by robotic manipulators, I could claim to be present. Are these assistive technologies my body? How far apart does one's prosthetic need to be before it is no longer considered part of the local body and becomes part of the extended body? Good topic Natasha, thanks :) From jedwebb at hotmail.com Thu Feb 9 06:29:30 2012 From: jedwebb at hotmail.com (Jeremy Webb) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 06:29:30 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: What an exiting theory! This is one heck of a disaster movie in the making too, step aside Bruce Willis! :0) Jeremy Jeremy Webb Heathen Vitki Tel: (07758) 966076 e-Mail: jedwebb at hotmail.com http://jeremywebb301.tripod.com/vikssite/index.html On 08/02/2012 16:32, "BillK" wrote: > Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy > > > > We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass > range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are > unbound to a host star in the Galaxy. We refer to these objects as > nomads; in the literature a subset of these are sometimes called > free-floating or rogue planets. Our estimate for the number of > Galactic nomads is consistent with a smooth extrapolation of the mass > function of unbound objects above the Jupiter-mass scale, the stellar > mass density limit, and the metallicity of the interstellar medium. > > Complete pdf file > > > =============== > > > Can there really be up to 100,000 wandering planets for *every* star? > That's a mind-boggling big number of planets. > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From eugen at leitl.org Thu Feb 9 09:59:10 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 10:59:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff In-Reply-To: References: <000601cce6a4$c50313c0$4f093b40$@cc> Message-ID: <20120209095910.GO7343@leitl.org> On Wed, Feb 08, 2012 at 09:27:44PM -0500, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Do the proponents of neural computation discount testosterone or > adrenaline as body chemicals? Their impact on the brain is pretty Why would you deliberately build a bad model, and then expect it work? > profound - but is that because the body is the sensorimotor apparatus > that the brain uses to interact with the world? If so, then wouldn't > neurons-only be artificial in the same way that computer programs > doing exactly as they are programmed to do is considered artificial > intelligence or behavior? I'm thinking of the rat brain robots; > they're neurons but without biological bodies. Anything practical has to be embodied. Isolated neuron cultures are at mercy of researchers, and will go into the biowaste bin once their work is done. Useless things don't stick around in the real world. > I think making this distinction between brain and body will be > continuously redefined. It won't scale well as people end up sharing > telepresence devices, projecting their concept of the self into new > containers or conversely as "my" identity is running concurrently on It's an illusion, albeit a useful one. Detachable sensoriums which can be relocated at relativistic speed do have their uses. > multiple machines with multiple perspectives. This doesn't even need > far-future technology to envision - several ustreams coming together > form a sense of security around my stuff. To the extent that I am > able to reach into those spaces either by awareness (read only) or by > robotic manipulators, I could claim to be present. Are these > assistive technologies my body? How far apart does one's prosthetic Tools are being incorporated into your internal body maps, so in a sense they're part of you. On the other hand, they're like crutches. Your avatar is left slackjawed and with virtual drool as you have your massive coronary in the ergonomic chair in front of your battlestation. > need to be before it is no longer considered part of the local body > and becomes part of the extended body? > > Good topic Natasha, thanks :) -- 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 bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu Feb 9 12:58:25 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 04:58:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Eating (Was: Drinking) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1328792305.15421.YahooMailClassic@web114413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "spike" wrote: > >... On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc > >...It's no paradox that eating fatty food doesn't make > you fat, and doesn't > give you heart disease.? You don't have to be French to > prove it.? You just > have to stop being scared of dietary fat.? And stop > taking notice of the > USDA.? I don't think it's a stretch to say that they > have actually caused > the obesity epidemic.? Ben Zaiboc > > > > Ben I think you are right.? I come at this not from > understanding diet > theory, but rather from having stumbled onto an observation > accidentally. [Story ensues] > I think this trait of craving fat has evolved into > humans.? If this is > correct, it explains why so many weight losers fail: the > dieter attempts a > diet too low in fat, which creates a persistent craving > which eventually > overpowers all reason and the most iron clad > willpower.? Eons of > evolution-selected instinct brutally crushes everything in > its path, up to > and including the will to live.? > > An alternative would be a relatively high fat but low > calorie diet: go ahead > and eat your egg mcmuffin, but have only one.? Then go > ahead and eat a > burger, but make it a small one, then stop!? That's it, > enough calories for > that day. That's interesting. I hadn't really considered the psychological effects of a low-fat diet, but it corresponds to my experience too (or rather that of a friend who is a bit of a 'low-fat' fanatic, and when exercising, especially when training for something like a triathlon, is frequently ravenous). I'd just add that a high-fat (and especially high-protein) meal actually makes it a lot easier to stop eating. Amino acids and fatty acids trigger satiation hormones that carbs don't. Ben Zaiboc From mbb386 at main.nc.us Thu Feb 9 13:31:01 2012 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 08:31:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Eating (Was: Drinking) In-Reply-To: <1328792305.15421.YahooMailClassic@web114413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328792305.15421.YahooMailClassic@web114413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: >> >> An alternative would be a relatively high fat but low >> calorie diet: go ahead >> and eat your egg mcmuffin, but have only one. Then go >> ahead and eat a >> burger, but make it a small one, then stop! That's it, >> enough calories for >> that day. > Consider Rabbit Starvation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation Regards, MB From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Feb 9 14:05:09 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:05:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff In-Reply-To: <000601cce6a4$c50313c0$4f093b40$@cc> References: <000601cce6a4$c50313c0$4f093b40$@cc> Message-ID: 2012/2/8 Natasha Vita-More > Has anyone read George Lakoff?s writings on functionalism? His essay > ?Philosophy in the Flesh? is Brockman?s *The Mind: Leading Scientists > Explore the Brain*, dismisses functionalism as Putman?s former interest, > which he later dismissed and argued against. Lakoff claims that the mind is > studied in terms of its cognitive functions independently of the brain and > body. How can this be possible? If the mind is what the brain does (More) > and the brain is an organ of the body, then how can Lakoff make this claim? > It seems absurd to me and misleading. > Mmhhh. A "weaker" form of functionalism might however just imply that we can study - and perhaps replicate - cognitive functions under a "black box" approach. Take for instance a microprocessor. If I copy the relevant lithographic masks I am in breach of the relevant special IP rights. But I can also map its responses to all possible inputs, and (try and) re-design a functionally equivalent processor that will be compatible with the first, and exhibit its features entirely irrespective of the internal structure and working of the first processor. Of course, speaking of minds, nothing guarantees that such an attempt is going to be successful, and - even more importantly - that I am going to end up with something with a performance even vaguely comparable with the original system, that is the organic brain of which I am trying to emulate the functions. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Feb 9 14:24:53 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:24:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Eating (Was: Drinking) In-Reply-To: <1328792305.15421.YahooMailClassic@web114413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1328792305.15421.YahooMailClassic@web114413.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 9 February 2012 13:58, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Amino acids and fatty acids trigger satiation hormones that carbs don't. > Apparently, a relatively high caloric input composed only by proteins and fats does not really makes one to become overweight because the relevant biochemical triggers are not activated, so it is at worst a waste (Atkins's or Eades's diets tell you that if you check what you eat you do not really have to checkl how much you eat). But I suspect that fats, when they are not ingested together with carbs, activate self-limiting reactions. Try to eat butter by spoonfuls on an empty stomach, and you do not go very far. Replace it with bread and butter, and you end up having not just added the bread, but also eaten a lot more butter than you would have otherwise. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu Feb 9 16:58:36 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 09:58:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Embodiment Message-ID: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27553/?nlid=nldly&nld=2012-02-07 Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Feb 9 21:16:40 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:16:40 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Embodiment In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <007b01cce770$1dab49e0$5901dda0$@cc> Good article. Thanks Jeff! Natasha Vita-More PhD Researcher, Univ. of Plymouth, UK Chairman, Humanity+ Co-Editor, The Transhumanist Reader -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Davis Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2012 10:59 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Embodiment http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27553/?nlid=nldly&nld=2012-02-07 Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles _______________________________________________ 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 Thu Feb 9 23:57:59 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:57:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Everything You Always Wanted to Know About AI* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) Message-ID: Thanks to Catarina Lamm, an English translation of my paper *Artificious Intelligence*s, which has just been published in the fifth issue of * Divenire*, the only continental peer-reviewed theoretical journal about transhumanism, is now online here . This brief essay summarises the radically posthumanist views of AI which are discussed by several multidisciplinary angles in the rest of this issue of *Divenire*, available in print for all those who understand Italian. Enjoy! :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Fri Feb 10 01:39:43 2012 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 20:39:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2F719D48-A60B-42FE-A5B0-3A9DC728BA88@alumni.virginia.edu> This topic brings to mind the phenomenon of when amputees have pain in their missing phantom limbs and are able to relieve the pain sometimes using "mirror therapy." http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box I think this lends support to idea that the present-day brain to be functional/comfortable/balanced needs at least to have the perception of (feedback indicating) embodiment. I'd extrapolate that in whatever medium the essence of our perception exists, we may require the perception of being embodied in an avatar. My belief obviously is that the essence of our perception is separable from the body in principle but requires at least the feedback mimicking a body to function properly. -Henry From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 10 10:52:08 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:52:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff In-Reply-To: <2F719D48-A60B-42FE-A5B0-3A9DC728BA88@alumni.virginia.edu> References: <2F719D48-A60B-42FE-A5B0-3A9DC728BA88@alumni.virginia.edu> Message-ID: On 10 February 2012 02:39, Henry Rivera wrote: > This topic brings to mind the phenomenon of when amputees have pain in > their missing phantom limbs and are able to relieve the pain sometimes > using "mirror therapy." http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box > I think this lends support to idea that the present-day brain to be > functional/comfortable/balanced needs at least to have the perception of > (feedback indicating) embodiment. I'd extrapolate that in whatever medium > the essence of our perception exists, we may require the perception of > being embodied in an avatar. My belief obviously is that the essence of our > perception is separable from the body in principle but requires at least > the feedback mimicking a body to function properly. > Yes. I think that major amputations may suggest what "changes" in one's identity when losing increasing parts of one's body without having them replaced by transplants or prostheses. Moreover, the ex-istence, the "being out there", in the world (or at least "a" world) is considered by some as essential to any accurate emulation of anthropomorphic or even teriomorphic intelligences (so that AI would be basically a robotic, rather than a computational, issue). In the article I have circulated the link to yesterday. I remark however that much of a human's complexity is in his or her brain, so that a full-body emulation should be just marginally more difficult than a brain-only one. If we crack the first problem, nothing indicates that the second would be a show stopper... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Fri Feb 10 15:58:13 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:58:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? Message-ID: Call me a silly blue-sky optimist. At first I thought, "Is it April 1st?" Then, "Holy sh*t!" Enjoy. Drug quickly reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice Case Western Reserve researchers discover FDA-approved drug rapidly clears amyloid from the brain and reverses cognitive defects http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/cwru-dqr020512.php Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From spike66 at att.net Fri Feb 10 16:25:25 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:25:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> ... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? >...Call me a silly blue-sky optimist. At first I thought, "Is it April 1st?" Then, "Holy sh*t!" >...Drug quickly reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice >...http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/cwru-dqr020512.php >...Best, Jeff Davis This is one of those cases where there will be volunteers lining up for miles for the first study that offers this stuff. Alzheimers patients have absolutely nothing to lose, and their lives to regain. None of the articles flying about on the internet in the last couple days have said how much it costs to make this stuff, but if they would tell me, I would personally kick in a few thousand bucks to make a gallon or two, and have a relative start drinking it down. Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers somehow make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is to get stoned, so can we grab their chemical expertise and hire them to cook us up some of this bexarotene? We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive. spike From eugen at leitl.org Fri Feb 10 17:15:47 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:15:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> Message-ID: <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 08:25:25AM -0800, spike wrote: > Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers somehow Looks easy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexarotene > make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is to get stoned, so can > we grab their chemical expertise and hire them to cook us up some of this > bexarotene? We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a It should probably be commercially available. In fact it is: https://www.google.com/search?q=bexarotene+buy however somewhat expensive. > chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive. They have no chemistry talent, with the exception of some people who post on Erowid. From spike66 at att.net Fri Feb 10 17:13:09 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:13:09 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> Message-ID: <004d01cce817$43cb98d0$cb62ca70$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of spike Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? ... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? >...Call me a silly blue-sky optimist. At first I thought, "Is it April 1st?" Then, "Holy sh*t!" >...Drug quickly reverses Alzheimer's symptoms in mice >...http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/cwru-dqr020512.php >...Best, Jeff Davis >... We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive... spike ...and furthermore... We often hear a comment about how we should be cautious about medical studies on mice, how they aren't necessarily applicable yakkity yak and mice are differ from humans bla bla. Well, note that nearly all these kinds of studies have to do with cancer research. We know cancer is a bunch of different things, and we know mice are different. But other beast studies not related to cancer are very helpful: in areas other than cancer, humans are physiologically more similar to the other mammals. For instance, the same diabetes drugs for humans will help most other mammals with that disease. Beast brains are more similar to ours than their cancer cells are similar to ours, at the neuron and synapse level. So I would argue Bexarotene is worth a try even if we don't know everything. In this case, humans would be the ideal lab beast, because we already have an infrastructure in place to assess the efficacy of the medication: family members to observe results, memory tests in the form of everyday activities, a ready control group (those who refuse to take any medication) everything we need to test this stuff. Let's get on it! Lets go! DAVIA DAVAI DAVIA! spike From atymes at gmail.com Fri Feb 10 16:49:29 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:49:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 8:25 AM, spike wrote: > Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? ?The dopers somehow > make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is to get stoned, so can > we grab their chemical expertise and hire them to cook us up some of this > bexarotene? ?We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a > chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive. The equipment and skill needed to reliably produce good quality medicinal drugs, are rarely to be found among those making cheap, black market recreational drugs. A better source would be DIY biotech enthusiasts. Similar mindset, better quality, little or no law enforcement interference. From spike66 at att.net Fri Feb 10 17:43:48 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:43:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 08:25:25AM -0800, spike wrote: >> Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? The dopers somehow >...Looks easy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexarotene ... >...It should probably be commercially available... It is! http://targretin.com/ >...https://www.google.com/search?q=bexarotene+buy however somewhat expensive... Expensive? Compared to what? For those families facing the prospect, the heartbreaking emotional drain and staggering expense of putting a family member in Alzheimers care, we will grasp wildly at any straw, a bit like what I am doing right now. Eugen, in the US, the cost of Alzheimers care is often largely carried by the family and it is typically 5000 Euro/month, and sometimes more. This can go on for years. This round of bexarotene is on me. The warnings are mostly to do with pregnancy, which I can assure you is not a factor in this particular family member's life. OK, so I have sent this around to the fam, and we are getting the goddam hell on this right away. The clock is ticking loudly. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 10 18:09:55 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:09:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> Message-ID: On 10 February 2012 18:43, spike wrote: > Expensive? Compared to what? > Actual manufacturing costs? :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Feb 10 18:58:58 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:58:58 -0800 Subject: [ExI] call to arms against a terrible disease: was RE: Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? Message-ID: <007601cce826$0c05f4e0$2411dea0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 8:25 AM, spike wrote: >> Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene? ?The dopers somehow make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is ... >...The equipment and skill needed to reliably produce good quality medicinal drugs, are rarely to be found among those making cheap, black market recreational drugs. OK skip that idea. Looks like there are several pharma-products available that contain bexarotene, so the homebrew isn't necessary in any case. However this all gives me one hell of an idea. Suppose there is some odd chemical somewhere which does dissolve amyloids in the brain. Do we wait years or decades for some obscure lab to stumble onto it? Perhaps no one ever does. However, all is not lost. Imagine some standard memory test for mice, a maze of some sort perhaps, where ordinary proles with no scientific training could use, by simply putting the mice in one end and noting the time to find the cheese. Imagine cheap detectors at various points in the maze, which for these purposes can be every bit as simple and cheap as a small magnet you glue onto or leg band onto your mice, with copper loops in various hallways, then software which takes the results and reduces the mouse's score to one or two numbers, such as time and error rate. Now imagine an enormous and grimly dedicated army of citizen scientist volunteers, a million proles who raise Alzheimer mice in their homes, and run the little bastards regularly, perhaps several times daily. We have an internet central distribution point which collects the data from everywhere, similar in principle to GIMPS and Folding at Home and such. We have some standard food we give the mice, plus some study ingredient. Could be bexarotene, or any oddball thing: some medication left over in the cabinet, doesn't matter what it is, but let's get enough volunteers to try a bunch of things, doesn't even need to be a medication. We could design a standardized maze which has living quarters, a maze which lets the mice through to get a reward, then circles back to the living quarters, all of it isolated well enough that anyone can set it up in the garage and need not have the experimenters directly contact the mice in any way. I can envision a setup which could contain about ten mice, cost about a few hundred bucks and perhaps 10 a month in recurring costs. It could communicate with the internet, send the data to a volunteer group who grok how to extract a signal from the noise. The home volunteer citizen scientist would be responsible only for supplying food and the one test ingredient. Have we anyone here who knows how to organize something like that? Or knows someone who knows? I think I can design a standard mouse maze that can be produced in quantity. I think I can do the instrumentation to detect a mouse magnet running by, and the software to collect the results. It could be there is some medication sitting quietly in the cabinet, waiting waiting waiting for someone to discover that it works against Alzheimers, as millions suffer the agony of losing their life's memories, their savings, their personhood, their everything. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Feb 10 19:39:45 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:39:45 -0600 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies Message-ID: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don't have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don't have to be transhumanist in scope. Thank you, Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Feb 10 19:19:07 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:19:07 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:43 PM, spike wrote: > Expensive? ?Compared to what? ?For those families facing the prospect, the > heartbreaking emotional drain and staggering expense of putting a family > member in Alzheimers care, we will grasp wildly at any straw, a bit like > what I am doing right now. ?Eugen, in the US, the cost of Alzheimers care is > often largely carried by the family and it is typically 5000 Euro/month, and > sometimes more. ?This can go on for years. > > This round of bexarotene is on me. > HuffPo article has a bit more info. Landreth and Cramer have formed a company called ReXceptor Therapeutics that intends to begin a preliminary trial in humans in the next few months to determine whether the drug crosses the blood-brain barrier and clears amyloid, as it does in mice. If those processes occur, clinical trials on the drug's effectiveness in humans could begin even this year, and they would probably last from 18 months to three years. The drug loses patent protection for cancer this year, but Case Western has filed for patents for its use in Alzheimer's. Despite their optimism, scientists say it's important not to overplay the progress. After all, drugs that work in mice do not necessarily help humans. Moreover, the genetically engineered version of mice used in this study do not recapitulate every aspect of the human disease. For instance, the mice do not experience the effects of dying neurons (despite having impaired cognition), and they do not go on to develop a hallmark characteristic of a later disease stage in humans--namely, the accretion of so-called tau proteins that seem to abet the killing of nerve cells. "Transgenic mouse experiments have not reliably predicted therapeutic effects in humans," Aisen says, "so caution is essential until human studies confirm target engagement," that is, the removal of amyloid plaques. As ReXceptor moves forward with its clinical trial plans, it will inevitably have to contend with the demands of the families of Alzheimer's patients. Landreth emphasizes that calling your physician after reading an article like this one is a bad idea. "Don't try this at home," he cautions, "because we don't know we what dose to give, we don't know how frequently to give it, and there are a few nuances to its administration. So one shouldn't be prescribing it off-label." It is also unclear whether a drug like bexarotene would work at a middle or advanced stage of the disease, when neurodegenerative processes have already set in. ------------ BillK From atymes at gmail.com Fri Feb 10 19:45:56 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:45:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] call to arms against a terrible disease: was RE: Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <007601cce826$0c05f4e0$2411dea0$@att.net> References: <007601cce826$0c05f4e0$2411dea0$@att.net> Message-ID: Nice idea, but the numbers in practice tend not to work. On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 10:58 AM, spike wrote: > Now imagine an enormous and grimly dedicated army of citizen scientist > volunteers, a million proles who raise Alzheimer mice in their homes, and > run the little bastards regularly, perhaps several times daily. A million unpaid citizen scientists focused on one project, which requires their time on a regular basis (not just their computers' time), would be difficult to recruit even for this - especially if you limited yourself to the US (which, given regulations, you might have to). But let us say you had 100,000 - for something like this, that might be doable. > We have an internet central distribution point which collects the data from > everywhere, similar in principle to GIMPS and Folding at Home and such. And yet so very different. GIMPS and Folding at Home are fully automated, and as such the quality is far better. Furthermore, they only require computer time; the people running this can forget it's even there. That's the secret to how they recruit so many people: someone just has to participate once, and then they're "helping" on a recurring basis by not doing anything (since these run while the computers idle). Ask anyone who runs a volunteer organization, how difficult it is to get recurring labor - even untrained labor, even for the best of causes. >?We > have some standard food we give the mice, plus some study ingredient. ?Could > be bexarotene, or any oddball thing: some medication left over in the > cabinet, doesn't matter what it is, but let's get enough volunteers to try a > bunch of things, doesn't even need to be a medication. You'd have to organize the logistics of sending these out, and then make sure they're properly identified in the database. If "mystery ingredient 10-THP" turns out to be a winner, you'd better be able to say what that ingredient is, but if no one bothered to record it properly before the experiment (when, so far as anyone knew yet, it'd do no better than the millions of others that had been tried), you're SOL. Worse, the 99+% of ingredients that didn't work also need to be identified, so people don't waste time retesting the same old thing. (Sure, lots of people might volunteer to buy plain old aspirin to test. After the 1,000th test shows no effect, 10,000 more people running that test really won't help at all...especially if that's the only test they can think of, that they'd be able and willing to run.) >?I can envision a setup which could contain about ten mice, cost about > a few hundred bucks and perhaps 10 a month in recurring costs. Easily at least $100/month, including raising and feeding the mice. For one thing, what's your cheese budget for the month, if you anticipate running at least a test a day, possibly several? For another, what about shipping around stuff that's worth testing but that no one had lying around (or sending in to some central place, a mystery compound that needed identification, so the tests run on it would mean anything)? That's $10,000,000 in total project budget per month. Even if most of that comes out of those 100,000 pockets, quite a bit is still going to have to come from some central source. >?It could > communicate with the internet, It? The automated system itself? How does it know which drug it is testing, or the state of the mouse being tested? A mouse given an appetite suppressant would be less likely to go for cheese than an equal one not given anything, and this has nothing to do with Alzheimer's. In general, such experiments need to be run in as identical setups as possible, to screen out unrelated factors. With the setup you are proposing, it does not seem practical to do this. Which is not to say that something like this couldn't work - just a few problems with this embodiment. Maybe you can find a way to address those challenges? From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Feb 10 20:23:25 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:23:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> Message-ID: <1328905405.51320.YahooMailNeo@web164517.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: spike > To: 'ExI chat list' > Cc: > Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 8:25 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? >? > This is one of those cases where there will be volunteers lining up for > miles for the first study that offers this stuff.? Alzheimers patients have > absolutely nothing to lose, and their lives to regain.? None of the articles > flying about on the internet in the last couple days have said how much it > costs to make this stuff, but if they would tell me, I would personally kick > in a few thousand bucks to make a gallon or two, and have a relative start > drinking it down. > > Anyone found any info on how to synthesize bexarotene?? The dopers somehow > make in their home labs meth-a-whatever-that-stuff-is to get stoned, so can > we grab their chemical expertise and hire them to cook us up some of this > bexarotene?? We will overlook that other business, and this will give them a > chance to use their chemistry talent for something constructive. Spike, looking at the chemical structure, it looks?it?would be time-consuming to manufacture by a DIY. The online prices you are finding are for the pharmaceutical grade stuff precisely dosed for cancer treatment. Rather than have?a chemist start from scratch to synthesize bexarotene,?I recommend you inquire as to the price of the industrial grade stuff which usually much cheaper and available by the kilogram from chemical companies all over the world. I found two in China that have it in their catalog but you have to inquire as to the price. I think the suppliers are all?in China because of patent issues. In any case, I can't imagine?how a?state-side DIY chemist could do any cheaper or better. Once you have the bulk product, then hire a drug chemist to QC the product from China and purify it?to pharmaceutical grade. I think this would be your cheapest route, Spike. Here is the information you will need for that: IUPAC Name:?4-[1-(3,5,5,8,8-pentamethyl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydronaphthalen-2-yl)ethenyl]benzoic acid CAS Number: 153559-49-0? Suppliers: Atomax Chem Address?Huiji 302 Huitingju Bao'An Avenue, ShenZhen, China 518104 Tel?0086 755 33239182 ???????sales department: 601 ???????Purchasing department: 602 ???????Accountant department: 608 Fax: 0086 755 33233381 Email?Atomax.chemicals at gmail.com, info at atomaxchem.com Amadis Chemical Co., Ltd. SaiBo Pioneer Park No.168,Jianding Road,Jianggan District. 310021.Hangzhou,Zhejiang,P.R.China. Tel:0086-571-89925085 Fax:0086-571-89925065 Email:sales at amadischem.com Web:www.amadischem.com Stuart LaForge From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 10 20:39:16 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:39:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> References: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> Message-ID: 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More > Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book > titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for > leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don?t have to like, agree with or > support the narratives, and they don?t have to be transhumanist in scope. > Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought of them. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Feb 10 23:38:49 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:38:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> Message-ID: <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:43 PM, spike wrote: >> Expensive? ?Compared to what? ?... >> This round of bexarotene is on me. HuffPo article has a bit more info. >...Despite their optimism, scientists say it's important not to overplay the progress. After all, drugs that work in mice do not necessarily help humans... We know. Read on please. >... Aisen says, "so caution is essential until human studies confirm target engagement," that is, the removal of amyloid plaques. Caution is essential. Noted. >...As ReXceptor moves forward with its clinical trial plans, it will inevitably have to contend with the demands of the families of Alzheimer's patients... Imagine that. >... Landreth emphasizes that calling your physician after reading an article like this one is a bad idea. "Don't try this at home," he cautions... Please let us contact Dr. Landreth and explain that the phrase "Don't try this at home" is actually code for "Try this at home." It's another one of those like when a cop is standing there saying "Move along folks, there is nothing to see here." >... "because we don't know we what dose to give, we don't know how frequently to give it, and there are a few nuances to its administration..." Noted. You have a standing army of patients who will pay for the medication themselves and experiment in a thousand different ways because *they have not one goddam thing to lose* NOTHING! And everything to gain. So hand over the medication and stand out of the way, because this army is coming, for we do know this: the current medications are ineffective, and may be making the problem worse. >... So one shouldn't be prescribing it off-label." BillK Prescribing my ass! We aren't asking doctors or anyone else to take responsibility for this outcome. What I expect of researchers is honesty and openness. If they find something that looks positive, ANYthing positive, I want them to report exactly what they saw and don't bother talking about three to five year clinical trials because too many families don't have three to five years. We are in a position to cast caution to the wind and become lab rats, for the alternative is bankruptcy of the family and gradual death in which even cryonics may not be able to help, as the brain may be destroyed long before the body stops functioning. Bexarotene is a straw of hope where currently there is none. I can imagine the black market for this stuff has gone open loop, and I don't see why not: the dopers somehow get whatever it is they poke into themselves without anyone prescribing that damn junk. So why can't the rest of us do whatever it is they do? Doctors, hand over the medications and stand back, we buy the risk, and good luck to us. spike From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Feb 11 00:13:57 2012 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:13:57 -0800 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> References: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> Message-ID: <4F35B2C5.3050002@mac.com> On 02/10/2012 11:39 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > > Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their > book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment > for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don't have to like, agree > with or support the narratives, and they don't have to be > transhumanist in scope. > Please share this list when you collect it. I would love to read more stories like that. The only ones that spring immediately to mind are: Permutation City (Egan) Accelerando (Stross) (parts of it) Golden Age triology (John C Wright) - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Feb 11 00:17:48 2012 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:17:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: References: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> Message-ID: <4F35B3AC.10509@mac.com> On 02/10/2012 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More > > Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and > their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative > environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don?t > have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don?t > have to be transhumanist in scope. > > > Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought > of them. > Lawnmower Man TRON When I think about it though, I think the Golden Age triology is about the only fully developed post-singularity upload universal culture I have come across. If I am missing some I would love to hear of them. - s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Sat Feb 11 00:31:42 2012 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:31:42 -0800 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: References: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> Message-ID: <4F35B6EE.3050406@mac.com> True Names (sort of but not a full blown uploaded culture) On 02/10/2012 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More > > Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and > their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative > environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don?t > have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don?t > have to be transhumanist in scope. > > > Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought > of them. > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Feb 11 01:43:02 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:43:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: <4F35B2C5.3050002@mac.com> References: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> <4F35B2C5.3050002@mac.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 Samantha Atkins > ** > Permutation City (Egan) > At least parts of Schild's Ladder and above all of Diaspora civilisations live permanently in a virtual wordl, even though much different of that of Count Zero. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 02:10:02 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:10:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> References: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> Message-ID: 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More : > Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book > titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for > leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don?t have to like, agree with or > support the narratives, and they don?t have to be transhumanist in scope. Rudy Rucker's Ware series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy I'm assuming everyone here has already read it and simply forgot about it or otherwise didn't think of it in response to "cyberspace as an alternative environment." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 02:05:03 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:05:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article Message-ID: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto &offset=2 Remember that Star Trek original Miri, one of the most memorable episodes of the bunch, where the people age very slowly, but some virus or something kills people whenever they get well into adolescence, with no effect on children. Consequently, the only inhabitants of the planet appear to be children, and revolting bastards they are for the most part (".bonk bonk on the head.") The apparently fifteen yr old Miri has it bad for Kirk, but he doesn't get involved with older women. Bones races to find a cure, but isn't sure what is the correct dose, so he has to make a wild guess and hope for the best, then use it on himself, otherwise they will all die. It works. It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one's weapon. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 03:17:37 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:17:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] temporary open season declared on bexarotene was: RE: good bexarotene article Message-ID: <00fa01cce86b$b5802280$20806780$@att.net> As your friendly nanopotent ExI-chat moderator, I propose a temporary open season on what looks like an exciting development, the use of bexarotene against Alzheimer's. We have tried this before, and it works pretty well: for the next week, if you are posting on this topic, it doesn't count against your normal daily posting guidelines of five posts a day. Let's do this for a week, shall we? If one is a non-cryonicist, the best thing that can happen is to live a long life and have a sudden heart attack. No suffering, low cost to the family, etc. You are just gone. Getting cancer is the worst thing. If on the other hand, one is a hardcore cryonics believer, a sudden heart attack is a bad thing because you cool and perhaps suffer brain degradation while the local yahoos figure out what to do. Some form of cancer is actually good perhaps, for one knows about how long one has to live and can make arrangements for the Alcor team. But for the cryonics hipster, Alzheimer's is perhaps the worst thing that can happen, for the brain is ruined by the time the family can call in the team. If that is not bad enough, Alzheimer's is probably one of the most likely ends for those who take good care of themselves. Any promising Alzheimer's therapy is exciting. spike From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 6:05 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto &offset=2 . spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 06:43:37 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:43:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 8:31 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > On 02/10/2012 11:39 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote: >> >> Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their >> book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment >> for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? ?You don't have to like, agree >> with or support the narratives, and they don't have to be >> transhumanist in scope. > > Please share this list when you collect it. ?I would love to read more > stories like that. ?The only ones that spring immediately to mind are: > > Permutation City ?(Egan) > Accelerando ?(Stross) (parts of it) Go here: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html Download the RTF version and search for "FieldCircus." You actually need to read the whole thing to get the context, but if you have, this will get you to the right place to appreciate perhaps the best book to date on the Singularity. The world Stross places this novel in is right out of the late 80s, early 90s Extropian mailing list, when M Brains and computronium were brand new ideas. An exchange between Hans Moravec and me (reviving authors through their works) becomes a plot element toward the end of the novel. "The Clinic Seed" also explores the uploaded world, in this case a tiny African village is uploaded. Per my recent posting, I no longer think it's practical to surround a star with computronium (speed of light problems). Instead population centers will probably shrink to sizes in the few hundred meter range and sunk the the deep oceans for cooling. I really don't see any way out of this. Being smart is a prime goal for transhumanists. Everyone wants to be smarter than average. A substantial part of being smart is being able to think faster. This leads to a runaway situation where we rapidly run into distance being time. We hardly notice telephone communication delays unless they are going through satellites. But speed us up a million fold and the maximum delay is (20,000 km/300,000 km/s) or 1/15 s. At a million to one speed up, that would impose a subjective round trip delay of a day and a half from one side of the earth to the other. Subjective round trip delay to the moon would be a month. Maybe this isn't important. People went around the earth when it took years. Keith > Golden Age triology (John C Wright) > > - samantha > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 16 > Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:17:48 -0800 > From: Samantha Atkins > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless > ? ? ? ?bodies > Message-ID: <4F35B3AC.10509 at mac.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed" > > On 02/10/2012 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More >> >> ? ? Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and >> ? ? their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative >> ? ? environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? ?You don?t >> ? ? have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don?t >> ? ? have to be transhumanist in scope. >> >> >> Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought >> of them. >> > > Lawnmower Man > TRON > > When I think about it though, I think the Golden Age triology is about > the only fully developed post-singularity upload universal culture I > have come across. ?If I am missing some I would love to hear of them. > > - s > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 17 > Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:31:42 -0800 > From: Samantha Atkins > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless > ? ? ? ?bodies > Message-ID: <4F35B6EE.3050406 at mac.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed" > > True Names (sort of but not a full blown uploaded culture) > > On 02/10/2012 12:39 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More >> >> ? ? Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and >> ? ? their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative >> ? ? environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? ?You don?t >> ? ? have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don?t >> ? ? have to be transhumanist in scope. >> >> >> Egan and Gibson jump to mind, but I am sure you have already thought >> of them. >> >> -- >> Stefano Vaj >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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: 18 > Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:43:02 +0100 > From: Stefano Vaj > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless > ? ? ? ?bodies > Message-ID: > ? ? ? ? > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > 2012/2/11 Samantha Atkins > >> ** >> Permutation City ?(Egan) >> > > At least parts of Schild's Ladder and above all of Diaspora civilisations > live permanently in a virtual wordl, even though much different of that of > Count Zero. > > -- > Stefano Vaj > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 19 > Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:10:02 -0500 > From: Mike Dougherty > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless > ? ? ? ?bodies > Message-ID: > ? ? ? ? > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" > > 2012/2/10 Natasha Vita-More : >> Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book >> titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for >> leaving the flesh/meat body behind? ?You don?t have to like, agree with or >> support the narratives, and they don?t have to be transhumanist in scope. > > Rudy Rucker's Ware series. ?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy > > I'm assuming everyone here has already read it and simply forgot about it > or otherwise didn't think of it in response to "cyberspace as an > alternative environment." > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 20 > Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:05:03 -0800 > From: "spike" > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article > Message-ID: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > > > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto > offset=2> &offset=2 > > > > Remember that Star Trek original Miri, one of the most memorable episodes of > the bunch, where the people age very slowly, but some virus or something > kills people whenever they get well into adolescence, with no effect on > children. ?Consequently, the only inhabitants of the planet appear to be > children, and revolting bastards they are for the most part (".bonk bonk on > the head.") ?The apparently fifteen yr old Miri has it bad for Kirk, but he > doesn't get involved with older women. > > > > Bones races to find a cure, but isn't sure what is the correct dose, so he > has to make a wild guess and hope for the best, then use it on himself, > otherwise they will all die. ?It works. > > > > It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having > fired one's weapon. > > > > spike > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 21 > Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:17:37 -0800 > From: "spike" > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Subject: [ExI] temporary open season declared on bexarotene was: RE: > ? ? ? ?good ? ?bexarotene article > Message-ID: <00fa01cce86b$b5802280$20806780$@att.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > > > As your friendly nanopotent ExI-chat moderator, I propose a temporary open > season on what looks like an exciting development, the use of bexarotene > against Alzheimer's. ?We have tried this before, and it works pretty well: > for the next week, if you are posting on this topic, it doesn't count > against your normal daily posting guidelines of five posts a day. ?Let's do > this for a week, shall we? > > > > If one is a non-cryonicist, the best thing that can happen is to live a long > life and have a sudden heart attack. ?No suffering, low cost to the family, > etc. ?You are just gone. ?Getting cancer is the worst thing. > > > > If on the other hand, one is a hardcore cryonics believer, a sudden heart > attack is a bad thing because you cool and perhaps suffer brain degradation > while the local yahoos figure out what to do. ?Some form of cancer is > actually good perhaps, for one knows about how long one has to live and can > make arrangements for the Alcor team. ?But for the cryonics hipster, > Alzheimer's is perhaps the worst thing that can happen, for the brain is > ruined by the time the family can call in the team. > > > > If that is not bad enough, Alzheimer's is probably one of the most likely > ends for those who take good care of themselves. ?Any promising Alzheimer's > therapy is exciting. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike > Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 6:05 PM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article > > > > > > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto > offset=2> &offset=2 > > > > . > > spike > > -------------- 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 101, Issue 14 > ********************************************* From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 13:45:34 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:45:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 spike > It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having > fired one?s weapon. > This is not really what dominant ideologies dictate, which is the essence itself of neoLuddisme, humanism, environmentalism, providentialism, etc. Whenever a risk exists, doing nothing is morally superior to doing something ("meddling with nature, providence, the divine plan, the... market, etc."). Somebody dies, or some disaster happens, too bad, but the important thing is that it is not your fault, and that you have not attempted to play God. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 14:01:55 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:01:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> Message-ID: On 11 February 2012 00:38, spike wrote: > If they find something that looks positive, ANYthing > positive, I want them to report exactly what they saw and don't bother > talking about three to five year clinical trials because too many families > don't have three to five years. I do not have the foggiest idea about Bexarotene, but I strongly support your view on that in more general, philosophical terms. "I shall overcome my mortality, or at least die trying" is what the very old and very new ethic commands. > We are in a position to cast caution to the > wind and become lab rats, for the alternative is bankruptcy of the family > and gradual death in which even cryonics may not be able to help, as the > brain may be destroyed long before the body stops functioning. > Another important angle. Should one who is willing to bet on cryonic suspension really wait for entropic mechanisms destroying his identity to kick in? There again, I appreciate that those practically involved with cryonics had better be prudent in their public stances, but at a philosophical level I think we should make it abundantly clear that our answer is a resonant No, political correctness and caution be damned. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 14:21:48 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:21:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11 February 2012 07:43, Keith Henson wrote: > Maybe this isn't important. People went around the earth when it took > years. > We may have already had this discussion before, but I think that if we should take contemporary IT as a good enough metaphor of intelligence in general, "hierarchical structure" is the answer to "latency" and "scarce band". I am not persuaded that there is any real limit to acceptable latency, given that any arbitrary computational node speaks anyway very quickly with neighbouring nodes, no matter how "distant" it may be from an arbitrary "centre", so the rationale to connect three of them is not so different from having the last one added in a row of 10^10 of them. This simply means that "long-distance calls" are reduced as much as possible in favour of local computation and data caching. Take for instance the contemporary scenario, where we have at one extreme the internal working of registers of single processing unit, then the processor with its internal cache(s), then your possibly multiprocessor board with its RAM, then (virtual?) clusters thereof, then perhaps a configuration such as folding at home where possible latency already may measure in weeks - much higher than what would exist in a ideal, optimised star-sized computronium sphere. But even in organic brains I suspect that most computations already take place at a "local" level, with neurons firing neighbouring neurons in a limited area, rather than involving the entire system, as the latter solution would pointlessly degrade the overall performance of the same. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 14:55:16 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:55:16 +0000 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/11 Stefano Vaj wrote: > I am not persuaded that there is any real limit to acceptable latency, given > that any arbitrary computational node speaks anyway very quickly with > neighbouring nodes, no matter how "distant" it may be from an arbitrary > "centre", so the rationale to connect three of them is not so different from > having the last one added in a row of 10^10 of them. > > This simply means that "long-distance calls" are reduced as much as possible > in favour of local computation and data caching. > > Take for instance the contemporary scenario, where we have at one extreme > the internal working of registers of single processing unit, then the > processor with its internal cache(s), then your possibly multiprocessor > board with its RAM, then (virtual?) clusters thereof, then perhaps a > configuration such as folding at home where possible latency already may > measure in weeks - much higher than what would exist in a ideal, optimised > star-sized computronium sphere. > > Your example works fine when low-level processors work on bits of a problem. But Keith was talking about whole civilisations. Long communication delays mean that they will no longer be one unified civilisation. They will diverge into separate civilisations. These future 'million-times speed up' intelligences will probably be more like hive-minds than the groups of individuals that we have today. As such, the communication delays would stop the mind growing above a certain size, because it would take too long to reach a decision. The mind itself will decide what the optimum size would be for calculating efficiency and if it wants to expand then it would build another mind next door. Though I don't see why it would want to create a competitor for resources. Unless resources are really plentiful, of course. BillK From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Feb 11 15:15:54 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 07:15:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> _____________________________ >From: Stefano Vaj >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 5:45 AM >Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article > > >2012/2/11 spike > >It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one?s weapon. ? The Star Trek story reminds me of the true life story of Louis Pasteur and the invention of rabies vaccine: ? http://www.angelfire.com/al/aloysius/rabies.html ? The writer leaves out many details including the fact that Pasteur administered the vaccine to the boy himself even though he was a chemist and not trained in medicine. This is all the more?amazing because Pasteur *had* a physician in his employ named Emile Roux who was trained in medicine. But Roux refused to give the boy?an untested?vaccine on ethical grounds. He even?lodged a formal protest?against his boss for "playing God". Lucky for Pasteur and all of mankind that the chemist was right and the?physician wrong. ? So what happened here? A distraught mother?begged a?man to save her son. The man risked his career?in an attempt to save the boy. The result? That man became?remembered as one of the greatest men in history.?Pasteur went on to become one the founding fathers of microbiology?and disproved the spontaneous generation of life,?fleshed out?germ theory, saved the French wine industry from an invasive yeast species by inventing "pasteurization",?and?discovered the entire concept of stereo-chemistry and optical polarization-rotation which give rise to "left handed" and "right handed" organic molecules. ? >This is not really what dominant ideologies dictate, which is the essence itself of neoLuddisme, humanism, environmentalism, providentialism, etc. > >Whenever a risk exists, doing nothing is morally superior to doing something ("meddling with nature, providence, the divine plan, the... market, etc."). > >Somebody dies, or some disaster happens, too bad, but the important thing is that it is not your fault, and that you have not attempted to play God. ? Attempt to play God? Seriously? Most people are too afraid to color outside the lines to even think of playing God. Baaaaaaaaah!?Little do they know they play God unintentionally for their children all time. ? Maybe fewer prayers would go unaswered, if more?people were willing to play God. ? ? ? Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 15:48:50 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 07:48:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <014401cce8d4$a71f5120$f55df360$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 5:46 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article 2012/2/11 spike >>.It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having fired one's weapon. >.This is not really what dominant ideologies dictate. the important thing is that it is not your fault, and that you have not attempted to play God. -- Stefano Vaj I fear you are right Stefano. There's something else going on, an increased urgency that may be more apparent to Californians. I suspect we have systematically underestimated the life penalty from smoking. In my own misspent youth, they estimated 3 to 5 years was the life penalty for smoking, but estimates have risen over the years as data came in. In California, is it very rare to see a person smoking, and a lot less common elsewhere. Consequently there may be a loooot more boomers living to be old, in which case Alzheimer's will hit us like a tsunami, causing costs of those patients to dwarf other societal medical costs. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 15:56:36 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 07:56:36 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> Message-ID: <014a01cce8d5$bbf02f60$33d08e20$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj . We are in a position to cast caution to the wind and become lab rats, for the alternative is bankruptcy of the family and gradual death in which even cryonics may not be able to help, as the brain may be destroyed long before the body stops functioning. >.Another important angle. Should one who is willing to bet on cryonic suspension really wait for entropic mechanisms destroying his identity to kick in? Stefano Vaj In the US, we don't really have a choice. One of the early cryonics cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 16:11:36 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:11:36 -0800 Subject: [ExI] mail: a paper device in that metal thing on the front of the house Message-ID: <000a01cce8d7$d4faa330$7eefe990$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] . >.In the US, we don't really have a choice. One of the early cryonics cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html spike Interesting article. One odd thing just jumped out at me: Dr. Perry refers to going to the mailbox and getting a letter from a friend. That was in December 1987, less than 25 years ago. Right about that time, I was transitioning to email as the primary form of written communications. Within a few years we no longer got paper mail from friends, other that Christmas cards, which I still send out in paper form. Can you imagine the latency we used to suffer, when you had to write out a letter by hand and send it through the post office? It is hard to see how you could even communicate that way. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 16:40:44 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:40:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] mail: a paper device in that metal thing on the front of the house In-Reply-To: <000a01cce8d7$d4faa330$7eefe990$@att.net> References: <000a01cce8d7$d4faa330$7eefe990$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 spike : > Can you imagine the > latency we used to suffer, when you had to write out a letter by hand and > send it through the post office?? It is hard to see how you could even > communicate that way. Please. It is perfectly easy to see how you could communicate. Granted, it wasn't anywhere close to real time, so there were workarounds for any communications that had to get there ASAP, but a delay in communication does not render communication impossible. Heck, even email is sometimes delayed - and in most cases, it is not realistic to expect the recipient to be checking email every second, or even to have a notification the moment email comes in. Postal mail is, for the most part, just email with longer latency - thus why they're both called "mail". From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 16:46:35 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:46:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 Stefano Vaj : > Another important angle. Should one who is willing to bet on cryonic > suspension really wait for entropic mechanisms destroying his identity to > kick in? As Max put it, being frozen is the second worst thing that can happen to a person. Cryonics may be useful as a backup plan, but for most people, a better primary plan is to live (for whatever state of being one deems to constitute "living", and not merely "existing") as long as possible, in the hopes that aging gets defeated (or effectively so) before means such as cryonics become necessary. Even better if one actively assists such efforts - whether via money, labor, or by some other means. Granted, that's quite a gamble. That's why cryonics is there for those who no longer have this option. From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 16:58:53 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:58:53 -0800 Subject: [ExI] new testing with internet access Message-ID: <002101cce8de$6fbf6620$4f3e3260$@att.net> This is something that has been on my mind for some time. We still use the same old testing techniques that have been around for decades, but the needs of employers have changed radically. Your employees have internet access and you need them to be good at it, so is there a way to test for it? http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/02/10/1951210/ask-slashdot-how-to-allow-tes t-takers-internet-access-but-minimize-cheating Here's your challenge: how do you design a test such that it separates the smart applicants from the rest? Assume internet access. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 17:37:14 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:37:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11 February 2012 15:55, BillK wrote: > Your example works fine when low-level processors work on bits of a > problem. > > But Keith was talking about whole civilisations. > Long communication delays mean that they will no longer be one unified > civilisation. They will diverge into separate civilisations. What escapes me is why this should be the case, rather than a continuous civilisation/mind, increasingly diverging with distance but without any substantial quantum leaps, as it used to be the case for, say, the Roman Empire from the Scotian to the Persian border. Mind, I do prefer a scenario of multiple, diverse and somewhat "independent" units. But this require some "border" to exist, defining an "in" and an "out" even though "closeness" is equal in the opposite direction, and I suspect that such borders will of a voluntary and arbitrary nature, and sometimes with grey areas in-between - not so differently from our current and past experiences of human cultures themselves. As such, the communication delays would stop the mind growing above a > certain size, because it would take too long to reach a decision. This is the point. How do we deal with that *today*? We decentralise. At an organic, computing, corporate and political level. When does something become independent enough to stop being considered as part of an entity/system? It is a matter of POVs, and dubious cases abound. > The mind itself will decide what the optimum size would be for calculating > efficiency and if it wants to expand then it would build another mind > next door. > This assumes that some ontological difference exists between, say, the computer and the network, an attitude which is probably based on the very steep decrease of informational exchange speed when we step outside an organic brain and try to communicate with neurons in another one, notwithstanding the fact that they may be spatially closer than the opposite side of my head. I am inclined instead to consider such distinction upon closer inspection much fuzzier than one might think. So, in an informationally dense universe, to decide where a "mind" begins and another stops may not be so easy. Even though, admittedly, vast semi-void spaces between denser "islands", such as interstellar or intergalactic gaps, might provide the breaks and the asymmetries serving this purpose (if you are Pluto, it is not the same to communicate with the inner system and with Alpha Centauri). -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 17:41:59 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:41:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 11 February 2012 16:15, The Avantguardian wrote: > Maybe fewer prayers would go unaswered, if more people were willing to > play God. > Excellent aphorism in an excellent post. Too bad that we are probably preaching to the choir in a transhumanist list, while the mainstream view remains just the opposite, and perhaps increasingly so. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 17:33:28 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:33:28 -0800 Subject: [ExI] saul kent's cryonics documentary, was: RE: mail: a paper device... Message-ID: <003201cce8e3$44f81130$cee83390$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] . >.In the US, we don't really have a choice. One of the early cryonics cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html spike When I started reading up on the Dora Kent case, I wondered if Saul Kent is still with us. He is alive and well. This interesting 2009 cryonics documentary held my attention for nearly half an hour, something very few forms of entertainment can manage in these times of severe attention span deficit: Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaHavhQllDI Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psm96dR1d1A &feature=related Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBYIzWblGTI &feature=related -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 18:25:45 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:25:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 Stefano Vaj : > ...the mainstream view remains just the > opposite, and perhaps increasingly so. The compelling nature of the Alzheimer's predicament and the looming baby boom demographic will likely dispose of **that** mainstream view. Or an effective AMA and FDA-approved Alzheimer's therapy will emerge to moot the issue. Best outcome: an effective off-label (ie non-FDA "owned") Alzheimer's therapy that becomes the champion example for patients' rights. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 18:27:00 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:27:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] new testing with internet access In-Reply-To: <002101cce8de$6fbf6620$4f3e3260$@att.net> References: <002101cce8de$6fbf6620$4f3e3260$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 spike : > Here?s your challenge: how do you design a test such that it separates the > smart applicants from the rest?? Assume internet access. Take the cleverer parts of proprietary code written by your existing pool of talent, ask applicants to explain it to you. Take the top N candidates that did a good job explaining the code and ask them to introduce new features to the existing code. After they've done this, let them find (and describe) flaws in the other applicant's code. When they're finished, you have a decision to make whether you hire the person who wrote flawless code or the person who identified the most potential problems in others' code. If your test isn't for programmers, you might have a different puzzle to solve. Time is probably the most realistic measure of information synthesis - sure you can have internet access, but do you know how to get the answers more quickly/easily than anyone else? I've seen people browsing through pages of results rather than issuing a better search. That's an unproductive use of clock-time. From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 18:41:49 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:41:49 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis ... >...Best outcome: an effective off-label (ie non-FDA "owned") Alzheimer's therapy that becomes the champion example for patients' rights. Best, Jeff Davis Ja well said. Yesterday we made some calls, learned that it is generally OK for a GP to prescribe off-label at the doctor's discretion. We have a message in to our family member's doctor asking if she is willing to prescribe bexarotene off-label, or do we need to go find a doctor who will. The next thing we need is to calculate or estimate the dosage. For a first shot, I am trying to find out what dose they gave the mice, then scale it up linearly. Would you estimate a mouse is about 50 to 60 grams? So whatever the mice received, scale it up by a factor of about 1000? The medications which contain bexarotene supply the information of the concentration of the active ingredient, so it will be an easy calculation. Open to suggestion here. The topic is temporarily open season, so your suggestion is free and welcome. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 19:27:47 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:27:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <014a01cce8d5$bbf02f60$33d08e20$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <014a01cce8d5$bbf02f60$33d08e20$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 spike > In the US, we don?t really have a choice.? One of the early cryonics cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue.? Dora Kent:? http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html I appreciate that, and this is not really unusual in existing legal systems. Should we however seek an undefined lifespan without at the same time advocating for the freedom to obtain assisted suicide at any time, for whatsoever reason? I fully accept that given the rather remote chances of resurrection, cryonic suspension of a healthy (or, at least, alive) individual may well be considered as such by some. But why should this be anybody else's business? The reason why we should support even "turist" cryonic suspension, for those willing to take the bet, is the same why we should support the freedom to obtain euthanasia and cremation if one so wishes. -- Stefano Vaj From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 19:29:54 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:29:54 -0800 Subject: [ExI] new testing with internet access In-Reply-To: References: <002101cce8de$6fbf6620$4f3e3260$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 10:27 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Take the cleverer parts of proprietary code written by your existing > pool of talent, ask applicants to explain it to you. ?Take the top N > candidates that did a good job explaining the code and ask them to > introduce new features to the existing code. ?After they've done this, > let them find (and describe) flaws in the other applicant's code. > When they're finished, you have a decision to make whether you hire > the person who wrote flawless code or the person who identified the > most potential problems in others' code. Aye. Don't ask people to do stuff that, in a real situation, they really would be looking up (like, "describe how (language-specific feature) works," when you're really trying to find out if they can solve problem X with the language in question). Problem is, you need to overcome a psychological hurdle of, "the best candidate will have memorized all the definitions as well as know off the top of his/her head how to answer any question". This is not something that even the interviewers themselves will be able to do; they excuse it by looking for someone "better" than themselves. > If your test isn't for programmers, you might have a different puzzle > to solve. ?Time is probably the most realistic measure of information > synthesis - sure you can have internet access, but do you know how to > get the answers more quickly/easily than anyone else? ?I've seen > people browsing through pages of results rather than issuing a better > search. ?That's an unproductive use of clock-time. That measures searching itself - which, yes, is a job skill, but can be seen to not measure knowledge of the field in question. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 19:32:01 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:32:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 11 February 2012 19:25, Jeff Davis wrote: > The compelling nature of the Alzheimer's predicament and the looming > baby boom demographic will likely dispose of **that** mainstream view. Yes. Alzheimer is such a beast that it makes the opposite view even harder to defend than the XIX century view that it was OK if the mother died provided that the physician did not provide an abortion. -- Stefano Vaj From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sat Feb 11 19:55:50 2012 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:55:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> Message-ID: <4b8a7b79c4c34de99630698984ae4d90.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > > The next thing we need is to calculate or estimate the dosage. For a first > shot, I am trying to find out what dose they gave the mice, then scale it up > linearly. Would you estimate a mouse is about 50 to 60 grams? So whatever > the mice received, scale it up by a factor of about 1000? > The Mouse Factory says adult mice are about 25 g and jumbo mice are 45-50 g. (That is snake food.) A medium rat is 80 g and the extra huge jumbo rats are 250+ g. Regards, MB From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 19:57:42 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:57:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] new testing with internet access In-Reply-To: References: <002101cce8de$6fbf6620$4f3e3260$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > That measures searching itself - which, yes, is a job skill, but can be > seen to not measure knowledge of the field in question. I watched a coworker become the resident PHP expert using the following: "How do you get the contents of a file into a variable?" 1) google "PHP get contents file 2) click link to get_file_content() manual page 3) copy/paste example code into current project file 4) tweak to fit I chastised him for it at first - but after testing the PHP waters myself, that's how ya learn PHP! :) From pharos at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 20:17:36 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:17:36 +0000 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 6:41 PM, spike wrote: > The next thing we need is to calculate or estimate the dosage. ?For a first > shot, I am trying to find out what dose they gave the mice, then scale it up > linearly. ?Would you estimate a mouse is about 50 to 60 grams? ?So whatever > the mice received, scale it up by a factor of about 1000? > > The medications which contain bexarotene supply the information of the > concentration of the active ingredient, so it will be an easy calculation. > > Open to suggestion here. ?The topic is temporarily open season, so your > suggestion is free and welcome. > > The dosage for cancer treatment has already been specified. So I would start with their recommendations. Especially as they warn to watch out for toxicity and reduce the dosage if necessary. Quote: The recommended initial dose of Targretin capsules is 300 mg/m2/day. Targretin capsules should be taken as a single oral daily dose with a meal. Targretin Capsule Initial Dose Calculation According to Body Surface Area Initial Dose Level (300 mg/m2/day) Body Surface Area (m2) Total Daily Dose (mg/day) 0.88 - 1.12 300 1.13 - 1.37 375 1.38 - 1.62 450 1.63 - 1.87 525 1.88 - 2.12 600 2.13 - 2.37 675 2.38 - 2.62 750 Dose Modification Guidelines: The 300 mg/m2/day dose level of Targretin capsules may be adjusted to 200 mg/m2/day then to 100 mg/m2/day, or temporarily suspended, if necessitated by toxicity. When toxicity is controlled, doses may be carefully readjusted upward. If there is no tumor response after eight weeks of treatment and if the initial dose of 300 mg/m2/day is well tolerated, the dose may be escalated to 400 mg/m2/day with careful monitoring. Duration of Therapy: In clinical trials in CTCL, Targretin capsules were administered for up to 97 weeks. Targretin capsules should be continued as long as the patient is deriving benefit. ------------------------------ BillK From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 20:54:20 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:54:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> Message-ID: <005d01cce8ff$54292970$fc7b7c50$@att.net> >The dosage for cancer treatment has already been specified. >So I would start with their recommendations. >Especially as they warn to watch out for toxicity and reduce the dosage if necessary. ... BillK EXCELLENT BillK, thanks. I went looking for this and missed it. I am co-dedicating a puzzle to you, for two reasons: you find stuff like this, and your name does not contain an e, and n, or an s. Stand by for explanation. spike From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 20:50:50 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:50:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ens puzzle, was: bexarotene Message-ID: <005801cce8fe$d7419b40$85c4d1c0$@att.net> Humans have evolved to do our best and most creative thinking when dealing with a crisis. When all is well and we are too comfortable, we get conservative and have no good ideas. We squander our plentiful circumstances with scandalously wasteful activities, such as war. But during the actual crisis of war, we do perhaps our best thinking and inventing. I am enjoying a temporary burst of creativity while dealing with a family crisis related to bexarotene, so I will toss out this idea, and perhaps get back to it later after the creativity burst is over. Yesterday's puzzle on my MENSA calendar was a sketch of a television which contained the following commentary: This flat screen TV contains exactly _______ E's, _______ N's and ______ S's. The puzzle is to fill in the blanks with spelled out numbers to make the sentence true. The answer is way down at the bottom of this post. I fiddled around with it for a while, and eventually decided to solve it with a script, and found the answer. Then I found a closed form solution of sorts, but it is still iterative. Using the script, I found a way to generate these kinds of puzzles of arbitrary difficulty. I ran my script twice. It found the solution to the puzzle below after 400 iterations the first time and after 5102 iterations the second time. Here's the puzzle: This is a puzzle dedicated to the young people who hang outwardly on extropians, such as Keith Henson and Jeff Davis, for they are they are fine guys, yes indeed. This commentary by spike contains _______ E's, _______ N's and ______ S's. If you want me to create for you a similar puzzle, which doesn't need to count Es, Ns and Ss but can be any letters, let me know, I can create it. The puzzle can be of arbitrary length, but if it gets too big the solution may be beyond the reach of even computers. Answer to the flat screen puzzle down below: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don't give up, you are almost there. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seven Es, four Ns and eight Ss. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 20:56:11 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:56:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ens puzzle, was: bexarotene Message-ID: <005e01cce8ff$96caf650$c460e2f0$@att.net> Here's the revised puzzle: This is a puzzle dedicated to the young people who hang outwardly on extropians, such as BillK, Keith Henson and Jeff Davis, for they are they are fine guys, yes indeed. This commentary by spike contains _______ E's, _______ N's and ______ S's. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 21:18:39 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:18:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] ens puzzle, was: bexarotene In-Reply-To: <005e01cce8ff$96caf650$c460e2f0$@att.net> References: <005e01cce8ff$96caf650$c460e2f0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 spike : > Here?s the revised puzzle: > > This is a puzzle dedicated to the young people who hang outwardly on > extropians, such as BillK, Keith Henson and Jeff Davis, for they are they > are fine guys, yes indeed.? This commentary by spike contains _______ E?s, > _______ N?s and ______ S?s. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > Before or after the mailing list suffix is added? From ismirth at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 20:59:45 2012 From: ismirth at gmail.com (Isabelle Hakala) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:59:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> Message-ID: How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the particular type of cancer that it is used for... that seems as though there must be SOMEONE out there... and odds are they would be willing to take it for their cancer... esp if it might help their Alzheimers... Seems as though that would be an easy enough test. It isn't like they would say 'oh... you can't take this drug for your cancer because it might help your Alzheimers too, and that would be experimenting'. -Isabelle ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Isabelle Hakala "Any person who says 'it can't be done' shouldn't be interrupting the people getting it done." "Do every single thing in life with love in your heart." 2012/2/10 spike > ** ** > > > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-disease-sympto&offset=2 > **** > > ** ** > > Remember that Star Trek original Miri, one of the most memorable episodes > of the bunch, where the people age very slowly, but some virus or something > kills people whenever they get well into adolescence, with no effect on > children. Consequently, the only inhabitants of the planet appear to be > children, and revolting bastards they are for the most part (??bonk bonk on > the head??) The apparently fifteen yr old Miri has it bad for Kirk, but he > doesn?t get involved with older women. **** > > ** ** > > Bones races to find a cure, but isn?t sure what is the correct dose, so he > has to make a wild guess and hope for the best, then use it on himself, > otherwise they will all die. It works.**** > > ** ** > > It is better to take a shot in the dark than to meekly die never having > fired one?s weapon.**** > > ** ** > > 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 listsb at infinitefaculty.org Sat Feb 11 21:48:13 2012 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:48:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> El 2012-02-11 15:59, Isabelle Hakala escribi?: > How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the > particular type of cancer that it is used for... that seems as though > there must be SOMEONE out there... and odds are they would be willing to > take it for their cancer... esp if it might help their Alzheimers... > Seems as though that would be an easy enough test. It isn't like they > would say 'oh... you can't take this drug for your cancer because it > might help your Alzheimers too, and that would be experimenting'. Excellent idea! A twist on your question: might it be possible to find enough people who /already have/ taken the drug to look for a meaningful reduction in rate of Alzheimer's compared to matched controls? The matching would be tricky of course: look at age-, sex-, etc.-matched controls who also had skin cancer? Then the sample is tiny. Or forget the cancer in the matching, under the assumption it's not significantly related to the dev. of Alzheimer's? (Though there probably is an indirect relation via cancer's impact on exercise levels and diet, which also affect risk of Alzheimer's.) Either way, there's got to be some useful data already out there, seems to me. The drug has been in use for nearly 13 years. The number of people who've taken it might be many thousands. Let's take a look at them! -Brian From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 22:13:05 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:13:05 -0800 Subject: [ExI] new testing with internet access In-Reply-To: References: <002101cce8de$6fbf6620$4f3e3260$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > I chastised him for it at first - but after testing the PHP waters > myself, that's how ya learn PHP! ?:) Works for Perl too, I can testify from personal experience. Seems to work well for most computer languages in significant use these days. From max at maxmore.com Sat Feb 11 22:23:33 2012 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:23:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Alcor vindicated contra Larry Johnson's allegations Message-ID: Alcor lawsuit against Larry Johnson concluded: http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2471 --Max -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 22:46:26 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:46:26 -0800 Subject: [ExI] ens puzzle, was: bexarotene In-Reply-To: <005e01cce8ff$96caf650$c460e2f0$@att.net> References: <005e01cce8ff$96caf650$c460e2f0$@att.net> Message-ID: <009f01cce90e$fd606a30$f8213e90$@att.net> The puzzle can be arbitrarily complex, using a new algorithm I found. This is an example of the kind of puzzle one might expect a prole to create when the yahoo is trying to distract himself from the immediate crisis at hand, such as where to find bexarotene, and whether one should use the stuff on an ailing family member. Crises tend to bring out our most creative ideas. This does not mean we should create crises in order to create crisis creativity. This commentary contains exactly __________ Es, __________ Ns, ________ Ts. My new algorithm discovered a solution in about 16 seconds. If I wanted to take this to absurd lengths, or rather more absurd than I already have, I can take an entire page of text, or a book for that matter, and do the same trick. Aren't I clever? So what I want you guys to tell me is if I am so damn smart, why is it that I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO about this particular family crisis, and I notice almost no one is offering suggestions. Feel free to toss out anything, and I will offer the reasons why that is a good idea, but has risks and drawbacks, which I will offer freely. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 23:00:09 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Alcor vindicated contra Larry Johnson's allegations In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/11 Max More > Alcor lawsuit against Larry Johnson concluded: > > http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2471 > Congratulations, even though I regret to hear that "Bankruptcy papers filed by Johnson end Alcor?s ability to collect damages related to this lawsuit from Mr. Johnson, unless there is a subsequent violation of terms by Mr. Johnson." Let Alcor get defamed by somebody with deeper pockets: :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 22:56:48 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:56:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Isabelle Hakala Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 1:00 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article >.How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the particular type of cancer that it is used for... that seems as though there must be SOMEONE out there... and odds are they would be willing to take it for their cancer... esp if it might help their Alzheimers... Seems as though that would be an easy enough test. It isn't like they would say 'oh... you can't take this drug for your cancer because it might help your Alzheimers too, and that would be experimenting'. -Isabelle Ooooh good thinking, thanks Isabelle. It should be easy to find cancer patients with Alzheimer's. The question now at hand is if that information about their medical history is available. This goes back to a discussion we had here a dozen years ago. There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise. I am surprised something like that doesn't exist somewhere. We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations: a certain type of cancer patient doesn't seem to get Alzheimer's or has a lower rate than the general population. The signal could have been sitting there for years, undiscovered because we have no systematic way to find it among the deep piles of data, hidden away to maintain patient privacy. Perhaps if we had a group of volunteers who are willing to dump everything about their medical history on the web, that might help. I would sign up, but my medical history is pretty boring: one kidney stone 15 years ago, and nothing else has ever gone wrong. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 23:01:25 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:01:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> >... Brian Manning Delaney Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article El 2012-02-11 15:59, Isabelle Hakala escribi?: >>... How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the particular type of cancer that it is used for... Isabelle >...Excellent idea! >...A twist on your question: might it be possible to find enough people who /already have/ taken the drug to look for a meaningful reduction in rate of Alzheimer's compared to matched controls? The matching would be tricky of course: look at age-, sex-, etc.-matched controls who also had skin cancer? Then the sample is tiny. Or forget the cancer in the matching, under the assumption it's not significantly related to the dev. of Alzheimer's? (Though there probably is an indirect relation via cancer's impact on exercise levels and diet, which also affect risk of Alzheimer's.) Either way, there's got to be some useful data already out there, seems to me. The drug has been in use for nearly 13 years. The number of people who've taken it might be many thousands. Let's take a look at them! -Brian _______________________________________________ Good ideas from Brian, thanks. Do we have any hipsters here who are medics or have friends who are, who are hip to how one gets at this kind of data? Seems like there is a masters degree offered in some places called Public Health, that deals with this sort of thing, ja? If this isn't already a specialized field of study, it should be. Otherwise we would need to create it. How? spike From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 23:09:24 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:09:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Alcor vindicated contra Larry Johnson's allegations In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00c401cce912$328b12c0$97a13840$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj >. >.Congratulations, even though I regret to hear that "Bankruptcy papers filed by Johnson end Alcor's ability to collect damages related to this lawsuit from Mr. Johnson, unless there is a subsequent violation of terms by Mr. Johnson." >.Let Alcor get defamed by somebody with deeper pockets: :-) -- Stefano Vaj Vanguard Press has deeper pockets, and I would think it is the publisher who is ultimately responsible. Any yahoo can write anything, but I would think the publisher must bear the legal responsibility. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 11 23:26:42 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:26:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/11 spike >There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise.? I am surprised something like that doesn?t exist somewhere.? We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations... Yes, this would be a very good idea. Not that I understand why privacy should really be a primary concern for terminal cancer patients... -- Stefano Vaj From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 11 23:46:27 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:46:27 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> Message-ID: <00dd01cce917$5f69a360$1e3cea20$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj ... Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article 2012/2/11 spike >>...There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise.? I am surprised something like that doesn?t exist somewhere.? We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations... >...Yes, this would be a very good idea. Not that I understand why privacy should really be a primary concern for terminal cancer patients... -- Stefano Vaj _______________________________________________ I can think of reasons with regard to health insurance and life insurance. I can imagine cases where a person who thinks they have cancer might try to go anonymously to a medic and get it diagnosed, then figure out some way to not have their health insurance cancelled. Or in the coming age in the US where we may be required to buy insurance, that information may be intentionally hidden. In any case, the medical records infrastructure as it exists in the US is all about patient privacy, with no regard to filtering out unexpected correlations between a medication and some unrelated disease. We actually risk patients' lives in some cases in order to maintain medical record privacy. The only area where we don't really sacrifice safety for privacy is when a prole's eye doctor finds her vision insufficient for guiding her Detroit. In that case, they are certain to alert the authorities. But if a person is found crazy as a loon for instance, that information will generally not prevent the prole from purchasing firearms for instance. If a person is found to have HIV, we have no systematic way of warning the public to not screw with the patient. Stefano, regarding your comment about primary concerns of cancer patients, I can imagine we have PLENTY of patients willing and eager to tell all there is to know, but we have no infrastructure in place to accommodate information volunteers. I can easily imagine 10 to 20 percent of all patients volunteering their medical histories. I am one. It might skew the results toward those of us who have had delightfully boring G rated lives. Or maybe just the opposite, I don't know. People who are healthy don't give this question a second thought, because they don't go to see the medics. This would also distort the record toward the chronic medic-seers. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Sun Feb 12 00:47:02 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:47:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 3:17 PM, BillK wrote: > Targretin Capsule Initial Dose Calculation According to Body Surface > Area Initial Dose Level (300 mg/m2/day) > Body Surface Area (m2) ?Total Daily Dose (mg/day) > 0.88 - 1.12 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 300 > 1.13 - 1.37 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 375 > 1.38 - 1.62 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 450 > 1.63 - 1.87 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 525 > 1.88 - 2.12 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 600 > 2.13 - 2.37 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 675 > 2.38 - 2.62 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 750 If you were asking how many applications of sunscreen per bottle, I would understand measurement by surface area. In this case, how does measurement of dosage by surface area of the body indicate a correct application of neural-affecting drugs? From lubkin at unreasonable.com Sun Feb 12 02:15:52 2012 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:15:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Spider Robinson Message-ID: <201202120235.q1C2ZEwu028578@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Spider is a good egg. You can't have read his work without realizing that. I have a few extra reasons to feel kindly and beholden to him, as I suspect anyone who has crossed his path does. I was just thinking I should touch base and see how he was doing, now that a little time has passed since Jeanne's death. And then I heard his news: http://www.spiderrobinson.com/index2.html -- David. From listsb at infinitefaculty.org Sun Feb 12 03:42:13 2012 From: listsb at infinitefaculty.org (Brian Manning Delaney) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:42:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> El 2012-02-11 18:01, spike escribi?: > >> ... Brian Manning Delaney > Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article > > El 2012-02-11 15:59, Isabelle Hakala escribi?: >>> ... How difficult would it be to find someone with Alzheimer AND the > particular type of cancer that it is used for... Isabelle >> ...Excellent idea! >> >> ...A twist on your question: might it be possible to find enough people who >> /already have/ taken the drug to look for a meaningful reduction in rate of >> Alzheimer's compared to matched controls? The matching would be tricky of >> course: look at age-, sex-, etc.-matched controls who also had skin cancer? >> Then the sample is tiny. Or forget the cancer in the matching, under the >> assumption it's not significantly related to the dev. of Alzheimer's? >> (Though there probably is an indirect relation via cancer's impact on >> exercise levels and diet, which also affect risk of >> Alzheimer's.) Either way, there's got to be some useful data already out >> there, seems to me. The drug has been in use for nearly 13 years. The number >> of people who've taken it might be many thousands. Let's take a look at >> them! >> >> -Brian > _______________________________________________ > > Good ideas from Brian, thanks. Spike- Thanks. Though I see now in an earlier post of yours I missed that this is more your idea than mine: Spike wrote, earlier: > This goes back to a discussion we had here a dozen years ago. There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise. I am surprised something like that doesn?t exist somewhere. We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations: a certain type of cancer patient doesn?t seem to get Alzheimer?s or has a lower rate than the general population. The signal could have been sitting there for years, undiscovered because we have no systematic way to find it among the deep piles of data, hidden away to maintain patient privacy. This is a great idea. Get as much data out there as we can, and see what correlations we find -- about bexarotene, or anything else that might be useful! But about the specific idea of looking for Alzheimer's rates in the many people who've taken the drug for skin cancer, it occurred to me after I sent my post that the researchers of the new paper have probably already thought of that, and are likely working on it. I was about to email Gary Landreth (lead researcher) and ask, but I think I'll wait a bit. He's probably overwhelmed with inquiries right now. > Do we have any hipsters here who are medics or have friends who are, who are > hip to how one gets at this kind of data? Seems like there is a masters > degree offered in some places called Public Health, that deals with this > sort of thing, ja? If this isn't already a specialized field of study, it > should be. Otherwise we would need to create it. How? Public health, partly. But I think this is what a lot of basic medical research consists of: finding patient records, loooking at them, determining the relevant variables, and crunching numbers. Patient records would be spread out across dozens, perhaps hundreds of physicians and clinics, unfortunately. One would have to get enough records, look for Alzheimher's diagnoses in the records, but, probably, have to look in records located /elsewhere/ for later diagnoses because Alz. would have been diagnosed by a diff. doctor.... (This is why the absence of the database you hope one could pull together really hurts....) Doable, just a huge amount of work. So much so that Landreth may have thought of the idea annd rejected it as impractical. -Brian From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 12 04:12:32 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:12:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> Message-ID: <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Brian Manning Delaney ... Spike wrote, earlier: >> This goes back to a discussion we had here a dozen years ago. There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information... and maintain patient privacy. >...This is a great idea. Get as much data out there as we can, and see what correlations we find -- about bexarotene, or anything else that might be useful! ... But about the specific idea of looking for Alzheimer's rates in the many people who've taken the drug for skin cancer, it occurred to me after I sent my post that the researchers of the new paper have probably already thought of that... Patient records would be spread out across dozens, perhaps hundreds of physicians and clinics, unfortunately... (This is why the absence of the database you hope one could pull together really hurts....) Doable, just a huge amount of work. So much so that Landreth may have thought of the idea annd rejected it as impractical. -Brian _______________________________________________ Brian, we would need to invent a system, or look for one in existence, whereby doctors can estimate the degree of progressive diseases. We already have cancer described that way, four stages, so we could do the same with Alzheimer's or anything. It doesn't matter if different doctors evaluate differently; statistics can handle that problem. If we have any resident expertise in this or the locals have friends who are hip to medical statistics, they can surely help. Dammit Jim, I am just a country rocket scientist, not a doctor. There may be a way to reduce diseases to a number or series of numbers. This will be needed for sorting purposes. For instance, all cancer could be 4. Then perhaps colon could be 12, and hyposquamal scatorsic cell could be 16 with frumbic slambonian harcomipsis syndrome is 5, so a patient with that type of disease would be 4.12.16.5.3 once they hit stage 3. The medications would also be numbered in some systematic fashion. We would encode somehow the age of the patient, their race, their bad habits, their good habits, whatever we can put in a matrix. Then we can apply our mathematical tools that we know so very well, sparse matrix techniques used in satellite control systems for instance. It wouldn't even hurt much if the patients lie: statistical methods can deal with that. Now we would need a central website I suppose and some means of getting people to drop data into it. We could set it up in some sort of spreadsheet perhaps, and let our volunteer background process team grind away, looking for correlations or signals in the pile of data. Have we any medics among us who can suggest a data structure? Or point to one that already exists? Once a system starts somewhere, perhaps it would grow, or start competing systems, kinda like dust bunnies. spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun Feb 12 06:09:07 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:09:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> Message-ID: <1329026947.77573.YahooMailNeo@web164514.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: spike > To: 'ExI chat list' > Cc: > Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 10:41 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article > >> ... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis > ... > >> ...Best outcome:? an effective off-label (ie non-FDA "owned") > Alzheimer's > therapy that becomes the champion example for patients' rights.? Best, Jeff > Davis > > > Ja well said.? Yesterday we made some calls, learned that it is generally OK > for a GP to prescribe off-label at the doctor's discretion.? We have a > message in to our family member's doctor asking if she is willing to > prescribe bexarotene off-label, or do we need to go find a doctor who will. > > The next thing we need is to calculate or estimate the dosage.? For a first > shot, I am trying to find out what dose they gave the mice, then scale it up > linearly.? Would you estimate a mouse is about 50 to 60 grams?? So whatever > the mice received, scale it up by a factor of about 1000?? > > The medications which contain bexarotene supply the information of the > concentration of the active ingredient, so it will be an easy calculation.? > > Open to suggestion here.? The topic is temporarily open season, so your > suggestion is free and welcome. Does anybody have an institutional?Science subscription that could send me a copy of this article? http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/02/08/science.1217697 The dosing information and administration route?are probably in there. Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun Feb 12 06:22:57 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:22:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <1328973354.18025.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <004d01cce8ec$d1337c80$739a7580$@att.net> Message-ID: <1329027777.51038.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Mike Dougherty > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 4:47 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article > > On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 3:17 PM, BillK wrote: >> Targretin Capsule Initial Dose Calculation According to Body Surface >> Area Initial Dose Level (300 mg/m2/day) >> Body Surface Area (m2) ?Total Daily Dose (mg/day) >> 0.88 - 1.12 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 300 >> 1.13 - 1.37 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 375 >> 1.38 - 1.62 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 450 >> 1.63 - 1.87 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 525 >> 1.88 - 2.12 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 600 >> 2.13 - 2.37 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 675 >> 2.38 - 2.62 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 750 > > If you were asking how many applications of sunscreen per bottle, I > would understand measurement by surface area.? In this case, how does > measurement of dosage by surface area of the body indicate a correct > application of neural-affecting drugs? Because muscle is denser than fat. A lean but muscular man can weigh as much or more than an obese woman but have less flesh. Drugs have to diffuse throughout the whole?body to get to where they need to operate. As such, if you dose by weight, the man would overdose but the woman would be fine.?Doctors dose by surface area because that is more indicative of what the patient's?true cellular volume is than simple weight. Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 12 08:52:40 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:52:40 +0000 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 4:12 AM, spike wrote: > There may be a way to reduce diseases to a number or series of numbers. > This will be needed for sorting purposes. ?For instance, all cancer could be > 4. ?Then perhaps colon could be 12, and hyposquamal scatorsic cell could be > 16 with frumbic > slambonian harcomipsis syndrome is 5, so a patient with that type of disease > would be 4.12.16.5.3 once they hit stage 3. > > The medications would also be numbered in some systematic fashion. ?We would > encode somehow the age of the patient, their race, their bad habits, their > good habits, whatever we can put in a matrix. ?Then we can apply our > mathematical tools that we know so very well, sparse matrix techniques used > in satellite control systems for instance. ?It wouldn't even hurt much if > the patients lie: statistical methods can deal with that. > > Now we would need a central website I suppose and some means of getting > people to drop data into it. ?We could set it up in some sort of spreadsheet > perhaps, and let our volunteer background process team grind away, looking > for correlations or signals in the pile of data. > > Have we any medics among us who can suggest a data structure? ?Or point to > one that already exists? > > Quick to write down, but you are talking about a huge project. Once you get into it, it is ferociously complicated. The medical profession have been trying to develop a disease coding system for over 40 years, with some success. SNOWMED CT seems to be the latest system It covers areas such as diseases, symptoms, operations, treatments, devices and drugs. Its purpose is to consistently index, store, retrieve, and aggregate clinical data across specialties and sites of care. It helps organizing the content of electronic health records systems, reducing the variability in the way data is captured, encoded and used for clinical care of patients and research. ----------------------- Over four decades, SNOMED has developed from a pathology-specific nomenclature (SNOP) into a logic-based health care terminology. In January 2002, SNOMED CT was created by the merger, expansion, and restructuring of the College of American Pathologists (CAP) SNOMED RT (Reference Terminology) and the UK National Health Service (NHS) Clinical Terms (also known as the Read codes). The historical strength of the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) was its coverage of medical specialties, while the strength of Clinical Terms Version 3 was its terminologies for general practice. SNOMED CT cross maps to such other terminologies as ICD-9-CM, ICD-O3, ICD-10, Laboratory LOINC and OPCS-4 BillK From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 12 09:43:45 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:43:45 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Medical Singularity pain Message-ID: If you read the medical news and science news streams, you get some impression of the flood of research that is going on. Cancer news has seeming breakthroughs published every day. The exponential curve of the Singularity seems to be working. Or, at least, a very steep linear increase in science research is going on. You get the impression that in twenty years, every disease will be curable and ageing itself will be becoming fixable. (Affordable cures are a separate political / economic question). The pain comes in realising that we are going to lose loved ones during those twenty years. Perhaps I may not last that long myself. Accidents or illness can strike at any time. As Spike says, it is a great time to be alive. But I'd like to be twenty years further ahead, please. (Ignoring all the economic doom and gloom temporarily). BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Feb 12 13:00:00 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <00dd01cce917$5f69a360$1e3cea20$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <00dd01cce917$5f69a360$1e3cea20$@att.net> Message-ID: On 12 February 2012 00:46, spike wrote: > I can think of reasons with regard to health insurance and life insurance. > I can imagine cases where a person who thinks they have cancer might try to > go anonymously to a medic and get it diagnosed, then figure out some way to > not have their health insurance cancelled. ?Or in the coming age in the US > where we may be required to buy insurance, that information may be > intentionally hidden. Yes, did not think of that. Even though keeping silent on a condition would void the contract, I appreciate that one would be willing to give it a try. > In any case, the medical records infrastructure as it exists in the US is > all about patient privacy, with no regard to filtering out unexpected > correlations between a medication and some unrelated disease. ?? Yes, the same goes for Italy and continental Europe in general. If anything, the alternative is between total opacity - say, HIV positive results - and compulsory report - say, firearm wounds. And even when a National Health system would make it in principle easy to collect abundant statistical data on any possible combination of diseases, drugs, lifestyles, genetic makes, etc., very little if anything is actually required or even encouraged. Moreover, according to the EU directive on personal data processing, the concept of "personal data" is not limited to data referring to somebody's name, because anything that is "identifying" enough (and of course any in-depth profiling of an individual would be...) theoretically qualifies. -- Stefano Vaj From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun Feb 12 14:01:51 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:01:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Mouse to Human Dosage Conversion Message-ID: <1329055311.45423.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Since I know Spike and many people are curious how to translate doses from mice to human, here is a FASEB article on the subject that is free to download. ? http://www.fasebj.org/content/22/3/659.full.pdf+html ? Now if someone would kindly send Spike a copy of the original Bexarotene paper, he could start crunching numbers. ? ? Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 12 15:42:51 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:42:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> Message-ID: <001901cce99c$fbc25a10$f3470e30$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 4:12 AM, spike wrote: >>... There may be a way to reduce diseases to a number or series of numbers. > This will be needed for sorting purposes... > Have we any medics among us who can suggest a data structure? ?Or > point to one that already exists? spike > > >...Quick to write down, but you are talking about a huge project. Once you get into it, it is ferociously complicated. >...The medical profession have been trying to develop a disease coding system for over 40 years, with some success. >...SNOWMED CT seems to be the latest system >...It covers areas such as diseases, symptoms, operations, treatments, devices and drugs. Its purpose is to consistently index, store, retrieve, and aggregate clinical data across specialties and sites of care. It helps organizing the content of electronic health records systems, reducing the variability in the way data is captured, encoded and used for clinical care of patients and research...BillK _______________________________________________ Thanks BillK! The more I thought about this yesterday, the more clear it became that this idea is so obvious it must have already been attempted a thousand times, and there had to be an existing front runner somewhere. I am surprised I had never heard of it. About a decade ago, I created a matrix for everything that could go wrong with a particular oddball motorcycle, the Suzuki Cavalcade. We eventually collected data from over 600 bikes, along with VIN, so I could get a manufacture date and so forth. We saw clusters of a particular failure, trends, calculated mean time between failure of all the subsystems that commonly fail and so on. That tool allowed us to use all the mathematical tools we developed in the rocket science industry. I could imagine something about four orders of magnitude more complicated than that for humans, which would be an interesting tool in medical research. We could use something like that Snowmed CT database, and arrange a volunteer base to do some kind of background computing project to look for unexpected correlations. Once we get thousands of people grinding away in the background, some of those people might study Snowmed CT and come up with suggested extensions and improvements, or if nothing else, just clean up their own records, mention all the grass they smoked back in college, and such as that. Something roughly analogous happened with the cavalcade database after we started getting useful data: the others used it and put their own data in there, such that it snowballed. If the Snowmed CT database does likewise, it would be appropriately named. Way to go BillK! spike From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 12 16:06:41 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:06:41 +0000 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <001901cce99c$fbc25a10$f3470e30$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> <001901cce99c$fbc25a10$f3470e30$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 3:42 PM, spike wrote: > We could use something like that Snowmed CT database, and arrange a > volunteer base to do some kind of background computing project to look for > unexpected correlations. ?Once we get thousands of people grinding away in > the background, some of those people might study Snowmed CT and come up with > suggested extensions and improvements, or if nothing else, just clean up > their own records, mention all the grass they smoked back in college, and > such as that. ?Something roughly analogous happened with the cavalcade > database after we started getting useful data: the others used it and put > their own data in there, such that it snowballed. ?If the Snowmed CT > database does likewise, it would be appropriately named. > > Thinking it over, it sounds like a project for Watson. I believe they are already planning to use Watson to help with medical diagnosis. Why do all these projects take years? BillK From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun Feb 12 16:12:55 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:12:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] the changing education model Message-ID: I have long been frustrated by what I see as an ossified and outdated education delivery model. (Basically, I think education has been "corrupted" by factors which place provider interest over actual learning. In other words, the financial interests of teachers, teachers unions, and textbook publishers, and the ideologically-driven political/financial interests of school boards, administrators, politicians, and vast self-interested education bureaucracies, tend to shunt rational ***EDUCATION*** goals down the list and out of sight.) We had a short discussion a few weeks back along these lines. Anyway, the internet is changing all that -- Khan Academy, Stanford's online AI class, MIT opening up its lessons for free online, etc. Here's another: http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/peer-instruction Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 12 16:06:25 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:06:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Medical Singularity pain In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002301cce9a0$45e77e60$d1b67b20$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] Medical Singularity pain >...If you read the medical news and science news streams, you get some impression of the flood of research that is going on. Cancer news has seeming breakthroughs published every day...The pain comes in realising that we are going to lose loved ones during those twenty years. Perhaps I may not last that long myself. Accidents or illness can strike at any time...BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, if we can get Snowmed CT to go critical mass, that might be the biggest breakthrough in medicine since penicillin. If we can somehow get the masses of proles to help reduce their health history from a bunch of words that only a few overworked doctors can use to a bunch of numbers that millions of tireless computers can grind away on through the night, we might get ten big news stories for every one we get now. I am imagining creating an extension of Snowmed CT that would somehow accommodate stuff like dietary intake, weight history, frequency of copulation, mental outlook, although that might be redundant with the previous, employment history, recreational drug use, environmental exposure to known toxins, location of the patient, how well you sleep (not so well lately alas) how many larvae you have spawned and when, accidents, sports injuries, degenerative diseases, how much alcohol you have devoured and when, all that kind of stuff. All this reminds me of a discussion I had with my grandfather about smoking, 40 yrs ago. At that time, the TV advertisers were getting into high gear about about how bad it is to smoke. My grandfather had given up smoking in his 40s, before there was any of this (1950s.) He was the kind of guy who collected data and was always studying this variable vs that, so I asked him about whether any of the old timers suspected a correlation between smoking and lung cancer. His answer is one I will never forget. He said they never knew about lung cancer, but they knew way back even before his time that smoking was bad for the health and that smokers died sooner. He always suspected it caused emphysema, and of course there was that raspy smokers cough. According to him, it was obvious to anyone with at least one eye and at least two functioning brain cells: you compared those who smoked with those who didn't, and the signal was as subtle as a steamroller. So he quit. About 8 years after we had that discussion, one of his sons developed lung cancer at age 34. We buried him six months later. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 12 16:53:23 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:53:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Mouse to Human Dosage Conversion In-Reply-To: <1329055311.45423.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1329055311.45423.YahooMailNeo@web164511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <002a01cce9a6$d5cc7110$81655330$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of The Avantguardian Subject: [ExI] Mouse to Human Dosage Conversion >...Since I know Spike and many people are curious how to translate doses from mice to human, here is a FASEB article on the subject that is free to download. ? >...http://www.fasebj.org/content/22/3/659.full.pdf+html Stuart LaForge Cool thanks Avant! Good chance we will hear back from the medics tomorrow, or very soon I hope. They may have some kind of inside infrastructure in the profession to deal with what must be hundreds of requests for off-label prescriptions. You know as soon as this made the headlines, everyone who knows an Alzheimer's patient called and asked them if they saw it. The medics will likely make a heroic effort to maintain some kind of control over this wave. I can imagine the geriatric docs tomorrow morning with long lines of geezers outside their offices. Nearly everyone has a family member, friend or acquaintance with this disease, with little hope, nothing to lose and an eagerness to sign up for any test of any ray of hope. This I will offer: the current Alzheimer's medications aren't worth a damn, they are expensive, have side effects to the point many of them may do more harm than good, and don't seem to work; all of them together are not worth one single faint damn. It's a hell of a note for researchers: if they see something that offers any hope, they are ethically obligated to report it, even if they have good reason to doubt this medication will cross the blood brain barrier. Who the hell knows, perhaps the dopers will come to the rescue of the rest of us: they figure out how to use this chemical or that solvent to carry the active ingredient across the barrier. If some damn junky comes up with the solution to getting bexarotene across the barrier to the amyloid plaques, I will gladly stop making disparaging comments about junkies. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 12 17:08:22 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:08:22 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> <001901cce99c$fbc25a10$f3470e30$@att.net> Message-ID: <003101cce9a8$ed2d7aa0$c7886fe0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 3:42 PM, spike wrote: >>... We could use something like that Snowmed CT database, and arrange a > volunteer base to do some kind of background computing project to look > for unexpected correlations... >...Thinking it over, it sounds like a project for Watson. I believe they are already planning to use Watson to help with medical diagnosis. Why do all these projects take years? BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, if we manage to help Snowmed or something analogous to it go mainstream and it turns into a really useful life extension tool, it could be the very most important achievement the transhumanist movement has ever accomplished. All our yakkity yak and bla bla here over the years would pale in comparison to contributing to Snowmed or equivalent going critical mass. I define success as creating sufficient awareness that the unwashed hordes of internet humanity will use it. Then from that, the next success is the creation of digital health profiles that we can somehow chew on in background processes. Then perhaps GIMPS, Folding at home and all those guys might contribute a few trillion cycles per second to the effort. Success would be the creation of some kind of user interface which would allow a prole to go in and enter, perhaps anonymously, what diseases they have suffered, what they ate, where they live, what they smoked, when they were born, what damn junk they poked into their veins to build muscle or just for kicks, etc, then have the software reduce all that to a digital signature and drop it into Snowmed. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 12 18:36:41 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:36:41 +0000 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <003101cce9a8$ed2d7aa0$c7886fe0$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> <001901cce99c$fbc25a10$f3470e30$@att.net> <003101cce9a8$ed2d7aa0$c7886fe0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 5:08 PM, spike wrote: > BillK, if we manage to help Snowmed or something analogous to it go > mainstream and it turns into a really useful life extension tool, it could > be the very most important achievement the transhumanist movement has ever > accomplished. ?All our yakkity yak and bla bla here over the years would > pale in comparison to contributing to Snowmed or equivalent going critical > mass. ?I define success as creating sufficient awareness that the unwashed > hordes of internet humanity will use it. ?Then from that, the next success > is the creation of digital health profiles that we can somehow chew on in > background processes. ?Then perhaps GIMPS, Folding at home and all those guys > might contribute a few trillion cycles per second to the effort. > > Success would be the creation of some kind of user interface which would > allow a prole to go in and enter, perhaps anonymously, what diseases they > have suffered, what they ate, where they live, what they smoked, when they > were born, what damn junk they poked into their veins to build muscle or > just for kicks, etc, then have the software reduce all that to a digital > signature and drop it into Snowmed. > > Snowmed is already in widespread use around the world. For example, the new UK NHS computerised patient records system has adopted the Snowmed classification system. Unfortunately the coding system involving disease and all the sub-categories is too complex for most proles to use. Doctors have years of training to understand what is going on. The other problem is that these medical records are scattered around in hospital systems, insurance systems, doctor's systems, etc. in thousands of separate computer records systems. Nobody is collecting it all into one database. Probably because of patient confidentiality as you said. It would probably take somebody like Google to collect it all together. It might happen eventually, when the government decides it wants to know absolutely everything about everyone. That's the way things are going anyway. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 12 20:46:13 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:46:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> <001901cce99c$fbc25a10$f3470e30$@att.net> <003101cce9a8$ed2d7aa0$c7886fe0$@att.net> Message-ID: <007a01cce9c7$5c4a5200$14def600$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 5:08 PM, spike wrote: >>... BillK, if we manage to help Snowmed or something analogous to it go > mainstream and it turns into a really useful life extension tool, it > could be the very most important achievement the transhumanist > movement has ever accomplished... have the software > reduce all that to a digital signature and drop it into Snowmed... spike >...Snowmed is already in widespread use around the world. ...The other problem is that these medical records are scattered around in ... insurance systems... BillK _______________________________________________ Ja, BillK, another aspect you almost touched on here is that for medical insurance companies, the understanding of the medical cost and risk structure of a client as a function of apparently unrelated variables is their value. They are motivated specifically against their clientele understanding their own risk structure, for the insurance company's bread and butter is in having people bet against their own health. What I have proposed would largely obviate medical insurance companies, or would reduce their profitability. For that reason, we could imagine a class of people who are motivated to intentionally degrade a database of this nature, even if we are successful in creating it. So we need to design in some tolerance or protection against those who would intentionally degrade a database. This would mean loss of privacy: all records would need to be traceable to a particular patient, as opposed to a privacy-robust system which would allow patients to enter anonymously and enter their data in private. There is a name for this where two variables generally work against each other (anyone know?) In my world of flight controls, the variables are stability vs maneuverability. In the medical database world it would be patient privacy vs corruptibility of the database. To achieve robustness against corruptibility, we would be back to making the database volunteers willing to reveal everything about themselves, which selects a particular cross section. This limits usefulness, to some degree. We could have two databases, one with traceable volunteers, the other with untraceable corruptible database. Then we compare the two. spike From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 13 03:53:32 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:53:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> <001901cce99c$fbc25a10$f3470e30$@att.net> <003101cce9a8$ed2d7aa0$c7886fe0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00bd01ccea03$0e274d80$2a75e880$@att.net> Cool, the temporary open season is working out well for the topic of bexarotene: no one is abusing it by wandering off on other unrelated stuff and it is generating lots of discussion on this timely topic. Read on please: >... On Behalf Of BillK ... >...Snowmed is already in widespread use around the world. For example, the new UK NHS computerised patient records system has adopted the Snowmed classification system...Unfortunately the coding system involving disease and all the sub-categories is too complex for most proles to use. Doctors have years of training to understand what is going on...BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, here's the Wiki example of exactly what you are talking about: SNOMED CT provides a compositional syntax[5] for building new concepts. For example, there might not be an explicit concept for a burn in the palm of the hand. Using the compositional syntax it could be described as 413350009 | finding with explicit context | : { 246090004 | associated finding | = ( 284196006 | burn of skin | : 246112005 | severity | = 24484000 | severe | , 363698007 | finding site | = 321472003 | structure of dermatoglyphic patterns of palm |) , 408729009 | finding context | = 410515003 | known present | , 408731000 | temporal context | = 410512000 | current or specified | , 408732007 | subject relationship context | = 410604004 | subject of record | } My doctor is busy, so I suspect she doesn't use this system. If we want to find stuff like some unexplained correlation between Alzheimer's and bexarotene, we need a way to simplify SNOMED, or create something analogous to a macro language. We need to harness the recent and surprisingly competent speech recognition software to translate the comment "patient presents with severe burn on the palm of the hand" to: 413350009 | finding with explicit context | : { 246090004 | associated finding | = ( 284196006 | burn of skin | : 246112005 | severity | = 24484000 | severe | , 363698007 | finding site | = 321472003 | structure of dermatoglyphic patterns of palm |) , 408729009 | finding context | = 410515003 | known present | , 408731000 | temporal context | = 410512000 | current or specified | , 408732007 | subject relationship context | = 410604004 | subject of record | } Once we get that far, we have a standardized terminology which can be dumped into a spreadsheet. Actually this is one of those ideas which is so obvious, someone somewhere must already be working on it. All my best ideas are that way. From the description, there is already considerable intellectual investment in SNOMED in the community, so we would likely be best working with that system rather than inventing a competitor. I can imagine this would really take off if we could get a voice to SNOMED code macro. spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 13 03:56:19 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:56:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. Message-ID: <1329105379.13047.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Does anybody have a clue how many total people are involved in transhumanism-related movements in the United States and worldwide? We have a pretty large Internet presence but there are so many orgs and?sites with a lot of lurkers?and overlap of membership, so its difficult to estimate actual numbers. Therefore I propose that we conduct an H+ census. ? This would accomplish a lot of things. First it would give us a benchmark of how much the movement has grown over the years. Also it would give us an idea how much bargaining power we as a movement have?in the state capitals of the world?and the global marketplace. I think this is an important first step toward us collectively wielding any kind collective influence in society. And?I think that we?will need to wield collective influence in order to achieve any semblance of the future we all?want. ? To give you an idea of what I mean, the Individual Health Insurance Mandate has been voted into law in the U.S.?and is going into effect in 2014. Considering that Obama care was based on Romney-care, and Romney is the media favorite, you can see that the insurance lobby has made engineered a win-win?Presidential election?for itself. ? Now if we as a movement continue as we have an unorganized fractious diffuse mess, then those of us who will be affected by the Individual Mandate will have to purchase some over-priced cookie-cutter health insurance policy that we don't really want. If you buy insurance as an individual you get screwed. But if we could organize ourselves into an actual transhumanist bloc of insurance customers, we could get group health rate discounts and other perks. Like maybe a choice between hospice care or?cryogenic suspension for the terminally ill. Or we could get a blood glucose meter without having diabetes so you can monitor your blood sugar and prevent yourself from getting diabetes in the first place. Or maybe even get off label-presciptions for enhancement like Ritalin before an exam.???? ? So if somebody has an estimated headcount, please state it.?Also if you have ideas on how we could use free?Internet resources such as?google groups?or a social media site to conduct an accurate H+ Census, that would be great.??? ? ? Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 13 04:37:19 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:37:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <1329105379.13047.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1329105379.13047.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00c101ccea09$2c570f10$85052d30$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of The Avantguardian Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. ? >...To give you an idea of what I mean, the Individual Health Insurance Mandate has been voted into law in the U.S.?and is going into effect in 2014... Stuart LaForge It goes into effect only if the Supreme Court can find anything in the constitution that grants the federal government the right to mandate that we buy anything. I have read that document word for word and have never found anything in there that would suggest the fed has that authority. If the SCOTUS pulls some kind of rabbit out of the hat and decides there is constitutional grounds for this, you still don't need to buy the insurance. Just pay 750 dollars a year penalty for not having it. If you get sick, then buy the insurance. If the SCOTUS upholds that law, it will not take very long after 2014 for the insurance/medical system to collapse in a smoldering heap. I predict it will be overturned. Regarding your original proposal: >...Does anybody have a clue how many total people are involved in transhumanism-related movements in the United States and worldwide? How do we define "involved in"? In the making of a ham and eggs breakfast, the cow and the chicken are involved, but the pig is committed to it. I can imagine plenty of people are generally favorable to the H+ movement, but haven't actually committed personal funds to the matter. spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 13 04:57:08 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:57:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <00c101ccea09$2c570f10$85052d30$@att.net> References: <1329105379.13047.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00c101ccea09$2c570f10$85052d30$@att.net> Message-ID: <1329109028.45294.YahooMailNeo@web164507.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: spike > To: 'The Avantguardian' ; 'ExI chat list' > Cc: > Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2012 8:37 PM > Subject: RE: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. > > >> ... On Behalf Of The Avantguardian > Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. > ? >> ...To give you an idea of what I mean, the Individual Health Insurance > Mandate has been voted into law in the U.S.?and is going into effect in > 2014... Stuart LaForge > > It goes into effect only if the Supreme Court can find anything in the > constitution that grants the federal government the right to mandate that we > buy anything.? I have read that document word for word and have never found > anything in there that would suggest the fed has that authority.? If the > SCOTUS pulls some kind of rabbit out of the hat and decides there is > constitutional grounds for this, you still don't need to buy the insurance. > Just pay 750 dollars a year penalty for not having it.? If you get sick, > then buy the insurance. > > If the SCOTUS upholds that law, it will not take very long after 2014 for > the insurance/medical system to collapse in a smoldering heap.? I predict it > will be overturned. I doubt?the insurance companies will allow themselves to be thwarted by the SCOTUS. If they haven't already lobbied the judges and the SCOTUS does overturn the national mandate, the insurance companies would just spend the extra money to lobby all the state legislatures into adopting clones of the Massuchussetts?health care model?the way they did for mandatory auto insurance. > Regarding your original proposal: > >> ...Does anybody have a clue how many total people are involved in > transhumanism-related movements in the United States and worldwide? > > How do we define "involved in"?? In the making of a ham and eggs > breakfast, > the cow and the chicken are involved, but the pig is committed to it.? I can > imagine plenty of people are generally favorable to the H+ movement, but > haven't actually committed personal funds to the matter. Maybe we should find out how many chickens *and* pigs there are. Cows too since you never know when someone might want steak and eggs instead of ham. I get your point about the funds thing, but maybe there are people holding out to see the movement devlops momentum before they commit. Besides I think that there are other ways to be committed to a movement other than?sending in cash. "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson Stuart LaForge From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Feb 13 04:42:34 2012 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:42:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <1329105379.13047.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1329105379.13047.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I do know that the Mormon Transhumanist Association does it's own census, which asks its members their stats and views regarding a number of things. John On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 8:56 PM, The Avantguardian < avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote: > Does anybody have a clue how many total people are involved in > transhumanism-related movements in the United States and worldwide? We have > a pretty large Internet presence but there are so many orgs and sites with > a lot of lurkers and overlap of membership, so its difficult to estimate > actual numbers. Therefore I propose that we conduct an H+ census. > > This would accomplish a lot of things. First it would give us a benchmark > of how much the movement has grown over the years. Also it would give us an > idea how much bargaining power we as a movement have in the state capitals > of the world and the global marketplace. I think this is an important first > step toward us collectively wielding any kind collective influence in > society. And I think that we will need to wield collective influence in > order to achieve any semblance of the future we all want. > > To give you an idea of what I mean, the Individual Health Insurance > Mandate has been voted into law in the U.S. and is going into effect in > 2014. Considering that Obama care was based on Romney-care, and Romney is > the media favorite, you can see that the insurance lobby has made > engineered a win-win Presidential election for itself. > > Now if we as a movement continue as we have an unorganized fractious > diffuse mess, then those of us who will be affected by the Individual > Mandate will have to purchase some over-priced cookie-cutter health > insurance policy that we don't really want. If you buy insurance as an > individual you get screwed. But if we could organize ourselves into an > actual transhumanist bloc of insurance customers, we could get group health > rate discounts and other perks. Like maybe a choice between hospice care > or cryogenic suspension for the terminally ill. Or we could get a blood > glucose meter without having diabetes so you can monitor your blood sugar > and prevent yourself from getting diabetes in the first place. Or maybe > even get off label-presciptions for enhancement like Ritalin before an > exam. > > So if somebody has an estimated headcount, please state it. Also if you > have ideas on how we could use free Internet resources such as google > groups or a social media site to conduct an accurate H+ Census, that would > be great. > > > > Stuart LaForge > > > "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson > > _______________________________________________ > 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 natasha at natasha.cc Mon Feb 13 14:30:52 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:30:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> References: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> Message-ID: <014b01ccea5c$16bede00$443c9a00$@cc> Hi everyone, I received plenty of responses from extrobritannia on this, so no need to respond! Natasha Vita-More PhD Researcher, Univ. of Plymouth, UK Chairman, Humanity+ Co-Editor, The Transhumanist Reader From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Natasha Vita-More Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 1:40 PM To: 'ExI chat list'; extrobritannia at yahoogroups.com Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies Can someone suggest five well-known science fiction authors and their book titles that speculate on cyberspace as an alternative environment for leaving the flesh/meat body behind? You don't have to like, agree with or support the narratives, and they don't have to be transhumanist in scope. Thank you, Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 13 17:07:06 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:07:06 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <00bd01ccea03$0e274d80$2a75e880$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <4F36E21D.7030802@infinitefaculty.org> <00a901cce911$150310a0$3f0931e0$@att.net> <4F373515.8070201@infinitefaculty.org> <003601cce93c$8b322290$a19667b0$@att.net> <001901cce99c$fbc25a10$f3470e30$@att.net> <003101cce9a8$ed2d7aa0$c7886fe0$@att.net> <00bd01ccea03$0e274d80$2a75e880$@att.net> Message-ID: <004401ccea71$ea80b7d0$bf822770$@att.net> I have learned that a typical therapeutic dosage of bexarotene for cancer patients costs about 1200 USD per month, which is manageable, less than a fifth as much as a typical memory care facility. The other good news is that the patent for bexarotene expires this year, so there might be a bunch of generics show up soon. I expect those labs all over the world which have Alzheimer's mice are scrambling to reproduce the results reported last week, so we should be hearing from them soon. I don't know how long it takes for these kinds of tests to run. I also want to hear from those few labs which have natural Alzheimer's chimps. Chimps are expensive to keep, so there aren't many of them, but their blood/brain barrier is very similar to humans. There are zoos that keep chimps and bonobos well into their dotage, most claiming they are the original Tarzan's companion, Cheetah. Unanswered still is if bexarotene works at lower dosages than are typical for cancer patients, or if it works at all in humans against Alzheimer's, or if for some odd reason it helps only genetically linked early Alzheimer's patients. spike From sjatkins at mac.com Mon Feb 13 19:31:48 2012 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:31:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> Yummy! The answer to whether to stay where the information flow is hyper fast and rich or go off exploring? Take your entire planet with you. I saw a paper by some mad scientist that I don't have immediately at hand. Its premise was that it might be possible to introduce just the right size black hole into a planet in a way where the energy released by infalling matter just balanced the gravitational force of the hole with enough internal heat generated to keep the planet reasonably warm at the surface without a nearby star. Of course if you have enough uber-energy of any kind you should be able to keep many parts of the surface or interior comfortable enough for life. Of course if your civilization has gone post-biological this may not be as much of an issue. - samantha On 02/08/2012 08:32 AM, BillK wrote: > Nomadic Planets May Swarm the Galaxy > > > > We estimate that there may be up to ~10^5 compact objects in the mass > range 10^{-8} -10^{-2} solar mass per main sequence star that are > unbound to a host star in the Galaxy. We refer to these objects as > nomads; in the literature a subset of these are sometimes called > free-floating or rogue planets. Our estimate for the number of > Galactic nomads is consistent with a smooth extrapolation of the mass > function of unbound objects above the Jupiter-mass scale, the stellar > mass density limit, and the metallicity of the interstellar medium. > > Complete pdf file > > > =============== > > > Can there really be up to 100,000 wandering planets for *every* star? > That's a mind-boggling big number of planets. > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From scerir at alice.it Mon Feb 13 20:38:01 2012 From: scerir at alice.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:38:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] LENR at CERN In-Reply-To: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> References: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> Message-ID: http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=177379 From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Feb 13 20:28:50 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:28:50 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> References: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Yummy! The answer to whether to stay where the information flow is hyper > fast and rich or go off exploring? Take your entire planet with you. I > saw a paper by some mad scientist that I don't have immediately at hand. > Its premise was that it might be possible to introduce just the right size > black hole into a planet in a way where the energy released by infalling > matter just balanced the gravitational force of the hole with enough > internal heat generated to keep the planet reasonably warm at the surface > without a nearby star. Of course if you have enough uber-energy of any > kind you should be able to keep many parts of the surface or interior > comfortable enough for life. Of course if your civilization has gone > post-biological this may not be as much of an issue. > > I imagine the first response to "blackhole the earth" would be something like, "You want to what?!?" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 13 20:52:37 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:52:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> References: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> Message-ID: <00af01ccea91$6b6b66a0$424233e0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins Subject: Re: [ExI] Planets galore! >...Yummy! The answer to whether to stay where the information flow is hyper fast and rich or go off exploring? Take your entire planet with you. I saw a paper by some mad scientist that I don't have immediately at hand. Its premise was that it might be possible to introduce just the right size black hole into a planet in a way where the energy released by infalling matter just balanced the gravitational force of the hole with enough internal heat generated to keep the planet reasonably warm at the surface without a nearby star... - samantha Mad scientist? HAH! I match his madness, and raise him a schizophrenic hallucination! Agreed, the interstellar traveler takes the planet and local star along, but this isn't the way to do it. You create an MBrain, reflect about half the star's light in one direction, creating a gentle force going in the other direction (conservation of momentum.) Too gentle in fact, for it takes 20 million years to get to the nearest star, assuming you don't attempt to slow down, but rather leave some stuff behind to reproduce and do it all again. In the meantime, you gravitationally deflect off of the other star to change your direction (a few milliradians with each of multiple deflections) either outward toward the nearest neighboring galaxy or toward the core of our own, thereby starting on a billion year trip, using the orbit velocity of the sun around the center of the galaxy, which is a couple hundred km/sec as I recall. In this fashion, we populate the entire universe eventually, for we deposit our seed in some of the younger stars as our own approaches old age. That should keep our mind-children going until heat death of the universe or the big rip. John Gribbin has just released a book called Alone in the Universe, in which he argues we are the only advanced civilization. If so, we need to get going, even if the available acceleration is only a few microns per second per year, or 300 meters per square year, if you prefer those units, and by the time we get it all to the nearest star we are going about as fast as a Boeing 737 flies. I pitched the notion to a group of aerospace engineers on 4 November 2011. Their unanimous response was "huh?" Followed by some quick calculations to show that yes it is theoretically possible, followed by what the hell difference does it make, what we can do 20 million years from now? Paper available on request, non-serious inquiries only please. There really is a pitch however, about 18 MB PowerPoint. Samantha, do you want to see it? spike From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Feb 13 21:58:17 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:58:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: <00af01ccea91$6b6b66a0$424233e0$@att.net> References: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> <00af01ccea91$6b6b66a0$424233e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 3:52 PM, spike wrote: > I pitched the notion to a group of aerospace engineers on 4 November 2011. > Their unanimous response was "huh?" Followed by some quick calculations to > show that yes it is theoretically possible, followed by what the hell > difference does it make, what we can do 20 million years from now? > > Paper available on request, non-serious inquiries only please. There > really > is a pitch however, about 18 MB PowerPoint. Samantha, do you want to see > it? > > Those engineers were confused because your pitch lacks sufficient examples of in-flight entertainment and similar amusing distractions. Perhaps you could spend a bit more time on the computational power in terms of modern metrics - like how many Blue-Ray DVD-equivalences you could store or how many Library of Congresses (LoCs) you can transfer from one side of the M-Brain to another each second. Whether you propose that the amount of speed (per conscious entity) is orders of magnitude faster than humanity is currently operating or opt instead for the 20 million years to one subjective hour so you don't get bored on the way... it's personal preference. It'd be the cruise of a lifetime... or several million lifetimes... Definitely needs more marketing. Think in terms of 30 second adverts, then think in terms of 2 second adverts within the 30 second adverts for the really ADHD. :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Mon Feb 13 21:47:52 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:47:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The Avantguardian asked: > > Does anybody have a clue how many total people are involved > in transhumanism-related movements in the United States and > worldwide? I can confirm that there are at least 6 transhumanists in the UK. Ben Zaiboc From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 13 22:55:29 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:55:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: References: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> <00af01ccea91$6b6b66a0$424233e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00e501cceaa2$96276ef0$c2764cd0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] Planets galore! On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 3:52 PM, spike wrote: >>.I pitched the notion to a group of aerospace engineers on 4 November 2011. Their unanimous response was "huh?" Followed by some quick calculations to show that yes it is theoretically possible, followed by what the hell difference does it make, what we can do 20 million years from now? >.Those engineers were confused because your pitch lacks sufficient examples of in-flight entertainment and similar amusing distractions. Perhaps you could spend a bit more time on the computational power in terms of modern metrics - like how many Blue-Ray DVD-equivalences you could store or how many Library of Congresses (LoCs) you can transfer from one side of the M-Brain to another each second. Whether you propose that the amount of speed (per conscious entity) is orders of magnitude faster than humanity is currently operating or opt instead for the 20 million years to one subjective hour so you don't get bored on the way... it's personal preference. It'd be the cruise of a lifetime... or several million lifetimes... Mike Very much to the contrary on all points Mike. This scheme provides the ultimate in-flight entertainment and amusing distractions: everything we have now and everything we will develop in the next 20 million years. Life goes right along as before, evolving, uploading, whatever we want to do, completely transparent to the users down here other than it obscures some of the light from the distant stars. I wouldn't like that part, but most people seldom or never go out on a clear night and look up anyway. These tragic lost souls miss out on the sheer awe and wonder of it all, the mind boggling openness of the endless cosmos, WOW! But this notion is an example of a process that in principle could continue even if we go retro and become something about halfway between a current human and a chimp, ook ooking around in the trees and fighting over bananas. The MBrain could quietly drag us along, and deposit nodes as we pass the next star, so that our mind children will continue outward and onward, with or without us. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Mon Feb 13 23:51:13 2012 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:51:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <014a01cce8d5$bbf02f60$33d08e20$@att.net> Message-ID: One way that you can time your exit (and entry into the cryopreservation process) is to refuse food and water. It's not pleasant and requires determination, although some say it gets easier after the first couple of days. This is not treated as a suspicious death if you are already terminal with cancer or something else deadly. Alcor members who expect to die soon (you are eligible for hospice care if the doctor thinks you have less than six months) can optimize their cryopreservation by relocating to hospice in Scottsdale and then refuse food and fluids. This leads to a fairly predictable decline with our standby team on hand. In this situation, the time from pronouncement to arrival at Alcor (after administering medications, restoring circulation, and starting cooling) can take less than 30 minutes. --Max On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2012/2/11 spike > > In the US, we don?t really have a choice. One of the early cryonics > cases as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: > http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html > > I appreciate that, and this is not really unusual in existing legal > systems. > > Should we however seek an undefined lifespan without at the same time > advocating for the freedom to obtain assisted suicide at any time, for > whatsoever reason? > > I fully accept that given the rather remote chances of resurrection, > cryonic suspension of a healthy (or, at least, alive) individual may > well be considered as such by some. > > But why should this be anybody else's business? The reason why we > should support even "turist" cryonic suspension, for those willing to > take the bet, is the same why we should support the freedom to obtain > euthanasia and cremation if one so wishes. > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue Feb 14 00:27:45 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:27:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <014a01cce8d5$bbf02f60$33d08e20$@att.net> Message-ID: <1329179265.77161.YahooMailNeo@web164513.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ________________________________ >From: Max More >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Monday, February 13, 2012 3:51 PM >Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? > > >One way that you can time your exit (and entry into the cryopreservation process) is to refuse food and water. It's not pleasant and requires determination, although some say it gets easier after the first couple of days. This is not treated as a suspicious death if you are already terminal with cancer or something else deadly. > >Alcor members who expect to die soon (you are eligible for hospice care if the doctor thinks you have less than six months) can optimize their cryopreservation by relocating to hospice in Scottsdale and then refuse food and fluids. This leads to a fairly predictable decline with our standby team on hand. In this situation, the time from pronouncement to arrival at Alcor (after administering medications, restoring circulation, and starting cooling) can take less than 30 minutes. >>I fully accept that given the rather remote chances of resurrection, >>cryonic suspension of a healthy (or, at least, alive) individual may >>well be considered as such by some. Thanks, Max, this is a?doable stop gap measure until we can get the insurance industry to write policies specifically for the purpose. ? ? Stefano writes: ? >>But why should this be anybody else's business? The reason why we >>should support even "turist" cryonic suspension, for those willing to >>take the bet, is the same why we should support the freedom to obtain >>euthanasia and cremation if one so wishes. It is ironic that terminally ill patients have to earn the right to die in order to give themselves a chance to live. ? ? Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From rtomek at ceti.pl Tue Feb 14 01:12:02 2012 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:12:02 +0100 (CET) Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: <014b01ccea5c$16bede00$443c9a00$@cc> References: <010f01cce82b$be6d1780$3b474680$@cc> <014b01ccea5c$16bede00$443c9a00$@cc> Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Feb 2012, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Hi everyone, I received plenty of responses from extrobritannia on this, so > no need to respond! > > > > Natasha Vita-More > PhD Researcher, Univ. of Plymouth, UK > Chairman, Humanity+ > > Co-Editor, The Transhumanist Reader No, please, don't give up on us :-). Just because I have already searched my memories, and at worst it will be archived even if not quite useful for your goals, here goes: - Philip K. Dick "A Maze of Death" - colonist ship is stranded somewhere, crew cannot call home and to pass the time they engage in VR-based plays. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Maze_of_Death - Frederik Pohl "Heechee Rendezvous" - I am not sure about rest of Heechee/Gateway novels, and this one is the first I can recall that describes a concept that a billionaire can escape death as an upload to alien computer. Heechees do this kind of stuff routinely, as they don't need/want to write complicated software - instead, they use dead Heechees' uploads to do complicated things (if I remember it well enough) in a way that made me thinking about cyberslaves, or dead folk turned into cyberspace zombies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heechee_Rendezvous - Stanislaw Lem "Bajka o trzech maszynach opowiadajacych krola Genialona" ("Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius") - yeah, indeed, would it be possible that I did not mention Lem? Anyway, this story is not quite about cyberspace as other authors do. I will write part of the story only. In short, Trurl, a great constructor and inventor, travelled between the stars and came upon a barking comet. Trying to make it go away, he thrown lots of things from the ship, and he also thrown a pot. A pot landed on one moon with cosmic trash on it, left from two civilisations that ended their existence in war against each other. Landing on a heap of trash, pot caused a number of coincidences which resulted in creation of electric robot, Maimas (Pl. "Majmasz"). He stood up, looked around, seen himself in a nearby pool and walked away singing hymn about Harmony. Accidentally, he misstepped, failed and turned off. After about 300 000 years, some merchant passed by, quarreling with his helper. A merchant threw his shoes at helper, missed, shoes went throu spaceship's window and one of them landed on Maimas, pushing his rusting body into water pool. Thanks to chemistry, this contributed to making of electrolyte and since Maimas' head sat in it, some current passed through his brain. Unfortunately, he only managed to think "I exist" and again went off. After some 1500 years, a bird flew over Maimas and made a poo. A poo landed on his forehead. Again, Maimas started to think. His sensors rusted and failed, so he only had his thoughts, and he went on creating whole universe based on some logical assumptions about his own being. Kind of I think therefore I am. If I am, but empty, therefore I need to be filled up. So he invented all kinds of figures living in this universe, wild peoples and romantic lovers. He understood that his universe depends on him so he made his best to remember about everything etc. Unfortunately, his physical body slowly sunk into mud and finally, the abovementioned pot, directed by flow of wind, hit his head, it broke and water entered the brain, putting an end to his thinking and universe created by it. And, as a story says, nobody ever knew about it all, not even those who started all events by accident. - a bunch of usual suspects - Gibson, Stross - already mentioned by others It is possible I will recall more about Lem, but let's leave it like it is now. My gelly works in circular and upredictable ways. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com ** From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 14 01:02:46 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:02:46 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article Message-ID: <010e01cceab4$5de47d50$19ad77f0$@att.net> Googled bexarotene therapeutic dose, found it was 75 mg per day (for cancer patients), then went looking for sources, found this: http://www.drugstore.com/targretin/75mg-capsules/qxn62856060210 This site says Targretin's patents don't expire until 2016, but I don't know if it contains other stuff besides bexarotene: http://www.medcitynews.com/2011/10/generic-cancer-drug-from-banner-aims-to-t ake-on-eisais-targretin/ This site says Banner Pharmacaps Inc has applied for an FDA fast track for a generic version of Targretin, back last October. http://banpharm.com/newsview.cfm/pID/31 spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Feb 14 04:23:33 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:23:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: <00e501cceaa2$96276ef0$c2764cd0$@att.net> References: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> <00af01ccea91$6b6b66a0$424233e0$@att.net> <00e501cceaa2$96276ef0$c2764cd0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/13 spike : > Very much to the contrary on all points Mike.? This scheme provides the > ultimate in-flight entertainment and amusing distractions: everything we > have now and everything we will develop in the next 20 million years.? Life > goes right along as before, evolving, uploading, whatever we want to do, > completely transparent to the users down here other than it obscures some of > the light from the distant stars.? I wouldn?t like that part, but most > people seldom or never go out on a clear night and look up anyway.? These > tragic lost souls miss out on the sheer awe and wonder of it all, the mind > boggling openness of the endless cosmos, WOW! Oh agreed. I meant that _your pitch_ is light on the brochure parts of marketing the fun. People go on cruises all the time, only engineers (and similar nerds) want to know how much horsepower is in the engine. :) From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 14 04:44:03 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:44:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Planets galore! In-Reply-To: References: <4F396524.4010909@mac.com> <00af01ccea91$6b6b66a0$424233e0$@att.net> <00e501cceaa2$96276ef0$c2764cd0$@att.net> Message-ID: <002001ccead3$47935a20$d6ba0e60$@att.net> ... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] Planets galore! 2012/2/13 spike : >> ...? These tragic lost souls miss out on > the sheer awe and wonder of it all, the mind boggling openness of the endless cosmos, WOW! >...Oh agreed. I meant that _your pitch_ is light on the brochure parts of marketing the fun. People go on cruises all the time, only engineers (and similar nerds) want to know how much horsepower is in the engine. :) _______________________________________________ Ja, I have never understood that. How the heck can normal people have fun without knowing about the engine? That is soooo cooool! They don't know what they are missing up there on the dance floor, jiggling around and such, when all the really interesting stuff is down in the engine room and the command and control architecture. People are so weird. spike From bbenzai at yahoo.com Tue Feb 14 09:34:55 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:34:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1329212095.74055.YahooMailClassic@web114403.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Kelly Anderson wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Ben Zaiboc > wrote: > > Kelly Anderson > asked: > > > >> ... if you had never experienced sad, how would you > know the true > >> "meaning" of happy? > > > > I call Bullshit on this. > > Sweet. I like an active conversation! Let's see what we can > agree upon! > > > It's like saying "If you never knew Green, how would > you ever know the true 'meaning' of Red?" > > Not exactly analogous because Green is not the opposite of > Red. What? Green is exactly the opposite of Red. Have you never seen a colour wheel? I don't understand you saying it's not. What do you think is the opposite of Red? > If, on > the other hand, you said "If you don't know what UP is, > your > appreciation of DOWN is probably limited." then maybe that > is not > quite so full of shit. Happy and sad are opposites, and if > you can't > appreciate sad, then happy becomes the new base line. So if > all you > experience is happy. Then there are times when you are more > happy, and > times you are less happy. Less happy times might then be > described as > "sad". OK, but none of this means that an absence of one produces a corresponding absence of the other. Higher happiness being your baseline doesn't mean you are LESS happy. It just means your baseline is happier than someone else's. Your ability to experience 'happy' isn't compromised. In fact, I'd say you are more happy, not less. > > Now if I say I can see red and green but not xrays or radio > waves, and > apply that analogously to the happy-sad spectrum, then what > you have > is simply an optimist... :-) They would be somewhat > sad-blind. They > would still have to experience a continuum of emotions for > the words > to have any meaning. Can you or I really appreciate infrared > or > ultraviolet? Only in a limited way. So you're saying that my inability to see infrared means my ability to see whatever I /can/ see lacks some kind of meaning? This makes no sense at all. It would mean all the millions of things and ways I can't see make my current perceptions totally meaningless. Suppose there are depths of sad and happy that we are totally unaware of. Then suppose there are not. Do these two possibilities change our current experience in different ways? > Linguistics is all about the relationship of words to each > other. Have > you ever noticed that the dictionary uses words to define > other words? > Where do you start understanding? Everything in > understanding words is > related to experience, and to the words we have previously > been > exposed to. While you could give a machine the equivalent of > some sort > of endorphin rush of happiness... if they haven't had > sadness, would > they appreciate it as much? I think not. So they could have > the tokens > "happy" and "sad", but it might not have the same meaning to > them as > it does to us. In fact, they probably don't have absolutely > identical > meaning to you and I. By this logic, electric shocks don't hurt people who have never experienced an orgasm as much as those who have. > > > Suppose I invert your question, and say does sadness > only derive 'meaning' from > > happiness? (In other words, can you only be sad if > you've been happy?) > > > > Yes. When I have met people in Haiti and Brazil who have > never > experienced wealth, they are still glad to have a little > money. But > they don't understand what it's like not to have to worry > about where > your next meal comes from. This just demonstrates that people who have never experienced something, don't know what that thing is like. It doesn't demonstrate that they experience less of the opposite. > Likewise, we have a hard time > getting into > the mind of people who are ALWAYS worried about where there > next meal > is going to come from. This different experience of the > poverty-richness spectrum gives meaning to both parties, and > makes it > difficult for them to fully understand each other. > Thankfully, the > neo-cortex gives us the ability to run a little simulation, > but it > really isn't QUITE the same as actually having BEEN in > abject poverty. Yes, I have never been in abject poverty, and agree that I can't really understand what that's like. This doesn't reduce my ability to enjoy the modest level of affluence that I have. On average, I'm happier, not less happy, for not having been abjectly poor. > > > Do you think it makes sense to say that if someone has > never had any happiness in their lives, or very little, that > makes their sadness somehow less significant than that of > someone else who has been happy loads of times? > > > > No, So you do think that sadness derives meaning from happiness (see further above), but you don't think that sadness is made less significant if less happiness has been experienced? These are the same thing, and you've answered both No and Yes to the same question. > it merely makes them less familiar with the subject. The > saddest > people I have ever met still have some happiness. But when > your > baseline is at a different place than mine, that makes the > meaning of > the words we use slightly different, at least to degree. If > I put you > into the life of any of 80% of the people on this planet, > you would > find yourself very sad, very quickly, because your baseline > is > different from theirs. You would probably not enjoy living > in a > favela, but some of the happiest people I've ever met live > there. > Different experience... leads to different feelings in the > same > context... leads to different definitions of the words. > > My ex-brother-in-law lives in a bed in an open air hospice > in > Singapore. He has no ability to walk or even move much due > to a > brittle bone disease. Yet, he experiences some happiness, > for example, > when we visited him he seemed happy about the fact. I would > guess his > life is not as happy as mine has been. He derives pleasure > in > different ways than we do. He has had to adapt to a sadder > base line > in his emotional life. Things that would make you and I very > sad are > simply part of his daily life. So, does "happy" and "sad" > mean exactly > the same thing to him and I? Not exactly. If what you say is true, then everybody will be as happy as everybody else, because people who are 'unhappy' will by that token, be 'happy', and people who are very happy will be correspondingly less happy, so it will all even out. I honestly think there are people who are much happier, and others who are much unhappier, than average, and they aren't that way by virtue of experiencing a more-than-average amount of the opposite state. It's pretty obvious, really. > > If someone has had very little experience of pleasure, > is whatever pain they experience therefore less painful than > that experienced by a hedonist? (your example of a leper is > a good example: Do lepers feel less pleasure than other > people, purely because they feel less pain?) > > > > > Yes. Lepers feel less pleasure. OK, so lepers aren't such a good example after all. Their condition means they feel less sensation altogether, not just pain. Ben Zaiboc From anders at aleph.se Tue Feb 14 11:01:03 2012 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:01:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> On 2012-02-13 22:47, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > The Avantguardian asked: > >> >> Does anybody have a clue how many total people are involved >> in transhumanism-related movements in the United States and >> worldwide? > > I can confirm that there are at least 6 transhumanists in the UK. If you counted me, make that 5 certain transhumanists, since I am for the moment in Sweden. :-) Seriously, the question does come up again and again (a French journalist asked me it last week). And I think it doesn't have any good answer: counting people on mailing lists will likely give a number of a few hundred. But plenty of people are not on mailing lists, do not come to any regular meetings and do not call themselves transhumanists. Ideally we should be able to calculate backwards: given some assumption (for example based on other movements) of how many "lurkers" there are to active people, one could make an estimate based on (say) sales of Humanity+ Magazine. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Tue Feb 14 12:48:26 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:48:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20120214124826.GY7343@leitl.org> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:01:03PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Ideally we should be able to calculate backwards: given some assumption > (for example based on other movements) of how many "lurkers" there are > to active people, one could make an estimate based on (say) sales of > Humanity+ Magazine. I would estimate that some 0.1% of the general population in a typical industrial country would qualify to be called tranhumanists. Some particular locations (say, Bay Area) would run much higher (perhaps as high as 2-3%). From eugen at leitl.org Tue Feb 14 13:13:09 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:13:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20120214131309.GB7343@leitl.org> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 11:43:37PM -0700, Keith Henson wrote: > Per my recent posting, I no longer think it's practical to surround a > star with computronium (speed of light problems). Instead population Of course it's practical. The speed of light is a hard limit only for ~1 nm assemblies which must work by overlapped lightcones. This is ~THz refresh rates in practice, so not cramping your style too much. Power dissipation will be a much higher limit in practice. > centers will probably shrink to sizes in the few hundred meter range > and sunk the the deep oceans for cooling. The cosmic microwave heatsink is the largest and coldest heatsink known to man. Anything in-between will only be an obstacle. > I really don't see any way out of this. Being smart is a prime goal > for transhumanists. Everyone wants to be smarter than average. A > substantial part of being smart is being able to think faster. This > leads to a runaway situation where we rapidly run into distance being > time. We hardly notice telephone communication delays unless they are > going through satellites. But speed us up a million fold and the > maximum delay is (20,000 km/300,000 km/s) or 1/15 s. At a million to > one speed up, that would impose a subjective round trip delay of a day > and a half from one side of the earth to the other. Subjective round > trip delay to the moon would be a month. > > Maybe this isn't important. People went around the earth when it took years. Not only that, but you're living in that mythical country, founded by people who didn't exist. Perhaps I'm only imagining this conversation. Obviously I cannot perceive anything much beyond my own nose. Even my neurons don't bother talking to their neighbours, as they're Too Far Away! at mere 120 m/s speed. From eugen at leitl.org Tue Feb 14 13:51:59 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:51:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20120214135159.GK7343@leitl.org> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 02:55:16PM +0000, BillK wrote: > Your example works fine when low-level processors work on bits of a problem. > > But Keith was talking about whole civilisations. Ecosystems. Doesn't change a damn thing. > Long communication delays mean that they will no longer be one unified > civilisation. They will diverge into separate civilisations. These You make it sound like it was a bad thing! Diversity is what stabilizes ecosystems. > future 'million-times speed up' intelligences will probably be more > like hive-minds than the groups of individuals that we have today. As Bzzt. There's no reason to assume the current hierarchical organization (from molecules to eusocial animals) will be ever superceded. > such, the communication delays would stop the mind growing above a > certain size, because it would take too long to reach a decision. The Bzzt. Reflex processing is local, and doesn't need higher-order processing. > mind itself will decide what the optimum size would be for calculating > efficiency and if it wants to expand then it would build another mind Nobody calculates jack. The system self-optimizes. > next door. Though I don't see why it would want to create a competitor > for resources. Unless resources are really plentiful, of course. Why do animals have offspring? From eugen at leitl.org Tue Feb 14 14:14:47 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:14:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <014a01cce8d5$bbf02f60$33d08e20$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <014a01cce8d5$bbf02f60$33d08e20$@att.net> Message-ID: <20120214141447.GM7343@leitl.org> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 07:56:36AM -0800, spike wrote: > In the US, we don't really have a choice. One of the early cryonics cases > as I recall had a disputed time of death issue. Dora Kent: > http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/DoraKentCase.html But with VRFF/PRNH until arrest (predicted by urine specific gravity measurement), especially in a hospice setting you do have a choice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_euthanasia From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Tue Feb 14 14:07:21 2012 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:07:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4F3A6A99.3040001@canonizer.com> Transhumanists, I'm glad people are asking / interested in this. Knowing this, concisely, and quantitatively is critically important to our movement. There is usually the beliefs of the general population. Then there is a minority belief of experts, out in front of this hurdling and very noisy crowd. Often time, the expert signal is completely lost in all the noise of the crowd. Because of the way our critical scientific / expert publication system, and all of our communication systems for that matter, work, all of the conversation stops when there is any agreement. What are you going to do, publish the same paper and add a "me to" on the end? You only publish something, when you have a disagreement, no matter how trivial. This is precisely the problem. We need to develop a system that enables the experts to build as much consensus on as many things as possible, so the general crowd distinguish that unified expert voice signal from lonely crazy aunt sue. Even experts in any given still theoretical moral / scientific field are completely clueless as to how much expert consensus there is on the most important things. In addition to measuring for expert consensus, we need to measure what the following crowd is still believing and why. Telling them the evidence that convinces us, isn't enouogh. But we need to find out what it is, that is required to convince them. And we need to measure for such, and see how much progress we are making, what works for everyone else, and so on. That which you measure can improve, that much faster. We need to measure for much more than just "are you a transhumanist". (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/54/16 ). We need to survey for each and every moral and theoretical issue facing society such as these huge emerging transhumanist values consensus camps (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 and http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/40/2 and so many other critically important issues). I bet you everyone would be truly shocked at just how many people, not just people that called themselves trans humanists, value general transhumanist morals. And if we measured for what everyone else was believeing, and why, we'd have significantly more ability to speed up this process of herding the masses, following these experts, into the singularity. If you claim there are 6 transhumanists, in the UK, how many people are going to want to doubt you? And what people want is what is all important. But if you have signed online current decelerations with far more than this, nobody can deny just how many people have that particular value, on that particular moral issue. And as usual, the primitive ignorant crowd camps will be a complete and immoral clueless mess. We've simply all got to start speaking with one unified expert voice on all moral issues. We definitely need to find some way to help the moral wisdom of the crowd be amplified so that it can better track and keep up with what the leading experts already know. Everyone needs to get all their transhumanist friends to sign the most important moral declarations, and get their friends to do the same with their friends... You can't do a survey, unless people are willing to participate. Just like voting, if you don't work at it, you shouldn't expert anything any better than the ignorant morality stuck in the disagreeable mud of the dark ages we now have. Help us speak to the rest of the world with a unified voice. Brent Allsop On 2/14/2012 4:01 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2012-02-13 22:47, Ben Zaiboc wrote: >> The Avantguardian asked: >> >>> >>> Does anybody have a clue how many total people are involved >>> in transhumanism-related movements in the United States and >>> worldwide? >> >> I can confirm that there are at least 6 transhumanists in the UK. > > If you counted me, make that 5 certain transhumanists, since I am for > the moment in Sweden. :-) > > Seriously, the question does come up again and again (a French > journalist asked me it last week). And I think it doesn't have any > good answer: counting people on mailing lists will likely give a > number of a few hundred. But plenty of people are not on mailing > lists, do not come to any regular meetings and do not call themselves > transhumanists. > > Ideally we should be able to calculate backwards: given some > assumption (for example based on other movements) of how many > "lurkers" there are to active people, one could make an estimate based > on (say) sales of Humanity+ Magazine. > > > From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 14 16:33:10 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:33:10 -0800 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <20120214124826.GY7343@leitl.org> References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> <20120214124826.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <009201cceb36$570357e0$050a07a0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:01:03PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: >>... Ideally we should be able to calculate backwards: given some > assumption (for example based on other movements) of how many > "lurkers" there are to active people, one could make an estimate based > on (say) sales of Humanity+ Magazine. >...I would estimate that some 0.1% of the general population in a typical industrial country would qualify to be called tranhumanists. Some particular locations (say, Bay Area) would run much higher (perhaps as high as 2-3%). _______________________________________________ Ja, and people self-select to form groups of similar individuals, so it may skew our estimates. For instance, when I look at my own world, I realize why I never get to serve on a jury: the prosecuting attorney asks some key questions that I always fumble. I invite you to look at your own world and contrast it with the real world. For the sake of this exercise, exclude relatives, and look at the world you have chosen. Here's a description of mine: last night I went to a memorial service for the wife of a friend from work. There were perhaps 100 people there. Even if I include spouses of colleagues, I would estimate a good 80% of those present have college degrees, and at least a quarter have advanced degrees. I don't think anyone there has ever been to jail or has ever been charged with anything serious. I look at my regular social contacts. Nearly all of them have college degrees, and of those rare ones who do not, it isn't because they were insufficiently bright or were too poor. The attorney figures this out, and I never get to serve on a jury. Of the people that form my world, transhumanism and general sympathy with H+ notions may run to as much as a third or more. Support for the concept of cryonics for instance is broad, even if tepid. The majority generally believe in a Star Trek future where humanity eventually solves the biggest problems. The question for a H+ census is in identifying who to include and on what basis. Regarding Eugen's comment about the Bay Area having a high H+ concentration, I would have to agree, and that does make this neighborhood a fun place to live even if it is crazy expensive. {8^] spike From kanzure at gmail.com Tue Feb 14 15:38:23 2012 From: kanzure at gmail.com (Bryan Bishop) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:38:23 -0600 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 5:01 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Ideally we should be able to calculate backwards: given some assumption > (for example based on other movements) of how many "lurkers" there are to > active people, one could make an estimate based on (say) sales of Humanity+ > Magazine. $0. Nobody buys it and it's not sold. - Bryan http://heybryan.org/ 1 512 203 0507 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From seculartranshumanist at gmail.com Tue Feb 14 17:58:16 2012 From: seculartranshumanist at gmail.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:58:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <20120214124826.GY7343@leitl.org> References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> <20120214124826.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > I would estimate that some 0.1% of the general population in a typical > industrial country would qualify to be called tranhumanists. Some particular > locations (say, Bay Area) would run much higher (perhaps as high as 2-3%). This begs two questions. First, and most obvious, on what are you basing your estimate? 300,000 transhumanists in the U.S. alone seems a bit optimistic. Heck, even in New York City they couldn't get more than one person to show up to the transhumanist meetup most months. The second question is, are you distinguishing between self-identified transhumanists, and those who "would qualify to be called transhumanists"? That's a vital difference, and one that matters greatly. How does one qualify to be called a transhumanist, as opposed to calling onesself a transhumanist? Is it possible to do the latter and still not qualify? The devil's in details such as these. Joseph From seculartranshumanist at gmail.com Tue Feb 14 17:54:04 2012 From: seculartranshumanist at gmail.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:54:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> Message-ID: 2012/2/14 Bryan Bishop : > On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 5:01 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: >> >> Ideally we should be able to calculate backwards: given some assumption >> (for example based on other movements) of how many "lurkers" there are to >> active people, one could make an estimate based on (say) sales of Humanity+ >> Magazine. > > > $0. Nobody buys it and it's not sold. More's the pity. Joseph From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 14 19:23:11 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:23:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> <20120214124826.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00f601cceb4e$176a7150$463f53f0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Joseph Bloch Subject: Re: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >> ...I would estimate that some 0.1% of the general population in a typical > industrial country would qualify to be called tranhumanists. Some > particular locations (say, Bay Area) would run much higher (perhaps as high as 2-3%). >...This begs two questions. First, and most obvious, on what are you basing your estimate? 300,000 transhumanists in the U.S. alone seems a bit optimistic. Heck, even in New York City they couldn't get more than one person to show up to the transhumanist meetup most months. Joseph _______________________________________________ What is this ancient term "show up?" We are meeting right now, in our own homes in a timeframe and spaceframe completely under our own control. spike From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 14 19:48:23 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:48:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <010e01cceab4$5de47d50$19ad77f0$@att.net> References: <010e01cceab4$5de47d50$19ad77f0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00fc01cceb51$9d2815b0$d7784110$@att.net> This one test should be simple: find a bexarotene patient with Alzheimer's. I look at the annual sales figures for Targretin which one source gave as 141 million, divide by 1200 a month and divide that by 12, and I get on the order of ten thousands patients taking Targretin. Skin cancer disproportionately effects older people, so I figure if bexarotene does not have any effect on Alzheimer's then probably several hundred Targretin patients should have Alzheimers right now. So now all you internet hipsters, here is your assignment: find a Targretin-devouring patient with Alzheimer's. Or rather offer a suggestion: how do we find these patients? Would not a huge open volunteer database be useful here? Could not we talk to memory care facilities and find out if they have Targretin-eaters among their patients? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue Feb 14 20:48:45 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:48:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> <20120214124826.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20120214204845.GE7343@leitl.org> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:58:16PM -0500, Joseph Bloch wrote: > This begs two questions. First, and most obvious, on what are you > basing your estimate? 300,000 transhumanists in the U.S. alone seems a Order of magnitude BOTEC, less than 1% but higher than 0.01%. 0.1% sounds about right. Based on my observed incidence in the (informally bias-corrected) wild. > bit optimistic. Heck, even in New York City they couldn't get more > than one person to show up to the transhumanist meetup most months. We used to raise way more in Munich, but it's not about the mobilizability among self-identified but just external classification. A duck may not be aware it's a duck, but nevertheless we know it is one. Quack. > The second question is, are you distinguishing between self-identified > transhumanists, and those who "would qualify to be called > transhumanists"? That's a vital difference, and one that matters > greatly. How does one qualify to be called a transhumanist, as opposed I don't see how it matters, since whatever the self-identification, the values are still the same. > to calling onesself a transhumanist? Is it possible to do the latter > and still not qualify? I'm rather unsure about the Mormon transhumanists, but it's a pathological case anyway. > The devil's in details such as these. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Feb 14 21:34:37 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 22:34:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Everything You Always Wanted to Know About AI* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) In-Reply-To: <20120214105636.91388u0x1xljeyn8@mail.sapo.pt> References: <20120214105636.91388u0x1xljeyn8@mail.sapo.pt> Message-ID: 2012/2/14 > Thanks Stefano, it's always interesting to read about non-obsessive > views of AI. > > I added a reference in my blog: > http://transhumanismo.blogs.sapo.pt/3813.html > Thank you. I am pretty comfortable with "passive" Portuguese, and if you have any additional sources in your language you can recommend, please do not hesitate to let me know. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timhalterman at gmail.com Tue Feb 14 21:17:34 2012 From: timhalterman at gmail.com (Tim Halterman) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:17:34 -0600 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <20120214204845.GE7343@leitl.org> References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> <20120214124826.GY7343@leitl.org> <20120214204845.GE7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 2:48 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > We used to raise way more in Munich, but it's not about the mobilizability > among self-identified but just external classification. A duck may not > be aware it's a duck, but nevertheless we know it is one. Quack. > > I don't see how it matters, since whatever the self-identification, > the values are still the same. Let's take an individual who: a. Does not believe altering ones own immune system to be resistant to disease to lower healthcare costs and reduce the burden of illness on society. b. Would be willing to alter their immune system in a permanent manner to prevent a supervirus spreading around the globe from killing them and their offspring. I don't think it's a far stretch to find such individuals, how would you label them? If they're not self-identifying as transhumanists I think their actions seen as transhumanist or not can be easily swayed by the situation or subject at hand. -Tim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 15 10:22:50 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:22:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2012/2/11 spike >>There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise.? I am surprised something like that doesn?t exist somewhere.? We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations... > > Yes, this would be a very good idea. Not that I understand why privacy > should really be a primary concern for terminal cancer patients... It isn't. But it is a primary concern for doctors and hospitals due to the ridiculous HIPPA laws here. I have heard that there are some databases with info stripped out, but I forget the details of who has it and why. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 15 10:53:25 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:53:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment In-Reply-To: <1329212095.74055.YahooMailClassic@web114403.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1329212095.74055.YahooMailClassic@web114403.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 2:34 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Kelly Anderson wrote: >> >> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Ben Zaiboc >> wrote: >> > Kelly Anderson >> asked: >> > >> >> ... if you had never experienced sad, how would you >> know the true >> >> "meaning" of happy? >> > >> > I call Bullshit on this. >> >> Sweet. I like an active conversation! Let's see what we can >> agree upon! >> >> > It's like saying "If you never knew Green, how would >> you ever know the true 'meaning' of Red?" >> >> Not exactly analogous because Green is not the opposite of >> Red. > > > What? > > Green is exactly the opposite of Red. ?Have you never seen a colour wheel? I'm not sure, but I think the color wheel has little to do with physics and is just a convenience for artists mixing paint. I'm probably totally wrong though. > I don't understand you saying it's not. ?What do you think is the opposite of Red? As I understand things, Red is a wavelength of light. Asking what the opposite of Red is, is kind of like asking what is the opposite of Pi? Negative Pi? That's not exactly an opposite... >> If, on >> the other hand, you said "If you don't know what UP is, >> your >> appreciation of DOWN is probably limited." then maybe that >> is not >> quite so full of shit. Happy and sad are opposites, and if >> you can't >> appreciate sad, then happy becomes the new base line. So if >> all you >> experience is happy. Then there are times when you are more >> happy, and >> times you are less happy. Less happy times might then be >> described as >> "sad". > > > OK, but none of this means that an absence of one produces a corresponding > absence of the other. ?Higher happiness being your baseline doesn't mean you > are LESS happy. ?It just means your baseline is happier than someone else's. > Your ability to experience 'happy' isn't compromised. ?In fact, I'd say you are > more happy, not less. But your appreciation for "happy" is compromised. My ancestors were extremely happy to have a glass of water during certain periods of their lives. I will NEVER be that happy to have a glass of water, because I haven't (and don't expect to) gone without water being close by for any period of time. >> Now if I say I can see red and green but not xrays or radio >> waves, and >> apply that analogously to the happy-sad spectrum, then what >> you have >> is simply an optimist... :-) ?They would be somewhat >> sad-blind. They >> would still have to experience a continuum of emotions for >> the words >> to have any meaning. Can you or I really appreciate infrared >> or >> ultraviolet? Only in a limited way. > > > So you're saying that my inability to see infrared means my ability to see > whatever I /can/ see lacks some kind of meaning? > > This makes no sense at all. It just means you can't appreciate infrared in the same way as an animal that has been seeing infrared for years might. You have no ability to process the meaning of infrared images the way a creature brought up on infrared would. > It would mean all the millions of things and ways I can't see make my current > perceptions totally meaningless. ?Suppose there are depths of sad and happy > that we are totally unaware of. ?Then suppose there are not. ?Do these two > possibilities change our current experience in different ways? Not totally meaningless, just LESS meaningful. Our feelings about experiences are calibrated to our past experiences. That's really all I'm saying here. >> Linguistics is all about the relationship of words to each >> other. Have >> you ever noticed that the dictionary uses words to define >> other words? >> Where do you start understanding? Everything in >> understanding words is >> related to experience, and to the words we have previously >> been >> exposed to. While you could give a machine the equivalent of >> some sort >> of endorphin rush of happiness... if they haven't had >> sadness, would >> they appreciate it as much? I think not. So they could have >> the tokens >> "happy" and "sad", but it might not have the same meaning to >> them as >> it does to us. In fact, they probably don't have absolutely >> identical >> meaning to you and I. > > > By this logic, electric shocks don't hurt people who have never > experienced an orgasm as much as those who have. Not following how my logic says that... but orgasms are electricity... >> > Suppose I invert your question, and say does sadness >> only derive 'meaning' from >> > happiness? (In other words, can you only be sad if >> you've been happy?) >> > >> >> Yes. When I have met people in Haiti and Brazil who have >> never >> experienced wealth, they are still glad to have a little >> money. But >> they don't understand what it's like not to have to worry >> about where >> your next meal comes from. > > > This just demonstrates that people who have never experienced > something, don't know what that thing is like. ?It doesn't > demonstrate that they experience less of the opposite. Yet, their impressions are modified by their experiences. >> Likewise, we have a hard time >> getting into >> the mind of people who are ALWAYS worried about where there >> next meal >> is going to come from. This different experience of the >> poverty-richness spectrum gives meaning to both parties, and >> makes it >> difficult for them to fully understand each other. >> Thankfully, the >> neo-cortex gives us the ability to run a little simulation, >> but it >> really isn't QUITE the same as actually having BEEN in >> abject poverty. > > > Yes, I have never been in abject poverty, and agree that I can't > really understand what that's like. ?This doesn't reduce my ability > to enjoy the modest level of affluence that I have. ?On average, > I'm happier, not less happy, for not having been abjectly poor. Yes, but do you APPRECIATE your being more happy. Would you potentially appreciate your "modest" wealth (which is likely FAR from modest on an international scale) even more if you had been very poor at some point in your past? >> > Do you think it makes sense to say that if someone has >> never had any happiness in their lives, or very little, that >> makes their sadness somehow less significant than that of >> someone else who has been happy loads of times? >> > >> >> No, > > > So you do think that sadness derives meaning from happiness > (see further above), but you don't think that sadness is made less > significant if less happiness has been experienced? ?These are > the same thing, and you've answered both No and Yes to the same question. Perhaps. I am not a professional philosopher. The sadness that today's typical teenager experiences when their music is deleted from their iPod could not have been experienced by Henry VIII. He would have been very happy to have had an iPod for a single afternoon. That is, sadness is calibrated by experience. Henry never had the experiences that are enjoyed by today's teenagers, and most of us would be terribly unhappy to live like a king, if that king were Henry. >> it merely makes them less familiar with the subject. The >> saddest >> people I have ever met still have some happiness. But when >> your >> baseline is at a different place than mine, that makes the >> meaning of >> the words we use slightly different, at least to degree. If >> I put you >> into the life of any of 80% of the people on this planet, >> you would >> find yourself very sad, very quickly, because your baseline >> is >> different from theirs. You would probably not enjoy living >> in a >> favela, but some of the happiest people I've ever met live >> there. >> Different experience... leads to different feelings in the >> same >> context... leads to different definitions of the words. >> >> My ex-brother-in-law lives in a bed in an open air hospice >> in >> Singapore. He has no ability to walk or even move much due >> to a >> brittle bone disease. Yet, he experiences some happiness, >> for example, >> when we visited him he seemed happy about the fact. I would >> guess his >> life is not as happy as mine has been. He derives pleasure >> in >> different ways than we do. He has had to adapt to a sadder >> base line >> in his emotional life. Things that would make you and I very >> sad are >> simply part of his daily life. So, does "happy" and "sad" >> mean exactly >> the same thing to him and I? Not exactly. > > > If what you say is true, then everybody will be as happy as > everybody else, because people who are 'unhappy' will by > that token, be 'happy', and people who are very happy will > be correspondingly less happy, so it will all even out. Right! I think most people spend a certain percentage of their time feeling happy and a certain percentage feeling sad, pretty much independently of their circumstances. You have gotten what I was saying. > I honestly think there are people who are much happier, and > others who are much unhappier, than average, and they aren't > that way by virtue of experiencing a more-than-average amount > of the opposite state. ?It's pretty obvious, really. There are people who are predisposed to be happy, no matter what is happening to them. Look at the Dali Lama and his crowd. While they seek to eliminate all forms of happy and sad from their lexicon of experience, they seem pretty happy, even when trekking barefoot over the Himalaya to avoid capture by the Chinese... And I've met people who have everything you would ever want, and are still unhappy. They shouldn't be, but they are. I guess it boils down to your definition of happy. Is happy a chemical state of the brain? If it is, then surely some people are happier (have say higher serotonin levels) than others, independent of their experience. People say that lions and other big cats have the highest serotonin levels measured. So big cats are happier than you and I, despite the fact that they live pretty rugged lives (by civilized standards)... -Kelly From amara at kurzweilai.net Wed Feb 15 11:03:31 2012 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:03:31 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> Message-ID: <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> Try http://curetogether.com/alzheimers-disease/treatments/ On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: > 2012/2/11 spike >>There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise.? From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 15 15:12:44 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:12:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] H+ Census- why it matters to know if you matter. In-Reply-To: <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> References: <1329169672.51819.YahooMailClassic@web114420.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <4F3A3EEF.8060608@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 14 February 2012 12:01, Anders Sandberg wrote: > But plenty of people are not on mailing lists, do not come to any regular > meetings and do not call themselves transhumanists. > As much as I like, and prefer, mailing lists for many purposes over other solutions, be it just out of their "push" nature, it must be added that their overal usage is probably declining, at least relatively to other communication channels, from Web fora to blogs to social networks, so that I have to assume that many who do call themselves transhumanists do not care much for being on mls. This is certainly the case for France, where the real action is in the AFT Web forum, and for Italy, where just 10% of AIT members are subscribers to the relevant yahoogroup. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Feb 15 16:10:30 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:10:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 5:00 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: snip > Power dissipation will be a much higher limit in practice. > >> centers will probably shrink to sizes in the few hundred meter range >> and sunk the the deep oceans for cooling. > > The cosmic microwave heatsink is the largest and coldest heatsink > known to man. Anything in-between will only be an obstacle. This is a subject (space radiators) I know about. If you have a small object that is dissipating a lot of heat, radiation won't keep it cool nearly as well as a flow of cold water. Poul Anderson wrote a story, Satan's World, long ago where the value of planetary heat sinks was the main story element. The huge radiation area of a planet is just about free. On the number of Transhumanists, there was a list on Wikipedia that had around 100 on it. I found a list (that includes me, but leaves out many prominent transhumanists) of 24. My estimate is that the number of people who identify as transhumanists is within a factor of 5 either way of the number of people signed up for cryonics. Since there are about 2000 people signed up for cryonics that would put transhumanists at 400-10,000 people. Keith From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 15 18:12:22 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:12:22 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> Message-ID: <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara D. Angelica Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article >>There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise... spike >...Try: http://curetogether.com/alzheimers-disease/treatments/ >...Amara Angelica Thanks Amara, I joined. It looks to me like CureTogether is the right idea, but they are far from critical mass on the Alzheimer's part of it. There is a signal here which would require a lot of people working together in order to find it. For instance, suppose about 1 in 40 people of average age 75 use some bexarotene-containing medication for skin cancer. Now suppose a memory-care facility has 80 patients, none of which use any bexarotene medications. No signal there, nothing anywhere near statistical significance. Now imagine that someone can survey 100 different memory care facilities all over the place, and discovers that of the 8000 patients of average age 75 in those facilities, only 1 in 200 uses bexarotene medications. That would be a two sigma signal, well into the statistical significance range, but it couldn't be found unless there is some mechanism for compiling the survey of 100 memory care facilities. I have been studying up on this, and my intuition was right: there is in fact a complete field of study dedicated to finding this kind of signal, and they are on this bigtime. I am following it, and will post as there are interesting things to report. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Feb 15 20:38:34 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:38:34 -0500 Subject: [ExI] SF - cyberspace and utopian narratives for meatless bodies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > > On the number of Transhumanists, there was a list on Wikipedia that > had around 100 on it. ?I found a list (that includes me, but leaves > out many prominent transhumanists) of 24. ?My estimate is that the > number of people who identify as transhumanists is within a factor of > 5 either way of the number of people signed up for cryonics. ?Since > there are about 2000 people signed up for cryonics that would put > transhumanists at 400-10,000 people. > Is your intent that factor of 5 covers those who might consider cyborgisation but would have zero interest in cryonics? ?Or is that an unrelated dimension of consideration? ?I am curious why cryonics would be such a strong indicator. I wonder how many people would select themselves into this group if given the right questions. ?I imagine something like Belief-O-Matic [1] asking a few qualifiers that start listing "transhumanist" as something people could investigate as a 'belief.' I know many here raise a red flag regarding any belief that isn't backed by empirical evidence and the scientific method but we're still discussing the qualia of red... so maybe there's some room for beliefs. :) [1]?http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Quizzes/BeliefOMatic.aspx From jrd1415 at gmail.com Wed Feb 15 20:02:03 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:02:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:12 AM, spike wrote: > I have been studying up on this, and my intuition was right: there is in > fact a complete field of study dedicated to finding this kind of signal, and > they They? They who? Help us out here with a link, Spike, organization name, something. > are on this bigtime. "This"? The bexarotene thing? or mining medical data in general? > ?I am following it, and will post as there are > interesting things to report I would recommend calling a major hospital Oncology Dept, and enlisting their help. Discuss with them the nature of your inquiry, and ask them what they suggest regarding getting at the data which they and other Oncology folks possess. I suspect that like you they would be very interested. One other thing, I recommend calling some large drug retailer and inquiring about Targretin sales. Are they spiking (no pun intended)? In any event, the interest in this has to be huge. I suspect we will know shortly what effect if any bexarotene has on human Alzheimer's. If I had a loved one with Alzheimer's and I couldn't get the drug "conventionally", I'd be puttin' on my black Ninja gear and Balaclava and headin' down to the local Walgreens at three in the morning. A man's gotta do etc. But calling your doctor and saying "Will you write me the prescription, or should go elsewhere to find someone who will?",... that should work. jeff From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 15 21:37:29 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:37:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> Message-ID: <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:12 AM, spike wrote: >...> I have been studying up on this, and my intuition was right: there is > in fact a complete field of study dedicated to finding this kind of > signal, and they >...They? They who? Help us out here with a link, Spike, organization name, something... I am told by one who has a masters degree in this field that it is a subcategory of a discipline called Public Health. >> ...are on this bigtime. >..."This"? The bexarotene thing? or mining medical data in general? Both, but the Alz organizations are buzzing about specifically Bexarotene as we expected. Apparently there was already at least some awareness in the medical community that bexarotene might have other therapeutic uses besides skin cancer, which is perhaps why a company had applied for off-label manufacturing and marketing rights on a temporary basis last October. Perhaps I should have thought of it: there were researchers who were giving a skin cancer medication to Alzheimer's mice. Why were they doing that? >> ?...I am following it, and will post as there are interesting things to report >...I would recommend calling a major hospital Oncology Dept, and enlisting their help... Ja! Anyone here have friends who are doctors or have foafs who are doctors, do encourage them. >... Discuss with them the nature of your inquiry, and ask them what they suggest regarding getting at the data which they and other Oncology folks possess. I suspect that like you they would be very interested... I have an appointment with my own medic coming up, so I will mention it to her. What I am doing now is trying to find out if there have been other medications which have reduced amyloid plaques in mouse brains, then been tested on humans and found not effective in treatment of humans. If so, that will be a clue. A discouraging one, but a clue. >...One other thing, I recommend calling some large drug retailer and inquiring about Targretin sales. Are they spiking (no pun intended)? In fact they are, this one I can answer. We found that any licensed doctor can legally prescribe off-label. >...In any event, the interest in this has to be huge. I suspect we will know shortly what effect if any bexarotene has on human Alzheimer's. I suspect you are right Jeff. >...If I had a loved one with Alzheimer's and I couldn't get the drug "conventionally", I'd be puttin' on my black Ninja gear and Balaclava and headin' down to the local Walgreens at three in the morning. A man's gotta do etc. We are looking at a run down to Mexico. I hear they can get a lot of stuff a lot easier than we can. You run a high risk of counterfeit medications that way. >...But calling your doctor and saying "Will you write me the prescription, or should go elsewhere to find someone who will?",... that should work. jeff Ja, the doctor in question has our messages in her inbox, we are waiting to hear back. Do stand by. She is a good doctor, so we don't want to lose her, but our patience is wearing thin. If Targretin is even partially effective, this could be the biggest game changer since the Polio vaccine. spike From amara at kurzweilai.net Wed Feb 15 22:23:24 2012 From: amara at kurzweilai.net (Amara D. Angelica) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:23:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> Message-ID: <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> Spike said: "Perhaps I should have thought of it: there were researchers who were giving a skin cancer medication to Alzheimer's mice. Why were they doing that?" As noted by Paige E. Cramer et al., ApoE-Directed Therapeutics Rapidly Clear ?-Amyloid and Reverse Deficits in AD Mouse Models, Science, 2012 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1217697] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/02/08/science.1217697.full.pdf : "We reasoned that an RXR [retinoid X receptors]agonist would enhance normal A? [?-amyloid] clearance mechanisms by activating PPAR:RXR [peroxisome proliferator activated receptor] and LXR:RXR [liver X receptors], inducing apoE expression, facilitating A? clearance and promoting microglial phagocytosis. Bexarotene (TargretinTM) is a highly selective, blood brain barrierpermeant ... FDA-approved, RXR agonist (11) with a favorable safety profile (12)." Dr. Cramer's video: http://bit.ly/zj8xrw From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 15 22:58:35 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:58:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> Message-ID: <020201ccec35$5970ac80$0c520580$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of spike Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article >... What I am doing now is trying to find out if there have been other medications which have reduced amyloid plaques in mouse brains, then been tested on humans and found not effective in treatment of humans. If so, that will be a clue. A discouraging one, but a clue... spike Woohooo, NO! There has not been any class of drugs which do what bexarotene appears to do to Alz mice. Here's the money quote: "This is an unprecedented finding," says Paige Cramer, PhD candidate at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and first author of the study. "Previously, the best existing treatment for Alzheimer's disease in mice required several months to reduce plaque in the brain." http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-02/cwru-dqr020512.php >From the same article: Researchers are hoping for approval to study bexarotene in humans as soon as possible. Dr. Landreath related to the post that there is an urgency since he has heard from physicians that patients are already asking for this drug. He does note "We've got to work fast, and we have got to be right, we can't screw this up". And from this article: http://topnews.us/content/246219-skin-cancer-drug-bexarotene-reverses-alzhei mers-mice this delightful comment!: Noting that that within hours of being given the drug, the destructive brain plaque which was causing Alzheimer's in the mice started disappearing, lead researcher Gary Landreth told AFP: "We were shocked and amazed. Things like this had never, ever been seen before." Ooooh, I like those words, purr them to me baby, NEVER EVER been seen before. >...One other thing, I recommend calling some large drug retailer and inquiring about Targretin sales. Are they spiking (no pun intended)? Good question. Eisai Corp's stock didn't spike way up, but the privately owned company Banner Pharmacaps, which applied for the fast track last October is sitting pretty. Note there are other medications which contain bexarotene besides Targretin. That one is promising because it is an oral. One possible scenario worries me: some lab tech from Case Western U buys a bunch of shares of Eisai, breakes into the lab in the middle of the night, switches the Alzheimer's mice with younger ones (seen one lab mouse ya seen em all) next day the researchers come in, run the tests, mice are suddenly smarter, the lab tech cashes out, flees into the night. Then tech sells short, reveals the trick, stocks drop, she cashes out a second time. Note Dr. Landreth's comment above: he did say "...within hours of being given the drug..." which counter indicates a sneaky lab technician in the middle of the night. Actually with that comment there should be preliminary results: we have hospitals which have cancer patients taking Targretin, and you know damn well someone somewhere would have suggested giving the caplets to the Alz patients by now. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 15 23:03:42 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:03:42 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> Message-ID: <020701ccec36$10948620$31bd9260$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Amara D. Angelica Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article >>...Spike said: "Perhaps I should have thought of it: there were researchers who were giving a skin cancer medication to Alzheimer's mice. Why were they doing that?" Amara Angelica found the comment: >..."We reasoned that an RXR [retinoid X receptors]agonist would enhance normal A? [?-amyloid] clearance mechanisms by activating PPAR:RXR [peroxisome proliferator activated receptor] and LXR:RXR [liver X receptors], inducing apoE expression, facilitating A? clearance and promoting microglial phagocytosis... I do like those words, "...we reasoned that..." and "...promoting microglial phagocytosis..." This might be BIG! >... Bexarotene (TargretinTM) is a highly selective, blood brain barrierpermeant ... Oooooh baby now THERE'S some sexy words: Bexarotene is a highly selective blood brain barrier permeant. Keep telling me that, ooooh. >...FDA-approved, RXR agonist (11) with a favorable safety profile (12)." Dr. Cramer's video: http://bit.ly/zj8xrw Amara _______________________________________________ Thanks Amara! spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 15 23:12:37 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:12:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> Message-ID: <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> This ABC news item from yesterday says the cost of the treatment is 1200 to 2400 bucks per day: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/AlzheimersCommunity/alzheimers-disease-skin-can cer-drug-sparks-hope-desperation/story?id=15573971 But I think that might be a mistake and they meant 1200 to 2400 bucks per month. I sure hope that it was a mistake in the article. If so, they need to fix that forthwith. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 15 23:28:25 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:28:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> Message-ID: <022501ccec39$83f3b660$8bdb2320$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of spike ... >>...If I had a loved one with Alzheimer's and I couldn't get the drug "conventionally", I'd be puttin' on my black Ninja gear and Balaclava and headin' down to the local Walgreens at three in the morning. A man's gotta do etc. Jeff >...We are looking at a run down to Mexico. I hear they can get a lot of stuff a lot easier than we can... Hmmm, OK so I am reading some of the chatter on the AD sites. Apparently this is not as simple as a run down to Tijuana. If you manage to get some Targretin that way, and you give it to your family member and that family member dies, you may have bigger problems on your hands than just funeral expenses. >...You run a high risk of counterfeit medications that way... That's another thing. An alternative is to buy Targretrin from cancer patients who have legitimate prescriptions already in place, although that too is technically illegal. Sheesh this is a complicated problem. Ow, discouraging realization, it's been six days since the Scientific American article came out. Surely someone somewhere has done this test by now. If it worked in humans the way it does in mice, we would likely have heard it by about Sunday afternoon. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 15 23:56:58 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:56:58 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> Hey cool, I found this on wiki: Bexarotene is a solid, white powder. It is poorly soluble in water; the solubility is estimated to be about 10-50 ?M. It is soluble in DMSO at 65 mg/mL and in ethanol at 10 mg/mL with warming.[3] DMSO is dimethyl sulfoxide. You can get that stuff in reagent grade cheaply, and it absorbs directly through the skin taking with it whatever is dissolved in it. A therapeutic dose for cancer patients is about 75 mg, so it would take would be a little over a gram of DMSO. Then again, it would only take about 7.5 ml of alcohol, which is the amount of alcohol found in about 8 ounces of beer, and that's that weak California 3.2, or four ounces of normal beer. So never mind Targretin. What if we could find the company that makes reagent grade Bexarotene and buy it not as a medication but as rather a flavoring for beer? Or rather as mouse food? The patents apply to Targretin, but not necessarily to bexarotene, which should solve one hell of a lot of problems. If we short circuit the Targretin route and have a million amateur chemists dissolving reagent grade (but not pharma grade) bexarotene in alcohol or DMSO, would not we go around the whole profit-driven medical-government alliance? spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Feb 16 00:10:48 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:10:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <022d01ccec3f$704f6d10$50ee4730$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 3:57 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] good bexarotene article >...Hey cool, I found this on wiki: >>...Bexarotene is a solid, white powder. It is poorly soluble in water; the solubility is estimated to be about 10-50 ?M. It is soluble in DMSO at 65 mg/mL and in ethanol at 10 mg/mL with warming.[3] So if bexarotene therapeutic dose is about 75 mg, it takes about 7.5 mL of alcohol to dissolve that, so if all of that goes in the bloodstream and a typical person has about 5 liters of blood, then her BAC is .15, ja? So she cannot drive for a while, she's nearly twice the legal limit, but hey, most of us here have been at .15 at some time in our lives, or are there fairly regularly. If that is what it takes, pass the warm beer. If it does work out this way, my irony meter would be pegged. My AD family member is a super strict Seventh Day Adventist. The three most important guiding principles of the SDA health message are NO tobacco, NO caffeine, and of course NO ALCOHOL of any kind! The Alzheimer's community has been recommending caffeine for AD patients, and the interim drug of choice has been nicotine patches. Now if it turns out that the best way to take affordable bexarotene is by dissolving it in alcohol, they will suspect that the whole thing is a clever trick dreamed up by Satan to cause the saints to lose their way just before it is time to check into heaven. spike From jrd1415 at gmail.com Thu Feb 16 00:25:22 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:25:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <022501ccec39$83f3b660$8bdb2320$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <022501ccec39$83f3b660$8bdb2320$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 4:28 PM, spike wrote: > Ow, discouraging realization, it's been six days since the Scientific > American article came out. ?Surely someone somewhere has done this test by > now. ?If it worked in humans the way it does in mice, we would likely have > heard it by about Sunday afternoon. > > spike Perhaps someone should give the news people a call, see what's keeping them? Jeff From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu Feb 16 00:02:57 2012 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:02:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] medical information (was good bexarotene article) Message-ID: *On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:22:50 -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote:* *On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote: * * > 2012/2/11 spike >>There should be a database somewhere, where people can dump medical information, while stripping out identities, so that we can find this kind of signal in the noise.? I am surprised something like that doesn?t exist somewhere.? We could maintain patient privacy while still perhaps filtering out these oddball correlations... > > Yes, this would be a very good idea. Not that I understand why privacy > should really be a primary concern for terminal cancer patients... It isn't. But it is a primary concern for doctors and hospitals due to* * the ridiculous HIPPA laws here. I have heard that there are some databases with info stripped out, but I forget the details of who has it and why. -Kelly* ------- As someone in the healthcare industry who used to bill private insurance (before I moved into socialized medicine via Dept. of Veteran?s Affairs) and had clients with privacy concerns, I am aware of the following medical databases. This info is particular to the US and Canada, and identifying info is not stripped out as it?s essential to the function of these databases. Nevertheless, the data is there and could be scrubbed for data analysis, I imagine. It?s too bad such massive repositories are only created by entities motivated to maximize profits for shareholders. Public health is not of concern to them, IMHO. -Henry From: http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs8-med.htm The *Medical Information Bureau* (MIB) is a central database of medical information shared by insurance companies. Approximately 15 million Americans and Canadians are on file in the MIB's computers. About 600 insurance firms use the services of the MIB primarily to obtain information about life insurance and individual health insurance policy applicants.When you apply for life or health insurance as an *individual*, you are likely to be asked to provide information about your health. Sometimes you are required to be examined by a doctor and/or to have your blood and urine tested. If you have medical conditions that insurance companies consider significant, the insurance company will report that information to the MIB.The information contained in a typical MIB record is limited to codes for specific medical conditions and lifestyle choices. Examples include codes to indicate high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, or depression. A code can signify participation in high-risk sports such as skydiving. A file would also include a code to indicate that the individual smokes cigarettes. The MIB uses 230 such codes.It's important to remember the following about the MIB: - The MIB is *not* subject to HIPAA.MIB files do *not* include the totality of one's medical records as held by your health care provider. Rather it consists of codes signifying certain health conditions. - A decision on whether to insure you is not supposed to be based solely on the MIB report. - The MIB is a consumer reporting agency subject to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). If you are denied insurance based on an MIB report, you are entitled to certain rights under the FCRA, including the ability to obtain a free report and the right to have erroneous information corrected. See the Federal Trade Commission's website on insurance decisions . And IntelliScript and MedPoint are databases that report prescription drug purchase histories to insurance companies. Like the MIB reports, IntelliScript and MedPoint reports are used primarily when consumers are seeking private health, life or disability insurance. Prescription drug databases can go back as far as five years, detailing drugs used as well as dosage and refills. With a history of prescription drugs in hand, insurers may make assumptions about medical conditions and assess the risk of writing an insurance policy. Information in an IntelliScript or MedPoint report may prompt an insurer to deny coverage for certain conditions, increase insurance premiums, or deny coverage altogether. Such adverse actions by insurance companies trigger a sequence of consumer rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Until recently, use of prescription drug databases was unknown to consumers. Insurers' use of these databases first came to light in 2007 when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued Milliman, the owner of the IntelliScript database, and Ingenix, Inc., owner of the MedPoint database. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Feb 16 00:40:32 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:40:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <022501ccec39$83f3b660$8bdb2320$@att.net> Message-ID: <023301ccec43$97815020$c683f060$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 4:28 PM, spike < spike66 at att.net> wrote: >> Ow, discouraging realization, it's been six days since the Scientific > American article came out. Surely someone somewhere has done this > test by now. If it worked in humans the way it does in mice, we would > likely have heard it by about Sunday afternoon... spike >...Perhaps someone should give the news people a call, see what's keeping them? Jeff _______________________________________________ Saturday's Wall Street Journal commented thus: Targretin is generally used at the highest tolerated dose in cancer patients, according to Keith Flaherty, a skin-cancer specialist at Harvard Medical School. The dosage that might be needed to treat Alzheimer's is unclear but is likely far lower, he said. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204642604577215382600942356.ht ml This is good news indeed. Targretin is known to be a mild drug for side effects, and having Dr. Flaherty comment that the AD dosage is likely to be far lower is a good thing. I am still looking for the online comments by people who have tried this. Apparently Targretin is not easy to find. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Thu Feb 16 00:59:34 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:59:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> Message-ID: <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: spike > To: 'ExI chat list' > Cc: > Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 3:56 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article > Hey cool, I found this on wiki: > > Bexarotene is a solid, white powder. It is poorly soluble in water; the > solubility is estimated to be about 10-50 ?M. It is soluble in DMSO at 65 > mg/mL and in ethanol at 10 mg/mL with warming.[3] > > DMSO is dimethyl sulfoxide.? You can get that stuff in reagent grade > cheaply, and it absorbs directly through the skin taking with it whatever is > dissolved in it.? A therapeutic dose for cancer patients is about 75 mg, so > it would take would be a little over a gram of DMSO.? Then again, it would > only take about 7.5 ml of alcohol, which is the amount of alcohol found in > about 8 ounces of beer, and that's that weak California 3.2, or four ounces > of normal beer. > > So never mind Targretin.? What if we could find the company that makes > reagent grade Bexarotene and buy it not as a medication but as rather a > flavoring for beer?? Or rather as mouse food?? The patents apply to > Targretin, but not necessarily to bexarotene, which should solve one hell of > a lot of problems.? If we short circuit the Targretin route and have a > million amateur chemists dissolving reagent grade (but not pharma grade) > bexarotene in alcohol or DMSO, would not we go around the whole > profit-driven medical-government alliance? Reagent grade is usually only about?99% pure, Spike. That 1% impurity can be unconsumed reactants, products of side reactions, bacterial endotoxins, or practically anything. So I would discourage anybody from using reagent-grade on a human?without having a drug chemist clean it up for you.?Feeding?reagent grade?to mice on the?other hand is fine as long as you are not recieving NIH funding. If you are recieving NIH funding then you must use the pharmaceutical or vetinary grade drug. It is kind of stupid law?because it is?sort of?giving?doomed lab?rodents a prescription drug benefit that is paid for by tax-payers.?Because of this experiments are much?more expensive to conduct because you are paying full price for the drugs. But this is the strength of the pharmaceutical lobby in this country. Lab mice get government-subsidized prescription drugs while humans?must buy their own. Kind of silly huh?? Also keep in mind that beer is food and regulated by FDA *and* the ATF so if you plan to sell bexarotene-spiked beer, I would get a lawyer and come up with a loophole to exploit first. Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From spike66 at att.net Thu Feb 16 01:51:44 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:51:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <024b01ccec4d$898f0430$9cad0c90$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of The Avantguardian Subject: Re: [ExI] good bexarotene article ----- Original Message ----- > From: spike >>...? What if we could find the company that makes > reagent grade Bexarotene and buy it not as a medication but as rather > a flavoring for beer?? Or rather as mouse food?? ... >...Reagent grade is usually only about?99% pure, Spike. That 1% impurity can be unconsumed reactants, products of side reactions, bacterial endotoxins, or practically anything... Ja, I specified reagent grade because it typically costs less than a tenth as much as pharmaceutical grade. If it is 99% pure, then 1% of 75 mg is less than a milligram of impurities. It would be dissolved in alcohol, which is likely to slay any bacterial contaminants or other microbeasts in there. My contention is that there aren't many substances likely to do much harm at less than a milligram a day. I checked the MSDS and other sources, learned that the common catalysts in the production of reagent grade bexarotene are aluminum trichloride and sodium hydroxide, neither of which are toxic at these levels. At much higher levels, aluminum trichloride causes skin and eye irritation. Sodium hydroxide is used in hand soap. >...So I would discourage anybody from using reagent-grade on a human?without having a drug chemist clean it up for you... Hmmm, if one can afford it sure, but I bet I could clean reagent grade bexarotene with only amateur chemistry knowledge. A little hydrochloric acid will neutralize the sodium hydroxide but this is unnecessary anyways, there is plenty of HCl in the stomach. Sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid produce sodium chloride (table salt) and water. I can dissociate and precipitate that alum trichlor, but that isn't necessary either, for in this form and at these amounts the body wouldn't know or care if it is present. Thanks everyone for all the bexarotene chatter. I propose keeping in effect the open season on the topic until Friday, which is good in my case for I have posted my brains out on this topic and I am not even finished yet. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Feb 16 05:56:40 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:56:40 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <027201ccec6f$c1565f90$44031eb0$@att.net> Oh dear, I do hope this isn't true. A comment in an article about Dr. Landreth, they casually mention the original experiment was done in 2009: He set his sights on bexarotene, an orally administered drug known to activate a protein that helps switch on the ApoE gene. In 2009, Dr. Landreth asked a newly minted postgraduate student in his lab to give the drug to some "Alzheimer mice." Three days later, the amyloid plaques in their brains had largely disappeared. http://www.eyedrd.org/2012/02/targretin-a-skin-cancer-drug-may-have-benefits -in-alzheimers-patients.html If he has been quietly sitting on this for two to three years, Dr. Landreth goes from hero to zero in 60 milliseconds. The amount of human suffering in all that time incalculable. If anyone sees anything like this, they need to go to the medical press that day, not even wait until morning. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Feb 16 07:29:47 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:29:47 -0800 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <027901ccec7c$c3d70410$4b850c30$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of The Avantguardian ... > ... > >> ...? What if we could find the company that makes > reagent grade Bexarotene and buy it not as a medication but as rather > a flavoring for beer?? Or rather as mouse food??... would not we go around > the whole profit-driven medical-government alliance? >...?Feeding?reagent grade?to mice on the?other hand is fine as long as you are not recieving NIH funding. If you are recieving NIH funding then you must use the pharmaceutical or vetinary grade drug. >...It is kind of stupid law?because it is?sort of?giving?doomed lab?rodents a prescription drug benefit that is paid for by tax-payers.?Because of this experiments are much?more expensive to conduct because you are paying full price for the drugs... Good, this had to happen. What we have here is a case where the pharmaceutical/government alliance is harming people for profit. This is the poster child case, right here. It might be that bexarotene is useless or harmful, but every day that passed without our knowing is useless or harmful. >... But this is the strength of the pharmaceutical lobby in this country. Lab mice get government-subsidized prescription drugs while humans?must buy their own. Kind of silly huh?? Worse than silly. It might be that skin cancer dose of 75 mg/day is effective in fighting beta amyloids, and if so, the cost is about 40 bucks a day. Plenty of retired people cannot afford that, and medicare will not cover it for that purpose, however, they will cover it for skin cancer treatment. So for the less well funded seniors with Alzheimer's, we need some kind of drug that will cause skin cancer. Then they can get medicare to pay for their Alzheimer's drug. I think we must end up going with reagent grade bexarotene however. It would be healthier to risk a milligram a day of aluminum trichlor and good old sodium hydroxide than to try to induce skin cancer. >...Also keep in mind that beer is food and regulated by FDA *and* the ATF so if you plan to sell bexarotene-spiked beer, I would get a lawyer and come up with a loophole to exploit first. Stuart LaForge ? I already have it Stu. Sell the reagent grade bex as a hand soap. If people decide to take a pinch of this powder, drop it in a shot of vodka, stir vigorously and slam it down, well, hey you aren't in any position to tell them what to do with the hand soap you sold them, which is intended for, you know, washing their hands. I can't find a price for reagent grade bexarotene, still looking. One last thing for you guys to chew on: this stuff might not be just for grandma; it might be too late for her. But you and I are quietly accumulating beta amyloid ourselves right now. This bell might be tolling for me and thee. Perhaps the beta amyloids may be prevented by the right medications, we just don't know. But once those plaques form, there is plenty of brain damage already done. If we prevent that, we prevent losing what makes us such cool people. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Feb 16 13:58:53 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:58:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A certain cult Message-ID: As you who have been on this list since early 2007 know, I have been tangled up with a certain cult since 1995. http://www.religionnewsblog.com/26558/ex-clearwater-scientology-officer-debbie-cook-testifies-she-was-put-in-the-hole-abused-for-weeks There is more, a whole continuing saga, being reported on the Village Voice. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/02/scientologys_di.php And the social force known as Anonymous came out of their operations against the cult after net-people were annoyed at the cult's attempt to censor the net. Keith From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Feb 16 15:26:09 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:26:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] A certain cult In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 16 February 2012 14:58, Keith Henson wrote: > As you who have been on this list since early 2007 know, I have been > tangled up with a certain cult since 1995. > After all that time, how can you be still prey of your thetans? :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Thu Feb 16 17:03:55 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:03:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <024b01ccec4d$898f0430$9cad0c90$@att.net> Message-ID: <1329411835.60737.YahooMailNeo@web164510.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: spike > To: 'The Avantguardian' ; 'ExI chat list' > Cc: > Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 5:51 PM > Subject: RE: [ExI] good bexarotene article > ----- Original Message ----- >> From: spike >>> ...? What if we could find the company that makes >> reagent grade Bexarotene and buy it not as a medication but as rather >> a flavoring for beer?? Or rather as mouse food?? ... > >> ...Reagent grade is usually only about?99% pure, Spike. That 1% impurity > can be unconsumed reactants, products of side reactions, bacterial > endotoxins, or practically anything... > > Ja, I specified reagent grade because it typically costs less than a tenth > as much as pharmaceutical grade.? If it is 99% pure, then 1% of 75 mg is > less than a milligram of impurities.? It would be dissolved in alcohol, > which is likely to slay any bacterial contaminants or other microbeasts in > there.? My contention is that there aren't many substances likely to do much > harm at less than a milligram a day. Actually bacterial endotoxins like Botulinin D can have lethal doses as low as 4 nanograms per kilogram of bodyweight but?you are correct that such would not be likely contaminant. Here are some methods of inactivating various endotoxins: http://www.ehs.ufl.edu/Bio/toxin.htm > I checked the MSDS and other sources, learned that the common catalysts in > the production of reagent grade bexarotene are aluminum trichloride and > sodium hydroxide, neither of which are toxic at these levels.? At much > higher levels, aluminum trichloride causes skin and eye irritation.? Sodium > hydroxide is used in hand soap. It isn't the catalysts that I would worry about, it is the precursors they use to build the molecule. One of the precursors is Methyl 4-(chlorocarbonyl)benzoate which is toxic by ingestion. ? >> ...So I would discourage anybody from using reagent-grade on a > human?without having a drug chemist clean it up for you... > > Hmmm, if one can afford it sure, but I bet I could clean reagent grade > bexarotene with only amateur chemistry knowledge.? A little hydrochloric > acid will neutralize the sodium hydroxide but this is unnecessary anyways, > there is plenty of HCl in the stomach.? Sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric > acid produce sodium chloride (table salt) and water.? I can dissociate and > precipitate that alum trichlor, but that isn't necessary either, for in this > form and at these amounts the body wouldn't know or care if it is present. I don't doubt that given suitable equipment you could do it yourself, Spike. But I think you overestimate what say an o-chem grad student who eats Top Ramen twice a day would charge you. I estimate $50-$200 for about one afternoon of work. And believe me, when you see that single sharp peak on the gas chromatagraph indicating pure product, you will feel a lot better about taking it.? ? Incidentally, I can't find any sources for non-pharmaceutical grade bexarotene outside of China, so good luck on that. ? ? Stuart LaForge ? "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From eugen at leitl.org Thu Feb 16 17:43:40 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:43:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <1329411835.60737.YahooMailNeo@web164510.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <024b01ccec4d$898f0430$9cad0c90$@att.net> <1329411835.60737.YahooMailNeo@web164510.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20120216174340.GS7343@leitl.org> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 09:03:55AM -0800, The Avantguardian wrote: > Actually bacterial endotoxins like Botulinin D can have lethal doses as low as 4 nanograms per kilogram of bodyweight but?you are correct that such would not be likely contaminant. Here are some methods of inactivating various endotoxins: Pyrogen-free is a requirement for injectable drugs. > It isn't the catalysts that I would worry about, it is the precursors they use to build the molecule. One of the precursors is Methyl 4-(chlorocarbonyl)benzoate which is toxic by ingestion. I hear Alzheimer is pretty bad for your health. ? > I don't doubt that given suitable equipment you could do it yourself, Spike. I doubt it. Most nonprofessionals make a huge mess from simple syntheses. Not everybody is fit to cuisin-art a fine menu, especially with unfamiliar equipment. > But I think you overestimate what say an o-chem grad student who eats Top Ramen twice a day would charge you. I estimate $50-$200 for about one afternoon of work. And believe me, when you see that single sharp peak on the gas chromatagraph indicating pure product, you will feel a lot better about taking it.? There are plenty of commercial services which will do a custom synthesis for you up to kg scale. ? > Incidentally, I can't find any sources for non-pharmaceutical grade bexarotene outside of China, so good luck on that. Do a DC, and if you see something funny run an LC column. GC/MS and NMR is of course great, but typically you won't be able to afford it. From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Feb 17 00:19:56 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:19:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] good bexarotene article In-Reply-To: <1329411835.60737.YahooMailNeo@web164510.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <00e301cce861$92298c90$b67ca5b0$@att.net> <00a401cce910$70374280$50a5c780$@att.net> <019c01ccebd1$74adc820$5e095860$@net> <01be01ccec0d$5dd630b0$19829210$@att.net> <01f801ccec2a$04e24120$0ea6c360$@att.net> <02c101ccec30$6f5f1770$4e1d4650$@net> <021b01ccec37$4f4462e0$edcd28a0$@att.net> <022601ccec3d$8150d420$83f27c60$@att.net> <1329353974.54323.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <024b01ccec4d$898f0430$9cad0c90$@att.net> <1329411835.60737.YahooMailNeo@web164510.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 12:03 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > Incidentally, I can't find any sources for non-pharmaceutical grade bexarotene outside of China, so good luck on that. Are they the same suppliers who recently had problems shipping consumption-grade milk? * http://www.google.com/#q=milk+melamine From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Fri Feb 17 09:14:53 2012 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:14:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why don't Americans elect scientists to office? Message-ID: An interesting article from the io9 website. I am very curious to learn what list members have to say about it... http://io9.com/5885105/why-dont-americans-elect-scientists-to-office?utm_source=io9+Newsletter&utm_campaign=575709a17d-UA-142218-29&utm_medium=email John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Feb 17 22:59:06 2012 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:59:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> Message-ID: Any work done in amyloid mice is likely to be useless - the models are wrong on many levels, from the fact that they are using mutated proteins (which are almost always absent in senile dementia), to using combinations of mutated proteins (which almost never happens in senile dementia), to the lack of pathology in response to the mutated proteins (which indicates the mouse's brain reacts differently on the biochemical level than human brain). These mice have essentially no construct validity for senile dementia, misleadingly called "Alzheimer's disease", and only poor to middling construct validity for the true Alzheimer's dementia which is a very uncommon familial disease affecting young and middle age adults. Save your money, until you see results in aged dogs or monkeys (not mutated). If somebody publishes a non-human primate study showing a good cognitive boost in 25 year old rhesus monkeys, I would be very impressed. Rafal From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Feb 18 04:03:30 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:03:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Why don't Americans elect scientists to office? References: Message-ID: <1329537810.59797.YahooMailNeo@web164509.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> _______________________________ >From: John Grigg >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 1:14 AM >Subject: [ExI] Why don't Americans elect scientists to office? > > >An interesting article from the?io9 website.? I?am very curious to learn what list members have to say about it... > > >http://io9.com/5885105/why-dont-americans-elect-scientists-to-office?utm_source=io9+Newsletter&utm_campaign=575709a17d-UA-142218-29&utm_medium=email ?? Many scientists are atheists.?According to surveys like http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/307.pdf?, admitted atheism is?the kiss of death for any political candidate in?America. A quick calculation shows that it is as bad politically to "not believe in God" as it is to be both a former minister?and to?cheat on?your spouse. ? Candidate Assets ????????????????????????????More????Less?????No ????????????????????????????likely????likely????Diff???DK Candidate traits:?????%???????%????????%??????% ? Military service???????48??????3??????????48??????1 Christian????????????????39??????4??????????56??????1 Long-time DC politician ?35 ?15 ?45 ?5 Attended prestigious univ. ?22 ?5 ?72 ?1 Former business exec. ??28 ?13 ?56 ?3 In their 40s????????????????????18?????8??????73??????1 Black ????7 ?4 ?88 ?1 Woman ????13 ?11 ?75 ?1 Physically handicapped ??4 ?7 ?86 ?3 Divorced ???3 ?9 ?86 ?2 Hispanic ???4 ?14 ?80 ?2 Has been a minister ??15 ?25 ?56 ?4 Smokes cigarettes ??2 ?18 ?79 ?1=100 Mormon ????2 ?30 ?64 ?4 Taken anti-depressants ??2 ?36 ?59 ?3 Had extramarital affair ?1 ?39 ?56 ?4 In their 70s ???5 ?48 ?45 ?2 No college education ??3 ?46 ?49 ?2 Used drugs in past ??2 ?45 ?47 ?6 Muslim ????1 ?46 ?49 ?4 Homosexual ???1 ?46 ?51 ?2 Never held elected office ?7 ?56 ?35 ?2 Doesn?t believe in God ??3 ?63 ?32 ?2 ? ? ? ? Stuart LaForge "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 18 05:47:51 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:47:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> Message-ID: <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? Any work done in amyloid mice is likely to be useless - the models are wrong on many levels, from the fact that they are using mutated proteins (which are almost always absent in senile dementia), to using combinations of mutated proteins (which almost never happens in senile dementia), to the lack of pathology in response to the mutated proteins (which indicates the mouse's brain reacts differently on the biochemical level than human brain). These mice have essentially no construct validity for senile dementia, misleadingly called "Alzheimer's disease", and only poor to middling construct validity for the true Alzheimer's dementia which is a very uncommon familial disease affecting young and middle age adults. Save your money, until you see results in aged dogs or monkeys (not mutated). If somebody publishes a non-human primate study showing a good cognitive boost in 25 year old rhesus monkeys, I would be very impressed. Rafal _______________________________________________ Thanks Rafal, I came to the same conclusion with great regret. It has been a week since the news hit. I have been scouring the internet almost constantly to see if anyone had taken some of this stuff, and if so what happened. The silence on the topic was deafening. So I had to conclude that of the estimated perhaps a thousand people who managed to get Targretin in the past week, none saw any positive results. Otherwise they would have posted it in the usual places, and I would have found them by now. It surprises me that no one took some and imagined positive results, but I can't find even that. I sometimes think imagined positive results are how we ended up with the apparently useless Aricept and the possibly worse than nothing Namenda. But how the hell can we know for sure? It is maddening difficult to tell if these medications work. spike From ilia.stambler at gmail.com Sat Feb 18 07:32:24 2012 From: ilia.stambler at gmail.com (Ilia Stambler) Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 09:32:24 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> Message-ID: >?It is maddening difficult to tell if these medications work.? It is very sad that we live in a time and milieu where physicians and pharmaceutical industry, biomedical research establishment and popular and special press, are not to be trusted, and where the responsibility for testing and advancing new therapies lies with individual enthusiasts. Really sad. But is it hopeless? On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 7:47 AM, spike wrote: > > > On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki > Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? > > Any work done in amyloid mice is likely to be useless - the models are > wrong > on many levels, from the fact that they are using mutated proteins (which > are almost always absent in senile dementia), to using combinations of > mutated proteins (which almost never happens in senile dementia), to the > lack of pathology in response to the mutated proteins (which indicates the > mouse's brain reacts differently on the biochemical level than human > brain). > These mice have essentially no construct validity for senile dementia, > misleadingly called "Alzheimer's disease", and only poor to middling > construct validity for the true Alzheimer's dementia which is a very > uncommon familial disease affecting young and middle age adults. > > Save your money, until you see results in aged dogs or monkeys (not > mutated). If somebody publishes a non-human primate study showing a good > cognitive boost in 25 year old rhesus monkeys, I would be very impressed. > > Rafal > _______________________________________________ > > > Thanks Rafal, I came to the same conclusion with great regret. It has been > a week since the news hit. I have been scouring the internet almost > constantly to see if anyone had taken some of this stuff, and if so what > happened. The silence on the topic was deafening. So I had to conclude > that of the estimated perhaps a thousand people who managed to get > Targretin > in the past week, none saw any positive results. Otherwise they would have > posted it in the usual places, and I would have found them by now. It > surprises me that no one took some and imagined positive results, but I > can't find even that. I sometimes think imagined positive results are how > we ended up with the apparently useless Aricept and the possibly worse than > nothing Namenda. But how the hell can we know for sure? It is maddening > difficult to tell if these medications work. > > 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 kellycoinguy at gmail.com Sat Feb 18 09:55:24 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 02:55:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why don't Americans elect scientists to office? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/17 John Grigg : > An interesting article from the?io9 website.? I?am very curious to learn > what list members have to say about it... > > > http://io9.com/5885105/why-dont-americans-elect-scientists-to-office?utm_source=io9+Newsletter&utm_campaign=575709a17d-UA-142218-29&utm_medium=email > The last "scientist", or at least engineer, elected was Jimmy Carter... that worked out well. -Kelly From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Feb 18 16:18:05 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 09:18:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist Message-ID: A while ago there was a discussion about how many transhumanists are around. This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Transhumanists list 73 who are in the Wikipedia and are in that category. Looking a the links to "cryonics" (no "Category:Cryonicists yet) there are perhaps 30 people who are signed up for cryonics *and* and listed on Wikipedia. (This could be off a good deal.) To the extent this means anything, the number of transhumanists might be something like twice as many as the number of people signed up for cryonics. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 18 16:47:22 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:47:22 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> Message-ID: <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? >>>Any work done in amyloid mice is likely to be useless - the models are wrong on many levels...Rafal _______________________________________________ >>Thanks Rafal, I came to the same conclusion with great regret. >"It is maddening difficult to tell if these medications work." .spike > >.It is very sad that we live in a time and milieu where physicians and pharmaceutical industry, biomedical research establishment and popular and special press, are not to be trusted, and where the responsibility for testing and advancing new therapies lies with individual enthusiasts. Really sad. But is it hopeless? Ilia That is one way to look at it, but I have an alternate take for you. The finding was announced on the internet a week ago. It perfused the internet immediately. Within hours I found annual sales of Targretin at 140 million per year and the cost per year, divided through and estimated about a hundred thousand Targretin devourers. Next I asked myself, if I had a bottle of Targretin (or any other of half a dozen medications that contain bexarotene) what would I do upon reading the announcement? What would you do? What I would do is take my bottle of medications and immediately give it to the nearest Alzheimer's patient. Most of us know one or more, a parent, a grandparent, parent of a friend, a suffering neighbor, perhaps a former colleague. If you are one of the fortunate few whose family has been untouched by this disease, you might go down to the local memory care facility, find a person visiting a patient, and quietly slip the bottle of meds to that person, perhaps without saying a word, for words would be unnecessary. Everyone who is down there has heard of this stuff and would know what to do if a kind stranger offered them the meds. The kind of skin cancer Targretin treats is not likely to slay the patient, at least not immediately, but if Targretin does in humans what it does for mice, then you could save countless lives by your act of charity. I would be down there to that care facility that day, not tomorrow, not next week, NOW! Yesterday isn't soon enough. So, I can't imagine I am so different from others. If I would do this, at least some of the hundred thousand Targretin eaters would do likewise, and would sit down there for a few hours to see if the medication did anything, and if so, the chatter on the internet about that would be so loud it would drown out most other discussion. But I can find nada. So apparently this stuff doesn't do anything, in which case we have another Aricept equivalent on our hands. So on the contrary to sad and hopeless, we now have the infrastructure for information to pervade the patient community quickly, with results (if positive) being learned by all involved. Within days I had already figured out approximately how to make reagent grade bexarotene available for Alzheimer's patients to use for washing hands (dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide so that it permeates the skin, carrying with it solutes) so that it technically is not a medication but rather a hand soap you know. This is the poster child medical discovery in the age of widespread internet use, and a perfect example of what Gregory Stock wrote about in Metaman. We are wired together. Information moves quickly. This is a good thing, even though it turned out to be disappointing: the lack of signal causes me to conclude the promise of bexarotene was apparently a mirage. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 18 19:31:20 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:31:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <019a01ccee73$e52e7aa0$af8b6fe0$@att.net> . > >.It is very sad that we live in a time and milieu where physicians and pharmaceutical industry, biomedical research establishment and popular and special press, are not to be trusted, and where the responsibility for testing and advancing new therapies lies with individual enthusiasts. Really sad. But is it hopeless? Ilia >.That is one way to look at it, but I have an alternate take for you.spike This is the first case I know of where the efficacy of a medication has been decided within a week based on the internet community. In general we have entered a new age. Now if anyone posts that yakkity yak cures bla bla, then a million bla bla sufferers will find a bottle of yakkity yak and devour it immediately, risk be damned. There is no waiting years for controlled clinical trials for cures to these terrible human conditions. Years from now is too late; yesterday is not soon enough. I can imagine bexarotene will undergo clinical study, and three years from now they will announce it doesn't do anything, but it will be irrelevant as hell, for we already know. There is a bright side to all this. The internet-enabled proletariat is a dangerous but powerful weapon against disease: the results come back quickly with enormous numbers of test subjects. If anything does show up that does work, the word spreads quickly, along with the risks, from firsthand reports by volunteer test subjects. Then the clinical trials can bring up the rear, eventually telling us what we already know. Lives will be lost, we know that too. But lives are lost now, waiting for cures. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sun Feb 19 07:35:28 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:35:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/18 spike : >...the lack of signal causes me to > conclude the promise of bexarotene was > apparently a mirage. I'm inclined that way as well. Yet there are some problems with that logic. If indeed the CWRU results provoked many individuals to obtain bexarotene last week and administer it off-label -- and fail to achieve any positive result -- then wouldn't there be a negative announcement? Wouldn't someone, of the many you are supposing **must** have tried this and gotten the "fail" result, wouldn't one of these persons have reported it? Also, wouldn't the whole thing be a monster human interest news story? Shouldn't various ambitious journalists be crawling all over it? where are they? Win or lose -- cure or fail -- this seems to me like a really big mass media news story. Yet I hear/see only silence. Otherwise the headlines should be screaming out: "Thousands despair at failure of Alzheimer's cure". (Actually, today's Google search shows major media has noticed, but no sooner than ten days ago.) If the media is just catching on, then I'd say it's still too early for your negative conclusion. Frankly, I'd still go with the plan: get some, and administer the safe-for-skin-cancer dose. Get some genuine first-person "in vivo" data. Then get back to me. Enough with the guessing. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From anders at aleph.se Sun Feb 19 09:30:38 2012 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:30:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F40C13E.8090900@aleph.se> On 18/02/2012 17:18, Keith Henson wrote: > This > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Transhumanists > > list 73 who are in the Wikipedia and are in that category. > Of course, many of them were around before the current movement (like Fyodorov, who died in 1903) or are fellow travellers who tend to refuse to call themselves transhumanists (like professor Savulescu). More importantly, the list shows that there are quite a few fairly notable people who are so clear in their views that it makes sense to call them transhumanists. We should expect a far larger number of notable people who have unexpressed opinions or partially agree. Anybody who has an estimate of how many people are mentioned in Wikipedia in total? Scaling up 73 by the ratio 7 billion / #people in Wikipedia might give a lower bound (since many people in Wikipedia are historical). I was attending a meeting about emerging technology and global security in Washington DC last week. I think that among the intelligence analysts and technologists present at least a third were "transhumanists" in some sense. At the very least they were quite open to radical new technologies, although often more concerned with how to avoid bad guys getting them. Transhumanism is creeping into the mainstream to the extent that we card-carrying transhumanists might want to consider what role - if any - we should play. An old-timer I met recently complained that he wasn't seeing much *new* ideas on our fora - maybe it is time for us to shape up and go to the next level? Or revel in our mainstreaminess and get lucrative jobs as lobbyists? -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From eugen at leitl.org Sun Feb 19 15:00:17 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:00:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist In-Reply-To: <4F40C13E.8090900@aleph.se> References: <4F40C13E.8090900@aleph.se> Message-ID: <20120219150017.GB7343@leitl.org> On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 10:30:38AM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Transhumanism is creeping into the mainstream to the extent that we > card-carrying transhumanists might want to consider what role - if any - > we should play. An old-timer I met recently complained that he wasn't > seeing much *new* ideas on our fora - maybe it is time for us to shape > up and go to the next level? Or revel in our mainstreaminess and get The next level would seem to make ideas flesh. > lucrative jobs as lobbyists? From gsantostasi at gmail.com Sun Feb 19 15:56:41 2012 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 09:56:41 -0600 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: How can we make more appealing our ideas? We cannot change the world without the numbers. Giovanni On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > A while ago there was a discussion about how many transhumanists are > around. > > This > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Transhumanists > > list 73 who are in the Wikipedia and are in that category. > > Looking a the links to "cryonics" (no "Category:Cryonicists yet) there > are perhaps 30 people who are signed up for cryonics *and* and listed > on Wikipedia. (This could be off a good deal.) > > To the extent this means anything, the number of transhumanists might > be something like twice as many as the number of people signed up for > cryonics. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun Feb 19 18:15:04 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:15:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <021601ccef32$678451f0$368cf5d0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Davis Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2012 11:35 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? 2012/2/18 spike : >>...the lack of signal causes me to conclude the promise of bexarotene was apparently a mirage. >...I'm inclined that way as well. Yet there are some problems with that logic. >...If indeed the CWRU results provoked many individuals to obtain bexarotene last week and administer it off-label -- and fail to achieve any positive result -- then wouldn't there be a negative announcement? Wouldn't someone, of the many you are supposing **must** have tried this and gotten the "fail" result, wouldn't one of these persons have reported it? One would surely think so. A negative result is a result. Check this: http://www.ehealthme.com/ds/targretin/dementia+alzheimer's+type This site is exactly what I was yammering about a couple days ago, eHealthMe: Real world drug outcomes. From that site: This is a study of Dementia alzheimer's type among people who take Targretin (bexarotene). The study is created by eHealthMe based on reports from FDA and user community. On Feb, 18, 2012: 369 people reported to have side effects when taking Targretin. Among them, 0 people (0.00%) has Dementia Alzheimer's Type. Time on targretin when people have Dementia alzheimer's type * : n/a Gender of people who have Dementia alzheimer's type when taking targretin * : n/a Age of people who have Dementia alzheimer's type when taking targretin * : n/a Severity of Dementia alzheimer's type when taking targretin * : n/a Top conditions involved for these people * : n/a Top co-used drugs for these people * : n/a * Approximation only. Some reports may have incomplete information. >...Frankly, I'd still go with the plan: get some, and administer the safe-for-skin-cancer dose. Get some genuine first-person "in vivo" data. Then get back to me. Enough with the guessing. Best, Jeff Davis That's where we are still heading, although the doctor is reluctant. We are hoping to set up some kind of at least partially controlled experiment, possibly with firsthand semi-trained observations, which would require moving the grandparents to where I can make measurements. Never give up hope friends. It is better to take a shot in the dark rather than die never having fired one's weapon. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 19 19:13:19 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:13:19 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <021601ccef32$678451f0$368cf5d0$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> <021601ccef32$678451f0$368cf5d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 6:15 PM, spike wrote: > > That's where we are still heading, although the doctor is reluctant. ?We are > hoping to set up some kind of at least partially controlled experiment, > possibly with firsthand semi-trained observations, which would require > moving the grandparents to where I can make measurements. ?Never give up > hope friends. ?It is better to take a shot in the dark rather than die never > having fired one's weapon. > > I think the problem could be age. The average age for patients that are prescribed Targretin seems to be around 55 years. This is probably about 15-20 years before the average age for dementia developing. So it could be self-selecting for being given to people that don't have dementia. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Feb 19 19:44:32 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 20:44:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/19 Giovanni Santostasi > How can we make more appealing our ideas? We cannot change the world > without the numbers. > Basically, as everybody else always did, by representing our own ideas wherever we are and in whatever we do. In more strategic terms, at the Associazione Italiana Transumanisti we concluded that the best approach, rather than going after the large public when we do not have at all the resources required to establish large and popular TV networks, daily newspapers, movie studios, etc., is to try and influence those who influence those who influence the opinion leaders (see for instance the establishment of *Divenire*, the only European H+ peer-reviewed academic journal). :-) But this may have to do with the fact that most of us are basically intellectuals. Had we been popstars, scientologists or politicians, probably our choice would be different. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Feb 19 20:36:42 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:36:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 5:00 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: snip > Anybody > who has an estimate of how many people are mentioned in Wikipedia in > total? Scaling up 73 by the ratio 7 billion / #people in Wikipedia might > give a lower bound (since many people in Wikipedia are historical). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Living_people reports 557,616 Wikipedia (EN) probably draws living people from fewer than half a billion people. so 73/557,616 * 0.5 B is ~ 65,000. L5 Society defeated the moon treaty with fewer than 10,000 people, but normally 65,000 people isn't enough to do serious lobbying in the US and the US share wouldn't be higher than 40k. This is a very uncertain number, just exploring Anders question. > I was attending a meeting about emerging technology and global security > in Washington DC last week. I think that among the intelligence analysts > and technologists present at least a third were "transhumanists" in some > sense. At the very least they were quite open to radical new > technologies, although often more concerned with how to avoid bad guys > getting them. > > Transhumanism is creeping into the mainstream to the extent that we > card-carrying transhumanists might want to consider what role - if any - > we should play. An old-timer I met recently complained that he wasn't > seeing much *new* ideas on our fora - maybe it is time for us to shape > up and go to the next level? Or revel in our mainstreaminess and get > lucrative jobs as lobbyists? As you have seen recently, there isn't much interest in exploring the consequences of speeding up on our old concept of M-brains. Or advanced proposals for solving the much more mundane (but important) energy/carbon problems. Or low cost space transport based on high exhaust velocities. 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 > > > End of extropy-chat Digest, Vol 101, Issue 26 > ********************************************* From gsantostasi at gmail.com Sun Feb 19 20:44:06 2012 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:44:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Don't follow this because most transhumanist are bound to be in the subgroup of the half a billion. The other people non using wiki are very likely in underveloped nations where you would not find many transhumanists. Giovanni On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 5:00 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > snip > > > Anybody > > who has an estimate of how many people are mentioned in Wikipedia in > > total? Scaling up 73 by the ratio 7 billion / #people in Wikipedia might > > give a lower bound (since many people in Wikipedia are historical). > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Living_people reports 557,616 > > Wikipedia (EN) probably draws living people from fewer than half a > billion people. > > so 73/557,616 * 0.5 B is ~ 65,000. > > L5 Society defeated the moon treaty with fewer than 10,000 people, but > normally 65,000 people isn't enough to do serious lobbying in the US > and the US share wouldn't be higher than 40k. This is a very > uncertain number, just exploring Anders question. > > > I was attending a meeting about emerging technology and global security > > in Washington DC last week. I think that among the intelligence analysts > > and technologists present at least a third were "transhumanists" in some > > sense. At the very least they were quite open to radical new > > technologies, although often more concerned with how to avoid bad guys > > getting them. > > > > Transhumanism is creeping into the mainstream to the extent that we > > card-carrying transhumanists might want to consider what role - if any - > > we should play. An old-timer I met recently complained that he wasn't > > seeing much *new* ideas on our fora - maybe it is time for us to shape > > up and go to the next level? Or revel in our mainstreaminess and get > > lucrative jobs as lobbyists? > > As you have seen recently, there isn't much interest in exploring the > consequences of speeding up on our old concept of M-brains. > > Or advanced proposals for solving the much more mundane (but > important) energy/carbon problems. > > Or low cost space transport based on high exhaust velocities. > > 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 > > > > > > End of extropy-chat Digest, Vol 101, Issue 26 > > ********************************************* > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun Feb 19 20:37:30 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:37:30 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> <021601ccef32$678451f0$368cf5d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <022301ccef46$4e0373a0$ea0a5ae0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 6:15 PM, spike wrote: > >> That's where we are still heading, although the doctor is reluctant... > >...I think the problem could be age. The average age for patients that are prescribed Targretin seems to be around 55 years. This is probably about 15-20 years before the average age for dementia developing. So it could be self-selecting for being given to people that don't have dementia. BillK _______________________________________________ Ja that is only one mechanism of self-selection. The kind of skin cancer that Targretin treats is non-lethal, at least in the near term. So Alzheimer's patients are perhaps passed over for this expensive medication. After I thought that through, I realized there was probably not much information content in the finding that there are no Alzheimer's patients receiving this treatment. It is by itself not necessarily an indication that Targretin was having any beneficial effect on skin cancer patients. Damn. {8-[ Still I am astonished that the internet medical community is not buzzing with reports this week on AD patients who took a friend or family member's Targretin, and if so, what if anything happened. My notion is that people are far likely to post that kind of information if it is notably bad or notably good, but may be more likely to post nothing if the medications did nothing. Damn. {8-[ spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 19 20:43:45 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:43:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <022401ccef47$2d7105c0$88531140$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: Re: [ExI] How many transhumanist 2012/2/19 Giovanni Santostasi >.How can we make more appealing our ideas? We cannot change the world without the numbers. Think about this for a minute before you dismiss the notion: the way we increase our numbers is by increasing our exposure, and the surest way to do that is not to make our ideas more appealing, but rather to make them less so. We make the ideas threatening to a particular segment who already has a following, such as some widely known and perhaps widely disliked religion, then have them criticize transhumanism. We increase numbers by becoming controversial, not by becoming appealing. The transhumanists out there who have never heard of us will come, regardless of appeal. Hollyweird discovered this a long time ago. It was once believed that negative publicity is better than no publicity. Now,negative publicity is better than positive publicity. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 19 21:42:48 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:42:48 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <022301ccef46$4e0373a0$ea0a5ae0$@att.net> References: <004601cce810$9889f300$c99dd900$@att.net> <20120210171547.GK7343@leitl.org> <005701cce81b$8be01020$a3a03060$@att.net> <00af01cce84d$24954570$6dbfd050$@att.net> <00fa01ccee00$db096b20$911c4160$@att.net> <015a01ccee5c$fd1697e0$f743c7a0$@att.net> <021601ccef32$678451f0$368cf5d0$@att.net> <022301ccef46$4e0373a0$ea0a5ae0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 8:37 PM, spike wrote: > Ja that is only one mechanism of self-selection. ?The kind of skin cancer > that Targretin treats is non-lethal, at least in the near term. ?So > Alzheimer's patients are perhaps passed over for this expensive medication. > After I thought that through, I realized there was probably not much > information content in the finding that there are no Alzheimer's patients > receiving this treatment. ?It is by itself not necessarily an indication > that Targretin was having any beneficial effect on skin cancer patients. > > I intended to say that although Targretin has been prescribed for many years as a skin cancer treatment, almost all of these patients probably presented at an age before any significant dementia symptoms were apparent. So it would not be surprising that a helpful effect on dementia (if present) went completely unnoticed. So looking at past patients data would not be helpful. As you are saying, what is now required is a new study on patients with significant dementia symptoms. BillK From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 19 21:17:05 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:17:05 -0800 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist In-Reply-To: <022401ccef47$2d7105c0$88531140$@att.net> References: <022401ccef47$2d7105c0$88531140$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/19 spike : > Think about this for a minute before you dismiss the notion: the way we > increase our numbers is by increasing our exposure, and the surest way to do > that is not to make our ideas more appealing, but rather to make them less > so.? We make the ideas threatening to a particular segment who already has a > following, such as some widely known and perhaps widely disliked religion, > then have them criticize transhumanism.? We increase numbers by becoming > controversial, not by becoming appealing.? The transhumanists out there who > have never heard of us will come, regardless of appeal. > > Hollyweird discovered this a long time ago.? It was once believed that > negative publicity is better than no publicity.? Now,negative publicity is > better than positive publicity. Actually, what you describe here is positive publicity. Hatred that turns out to be baseless, or based in the not-popularly-defensible beliefs of a group, does not say anything bad about the group those words were intended to defame. From gsantostasi at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 01:31:55 2012 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:31:55 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist Message-ID: Too many transhumanist embrace capitalistic ideals. I think we should be associated with social justice and equity. I think these would bring the singularity faster than unchecked capitalism and liberalism. Here a nice article on how the Scandinavians overcame the 1 % : http://www.truth-out.org/how-does-1-exploit-america-find-out-1-minute-video/1329436217?q=how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-power-one-percent/1327942221 Giovanni On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 2:43 PM, spike wrote: > ** ** > > ** ** > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *Stefano Vaj > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] How many transhumanist**** > > ** ** > > 2012/2/19 Giovanni Santostasi **** > > ** ** > > >?How can we make more appealing our ideas? We cannot change the world > without the numbers? > **** > > ** ** > > Think about this for a minute before you dismiss the notion: the way we > increase our numbers is by increasing our exposure, and the surest way to > do that is not to make our ideas more appealing, but rather to make them > less so. We make the ideas threatening to a particular segment who already > has a following, such as some widely known and perhaps widely disliked > religion, then have them criticize transhumanism. We increase numbers by > becoming controversial, not by becoming appealing. The transhumanists out > there who have never heard of us will come, regardless of appeal.**** > > ** ** > > Hollyweird discovered this a long time ago. It was once believed that > negative publicity is better than no publicity. Now,negative publicity is > better than positive publicity.**** > > ** ** > > 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 Mon Feb 20 03:01:16 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:01:16 -0800 Subject: [ExI] math fun: RE: Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? Message-ID: <027f01ccef7b$e9e90480$bdbb0d80$@att.net> Mike Dougherty pointed this out to me offline. It has no transhumanist angle that I can think of, other than transhumanists love cool stuff that is hard to explain, since we are cool geeks and we are hard to explain. To blunt the disappointment of the letdown from the apparent failure of bexarotene, I have been geek-out on arbitrary precision arithmetic. A few days ago, I presented the 1 to 10 game, where you imagine something you like, and imagine a life in which that interest improved from 1 to 10 in your lifetime. Computers have allowed monster coolness to be enjoyed by us, SO BE THANKFUL all you fellow math geeks! Be thankful that you and I can marvel at the following, something that Newton, Euler, Von Neumann, all the other historical smart guys would have given anything to be able to enjoy. Thanks Mike! Check it out, here it is: 1/998001 is approximately equal to 0. 000 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495 496 497 498 499 500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508 509 510 511 512 513 514 515 516 517 518 519 520 521 522 523 524 525 526 527 528 529 530 531 532 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547 548 549 550 551 552 553 554 555 556 557 558 559 560 561 562 563 564 565 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577 578 579 580 581 582 583 584 585 586 587 588 589 590 591 592 593 594 595 596 597 598 599 600 601 602 603 604 605 606 607 608 609 610 611 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623 624 625 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639 640 641 642 643 644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 702 703 704 705 706 707 708 709 710 711 712 713 714 715 716 717 718 719 720 721 722 723 724 725 726 727 728 729 730 731 732 733 734 735 736 737 738 739 740 741 742 743 744 745 746 747 748 749 750 751 752 753 754 755 756 757 758 759 760 761 762 763 764 765 766 767 768 769 770 771 772 773 774 775 776 777 778 779 780 781 782 783 784 785 786 787 788 789 790 791 792 793 794 795 796 797 798 799 800 801 802 803 804 805 806 807 808 809 810 811 812 813 814 815 816 817 818 819 820 821 822 823 824 825 826 827 828 829 830 831 832 833 834 835 836 837 838 839 840 841 842 843 844 845 846 847 848 849 850 851 852 853 854 855 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 865 866 867 868 869 870 871 872 873 874 875 876 877 878 879 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 888 889 890 891 892 893 894 895 896 897 898 899 900 901 902 903 904 905 906 907 908 909 910 911 912 913 914 915 916 917 918 919 920 921 922 923 924 925 926 927 928 929 930 931 932 933 934 935 936 937 938 939 940 941 942 943 944 945 946 947 948 949 950 951 952 953 954 955 956 957 958 959 960 961 962 963 964 965 966 967 968 969 970 971 972 973 974 975 976 977 978 979 980 981 982 983 984 985 986 987 988 989 990 991 992 993 994 995 996 997 999 000 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 and so on. Kewalllll... {8-] spike From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 20 03:04:11 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:04:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist References: Message-ID: <028001ccef7c$524330a0$f6c991e0$@att.net> Posted on behalf of Alan Brooks: >. On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: Re: [ExI] How many transhumanist 2012/2/19 Giovanni Santostasi >>.How can we make more appealing our ideas? We cannot change the world without the numbers. . >.Hollyweird discovered this a long time ago. It was once believed that negative publicity is better than no publicity. Now,negative publicity is better than positive publicity. spike Perhaps better than negative publicity might be reverse psychology (RS), which works very often. Now, since not all that many are interested at this time, it might not work with transhumanism, but life extension can be a way to get a foot in the door; tell someone not to take care of their health, and they will be more likely to at least think about being more health-conscious. I've learned how to back-manipulate indigent cigarette smokers by saying: "go ahead, smoke a whole carton- it's good for you, boy!" If such RS doesn't work all the time, it does have some results- guaranteed- because men are so rebellious that even if we let them know (which is forthright) we are using RS, they will have doubts about their current behavior: If you tell an alcoholic to, "drink a whole gallon, you sot", they are going to feel guilt and confusion, and might possibly change their behavior when things worsen for them later on. In America people screw with others' minds all the time.. it is considered fair game-- and turnabout is in fact fair play. It is worth a shot-- unless I'm being too devious for anyone's good. Alan Brooks -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From seculartranshumanist at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 02:49:27 2012 From: seculartranshumanist at gmail.com (Joseph Bloch) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:49:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/19 Giovanni Santostasi : > Too many transhumanist embrace capitalistic ideals. I think we should be > associated with social justice and equity. I think these would bring the > singularity faster than unchecked capitalism and liberalism. I could not disagree more. First of all, transhumanism is apolitical. One of its greatest strengths lies in being a large enough tent that people from all political persuasions can self-identify as transhumanists. What you suggest infers that those who do not agree with your assertion about capitalism being bad and "social justice" being good should somehow be purged. That's already been tried... Secondly, transhumanism has already gone through a period when its leading organization attempted to purge those who did not agree with a particular economic/political orientation. The result was stagnation, apathy, and the setting back of organized transhumanism by half a decade. Fortunately, Humanity+ has now overcome that odious tendency through new leadership. Third, bear in mind that transhumanism does not necessarily equal "the singularity." Transhumanism is, at its heart, the use of technology to overcome the limitations of the human condition. That does not require some sort of "singularity" (although it does not discount it). Especially in the context of a discussion of how to make transhumanism more palatable and popular, singularitianism has a tendency to veer towards the apocalyptic, which turns off quite a number of people (if for nothing more than its religious millenarianism). The impulse to define transhumanism by any single technological innovation (whether it be artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, uploading, etc.) should be guarded against. Especially as transhumanists, we should be aware that we don't know exactly what the future will look like. Fourth, I disagree with your specific assertion that "social justice and equity" will bring about transhumanist goals necessarily faster than capitalism and free markets. Guaranteed equality of outcomes will necessarily force a much more gradual improvement (if any) of the human condition, as it requires that all people be raised at the same rate and to the same level. So before you develop the technology to make *some* people live to 300, you have to ensure that *all* of them live to 50. I believe exactly the opposite to be preferable; better to have a minority live to a ripe old age of 1,000 than prevent anyone from doing so until everyone can. I don't begrudge Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the opportunity to walk on the moon just because they didn't bring along 3 billion other people. I don't begrudge you attempting to prove me wrong in this by attempting to produce some sort of socialism-transhumanism hybrid (although it's already been done). But I will not accept you attempting to insinuate that such is somehow integral to the definition of transhumanism itself. I tend to agree with spike's earlier notion. Better to gain notoriety through controversy than to pander to the basest form of populism that demands ever-increasing handouts be taken from producers to be given to consumers in the name of some never-to-be-achieved notion of "fairness". Joseph From gsantostasi at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 04:04:00 2012 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:04:00 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A Cybernetic Love Poem Message-ID: Cybernetic Love Poem Why should I want you only with mortal flesh? When a thousand rotating electronic fingers Could caress you and make you vibrate As an instrument of pleasure and cosmic joy? May I be our immortal cyborg of love, With a pulsating heart Made of fiber optics and a billion transistors All lighted up at the sight of you form Rejoicing in the calculation Of the cube root of your beauty Nanobots navigating in my arteries Bringing extra oxygen to my vital Bioengineered organs To feel life in a million times Empowered self Bringing you in my shiny silicon mind In a colorful swirl of nourishing Information that encodes The most distilled part Of your essence -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alito at organicrobot.com Mon Feb 20 04:24:00 2012 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:24:00 +1100 Subject: [ExI] math fun: RE: Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <027f01ccef7b$e9e90480$bdbb0d80$@att.net> References: <027f01ccef7b$e9e90480$bdbb0d80$@att.net> Message-ID: <4F41CAE0.6080305@organicrobot.com> On 02/20/12 14:01, spike wrote: > > Mike Dougherty pointed this out to me offline. It has no transhumanist > angle that I can think of, other than transhumanists love cool stuff that is > hard to explain, since we are cool geeks and we are hard to explain. [snip] Very cool indeed. Also, note the gap at 99 Nice explanation on how to make any of these cycling decimals on the top comment of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3514721 > Thanks Mike! Check it out, here it is: > > 1/998001 is approximately equal to > > 0. 000 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 > 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 > 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 > 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 > 075 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 > 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 > 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 > 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 > 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 > 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 > 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 > 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 > 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 > 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 > 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 > 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 > 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 > 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 > 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 > 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 > 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 > 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 > 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 > 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 > 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 > 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 > 493 494 495 496 497 498 499 500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508 509 510 511 > 512 513 514 515 516 517 518 519 520 521 522 523 524 525 526 527 528 529 530 > 531 532 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547 548 549 > 550 551 552 553 554 555 556 557 558 559 560 561 562 563 564 565 566 567 568 > 569 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577 578 579 580 581 582 583 584 585 586 587 > 588 589 590 591 592 593 594 595 596 597 598 599 600 601 602 603 604 605 606 > 607 608 609 610 611 612 613 614 615 616 617 618 619 620 621 622 623 624 625 > 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639 640 641 642 643 644 > 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 660 661 662 663 > 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 > 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 > 702 703 704 705 706 707 708 709 710 711 712 713 714 715 716 717 718 719 720 > 721 722 723 724 725 726 727 728 729 730 731 732 733 734 735 736 737 738 739 > 740 741 742 743 744 745 746 747 748 749 750 751 752 753 754 755 756 757 758 > 759 760 761 762 763 764 765 766 767 768 769 770 771 772 773 774 775 776 777 > 778 779 780 781 782 783 784 785 786 787 788 789 790 791 792 793 794 795 796 > 797 798 799 800 801 802 803 804 805 806 807 808 809 810 811 812 813 814 815 > 816 817 818 819 820 821 822 823 824 825 826 827 828 829 830 831 832 833 834 > 835 836 837 838 839 840 841 842 843 844 845 846 847 848 849 850 851 852 853 > 854 855 856 857 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 865 866 867 868 869 870 871 872 > 873 874 875 876 877 878 879 880 881 882 883 884 885 886 887 888 889 890 891 > 892 893 894 895 896 897 898 899 900 901 902 903 904 905 906 907 908 909 910 > 911 912 913 914 915 916 917 918 919 920 921 922 923 924 925 926 927 928 929 > 930 931 932 933 934 935 936 937 938 939 940 941 942 943 944 945 946 947 948 > 949 950 951 952 953 954 955 956 957 958 959 960 961 962 963 964 965 966 967 > 968 969 970 971 972 973 974 975 976 977 978 979 980 981 982 983 984 985 986 > 987 988 989 990 991 992 993 994 995 996 997 999 000 001 002 003 004 005 006 > 007 008 009 010 011 012 and so on. > > Kewalllll... > > {8-] > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 05:20:17 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:20:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 9:04 PM, Joseph Bloch wrote: snip > Third, bear in mind that transhumanism does not necessarily equal "the > singularity." Transhumanism is, at its heart, the use of technology to > overcome the limitations of the human condition. It would be scary if we were to list out the "limitations of the human condition" and start thinking about what the consequences are. Having been called (by RU Sirius no less) an ur-transhumanist, I am trying not to come across as a Luddite. But I think there are *real* problems coming along with removing the limitations. It's not things like population, any technology able to keep us alive indefinitely would be up to solving any resource problem you could name at least if you were not using it to print off more copies of people. One batch of trouble comes from the new state of people *also* having limitations. There is a whole ecosystem that will rapidly emerge with many places for people to screw up like messing with the state of their reward systems. > That does not require > some sort of "singularity" (although it does not discount it). It's really clear that the historical trend is for technologies to come faster and faster and to last shorter and shorter times. Where this leads is hard to say. > Especially in the context of a discussion of how to make transhumanism > more palatable and popular, singularitianism has a tendency to veer > towards the apocalyptic, which turns off quite a number of people (if > for nothing more than its religious millenarianism). Those movement have also been highly influential in the past. The trouble with the singularity is that the more people grok it, the more ambivalent they feel about it as well as the strong tendency to consider it inevitable and most likely in the next few decades. > The impulse to > define transhumanism by any single technological innovation (whether > it be artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, uploading, etc.) should > be guarded against. Especially as transhumanists, we should be aware > that we don't know exactly what the future will look like. That's certainly true, but on the other hand, AI and nanotech will tend to happen almost together because advances in one will drive the other. snip Keiht From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 05:00:38 2012 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 22:00:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] A Cybernetic Love Poem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Giovanni, I just want to say how much I enjoyed your poem. You definitely have talent as a poet! I look forward to your next effort... John : ) 2012/2/19 Giovanni Santostasi > Cybernetic Love Poem > Why should I want you only with mortal flesh? > When a thousand rotating electronic fingers > Could caress you and make you vibrate > As an instrument of pleasure and cosmic joy? > May I be our immortal cyborg of love, > With a pulsating heart > Made of fiber optics and a billion transistors > All lighted up at the sight of you form > Rejoicing in the calculation > Of the cube root of your beauty > Nanobots navigating in my arteries > Bringing extra oxygen to my vital > Bioengineered organs > To feel life in a million times > Empowered self > Bringing you in my shiny silicon mind > In a colorful swirl of nourishing > Information that encodes > The most distilled part > Of your essence > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 07:53:17 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:53:17 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/20 Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > Too many transhumanist embrace capitalistic ideals. I think we should be > associated with social justice and equity. I think these would bring the > singularity faster than unchecked capitalism and liberalism. Here a nice > article on how the Scandinavians overcame the 1 % : > > http://www.truth-out.org/how-does-1-exploit-america-find-out-1-minute-video/1329436217?q=how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-power-one-percent/1327942221 > > You have to be careful when using words like 'social justice and equity' when writing to US Exi members. :) It immediately makes them think of Mao's legions of people all dressed in blue overalls, on bicycles, working for minimum wages. Europeans can see that the 1% are already producing the same effect in the US, with unemployment, homelessness, people living in cars, 46 million surviving on food stamps, etc. The main difference is that the US poor wear old Nike t-shirts. I see social justice more in terms of a safety net. To ensure that people don't starve and do get medical treatment when needed. If the poorer people are going to 'get on' then they have to be fit enough to empower them to better themselves. If you don't then, as your Norwegian article shows, eventually the numbers of the poor, starving, unemployed people will become so large that it will lead to a breakdown in society and a 'reorganisation' of the system. With 'the end of work' rapidly approaching Western societies, there will soon have to be a big rethink on how society works. BillK From anders at aleph.se Mon Feb 20 10:30:19 2012 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:30:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F4220BB.4050407@aleph.se> On 20/02/2012 02:31, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > Too many transhumanist embrace capitalistic ideals. I think we should > be associated with social justice and equity. I think these would > bring the singularity faster than unchecked capitalism and liberalism. > Here a nice article on how the Scandinavians overcame the 1 % : HAHAHAHA!!! Sorry, but as a Swede I find this article hilarious. So that is how the American left sees us :-) The article forgets that many historians think Sweden was very close to going in the direction of fascism or communism in the early 20th century. The problem in learning from Scandinavia is that these societies are small (Sweden's entire population could fit into New York City) and culturally homogeneous. It is not hard to be consensus oriented if everybody more or less believes the same thing and social distances are by necessity are small. Sure, some of these ideas are sensible, like unions that work with the employers because they realise they have mostly shared interests. But the Scandinavian model does not scale well to big and diverse societies, since the consensus-seeking is not possible or efficient enough. It is notable that the current Swedish political export since the 90s is clever liberalisation: how to deregulate markets, school choice (even including for-profit schools), handling bank crises lightly and how to run welfare states on market principles. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 11:10:00 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:10:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] How many transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/19 Giovanni Santostasi : > How can we make more appealing our ideas? We cannot change the world without > the numbers. I think this is not correct. Once the technology enables people to do transhumanist sorts of things, then many more people will become transhumanists. It's a little like asking someone if they would install the Mr. Fusion in their car. Well, not so many people are really worrying about the Mr. Fusion in their car right now, but if the technology were to become available, then sure, everyone would buy one. So it is with transhumanism. How many people in 1975 were thinking, "Man, I've got to get some digital music into my life somehow!" Not so many. But a small number of engineers were working on what would become the CD-ROM, and eventually that changed the world. When the technology is ready, the sheep will herd around iTranshuman. Until then, the only thing we can do is work on the digital human (or whatever form of transhumanism floats your boat), in what ever way we can. Most people can't look three weeks into the future. Asking them to stare down the barrel of the singularity is just asking too much of most proles. -Kelly From anders at aleph.se Mon Feb 20 11:05:29 2012 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:05:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F4228F9.2020907@aleph.se> On 20/02/2012 02:31, Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > Too many transhumanist embrace capitalistic ideals. I think we should > be associated with social justice and equity. I think these would > bring the singularity faster than unchecked capitalism and liberalism. First, it is not obvious that we *should* want to bring the singularity faster. As some of us have argued, it might be so risky that the responsible thing is to slow down. From an individual standpoint early singularities might be good for *us* individually, since we are all fairly affluent neophiles who (if anybody survives) will likely benefit. But that is not a great ethical argument for going ahead. And if you worry about inequality, radical economic growth might actually be a very bad thing since it might amplify inequalities enormously. Second, social justice and equity does not obviously produce rapid technological growth. Plots of Gini coefficient vs. economic growth doesn't show a strong link in developed countries and a fairly mild correlation in developing countries http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights/statistics-on-gross-domestic-product-correlations/#16 It might be more important to urbanize people, since this has big economies of scale on technology and income. Or just bringing up the GDP, since this has strong effect on the patents per capita http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0101-41612010000200003&script=sci_arttext There are plenty of feedbacks here of course - one reason a country get rich is lots of patents and tech, and the wealth pays of more education and research. This is also an argument *against* equalizing things, since this kind of clustering effects can produce much more total tech growth than a more equal distribution of where R&D happens. Third: If you want to argue for social justice, do it because there is something good about the justice itself. Arguing that it could be an instrumental tool for getting other things means that if we find a better tool we will just abandon justice. Arguing that we have a moral duty, that equality makes a nicer world, or that it somehow follows from transhumanist principles - that is a much stronger line of argument if you want to change transhumanism. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From giulio at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 12:03:26 2012 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:03:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: <4F4228F9.2020907@aleph.se> References: <4F4228F9.2020907@aleph.se> Message-ID: I don't really believe in "moral duties," but more equality would certainly make a nicer world. I don't want an egalitarian world, but I want a _more_ egalitarian world instead of the current insane gaps. On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Third: If you want to argue for social justice, do it because there is > something good about the justice itself. Arguing that it could be an > instrumental tool for getting other things means that if we find a better > tool we will just abandon justice. Arguing that we have a moral duty, that > equality makes a nicer world, or that it somehow follows from transhumanist > principles - that is a much stronger line of argument if you want to change > transhumanism. > > > -- > 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 nymphomation at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 12:50:02 2012 From: nymphomation at gmail.com (*Nym*) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:50:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 20/02/2012, BillK wrote: > 2012/2/20 Giovanni Santostasi wrote: >> Too many transhumanist embrace capitalistic ideals. I think we should be >> associated with social justice and equity. I think these would bring the >> singularity faster than unchecked capitalism and liberalism. Here a nice >> article on how the Scandinavians overcame the 1 % : >> >> http://www.truth-out.org/how-does-1-exploit-america-find-out-1-minute-video/1329436217?q=how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-power-one-percent/1327942221 >> > > You have to be careful when using words like 'social justice and > equity' when writing to US Exi members. :) > > It immediately makes them think of Mao's legions of people all dressed > in blue overalls, on bicycles, working for minimum wages. There seems to be a blind spot concerning one type of logical fallacy doesn't there? The false dichotomy is seldom noticed.. :o) Heavy splashings, Thee Nymphomation 'If you cannot afford an executioner, a duty executioner will be appointed to you free of charge by the court' From gsantostasi at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 16:21:09 2012 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:21:09 -0600 Subject: [ExI] A Cybernetic Love Poem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thank you for the appreciation. I think art is an avenue that we should use more often to spread transhumanist ideas. We need more Natasha Vitamore and Jason DeSilva. Giovanni On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 11:00 PM, John Grigg wrote: > Giovanni, I just want to say how much I enjoyed your poem. You definitely > have talent as a poet! I look forward to your next effort... > > > John : ) > > > 2012/2/19 Giovanni Santostasi > >> Cybernetic Love Poem >> Why should I want you only with mortal flesh? >> When a thousand rotating electronic fingers >> Could caress you and make you vibrate >> As an instrument of pleasure and cosmic joy? >> May I be our immortal cyborg of love, >> With a pulsating heart >> Made of fiber optics and a billion transistors >> All lighted up at the sight of you form >> Rejoicing in the calculation >> Of the cube root of your beauty >> Nanobots navigating in my arteries >> Bringing extra oxygen to my vital >> Bioengineered organs >> To feel life in a million times >> Empowered self >> Bringing you in my shiny silicon mind >> In a colorful swirl of nourishing >> Information that encodes >> The most distilled part >> Of your essence >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 jonkc at bellsouth.net Mon Feb 20 17:48:43 2012 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:48:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Quantum computer advance In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1329760123.53372.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/nanotransistor-breakthrough-to-offer-billion-times-faster-computer-20120220-1thqk.html ?John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Feb 20 18:48:56 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:48:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Quantum computer advance In-Reply-To: <1329760123.53372.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <1329760123.53372.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20120220184856.GZ7343@leitl.org> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 09:48:43AM -0800, john clark wrote: > > > > http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/nanotransistor-breakthrough-to-offer-billion-times-faster-computer-20120220-1thqk.html Doesn't feature entangled qubits or quantum parallelism, hence is not quantum computing. P.S. http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/why-im-wagering-100000-on-quantum-computing I think he's going to lose money on this, but the proof will be difficult. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 20 20:33:51 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:33:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Quantum computer advance References: <1329760123.53372.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20120220184856.GZ7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1329770031.7560.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Eugen Leitl > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 10:48 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Quantum computer advance > > On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 09:48:43AM -0800, john clark wrote: >> >> >> >> > http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/nanotransistor-breakthrough-to-offer-billion-times-faster-computer-20120220-1thqk.html > > Doesn't feature entangled qubits or quantum parallelism, hence > is not quantum computing. > > P.S. > http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/why-im-wagering-100000-on-quantum-computing > I think he's going to lose money on this, but the proof will be difficult. I read his?wager but I am somewhat confused by what he means by "scaling". I mean something can scale mathematically just fine but in?reality can't scale?worth crap.?Examples are?the mythical man-hour or non-existent individual insects weighing over a kilogram despite a fairly large range of workable masses. ? Conversely other phenomena can be more-or-less scalable in an trivial?practical sense although one cannot make any quantitatively meaningful physical predictions about them. For example my sample of ten rocks is in the most trivial fashion precisely a 10-fold scale up?of your?one rock. Yet I cannot make any predictions of how my ten rocks would compare?to yours. I mean?we might be hard-pressed to find any?physical meaning to the 10 X scale up of rocks in terms of any physical property, if my rocks are sandstone, limestone, and?chalk while yours is?a star-sapphire. So if he words his?wager vaguely enough, then?he can't lose. ? Stuart LaForge ? "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 21:05:09 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:05:09 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Quantum computer advance In-Reply-To: <1329770031.7560.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1329760123.53372.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20120220184856.GZ7343@leitl.org> <1329770031.7560.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/20 The Avantguardian : > So if he words his?wager vaguely enough, then?he can't lose. That's why I'm not paying too much attention to his wager. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 21:08:51 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:08:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 20 February 2012 03:49, Joseph Bloch wrote: > What you > suggest infers that those who do not agree with your assertion about > capitalism being bad and "social justice" being good should somehow be > purged. That's already been tried... > I am not sure about Giovanni's intentions, but I believe that "social justice" need not be interpreted as egalitarianism - even though, admittedly, it may be. Even from a hyper-orthodox Randian view, the fact that, for instance, in a given society essentially parasitic social classes may enjoy a disproportionate share of the available wealth and/or are actually protected from social competition may well be considered as "unjust". See The Fountainhead if one is looking for examples of how this may happen. This is turn may well reduce resources that could otherwise be available for long-term, high-risk investment or to reward innovation, and this is of course relevant to any transhumanist agenda. Especially in the context of a discussion of how to make transhumanism > more palatable and popular, singularitianism has a tendency to veer > towards the apocalyptic, which turns off quite a number of people (if > for nothing more than its religious millenarianism). > Absolutely. And the fact that regrettably many "singularitarians" now believe it is cooler to be prophets of an impending Doom - in the most parochial humanist terms, btw - rather than Rapture, make things only worse. I will not insist on the point, because I have already expressed my view on "x-risks" and "Big, Bad AIs" in the brief essay *Artificious Intelligences* . So before you develop the technology to > make *some* people live to 300, you have to ensure that *all* of them > live to 50. I believe exactly the opposite to be preferable; better to > have a minority live to a ripe old age of 1,000 than prevent anyone > from doing so until everyone can. I don't begrudge Neil Armstrong and > Buzz Aldrin the opportunity to walk on the moon just because they > didn't bring along 3 billion other people. > Yes, I am on your line on this one. Besides, medicine has *always* been "unsustainable". By sparing the resources devoted to therapy, not to mention research, we always could save more lives than we did. Yet, traditional medical ethic orders to do anything possible for the patient at hand, even though the cost might save three other people from, say, starvation or accidents. This, however, does not necessarily mean that unless your American Express is in order when you have a heart attack it is reasonable or efficient for your community to let you die at the next crossroad. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 21:15:29 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:15:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: <4F4220BB.4050407@aleph.se> References: <4F4220BB.4050407@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 20 February 2012 11:30, Anders Sandberg wrote: > But the Scandinavian model does not scale well to big and diverse > societies, since the consensus-seeking is not possible or efficient enough. > This might in fact be an argument against "big" and "diverse" societies. :-) But of course many people were very frustrated with the Scandinavian models in the sixties and seventies of last centuries. A few even emigrated. Heck, some Scandinavians had done just the same a few years before and reached Iceland, not to mention Normandy, Sicily, England, Vinland, Greenland. :-) That again might be an argument in favour of the Scandinavian models. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 21:23:24 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:23:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: <4F4228F9.2020907@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 20 February 2012 13:03, Giulio Prisco wrote: > I don't really believe in "moral duties," but more equality would > certainly make a nicer world. I don't want an egalitarian world, but I > want a _more_ egalitarian world instead of the current insane gaps. > Besides the width of such gaps, I think that speaking in terms of "equity" and "justice" one is well entitled to question whether such gaps are deserved and justified in terms of societal values that one shares. The fact that, say, one today chooses to be a researcher only inasmuch as one is too stupid to be a banker suggests that something may be wrong in the contemporary social model. And that the same may well be doomed in the medium term, as recent evolution seems to suggest. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 20 21:19:11 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:19:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? Message-ID: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> I had one hell of an insight and I need some input from the medical hipsters, for I am a rocket scientist, not a doctor. Last week I studied into the solubility of bexarotene and learned that 75mg in the form of Targretin is therapeutic and safe for humans. The capsules themselves look a little like vitamin E softgels, so that is a huge clue. I know that it takes a couple ounces, or about 75 grams of alcohol to dissolve 75mg of bexarotene, so the active ingredient is definitely not dissolved in either alcohol nor dimethyl sulfoxide in Targretin. Eisai Corp has figured out some means of dissolving bexarotene in some kind of gel or solvent oil for delivery in such a way that the medication perfuses the body. It occurred to me that bexarotene in the form of Targretin might perfuse the body but not permeate the blood/brain barrier, whereas it might go across the barrier if dissolved in alcohol. Reasoning: we know that the solubility of bexarotene in water is nearly negligible and that its natural state is powder. So pure bexarotene clumps together in globs of millions of molecules, forming a fine powder. So if one swallowed 75 mg of bexarotene in powder form, it would still be in powder form when it arrived several days later at the sewage processing plant. Now imagine if bexarotene in some form of oil solvent partially dissolves, forming a slurry or suspension of globs of tens of thousands of molecules. Then it can enter the bloodstream in that form, and (somehow) have a therapeutic effect on skin cancers, but still not be able to cross the blood brain barrier? If so, then the finding that Targretin is safe would not apply to bexarotene in alcohol? If so, then we would have no reason to suspect that the 100k patients taking Targretin would see any impact on Alzheimer's, since the medication doesn't cross the barrier. But if dissolved in alcohol, perhaps the medication could get to where the action is. That brings up another thorny question. Targretin has been shown to be safe in 75 mg doses, but only in the form of a slurry or suspension in solvent oil (or whatever they are using as a solvent, not alcohol or DMSO.) So there is a risk that if we took 75 mg of bexarotene, dissolved it in alcohol and the patient glugged it down, that same 75 mg might kill the patient. As far as I can tell, the mice were given bexarotene in a form that was administered via a skin permeant, not via Targretin, since the article mentions skin surface area. When I see the volume of a Targretin tablet, I suspect that the bexarotene may be in a form that cannot permeate into the brain, which is perhaps why Targretin is safe to use. So after ten days of internet eerie silence, we still don't know what bexarotene does in the brain. 75mg might kill the patient. This is one hell of a note, ja? I am now in a position where I would give a family member FDA approved Targretin, but would not give that same family member 75mg of bexarotene dissolved in alcohol. Dr. Smigrodzki, or some of you hipsters, how do we experiment ethically with this? Is it even possible to experiment ethically with bexarotene mixed with alcohol? Can we use aged chimps or something? Heeeelllllp Mister Wizaaarrrrd! spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Feb 20 22:17:39 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:17:39 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> Message-ID: On 20 February 2012 22:19, spike wrote: > Dr. Smigrodzki, or some of you hipsters, how do we experiment ethically > with > this? Is it even possible to experiment ethically with bexarotene mixed > with alcohol? Can we use aged chimps or something? No, ethically we cannot really risk that some chimps become alcoholists and start a life of debauchery in their old age. :-) Sorry, but I could not resist. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Feb 20 23:14:34 2012 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:14:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: References: <4F4220BB.4050407@aleph.se> Message-ID: <4F42D3DA.9060808@aleph.se> On 20/02/2012 21:15, Stefano Vaj wrote: > On 20 February 2012 11:30, Anders Sandberg > wrote: > > But the Scandinavian model does not scale well to big and diverse > societies, since the consensus-seeking is not possible or > efficient enough. > > > This might in fact be an argument against "big" and "diverse" > societies. :-) Indeed. I suspect that small homogenous societies can be quite functional and happy - at the price of entrepreneurship, individual freedom and dynamism. If we look at where the groundbreaking intellectual insights have occured, they tend to appear in cosmopolitan zones, not in the middle of homogenity. > But of course many people were very frustrated with the Scandinavian > models in the sixties and seventies of last centuries. A few even > emigrated. Exactly. As an emigrant I feel quite free. And last year more Swedes emigrated than during the big emigration to America in the 1880s - although besides the US it is the rest of Scandinavia, Britain and China that are popular. Many tend to return eventually, but it seems that the most entrepreneurial stay abroad. Free migration is a good way of keeping states in line - if their policies are too bad, people vote with their feet. Not frictionlessly, but enough to put some check on the policies (or just allocate people more economically efficiently). -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Feb 21 02:38:46 2012 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:38:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Quantum computer advance In-Reply-To: References: <1329760123.53372.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20120220184856.GZ7343@leitl.org> <1329770031.7560.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: And so is this really a gigantic scientific leap forward in terms of functional computational power? And when will we see it seriously put into use? John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 21 04:32:02 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:32:02 -0800 Subject: [ExI] human hibernation? Message-ID: <006001ccf051$c251a6d0$46f4f470$@att.net> What do you make of this? http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/20/swedish-man-survives-two-months-in-s ub-zero-temperatures-by-hibernating-in-car/ Do you suppose it is possible for the body to process fat fast enough to survive? Bears do that somehow. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 21 06:24:30 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:24:30 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> Message-ID: <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? >>. Is it even possible to experiment ethically with bexarotene mixed with alcohol? Can we use aged chimps or something? >.No, ethically we cannot really risk that some chimps become alcoholists and start a life of debauchery in their old age. :-) -- Stefano Vaj Ja, we need to find chimps who are already hopeless drunks. I was grousing because the mouse experiment was conducted in 2009 and we are just now hearing about it. I learned that Dr. Landreth went public last week under pressure, because the 2009 results had leaked. A patient referred to that result and requested bexarotene. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Feb 21 07:32:14 2012 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:32:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] "Why Mass Effect is the most important science fiction universe of our generation" Message-ID: A very thought-provoking article.... http://io9.com/5886178/why-mass-effect-is-the-most-important-science-fiction-universe-of-our-generation John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Feb 21 12:42:09 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:42:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Social justice and transhumanist In-Reply-To: <4F42D3DA.9060808@aleph.se> References: <4F4220BB.4050407@aleph.se> <4F42D3DA.9060808@aleph.se> Message-ID: 2012/2/21 Anders Sandberg > Indeed. I suspect that small homogenous societies can be quite functional > and happy - at the price of entrepreneurship, individual freedom and > dynamism. If we look at where the groundbreaking intellectual insights have > occured, they tend to appear in cosmopolitan zones, not in the middle of > homogenity. > I think it is fair to say that this is what happens to small, homogenous but at the same time *insulated* societies - or, rather, communities. Something which has been rarely applicable to Scandinavian ones (one example being the Icelandic enclave after the conversion of the mainland). Societies with strong communitarian ties often prove very dynamic in their competition with the rest of the world. See also post-Meiji Japan. Free migration is a good way of keeping states in line - if their policies > are too bad, people vote with their feet. Not frictionlessly, but enough to > put some check on the policies (or just allocate people more economically > efficiently). > Yes, I am inclined to agree with this one. And it is indeed a reasonable compromise between the concern political pluralism and self-determination and the allegedly "humanitarian" concerns of those who occasionally do not really like the fruits thereof and are inclined to launch crusades to save others from themselves. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Tue Feb 21 14:08:02 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:08:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] human hibernation? In-Reply-To: <006001ccf051$c251a6d0$46f4f470$@att.net> References: <006001ccf051$c251a6d0$46f4f470$@att.net> Message-ID: <20120221140802.GC7343@leitl.org> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 08:32:02PM -0800, spike wrote: > > > What do you make of this? > > > > http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/20/swedish-man-survives-two-months-in-s > ub-zero-temperatures-by-hibernating-in-car/ > > > > Do you suppose it is possible for the body to process fat fast enough to > survive? Bears do that somehow. It was probably the emancipation that kept that man alive. Never misunderstimate the powers of emancipation. (Or maybe, just maybe, the man's own claims are not entirely truthful -- not that Faux would care, it being Faux). From anders at aleph.se Tue Feb 21 14:49:06 2012 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:49:06 +0000 Subject: [ExI] human hibernation? In-Reply-To: <006001ccf051$c251a6d0$46f4f470$@att.net> References: <006001ccf051$c251a6d0$46f4f470$@att.net> Message-ID: <4F43AEE2.2010509@aleph.se> On 21/02/2012 04:32, spike wrote: > > What do you make of this? > > http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/20/swedish-man-survives-two-months-in-sub-zero-temperatures-by-hibernating-in-car/ > From Swedish news, it looks like he left home last summer after his business went bad and went up north. At least during the autumn he occasionally popped by a village to buy junk food. My guess is he suffered from some form of fugue state, either a fullblown dissociative amnesia, or just an attempt to escape a social situation he could not handle. Not sure about the metabolism question. If you semi-starve and do not move much, I would imagine you burn very few calories. The lowered body temperature in caloric restriction might really reduce energy demands. But I suspect the man had some calorie reserves in the car. -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 21 14:57:37 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:57:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] human hibernation? In-Reply-To: <20120221140802.GC7343@leitl.org> References: <006001ccf051$c251a6d0$46f4f470$@att.net> <20120221140802.GC7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00d201ccf0a9$272b4c30$7581e490$@att.net> >...On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] human hibernation? On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 08:32:02PM -0800, spike wrote: > > >> What do you make of this? > > > > http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/20/swedish-man-survives-two-months-in-s ub-zero-temperatures-by-hibernating-in-car/ > " ...When rescuers arrived at the scene, Skyllberg was emancipated and barely speaking..." >...It was probably the emancipation that kept that man alive. Never misunderstimate the powers of emancipation. ""He had a girlfriend but she ran out. And then he also had problems paying bills and the rent," a source close to Skyllberg said, according to Aftonbladet newspaper." Ja, I guess if one is a sex slave to a beautiful Swedish girl, and she sets you free, the logical thing might be to go hibernate in your Volvo for a couple months. spike From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Feb 21 18:38:41 2012 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:38:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Quantum computer advance In-Reply-To: <1329770031.7560.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1329849521.44715.YahooMailClassic@web82908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Mon, 2/20/12, The Avantguardian wrote: >?? I read his wager but I am somewhat confused by what he means by "scaling". Quantum Computers need not be perfect to give the correct answer because quantum error correction algorithms have been developed and the larger the computer the more error correction you can do, but if somebody could prove that as computers got larger the error rate would grow larger so fast that error correction could never keep up then we would know that Quantum Computers would never be practical and the problems they could solve would be small and dull, like finding the factors for the number 15 which Quantum Computers have already done, but that would just about be the limit of their ability. I would be rather surprised if that turned out to be the case because in a sense nature seems to have a way of making astronomically complex calculations very quickly, like figuring out how to fold up a very large protein. But who knows, I have been surprised before, I never expected that CERN would announce they have found something that moved faster than light. Incidentally I made a bet with a guy that FTL neutrinos would turn out to be real, he gave me 2 to 1 odds and there wasn't a lot of money involved so for fun I took the bet. We should know by the end of summer, maybe earlier if we're lucky. ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonkc at bellsouth.net Tue Feb 21 18:51:36 2012 From: jonkc at bellsouth.net (john clark) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:51:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Quantum computer advance In-Reply-To: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> Message-ID: <1329850296.601.YahooMailClassic@web82902.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On Feb 20, 2012, at 3:33 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: >?? I read his wager but I am somewhat confused by what he means by "scaling". Quantum Computers need not be perfect to give the correct answer because quantum error correction algorithms have been developed and the larger the computer the more error correction you can do, but if somebody could prove that as computers got larger the error rate would grow larger so fast that error correction could never keep up then we would know that Quantum Computers would never be practical and the problems they could solve would be small and dull, like finding the factors for the number 15 which Quantum Computers have already done, but that would just about be the limit of their ability. I would be rather surprised if that turned out to be the case because in a sense nature seems to have a way of making astronomically complex calculations very quickly, like figuring out how to fold up a very large protein. But who knows, I have been surprised before, I never expected that CERN would announce they have found something that moved faster than light. Incidentally I made a bet with a guy that FTL neutrinos would turn out to be real, he gave me 2 to 1 odds and there wasn't a lot of money involved so for fun I took the bet. We should know by the end of summer, maybe earlier if we're lucky. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Feb 22 16:04:08 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:04:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Sharing the marbles Message-ID: http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/how-to-get-the-rich-to-share-the-marbles/ February 20, 2012, 9:00 pm How to Get the Rich to Share the Marbles By JONATHAN HAIDT Suppose scientists discovered a clump of neurons in the brain that, when stimulated, turned people into egalitarians. This would be good news for Democratic strategists and speechwriters, who could now get to work framing arguments about wealth and taxation in ways that might activate the relevant section of cerebral cortex. This ?share-the-spoils? button has been discovered, in a sense, but it may turn out to be harder to press than Democrats might think. Pretend you?re a three-year-old, exploring an exciting new room full of toys. You and another child come up to a large machine that has some marbles inside, which you can see. There?s a rope running through the machine and the two ends of the rope hang out of the front, five feet apart. If you or your partner pulls on the rope alone, you just get more rope. But if you both pull at the same time, the rope dislodges some marbles, which you each get to keep. The marbles roll down a chute, and then they divide: one rolls into the cup in front of you, three roll into the cup in front of your partner. This is the scenario created by developmental psychologists Michael Tomasello and Katharina Hamann at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. In this situation, where both kids have to pull for anyone to get marbles, the children equalize the wealth about 75% of the time, with hardly any conflict. Either the ?rich? kid hands over one marble spontaneously or else the ?poor? kid asks for one and his request is immediately granted. But an experiment must have more than one condition, and the experimenters ran two other versions of the study to isolate the active ingredient. What had led to such high rates of sharing, given that three-year-olds are often quite reluctant to share new treasures? Children who took part in the second condition found that the marbles were already waiting for them in the cups when they first walked up to the machine. No work required. In this condition, it?s finders-keepers. If you have the bad luck to place yourself in front of the cup with one marble, then your partner is very unlikely to offer you one, you?re unlikely to ask, and if you do ask, you?re likely to be rebuffed. Only about 5% of the time did any marbles change hands. But here?s the most amazing condition ? a slight variation that reveals a deep truth. Things start off just as in the first condition: you and your partner see two ropes hanging out of the machine. But as you start tugging it becomes clear that they are two separate ropes. You pull yours, and one marble rolls out into your cup. Your partner pulls the other rope, and is rewarded with three marbles. What happens next? For the most part, it?s pullers-keepers. Even though you and your partner each did the same work (rope pulling) at more or less the same time, you both know that you didn?t really collaborate to produce the wealth. Only about 30% of the time did the kids work out an equal split. In other words, the ?share-the-spoils? button is not pressed by the mere existence of inequality. It is pressed when two or more people collaborated to produce a gain. Once the button is pressed in both brains, both parties willingly and effortlessly share. Tomasello has found that chimpanzees doing tasks similar to this one do not share the spoils, in any of the conditions. They just grab what they can, regardless of who did what. They don?t seem to keep track of who was on the team. Tomasello believes that the ?share-the-spoils? response emerged at some point in the last half-million years, as humans began to forage and hunt cooperatively. Those who had the response could develop stable, ongoing partnerships. They worked together in small teams, which accomplished far more than individuals could on their own. So now let?s look at a key line in President Obama?s State of the Union address: ?we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.? The president is making three arguments about fairness in this one sentence, but do any of them press the ?share-the-spoils? button? If you think that the economy is like a giant marble dispenser with a single rope, then you?d probably agree that if everyone does their ?fair share? and pulls on the rope as hard as they can, then everyone is entitled to a ?fair share? in the nation?s wealth. But do Americans perceive the economy as a giant collaborative project? My parents were teenagers in New York City during the Second World War. The home front really was a vast and sustained communal pull. My mother remembers saving up nickels and dimes to buy a war bond. She lingered by her aunts and uncles, waiting for them to finish packs of cigarettes, so that she could grab the foil wrappers for the aluminum recycling campaign. My parents were part of the generation that went through the depression, a world war, and then the cold war together. This generation accepted federal controls on wages during the war as being necessary for the common good. In the years after the war, the combination of high taxes on top earners, social norms against exorbitant pay, and an increasingly sturdy safety net brought income inequality down from a peak in 1929 to a long valley from the 1950s through the 1970s. It?s a period known as ?the great compression.? The compression went into reverse in the 1980s, and since then, inequality has risen to levels approaching those of 1929. Democrats have long sounded the alarm about rising inequality, but for decades they got little traction among the electorate. It?s only in the last few months, since Occupy Wall Street popularized the concept of the 1 percent, and since we all learned that Mitt Romney pays less than 14% in federal taxes, that the nation?s attention has been focused on the earnings of the super-rich. Will the Democrats? new emphasis on fairness be enough to rally the nation to raise the top tax rates? Will Obama?s new progressivism press the right moral buttons? America is in deep fiscal trouble, and things are going to get far worse when the baby boomers retire. Normally, when a nation faces a threat to its very survival, a leader can press the shared-sacrifice button. Churchill offered Britons nothing but ?blood, toil, tears and sweat.? John F. Kennedy asked us all to ?bear the burden of a long twilight struggle? against communism. These were grand national projects, and everyone was asked to pitch in. Unfortunately, President Obama promised he would not raise taxes on anyone but the rich. He and other Democrats have also vowed to ?protect seniors? from cuts, even though seniors receive the vast majority of entitlement dollars. The president is therefore in the unenviable position of arguing that we?re in big trouble and so a small percentage of people will have to give more, but most people will be protected from sacrifice. This appeal misses the shared-sacrifice button completely. It also fails to push the share-the-spoils button. When people feel that they?re all pulling on different ropes, they don?t feel entitled to a share of other people?s wealth, even when that wealth was acquired by luck. If the Democrats really want to get moral psychology working for them, I suggest that they focus less on distributive fairness ? which is about whether everyone got what they deserved ? and more on procedural fairness?which is about whether honest, open and impartial procedures were used to decide who got what. If there?s a problem with the ultra-rich, it?s not that they have too much wealth, it?s that they bought laws that made it easy for them to gain and keep so much more wealth in recent decades. Sarah Palin gave a speech last September lambasting ?crony capitalism,? which she defined as ?the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest ? to the little guys.? I think that she was on to something and that she was right to include big government along with big business and big finance. The problem isn?t that some kids have many more marbles than others. The problem is that some kids are in cahoots with the experimenters. They get to rig the marble machine before the rest of us have a chance to play with it. Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and a visiting professor at the N.Y.U.-Stern School of Business. He is the author of ?The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.? The research reported on in this article was published in 2011 in Nature, 476, p. 328-331. (Hamann, K., Warneken, F., Greenberg, J. R., & Tomasello, M. Collaboration encourages equal sharing in children but not in chimpanzees.) From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 22 16:30:19 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:30:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Building Better Humans? Message-ID: Fantastic. If it is true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, this is almost embarassing, because both the formula *and* the message is almost identical to that of *Divenire. Rassegna di Studi Interdisciplinari sulla Tecnica e il Postumano* , which appears not to be anymore the only H+-oriented continental theoretical journal: "***Humanism, which is characterized by the special status of human beings within the world, i.e. human beings do not differ gradually but categorically from other natural beings, is in a crisis*. It gets attacked from various directions. Basically, it is possible to distinguish two main movements which try to transcend Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism. In the book series *Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism / Jenseits des Humanismus: Trans- und Posthumanismus*, monographs and essay collections can get published which discuss aspects of this range of topics historically or systematically." A not-so-trivial difference, besides the language (but Divenire is gradually going to translate most stuff in English) is the... price (around 80 Euros!). But, hey, nobody ever said that overcoming humanism is inexpensive. :-) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Hughes, James J. Date: 21 February 2012 20:43 Subject: Publication: Building Better Humans? To: "ieet-news at ieet.org" , " euro-transhumanists at googlegroups.com" **** http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=62785&cid=5&concordeid=263513 **** Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava / Mossman, Kenneth L. (eds.)****Building Better Humans? Refocusing the Debate on Transhumanism **** Series: Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism / Jenseits des Humanismus: Trans- und Posthumanismus- Volume 3 **** 2012 **** Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2012. 520 pp. ISBN 978-3-631-63513-1 hb. **** ** ** -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 35067 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 61809 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 22 17:26:39 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:26:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] bird fishing Message-ID: <009b01ccf187$23d9d860$6b8d8920$@att.net> Oh MAN ya gotta see this: http://www.arkive.org/osprey/pandion-haliaetus/video-00.html I have watched osprey fishing in the Umpqua River, but I never saw one go underwater, nor did I know they could catch two fistfuls of fish in one strike. WOW! Now THAT's a cool skill, and from a flight controls perspective most impressive. Check out the size of that fish he gets in the last scene. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Feb 22 18:01:36 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:01:36 -0800 Subject: [ExI] bird fishing In-Reply-To: <009b01ccf187$23d9d860$6b8d8920$@att.net> References: <009b01ccf187$23d9d860$6b8d8920$@att.net> Message-ID: It's all about scooping the air downward - if you're light enough, and have big enough wings, that this can get you more thrust than you weigh. It's not unlike how we can swim. 2012/2/22 spike : > > > Oh MAN ya gotta see this: > > > > http://www.arkive.org/osprey/pandion-haliaetus/video-00.html > > > > I have watched osprey fishing in the Umpqua River, but I never saw one go > underwater, nor did I know they could catch two fistfuls of fish in one > strike.? WOW!? Now THAT?s a cool skill, and from a flight controls > perspective most impressive. > > > > Check out the size of that fish he gets in the last scene. > > > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 22 19:49:00 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:49:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Quantum computer advance In-Reply-To: References: <1329760123.53372.YahooMailClassic@web82901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <20120220184856.GZ7343@leitl.org> <1329770031.7560.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/20 John Grigg : > And so is this really a?gigantic scientific leap forward in terms > of?functional?computational power?? And when will we see it seriously put > into use? I'm guessing around 2020.. :-) Right when Moore's Law says it should be available... LOL. It is a little hard to say from the video how small the overall transistor would be. Yes, the one atom forms the transistor, however, the physics of the leads going up to the atom appear to be a fair bit larger. They have managed to replace a single atom in a silicon "diamond" with phosphorous, which is cool, but a functional transistor would be quite a bit larger than the phosphorous atom because of the leads that carry the electrical current up to the phosphorous atom. In the video, the space between the leads and the atom was on the order of ten spaces of the silicon diamond grid. So, they are at least an order of magnitude bigger than an atom to implement the actual circuit. The next step is for them to create a bunch of these in a grid and see how far apart they have to be to maintain their transistor behavior. That's the real size, not the size of the phosphorous atom. Now it should be fairly obvious to most on this list... but in case someone is new, I'll explain the simple nature of the problem... The speed of light is the approximate speed limit of the universe (neutrinos pending) and electricity travels in a wire at a good percent of the speed of light an no faster. So, by building transistors smaller you get a faster CPU. Since it is 2 dimensional, halving the size of the overall transistor and circuit leads to a 4x improvement in speed. So the trick is building lots of transistors close together to make it smaller. Of course if you could go to 3D transistors, then every time you cut the size in half you get an 8 fold increase in processing speed. Nobody has done this yet because conducting heat out of the way becomes very difficult in 3d chips. The real breakthrough I'm hoping for is a transistor that works without emitting heat. If we can do that, then you can start making 3d chips, and that will keep Moore happy for quite some time to come. Nevertheless, this is seriously interesting stuff, and smaller transistors are absolutely a great thing to build, and you can't get much smaller than this, it would seem... but you could potentially go 3D with something like this and build something truly amazing. Silicon "diamonds" are a nice 3D substrate. I also don't see exactly how this is quantum computing... -Kelly From gsantostasi at gmail.com Wed Feb 22 21:26:36 2012 From: gsantostasi at gmail.com (Giovanni Santostasi) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:26:36 -0600 Subject: [ExI] No faster than light neutrinos after all Message-ID: It seems that it was the discrepancy was only due to a bad connection between gps receiver and computer. http://www.repubblica.it/scienze/2012/02/22/news/neutrini_pi_veloci_della_luce_c_era_anomalia_in_strumenti-30349960/ Giovanni > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 22 21:30:57 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:30:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? Message-ID: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Simple enough question although I mean 'men' to be gender neutral. I can think of good arguments for both. But being locked in des Cartes Prison, I want to hear other people's arguments. ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 22 21:50:13 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:50:13 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 22 February 2012 22:30, The Avantguardian wrote: > Simple enough question although I mean 'men' to be gender neutral. I can > think of good arguments for both. But being locked in des Cartes Prison, I > want to hear other people's arguments. > Law, unless for believers in "natural law" is made by men. Accordingly, "rule of law" simply means that it is hypocrite for ruling classes to make law and then breach them, keeping however in mind that according to Heraklit say, "law is also to obey the orders of one" (not that it is a law that necessarily deserves support). -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Feb 22 22:32:03 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:32:03 +0000 Subject: [ExI] No faster than light neutrinos after all In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/22 Giovanni Santostasi wrote: > > It seems that it was the discrepancy was only due to a bad connection > between gps receiver and computer. > > http://www.repubblica.it/scienze/2012/02/22/news/neutrini_pi_veloci_della_luce_c_era_anomalia_in_strumenti-30349960/ > > Here is the Science Insider article referenced in the above article: BillK From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Feb 22 22:05:33 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:05:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> Then use "human" or "men and women". Quoting The Avantguardian : > Simple enough question although I mean 'men' to be gender neutral. > I? can think of good arguments for both. But being locked in des > Cartes? Prison, I want to hear other people's arguments. > ? > > Stuart LaForge > > > "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have? > its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat[1] > Links: ------ [1] http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Thu Feb 23 00:25:00 2012 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:25:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Building Better Humans? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Given who is editing the volume below -- and who is and is not contributing -- I predict that the volume will be very unfavorable to transhumanism. --Max 2012/2/22 Stefano Vaj > Fantastic. If it is true that imitation is the sincerest form of > flattery, this is almost embarassing, because both the formula *and* the > message is almost identical to that of *Divenire. Rassegna di Studi > Interdisciplinari sulla Tecnica e il Postumano* , > which appears not to be anymore the only H+-oriented continental > theoretical journal: > > "***Humanism, which is characterized by the special status of human > beings within the world, i.e. human beings do not differ gradually but > categorically from other natural beings, is in a crisis*. It gets > attacked from various directions. Basically, it is possible to distinguish > two main movements which try to transcend Humanism: Trans- and > Posthumanism. In the book series *Beyond Humanism: Trans- and > Posthumanism / Jenseits des Humanismus: Trans- und Posthumanismus*, > monographs and essay collections can get published which discuss aspects of > this range of topics historically or systematically." > > A not-so-trivial difference, besides the language (but Divenire is > gradually going to translate most stuff in English) is the... price (around > 80 Euros!). But, hey, nobody ever said that overcoming humanism is > inexpensive. :-) > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Hughes, James J. > Date: 21 February 2012 20:43 > Subject: Publication: Building Better Humans? > To: "ieet-news at ieet.org" , " > euro-transhumanists at googlegroups.com" < > euro-transhumanists at googlegroups.com> > > > **** > http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=62785&cid=5&concordeid=263513 > **** > Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava / Mossman, Kenneth L. (eds.)****Building Better > Humans? Refocusing the Debate on Transhumanism **** > > Series: Beyond Humanism: Trans- and Posthumanism / Jenseits des > Humanismus: Trans- und Posthumanismus- Volume 3 > **** > > 2012 **** > > Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2012. > 520 pp. > ISBN 978-3-631-63513-1 hb. **** > > ** ** > > > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Thu Feb 23 12:11:12 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:11:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Building Better Humans? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/23 Max More > Given who is editing the volume below -- and who is and is not > contributing -- I predict that the volume will be very unfavorable to > transhumanism. > Really? It was too good to be true... :-( -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bbenzai at yahoo.com Thu Feb 23 13:08:14 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:08:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1330002494.74991.YahooMailClassic@web114403.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The Avantguardian clarified: > Simple enough question although I mean 'men' to be gender neutral. Don't worry, Stuart, most of us can 'manage' to contextualise the word 'man' or 'men' when it is clearly gender-neutral. There is no need to jump through hoops in order to appear PC or prove that you don't hate women. Ben Zaiboc From steinberg.will at gmail.com Thu Feb 23 22:51:14 2012 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:51:14 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: 'Woman' means 'wife-person', though, so maybe the classic 'mann' has a revival in its future. On Feb 22, 2012 4:34 PM, wrote: > Then use "human" or "men and women". > > Quoting The Avantguardian : > > > Simple enough question although I mean 'men' to be gender neutral. I > > can think of good arguments for both. But being locked in des Cartes > > Prison, I want to hear other people's arguments. > > > > > > Stuart LaForge > > > > > > "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have > > its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 natasha at natasha.cc Fri Feb 24 00:25:40 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (natasha at natasha.cc) Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:25:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <20120223192540.eimwcjjspno4k4ws@webmail.natasha.cc> It seems that the wifey-poo was a revamping of the word: "The Old English WIFMAN meant "female human" (WERMAN meant "male human". MAN or MANN had a gender neutral meaning of "human", corresponding to Modern English "one" or "someone". However in around 1000AD "man" started to be used more to refer to "male human", and in the late 1200s began to inevitably displace and eradicate the original word "werman").[1][1] The medial labial consonants coalesced to create the modern form "woman"; the initial element, which meant "female," underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman ("wife")." Really weird explanataion ... Natasha Quoting Will Steinberg : > 'Woman' means 'wife-person', though, so maybe the classic 'mann' has a > revival in its future. > On Feb 22, 2012 4:34 PM, wrote: > >> Then use "human" or "men and women". >> >> Quoting The Avantguardian : >> >> > Simple enough question although I mean 'men' to be gender neutral. I >> > can think of good arguments for both. But being locked in des Cartes >> > Prison, I want to hear other people's arguments. >> > >> > >> > Stuart LaForge >> > >> > >> > "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have >> > its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > extropy-chat mailing list >> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat[2] >> > >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat[3] >> >> > Links: ------ [1] #cite_note-0 [2] http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat [3] http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Feb 24 11:10:22 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:10:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zen19 is now at 5-dan in Go Message-ID: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> http://blog.printf.net/articles/2012/02/23/computers-are-very-good-at-the-game-of-go Computers are very good at the game of Go Posted by Chris Ball Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:07:00 GMT MIT Speed Go tournament, Jan 2012 There's an attraction between computer programmers and the Asian game of Go. I think there's a lot to like about the game ? it has very simple rules, high complexity (it's "deeper" than chess) and pleasing symmetry and aesthetics. I think the real reason programmers are so drawn to it might be a little more self-involved, though: being good at things that computers aren't good at tends to make programmers happy, and computers are terrible at Go.1 Or at least, that's the folk knowledge that's been true for most of my life. Computers have always been worse than an average amateur with a few years of experience, and incomparably bad to true professionals of the game. Someone I was talking to brought up the ineptitude of computers at Go a few days ago, talking about new ideas for CAPTCHAs: "just make the human solve Go problems", they said, and you're done; computers can't do that, right? So, I've enjoyed this feeling of technological superiority to computers as much as anyone, and it hurts me a little to say this, but here I go: the idea that computers are bad at Go is not remotely true anymore. Computers are excellent at Go now. To illustrate this, there's some history we should go into: Back in 1997 ? the year that Deep Blue beat chess world champion Garry Kasparov for the first time ? Darren Cook asked Computer Go enthusiasts for predictions on when computers will get to shodan (a strong amateur level) and when they'll beat World Champion players. John Tromp, an academic researcher and approximately shodan-level amateur, noticed the optimism of the guesses and wondered aloud whether the bets would continue to be optimistic if money were on the line, culminating in: John Tromp: "I would happily bet that I won't be beaten in a 10 game match before the year 2011." Darren Cook took the bet for $1000, and waited until 2010 before conducting the match against the "Many Faces of Go" program: Tromp won by 4 games to 0. That seemed to settle things, but the challenge was repeated last month, from January 13th-18th 2012, and things happened rather differently. This time Tromp was playing a rising star of a program named Zen19, which won first place at the Computer Go Olympiad in 2009 and 2011. The results are in, and: Zen19 won by 3 games to 1. (For more reading on the challenge, see David Ormerod's page or Darren Cook's.) Beating an amateur shodan-level player is shocking by itself ? that's my strength too, and I wasn't expecting a computer to be able to beat me anytime soon ? but that isn't nearly the limit of Zen19's accomplishments: its progress on the KGS Go server looks something like this: Year KGS Rank 2009 1-dan 2010 3-dan 2011 4-dan 2012 5-dan To put the 5-dan rank in perspective: amongst the players who played American Go Association rated games in 2011, there were only 105 players that are 6-dan and above.2 This suggests that there are only around 100 active tournament players in the US who are significantly stronger than Zen19. I'm sure I'll never become that strong myself.3 Being able to gain four dan-level ranks in three years is incredible, and there's no principled reason to expect that Zen19 will stop improving ? it seems to have aligned itself on a path where it just continues getting better the more CPU time you throw at it, which is very reminiscent of the story with computer chess. Even more reminiscent (and frustrating!) is the technique used to get it to 5-dan. Before I explain how it works, I'll explain how an older Go program worked, using my favorite example: NeuroGo. NeuroGo dates back to 1996, and has what seems like a very plausible design: it's a hierarchical set of neural networks, containing a set of "Experts" that each get a chance to look at the board and evaluate moves. It's also possible for an expert to override the other evaluators ? for example, a "Life and Death Expert" module could work out whether there's a way to "kill" a large group, and an "Opening Expert" could play the first moves of the game where balance and global position are most important. This seems to provide a nice balance to the tension of different priorities when considering what to play. Zen19, on the other hand, incorporates almost no knowledge about how to make strong Go moves! It's implemented using Monte Carlo Tree Search, as are all of the recent strong Go programs. Monte Carlo methods involve, at the most basic level, choosing between moves by generating many thousands of random games that stem from each possible move and picking the move that leads to the games where you have the highest score; you wouldn't expect such a random technique to work for a game as deep as Go, but it does. This makes me sad because while I wasn't foolish enough to believe that humans would always be better at Go than computers, I did think that the process of making a computer that is very good at Go might be equivalent to the process of acquiring a powerful understanding of how human cognition works; that the failure of brute-force solutions to Go would mean that we'd need a way to approximate how humans approach Go before we'd start to be able to beat strong human players reliably by implementing that same approach in silico. I think that programs like Zen19 have actually learned even less about how to play good Go than computer chess programs have learned about how to play good chess; at least the chess programs contain heuristics about how to play positionally and how to value different pieces (in the absence of overriding information like a path to checkmate that involves sacrificing them). This lack of inbuilt Go knowledge shows up in Zen19's games ? it regularly makes moves that look obviously bad, breaking proverbs about good play and stone connectivity, leaving you scratching your head at how it's making decisions. You can read a commented version of one of its wins against Tromp at GoGameGuru, or you could even play against it yourself on KGS. Update: Matthew Woodcraft comments below that Zen19 does contain significant domain knowledge about Go. It's hard to know exactly how much; it's closed-source. Zen19 is beating extremely strong amateurs, but it hasn't beaten professionals in games with no handicap yet. That said, now that we know that Zen19 is using Monte Carlo strategies, the reason why it seems to be getting stronger as it's fed more CPU time is revealed: these strategies are the most obviously parallelizable algorithms out there, and for all we know this exact version of Zen19 could end up becoming World Champion if a few more orders of magnitude of CPU time were made available to it. Which would feel like a shame, because I was really looking forward to seeing us figure out how brains work. 1: I think this is probably why I've never been interested in puzzles like Sudoku; I can't escape the feeling of "I could write a Perl script that does this for me". If I wouldn't put up with such manual labor in my work life, why should I put up with it for fun? 2: Here is the query I used to come up with the 105 number. 3: In fact, KGS ranks are stronger than the same-numbered AGA rank, so the correct number of active players in the US who are stronger than Zen19 may be even smaller. Being stronger than US players isn't the same as being stronger than professional players, though ? there are many players that are much stronger than amateur 5-dan in Asia, because there are high-value tournaments and incentives to dedicating your life to mastering Go there that don't exist elsewhere. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 13:59:27 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:59:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: <20120223192540.eimwcjjspno4k4ws@webmail.natasha.cc> References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> <20120223192540.eimwcjjspno4k4ws@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: 2012/2/24 > It seems that the wifey-poo was a revamping of the word: > > "The Old English *wifman* meant "female human" ( > *werman* meant "male human". *Man* or *mann* had a gender neutral meaning > of "human", corresponding to Modern English "one" or "someone". However in > around 1000AD "man" started to be used more to refer to "male human", and > in the late 1200s began to inevitably displace and eradicate the original > word "werman").[1] <#135afa6a20c19cc9_135accbaee202aa0_cite_note-0> The > medial labial consonants coalesced to create the modern form "woman"; the > initial element, which meant "female," underwent semantic narrowing to the > sense of a married woman ("wife")." > > Really weird explanataion ... > Interesting, however. In German, as in Latin and Greek, we have a comfortably generic, albeit grammaticaly masculin, form (mensch, home, anthropos, as opposed to mann, vir, aner), but the impersonal "one" is "man", which is closer to the male form "mann", while the French "on" derives from the Latin "homo". In Italian, as in French, the male form itself comes from the generic form "homo". But it is still not terribly mysoginist to make use of the male form for generic. Moreover, grammars expressly state that when the gender is unknown, you should use the masculin form, so that the possessive for one is "his", not "one's". Lastly, my native Italian intuitions suggest that the PC English usage of "his or her" could be considered in my language as unkind to the female genter, as you should if anything say "her or his", giving precedence to the ladies. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 14:28:43 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:28:43 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Zen19 is now at 5-dan in Go In-Reply-To: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 24 February 2012 12:10, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > http://blog.printf.net/articles/2012/02/23/computers-are-very-good-at-the-game-of-go > > Computers are very good at the game of Go > One wonders if there is anything at all which cannot be emulated by brute-force approaches... -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Feb 24 16:04:31 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:04:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> <20120223192540.eimwcjjspno4k4ws@webmail.natasha.cc> Message-ID: <003201ccf30d$fe897f10$fb9c7d30$@cc> Stefano wrote on 2/25/12: 2012/2/24 It seems that the wifey-poo was a revamping of the word: "The Old English wifman meant "female human" (werman meant "male human". Man or mann had a gender neutral meaning of "human", corresponding to Modern English "one" or "someone". However in around 1000AD "man" started to be used more to refer to "male human", and in the late 1200s began to inevitably displace and eradicate the original word "werman").[1] <> The medial labial consonants coalesced to create the modern form "woman"; the initial element, which meant "female," underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman ("wife")." Really weird explanataion ... "Interesting, however. In German, as in Latin and Greek, we have a comfortably generic, albeit grammaticaly masculin, form (mensch, home, anthropos, as opposed to mann, vir, aner), but the impersonal "one" is "man", which is closer to the male form "mann", while the French "on" derives from the Latin "homo". "In Italian, as in French, the male form itself comes from the generic form "homo". But it is still not terribly mysoginist to make use of the male form for generic. Moreover, grammars expressly state that when the gender is unknown, you should use the masculin form, so that the possessive for one is "his", not "one's". "Lastly, my native Italian intuitions suggest that the PC English usage of "his or her" could be considered in my language as unkind to the female genter, as you should if anything say "her or his", giving precedence to the ladies. :-)" Lol J I'm still stuck by the reference the the "medial labial" connotation . Natasha Vita-More PhD Researcher, Univ. of Plymouth, UK Chairman, Humanity+ Co-Editor, The Transhumanist Reader -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Feb 24 17:11:55 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:11:55 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Zen19 is now at 5-dan in Go In-Reply-To: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <032001ccf317$695e5910$3c1b0b30$@att.net> ? On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl http://blog.printf.net/articles/2012/02/23/computers-are-very-good-at-the-game-of-go >?Computers are very good at the game of Go?for all we know this exact version of Zen19 could end up becoming World Champion if a few more orders of magnitude of CPU time were made available to it. Which would feel like a shame, because I was really looking forward to seeing us figure out how brains work. Chess software has given me a similar disappointment over the years. The software has surpassed all human player, yet is surprisingly unsophisticated. It relies mostly on speed. A cell phone won a strong tournament in 2009, with several masters and two grandmasters. >?1: I think this is probably why I've never been interested in puzzles like Sudoku; I can't escape the feeling of "I could write a Perl script that does this for me". If I wouldn't put up with such manual labor in my work life, why should I put up with it for fun? Ja. A few years ago, I wrote an excel script which solves sudokus. It can take a couple days to solve one. I am not arguing that it is an efficient algorithm. {8^D I would argue however that the act of writing those kinds of scripts is good for the brain. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Feb 24 17:22:13 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:22:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Zen19 is now at 5-dan in Go References: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <032e01ccf318$d9c34700$8d49d500$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] >? >?Ja. A few years ago, I wrote an excel script which solves sudokus. It can take a couple days to solve one. I am not arguing that it is an efficient algorithm. {8^D I would argue however that the act of writing those kinds of scripts is good for the brain. spike I left out a critically important detail. The usual 9x9 sudokus can be solved by this algorithm in about a half a second usually. I don?t remember the exact score, but I think it was generating and solving them about 150-ish per minute. This algorithm can take up to 204x204 sudokus, and those biggies take a couple days each to solve, as I recall. It has been a long time since I played with it, but I can find out the date, for I remember we had a huge solar event just as I was finishing that, and the huge X11 flare that took everyone by surprise, so I was immediately distracted by that and was too busy to mess with Sudoku for the next several weeks because of the flare. Then I never got back to it, but as I vaguely recall, it was about 8 yrs ago. I should resurrect that code to see if modern computers can solve it faster than the machine I was using back then, which was already outdated back then. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 18:22:41 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:22:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Zen19 is now at 5-dan in Go In-Reply-To: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 4:10 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > http://blog.printf.net/articles/2012/02/23/computers-are-very-good-at-the-game-of-go > > Computers are very good at the game of Go > > Posted by Chris Ball Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:07:00 GMT > > MIT Speed Go tournament, Jan 2012 > > There's an attraction between computer programmers and the Asian game of Go. > I think there's a lot to like about the game ? it has very simple rules, high > complexity (it's "deeper" than chess) and pleasing symmetry and aesthetics. I > think the real reason programmers are so drawn to it might be a little more > self-involved, though: being good at things that computers aren't good at > tends to make programmers happy, and computers are terrible at Go.1 That's one reason I like Go so much. :-) It is a pride thing. I am a mediocre Go player, ranked at 11k on IGS myself, which is a level that requires years to achieve, but is nowhere near competitive. Computers passed me a few years back. > Or at least, that's the folk knowledge that's been true for most of my life. > Computers have always been worse than an average amateur with a few years of > experience, and incomparably bad to true professionals of the game. Someone I > was talking to brought up the ineptitude of computers at Go a few days ago, > talking about new ideas for CAPTCHAs: "just make the human solve Go > problems", they said, and you're done; computers can't do that, right? Except that most humans couldn't solve most Go problems... LOL. And, the sorts of Go problems that the computer would be able to verify would be the kind that would be able to be solved by computers... :-) Computers have had a mathematically perfect end game for over 15 years. There is a book with the algorithm in it. Just when the end game begins is, of course, an interesting question. :-) > So, I've enjoyed this feeling of technological superiority to computers as > much as anyone, and it hurts me a little to say this, but here I go: the idea > that computers are bad at Go is not remotely true anymore. Computers are > excellent at Go now. Arrrgh!!!! Soon, they will be good at programming too, I fear! :-) > To illustrate this, there's some history we should go > into: > > Back in 1997 ? the year that Deep Blue beat chess world champion Garry > Kasparov for the first time ? Darren Cook asked Computer Go enthusiasts for > predictions on when computers will get to shodan (a strong amateur level) and > when they'll beat World Champion players. John Tromp, an academic researcher > and approximately shodan-level amateur, noticed the optimism of the guesses > and wondered aloud whether the bets would continue to be optimistic if money > were on the line, culminating in: > > ? ?John Tromp: "I would happily bet that I won't be beaten in a 10 game > match before the year 2011." > > > Darren Cook took the bet for $1000, and waited until 2010 before conducting > the match against the "Many Faces of Go" program: Tromp won by 4 games to 0. Many Faces of Go isn't all that good... :-) > That seemed to settle things, but the challenge was repeated last month, from > January 13th-18th 2012, and things happened rather differently. This time > Tromp was playing a rising star of a program named Zen19, which won first > place at the Computer Go Olympiad in 2009 and 2011. The results are in, and: > > Zen19 won by 3 games to 1. (For more reading on the challenge, see David > Ormerod's page or Darren Cook's.) Ouch. > Beating an amateur shodan-level player is shocking by itself ? that's my > strength too, and I wasn't expecting a computer to be able to beat me anytime > soon ? but that isn't nearly the limit of Zen19's accomplishments: its > progress on the KGS Go server looks something like this: Is KGS an alternative to IGS? > Year ? ?KGS Rank > > 2009 ? ?1-dan > > 2010 ? ?3-dan > > 2011 ? ?4-dan > > 2012 ? ?5-dan > > To put the 5-dan rank in perspective: amongst the players who played American > Go Association rated games in 2011, there were only 105 players that are > 6-dan and above.2 This suggests that there are only around 100 active > tournament players in the US who are significantly stronger than Zen19. I'm > sure I'll never become that strong myself.3 Me either, no way. Unless I'm enhanced with a Zen19 module in my brain... LOL. > Being able to gain four dan-level ranks in three years is incredible, and > there's no principled reason to expect that Zen19 will stop improving ? it > seems to have aligned itself on a path where it just continues getting better > the more CPU time you throw at it, which is very reminiscent of the story > with computer chess. Even more reminiscent (and frustrating!) is the > technique used to get it to 5-dan. Before I explain how it works, I'll > explain how an older Go program worked, using my favorite example: NeuroGo. > > NeuroGo dates back to 1996, and has what seems like a very plausible design: > it's a hierarchical set of neural networks, containing a set of "Experts" > that each get a chance to look at the board and evaluate moves. It's also > possible for an expert to override the other evaluators ? for example, a > "Life and Death Expert" module could work out whether there's a way to "kill" > a large group, and an "Opening Expert" could play the first moves of the game > where balance and global position are most important. This seems to provide a > nice balance to the tension of different priorities when considering what to > play. > > Zen19, on the other hand, incorporates almost no knowledge about how to make > strong Go moves! It's implemented using Monte Carlo Tree Search, as are all > of the recent strong Go programs. Monte Carlo methods involve, at the most > basic level, choosing between moves by generating many thousands of random > games that stem from each possible move and picking the move that leads to > the games where you have the highest score; you wouldn't expect such a random > technique to work for a game as deep as Go, but it does. This makes me sad > because while I wasn't foolish enough to believe that humans would always be > better at Go than computers, I did think that the process of making a > computer that is very good at Go might be equivalent to the process of > acquiring a powerful understanding of how human cognition works; that the > failure of brute-force solutions to Go would mean that we'd need a way to > approximate how humans approach Go before we'd start to be able to beat > strong human players reliably by implementing that same approach in silico. I often wondered the same thing. But "intelligence" appears to have different paths... that is, the same degree of intelligence in any task can be achieved by differing means. > I think that programs like Zen19 have actually learned even less about how to > play good Go than computer chess programs have learned about how to play good > chess; at least the chess programs contain heuristics about how to play > positionally and how to value different pieces (in the absence of overriding > information like a path to checkmate that involves sacrificing them). This > lack of inbuilt Go knowledge shows up in Zen19's games ? it regularly makes > moves that look obviously bad, breaking proverbs about good play and stone > connectivity, leaving you scratching your head at how it's making decisions. > You can read a commented version of one of its wins against Tromp at > GoGameGuru, or you could even play against it yourself on KGS. Fun, will try it. > Update: Matthew Woodcraft comments below that Zen19 does contain significant > domain knowledge about Go. It's hard to know exactly how much; it's > closed-source. > > Zen19 is beating extremely strong amateurs, but it hasn't beaten > professionals in games with no handicap yet. That said, now that we know that > Zen19 is using Monte Carlo strategies, the reason why it seems to be getting > stronger as it's fed more CPU time is revealed: these strategies are the most > obviously parallelizable algorithms out there, and for all we know this exact > version of Zen19 could end up becoming World Champion if a few more orders of > magnitude of CPU time were made available to it. > > Which would feel like a shame, because I was really looking forward to seeing > us figure out how brains work. > > 1: I think this is probably why I've never been interested in puzzles like > Sudoku; I can't escape the feeling of "I could write a Perl script that does > this for me". If I wouldn't put up with such manual labor in my work life, > why should I put up with it for fun? I like Sudoku, it relaxes my mind. But Go, on the other hand, gets my brain highly involved. > 2: Here is the query I used to come up with the 105 number. > > 3: In fact, KGS ranks are stronger than the same-numbered AGA rank, so the > correct number of active players in the US who are stronger than Zen19 may be > even smaller. Being stronger than US players isn't the same as being stronger > than professional players, though ? there are many players that are much > stronger than amateur 5-dan in Asia, because there are high-value tournaments > and incentives to dedicating your life to mastering Go there that don't exist > elsewhere. Yes... Here in Utah, we have one of the 5 dan amateurs, and he is a transplant from asia. :-) I haven't been active in local Go in a long long time. -Kelly From spike66 at att.net Fri Feb 24 18:56:12 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:56:12 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Zen19 is now at 5-dan in Go In-Reply-To: References: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <036301ccf325$faa26cf0$efe746d0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >... >> So, I've enjoyed this feeling of technological superiority to > computers as much as anyone, and it hurts me a little to say this, but > here I go: the idea that computers are bad at Go is not remotely true > anymore. Computers are excellent at Go now. >...Arrrgh!!!! Soon, they will be good at programming too, I fear! :-)... -Kelly _______________________________________________ Arrrgh? As soon as computers can write software, the singularity occurs. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 19:19:22 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:19:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Zen19 is now at 5-dan in Go In-Reply-To: <036301ccf325$faa26cf0$efe746d0$@att.net> References: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> <036301ccf325$faa26cf0$efe746d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:56 AM, spike wrote: > >>... On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson >>... > >>> So, I've enjoyed this feeling of technological superiority to >> computers as much as anyone, and it hurts me a little to say this, but >> here I go: the idea that computers are bad at Go is not remotely true >> anymore. Computers are excellent at Go now. > >>...Arrrgh!!!! Soon, they will be good at programming too, I fear! :-)... > -Kelly > > Arrrgh? ?As soon as computers can write software, the singularity occurs. Well, yes, and where does that leave us? :-) As we both well know, that is a very complicated question. I for one am not quite ready for the Singularity yet. Give me just a few more years of kind of normal first please. :-) Even Go is still a game with very strict rules, nowhere near as complex as real life, but much more complex than chess (in the ways that computers approach problems anyway.) As to your point of what can be emulated by brute force, I think that it is highly likely that our own brains are employing some sort of brute force algorithm themselves... :-) It just doesn't "feel" that way from the inside. An awful lot of computation happens in the subconscious... many millions of times the processing power that is accessible in a conscious fashion. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 19:35:45 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:35:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Zen19 is now at 5-dan in Go In-Reply-To: References: <20120224111022.GX7343@leitl.org> <036301ccf325$faa26cf0$efe746d0$@att.net> Message-ID: Funny, I found that posting to this forum requires you to solve a go problem. http://gosensations.com/?id=2&server_id=1&new_id=319 It's not a very hard go problem, and you could clearly write a program that would be able to solve it, but you would have to do the (fairly simple) job of computer vision to recognize the board and stones... A nice little capcha, but if it became wide spread, it would be easy to defeat. You could definitely solve it with Amazon Turk pretty quick... LOL -Kelly From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 19:44:06 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:44:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: <003201ccf30d$fe897f10$fb9c7d30$@cc> References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> <20120223192540.eimwcjjspno4k4ws@webmail.natasha.cc> <003201ccf30d$fe897f10$fb9c7d30$@cc> Message-ID: 2012/2/24 Natasha Vita-More > I?m still stuck by the reference the the ?medial labial? connotation ? > Speaking of ladies, I studied the subject for my entire adult life, yet I am not aware of anything else than outer labia and inner labia. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Feb 24 20:14:48 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:14:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> <20120223192540.eimwcjjspno4k4ws@webmail.natasha.cc> <003201ccf30d$fe897f10$fb9c7d30$@cc> Message-ID: <1330114488.12100.YahooMailNeo@web164505.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ________________________________ >From: Stefano Vaj >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 11:44 AM >Subject: Re: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? > > >2012/2/24 Natasha Vita-More > >I?m still stuck by the reference the the ?medial labial? connotation ? >> >Speaking of ladies, I studied the subject for my entire adult life, yet I am not aware of anything else than outer labia and inner labia. :-) But that is exactly what Wikipedia was saying. When wifmen?evolved into?women, they lost their medial labia. Unless you were lifting skirts back in Roman-occupied Brittania, you would never had seen them. ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 20:29:19 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:29:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon Message-ID: Interesting... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/23/peak_oil_is_dead_citigroup/ -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Feb 24 20:49:30 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:49:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1330116570.85098.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> >________________________________ >From: Stefano Vaj >To: transumanisti ; transhumanistes at yahoogroupes.fr; ExI chat list ; doctrinezero at googlegroups.com; technoprogressive at yahoogroups.com >Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 12:29 PM >Subject: [ExI] RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon > > >Interesting... >http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/23/peak_oil_is_dead_citigroup/ ? So is the author's intent to lower interest and investment in alternative energy R&D? Sure the Nazi's figured out how to make oil from methane but it costs energy to do so. What is technologically scare to us is not "oil". We can make as much oil as we can afford to. ? What is scarce to us technologically is ENERGY. And this is sad because naturally energy is super-abundant. So if the author is simply trying to dissuade panicked tree-huggers from signing 2012 suicide pacts, well then I agree. If his intent is to instill a?"oil companies have it all under control" polyanna?mindset in potential investors I disagree. There is certainly hope at this point. But that hope requires ACTION to become reality. ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 21:12:20 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:12:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon In-Reply-To: <1330116570.85098.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1330116570.85098.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 24 February 2012 21:49, The Avantguardian wrote: > So is the author's intent to lower interest and investment in alternative > energy R&D? Sure the Nazi's figured out how to make oil from methane but it > costs energy to do so. What is technologically scare to us is not "oil". We > can make as much oil as we can afford to. > > What is scarce to us technologically is ENERGY. And this is sad because > naturally energy is super-abundant. So if the author is simply trying to > dissuade panicked tree-huggers from signing 2012 suicide pacts, well then I > agree. If his intent is to instill a "oil companies have it all under > control" polyanna mindset in potential investors I disagree. There is > certainly hope at this point. But that hope requires ACTION to become > reality. > I basically agree. Hydrocarbons, should they be really needed for something, can well be synthesised, but this requires energy. As long as burning them remains your main source thereof, this is a catch-22 scenario. OTOH, we can well become increasingly skilful in extracting them, and this can win us some more time - provided that we are going to make some positive use of it, which for me means either space-based solar power, or preferably fusion. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Feb 24 21:16:52 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:16:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 09:29:19PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: > Interesting... > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/23/peak_oil_is_dead_citigroup/ The opposite, it's the usual fact-free arm-waving. Head over to http://theoildrum.com/ for the actual numbers and reliable facts. I like The Register, but it takes a giant rock of salt. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Feb 24 22:30:50 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:30:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Eugen Leitl > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 1:16 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon > > On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 09:29:19PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> Interesting... >> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/23/peak_oil_is_dead_citigroup/ > > The opposite, it's the usual fact-free arm-waving. Head over to > http://theoildrum.com/ for the actual numbers and reliable facts. I just had a sobering thought while in the shower. Since most costs of doing business or even basic survival are tied to oil prices, then the cost of researching and developing alternative energies is also proportional to the price of oil. Therefore it would stand to reason that oil prices directly define?civilization's window of opportunity to survive the Malthusian Energy Crisis. I think that there is an oil price point that can be thought of as an indicator that even industrialized wealthy countries?can no longer afford to develop any alternative energy sources. Then it becomes an ugly?last-man-standing downward spiral to atavism. ? Unfortunately, I don't know what that price point is, nor am I certain how to calculate it. I do think each alternative energy source brought online should raise the Doomsday Oil Price?significantly. Any suggestions? ? Stuart LaForge ? "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From atymes at gmail.com Fri Feb 24 23:00:08 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:00:08 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 2:30 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > I just had a sobering thought while in the shower. Since most costs of doing business or even basic survival are tied to oil prices, then the cost of researching and developing alternative energies is also proportional to the price of oil. Only to a point. If the price of crude oil were to skyrocket to 1000 times its present level, there are already solutions that could and would be brought online quickly, capping the price of "oil" as you're using it here. Yes, there would be a crunch during the transition, but crude oil is not so completely irreplaceable that the lack of it would be a holocaust. More importantly, the oil companies themselves would be the most hurt by this crunch. That's why they're hedging their bets with alternative fuels, in so far as this crunch seems likely. From max at maxmore.com Fri Feb 24 23:42:22 2012 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:42:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: References: <1329946257.19022.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120222170533.0a3frcnn9cs880c8@webmail.natasha.cc> <20120223192540.eimwcjjspno4k4ws@webmail.natasha.cc> <003201ccf30d$fe897f10$fb9c7d30$@cc> Message-ID: Clearly you need to engage in additional close empirical study. It's all in the service of science! --Max 2012/2/24 Stefano Vaj > 2012/2/24 Natasha Vita-More > >> I?m still stuck by the reference the the ?medial labial? connotation ? >> > > Speaking of ladies, I studied the subject for my entire adult life, yet I > am not aware of anything else than outer labia and inner labia. :-) > > -- > Stefano Vaj > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Sat Feb 25 01:41:16 2012 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:41:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? Message-ID: On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 12:14:48 -0800 (PST) The Avantguardian < avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote: > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? > Message-ID: > <1330114488.12100.YahooMailNeo at web164505.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > __ > >From: Stefano Vaj > >To: ExI chat list > >Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 11:44 AM > >Subject: Re: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? > > > > > >2012/2/24 Natasha Vita-More > > > >I?m still stuck by the reference the the ?medial labial? connotation ? > >> > >Speaking of ladies, I studied the subject for my entire adult life, yet I > am not aware of anything else than outer labia and inner labia. :-) > > But that is exactly what Wikipedia was saying. When wifmen?evolved > into?women, they lost their medial labia. Unless you were lifting skirts > back in Roman-occupied Brittania, you would never had seen them. > ? > Stuart LaForge > I'm not sure how many of you are being serious about the medial labial reference, but in the event that someone out there is confused about the meaning, I'll clear it up. I learned this in a linguistics class in college and probably haven't used it since. Labial refers to the oral place of articulation in phonetics. Others are 1. Exo-labial, 2. Endo-labial, 3. Dental, 4. Alveolar, 5. Post-alveolar, 6. Pre-palatal, 7. Palatal, 8. Velar, 9. Uvular, 10. Pharyngeal, 11. Glottal, 12. Epiglottal, 13. Radical, 14. Postero-dorsal, 15. Antero-dorsal, 16. Laminal, 17. Apical, 18. Sub-apical. In practice, one combines that with the manner of articulation to describe sounds such as labiodental fricative, which is the "f" sound in the word foxtrot, and labiodental nasal, which is the "m" sound in the name Mike. In the context of the evolution of the word woman, I think the text is referring to the consonants literally in the middle of the word "werman" merging, which is confusing because at first I thought it was referring to a specialized category of the labial place of articulation. However, those are limited to Bilabial, Labial-velar, Labial-coronal, Labiodental, and Dentolabial. There is no medial-labial. * *You may now resume the innuendo, which I am thoroughly enjoying. ;-) -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 25 05:59:29 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:59:29 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> OK so I heard back from a contact whose identity I intentionally conceal. The short report is this: doctors are being swamped with requests for bexarotene, and some patients are going on their own and getting it through various channels. Doctors are doing their best to compile results, but it is far more complicated than watching mice making nests. For starters, bex is a powerful thyroid suppressant. About half the patients who take the meds start to show signs of hypothyroidism, which itself can cause Alzheimer's-like symptoms, possibly making the patient appear to get worse if they were already prone to hyperthyroidism. The patients sometimes cut themselves off from their regular doctors, which deprives the medical community and the patient community of valuable data. The ethical dilemmas faced by the doctors are maddening to the point of being nearly overwhelming. It turns out there are several different things that can cause intermittent mental dysfunction, and it is crazy difficult to separate and classify everything in every patient, a far bigger task than doctors can do in a few minutes a week visits. Families are so eager for any thread of hope, they may see signals in the data which are not there, creating reports that are mistakenly optimistic. Much if not most of the data may be false positives. The doctors must compensate for the hope effect, weighing the credibility of the various family members' reports, which is itself wildly difficult to do. The best study group would be those who seldom get visits from family members, for these can be examined by a neutral observer under more controlled conditions. Then of course there is the thorny ethical problem of giving a possibly dangerous medication to a patient who is not fully capable of making an informed decision. Dr. Landreth made the mouse observations in 2009, and discovered within minutes all the stuff that has taken us two weeks to realize. So he has been struggling with it ever since. I will put his picture back up on the piano, and thank evolution I didn't go to medical school. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the doctor making these decisions for others. If I find out anything worth reporting, I will do so. Good luck to all of us. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat Feb 25 10:15:58 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:15:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 02:30:50PM -0800, The Avantguardian wrote: > I just had a sobering thought while in the shower. Since most costs of doing business or even basic survival are tied to oil prices, then the cost of researching and developing alternative energies is also proportional to the price of oil. Therefore it would stand to reason that oil prices directly define?civilization's window of opportunity to survive the Malthusian Energy Crisis. I think that there is an oil price point that can be thought of as an indicator that even industrialized wealthy countries?can no longer afford to develop any alternative energy sources. Then it becomes an ugly?last-man-standing downward spiral to atavism. Congratulations, you've just rediscovered the energy trap http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8526 and the energy cliff http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46579 which very few people do on their own. And therein lies the core of our problems: most people do not realize that time is running out, and increasingly heroic measures are required to climb out of the trap the longer you wait while our muscle withers. Long-term prognosis of such behaviour is unfavorable. Collectively, we seem to have about the same intelligence as overnight culture which has been just peak maximum turbidity. This used to make me sad, but now I just find it grimly amusing. ? > Unfortunately, I don't know what that price point is, nor am I certain how to calculate it. I do think each alternative energy source brought online should raise the Doomsday Oil Price?significantly. Any suggestions? From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 11:01:22 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:01:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 25 February 2012 11:15, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Congratulations, you've just rediscovered the energy trap > http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8526 > and the energy cliff http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46579 > which very few people do on their own. > > And therein lies the core of our problems: most people do > not realize that time is running out, and increasingly > heroic measures are required to climb out of the trap > the longer you wait while our muscle withers. Long-term > prognosis of such behaviour is unfavorable. > I see the point, and wonder whether in fact we are not already in such a trap. OTOH, rather than going for a replacement with lower-EROI alternatives which is becoming increasingly unlikely for the reasons explained therein, perhaps we should make use of whatever resources we can still put on the table for breakthrough-oriented research programmes. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat Feb 25 11:40:20 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:40:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:01:22PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: > I see the point, and wonder whether in fact we are not already in such a > trap. > > OTOH, rather than going for a replacement with lower-EROI alternatives > which is becoming increasingly unlikely for the reasons explained therein, > perhaps we should make use of whatever resources we can still put on the > table for breakthrough-oriented research programmes. We pretty much know where to sink the bulk of the money and resources we still have (which are going, going, gone) -- it's increasing electrification wherever possible, energy conservation in nonessential areas, synfuels, thin-film PV and so on -- I could give a long list but nobody will read it, so I won't. There's sure some low hanging fruit in R&D still but we no longer can afford throwing around rapidly evaporating funds for high-risk high-payoff stuff. That's because we've waited to long, the right time would have been early 1970s (some early projects were started then but were cut in early 1980s because people are poor in foresight). Now we're out of time and money, need to focus on boring, sure winner areas. Deploying rather than developing. Germany does some of that, but also too little, too late. I'm sure many people will fail to see the lesson nevermind to learn from it, and will fail to assign blame where blame belongs. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 12:52:35 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:52:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 25 February 2012 12:40, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Now we're out of time and money, need to focus on boring, sure winner > areas. > Deploying rather than developing. Germany does some of that, but also > too little, too late. > If the direst forecasts are true, this would risk however being futile. Italy, eg, wasted substantial resources subsidising (corrupted and anti-economic) developments of solar and aeolic, and is now already reducing such incentives (paradoxically, when the return would be somewhat higher!), because the previous level was unsustainable - especially given that we have seen the light, and know by now that all money must go to the banks where it belongs. :-) So, perhaps high-risk, high-yield (that is, fusion), is our actual chance out of the trap. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat Feb 25 13:10:48 2012 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 06:10:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Hi faithless fear mongers, It'd be really interesting to find out how many experts agree with this kind of fear mongering, and if there are any better arguments for this that any experts think are more valid. These arguments still just seem silly, to me. Many people once claimed we had reached peak oil, at last in the US. But even that is no longer true right? Many people are now arguing we may be on track to start approaching complete oil independence. I missed the original "RIP: Peak Oil' article - was it about this? If so, to bad it, or the response wasn't canonized, so it wouldn't be lost and repeated endlessly. Obviously, I'm not an expert on this particular issue, but it seems to me that electricity for use in cars and everything is exploding. And nuclear energy, despite Fukushima, is continuing towards a big and safe Renascence. (Their about to build a big new one here in Utah, already) You mentioned that it would have been great to get started back in the 70s!!?? Do you know how many people launched in this dirrection back then with billions of $$, only to lose their shirts, and everything, because they were so successful at crashing the price of even oil for such a long time? You, We, and Obama, seem to be failing to learn from all that, and grossly repeating these mistakes, putting large money into already completely failing institutions, just like last time. It takes energy to get energy, pfffff... Yea, maybe for fossil fuels and other similar primitive and dirty stuff. The FV output per cost continues to rise exponentially, no additional energy required, right? I'd bet the bang per energy research cost or work (as measured in non automated human hours) is exponentially growing also, even for fossil and other similar fuels. Am I the only one that thinks it'd be valuable to survey to see just how many experts there are in both sides of this issue, and what the experts agree are the best reasons, and the morality of current society or the general population, as compared to the experts, including trending, on this? If you guys think this is such an important moral issue, shouldn't you start some kind of petition, or something, somewhere, or at least do something? Or are you just a lot of mistaken, noisy, non expert, hot air, just wasting everyone's time and slowing things down with such posts? Who and how many, here, are on either side of this issue? Or does nobody but me care what everyone else thinks, and why, and am I the only one that tires of all these continuously repeated popular noisy mistakes on either side? For decades, before a few years ago, the same kinds of silly mistaken noisy arguments were repeated in these groups, add infinitem, even more than peak oil, about consciousness and qualia. Has anyone noticed that nobody waists their time on any of that any more here? The same for the importance of Friendly AI, even though there is much less expert consensus emerging on that issue (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/16 ) There is a clear expert consensus emerging on some critically important moral issues on consciousness that were once lost in the popular ignorant noise (i.e. the popular wisdom is being significantly amplified, or at least finally catching up with the expert's at a faster rate). It appears the emerging expert consensus is we're on the verge of the greatest scientific discovery of all time in that field: The effing discovery of the relationship or mapping between subjective experience or quale and the underlying neural correlates. It's so fun to be able to say things like that, without fear of starting yet another many month infinitely repetitive, conversation war, with the noisy clueless masses, as it once would surely have done, before we even got to that level. (If you don't know why this is, see the clear emerging state of the moral art expert consensus camp: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 ). Brent Allsop On 2/25/2012 4:40 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:01:22PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: > >> I see the point, and wonder whether in fact we are not already in such a >> trap. >> >> OTOH, rather than going for a replacement with lower-EROI alternatives >> which is becoming increasingly unlikely for the reasons explained therein, >> perhaps we should make use of whatever resources we can still put on the >> table for breakthrough-oriented research programmes. > We pretty much know where to sink the bulk of the money and resources > we still have (which are going, going, gone) -- it's increasing electrification wherever > possible, energy conservation in nonessential areas, synfuels, thin-film > PV and so on -- I could give a long list but nobody will read it, so I won't. > > There's sure some low hanging fruit in R&D still but we no longer can > afford throwing around rapidly evaporating funds for high-risk high-payoff stuff. > That's because we've waited to long, the right time would have been > early 1970s (some early projects were started then but were cut in > early 1980s because people are poor in foresight). > > Now we're out of time and money, need to focus on boring, sure winner areas. > Deploying rather than developing. Germany does some of that, but also > too little, too late. > > I'm sure many people will fail to see the lesson nevermind to learn from it, > and will fail to assign blame where blame belongs. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From msd001 at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 13:41:15 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 08:41:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 2012/2/24 Henry Rivera : > I'm not sure how many of you are being serious about the medial labial > reference, but in the event that someone out there is confused about the > meaning, I'll clear it up. I learned this in a linguistics class in college > and probably haven't used it since. Labial refers to the oral place of > articulation in phonetics. Others are 1. Exo-labial, 2. Endo-labial, 3. > Dental, 4. Alveolar, 5. Post-alveolar, 6. Pre-palatal, 7. Palatal, 8. Velar, > 9. Uvular, 10. Pharyngeal, 11. Glottal, 12. Epiglottal, 13. Radical, 14. > Postero-dorsal, 15. Antero-dorsal, 16. Laminal, 17. Apical, 18. Sub-apical. > In practice, one? combines that with the manner of articulation to describe > sounds such as labiodental fricative, which is the "f" sound in the word > foxtrot, and labiodental nasal, which is the "m" sound in the name Mike. In > the context of the evolution of the word woman, I think the text is > referring to the consonants literally in the middle of the word "werman" > merging, which is confusing because at first I thought it was referring to a > specialized category of the labial place of articulation. However, those are > limited to Bilabial, Labial-velar, Labial-coronal, Labiodental, and > Dentolabial. There is no medial-labial. That was cool. Thanks Henry. From eugen at leitl.org Sat Feb 25 15:51:58 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:51:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20120225155158.GE7343@leitl.org> On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 01:52:35PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: > If the direst forecasts are true, this would risk however being futile. Nothing is ever futile. The higher the conversion volume done sooner, the less the pain. The question we're facing is how dire the energetic austerity is going to get, and how many people will have to starve. > Italy, eg, wasted substantial resources subsidising (corrupted and > anti-economic) developments of solar and aeolic, and is now already Italy should do very well with solar and geothermal, particularly given that the panel prices will be soon at the point where feed-in tariffs are immaterial. Where most countries fail so far, is synfuels. Germany is further ahead given that it will reach the point of >100% peak demand filled with renewables reasonably soon, and will face the dilemma of using it or losing it. The national natural gas storage infrastructure can buffer up to 3 months and take up to 5-10% of hydrogen with no modifications, and of course there's Sabatier. Methanol or formic acid from scrubbed carbon dioxide and hydrogen is also not very difficult. > reducing such incentives (paradoxically, when the return would be somewhat > higher!), because the previous level was unsustainable - especially given > that we have seen the light, and know by now that all money must go to the > banks where it belongs. :-) > > So, perhaps high-risk, high-yield (that is, fusion), is our actual chance > out of the trap. Terrestrial (or even for the inner solar system) fusion for energy production isn't going to happen. It's really hard to compete with the Sun. From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sat Feb 25 15:57:14 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 07:57:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Rule of Law or of Men? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1330185434.22990.YahooMailClassic@web114410.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Henry Rivera explained: > > I'm not sure how many of you are being serious about the > medial labial > reference, but in the event that someone out there is > confused about the > meaning, I'll clear it up. I learned this in a linguistics > class in college > and probably haven't used it since. Labial refers to the > oral place of > articulation in phonetics. Others are 1. Exo-labial, 2. > Endo-labial, 3. > Dental, 4. Alveolar, 5. Post-alveolar, 6. Pre-palatal, 7. > Palatal, 8. > Velar, 9. Uvular, 10. Pharyngeal, 11. Glottal, 12. > Epiglottal, 13. Radical, > 14. Postero-dorsal, 15. Antero-dorsal, 16. Laminal, 17. > Apical, 18. > Sub-apical. In practice, one? combines that with the > manner of articulation > to describe sounds such as labiodental fricative, which is > the "f" sound in > the word foxtrot, and labiodental nasal, which is the "m" > sound in the name > Mike. In the context of the evolution of the word woman, I > think the text > is referring to the consonants literally in the middle of > the word "werman" > merging, which is confusing because at first I thought it > was referring to > a specialized category of the labial place of articulation. > However, those > are limited to Bilabial, Labial-velar, Labial-coronal, > Labiodental, and > Dentolabial. There is no medial-labial. > * > *You may now resume the innuendo, which I am thoroughly > enjoying. ;-) Daaaang, and I thought it was all about some vestigial lady-part, a bit like the nictitating membrane of the eye. Does this mean we can all stop looking for it now? Ben Zaiboc From pharos at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 15:55:42 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:55:42 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: 2012/2/25 Stefano Vaj wrote: > Italy, eg, wasted substantial resources subsidising (corrupted and > anti-economic) developments of solar and aeolic, and is now already reducing > such incentives (paradoxically, when the return would be somewhat higher!), > because the previous level was unsustainable - especially given that we have > seen the light, and know by now that all money must go to the banks where it > belongs. :-) > > Not just money. *Everything* must go to the banks where it belongs. They don't actually have the money they lend out. They just leverage the same assets hundreds of times over. But when they want paid back they want everything they can get. Property, land, gold, silver, etc. Of course, the house of cards is collapsing now. I doubt (hope?) this thievery will continue for much longer. The riots in Greece are showing the way. As did Iceland, in just refusing to pay. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 25 16:54:03 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 08:54:03 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <007a01ccf3de$14dbf330$3e93d990$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:01:22PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> I see the point, and wonder whether in fact we are not already in such > a trap. OTOH, rather than going for a replacement with lower-EROI alternatives > which is becoming increasingly unlikely for the reasons explained > therein... Stefano >...We pretty much know where to sink the bulk of the money and resources we still have (which are going, going, gone) -- it's increasing electrification wherever possible, energy conservation in nonessential areas, synfuels, thin-film PV and so on -- I could give a long list but nobody will read it, so I won't... Eugen Reading up on the notion of EROI has been an astonishing and appalling revelation. I am convinced the model is useful and informative. I am surprised at how many sophisticated researchers dismiss the idea. Perhaps it is because they are looking at the short run, the next 10 to 20 years only. There is another fallacy which I see is failure to think through energy alternatives end to end. A perfect example I see is calculating the cost of energy from PVs without considering the cost of load leveling, which is already the dominant cost, if one does not assume the power company does everything for us. My own notions go towards the more radical conservation techniques, such as the single seat sub-500 kg class ape haulers. These ideas are far too often dismissed as silliness, but I think in ten years they will be front and center. I am also thinking about retrofitting of semi-trucks with vastly undersized engines, such that their top speed in still wind and level ground is about 50 mph, 80 kph, which should double their fuel economy. A few weeks ago I posted a question about the fuel savings from slowing cargo ships. It works just as I estimated: there are big fuel savings from tying up capital for a little longer on the sea. Fuel can be saved by slight changes in routes and schedules to better take advantage of prevailing winds. Fuel is getting more expensive, capital is becoming cheaper. In the long run, I foresee a future in which physical objects move slower than the pace to which we are so fondly accustomed, but data will move faster and in greater quantities. So in the immediately foreseeable future, I can imagine highly automated milli-factories that produce goods more locally, moving information more and finished goods less. We can adjust: the US has been in what appears to me as a declining average standard of living (depending on how it is measured) for the last several years. There is more stuff we can cut, life goes on. spike From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 25 17:00:32 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:00:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: <007b01ccf3de$fc807cb0$f5817610$@att.net> Finally an article with at least a little technical detail. The long-prevailing model for age-related brain degradation counter-indicated bexarotene, but the test results were a surprise. Check out the last two paragraphs below. http://www.bioworld.com/content/eisai-lymphoma-drug-reverses-alzheimers-dise ase-symptoms-0 Eisai Lymphoma Drug Reverses Alzheimer's Disease Symptoms By Anette Breindl Science Editor Researchers identified a drug which, in animals, rapidly decreases both plaque area and soluble amyloid beta levels in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. And it's FDA-approved. The drug in question is Targretin (bexarotene, Eisai Inc.) which was approved for the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma in 2000. Gary Landreth told BioWorld Today that "our results on plaque clearance are unprecedented." In mice treated with Targretin, plaque levels declined by more than 50 percent within three days, and ultimately declined by more than 75 percent. "We were stunned," he added, "and it took quite a while for us to believe our own data. The speed is shocking." Landreth is a professor of neuroscience at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the senior author of the paper describing those data, which was published in the Feb. 9, 2012, advance online issue of Science. Landreth and his team decided to test Targretin in Alzheimer's mice because it affects the retinoic X receptor. That receptor, in conjunction with two other proteins, controls brain levels of apolipoprotein E, or ApoE, which, in turn, is the protein that clears amyloid beta. That protein is overproduced in Alzheimer's disease, and the amyloid plaques it forms are the anatomical calling card of the disease - those plaques also were once thought to be the cause of the memory problems that are its behavioral calling card. As several drugs targeting amyloid plaques have failed in late-stage clinical trials, it has become clear that plaques themselves are not overly harmful, and they may even be protective against what many now consider the real villain: soluble amyloid beta, especially so-called oligomers. Targretin, Landreth said, "targets both soluble amyloid beta and plaque. [It] drives up ApoE expression in astrocytes, which clears soluble Abeta, and this likely improves cognition." But it also "provokes the change in activation state of microglia and reanimates their phagocytic machinery, and this is responsible for plaque clearance." When Landreth and his team treated several different mouse models of Alzheimer's disease with Targretin, levels of soluble amyloid beta decreased within six hours. The team tested their mice on several learning tasks; in some of those tasks, they saw improvements with as little as one week of treatment, though in others, longer treatment was necessary. The drug also improved the animals' olfactory abilities, which are normally impaired by plaque deposition. Finally, animals that had lost the ability to build nests - a social behavior for mice - were once again able to do so after Targretin treatment. Although he has no solid proof, Landreth's hunch is that the drug's effectiveness at improving behavioral symptoms is in large part due to its effects on soluble amyloid beta, not plaques. "I think that as we pull down Abeta levels, synaptic function improves, and that subserves the improvement in behavior," he said. Landreth stressed that the results are as yet preclinical, and that the model his team used is unable in principle to give any clues to how Targretin will affect individuals with advanced Alzheimer's. The reason, he said, is that in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, "the neurons don't die, and that is a serious problem for extrapolating to later stages of the disease." Still, he said, his team's results showed that, in animals, "early in the disease the effects . . . are largely reversible." And on the plus side, because Targretin is an approved drug, "we have just cut 10 years off of the developmental timeline." That doesn't mean he's not in a big hurry to get started. "I want to be in the clinic with this within the next two months," he said. Given the known, albeit indirect, connection from the retinoic acid receptor to ApoE levels and, from there, to amyloid, in hindsight the notion of trying to treat Alzheimer's disease with Targretin might seem obvious enough to be tested a long time ago. But Landreth said, a priori, there were also a number of reasons to suspect that such an approach would fail. Specifically, he said, "one might have predicted a boatload of side effects," since the retinoic X receptor "works in coordination with a number of other receptors." That those side effects did not occur "is just serendipitous." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 18:06:30 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:06:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <007b01ccf3de$fc807cb0$f5817610$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007b01ccf3de$fc807cb0$f5817610$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/25 spike > ** ** > > Finally an article with at least a little technical detail. The > long-prevailing model for age-related brain degradation counter-indicated > bexarotene, but the test results were a surprise. Check out the last two > paragraphs below.**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > > http://www.bioworld.com/content/eisai-lymphoma-drug-reverses-alzheimers-disease-symptoms-0 > **** > > > So, it would appear that bexarotene is still in play? -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 19:10:22 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:10:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) Message-ID: There are probably several technical ways out of the energy crisis. One I have investigated for many years is solar power satellites. They scale into the tens of TW and the energy payback time (more useful than EROEI for renewables) is down around two months. See http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7898 Power Satellite Energy Economics "# For the highly reusable Skylon and laser proposal, the laser part, draws around a GW to send 60 t/h to GEO(starting from a sub orbital boost by the Skylon). It also uses 30 ton per hour of hydrogen with an energy content of 210,000 kWh. One million, two hundred and ten kWh/60,000kg is 21 kWh/kg. # The Skylon boost phase burns 66807 kg of hydrogen per launch; the energy in the hydrogen (at 70 kWh/kg) for three per hour would be 14,029,470 kWh, / 60,000 kg or 233 kWh/kg. # Together, 254 kWh/kg, (6% efficient compared to the minimum energy) so material for a kW of power satellite would take 1270 kWh to lift--which gives an energy payback time of around 53 days, under two months." A more recent version uses four times as much laser power to put the entire first stage in LEO (solving the problem of getting it back to the launch point). Of the 120 ton drop mass, 54 tons gets to LEO, 24 tons reenters and is reused, 20 tons of the 30 ton second stage gets to GEO and is all used for power sat parts. So if you can get started, there is no lack of energy to get completely off fossil fuels. The problem is the initial investment, $50-100 B. One concept is to use 250 Falcon Heavy launches to put a half GW propulsion laser seed in GEO and use 1/4 scale (30 tons) air launched vehicles to bootstrap the rest of the 2 GW needed to support a 500,000 ton per year parts pipeline to GEO. That only builds ~100 GW of new power per year, but the profit is such it can rapidly grow by a factor of 10-20. There is room in GEO for ten times the current total energy use of humans. So who puts up the initial investment? A big propulsion laser that's able to track a fast accelerating vehicle from GEO is potentially a weapon. It doesn't matter if it is used or not. After one is up nobody can count on missiles or aircraft to deliver packages that go _FLASH_. And the justification for sorting atoms by mass goes away because nuclear reactors are under priced by 2 cent per kWh power from space. Some will argue that it would give the US (or China) a weapon they could use to kill people anywhere, anytime. So how does this differ from Predator drones loaded with Hellfire missiles? $50 B is big for a private investment, but it's small change for a war and on a par with what the US spent for the F-22. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 25 19:58:45 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:58:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007b01ccf3de$fc807cb0$f5817610$@att.net> Message-ID: <00ad01ccf3f7$e1cc0e20$a5642a60$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj . http://www.bioworld.com/content/eisai-lymphoma-drug-reverses-alzheimers-dise ase-symptoms-0 >.So, it would appear that bexarotene is still in play? -- Stefano Vaj Still in play, the number of unknowns increases every day. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 20:26:32 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:26:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Small solar satellites Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > The problem is the initial investment, $50-100 B. ?One concept is to > use 250 Falcon Heavy launches to put a half GW propulsion laser seed > in GEO and use 1/4 scale (30 tons) air launched vehicles to bootstrap > the rest of the 2 GW needed to support a 500,000 ton per year parts > pipeline to GEO. ?That only builds ~100 GW of new power per year, but > the profit is such it can rapidly grow by a factor of 10-20. ?There is > room in GEO for ten times the current total energy use of humans. Ah, right! Keith, this is something I wanted to ask you about re: one of the research groups I've gotten involved with. In short, what would the economics of this look like, if you broke it into ~1 kg sized launches? Specifically: 1 CubeSat launched at a time to LEO, to contain boosters to put a sub-kg power satellite into GEO. Just keep feeding more of these over time, making a cluster - both to easily replace any part that fails, and to let you get started for a far smaller investment. Key questions: * How many satellites would you need to get any measurable output at ground side? Not enough to export useful energy, but enough to demonstrate "ground truth" that the system works. This is an important milestone for many would-be investors - even for systems where there is no theoretical question as to feasibility. (You're proving that whoever did this, either has or knows how to get the necessary resources - people, materials, regulatory approval, et cetera.) * How much energy would you get from this minimal version, and how would it scale by adding more satellites? Linearly? * What's the minimum size of ground side receiving station that you would need? * Would the minimum size of ground side station scale linearly with the number of satellites? * What would the initial investment to cover manufacture, assembly, and installation of those components (and anything else necessary for a minimum ground truth version)? From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 19:41:32 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:41:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: Friends, I don't want to be unpleasant or conspiratorial, but something about this has begun to bother me. Something not related to whatever eventual benefit bexarotene may provide. According to one of the articles -- I don't remember where I saw it --that rehashed the original announcement, the CWRU experiment was conducted in 2009. That's two to three years ago. Why are we only hearing about this now? Why do we not have the benefit of the 2-3 years of additional research that would have followed had the announcement been immediate? Landreth was quoted in one of the reports as having said that people shouldn't try off-label experimentation. Also reported was Landreth's ongoing effort to patent bexarotene use in the treatment of Alzheimer's. Perhaps you see where this is going. Did Landreth conceal the bexarotene results for 2-3 years in order to use the time to lock down his "ownership" of bexarotene as a treatment for Alzheimer's? >From a humanitarian/ethical perspective, any delay in announcing the CWRU bexarotene results seems almost criminal. There also doesn't appear to be much of an excuse based on the time necessary to see results or the time necessary to repeat the experiment in order to confirm the initial results. Can someone offer an alternative explanation for the delay, one that can soften my suspicion that Landreth is a monstrously selfish individual. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Feb 25 20:26:43 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:26:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Adrian Tymes > To: The Avantguardian ; ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 3:00 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) ? > Only to a point.? If the price of crude oil were to skyrocket to 1000 > times its present level, there are already solutions that could and > would be brought online quickly, capping the price of "oil" as > you're > using it here.? Yes, there would be a crunch during the transition, > but crude oil is not so completely irreplaceable that the lack of it > would be a holocaust. The price of oil need not skyrocket. It could creep past the DDP?by a cent and?we would be equally screwed.?The DDP is a fairly robust measure because it would factor in any "price-capping" that the oil-companies might attempt by blowing the dust off of old patents and trying to build them in a hurry, even as they struggle to pay their employees? Yeah right.?The point is?how fast can the oil companies come up with an affordable synfuel that can work in the cars that are on the road RIGHT NOW? If?their answer is greater than?a week,?then we are fucked. You say the skyrocketing oil prices wouldn't cause a holocaust? Are you factoring in civil unrest? Let the average American have to choose which of?their two-point-five children to feed and?they?will most likely?hoist the black flag and start slitting throats. Say what you will about us, even the vilest American loves their children. ? > More importantly, the oil companies themselves would be the > most hurt by this crunch.? That's why they're hedging their bets > with alternative fuels, in so far as this crunch seems likely. If the oil companys' ace-in-the-hole isn't already online or deployable in a week or less, then it is time to get a shotgun.? Stuart LaForge ? "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 20:57:25 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:57:25 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 25 February 2012 20:41, Jeff Davis wrote: > Can someone offer an alternative explanation for the delay, one that > can soften my suspicion that Landreth is a monstrously selfish > individual. > Why, if he actually landed an effective cure for Alzheimer I think we can limit our blame and contempt to week-ends. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 21:09:03 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:09:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 6:10 AM, Brent Allsop wrote: > > Hi faithless fear mongers, Thanks, Brent. I've been sitting here wondering where to start. Now you've taken the weight off my shoulders. There is something in the human psyche that loves worrying. About something. About anything. I call it the Henny Penny Syndrome. "The sky is falling!!" "We're doomed!! We're all doomed!!" Something in such declarations provides some sort of emotional relief. Politicians love the Henny Penny Syndrome. They employ it all the time. For every political stripe, its own boogieman. They trot it out and then say, "Vote for me and I will save you." Commies, Injuns, Islamofascists, homosexuals, Nazis, fascists, feminazis, the yellow peril, Mogambo, terrorists, narcoterrorists, bankers, the Jews, the Bilderbergs, the Masons, Opus Dei, the Reptilians, furriners,... the list is endless. One ideology's bogieman is another's white knight. "Vote for me. I will save you." Puleeeeese!! This is so old. The energy "problem" we face -- not the bogus end times scare fantasy -- is basically one of price. We've had so much for so long and so cheap, that being wasteful has become SOP. When you see wastefulness for what it is, the solution becomes obvious. Stop being wasteful. Really, it's just that simple. When gas was 17 cents a gallon, kids would ride up and down main street in their muscle cars. For entertainment. Soon humanity will be expanding beyond the Terran gravity well. Then this fear-mongering will be seen for the emotion- and ambition-driven manipulation that it is. Fifty years tops. Till then primordial hydrocarbons and nukes will do us just fine. Not to worry. Just make sure you and yours stay educated so that you don't have to suffer unviability and impoverishment with the sheep and the other "stupids". "These are not the droids you're looking for." Same thing for the "global warming" scare. (Anthropogenic climate change is factual, but will never become catastrophic. The very factors which worry people about the (gradual)supply decline and (gradual)price rise in "fossil" fuels will drive -- are driving -- the transition to non-carbon-based energy sources.) Stop being manipulated by the fear-mongering and celebrate the awesome wonderfullness of life. Notice, but don't obsess over, things outside yourself. Focus on your own prosperity, build something for yourself, and don't be diverted by scary stories that emotionally manipulate you into serving the interests of others,...at your expense. Best, Jeff Davis "You are what you think." Jeff Davis > > It'd be really interesting to find out how many experts agree with this kind > of fear mongering, and if there are any better arguments for this that any > experts think are more valid. > > These arguments still just seem silly, to me. ?Many people once claimed we > had reached peak oil, at last in the US. ?But even that is no longer true > right? ?Many people are now arguing we may be on track to start approaching > complete oil independence. ?I missed the original "RIP: Peak Oil' ?article - > was it about this? If so, to bad it, or the response wasn't canonized, so it > wouldn't be lost and repeated endlessly. ?Obviously, I'm not an expert on > this particular issue, but it seems to me that electricity for use in cars > and everything is exploding. ?And nuclear energy, despite Fukushima, is > continuing towards a big and safe Renascence. ?(Their about to build a big > new one here in Utah, already) > > You mentioned that it would have been great to get started back in the > 70s!!?? ?Do you know how many people launched in this dirrection back then > with billions of $$, only to lose their shirts, and everything, because they > were so successful at crashing the price of even oil for such a long time? > ?You, We, and Obama, seem to be failing to learn from all that, and grossly > repeating these mistakes, putting large money into already completely > failing institutions, just like last time. > > It takes energy to get energy, pfffff... ?Yea, maybe for fossil fuels and > other similar primitive and dirty stuff. ?The FV output per cost continues > to rise exponentially, no additional energy required, right? ?I'd bet the > bang per energy research cost or work (as measured in non automated human > hours) is exponentially growing also, even for fossil and other similar > fuels. > > Am I the only one that thinks it'd be valuable to survey to see just how > many experts there are in both sides of this issue, and what the experts > agree are the best reasons, and the morality of current society or the > general population, as compared to the experts, including trending, on this? > ?If you guys think this is such an important moral issue, shouldn't you > start some kind of petition, or something, somewhere, or at least do > something? ?Or are you just a lot of mistaken, noisy, non expert, hot air, > just wasting everyone's time and slowing things down with such posts? > > Who and how many, here, are on either side of this issue? ?Or does nobody > but me care what everyone else thinks, and why, and am I the only one that > tires of all these continuously repeated popular noisy mistakes on either > side? > > For decades, before a few years ago, the same kinds of silly mistaken noisy > arguments were repeated in these groups, add infinitem, even more than peak > oil, about consciousness and qualia. ?Has anyone noticed that nobody waists > their time on any of that any more here? ?The same for the importance of > Friendly AI, even though there is much less expert consensus emerging on > that issue (see: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/16 ) There is a clear expert > consensus emerging on some critically important moral issues on > consciousness that were once lost in the popular ignorant noise (i.e. the > popular wisdom is being significantly amplified, or at least finally > catching up with the expert's at a faster rate). ?It appears the emerging > expert consensus is we're on the verge of the greatest scientific discovery > of all time in that field: ? The effing discovery of the relationship or > mapping between subjective experience or quale and the underlying neural > correlates. ?It's so fun to be able to say things like that, without fear of > starting yet another many month infinitely repetitive, conversation war, > with the noisy clueless masses, as it once would surely have done, before we > even got to that level. ?(If you don't know why this is, see the clear > emerging state of the moral art expert consensus camp: > http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6 ). > > Brent Allsop > > > On 2/25/2012 4:40 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >> On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:01:22PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> >>> I see the point, and wonder whether in fact we are not already in such a >>> trap. >>> >>> OTOH, rather than going for a replacement with lower-EROI alternatives >>> which is becoming increasingly unlikely for the reasons explained >>> therein, >>> perhaps we should make use of whatever resources we can still put on the >>> table for breakthrough-oriented research programmes. >> >> We pretty much know where to sink the bulk of the money and resources >> we still have (which are going, going, gone) -- it's increasing >> electrification wherever >> possible, energy conservation in nonessential areas, synfuels, thin-film >> PV and so on -- I could give a long list but nobody will read it, so I >> won't. >> >> There's sure some low hanging fruit in R&D still but we no longer can >> afford throwing around rapidly evaporating funds for high-risk high-payoff >> stuff. >> That's because we've waited to long, the right time would have been >> early 1970s (some early projects were started then but were cut in >> early 1980s because people are poor in foresight). >> >> Now we're out of time and money, need to focus on boring, sure winner >> areas. >> Deploying rather than developing. Germany does some of that, but also >> too little, too late. >> >> I'm sure many people will fail to see the lesson nevermind to learn from >> it, >> and will fail to assign blame where blame belongs. >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 21:17:24 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:17:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:26 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > The price of oil need not skyrocket. I used that as a dramatic example. If even this extreme case can be beaten, then slower versions can too. >?The point is?how fast can the oil companies come up with an affordable synfuel that can work in the cars that are on the road RIGHT NOW? If?their answer is greater than?a week,?then we are fucked. If the price of oil jumped 1000-fold in a day, the synfuels that exist today would suddenly be "affordable" at their current prices. The National Petroleum Reserve would almost certainly be dumped on the market entirely; that and similar measures would buy time to scale up synfuel production. > You say the skyrocketing oil prices wouldn't cause a holocaust? Are you factoring in civil unrest? Massive riots alone do not a holocaust make. Yes, there would be bloodshed - but far more than 10% of the populace would survive. It might well be over 50%. A holocaust, on the other hand, where there simply are no resources to survive on without going back to pre-industrial methods, no matter what anyone does? That's a fall back to pre-industrial population: less than 10% of current total. > If the oil companys' ace-in-the-hole isn't already online or deployable in a week or less, then it is time to get a shotgun. If that is your answer, go ahead and shoot them - and starve. We transhumanists, on the other hand, prefer instead to fix the problem. Get those aces online or rapidly deployable. Shooting people who - whatever their motivations - can be coopted into helping make this happen, rarely helps and often hurts this objective. You appear to be engaged in disasterbation: believing that the world is so terrible and doomed and there's nothing you can do about it. That can be a powerful emotional release, because it absolves you of all responsibility and culpability if bad things happen. Unfortunately, it is also fallacious. While it is true that no one of us can solve the entire energy crisis on our own, it is also the case that, if enough of us work to solve it, it will get solved. What you can do, and should do, is help make the better future happen. On the other hand, getting mad and preaching about inevitable doomsday just makes people give up - starting with yourself. Yes, that *does* mean you're partially responsible if the worst happens, if you've spent most of your energy on this convincing yourself otherwise. From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 25 21:12:16 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:12:16 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00ca01ccf402$278aedf0$76a0c9d0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Jeff Davis >...Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? >...Friends, I don't want to be unpleasant or conspiratorial, but something about this has begun to bother me... Begun? Several of us and plenty of AD family members have been going crazy over this. Before you post further Jeff, it sounds like you may be behind on what has already been posted on the topic here. Do read up first. >...According to one of the articles -- I don't remember where I saw it --that rehashed the original announcement, the CWRU experiment was conducted in 2009... True. But don't jump to conclusions. Read on please. >... That's two to three years ago. Why are we only hearing about this now? Why do we not have the benefit of the 2-3 years of additional research that would have followed had the announcement been immediate? ... This is the question plenty of us asked on 19 February, when it was learned about the 2009 experiment, and that there were at least two others who knew about the outcome. There was an even more disconcerting revelation that the description of this experiment was only now announced under duress. Apparently the information about the 2009 experiment leaked and was about to go open loop. >...Can someone offer an alternative explanation for the delay, one that can soften my suspicion that Landreth is a monstrously selfish individual. Best, Jeff Davis I am reserving judgment until all the facts are known, and they are likely to be known soon, based on the pace at which this story is unfolding. Apparently, according to hearsay in the community, Dr. Landreth was not trying to buy up stock in Aesai or anything of the kind, but he was upon the horns of an ethical dilemma which would drive one insane. He was carrying a theoretical model which counter-indicated the results seen, and counter-indicated success in early-onset Alzheimer's patients. There is legitimacy in the argument that the researchers realized uncontrolled release of the information may lead to TBCs (truly bad consequences) such as patients taking bex off label and not telling their doctors. The doctors would then perhaps diagnose hypothyroidism, and give a compensating medication known to be incompatible with bexarotene. Landreth and the (at least two) colleagues who knew of these results may have realized families would clamor for the medications and go to unadvisable lengths to get it. Still more ethical dilemmas are presented when we realize that 1200 bucks a month is an amount that some patients can raise and others cannot. It would be a bad thing if some families lost a member under the mistaken belief that if they could raise 1200 dollars a month, their beloved family member might have been cured. From what I can tell, it is unlikely bexarotene will be a cure. It might help some however, which is more than Aricept seems to do. Some may even go the route I did: look for reagent grade bexarotene and consider the possibility of trying a much lower dose than is in Targretin. If bexarotene is taken in experimental 10 mg doses, the risk goes down proportionally I would think. But this 'I would think' comment is bothering me too. I did a calculation that convinced me that bexarotene in the form of targretin does not cross the barrier in that form, by design. I am looking at solubility levels and such: the size of the caplets suggests to me that the bex in targretin could not be completely in solution, but that it could be therapeutic when not completely in solution, for cancer. This suggests to me that bex in targretin is not a significant blood/brain barrier crosser, but low doses of bex completely in solution, would permeate. This gives me the notion that we should be looking at 10 mg doses of bex completely dissolved in about 15 grams of alcohol, which is a lowish threshold a typical light-weight human would notice, should they devour that much alcohol. I sometimes feel I am sailing uncharted waters alone on this, being of a chemistry background and thinking about the solubility angle on bexarotene. Incompletely dissolved medications can form a colloid-equivalent, which does not permeate the barrier, whereas a much lower (generally safer and more affordable) dose might act as a barrier crosser, thus work better for this particular malady, breaking up beta amyloids. But I am not a doctor, and I don't know how to be a part of the community that is discussing this. They have a closed circle for perfectly legitimate reasons: they need a group who have formal training and experience in medical ethics. I have none of this, but I do sympathize with their not wanting to kill people by suggesting unproven medications for patients and families not well-positioned to understand the risks. Some of you hipsters offer me a clue here. If you are watching your posting limit, don't worry about it. I received no complaints during our temporary open season last week, and I as all-powerful semi-assistant moderator will certainly not bust anyone's chops for overposting on this timely topic, relevant directly or indirectly to every person on this list. spike From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 21:28:15 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:28:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 11:41 AM, Jeff Davis wrote: > Perhaps you see where this is going. ?Did Landreth conceal the > bexarotene results for 2-3 years in order to use the time to lock down > his "ownership" of bexarotene as a treatment for Alzheimer's? More likely, it was the bog-standard combination of: * Further tests to confirm his findings. Preaching about this kind of thing far and wide, when it turns out not to work, has often been a career ending mistake for many. (There are notable exceptions, but they are exceptions.) * Peer review to make sure what he says is legit, that it's clearly communicated (or at least that efforts to clarify things are made - not that they always work), and so on. * The standard inertia of publishing (which can add 6-12 months, or more, by itself). * Executive meetings by his funders - some of whom are probably far greedier than he, and may have tried to lock ownership to themselves, screwing Landreth out of any compensation or credit. If this happened, Landreth may have had to carefully weasel through contracts - and carefully remind said executives that he did NOT sign a "my firstborn belongs to you but you never have to pay me a cent" contract in blood, thank you kindly - before he could tell the world without being buried in frivolous lawsuits. That takes time. * Other work obligation getting in the way. He is not a billionaire *yet*, so he still has to pay bills like any working joe. Never assume malice where mere incompetence - especially organizational incompetence - will adequately explain. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Feb 25 21:53:22 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:53:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <1330206802.60347.YahooMailNeo@web164501.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Jeff Davis > To: brent.allsop at canonizer.com; ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:09 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) > > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 6:10 AM, Brent Allsop > wrote: >> >> Hi faithless fear mongers, > > Thanks, Brent.? I've been sitting here wondering where to start.? Now > you've taken the weight off my shoulders. > > There is something in the human psyche that loves worrying.? About > something.? About anything.? I call it the Henny Penny Syndrome.? "The > sky is falling!!"? "We're doomed!! We're all doomed!!"? > Something in > such declarations provides some sort of emotional relief. Oh puhleez.?Do you really think that what I am saying is motivated by fear??What I am saying?is that *civilization* is at risk. Most of you will probably more or less survive the collapse of civilization. (2/3 would be a reasonable survival rate for collapse). The point is not that you should fear for your life, but that you would have to live with the shame of?having dropped the ball on your turn on the court of life. Your opportunity to be the generation of mann, yea wifmen and wermen both, to bring about?the singularity. All that is really at stake is a few?hundred to thousands of years back at the drawing board. So?mu to?"ignorant fear-mongering". > Soon humanity will be expanding beyond the Terran gravity well.? Then > this fear-mongering will be seen for the emotion- and ambition-driven > manipulation that it is.? Fifty years tops.? Till then primordial > hydrocarbons and nukes will do us just fine. Soon compared to the singularity that was the emergence of life? Soon compared to the singularity that was the emergence of multicellular life? Soon?compared to the singularity that was the emergence of eusocial intelligence??Then yes.?? > Stop being manipulated by the fear-mongering and celebrate the awesome > wonderfullness of life.? Notice, but don't obsess over, things outside > yourself.? Focus on your own prosperity, build something for yourself, > and don't be diverted by scary stories that emotionally manipulate you > into serving the interests of others,...at your expense. Very good advice. Allow me to translate for the liberals that might be reading: "Don't fall for advertising, just be happy that you get a workable product, preferably locally made by people with a rough genetic simularity to you. Focus on your running the rat race in your hamster wheel so long as you have a job and can afford a hamster wheel. Notice, but don't complain about the clumsily-hid machinations of the powerful, while they tax you and give?your?money to the privileged elite around the world. Be thankful they have not?loosed their dogs upon you for sleeping in their parks."?? Sheesh Jeff and Brent, I expected *more* faith from you two. ? ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 21:48:30 2012 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:48:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Just a general remark - are we living on the same planet? With massive increases in proven economically viable hydrocarbon deposits being announced almost every day around the world, the ExI list is discussing 50% population losses due to lack of gasoline, the need for increasing, of all things, PV (!) investments? As they say, "Wow" Rafal From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 22:28:32 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:28:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power sats and payload size was Small solar satellites Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Keith Henson wrote: >> The problem is the initial investment, $50-100 B. ?One concept is to >> use 250 Falcon Heavy launches to put a half GW propulsion laser seed >> in GEO and use 1/4 scale (30 tons) air launched vehicles to bootstrap >> the rest of the 2 GW needed to support a 500,000 ton per year parts >> pipeline to GEO. ?That only builds ~100 GW of new power per year, but >> the profit is such it can rapidly grow by a factor of 10-20. ?There is >> room in GEO for ten times the current total energy use of humans. > > Ah, right! ?Keith, this is something I wanted to ask you about re: one of > the research groups I've gotten involved with. > > In short, what would the economics of this look like, if you broke it into > ~1 kg sized launches? ?Specifically: 1 CubeSat launched at a time to > LEO, to contain boosters to put a sub-kg power satellite into GEO. > Just keep feeding more of these over time, making a cluster - both to > easily replace any part that fails, and to let you get started for a far > smaller investment. Sorry, won't work. The problem is optical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk http://www.rocketdynetech.com/dataresources/WirelessPowerTransmissionOptionsForSpaceSolarPower.pdf http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/aiaa-2009-0462_ssp_alternatives_potter.pdf (see page 33) If you make the target 100 GW/year, which is small compared to the need but still significant, then the mass in GEO you need (at 5 kg/kW) is 500,000 tons. At 8760 hours per year it is ~60 tons per hour. The maximum acceleration time to get a payload into orbit is ~20 minutes (you want the longest time for the smallest laser power). This sets the payload size to 3 of 20 tons per hour. The 20 tons takes 30 tons in LEO and that takes a 120 ton starting mass if airdropped at ten km. There have been much smaller proposals for laser transmission from very small power sats. But they miss the target of making a substantial contribution (or paying off the non recurring engineering charges). > Key questions: > > * How many satellites would you need to get any measurable output > at ground side? ?Not enough to export useful energy, but enough to > demonstrate "ground truth" that the system works. You are doing that right now if you have a Dish network TV. Ever set one up? The energy is certainly measurable. > This is an > important milestone for many would-be investors - even for systems > where there is no theoretical question as to feasibility. ?(You're proving > that whoever did this, either has or knows how to get the necessary > resources - people, materials, regulatory approval, et cetera.) > > * How much energy would you get from this minimal version, and how > would it scale by adding more satellites? ?Linearly? > > * What's the minimum size of ground side receiving station that you > would need? Depends on the frequency. 10 km E/W and km 14 N/S are what you need for 2.45 GHz. > * Would the minimum size of ground side station scale linearly with > the number of satellites? No. It scales inversely with the frequency. But there are only a few frequencies that get through the atmosphere well. > * What would the initial investment to cover manufacture, assembly, > and installation of those components (and anything else necessary > for a minimum ground truth version)? The power satellites and the ground station are not the hard parts. It's the transport system that makes or breaks power satellites. That takes ~250 Falcon Heavy launches to set up plus the cost of the laser hardware, power plant and heat sink (a square km). The launch cost alone is $25 B, but for that number of launches SpaceX might give a substantial discount. Keith From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Feb 25 22:24:25 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:24:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1330208665.52534.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:48 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) > > Just a general remark - are we living on the same planet? With massive > increases in proven economically viable hydrocarbon deposits being > announced almost every day around the world, the ExI list is > discussing 50% population losses due to lack of gasoline, the need for > increasing, of all things, PV (!) investments? > > As they say, "Wow" ? Thus sayeth Rafal, who doesn't need to buy a shotgun, because he already has several. Sorry Rafal, but I sell a PV product, so its just business. ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sat Feb 25 22:37:57 2012 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:37:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: <1330206802.60347.YahooMailNeo@web164501.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> <1330206802.60347.YahooMailNeo@web164501.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4F4962C5.1040206@canonizer.com> Sorry, I'm just being open about my current beliefs, and how I feat as I read this, whether I'm mistaken or not. It may not have come through in that post, but I really do care about and respect what you (and everyone else saying the same thing) are saying. It's just that I don't really have time to fully study some of the sources you guys were quoting, let alone read every post, nor become near the expert you guys are on any of this. I was just simply trying to point out how just talking about it, like this, add infinitem, without tracking and summarizing what everyone is saying / believing - as compared to the experts (as person chooses to select them) it's kind of a waist. I basically don't have time to read add infinite wasteful statements like all this, but if you guys would canonize some of your work, so we could basically find out what everyone thinks are the most compelling reasons, so my ignorrant wisdom can keep up with you experts, in some kind of accelerated, with an easy and concise state of the art reference. That data you are pointing out - obviously convinces you. If it is really morally important, if peoples life are dependent on it, you need to also find out, and measure, what everyone else is thinking, and what it will take to help them see the moral light. - Just like we're doing with the consciousness survey project. In my mind, all you've posted was a waste, and long washed under the bridge, never to be seen again (I even missed the opening of the thread). But if the same stuff was concisely and quantitatively canonized, constantly improving in a wiki way....? Maybe then some of us mistaken masses, currently more interested in other things, could have a hope of keeping up, so less people end up suffering? I'm just trying to raise the level of communication in this group, and enable to it progress, instead of everyone being eternally stuck in the yes / no / yes / no mud, nobody caring anything about what anyone else but them thinks, forever. Brent Allsop On 2/25/2012 2:53 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- >> From: Jeff Davis >> To: brent.allsop at canonizer.com; ExI chat list >> Cc: >> Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:09 PM >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) >> >> On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 6:10 AM, Brent Allsop >> wrote: >>> Hi faithless fear mongers, >> Thanks, Brent. I've been sitting here wondering where to start. Now >> you've taken the weight off my shoulders. >> >> There is something in the human psyche that loves worrying. About >> something. About anything. I call it the Henny Penny Syndrome. "The >> sky is falling!!" "We're doomed!! We're all doomed!!" >> Something in >> such declarations provides some sort of emotional relief. > Oh puhleez. Do you really think that what I am saying is motivated by fear? What I am saying is that *civilization* is at risk. Most of you will probably more or less survive the collapse of civilization. (2/3 would be a reasonable survival rate for collapse). The point is not that you should fear for your life, but that you would have to live with the shame of having dropped the ball on your turn on the court of life. Your opportunity to be the generation of mann, yea wifmen and wermen both, to bring about the singularity. All that is really at stake is a few hundred to thousands of years back at the drawing board. So mu to "ignorant fear-mongering". > >> Soon humanity will be expanding beyond the Terran gravity well. Then >> this fear-mongering will be seen for the emotion- and ambition-driven >> manipulation that it is. Fifty years tops. Till then primordial >> hydrocarbons and nukes will do us just fine. > Soon compared to the singularity that was the emergence of life? Soon compared to the singularity that was the emergence of multicellular life? Soon compared to the singularity that was the emergence of eusocial intelligence? Then yes. > >> Stop being manipulated by the fear-mongering and celebrate the awesome >> wonderfullness of life. Notice, but don't obsess over, things outside >> yourself. Focus on your own prosperity, build something for yourself, >> and don't be diverted by scary stories that emotionally manipulate you >> into serving the interests of others,...at your expense. > Very good advice. Allow me to translate for the liberals that might be reading: > > "Don't fall for advertising, just be happy that you get a workable product, preferably locally made by people with a rough genetic simularity to you. Focus on your running the rat race in your hamster wheel so long as you have a job and can afford a hamster wheel. Notice, but don't complain about the clumsily-hid machinations of the powerful, while they tax you and give your money to the privileged elite around the world. Be thankful they have not loosed their dogs upon you for sleeping in their parks." > > Sheesh Jeff and Brent, I expected *more* faith from you two. > > > > Stuart LaForge > > > "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Feb 25 22:25:02 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:25:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1330208702.49340.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Adrian Tymes > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:17 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) > > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 12:26 PM, The Avantguardian > wrote: >> The price of oil need not skyrocket. > > I used that as a dramatic example.? If even this extreme case > can be beaten, then slower versions can too. > >> ?The point is?how fast can the oil companies come up with an affordable > synfuel that can work in the cars that are on the road RIGHT NOW? If?their > answer is greater than?a week,?then we are fucked. > > If the price of oil jumped 1000-fold in a day, the synfuels that > exist today would suddenly be "affordable" at their current prices. > The National Petroleum Reserve would almost certainly be > dumped on the market entirely; that and similar measures would > buy time to scale up synfuel production. > >> You say the skyrocketing oil prices wouldn't cause a holocaust? Are you > factoring in civil unrest? > > Massive riots alone do not a holocaust make.? Yes, there would > be bloodshed - but far more than 10% of the populace would > survive.? It might well be over 50%. > > A holocaust, on the other hand, where there simply are no > resources to survive on without going back to pre-industrial > methods, no matter what anyone does?? That's a fall back to > pre-industrial population: less than 10% of current total. You don't consider the deaths of 1/3 of humanity a holocaust? Why? Do you?mistakenly think that the 1/3 will be brown?people half a world away?? >> If the oil companys' ace-in-the-hole isn't already online or > deployable in a week or less, then it is time to get a shotgun. > > If that is your answer, go ahead and shoot them - and starve. I did not advocate shooting anyone, let alone oil companies. How do you shoot a company anyway? I am saying that if you don't get a shotgun or similar you might someday find yourself at the mercy of someone who does have one. Sorry I am not pussy pacifist. > > We transhumanists, on the other hand, prefer instead to fix > the problem.? Get those aces online or rapidly deployable. > Shooting people who - whatever their motivations - can be > coopted into helping make this happen, rarely helps and > often hurts this objective. > > You appear to be engaged in disasterbation: believing that > the world is so terrible and doomed and there's nothing > you can do about it.? That can be a powerful emotional > release, because it absolves you of all responsibility and > culpability if bad things happen. Huh? Nah consider it to be niche-marketing my new product. > Unfortunately, it is also fallacious.? While it is true that no > one of us can solve the entire energy crisis on our own, it > is also the case that, if enough of us work to solve it, it > will get solved.? What you can do, and should do, is help > make the better future happen.? On the other hand, getting > mad and preaching about inevitable doomsday just makes > people give up - starting with yourself. > Yes, that *does* mean you're partially responsible if the > worst happens, if you've spent most of your energy on > this convincing yourself otherwise. ? How have I given up? I am holding a sale. For a limited time only, I will sell you?two of these babies, for mere $1.0 billion USD rated at 1 MW each. That's enough to power a major hospital or two suburban neighborhoods so that you personally never get caught with your pants down. So don't try to paint ME as part of the problem, Adrian. http://www.google.com/patents/US20090294576 ? Stuart LaForge ? "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sat Feb 25 22:57:45 2012 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:57:45 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] artificial meat in the news again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1330210665.5942.YahooMailNeo@web132105.mail.ird.yahoo.com> No-one's commented on this, so I thought I'd bring it to attention. A couple of years ago we were all discussing the news on artificially cultured meat, Wired did an article, PETA set a challenge. This week the BBC website has been covering the story as the Maastricht university team thinks theirs will be ready to test soon. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16972761?in text http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17104501?for a two minute video piece http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17113214?for ethical discussion quoting Julian Savalescu. Tom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 25 23:22:52 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:22:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes ... >?The point is?how fast can the oil companies come up with an affordable synfuel that can work in the cars that are on the road RIGHT NOW? But it isn't really about cars. Alternatives there are fairly easy: way smaller lighter slower cars, and failing that, bicycles and scooters. But it isn't really all about cars, or even semi-trucks that carry food from the agricultural areas to the population centers, for we can retrofit and slow these and save a lot of fuel. The transition to renewable energy is really about fertilizer and powering farm equipment. That one isn't getting any easier, and currently isn't really even being improved. Everything else has technologically easy (even if painful) solutions. spike From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Sat Feb 25 23:23:50 2012 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:23:50 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Billion euro projects In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1330212230.98645.YahooMailNeo@web132104.mail.ird.yahoo.com> After reading that Henry Markram's blue brain team was competing for a billion euros in funding, I decided to check out the shortlist on?http://www.fet-f.eu/pilots. Six projects are shortlisted, two will win a billion euros in funding. They are http://www.futurict.eu/ - "global computing for our complex world" - linking ICT, complexity theory and social sciences to better understand global complexity and connectivity. ? http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/ - graphene research with electronic/spintronic spinoffs. http://www.ga-project.eu/ - "Guardian angels", or ultra-low power wearable devices for healthcare. human brain project preparatory study - web site not given on the main site,?http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ appears to be the site. The blue brain team wants to spend a billion on integrating as much neuroscience research as possible into a brain model. http://www.itfom.eu/ - "IT future of medicine" which is about personalised medicine. http://www.robotcompanions.eu/ - Companion robots for care purposes. Sounds a bit like what Japan is currently researching. All six are of potential transhumanist interest and offer a vision of the future. Tom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 23:39:36 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:39:36 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <1330208665.52534.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330208665.52534.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:24 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > Thus sayeth Rafal, who doesn't need to buy a shotgun, because he already has several. Sorry Rafal, but I sell a PV product, so its just business. Ah. Freely making up data and general trolling in the pursuit of profit. Nevermind, I thought you were here to debate honestly. Admins, is that actually over the line to spam? I'm not sure. From atymes at gmail.com Sat Feb 25 23:42:05 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:42:05 -0800 Subject: [ExI] artificial meat in the news again In-Reply-To: <1330210665.5942.YahooMailNeo@web132105.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <1330210665.5942.YahooMailNeo@web132105.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Nice to see progress on this. Thanks for posting it. 2012/2/25 Tom Nowell : > No-one's commented on this, so I thought I'd bring it to attention. A couple > of years ago we were all discussing the news on artificially cultured meat, > Wired did an article, PETA set a challenge. > > This week the BBC website has been covering the story as the Maastricht > university team thinks theirs will be ready to test soon. > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16972761?in text > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17104501?for a two minute > video piece > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17113214?for ethical discussion quoting > Julian Savalescu. > > Tom > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Sat Feb 25 23:44:48 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:44:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330208665.52534.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00ef01ccf417$76b154e0$6413fea0$@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] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:24 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > Thus sayeth Rafal, who doesn't need to buy a shotgun, because he already has several. Sorry Rafal, but I sell a PV product, so its just business. Ah. Freely making up data and general trolling in the pursuit of profit. Nevermind, I thought you were here to debate honestly. Admins, is that actually over the line to spam? I'm not sure. _______________________________________________ Fair game. Play ball. {8-] spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sun Feb 26 00:02:39 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:02:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330208665.52534.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1330214559.27014.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Adrian Tymes > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 3:39 PM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) > > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:24 PM, The Avantguardian > wrote: >> Thus sayeth Rafal, who doesn't need to buy a shotgun, because he > already has several. Sorry Rafal, but I sell a PV product, so its just business. > > Ah.? Freely making up data and general trolling in the > pursuit of profit. > > Nevermind, I thought you were here to debate honestly. > > Admins, is that actually over the line to spam?? I'm > not sure. Ok. Then in the interest of *objective* argumentation allow me to proffer that doing things the oil companies way is guaranteed to make us all millionaires about the same time that a loaf of bread costs two-million. See ya at the top Adrian. Whoohoo. Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 00:10:11 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:10:11 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Power sats and payload size was Small solar satellites In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > If you make the target 100 GW/year, which is small compared to the > need but still significant, then the mass in GEO you need (at 5 kg/kW) > is 500,000 tons. Ah. So the ~1 kg sats would, at best, work as a demonstration so you could get the investment needed to do a multi-ton launch. Thanks. >> * How many satellites would you need to get any measurable output >> at ground side? ?Not enough to export useful energy, but enough to >> demonstrate "ground truth" that the system works. > > You are doing that right now if you have a Dish network TV. ?Ever set > one up? ?The energy is certainly measurable. Dish network satellites are multi-ton. I was wondering how many 1 kg satellites would be needed to, collectively, produce measurable output on the ground. >> * What would the initial investment to cover manufacture, assembly, >> and installation of those components (and anything else necessary >> for a minimum ground truth version)? > > The power satellites and the ground station are not the hard parts. > It's the transport system that makes or breaks power satellites. ?That > takes ~250 Falcon Heavy launches to set up plus the cost of the laser > hardware, power plant and heat sink (a square km). ?The launch cost > alone is $25 B, but for that number of launches SpaceX might give a > substantial discount. Yes. Thus, again, why I proposed demonstrating it with a cheaper launch system, to help attract the investment to cover the larger launch cost. And yes, it would offer a substantial discount. The majority of launch costs arise because the equipment involved is used so infrequently. If you had ~250 launches, at 1/month or more frequently, you could slash launch costs by over half, possibly to 10% or less. From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 00:12:10 2012 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:12:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <1330208665.52534.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330208665.52534.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 5:24 PM, The Avantguardian wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ----- >> From: Rafal Smigrodzki >> To: ExI chat list >> Cc: >> Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 1:48 PM >> Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) >> >> Just a general remark - are we living on the same planet? With massive >> increases in proven economically viable hydrocarbon deposits being >> announced almost every day around the world, the ExI list is >> discussing 50% population losses due to lack of gasoline, the need for >> increasing, of all things, PV (!) investments? >> >> As they say, "Wow" > > > Thus sayeth Rafal, who doesn't need to buy a shotgun, because he already has several. Sorry Rafal, but I sell a PV product, so its just business. ### No, I don't own a shotgun, just a lowly Glock 27 with CC license ... today though I had a lot of fun participating in a combat shooting training day with a former US competitive shooting champion. Great day, ranging from 9 mm to 45 ACP, hundreds of rounds, many tricks, all in my backyard. I put the likelihood of moderate social disruption in the US (i.e. riots and other chaotic escapades with more than 1000 ppl killed in violent attacks) at 5% or less in the next decade, so the risk is quite low .... for now I'll put off buying those shotguns. Rafal From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun Feb 26 01:03:41 2012 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 20:03:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] artificial meat in the news again In-Reply-To: <1330210665.5942.YahooMailNeo@web132105.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <1330210665.5942.YahooMailNeo@web132105.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <41a9863c65090438c79b8434f0ccf1b4.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > This week the BBC website has been covering the story as the Maastricht university > team thinks theirs will be ready to test soon. > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16972761 in text > I wonder where they think to get the blood.... | They are off-white and resemble strips of calamari in appearance. | These strips will be mixed with blood and artificially grown fat | to produce a hamburger by the autumn. Regards, MB From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 01:10:12 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:10:12 -0800 Subject: [ExI] artificial meat in the news again In-Reply-To: <41a9863c65090438c79b8434f0ccf1b4.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <1330210665.5942.YahooMailNeo@web132105.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <41a9863c65090438c79b8434f0ccf1b4.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 5:03 PM, MB wrote: > I wonder where they think to get the blood.... Blood banks, or artificial blood? From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun Feb 26 01:48:08 2012 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 20:48:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] artificial meat in the news again In-Reply-To: References: <1330210665.5942.YahooMailNeo@web132105.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <41a9863c65090438c79b8434f0ccf1b4.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 5:03 PM, MB wrote: >> I wonder where they think to get the blood.... > > Blood banks, or artificial blood? They were pretty specific about the lab-grown fat. That's why I wondered. Or maybe it was just the article, you know how odd reporting can be. ;) Regards, MB From nymphomation at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 01:07:54 2012 From: nymphomation at gmail.com (*Nym*) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 01:07:54 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <00ef01ccf417$76b154e0$6413fea0$@att.net> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330208665.52534.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00ef01ccf417$76b154e0$6413fea0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 25/02/2012, 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] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) > > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:24 PM, The Avantguardian > wrote: >> Thus sayeth Rafal, who doesn't need to buy a shotgun, because he already > has several. Sorry Rafal, but I sell a PV product, so its just business. > > Ah. Freely making up data and general trolling in the pursuit of profit. > > Nevermind, I thought you were here to debate honestly. > > Admins, is that actually over the line to spam? I'm not sure. > _______________________________________________ > > Fair game. Please avoid using that phrase in future, you'll give Keith nightmares! :o/ Heavy splashings, Thee Nymphomation 'If you cannot afford an executioner, a duty executioner will be appointed to you free of charge by the court' From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Feb 26 02:07:52 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 20:07:52 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Billion euro projects In-Reply-To: <1330212230.98645.YahooMailNeo@web132104.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <1330212230.98645.YahooMailNeo@web132104.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <010601ccf42b$72c8b8f0$585a2ad0$@cc> Hi Tom, it is my understanding that Henry Markram is distinctly opposed to transhumanism. Correct me if I am wrong. From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tom Nowell Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2012 5:24 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [ExI] Billion euro projects After reading that Henry Markram's blue brain team was competing for a billion euros in funding, I decided to check out the shortlist on http://www.fet-f.eu/pilots. Six projects are shortlisted, two will win a billion euros in funding. They are http://www.futurict.eu/ - "global computing for our complex world" - linking ICT, complexity theory and social sciences to better understand global complexity and connectivity. http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/ - graphene research with electronic/spintronic spinoffs. http://www.ga-project.eu/ - "Guardian angels", or ultra-low power wearable devices for healthcare. human brain project preparatory study - web site not given on the main site, http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ appears to be the site. The blue brain team wants to spend a billion on integrating as much neuroscience research as possible into a brain model. http://www.itfom.eu/ - "IT future of medicine" which is about personalised medicine. http://www.robotcompanions.eu/ - Companion robots for care purposes. Sounds a bit like what Japan is currently researching. All six are of potential transhumanist interest and offer a vision of the future. Tom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 06:42:53 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:42:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power sats and payload size was Small solar satellites Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 5:12 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Keith Henson wrote: >> If you make the target 100 GW/year, which is small compared to the >> need but still significant, then the mass in GEO you need (at 5 kg/kW) >> is 500,000 tons. > > Ah. ?So the ~1 kg sats would, at best, work as a demonstration so you > could get the investment needed to do a multi-ton launch. ?Thanks. Hmm. Not sure you grok the sheer scale involved. >>> * How many satellites would you need to get any measurable output >>> at ground side? ?Not enough to export useful energy, but enough to >>> demonstrate "ground truth" that the system works. >> >> You are doing that right now if you have a Dish network TV. ?Ever set >> one up? ?The energy is certainly measurable. > > Dish network satellites are multi-ton. ?I was wondering how many 1 kg > satellites would be needed to, collectively, produce measurable output > on the ground. One would do it. I don't think you appreciate just how little power is needed to be "measurable." >>> * What would the initial investment to cover manufacture, assembly, >>> and installation of those components (and anything else necessary >>> for a minimum ground truth version)? >> >> The power satellites and the ground station are not the hard parts. >> It's the transport system that makes or breaks power satellites. ?That >> takes ~250 Falcon Heavy launches to set up plus the cost of the laser >> hardware, power plant and heat sink (a square km). ?The launch cost >> alone is $25 B, but for that number of launches SpaceX might give a >> substantial discount. > > Yes. ?Thus, again, why I proposed demonstrating it with a cheaper > launch system, to help attract the investment to cover the larger launch > cost. I don't exactly know what you mean in this context by "cheaper." Just about any existing launch rocket is "cheaper" for a one off launch than designing, building and testing a new one. > And yes, it would offer a substantial discount. ?The majority of launch > costs arise because the equipment involved is used so infrequently. > If you had ~250 launches, at 1/month or more frequently, you could > slash launch costs by over half, possibly to 10% or less. One per month would take 21 years. Starvation will get here first. One every other day would take 16 months. The remaining 15,000 tons would go up as a bootstrap. That is 3000 5 ton flights. At 30 flights per day (3 per hour x 10 hours per day) it would take 100 days to bring up the rest of the parts for 2 GW. Fly them every other day and you need 60 1/4 scale vehicles. No spares, none "in the shop." If you crash a few, the project just stretches a few days. At the end of that time, you have enough power for full scale vehicles. At 72 launches per day, and flying every other day, you need ~175 with spares and some in the shop. Each vehicle will fly ~183 times a year. If they wear out in 500 flights, they will last ~2.7 years. 5.5 per month will need to come off the production lines to replace those wearing out. I am just running through a pert chart, This might not be the best or lowest cost way to get the laser seed or the first full scale (2 GW) laser built. If anyone has better ideas, I am open to them. Keith From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 07:36:45 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:36:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Power sats and payload size was Small solar satellites In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 5:12 PM, ?Adrian Tymes wrote: >> Ah. ?So the ~1 kg sats would, at best, work as a demonstration so you >> could get the investment needed to do a multi-ton launch. ?Thanks. > > Hmm. ?Not sure you grok the sheer scale involved. No, I do. The point is to demonstrate everything besides scale, so that you can then win investment to scale with. Scale is not the only challenge - you may think it the biggest one, but it can be tackled with brute financial force. This reduces the problem to, how to get said brute financial force. A tiny demonstration - enough to show that you can handle all the other challenges - would go a long way towards that end. > One would do it. ?I don't think you appreciate just how little power > is needed to be "measurable." I thought that might be the case, actually. But I figured you'd know for sure. Thanks for the confirmation. > I don't exactly know what you mean in this context by "cheaper." ?Just > about any existing launch rocket is "cheaper" for a one off launch > than designing, building and testing a new one. The research effort this stems out of, is proposing to design, build, and test a new launch system anyway. This inquiry is just gauging how useful it would be toward this end. Answer: you wouldn't be running many flights on it - a few at most, more likely just one. >> And yes, it would offer a substantial discount. ?The majority of launch >> costs arise because the equipment involved is used so infrequently. >> If you had ~250 launches, at 1/month or more frequently, you could >> slash launch costs by over half, possibly to 10% or less. > > One per month would take 21 years. ?Starvation will get here first. Only if we started after oil runs out. But yeah, you'd want to do it faster. Careful, though: 1 launch per month is the fastest turnaround time many in the rocket business can imagine. This says more about how ingrained they are in the slow, costly, and rather wasteful launch procedures that exist today, than about what's actually possible. But asking them to push beyond that before you're actually launching at that rate will get you dismissed out of hand. You'd have to get to 1/month, keep that rate up for a few months, then start broaching the topic of daily launches, then multiple-per-day. From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 12:07:49 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:07:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On 25 February 2012 22:09, Jeff Davis wrote: > The energy "problem" we face -- not the bogus end times scare fantasy > -- is basically one of price. We've had so much for so long and so > cheap, that being wasteful has become SOP. When you see wastefulness > for what it is, the solution becomes obvious. Stop being wasteful. > Really, it's just that simple. > I started it all by posting a link to an article in the Register, which was immediately commented by Eugen by pointing to sources that on the contrary illustrate how the peak oil prob would be real and quite immediate. Much of the debate is factual, and I am inclined to reserve judgment on that (albeit being generally quite wary of fear-mongering attitudes). But what seems excessive to me is that some of use appear to deny *in principle* and *at any time* the risk of ending up in energetic (economic, evolutionary, etc.) dead ends, where selection for immediate returns would actively prevent us from making the investments or the detours necessary to get out of our predicament(s). This reminds me of faith in the Providence (or avatars thereof, such as the Invisible Hand) and is quite symmetrical to the millenial idea that Doom is impending unless we see the Errors of Our Ways, Atone and Expiate. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 13:22:34 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:22:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: 2012/2/26 Stefano Vaj wrote: > But what seems excessive to me is that some of use appear to deny *in > principle* and *at any time* the risk of ending up in energetic (economic, > evolutionary, etc.) dead ends, where selection for immediate returns would > actively prevent us from making the investments or the detours necessary to > get out of our predicament(s). > > This reminds me of faith in the Providence (or avatars thereof, such as the > Invisible Hand) and is quite symmetrical to the millenial idea that Doom is > impending unless we see the Errors of Our Ways, Atone and Expiate. > > I have always found that it is much easier to make decisions when you are faced with no alternative. I have the feeling that is what our politicians are waiting for. We already seem to be at the stage where we have no 'good' choices left. Politicians like to offer a view of wondrous benefits if you vote for them. Even in the middle of the worst financial crisis the world has seen, politicians are eager to talk about their spending plans. At the moment the water is getting hot, but it is not yet hot enough that we have to jump before we boil. Politicians just can't promise higher taxes and work harder to solve a problem in twenty years time. They won't get elected next year and that's their main concern. When things get bad enough that the people are marching to demand higher taxes and crash programs for energy development - then the politicians will step forward and leap into action. We must anticipate bad things to come. BillK From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sun Feb 26 14:28:56 2012 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 07:28:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <4F4A41A8.1020306@canonizer.com> Bill and Stefano, Thanks so much for pointing out how important all this is. I so much agree, just as you say, on both sides. It sounds like you guys think at least some people believe, it is the politician's job to handle this, yet they can't do anything because of the popular vote! And THAT is the problem. The poloticians have nothing, really, to do with any of this. If we could know, concisely and quantitatively, what everyone wanted, we wouldn't even need any politicians. We simply need to find way to amplify the moral wisdom of society, so the moral wisdom of the experts in the crowd no longer get drowned out by the mistaken, clueless, people that mistakenly think they are the 'moral majority'. Part of this is surveying for what everyone does believe on all such issues. Again, we need to know, concisely and quantitatively, what everyone does believe, in a way so that the moral experts can see what everyone believes, and where they are mistaken, and why. The moral experts need to be able know what evidence, and arguments, might convince everyone, not just themselves. And we need to provide the common man, with the ability to select who they think are the experts, and provide a way for them to have easy access reference access so they can know what they all think, concisely and quantitatively, are the best actions to take. Sure, some people are going to select the experts, incorrectly, but on the hole things should improve significantly. And, again, measuring for, and knowing who are everyone's experts, is part of the problem. All this can be improved. All this is and so much more is what canonizer.com is all about. We need to provide a tool to the experts so they can all build as much consensus as possible on everything they do agree on, without focusing so much on what they disagree on. We need to measure this consensus. All these kinds of thinks will make it possible to significantly amplify the moral wisdom and intelligence of the crowd, and stop all this infernal, eternal, yes, no, yes, no, deadlock, nobody can do anything other than find something to disagree about, and kill each other because of it. We've got to find out, concisely, quantitatively, and in real time, what the minority moral experts believe, and provide a way for the rest of us to understand and keep up, and correspondingly, atone and expiate. Brent Allsop On 2/26/2012 6:22 AM, BillK wrote: > 2012/2/26 Stefano Vaj wrote: >> But what seems excessive to me is that some of use appear to deny *in >> principle* and *at any time* the risk of ending up in energetic (economic, >> evolutionary, etc.) dead ends, where selection for immediate returns would >> actively prevent us from making the investments or the detours necessary to >> get out of our predicament(s). >> >> This reminds me of faith in the Providence (or avatars thereof, such as the >> Invisible Hand) and is quite symmetrical to the millenial idea that Doom is >> impending unless we see the Errors of Our Ways, Atone and Expiate. >> >> > I have always found that it is much easier to make decisions when you > are faced with no alternative. > I have the feeling that is what our politicians are waiting for. > > We already seem to be at the stage where we have no 'good' choices > left. Politicians like to offer a view of wondrous benefits if you > vote for them. Even in the middle of the worst financial crisis the > world has seen, politicians are eager to talk about their spending > plans. > > At the moment the water is getting hot, but it is not yet hot enough > that we have to jump before we boil. Politicians just can't promise > higher taxes and work harder to solve a problem in twenty years time. > They won't get elected next year and that's their main concern. When > things get bad enough that the people are marching to demand higher > taxes and crash programs for energy development - then the politicians > will step forward and leap into action. We must anticipate bad things > to come. > > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sun Feb 26 15:09:42 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:09:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: <4F4A41A8.1020306@canonizer.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> <4F4A41A8.1020306@canonizer.com> Message-ID: On 26 February 2012 15:28, Brent Allsop wrote: > The moral experts need to be able know what evidence, and arguments, might > convince everyone, not just themselves. > I do not believe for a minute that "moral experts" exist who be anything else than historians of ethical systems - something which is not really a qualification for making my choices in my stead. As to "politicians" and "votes", the problem, as with "markets", has simply to do with game theory unravelling effects, and I suspect that it cannot be solved unless we accept that plural, competing collective entities be maintained preventing all eggs to be put in a single basket and being affected by Darwinian pressures. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 15:21:14 2012 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:21:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Occupy Elsevier? A boycott of the publishing giant swells, but is the criticism warranted? Message-ID: Please post this story on your Facebook and Google+ walls, to get it as much publicity as possible. Thanks! http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/07/occupy-elsevier/ Nearly 4,500 researchers have signed an agreement to refrain from publishing in, refereeing, and/or performing editorial services for journals produced by the science-publishing behemoth Elsevier. But the publisher of several well-respected life-science journals, including *Cell* and *The Lancet*, maintains that a misunderstanding of its intentions, and not unfair business practices, are fueling the boycott. The boycott was launched on January 21 when renowned Cambridge University mathematicianTimothy Gowers detailed his criticisms of the company?s business practices on his blog *Gowers?s Weblog *. His reasons for the boycott included what Gowers referred to as the ?very high prices? Elsevier charges for subscriptions to its journals, the practice of ?bundling,? in which academic libraries are sold package deals that include desirable as well as less than desirable journal titles, and Elsevier?s support of the Research Works Act, a bill making its way through the US House of Representatives that seeks to limit open access policies at federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health. ?I also don?t see any argument at all against refusing to submit papers to Elsevier journals,? Gowers wrote. ?So I am not only going to refuse to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on, but I am saying so publicly. I am by no means the first person to do this, but the more of us there are, the more socially acceptable it becomes, and that is my main reason for writing this post.? The blog post was tweeted, retweeted, linked in Facebook, and otherwise spread like wildfire throughout the Internet. Within days, thousands of Gowers?s fellow mathematicians and other academics had signed on to the boycott at a site?http://thecostofknowledge.com/?set up by Tyler Neylon, co-founder of data analysis company Zillabyte, expressly for the purpose of collecting names in support of the anti-Elsevier stance. As of this writing, 4439 people had signed up, including more than 570 biologists. Albert Einstein College of Medicine geneticist Brett Abrahams learned of the boycott when a friend posted a link to the cost of knowledge website on Facebook last week. Later the same day he joined the boycott himself. ?When I signed on to the website there was something like 1500 names,? Abrahams recalled. Abrahams, who studies the genetic roots of autism, said that he joined the boycott for what he considers the unsustainable nature of the subscription-based publishing model for scientific research. ?The notion that the government pays my salary and my colleagues? salaries and enables us to do this very expensive research and then requires separate funding for us to access our work,? he said, ?That?s insane.? Though he admits that he?s not intimately familiar with the way in which Elsevier conducts business, Abrahams said that open-access publishing is a fairer way to disseminate knowledge gained from publicly funded research. ?I know very very little about Elsevier and the specifics associated with it,? he conceded. ?The only problem I have with them is their resistance to facing the reality of the changing environment. I don?t believe that we should continue with this system rigged in the way it is now.? Younger researchers also joined the Elsevier boycott. Aspiring soil scientist and Virginia Tech grad studentNick Bonzey heard about the boycott via a post on the popular blog BoingBoing. ?It was a way to show my support to end monopolistic practices by big companies like that,? he said. Bonsey added that unease with Elsevier?s ?bundling? practices bugged him the most. ?Virginia Tech struggles from keeping their libraries from sucking up too much money,? he said. ?If I didn?t have access to all the literature that was relevant in my field, I?d have to pay $20-30 per article. I wouldn?t be able to do my work.? Theoretical biology PhD student Joel Adamson signed up for the boycott after reading about it on Twitter. He said that seeing prominent scientists, such as renowned Masachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist Hal Ableson , on the list influenced his decision to join. ?Seeing the names of people who had already signed up was the critical thing,? Adamson said. Like Bonzey and Abrahams, the University of North Carolina grad student said that the stark distinction between Elsevier?s publishing model and that of open-access publishers was central to his support of the boycott. ?I?m not opposed to the basic idea of subscription-based journals,? Adamson said. ?Day by day I see people making a bigger commitment to open-access publishing, and I don?t think [Elsevier] can stand up for very much longer with their business model.? Elsevier maintains that the criticisms are based more on a misunderstanding of the company?s goals and strategies than a truly flawed or unethical business model. David Clark, Elsevier?s senior vice president for physical sciences, said that the boycott is still troubling to the company. ?The fact that anybody wants to say that they don?t want to work with us is something that is going to cause us concern,? he said. ?I wouldn?t underestimate just how alert we are when people have this negative sort of reaction.? But Clark rebutted the criticism voiced in Glowers?s blog post, starting with the claim that Elsevier?s subscription prices are too high. ?Our list prices, on a price per article basis, are absolutely on the industry average,? he claimed. ?This image of these journals becoming more and more expensive and less and less accessible simple isn?t true.? Clark also refuted the notion that Elsevier was forcing institutional libraries to buy bundles of journal titles and ruthlessly negotiating those deals. ?If you look at what libraries choose to do, they do choose to take some of these packages,? he said. ?We?re not in the business of forcing people to take journals.? Clark added that libraries have the option of purchasing each of Elsevier?s publications individually if they don?t want to buy bundled packages. Clark defended the company?s decision to support the Research Works Act through its membership in the Association of American Publishers, a trade group that is lobbying for passage of the legislation. ?We want to have a voluntary relationship, and we want to encourage authors to get their work out and disseminated,? he said. ?We?re not wild about government mandates,? such as the NIH?s mandate that any research supported with public funds be submitted to the publically accessible digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication in journals. ?But I don?t think any other publisher is wild about that either.? Elsevier posted a statement echoing Clark?s stance on the Research Works Act (RWA) this past weekend. ?We are against unwarranted and potentially harmful government laws that could undermine the sustainability of the peer-review publishing system,? the statement reads. ?The RWA?s purpose is simply to ensure that the US government cannot enshrine in law how journal articles or accepted manuscripts are disseminated without involving publishers. We oppose in principle the notion that governments should be able to dictate the terms by which products of private sector investments are distributed, especially if they are to be distributed for free.? The boycott, Clark added, largely boils down to academic authors failing to understand how the business side of Elsevier works. ?I think people are misunderstanding, but I think part of the fault in that is ours,? he said. ?I look at the current situation, and we just need to do a better job of communicating about who we are, what we want to achieve, and how we value access and dissemination.? But academics who?ve signed on to the boycott are thinking about their futures in a future without Elsevier journals. ?It?s really frustrating because it?s so much extra work now to figure out alternatively where to submit my papers,? Abrahams said. The Albert Einstein College of Medicine geneticist noted that he?d have to balance his own stance on Elsevier with the good of his students and collaborators. He admitted that if he?s in a collaborative situation in which the decision of where to publish findings is not his to make, he?ll likely voice his opinion but ultimately yield to the consensus, even if that means publishing in an Elsevier title. ?At that point, that?s going to be a very hard decision for me,? Abrahams said. ?Then, I don?t think it?s in my students, or my institution?s interest to walk away.? *Correction (Feb 13, 2012): The original version of this article incorrectly identified Tyler Neylon as a grad student at NYU. In truth, Neylon secured his PhD and has moved on to bigger and better things. The mistake has been fixed, and * The Scientist* regrets the error.* James Clement -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 14:58:57 2012 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:58:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: BILK said, "I have always found that it is much easier to make decisions when you are faced with no alternative. I have the feeling that is what our politicians are waiting for." We've had numerous technologies that would save us lots of fuel, but there's not only no political interest in doing so, but the OPEC countries actively engage in "dumping" to ruin our alternative-fuel industry. A few years ago, an American consulting firm admitted to advising Saudi Arabian oil ministers that if they randomly dropped the price of oil every few years, for six months, that they'd completely disrupt the alternative energy startups, and cut off all investor funding to them (which relies on stable, high oil prices, for their projections). This seems to be the case, and most VC funds won't touch alternative energy companies for this reason (unpredictable prices). The only way around this was proposed a few years ago by a 3rd-party presidential candidate (I don't remember who) that we should impose a high enough tax on oil to keep the price stable, regardless of the market price. In Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan suggests that the industrial food chain primarily benefits agricultural corporations like Cargill and ADM because they are able to buy corn at a consistently cheap price and then process the cheap corn into ?value added? products. He points out that corn is production is inextricably tied into hydrocarbons, both directly (fertilizers) and indirectly (fuel for the tractors, combines, etc.). Quote from 2009 Popular Science article : An electric Humvee may still sound like fingernails on a chalkboard to environmentalists, but the company developing a plug-in Hummer H3e claims its green version can get 100 mpg on average. And what's a little boasting without taking a shot at the competition?$5/gallon adjusted price at the pump would be added to an alternative fuels fund. Raser Technologies calls its revamped Hummer a "Prius-Stomping Green Machine," based on an E-REV powertrain that supposedly enables large vehicles to drive the first 40 miles in all-electric mode. The company calculates that a typical driver who goes 65 miles per day would average about 100 mpg, and that driving over 200 miles per day would still get about double the fuel economy of a regular Hummer." Johnathan Goodwin has been profiled by several magazines , for his ability to double the gas milage of nearly any vehicle, including Gov. Schwarzenagger's '89 Jeep Wagoneer, by converting them to biodiesel. He uses nothing that Detroit couldn't use, but don't. If you don't start getting a conspiratorial view of what goes on regarding alternative energy, then you don't see the whole picture... IMHO. Best regards, James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 26 15:32:00 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 07:32:00 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <000901ccf49b$c91f6d50$5b5e47f0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK >...When things get bad enough that the people are marching to demand higher taxes and crash programs for energy development - then the politicians will step forward and leap into action... BillK _______________________________________________ BillK this is a very British comment that made me smile. People do not march to demand higher taxes. That makes the problems worse. Politicians stepping forward and leaping into action doesn't solve problems, it makes them worse too. People must march to lower taxes, which frees up capital, which leads to the means of solving problems. Politicians leaping into action is how we end up in trouble. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Feb 26 16:44:26 2012 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:44:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanist Apps Message-ID: <004c01ccf4a5$e7287030$b5795090$@cc> Hi everyone - I am working on a project and need your help. If you can provide any information or ideas on the following it would be great! All contributions will be included in the references of the project and any work that you are doing will be credited and referenced. 1. What wearable technologies (including hand held devises, appendable devises, and other technological interfaces and software for human use): a. What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed for humans to better understand their physical bodies? i. This concerns issues such as physical health - (e.g., apps that might monitor a person's hormone level, glucose level, etc.) ii. This concerns issues of physical exercise - (e.g., apps that might help a person who is at the gym, which would have her exercise routine, or for running a marathon that might encourage the runner to keep going!) iii. This concerns issues such as mental health - (e.g., apps that might connect people if they feel lonely, depressed, etc.) iv. This might concern issues such as a person drinking too much alcohol, drugs, etc. (e.g., an app that remind a person that he is not supposed to be having more than 2 glasses of wine, or not to have more than 3 cigarettes a day, etc.) b. What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed for humans become more intelligent? i. This might be apps that would help a person with his memory by reminding him to make visual or verbal associations, etc. . ii. Or, this might be apps that would help a person with mathematics, linguistics, aesthetics - etc. 2. What apps do you think we need to create that would help humans become transhuman or posthuman? 3. What do you think we need to create that would help a person better understand ways in which s/he could become aware of posthuman futures, the singularity, etc? a. What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed for humans to enhance (human enhancement). b. What apps might remind a person about choices s/he makes that could affect his future longevity? Thanks, Natasha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 16:24:32 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:24:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Power sats and payload size was Small solar satellites Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 5:00 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 10:42 PM, Keith Henson wrote: snip >> I don't exactly know what you mean in this context by "cheaper." ?Just >> about any existing launch rocket is "cheaper" for a one off launch >> than designing, building and testing a new one. > > The research effort this stems out of, is proposing to design, build, and > test a new launch system anyway. ?This inquiry is just gauging how > useful it would be toward this end. ?Answer: you wouldn't be running > many flights on it - a few at most, more likely just one. There are scale problems. The drag on the vehicle goes up by the frontal area, square of the linear dimensions, the mass of fuel by the cube of dimensions. There are also tracking problems because the target shrinks and the pointing and tracking problems for the laser get worse. I think a 30 ton with a 5 ton delivery to GEO will work. Not sure where it becomes too hard to work. > Careful, though: 1 launch per month is the fastest turnaround time many > in the rocket business can imagine. ?This says more about how > ingrained they are in the slow, costly, and rather wasteful launch > procedures that exist today, than about what's actually possible. ?But > asking them to push beyond that before you're actually launching at > that rate will get you dismissed out of hand. ?You'd have to get to > 1/month, keep that rate up for a few months, then start broaching the > topic of daily launches, then multiple-per-day. While there might very well be a month between the first test launch and the second, the project makes no sense without a rapid ramp up to 3 per hour. It just takes that many for it to make economic sense. And there are people, at Reaction Engines in particular, who already think in these terms. If the Chinese do it, they will be solving their energy problems. If the US does it, the main reason will be the secondary use of the propulsion laser--even if it *never* used for that. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 26 16:45:19 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 08:45:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <001e01ccf4a6$06e5be50$14b13af0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of James Clement Subject: Re: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) >.BillK said, "I have always found that it is much easier to make decisions when you are faced with no alternative. I have the feeling that is what our politicians are waiting for.".We've had numerous technologies that would save us lots of fuel, but there's not only no political interest in doing so. Best regards, James To add to James' comments, there are some things that politicians can do to help. For one instance, consider the super lightweight single seat ape haulers we currently envision. We know those rigs do not do everything, but they do one thing well: haul one ape a fairly short distance at moderate speeds. If used that way, they are great, but we know they aren't any good for hauling the kids to school, for picking up more than one sack of groceries, for cross country runs, for those applications which require speed. We have our current do-everything ape haulers for that purpose. So, what we need to be doing is making the license and tax fee structure to encourage ownership of two ape haulers per ape. Instead of charging a tax on each vehicle as is now the case, charge one fee per driver, who then can have as many ape haulers as she wants. Then a family can keep the venerable old comfortable, fast, versatile, expensive V8, but use the light small slower super economical single seater when that rig will do. Current vehicle based tax structures discourage this. Secondly, we could build low speed lanes to the far right of existing roads which are specifically restricted to sub-500 kg class vehicles which cannot keep up with Mister V8 and present a danger to their drivers, if required to share a lane. That lane can be restricted to a 50 kph, and shared by human powered vehicles and such. There are things politicians can and should do for transportation, but most of it is leaping out of action. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 17:42:23 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 17:42:23 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: <001e01ccf4a6$06e5be50$14b13af0$@att.net> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> <001e01ccf4a6$06e5be50$14b13af0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/26 spike wrote: > Secondly, we could build low speed lanes to the far right of existing roads > which are specifically restricted to sub-500 kg class vehicles which cannot > keep up with Mister V8 and present a danger to their drivers, if required to > share a lane.? That lane can be restricted to a 50 kph, and shared by human > powered vehicles and such. > > Errrr, shouldn't that be to the far *left*? We have them in the UK already. They are called cycle lanes. Also because your single-seat electric mini cars are definitely a *leftish* conception. The far right likes V12 twin-turbo vehicles, surely? ;) More seriously, James pointed out the reasons for the failure of private investment in alternative energy. At present they will just lose their money. This project needs long-term investment. Private investment likes quick(ish) profits. China makes very long-term investments, knowing that they won't really pay off until the next generation. Besides, under the present system, 'freeing up private capital' will just mean that the banks and corporations will take it all and use it to buy another luxury island hideaway. BillK From clementlawyer at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 17:55:18 2012 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:55:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: <001e01ccf4a6$06e5be50$14b13af0$@att.net> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> <001e01ccf4a6$06e5be50$14b13af0$@att.net> Message-ID: <5E9D8A57-D92A-40CF-AFC3-2921A39AA5BE@gmail.com> Spike writes: "To add to James? comments, there are some things that politicians can do to help." Respectfully speaking as an Agorist, nothing will change until the Oligarcgy/Corporatocracy has bled the hydrocarbon market dry and then figured out to corner another (alternative) fuel market for their sole profit. Best regards, James From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 18:08:31 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:08:31 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Power sats and payload size was Small solar satellites In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 8:24 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > There are scale problems. Yep. Those are being addressed by the research effort. Not your problem - unless you want to help me realize a delivery service that's focused on making space far more accessible to low budget folks by developing a launcher that gets just 1 CubeSat to LEO. If you want to help, our current challenge is surveying the commercially available rockets to see what good "mid sized" options are available. Most of the rockets are either multi-ton (too big to be economical) or amateur (too low specific impulse to do the job, even in bulk). But I've found a few. Specifically, we're looking at 200-400 kg total rocket mass, to get a 1 kg payload into LEO. For example, the HM-7B is close but probably a bit much: http://cs.astrium.eads.net/sp/launcher-propulsion/rocket-engines/hm7b-rocket-engine.html If that sounds like too much work, then just let me worry about it. I am well aware that scale is one of the problems, but there is no reason to believe it is insolvable. > While there might very well be a month between the first test launch > and the second, the project makes no sense without a rapid ramp up to > 3 per hour. ?It just takes that many for it to make economic sense. > And there are people, at Reaction Engines in particular, who already > think in these terms. Of course. But you'll need to plan on taking it slow and then ramping up. From max at maxmore.com Sun Feb 26 18:09:02 2012 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 11:09:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanist Apps In-Reply-To: <004c01ccf4a5$e7287030$b5795090$@cc> References: <004c01ccf4a5$e7287030$b5795090$@cc> Message-ID: A good source may be: http://quantifiedself.com/ --Max 2012/2/26 Natasha Vita-More > Hi everyone ?**** > > ** ** > > I am working on a project and need your help. If you can provide any > information or ideas on the following it would be great! All contributions > will be included in the references of the project and any work that you are > doing will be credited and referenced.**** > > ** ** > > **1. **What wearable technologies (including hand held devises, > appendable devises, and other technological interfaces and software for > human use):**** > > **a. **What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed > for humans to better understand their physical bodies?**** > > ** i. **This concerns issues > such as physical health ? (e.g., apps that might monitor a person?s hormone > level, glucose level, etc.)**** > > ** ii. **This concerns issues > of physical exercise ? (e.g., apps that might help a person who is at the > gym, which would have her exercise routine, or for running a marathon that > might encourage the runner to keep going!)**** > > ** iii. **This concerns issues > such as mental health ? (e.g., apps that might connect people if they feel > lonely, depressed, etc.)**** > > ** iv. **This might concern > issues such as a person drinking too much alcohol, drugs, etc. (e.g., an > app that remind a person that he is not supposed to be having more than 2 > glasses of wine, or not to have more than 3 cigarettes a day, etc.)**** > > **b. **What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed > for humans become more intelligent?**** > > ** i. **This might be apps > that would help a person with his memory by reminding him to make visual or > verbal associations, etc. ?**** > > ** ii. **Or, this might be > apps that would help a person with mathematics, linguistics, aesthetics ? > etc.**** > > **2. **What apps do you think we need to create that would help > humans become transhuman or posthuman?**** > > **3. **What do you think we need to create that would help a person > better understand ways in which s/he could become aware of posthuman > futures, the singularity, etc?**** > > **a. **What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed > for humans to enhance (human enhancement).**** > > **b. **What apps might remind a person about choices s/he makes that > could affect his future longevity?**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > Thanks,**** > > Natasha**** > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 E. Acoma Dr # 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 480/905-1906 ext 113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 18:40:55 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:40:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: <001e01ccf4a6$06e5be50$14b13af0$@att.net> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> <001e01ccf4a6$06e5be50$14b13af0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/26 spike : > Secondly, we could build low speed lanes to the far right of existing roads > which are specifically restricted to sub-500 kg class vehicles which cannot > keep up with Mister V8 and present a danger to their drivers, if required to > share a lane.? That lane can be restricted to a 50 kph, and shared by human > powered vehicles and such. I don't know what the landscape around your commute looks like but the majority of apes hauling themselves to and fro are doing so in metropolitan areas. We can't even repair the deplorable state of existing roads (because there is no alternate route during the repair perioid) much less create addition lane(s) of "low speed"(!) travel. I think for the cost investment and social acceptability of your proposal you might as well campaign for a flying-car in every garage. Equally likely would be to suggest unicorn-drawn carriages. Ok, that was facetious but my point is that engineering feasibility alone is not enough. Owning a cabinet full of politicians is not enough. You'll also need to solve the problem of public opinion. Talk about an unstable reactant; there's enough volatility to surely blow your face off. I'm still hoping for virtualizing the ape-haul for those of us apes who work via telepresence even when physically located at the employer's zoo. We don't need new engineering to make that happen; just financial incentives to convince the old-boys that leaving people at home is more cost effective than putting them in cube farms. The big boss still likes to survey his or her "floor" of workers as a measure of power and influence. From atymes at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 18:37:41 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:37:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Transhumanist Apps In-Reply-To: <004c01ccf4a5$e7287030$b5795090$@cc> References: <004c01ccf4a5$e7287030$b5795090$@cc> Message-ID: Aww, wish you'd been out here last month. VLAB just hosted a panel on wearable tech, back in January, that touched on quite a bit of this. And in October, they hosted an Augmented Reality panel - fortunately, there's video of that if you want: http://www.vlab.org/article.html?aid=430 The key takeaway from the January event was that, at the moment, wearable tech is as much - if not more - about fashion than function. Yes, a smart watch has a "glance" UI that no other platform has. But as far as peoples' willingness to use them (which is the chief limit on their utility to most people), they are more about - and more constrained by - what the wearer thinks the impression on others is, than on what the wearer can do with it. Similar constraints apply to non-smart-watch wearable tech, unless it is completely hidden within clothing (which limits what it can do). In other words, "wearer looks cool (or at least less uncool) while using it" is as much of a market requirement as, say, "device has enough battery life" or "device reliably performs its function". That said, I have - in my notes from the January event - a list of companies you can look up that are active in this space: Allerta, Inc / InPulse watches Basis Casio Eurotech Group Evena Medical Fitbit Garmin GPS Edge 800/500/200; Vector hd3 Compilation Jawbone UP Kisai LAKS / Watch2Pay Lark LOOXCIE Meta Watch Ltd. Minimal / TikTok, LunaTik Motorola Mobility Devices / MotoACTV Nike NYXIO Perfect Third Inc: WakeMate Philips Recon Instruments Robomotic / Ellipse RoundArch Shimmer Research Si14 / I'MWATCH Sifteo Sony Ericsson / LiveView SWAPCO Vuzix WristOffice Xybernaut Zeal Optics Zeo Inc. ZIIIRO Celeste Does this help? 2012/2/26 Natasha Vita-More : > Hi everyone ? > > > > I am working on a project and need your help.? If you can provide any > information or ideas on the following it would be great! All contributions > will be included in the references of the project and any work that you are > doing will be credited and referenced. > > > > 1.???? What wearable technologies (including hand held devises, appendable > devises, and other technological interfaces and software for human use): > > a.???? What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed for > humans to better understand their physical bodies? > > ????????????????????????????????????????? i.??? This concerns issues such as > physical health ? (e.g., apps that might monitor a person?s hormone level, > glucose level, etc.) > > ???????????????????????????????????????? ii.??? This concerns issues of > physical exercise ? (e.g., apps that might help a person who is at the gym, > which would have her exercise routine, or for running a marathon that might > encourage the runner to keep going!) > > ??????????????????????????????????????? iii.??? This concerns issues such as > mental health ? (e.g., apps that might connect people if they feel lonely, > depressed, etc.) > > ??????????????????????????????????????? iv.??? This might concern issues > such as a person drinking too much alcohol, drugs, etc. (e.g., an app that > remind a person that he is not supposed to be having more than 2 glasses of > wine, or not to have more than 3 cigarettes a day, etc.) > > b.??? What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed for > humans become more intelligent? > > ????????????????????????????????????????? i.??? This might be apps that > would help a person with his memory by reminding him to make visual or > verbal associations, etc. ? > > ???????????????????????????????????????? ii.??? Or, this might be apps that > would help a person with mathematics, linguistics, aesthetics ? etc. > > 2.???? What apps do you think we need to create that would help humans > become transhuman or posthuman? > > 3.???? What do you think we need to create that would help a person better > understand ways in which s/he could become aware of posthuman futures, the > singularity, etc? > > a.???? What apps are in use, being developed, or might be developed for > humans to enhance (human enhancement). > > b.??? What apps might remind a person about choices s/he makes that could > affect his future longevity? > > > > > > Thanks, > > Natasha > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From bbenzai at yahoo.com Sun Feb 26 19:08:39 2012 From: bbenzai at yahoo.com (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 11:08:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Billion euro projects In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1330283319.17259.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> "Natasha Vita-More" wrote: > Hi Tom,? it is my understanding that Henry Markram is > distinctly opposed to > transhumanism. Correct me if I am wrong. > Ha, you don't have to agree with transhumanism in order to contribute to it! Ben Zaiboc From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sun Feb 26 19:29:58 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:29:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Billion euro projects In-Reply-To: <1330283319.17259.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <1330283319.17259.YahooMailClassic@web114416.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 26 February 2012 20:08, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Ha, you don't have to agree with transhumanism in order to contribute to > it! > ... but normally you try to atone by bad-mouthing it. See for instance Ian Wilmut. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Feb 26 23:24:04 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:24:04 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> <001e01ccf4a6$06e5be50$14b13af0$@att.net> Message-ID: <005901ccf4dd$bb199ef0$314cdcd0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty ... Subject: Re: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) 2012/2/26 spike : >>... Secondly, we could build low speed lanes to the far right of existing roads which are specifically restricted to sub-500 kg class vehicles ... >...I don't know what the landscape around your commute looks like but the majority of apes hauling themselves to and fro are doing so in metropolitan areas. We can't even repair the deplorable state of existing roads (because there is no alternate route during the repair perioid)... Mike that is part of it, ja, but in many cases the deplorable state of the existing roads is a result of intentional inaction on the part of state legislatures. We have an example of a high level state legislator saying exactly that, caught on an open microphone and recorded. Terrible roads encourage the voters to raise taxes to fix those roads. The raised taxes are not used to fix the roads, for ratty old roads are a great moneymaker. It's a perfect example of immediate pain felt by taxpayers, more than closed parks and schools. >...much less create addition lane(s) of "low speed"(!) travel... In many places, bike lanes already exist, but are underused, because they feel dangerous. There is no physical divider between the bike lane and the ordinary traffic other than a white line. It is far too easy to imagine riding a bike in that lane, some drunken pickup truck driving yahoo is texting and putting on lipstick, drifts over, and you are dead. I have a solution: put a physical barrier on the white lines. This would cost even less than using existing concrete barriers, for the existing ones are over-spec for this purpose. The barrier does not need to withstand the impact of a drunkard's Detroit, but rather would decrease the chances the yahoo would drift over. Think about it. A physical barrier would make the bicycle lane feel safer, even if a determined Detroit driver could still theoretically slay a bicycler in that lane. Having a physical barrier there would cause her to drive a little farther over to the left, contributing to the safety of the cyclist. Next, the barriers need not be as sturdy as existing ones, nor would they need to be mounted on rods. They could be put down with a high viscosity adhesive, such as tar, so that installation is cheap. A car could knock them over, but my notion is that such an arrangement would be better than a white line. They could be made of the very lowest grade concrete, with the assumption that they would be a total loss if struck, which again would be a cost savings. If we figure out a way to make single seat ape haulers safe, they will be used. spike From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 02:52:14 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:52:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: <006e01ccf4fa$d01043f0$7030cbd0$@att.net> In my studies, I keep bumping into memes like this one, which make me squirm: Additionally, off-label use raises questions of fairness. Insurance companies do not usually cover off-label use of a drug, which means the patient will have to pay for the cost out-of-pocket. This can be prohibitively expensive. For example, the WSJ report on the drug approved to treat MS and may relieve ALS symptoms is called Gilenya and costs around $52,365 per year. Therefore, only those who can afford the hefty price tag are able to try Gilenya off-label, while poorer patients, or those that do not have an extra $50,000 available, do not have the option of using Gilenya for off-label use. http://blogs.tiu.edu/bioethics/2012/02/20/clinical-trials-or-off-label-use/ This notion can be extended to the kinds of advances we transhumanists might expect. We may find technological advances which allow superior performance, such as steroids for instance. Are we then expected to eschew these advances because every yahoo cannot afford it? What if we find out that bexarotene really does cure Alzheimer's? What if we are then told we cannot have it because every Alzheimer's patient cannot afford it? Wouldn't be fair you know. Sooner or later, it will occur to the population that if bexarotene helps Alzheimer's patients, perhaps it will also help those who do not have Alzheimer's but whose youth occurred tragically many years ago, and these have sufficient funds to finance the meds themselves. Why not? Do we need to hold up every medication until some magic single payer comes along, willing to buy every medication for everyone? In the meantime are we expected to do without? Bexarotene is a great test case. It is expensive, but not THAT expensive, and waaay cheaper than institutional care. It is a good example of a medication which some people will be able to afford easily, others will be able to afford with some discipline, and for some it will be as far out of reach as the moon. Do we have medical ethicists among us who can offer guidance? What is money for? Why should we work and save if we are not allowed to use our money any way we please? Are we to eschew cryonics because everyone cannot afford it? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From clementlawyer at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 03:24:06 2012 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:24:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <006e01ccf4fa$d01043f0$7030cbd0$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <006e01ccf4fa$d01043f0$7030cbd0$@att.net> Message-ID: Spike says: > "This notion can be extended to the kinds of advances we transhumanists > might expect. We may find technological advances which allow superior > performance, such as steroids for instance. Are we then expected to eschew > these advances because every yahoo cannot afford it? What if we find out > that bexarotene really does cure Alzheimer?s? What if we are then told we > cannot have it because every Alzheimer?s patient cannot afford it? > Wouldn?t be fair you know." > > > It's the 10 years and $800+ Million that it costs to satisfy the FDA that makes these drugs cost $50000to $100,000 per year. I can bet that the active ingredients cost no more than a few hundredths of a cent per dose. But to amortize the cost of approval over the number of expected sales and then make a profit - that boosts it to this extreme level. Short of getting rid of the FDA, one remedy is outright piracy. Maybe flash bio-mobs that get together just long enough to produce a year's worth of a particular drug and take orders online via mirrored sites. I'd like to hear other, practical, options that don't involve having to convince the voters to elect a Libertarian (RP) as President... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 03:15:43 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:15:43 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] >.Sooner or later, it will occur to the population that if bexarotene helps Alzheimer's patients, perhaps it will also help those who do not have Alzheimer's but whose youth occurred tragically many years ago, and these have sufficient funds to finance the meds themselves. Why not? spike Well hell, since I offered us all permission to answer our own questions, I will do so now. Why not try bexarotene myself? If I can get some of this stuff, I am willing to rely on my own calculations and research regarding bexarotene manufacturing, its intermediate components and its catalysts, aluminum trichloride and sodium hydroxide, the concentrations thereof, and my studies regarding solubility. Why not? The stoner crowd is willing take appalling risks to poke junk into their veins and sniff or eat god knows what, manufactured by who knows, with huge motive for all intermediate handlers to add who knows to increase profits, and yet no problem, up the nose with it, fearless as hungry lion. But when we get a known medication taken not for kicks but to possibly defeat a horrifying disease, suddenly we go all wobbly kneed? Come on, someone explain this to me please. No one? OK, good, here's the plan, if I can get some of this (still looking.) A therapeutic dose of bexarotene is 75 mg. My suspicion is that it is not completely dissolved to the molecular level in the form of Targretin, but I might be wrong, so my strategy is to take a tenth of that dose, in a form I know is completely dissolved, in about 10 grams of alcohol. Then I watch and test myself for any signs of hypothyroidism or any increase in memory, or anything else, and I am FREEEEE of all ethical dilemmas, ja? I cannot be faulted for taking the stuff myself, right? Cannot I pretend that it is some kind of dope, in which case our modern society's notions of ethics mysteriously excuse the devourer from all responsibility and accountability? Why do the stoners get a free pass but we amateur researchers don't? Come on, my fellow extropians, toss me a bone here, offer a suggestion, talk me out of this if there is a good reason this is a bad idea. Otherwise, suggest a place where I might get some bexarotene. I feel like I am sailing uncharted waters alone. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 03:42:48 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:42:48 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <006e01ccf4fa$d01043f0$7030cbd0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/26 James Clement : > It's the 10 years and $800+ Million that it costs to satisfy the FDA that > makes these drugs cost $50000to $100,000 per year. I can bet that the active > ingredients cost no more than a few hundredths of a cent per dose. Look through the process to make some generic drugs - aspirin, for example. You might be surprised. On top of that, there's the cost of equipment to make the drugs. (And then there's the non-FDA parts of the cost to actually develop the drug in the first place, but you're talking piracy anyway.) From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 03:40:14 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:40:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <006e01ccf4fa$d01043f0$7030cbd0$@att.net> Message-ID: <009401ccf501$84a06ba0$8de142e0$@att.net> >. On Behalf Of James Clement Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? Spike says: "This notion can be extended to the kinds of advances we transhumanists might expect.Wouldn't be fair you know." James wrote: >.It's the 10 years and $800+ Million that it costs to satisfy the FDA that makes these drugs cost $50000to $100,000 per year. I can bet that the active ingredients cost no more than a few hundredths of a cent per dose. But to amortize the cost of approval over the number of expected sales and then make a profit - that boosts it to this extreme level. OK thanks James, ja, I agree, and there is nada I can do about that. Sorry Eisai, the cat is out of the bag and there is no getting her back in. There are plenty of us out here willing to risk a tenth of a milligram of whatever impurities are in 10 mg of reagent grade bexarotene, going around your ultra-pure Targretin, sorry. If I could legally get Targretin, I would use that, cut it into ten doses (I know how to do that and I have the equipment) mix that with alcohol to insure it is completely dissolved to the molecular level, and down the hatch. I am willing to experiment on myself, before I suggest it to anyone else. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. >.Short of getting rid of the FDA, one remedy is outright piracy. Disagree sir, with all due respect, and you know I love you like a brother, but THIS IS NOT PIRACY to use bexarotene off-label, no sir. Eisai does not own that molecule and every use and misuse to which it might be put, no way. I do respect the notion of intellectual property, but I do not feel it is stealing anything from Eisai to use reagent grade bex, or Targretin for that matter. Thanks for the input James. Others please? If you have already hit five posts today, don't worry about it, I won't notice, and no one is complaining. I need guidance riiiiight noooowwwww. Dr. Rafal, are ye out there, me lad? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 03:55:10 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:55:10 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <006e01ccf4fa$d01043f0$7030cbd0$@att.net> Message-ID: <009f01ccf503$9a711130$cf533390$@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 >... >...(And then there's the non-FDA parts of the cost to actually develop the drug in the first place, but you're talking piracy anyway.) _______________________________________________ Thanks Adrian, but I disagree, if I understand you correctly. If I try to make aspirin myself, that is not piracy since the patents have long since expired. If I find some use for aspirin other than headaches, that isn't piracy either. If I find some off-label use for a drug and take it for that purpose, that isn't piracy, the manufacturer makes her sale regardless of what malady I suffer. If I figure out how the drug is made and I take the responsibility of using the process on less refined constituents, and I am not selling that drug to others, I don't see that this is piracy either. I don't have T-cell lymphoma, so my taking bex isn't hurting their sales. Question: is it piracy to blab on the internet about dissolving reagent grade bexarotene in alcohol rather than buying their fancy pants patented and FDA-approved Targretin? spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 27 04:43:06 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 20:43:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> Message-ID: <1330317786.93308.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ?From: spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 7:15 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? ? >Come on, my fellow extropians, toss me a bone here, offer a suggestion, talk me out of this if there is a good reason this is a bad idea.? Otherwise, suggest a place where I might get some bexarotene.? I feel like I am sailing uncharted waters alone. You could befriend a prole pharmacy tech. Find out when a batch of Targetrin will expire. Maybe he will drops some hints as to when/where he plans to throw it out? Drugs expired by a day or two are not really expired. Anybody who tells you different is on a pharm company's payroll. ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 05:21:35 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:21:35 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <1330317786.93308.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> <1330317786.93308.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00b401ccf50f$ad6b0b90$084122b0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of The Avantguardian Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? ?From: spike Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? ? >>...Come on, my fellow extropians, toss me a bone here, offer a suggestion, talk me out of this if there is a good reason this is a bad idea.? Otherwise, suggest a place where I might get some bexarotene.? I feel like I am sailing uncharted waters alone. >...You could befriend a prole pharmacy tech... Stuart LaForge Hmmm, thanks for the suggestion Avant, but this is out of the question. That could put the pharmatech at risk. But I might consider finding a lymphoma patient and buying exactly one tablet of Targretin from her. What I need is some means of determining if a mysterious white powder is actually bexarotene. I don't know how that is done, but I can imagine there are plenty of unscrupulous types that are trying to sell who knows what as bexarotene. A few minutes ago I learned from a private source that Eisai's supply of Targretin is very nearly exhausted. Imagine that. At this point I specifically want to go around Targretin and get unrefined bexarotene, so as to not compete with those who need Targretin. The ethical dilemmas pile high. The demand for Targretin has been steady for at least 11 years, but now it has gone crazy. It isn't easy to ramp up production of that stuff overnight. So it is likely that cancer patients will do without, for having to compete with every yahoo hoping to cure AD, which is 1000 times more common that T-cell lymphoma. I can see why Dr. Landreth would be reluctant to spill this result, while simultaneously being reluctant to not spill this result. Stuart, good thinking, me lad! Let's try something else, like attempting to synthesize bex at home, or failing that, some means of uncovering the purity of this substance. The recreational drug community has spawned a million of amateur chemists, for their needs are pretty similar to ours right now. Let's have these guys come forth, and offer suggestions. spike From nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk Mon Feb 27 12:34:31 2012 From: nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk (Tom Nowell) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:34:31 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1330346071.48236.YahooMailNeo@web132106.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Spike asked how come stoners take colossal risks putting god knows what junk into themselves and get a free pass. Well, the simple answer is they're not actually taking that big a risk. They have the mighty power of mammalian evolution on their side, and the human body is amazing at detoxifying all sorts of crap. You can fill yourself with rubbish, wash down your pharmaceuticals with a dose of ethanol that would butcher some other mammals, get the munchies and eat some junk food which is more additives than farm produce and still only have a modest hangover in the morning. I remember hearing a statistic about how many millions of pills of what customers believe is MDMA are taken each week in the UK, but I thought the figure I remembered was too high.?http://mdma.net/club-drugs/uk.html?reproduced an Observer article from 2003 stating the UN reckoned 730k people took MDMA in the UK, and the National Criminal Intelligence Service said from 500k to 2m pills of "MDMA" (well, something that produces a similar high mixed with random cutting agents, but lets pretend it's actually the drug people thought they were paying for) were consumed each week. If that's true, then in 2003 from 25m to 100m badly produced, minimally quality controlled tablets were taken in the UK for the purposes of getting high, and only 72 people died in "ecstasy related deaths", some of which were down to accidents they could have had on other intoxicating substances, some due to allergy, some due to people overdrinking water because they thought they needed that much while taking the drug.?http://thedea.org/statistics.html?says that in a UK study of 81 deaths where MDMA was present, only 6 died of MDMA toxicity. So, maybe 100 million tablets for single figures of actual deaths from poisoning. It says a lot about the resilience of the human body that large-scale consumption of illegal synthetic drugs still kills less people than old-fashioned heroin or cocaine. (It also says a lot about the UK that so many people escape the tedium of their lives through getting completely off their faces, nothing has changed since the gin-swilling drunks depicted by Hogarth in the 18th century) The acceptable risk levels allowed for pharmaceuticals are very small, and many medicines are rejected each year for small levels of risk. Cancer drugs are allowed to have a bigger level of risk than many others because the patients suffering the disease are staring at a very shortened lifespan as it is. Everyday medications, like contraceptives, have to have a very low level of risk simply because so many people will be taking them for years at a time. As Anders likes to point out in his talks on risk, what sort of price are we willing to put on these small risks? Mike Darwin gave a talk to the UKTA a few years back when he pointed out the work of the HIV underground in pressuring the government and research organisations into speeding up testing of antiretroviral therapies. It made a big difference to HIV sufferers, and could work for other conditions too. Tom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Feb 27 13:54:26 2012 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:54:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: <4F4B8B12.1020506@libero.it> Il 26/02/2012 00:22, spike ha scritto: > The transition to renewable energy is really > about fertilizer and powering farm equipment. That one isn't getting any > easier, and currently isn't really even being improved. Everything else has > technologically easy (even if painful) solutions. Nuclear (fission or fusion don't really matter) is the solution to this. With cheap energy, production of fertilizers could be done economically. Then, if you have cheap energy (heat and electricity) you could start producing much more agricultural stuff inside the cities and not outside of them. The great problem is the huge overhead the cost of the government put on everything we do. Take this away, in the form of less taxes and regulations, and many things will become economically profitable to do. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Feb 27 14:22:57 2012 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:22:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <20120225155158.GE7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <20120225155158.GE7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4F4B91C1.3040006@libero.it> Il 25/02/2012 16:51, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 01:52:35PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote: >> If the direst forecasts are true, this would risk however being futile. > Nothing is ever futile. The higher the conversion volume done sooner, > the less the pain. The question we're facing is how dire the energetic > austerity is going to get, and how many people will have to starve. In the current predicament? Many more than the necessary. The zero interests rate of the ECB, BoE, Fed, BoJ are inflating other bubbles (housing in North Europe for example) draining purchasing power from producers to rent seekers and other parasites. It will not end well because it can not end well. >> Italy, eg, wasted substantial resources subsidising (corrupted and >> anti-economic) developments of solar and aeolic, and is now already > Italy should do very well with solar and geothermal, particularly given > that the panel prices will be soon at the point where feed-in tariffs > are immaterial. "Will be soon" is not and never will be "are". Industries like Alcoa are not interested in unaffordable, undependable, dispersed power production. They will close down their foundries and move the production where cheap energy is available. The support and subsides to wind power and solar is costing the common people a lot of money (directly from their power bill) as cheaper, more affordable, dependable and competitive power is forced to pay for the scam of the day (aka wind and solar). > Where most countries fail so far, is synfuels. Germany is further > ahead given that it will reach the point of >100% peak demand filled > with renewables reasonably soon, and will face the dilemma of using it > or losing it. The national natural gas storage infrastructure can buffer > up to 3 months and take up to 5-10% of hydrogen with no modifications, > and of course there's Sabatier. Methanol or formic acid from scrubbed > carbon dioxide and hydrogen is also not very difficult. What would you use to produce synfuel? Solar? Geothermic? Wind? I just note that Germany delayed the closing of its nuclear power plants. Solar PV is unable to generate any economic return without subsides, ditto for wind. When it will be, there will not be the need for subsides. > Terrestrial (or even for the inner solar system) fusion for energy production > isn't going to happen. It's really hard to compete with the Sun. Unfortunately, the Sun is a bit far away and exploiting its energy is a bit problematic if you must sell it without resorting to government supported stealing and Ponzi schemes. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Feb 27 14:58:05 2012 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:58:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <4F4B99FD.10905@libero.it> Il 26/02/2012 13:07, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On 25 February 2012 22:09, Jeff Davis > wrote: > But what seems excessive to me is that some of use appear to deny *in > principle* and *at any time* the risk of ending up in energetic > (economic, evolutionary, etc.) dead ends, where selection for immediate > returns would actively prevent us from making the investments or the > detours necessary to get out of our predicament(s). > This reminds me of faith in the Providence (or avatars thereof, such as > the Invisible Hand) and is quite symmetrical to the millenial idea that > Doom is impending unless we see the Errors of Our Ways, Atone and Expiate. The trust in free markets and free competition is not like faith in government or gods. The trust in free market is based on the assumption that people do what they think good for themselves and, without violence, they can not damage others. Market work "as there is" an Invisible Hand managing them. There is no Invisible Hand, but from naive external observers it could appear so. The faith of people in Visible Hands from the governments appear much more delusional than the trust in a not existent Invisible Hand. For example, the faith of Italian people in the government is completely delusional as it never was able to show a balanced budget in the last fifty years (and more). Maybe they think now it is different, now they will do it right. We are so screwed but we are not alone. The US and all Europe is screwed, Japan is screwed. It will be much worse in other places like Syria and Iran or Egypt. Do transhumanist will fall for the fallacies of central planners like the monkeys of the past or not? There will be a great purchasing power transfer, a great wealth transfer, in the future (it is already happening now). Do transhumanists will lose or will profit from this opportunity? Mirco From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 15:34:10 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:34:10 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <1330346071.48236.YahooMailNeo@web132106.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <1330346071.48236.YahooMailNeo@web132106.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00f101ccf565$40f7deb0$c2e79c10$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tom Nowell Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 4:35 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? >.Spike asked how come stoners take colossal risks putting god knows what junk into themselves and get a free pass. Well, the simple answer is they're not actually taking that big a risk. Thanks Tom! That is exactly what I suspected. Our litigious society goes to heck and gone chasing tiny risks, when huge risks result from inaction. I propose a class of medications in which we apply the shocking caveat that the patient accepts her own risk, because we do not know everything. The stoners REALLY ARE a special class of people, I say with all due respect and humility, for they accept their own risk, in the sense they don't sue anyone if their dope is insufficiently pure and safe. Of course they load their cost and risk onto us in other ways, but they don't sue. >. They have the mighty power of mammalian evolution on their side, and the human body is amazing at detoxifying all sorts of crap. Ja, again, this is what I concluded independently. If I devour 10 mg of reagent grade bexarotene, I am getting at most a tenth of a milligram of impurities, less than one six-hundreth the mass of a typical grain of table salt, and I know what most of that is. I can accept that risk. The ethanol should slay any bio-beasts, and both known catalysts are harmless and kittens. >.The acceptable risk levels allowed for pharmaceuticals are very small, and many medicines are rejected each year for small levels of risk. Tom Ja, I think we have painted ourselves into a corner because of how our societies handle risk. We have a system which encourages lawsuits from those unlucky few who suffer from the consequences of small risks. I propose a system whereby we acknowledge that we own our own risk, then ask a pool of cluemeisters, like you dear readers, to estimate how we can hurt ourselves, then make an educated guess, then should we choose to proceed, we own our own damn risk. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 16:08:47 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:08:47 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <00f101ccf565$40f7deb0$c2e79c10$@att.net> References: <1330346071.48236.YahooMailNeo@web132106.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <00f101ccf565$40f7deb0$c2e79c10$@att.net> Message-ID: <010501ccf56a$167c11b0$43743510$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike . If I devour 10 mg of reagent grade bexarotene, I am getting at most a tenth of a milligram of impurities, less than one six-hundreth the mass of a typical grain of table salt.spike Ooops, take that comment with a huge grain of salt. I Wolframed "mass of a typical grain of sodium chloride" and got back 64 mg, wrote it and went along my merry way without thinking for a second, Wait, that would be one hell of a salt grain. I would believe 64 micrograms, although I think it is more like about a tenth of a mg to perhaps half a milligram, somewhere in that range. It occurred to me in the shower half an hour later that I had made about a two orders of magnitude error, damn. This is the problem, the internet makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. This time it made me dumber. {8-[ Most of the time it goes the other way. {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 16:47:15 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:47:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 3:22 PM, spike wrote: >?The transition to renewable energy is really > about fertilizer and powering farm equipment. ?That one isn't getting any > easier, and currently isn't really even being improved. ?Everything else has > technologically easy (even if painful) solutions. Really? There are plenty of electric tractors out there, and PV to make the energy for them locally would seem to optimize power production for when it's needed (coupled with wind if you need power for winter crops). As to fertilizer production, a quick google on "fertilizer production" strongly suggests it is being worked on. That said, high abundance of electrical power - to make hydrogen production via electrolysis more economically practical than hydrogen production from hydrocarbons - would help with this. From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 16:53:25 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:53:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] exoskeleton makes the lame to walk Message-ID: <012501ccf570$532ef3b0$f98cdb10$@att.net> Well done, lads from that other school up there which isn't Stanford but smart people go there too: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Ekso-Bionics-Delivers-First-Ekso-Exo skeleton-1620284.htm February 15, 2012 12:00 ET Ekso Bionics Delivers First "Ekso" Exoskeleton Investigational Studies Completed: All Paraplegic Patients Walked During First Session BERKELEY, CA--(Marketwire - Feb 15, 2012) - Ekso Bionics today announced that the first commercial unit of its Ekso exoskeleton was delivered yesterday, on February 14, to Craig Hospital in Denver. Ekso is a wearable robot that powers paraplegics up, enabling them to stand and walk. In addition -- working together with top rehabilitation centers in the U.S. -- Ekso Bionics just completed a ten-month Investigational Study of Ekso that entailed reciprocal information sharing and learning, training, as well as the definition of clinical protocols. Delivery of Eksos -- beginning with Ekso Bionics' Charter Rehabilitation Centers -- will take place over the course of the next three months. Ekso is a ready-to-wear, battery-powered exoskeleton designed for patients with spinal cord injuries and pathologies that inhibit their ability to walk. It is strapped over the user's clothing. The patient doesn't bear the weight, however, as the device transfers its 45 lb. load directly to the ground. Each Ekso can be adjusted in a few minutes to fit most people weighing 220 pounds or less, and between 5'2" and 6'2", with at least partial upper body strength, and can be adjusted to fit one patient and then another in minutes. "We said we'd be shipping the first units in Q1 of 2012, and we made that deadline," explained Eythor Bender, Ekso Bionics' CEO. "Ekso Bionics has fulfilled all of the FDA requirements that empower the company to sell the first commercial version of the Ekso exoskeleton to rehabilitation centers," he added. The sale of each exoskeleton to rehabilitation centers includes "Ekso +," a comprehensive service, financing and training program. Investigational studies of the device at the Charter Rehabilitation Centers have just been completed. The ten-month program defined clinical protocols, and provided insights into ways to improve the device. The charter hospitals will also become the first Ekso Centers in the world, conducting ongoing research, and offering the device for the rehabilitation of their patients. Among the preliminary results of the Investigational Studies: 70 subjects were proposed by the rehabilitation centers. All 63 patients that passed the preliminary health screening were able to walk 81 to 638 steps during their first session in Ekso. 7 of the 70 proposed subjects did not pass the preliminary screening due to flexibility, bone density and/or weight issues, so were unable to participate. The average number of steps taken in a session was over 200. 4,000 to 5,000 steps were taken on average per Investigational Study week. "It was phenomenal," architect Robert Woo and patient explained to the NY Daily News after taking 300 steps at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, where he's undergoing rehabilitation. "I was so excited to be walking on my own two feet, walking naturally." Michael Rhode, a C6/7 quadriplegic at the Kessler Institute, thought the experience "was one of the most unbelievable feelings I've ever had. I just started walking." He certainly did. Michael took 520 steps during his first session in Ekso. "We've been wowed by the dedication and willingness to collaborate on the part of our rehabilitation partners," stated Eythor Bender. "The input from their world-class physical therapists led to multiple new and improved features on the Ekso device, such as the adjustment of the harnessing system and the control interface. All of these remarkable centers are still on this journey with us and in it for the long haul. Knowing that every single participant stood and walked during their first session confirms that we are on track to alter the future of spinal cord injury rehabilitation," he added. Darrell Musick, PT clinical director for Ekso Bionics, oversaw the Investigational Studies and explained, "We were able to verify the safety of the device with various injury levels, body types and varying height/weight. Moreover, we worked closely with 31 physical therapists and successfully tested the user experience together." "Our initial testing clearly showed that with some assistance, patients with different levels of spinal cord injuries (SCI) can walk with Ekso. At Kessler Foundation, we plan to look not just at mobility, but the impact of that mobility on serious health issues. Do walking and standing improve bone and muscle strength, circulation, respiratory function, skin integrity, mood, and even bowel and bladder function? These are the really important issues we want to explore for people in wheelchairs, whether their impairment is caused by spinal cord injury, or stroke, MS, or brain injury," added Gail F Forrest, Ph.D., senior research scientist, Human Performance & Engineering Research at Kessler Foundation. Ekso Bionics' Charter Rehabilitation Centers are: Craig Hospital, Englewood, CO Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network, Allentown, PA Kessler Foundation, West Orange, NJ Mount Sinai Medical Center, NY, NY Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), Chicago, IL RIM Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, Detroit, MI Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific, Honolulu, HI Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, CA Shepherd Center, Atlanta, GA Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston, MA TIRR Memorial Hermann, Houston, TX About Ekso Bionics Ekso Bionics (http://www.eksobionics.com) -- formerly known as Berkeley Bionics and headquartered in Berkeley, California with offices in London, UK -- is a designer and maker of wearable robots, or exoskeletons, that physically augment humans. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 17:34:55 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:34:55 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: <4F4B99FD.10905@libero.it> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> <4F4B99FD.10905@libero.it> Message-ID: On 27 February 2012 15:58, Mirco Romanato wrote: > The trust in free markets and free competition is not like faith in > government or gods. The trust in free market is based on the assumption > that people do what they think good for themselves and, without > violence, they can not damage others. > > Market work "as there is" an Invisible Hand managing them. There is no > Invisible Hand, but from naive external observers it could appear so. > Yes, some as evolution. But evolution *does* involve dead ends. And similarly, the fact that people do what they think good for themselves - or even what they are compelled to do lest they be simply eliminated by competition - does not prevent in the least the fact that the end result may well be catastrophic, eg, out of "free riders" or "unravelling" effects. The possibility of such outcomes is entirely consistent with game theory or with classical economic theory. The best we can do is to make players to re-assess their priorities so that their economic behaviour is accordingly altered. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 17:52:58 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:52:58 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <00f101ccf565$40f7deb0$c2e79c10$@att.net> References: <1330346071.48236.YahooMailNeo@web132106.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <00f101ccf565$40f7deb0$c2e79c10$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/27 spike > We have a system which encourages lawsuits from those unlucky few who > suffer from the consequences of small risks. > Yes, in the US you do have punitive damages in civil cases. In Europe, we have nanny-states with politicians bureaucrats that *especially if they are not corrupted* have nothing to win, and much to lose, by accepting any level whatsoever of risk, and stamping their acceptance thereof, so possibly becoming escape goats in PR nightmares. Hey, am I speaking as a libertarian here? :-) Or perhaps the truth is that we should trust China to be relatively exempt from both the dissuasive factors above.. :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jrd1415 at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 18:24:51 2012 From: jrd1415 at gmail.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:24:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/26 spike : > The stoner crowd is willing take appalling risks to poke junk into their > veins and sniff or eat god knows what, manufactured by who knows, You could dial down this rather rough-edged characterization of "the stoner crowd". Overdose, disease, and despair destroy lives across the straight<->spectrum. Alcohol and tobacco take their toll, but straight and sober folks can and do also crater in the face of unsympathetic circumstance. If you had ever gone to an Alcoholics anonymous or narcotics anonymous meeting -- which I take it Mr. Straight Arrow Jones has not, and I commend you for your admirable and unblemished lifestyle -- you would have had the opportunity to look around and notice that we're all ***just regular folks*** with our personal particular irregularities, just trying to get it back on track and keep it there. Just like you ewith your current -- if more severe -- Alzheimer's challenge. > But when > we get a known medication taken not for kicks but to possibly defeat a > horrifying disease, suddenly we go all wobbly kneed?? Come on, someone > explain this to me please. Everybody goes "wobbly" under severe stress. An Alzheimer's problem will do that. But in this special bexarotene vs Alzheimer's case, the problem is amplified. You have great loyalty and confidence in the "straight" system, and have (I guess) rarely strayed from the approved path. So going "outlaw" is scary to you. Additional unneeded stress, that, going against the tribe. But as they say, "The first time is always the hardest." Segue. I still don't know why Landreth kept the CWRU research results secret until forced to publish, but I accept as a default presumption that, at least consciously, he thought he was the right thing. > here?s the plan, if I can get some of this (still > looking.)? A therapeutic dose of bexarotene is 75 mg.? My suspicion is that > it is not completely dissolved to the molecular level in the form of > Targretin, but I might be wrong, so my strategy is to take a tenth of that > dose, in a form I know is completely dissolved, in about 10 grams of > alcohol.? Then I watch and test myself for any signs of hypothyroidism or > any increase in memory, or anything else, and I am FREEEEE of all ethical > dilemmas, ja? Sure, good plan. > I cannot be faulted for taking the stuff myself, right? As long as it doesn't make you high. ;-} > Cannot I pretend that it is some kind of dope, in which case our modern > society?s notions of ethics mysteriously excuse the devourer from all > responsibility and accountability?? Why do the stoners get a free pass but > we amateur researchers don?t? Oy! Take the stuff already. Just face up to the fact that your going to become a gibbering degenerate, incapable of self-control and moral coherence. > Come on, my fellow extropians, toss me a bone here, offer a suggestion, talk > me out of this if there is a good reason this is a bad idea.? Otherwise, > suggest a place where I might get some bexarotene. On day one, I Googled up at least two Chinese suppliers who deal in kilogram quantities. Send them an email, ask price, and a spec sheet detailing purity level and impurity concentrations. >? I feel like I am sailing > uncharted waters alone. You are most definitely in uncharted waters and just as definitely not alone. There are 5.4 million Alzheimer's sufferers and probably 40 or 50 million of their friends all in the boat with you, shrouded in the mists of Maya. Segue. Blood brain barrier. >From Wikipedia re bexarotene this comment: Mechanism Bexarotene is a retinoid specifically selective for retinoid X receptors,... RXRs are located primarily in visceral organs such as the liver and kidney. *********************** As the CWRU study shows efficacy on the other side of the murine BBB, we can conclude that either bexarotene crosses the murine BBB, or that it doesn't need to. That ApoE is upregulated and reduces dissolved amyloid beta levels where that is (presumably) needed, is demonstrated. Start there, re its effect across the human BBB, and go and collect some (human) data. Segue. It seems to me that bexarotene, if it has a comparable effect in humans as in mice, will be more a preventive, and a means to halt progression, than a cure. Human Alzheimer's is thought to be asymptomatic for the first ten to fifteen years. So for people at high risk -- those possessing ApoE allele 4 -- or with the development of a means of early -- pre-symptomatic -- diagnosis, bexarotene could be employed as a preventive. Rolling back more advanced Alzheimer's, which involves neurofibrilary tangles, tau proteins, and nerve cell death -- all of which are not found in the mouse model -- is clearly a follow on challenge, and one on which the effect of bexarotene is currently a zero-data zone. That's it for now. Very curious to find out the Kg price for Chinese reagent grade bexarotene. Do tell us when you find out. Best, Jeff Davis "Everything's hard till you know how to do it." Ray Charles From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Feb 27 18:36:56 2012 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:36:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Ignorant fear mongering (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil)) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120225101558.GQ7343@leitl.org> <20120225114020.GY7343@leitl.org> <4F48DDD8.20600@canonizer.com> <4F4B99FD.10905@libero.it> Message-ID: <4F4BCD48.1090904@libero.it> Il 27/02/2012 18:34, Stefano Vaj ha scritto: > On 27 February 2012 15:58, Mirco Romanato > wrote: > > The trust in free markets and free competition is not like faith in > government or gods. The trust in free market is based on the assumption > that people do what they think good for themselves and, without > violence, they can not damage others. > > Market work "as there is" an Invisible Hand managing them. There is no > Invisible Hand, but from naive external observers it could appear so. > > > Yes, some as evolution. But evolution *does* involve dead ends. In fact, you want the dead enders to die. Or, in a market economy, the losers to go broken and stop losing. > And similarly, the fact that people do what they think good for > themselves - or even what they are compelled to do lest they be simply > eliminated by competition - does not prevent in the least the fact that > the end result may well be catastrophic, eg, out of "free riders" or > "unravelling" effects. This is true, because humans could foresee the future with various degree of certain, but not know it in advance. > The possibility of such outcomes is entirely consistent with game theory > or with classical economic theory. The possibility of such outcome is present even if the individuals are controlled by the government. I would say the past suggest this outcome is more probable when governments are allowed to dictate the actions of individuals. The individuals running the government rarely have the same priorities and incentives as the people they rule upon. > The best we can do is to make players to re-assess their priorities so > that their economic behaviour is accordingly altered. In the free market every and all actors are encouraged to re-assess their priorities continuously. The existence of a real free market take out the false feeling of safety that the existence of government planning give to the economic actors. Mirco From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 20:40:52 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:40:52 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> Message-ID: <017601ccf590$19a23ba0$4ce6b2e0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Davis Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 10:25 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? 2012/2/26 spike : >> The stoner crowd is willing take appalling risks to poke junk into their veins and sniff or eat god knows what, manufactured by who knows... >...You could dial down this rather rough-edged characterization of "the stoner crowd". Overdose, disease, and despair destroy lives across the straight<->spectrum... Acknowledged. Do let me restate in more diplomatic terms. I am criticizing the double standard. The stoners take whatever risky thing, society is all heh heh, girls just wanna have fuh-hunnnn. But let me do likewise, and suddenly I am some big evil peg-leg hook-hand eye-patch and green parrot on my shoulder pirate trolling the high seas, aaarrrrrr ye scurvy dogs! My disdain is not for the stoners, who may soon coming galloping to our collective aid, but rather the whole notion of labeling amateur pharmacists as pirates. I ain't buying it. We are closer to the noble and ballsy Columbus than Black Beard, aaarrrr. >...Alcohol and tobacco take their toll, but straight and sober folks can and do also crater in the face of unsympathetic circumstance. If you had ever gone to an Alcoholics anonymous or narcotics anonymous meeting -- which I take it Mr. Straight Arrow Jones has not... Thanks, never been to one of those but I have an interesting side comment. Twenty years ago I had a colleague who was for a while a fellow traveler with a certain church whose name is not mentioned, but whose name contains the same root word as Science and has an ology in there somewhere. He was a straight arrow engineering type, but found he just never did fit in with this crowd, because a bunch of them were recovering stoners. He had never touched the stuff, even back in the 70s. He noticed all too many of the regular meetings tended to break out into a spontaneous NarcAnon session, and he often felt like the only one there who had nothing to contribute. So he eventually just went away. No one noticed him gone. >... Just like you with your current -- if more severe -- Alzheimer's challenge... Not my, Jeff, our. The patient is myself in this case, but rather a family member. I had one grandfather who died of Alzheimer's, but neither of my parents are showing any signs in their 70s fortunately, nor are any of my uncles, all in their 70s, one in his 80s. So I might skate on that one, but this particular family member will not. That being said, Alzheimer's is one of the scariest things a cryonics patient can face. >...Everybody goes "wobbly" under severe stress. An Alzheimer's problem will do that. But in this special bexarotene vs Alzheimer's case, the problem is amplified... We have a sympathetic doctor who is urging the family to not jump the gun. Results are coming in, and we are but one family of hundreds she is treating, many clamoring for a shot at bexarotene. >... You have great loyalty and confidence in the "straight" system, and have (I guess) rarely strayed from the approved path. So going "outlaw" is scary to you... Hell yes! I am holding security clearances. I may need to either ask permission to do this or hand back my tickets, in which case I have no job. If that is what it takes, I may do it, but I think we can work with the system. Perhaps I can convince them that I am not trying to get stoned, nor do I wish to rob a few bucks from some enormous pharmaceutical corporation's bottom line, but rather just trying to save a family member's life and perhaps contribute to a problem plenty of us may face. >...I still don't know why Landreth kept the CWRU research results secret until forced to publish, but I accept as a default presumption that, at least consciously, he thought he was the right thing... I don't either Jeff. Apparently there has been a bunch of additional testing that we still don't know about, but the rumors are flying. Let us take two thirds of the advice of that LDS guy whose name escapes me: tune in, turn on, but do not drop out. News will be forthcoming, even if extracted with a crowbar. >> ... so my strategy is to take a tenth of that dose, in a form I know is completely dissolved, in about 10 grams of alcohol.? Then I watch and test myself for any signs of hypothyroidism or any increase in memory... >...Sure, good plan... However, this may not work: I am not an Alzheimer's patient myself and haven't noticed any particular unusual memory loss, other than failing to recall Dr. Leary's name temporarily in the above paragraph. I was never a fan of his, so my taking half a minute to recall his name isn't indicative of anything. So, question please Jeff and others: if we don't have memory loss symptoms, how can we determine if this stuff is effective? If we know someone who does have it, how can we feel confident we have informed consent of the patient to try it on them? What if we discover that bexarotene helps normal non-AD patients? Would not the clamor for the medications overwhelm the supply, depriving the unsuspecting cancer patients? Oy vey. >> ...I cannot be faulted for taking the stuff myself, right? >...As long as it doesn't make you high. ;-} Jeff Davis {8^D HEY! That?s IT! Jeff! We mix the stuff with cocaine, then all moral ambiguity is swept away with recreational drug use, all is well, for I have long advocated that all drugs should be legal (even if I do not advise their use) and no more ethical dilemmas. Oh wait, goodbye security clearance, goodbye job. {8-[ How about mixing it with some legal drug? Oh wait, already suggested that, alcohol, never mind. That?s IT! We use it as a flavoring for vodka! Call it a Targretin Wallbanger or an Amyloid Sundowner or something. Good thinking Jeff. spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 27 22:00:03 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:00:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ---- Original Message ----- > From: Adrian Tymes > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 8:47 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) > > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 3:22 PM, spike wrote: >> ?The transition to renewable energy is really >> about fertilizer and powering farm equipment. ?That one isn't getting > any >> easier, and currently isn't really even being improved. ?Everything > else has >> technologically easy (even if painful) solutions. > > Really?? There are plenty of electric tractors out there, and PV to make the > energy for them locally would seem to optimize power production for when > it's needed (coupled with wind if you need power for winter crops). > > As to fertilizer production, a quick google on "fertilizer production" > strongly > suggests it is being worked on.? That said, high abundance of electrical > power - to make hydrogen production via electrolysis more economically > practical than hydrogen production from hydrocarbons - would help with > this. I think what society needs is a balanced "energy diet". All this hydrocarbon burning is like a fat-only diet. Literally like spoonfuls of lard or butter.?Yes, it is cheap but SSSOOOOO DISGUSTING.??And all this CO2? That is the diarrhea of?your high-fat-diet. Don't believe CO2 is diarrhea? Try seeing how long you hold out with a?plastic bag sealed over your head. (WARNING: Do?*not* actually try.)?Yet solar-power, while more expensive than lard er oil, is like the broccoli of energy. It has NO emissions and while it has less calories, those calories can potentially last forever with proper maintenance. ? So people, you can continue guzzling that oil, which is like ordering off nature's value menu. Or you can pay the extra bucks to get a balanced energy diet so that you can build strong bones and conquer the stars. The choice is yours, I am just along for the ride. ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From spike66 at att.net Mon Feb 27 22:26:54 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 14:26:54 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <017601ccf590$19a23ba0$4ce6b2e0$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> <017601ccf590$19a23ba0$4ce6b2e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <019901ccf59e$e929a440$bb7cecc0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Doh! >... The patient is... not >... myself in this case, but rather a family member... Left out the word not. This in itself is worrysome. {8-[ spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 22:20:02 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:20:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 101, Issue 42 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: snip >> Terrestrial (or even for the inner solar system) fusion for energy production >> isn't going to happen. It's really hard to compete with the Sun. > > Unfortunately, the Sun is a bit far away and exploiting its energy is a > bit problematic if you must sell it without resorting to government > supported stealing and Ponzi schemes. That's subject to a straightforward analysis. For two cent per kWh power from solar can't cost more than $1600 per installed kW. Because of the peak to average factor of about 5, the cost of a kWp needs to be around $200 for ground solar. Even though the transmission cost 50%, it's more likely to reach this figure for space based solar power because the support structure is so much lighter. Keith From clementlawyer at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 23:08:25 2012 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:08:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: Adrian Tymes wrote: > Really? There are plenty of electric tractors out there, and PV to make > the > energy for them locally would seem to optimize power production for when > it's needed (coupled with wind if you need power for winter crops). > > Can you point me to a State where electric tractors are being used extensively for farming? I don't recall ever seeing one. Thanks. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Mon Feb 27 23:21:32 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:21:32 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/27 James Clement : > Adrian Tymes wrote: >> >> Really? ?There are plenty of electric tractors out there, and PV to make >> the >> energy for them locally would seem to optimize power production for when >> it's needed (coupled with wind if you need power for winter crops). >> > Can you point me to a State where electric tractors are being used > extensively for farming? I don't recall ever seeing one. Thanks. Define "extensively". I know there are several in California - but then, California has many tractors period. I don't have numbers, so I don't know what the % is. From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 27 23:24:05 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:24:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: <1330385045.24612.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ? >________________________________ >From: James Clement >To: ExI chat list >Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 3:08 PM >Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) > > >Adrian Tymes wrote: > >Really? ?There are plenty of electric tractors out there, and PV to make the >>energy for them locally would seem to optimize power production for when >>it's needed (coupled with wind if you need power for winter crops). >> >> >Can you point me to a State where electric tractors are being used extensively for farming? I don't recall ever seeing one. Thanks.? I can't do that but I can point you to a state where electric tractors haul thousands of tons of freight?hundreds of miles per day. That state is?California and the specific location is the?Port of Los Angeles.?Electric beats any internal combustion for "stop and go" because there is 0 idle cost. They can haul something like fifty tons per load. In any case farming involves lots of stop and go no?? ? ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 27 23:39:27 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:39:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] exoskeleton makes the lame to walk In-Reply-To: <012501ccf570$532ef3b0$f98cdb10$@att.net> References: <012501ccf570$532ef3b0$f98cdb10$@att.net> Message-ID: <1330385967.85496.YahooMailNeo@web164504.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> >________________________________ >From: spike >To: 'ExI chat list' >Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 8:53 AM >Subject: [ExI] exoskeleton makes the lame to walk > > >? >Well done, lads from that other school up there which isn?t Stanford but smart people go there too: Ahh yes, Spike, that would be the Merit League, as opposed to the Ivy League. That is to say that it takes more to both get into and graduate from than being a high-climbing, well-connected vegetable.??Ahem. ? ? Stuart LaForge "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From msd001 at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 03:16:26 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:16:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <017601ccf590$19a23ba0$4ce6b2e0$@att.net> References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> <017601ccf590$19a23ba0$4ce6b2e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 3:40 PM, spike wrote: > Acknowledged. ?Do let me restate in more diplomatic terms. ?I am criticizing > the double standard. ?The stoners take whatever risky thing, society is all > heh heh, girls just wanna have fuh-hunnnn. ?But let me do likewise, and > suddenly I am some big evil peg-leg hook-hand eye-patch and green parrot on > my shoulder pirate trolling the high seas, aaarrrrrr ye scurvy dogs! Unless something goes horribly wrong with your homemade meds, I'm pretty sure you lose you leg or eye. However, if your Chinese supplier tells you to pick up your ingredients yourself, you WILL be on a slow boat to (and from) China. You would of course be on the slow boat because it's more energy efficient. You would likely disembark and then continue your journey in your 50kg ape hauler. That is unless you were moving considerably large volumes of cargo, in which case you'd rely on the Detroit "suit-of-armor" which you'd also drive in the slow lane. :) > My disdain is not for the stoners, who may soon coming galloping to our > collective aid, but rather the whole notion of labeling amateur pharmacists > as pirates. ?I ain't buying it. ?We are closer to the noble and ballsy > Columbus than Black Beard, aaarrrr. You forget that both challenged the status quo. That is untenable to those with interests to protect. > However, this may not work: I am not an Alzheimer's patient myself and > haven't noticed any particular unusual memory loss, other than failing to > recall Dr. Leary's name temporarily in the above paragraph. ?I was never a > fan of his, so my taking half a minute to recall his name isn't indicative > of anything. ?So, question please Jeff and others: if we don't have memory > loss symptoms, how can we determine if this stuff is effective? ?If we know > someone who does have it, how can we feel confident we have informed consent > of the patient to try it on them? ?What if we discover that bexarotene helps > normal non-AD patients? ?Would not the clamor for the medications overwhelm > the supply, depriving the unsuspecting cancer patients? Oy vey. One idea comes to mind: how aware are you of your internal state? If you have some sense of a personality checksum or some means of determining the distance you have deviated from your baseline self - you might be able to sense changes caused by experimentation. If you are concerned the experiment could significantly influence/alter your perception of baseline then I suggest you have a journal. If you start now and build a sample of pre-experiment internal conversation (vs. what you converse here) you might have enough data to mine for differences over weeks/months into your experiment. You ARE planning for months, right? > How about mixing it with some legal drug? ?Oh wait, already suggested that, > alcohol, never mind. > > That?s IT! ?We use it as a flavoring for vodka! ?Call it a Targretin > Wallbanger or an Amyloid Sundowner or something. ?Good thinking Jeff. When you mentioned off-label aspirin use my first thought was as an additive to the water in your xmas tree. [http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070101162824AAykLXI] I personally prefer to eat the stuff myself for the headache caused by having a pine tree in the house. The soap idea is pretty good too. I guess it'd be difficult to make that into a bar with the amount of alcohol you're suspending this stuff in. Perhaps sell it as a powder that you have to mix into "water" much like any protein powder, but we'd all know the water you are talking about is vodka. For that matter you could add it to mouthwash, which is mostly alcohol already. Bex might as well be added for "tooth whitening" for all the purported good of those whitening substances already in your toothpaste. I digress. I don't have any chemistry or pharma skills to add to this conversation. I do suggest you consider the boat because you definitely don't want to try getting any of this through an airport... From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 28 04:00:14 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:00:14 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <006e01ccf015$4a77b3c0$df671b40$@att.net> <007601ccf061$78548240$68fd86c0$@att.net> <002401ccf382$a3c35f90$eb4a1eb0$@att.net> <007f01ccf4fe$17cc0960$47641c20$@att.net> <017601ccf590$19a23ba0$4ce6b2e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <002801ccf5cd$7a0b8d60$6e22a820$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty ... >> ...eye-patch and green parrot on my shoulder pirate trolling the high seas, aaarrrrrr ye scurvy dogs! ... >...One idea comes to mind: how aware are you of your internal state? I got lucky on that one. I have a program that comes with a lot of cheapy computers these days, Chess Titans. If I play fast, I am well matched with Chess Titans on the top level (10.) If I play at anything close to actual tournament speeds, I win every game, but if I play fast, it is a good match. I have had this for a couple years. I figure if I start to slip mentally, I will start losing more than winning against Titans on 10. I may keep this computer long after it is obsolete, just because it provides a good benchmark of my current mental skills. Something I was thinking about when I was fooling with an artificial intelligence class from Stanford last fall: we could perhaps develop software which takes text that we wrote at various points in our lives, and somehow figures out if we are declining or getting smarter. It could take into account sentence structure and complexity for instance, but not spelling, since we now have autocorrect. I think we can almost do this now. I have samples of my own writing dating back to about 1989 in ASCII format. Theory: my own writing is less annoying now than it was 15 yrs ago. {8^D >... If you have some sense of a personality checksum or some means of determining the distance you have deviated from your baseline self - you might be able to sense changes caused by experimentation... Coding is a good way to create a personality checksum. Last week I rewrote some code to solve Sudoku puzzles. I don't know why exactly, but about 8 yrs ago I somehow discovered a faster algorithm than the one I am using now. I haven't yet remembered how the heck I was doing that back then, but I will find it again perhaps. The code this time is waaay more compact than what I had then, but slower. Writing code is good for the brain. Thanks Mike, I see from your comments that you have been reading my posts. {8-] spike From eugen at leitl.org Tue Feb 28 07:27:20 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:27:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 02:00:03PM -0800, The Avantguardian wrote: > I think what society needs is a balanced "energy diet". All this hydrocarbon burning is like a fat-only diet. Literally like spoonfuls of lard or butter.?Yes, it is cheap but SSSOOOOO DISGUSTING.??And all this CO2? That is the diarrhea of?your high-fat-diet. Don't believe CO2 is diarrhea? Try seeing how long you hold out with a?plastic bag sealed over your head. (WARNING: Do?*not* actually try.)?Yet solar-power, while more expensive than lard er oil, is like the broccoli of energy. It has NO emissions and while it has less calories, those calories can potentially last forever with proper maintenance. I don't get it why people still think solar is expensive: it is certainly less expensive than new nuclear, and in dynamic large scale solar markets it is reliably the cheapest electricity by far during peak demand. Apparently almost nobody looked when nuclear France had to buy peak power from their nonnuclear neighbor this winter, which made a mint as the prices shot through the ceiling. In fact FiTs are being cut far sooner and far more severely than planned because they're eating into power supplier's profits. Their whole business model is at stake. Solar PV will be cheaper than dirty coal in less than 10 years, at which point the whole debate will look very silly in the retrospect. The actual problem is synfuels and synthons (e.g. reduction equivalents for ore) which is not on people's radars for some unfathomable reason (okay, I'm being uncharacteristically charitable here). ? > So people, you can continue guzzling that oil, which is like ordering off nature's value menu. Or you can pay the extra bucks to get a balanced energy diet so that you can build strong bones and conquer the stars. The choice is yours, I am just along for the ride. > ? > Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 08:50:49 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:50:49 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/27 James Clement queried: > Can you point me to a State where electric tractors are being used > extensively for farming? I don't recall ever seeing one. Thanks. > > I haven't heard about electric farm tractors either. Hmmmm. Looks like Google hasn't either. There are lots of small electric vehicles, like fork-lift trucks, dune-buggy type cars, even lawnmowers, but not big electric tractors for heavy farming use. John Deere doesn't make one, for example. Some reports say that hybrid systems are coming along, using electric power for attachments, like air-conditioning, pumps, etc, while retaining diesel for drive power. Farmers seem to think that using electric transmission in the rain in a muddy field is just not a good idea. I'd be interested if you can provide links to electric farm tractors. They certainly don't seem to be in extensive use at present. BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 14:34:10 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 07:34:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 5:00 AM, The Avantguardian wrote: snip >>Can you point me to a State where electric tractors are being used extensively for farming? I don't recall ever seeing one. Thanks.? > > I can't do that but I can point you to a state where electric tractors haul thousands of tons of freight?hundreds of miles per day. That state is?California and the specific location is the?Port of Los Angeles.?Electric beats any internal combustion for "stop and go" because there is 0 idle cost. They can haul something like fifty tons per load. In any case farming involves lots of stop and go no?? No. Most of the time a farm tractor is in the field, it is at close to full throttle. I wonder if I am the only one on the list with direct experience with farming? (Though in my case it is because two of my uncles and one aunt were farmers.) Keith From atymes at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 16:50:24 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:50:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:50 AM, BillK wrote: > 2012/2/27 James Clement queried: >> Can you point me to a State where electric tractors are being used >> extensively for farming? I don't recall ever seeing one. Thanks. > > I haven't heard about electric farm tractors either. > Hmmmm. Looks like Google hasn't either. Eh? "Electric tractor" and "electric farm tractor" get plenty of results. > There are lots of small electric vehicles, like fork-lift trucks, > dune-buggy type cars, even lawnmowers, but not big electric tractors > for heavy farming use. Is http://renewables.com/Permaculture/ElectricTractor.htm big enough? > I'd be interested if you can provide links to electric farm tractors. > They certainly don't seem to be in extensive use at present. Not as extensive as ICE, granted - not even close. Just like for autos, for the same reason. From pharos at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 17:32:13 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:32:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Is http://renewables.com/Permaculture/ElectricTractor.htm big enough? > Nawww. These are toy tractors. There are lots of small electric vehicles about the size of ride-on lawnmowers. DIY types are having fun using them on small farms. A typical small electric tractor (like the one you referenced) produces about 12 HP and will plough half-an-acre in two hours then have to recharge for 15 hours. (Don't try a battery swap in mud and rain!). That's not *real* farming. This is a *real* tractor ---- 200 to 280 HP or, to get really serious power, up to 560 HP, BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 28 17:32:19 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 09:32:19 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00ac01ccf63e$ecc2b3d0$c6481b70$@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 >>...They can haul something like fifty tons per load. In any case farming involves lots of stop and go no?? >...No. Most of the time a farm tractor is in the field, it is at close to full throttle... Ja, which makes tractor use a nearly ideal application of Diesel. If you are at idle, time is being wasted, which means money is being wasted. >...I wonder if I am the only one on the list with direct experience with farming? (Though in my case it is because two of my uncles and one aunt were farmers.) Keith Keith I suspect your experience is about 80% of the collective experience on this list on actual farms, and mine is about half of the remaining 20%. I have fresh memories of operating a tractor and burning up a tank of Diesel fuel. I am trying to imagine doing that job using an energy storage medium with about 1% of the energy density. I can imagine some applications for an electric tractor, but not the use I have. Regarding power use at idle for electrics, there is another consideration. A gasoline powered car uses zero energy when the engine is not running, but an all-electric vehicle discharges while sitting in the garage. This applies to lead-acid, NiCad and Li-ion tech, as well as every other electric storage medium. If you have a full charge on a bunch of batteries, we should calculate the energy used per day while sitting in the garage. I wouldn't think it negligible. For this reason, I think a series hybrid might have promise for automotive use rather than full electric. That way, you don't store very much energy in batteries and you keep your Diesel IC running at peak efficiency the whole time it is running. Series hybrids are inherently pokey, possibly too much so for most people in our current mindset. Our current mindset might be altered by what I expect in fuel prices as soon as Israel and Iran go at each other. Then people will compare Diesel series hybrids with bicycles instead of Detroit V8s, and marvel at how fast they are. spike From clementlawyer at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 17:45:33 2012 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:45:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <00ac01ccf63e$ecc2b3d0$c6481b70$@att.net> References: <00ac01ccf63e$ecc2b3d0$c6481b70$@att.net> Message-ID: > > >...I wonder if I am the only one on the list with direct experience with > farming? (Though in my case it is because two of my uncles and one aunt > were farmers.) Keith > > Grew up on a Midwest farm too, which is why I asked about evidence for existing electric tractors yesterday. James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Feb 28 20:10:51 2012 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:10:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> Il 28/02/2012 08:27, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > I don't get it why people still think solar is expensive: Maybe, the fact they ask and need subsides to sell PV solar installations is a give away of the fact solar is costly and not really competitive in a free open market. > it is certainly less expensive than new nuclear, If you make the solar jump in the loops as you do with new nuclear plants it would be much more expensive than new nuclear. Comparing the number of dead per Tera Watt Hour of energy produced, solar is ten time more deadly of nuclear (counting Chernobyl), then number of people crippled working on the installation is one or two order of magnitude greater and the dismantling costs of solar installation when their working life end. > and in dynamic large scale > solar markets it is reliably the cheapest electricity by far during > peak demand. Do any foundry use solar for producing aluminium or steel or whatever? At what costs? > Apparently almost nobody looked when nuclear France had > to buy peak power from their nonnuclear neighbor this winter, which > made a mint as the prices shot through the ceiling. And so? Germany had a bit more for a few days (probably a few hours for a few days) in the winter. Just see what happen in the rest of the days of the year. They needed more power because electricity is so cheap in France that some people heat their homes with it. >From Wikipedia: Due to the general inflexibility of nuclear energy compared to fossil energy based power plant, to achieve this high load factor, France is also forced to be the world's largest net exporter of electric power (exporting 18% of its total production via 10 GW overall of interconnection capacity[2] to Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Britain, and Germany), to use 14.59 GW storage hydroelectricity 4.302 GW of pumped storage[clarification needed][3], and the EJP load disconnection tarrif which is allied to the use of about 5 GW of diesel generators in private hands.[4] (It also has 6.16 GW run of river hydro irrelevant in this context of dealing with flexibility but is included for completeness) So, France export 18% of its electric power. And Germany is on the receiving end. Do Germans are stupid to buy overpriced electric power from France? > In fact FiTs are being cut far sooner and far more severely than > planned because they're eating into power supplier's profits. Their > whole business model is at stake. Is this because the Spiegel is writing "Rising Energy Prices Endanger German Industry" http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,816669,00.html > Solar PV will be cheaper than dirty coal in less than 10 years, at > which point the whole debate will look very silly in the retrospect. In the next ten years is not now. If wishes were horses we would be endangered by their manure. When, in ten years, PV will produce power at rates lower or comparable with dirty coal or dirty nuclear we will see. In the interim, it is not true. If I'm in high water, being able to swim the next week will not prevent me from drowning now. Mirco From clementlawyer at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 20:22:03 2012 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:22:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> Message-ID: > > Micro wrote: "Maybe, the fact they ask and need subsides to sell PV solar > installations is a give away of the fact solar is costly and not really > competitive in a free open market." > Let's be fair, Big Oil has been receiving subsidies all along... Obama for ending $4 bn annual subsidy to US oil companies WASHINGTON: Calling for ending the USD 4 billion subsidies that theAmerican oil industry receives every year, US President Barack Obama today asserted there is no quick fixes to challenges of galloping oil except for adopting the "all-of-the-above" approach. "A century of subsidies to the oil companies is long enough. It's time to end taxpayer giveaways to an industry that's never been more profitable, and use that money to reduce our deficit and double-down on a clean energy industry that's never been more promising," Obama said in his weekly address to the nation. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-25/news/31099860_1_gas-prices-oil-companies-oil-reserves James -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 20:30:41 2012 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:30:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:10 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 28/02/2012 08:27, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: >> Solar PV will be cheaper than dirty coal in less than 10 years, at >> which point the whole debate will look very silly in the retrospect. > > In the next ten years is not now. > > If I'm in high water, being able to swim the next week will not prevent > me from drowning now. Within the next ten years: * Earth's total human population will not decrease by 1% or more, either over the next 10 years together or between any two consecutive years. Indeed, odds are that Earth's total human population will continue to increase over this time period. * Humanity's total volume of food produced will, likewise, not decrease by 1% or more, and will likely increase. * Humanity will not face starvation far more severe than it does today, though local political situations may continue to deny food to most people in certain areas. * The net total energy output of all of humanity's power plants will increase. This applies to all types, to non-vehicular plants (typically large, immobile,electricity-generating facilities), and to vehicular plants (such as car engines). Based on the data presently available, this - the null hypothesis, in effect - seems very likely. That does not sound like we are presently in a situation where we can not afford to divert resources into increased energy production. From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Feb 28 21:03:48 2012 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:03:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> Message-ID: <4F4D4134.5080400@libero.it> Il 28/02/2012 21:22, James Clement ha scritto: > Micro wrote: "Maybe, the fact they ask and need subsides to sell PV > solar > installations is a give away of the fact solar is costly and not really > competitive in a free open market." > Let's be fair, Big Oil has been receiving subsidies all along... Maybe in the US, but in Europe hydrocarbons are one of the column of government budget. In Italy 70% of the price of gasoline is taxes. Anyway I support the elimination of all subsides and exemptions for all. They are simply a way to give pork to politically connect people or corporations. Let the market sort them. Mirco From clementlawyer at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 21:13:40 2012 From: clementlawyer at gmail.com (James Clement) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:13:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <4F4D4134.5080400@libero.it> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> <4F4D4134.5080400@libero.it> Message-ID: > > Mirco wrote: > > Anyway I support the elimination of all subsides and exemptions for all. > They are simply a way to give pork to politically connect people or > corporations. > > Let the market sort them. > > Hey, why stop at subsidies? I'm an Agorist, let's get rid of governments and be done with it! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Feb 28 21:34:51 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:34:51 -0800 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat Message-ID: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> Oh this is cool. I will be the first in line to devour these things: http://singularityhub.com/2012/02/28/lab-grown-burger-to-be-served-in-six-mo nths/?utm_source=The+Harvest+Is+Bountiful &utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6120fa3769-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN Lab-Grown Burger To Be Served In Six Months A number of laboratories around the world are trying to grow meat in a Petri dish. So far we've heard about clumps of cells grown from stem cells with the hope that those cells will one day grow into a full-sized, grill-ready chicken fillet or hamburger . Now one researcher says the time to fire up the propane is fast approaching. Researcher Mark Post announced to his in vitro meat producing colleagues that his lab will have a hamburger fit for consumption sometime this fall. This is the first I have seen them state an actual near term time-frame. I hope they make it. {8-] spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 22:12:12 2012 From: possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com (John Grigg) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:12:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> Message-ID: But what about lab-grown fish meat for sushi? And hydroponics for the vegies?? Now that will be a day for happy transhumanists to go out to dinner at a properly equipped restaurant! Anders can sate himself without guilt (but did he ever actually feel guilty? lol)... John ; ) 2012/2/28 spike > ** ** > > Oh this is cool. I will be the first in line to devour these things:**** > > ** ** > > > http://singularityhub.com/2012/02/28/lab-grown-burger-to-be-served-in-six-months/?utm_source=The+Harvest+Is+Bountiful&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6120fa3769-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN > **** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > Lab-Grown Burger To Be Served In Six Months**** > > ** ** > > A number of laboratories around the world are trying to grow meat in a > Petri dish. So far we?ve heard about clumps of cells grown from stem cells > with the hope that those cells will one day grow into a full-sized, grill-ready > chicken fillet or hamburger. > Now one researcher says the time to fire up the propane is fast > approaching. Researcher Mark Post announcedto his > *in vitro* meat producing colleagues that his lab will have a hamburger > fit for consumption sometime this fall.**** > > ** ** > > ** ** > > This is the first I have seen them state an actual near term time-frame. > I hope they make it. {8-]**** > > ** ** > > 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 Tue Feb 28 23:32:15 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:32:15 -0800 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> Message-ID: <00fc01ccf671$34a49380$9dedba80$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Grigg Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 2:12 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat But what about lab-grown fish meat for sushi? You have hit on something important here John. We all know low quality meat, something like you find on pizza, and high quality, something like you might get at a really good restaurant, all the way up to the top of the scale, sushi quality fish, so good you don't want to spoil it with heat. But what nature hands us is as good as it gets. What if. we create something in the lab which is better than sushi? >. And hydroponics for the vegies?? What if we can create better veggies than anything we get in the store? Better yet, some means of creating them at home, so the produce is fresher than that which the produce market can get to us. >. Now that will be a day for happy transhumanists to go out to dinner at a properly equipped restaurant! Oh my, now THAT will be a party. Anders can sate himself without guilt (but did he ever actually feel guilty? lol)... John ; ) As we all can. Let's hope this works out. Realize it takes a while to get this right. John the older ones among us remember the days before microwave ovens, and when those started becoming common. It took about ten years for food vendors to really figure out what works well in microwaves and how to provide that, in packages such that all of the sections cook uniformly for instance. I can easily extend this to lab-grown meat: the stuff isn't particularly good at first, but it gets better, and those lucky ones born today may never know when eating required us to slay beasts. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 07:31:13 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:31:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 10:32 AM, BillK wrote: > On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> Is http://renewables.com/Permaculture/ElectricTractor.htm big enough? > > Nawww. These are toy tractors. There are lots of small electric > vehicles about the size of ride-on lawnmowers. DIY types are having > fun using them on small farms. A typical small electric tractor (like > the one you referenced) produces about 12 HP and will plough > half-an-acre in two hours then have to recharge for 15 hours. ?(Don't > try a battery swap in mud and rain!). > That's not *real* farming. Agreed. > ?This is a *real* tractor ?---- > > 200 to 280 HP Now that's a tractor... very nice. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 07:39:37 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:39:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 1:10 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 28/02/2012 08:27, Eugen Leitl ha scritto: > >> I don't get it why people still think solar is expensive: > > Maybe, the fact they ask and need subsides to sell PV solar > installations is a give away of the fact solar is costly and not really > competitive in a free open market. Solar is VERY expensive on a per house retrofit basis. And that is how it is normally approached in the USA. Medium sized 200-500 household installations is an entirely different animal, and that's going to be competitive in the next decade. >> it is certainly less expensive than new nuclear, > > If you make the solar jump in the loops as you do with new nuclear > plants it would be much more expensive than new nuclear. Nuclear won't work because of the tree huggers. It's DOA, despite being highly reasonable technology. > Comparing the number of dead per Tera Watt Hour of energy produced, > solar is ten time more deadly of nuclear (counting Chernobyl), then > number of people crippled working on the installation is one or two > order of magnitude greater and the dismantling costs of solar > installation when their working life end. The number of dead per watt is irrelevant. We kill 1.5 million people per year world wide using cars (I read yesterday) and we still use those. Nobody REALLY cares how many people die as long as the light switch does something. It's a sad commentary, but I believe it to be true 99.99% of the time. It's like the poor Chinese workers who put together iPhones... most iPhone users don't give a crap. >> and in dynamic large scale >> solar markets it is reliably the cheapest electricity by far during >> peak demand. > > Do any foundry use solar for producing aluminium or steel or whatever? > At what costs? A lot of aluminum is smelted near large hydroelectric dams. The TVA dams were originally built to this purpose. If hydroelectric isn't solar, what is... ;-) >> Solar PV will be cheaper than dirty coal in less than 10 years, at >> which point the whole debate will look very silly in the retrospect. > > In the next ten years is not now. We don't have a huge problem right now. If we did, we would have $15 a gallon gasoline. > If wishes were horses we would be endangered by their manure. > When, in ten years, PV will produce power at rates lower or comparable > with dirty coal or dirty nuclear we will see. In the interim, it is not > true. > > If I'm in high water, being able to swim the next week will not prevent > me from drowning now. Who is drowning now? I bought gasoline today. It was reasonably priced. It's all hyped up for political reasons. Do we need a national energy policy? You bet. Let's stop subsidizing the oil industry. Other than that, let's just let the market work. -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 07:47:34 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:47:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: <00f101ccf565$40f7deb0$c2e79c10$@att.net> References: <1330346071.48236.YahooMailNeo@web132106.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <00f101ccf565$40f7deb0$c2e79c10$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/27 spike : > Thanks Tom!? That is exactly what I suspected.? Our litigious society goes > to heck and gone chasing tiny risks, when huge risks result from inaction. > I propose a class of medications in which we apply the shocking caveat that > the patient accepts her own risk, because we do not know everything.? The > stoners REALLY ARE a special class of people, I say with all due respect and > humility, for they accept their own risk, in the sense they don?t sue anyone > if their dope is insufficiently pure and safe.? Of course they load their > cost and risk onto us in other ways, but they don?t sue. Only because we LET them. A very large expense for the government is in taking care of the children of drug abusers that they deem necessary to remove from their parents. My kids have probably cost the government a couple of million dollars over their childhood, and that's just 8 children!! If we would legalize drugs, and encourage people taking certain drugs to be sterilized so we don't have to take care of the kids they can't take care of (or the system won't LET them take care of because they take drugs), we would go a long way towards solving ALL of our financial problems... -Kelly From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 07:24:05 2012 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:24:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 12:27 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Solar PV will be cheaper than dirty coal in less than 10 years, at which point the > whole debate will look very silly in the retrospect. This is my take on things. Also, there are several fossil fuel reserves that are NOT oil that would not be very hard to bring online, should the price of energy go up half an order of magnitude. Methane clathrate is there, should we need it. Hopefully, the solar will come online quickly enough and we won't need to go there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate As usual, the solution is technology. In this case, thin film solar is my bet for solving most of the problem over the mid term... and in the short term, oil is probably good enough for the moment. I predict no riots, unless Obama gets re-elected. Then all bets are off... but the riots won't be where you expect them... :-) -Kelly From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 29 08:40:15 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:40:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> Message-ID: <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 01:34:51PM -0800, spike wrote: > This is the first I have seen them state an actual near term time-frame. I > hope they make it. {8-] There are already quite acceptable meat substitutes from plant sources for people who need them. Animal cell culture will never work (=be cost-effective) for food production. It's expensive enough for medical and biotech purposes already. Much more intersting problem: make something like quorn, but with a meat taste and texture. Bonus: make above from single-cell algae grown in a photobioreactor on your roof, which uses your exhaled CO2 and flue gases for carbon input. If you can do the latter, monkeys... in... spaaaaace.... is one step away. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 29 10:07:00 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:07:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Hallo Heimatlandsicherheitsdienst Message-ID: <20120229100700.GY7343@leitl.org> Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Coast Guard (USCG) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol Secret Service (USSS) National Operations Center (NOC) Homeland Defense Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Task Force Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Fusion Center Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Secure Border Initiative (SBI) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Air Marshal Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Guard Red Cross United Nations (UN) Assassination Attack Domestic security Drill Exercise Cops Law enforcement Authorities Disaster assistance Disaster management DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office) National preparedness Mitigation Prevention Response Recovery Dirty Bomb Domestic nuclear detection Emergency management Emergency response First responder Homeland security Maritime domain awareness (MDA) National preparedness initiative Militia Shooting Shots fired Evacuation Deaths Hostage Explosion (explosive) Police Disaster medical assistance team (DMAT) Organized crime Gangs National security State of emergency Security Breach Threat Standoff SWAT Screening Lockdown Bomb (squad or threat) Crash Looting Riot Emergency Landing Pipe bomb Incident Facility Hazmat Nuclear Chemical Spill Suspicious package/device Toxic National laboratory Nuclear facility Nuclear threat Cloud Plume Radiation Radioactive Leak Biological infection (or event) Chemical Chemical burn Biological Epidemic Hazardous Hazardous material incident Industrial spill Infection Powder (white) Gas Spillover Anthrax Blister agent Exposure Burn Nerve agent Ricin Sarin North Korea Outbreak Contamination Exposure Virus Evacuation Bacteria Recall Ebola Food Poisoning Foot and Mouth (FMD) H5N1 Avian Flu Salmonella Small Pox Plague Human to human Human to ANIMAL Influenza Center for Disease Control (CDC) Drug Administration (FDA) Public Health Toxic Agro Terror Tuberculosis (TB) Agriculture Listeria Symptoms Mutation Resistant Antiviral Wave Pandemic Infection Water/air borne Sick Swine Pork Strain Quarantine H1N1 Vaccine Tamiflu Norvo Virus Epidemic World Health Organization (WHO and components) Viral Hemorrhagic Fever E. Coli Infrastructure security Airport CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources) AMTRAK Collapse Computer infrastructure Communications infrastructure Telecommunications Critical infrastructure National infrastructure Metro WMATA Airplane (and derivatives) Chemical fire Subway BART MARTA Port Authority NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center) Transportation security Grid Power Smart Body scanner Electric Failure or outage Black out Brown out Port Dock Bridge Canceled Delays Service disruption Power lines Drug cartel Violence Gang Drug Narcotics Cocaine Marijuana Heroin Border Mexico Cartel Southwest Juarez Sinaloa Tijuana Torreon Yuma Tucson Decapitated U.S. Consulate Consular El Paso Fort Hancock San Diego Ciudad Juarez Nogales Sonora Colombia Mara salvatrucha MS13 or MS-13 Drug war Mexican army Methamphetamine Cartel de Golfo Gulf Cartel La Familia Reynose Nuevo Leon Narcos Narco banners (Spanish equivalents) Los Zetas Shootout Execution Gunfight Trafficking Kidnap Calderon Reyosa Bust Tamaulipas Meth Lab Drug trade Illegal immigrants Smuggling (smugglers) Matamoros Michoacana Guzman Arellano-Felix Beltran-Leyva Barrio Azteca Artistics Assassins Mexicles New Federation Terrorism Al Queda (all spellings) Terror Attack Iraq Afghanistan Iran Pakistan Agro Environmental terrorist Eco terrorism Conventional weapon Target Weapons grade Dirty bomb Enriched Nuclear Chemical weapon Biological weapon Ammonium nitrate Improvised explosive device IED (Improvised Explosive Device) Abu Sayyaf Hamas FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia) IRA (Irish Republican Army) ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) Basque Separatists Hezbollah Tamil Tiger PLF (Palestine Liberation Front) PLO (Palestine Libration Organization) Car bomb Jihad Taliban Weapons cache Suicide bomber Suicide attack Suspicious substance AQAP (Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula) AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) Yemen Pirates Extremism Somalia Nigeria Radicals Al-Shabaab Home grown Plot Nationalist Recruitment Fundamentalism Islamist Emergency Hurricane Tornado Twister Tsunami Earthquake Tremor Flood Storm Crest Temblor Extreme weather Forest fire Brush fire Ice Stranded/Stuck Help Hail Wildfire Tsunami Warning Center Magnitude Avalanche Typhoon Shelter-in-place Disaster Snow Blizzard Sleet Mud slide or Mudslide Erosion Power outage Brown out Warning Watch Lightening Aid Relief Closure Interstate Burst Emergency Broadcast System Cyber security Botnet DDOS (dedicated denial of service) Denial of service Malware Virus Trojan Keylogger Cyber Command 2600 Spammer Phishing Rootkit Phreaking Cain and abel Brute forcing Mysql injection Cyber attack Cyber terror Hacker China Conficker Worm Scammers Social media _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt at postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 11:01:11 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:01:11 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough? In-Reply-To: References: <1330346071.48236.YahooMailNeo@web132106.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <00f101ccf565$40f7deb0$c2e79c10$@att.net> Message-ID: On 29 February 2012 08:47, Kelly Anderson wrote: > If we would legalize drugs, and encourage people taking certain drugs > to be sterilized so we don't have to take care of the kids they can't > take care of (or the system won't LET them take care of because they > take drugs), we would go a long way towards solving ALL of our > financial problems... How un-PC is that? :-D Hey, one wonders how you guys can get away with anything, while all my most minute thoughts are dissected, distorted and exposed to the (solicited) public outrage of the world and its dog... :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 11:16:16 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:16:16 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Hallo Heimatlandsicherheitsdienst In-Reply-To: <20120229100700.GY7343@leitl.org> References: <20120229100700.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote excitedly: > You forgot to add ---- Forward this to 50 contacts and DHS will send you their favourite cat photo. BillK From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 11:16:22 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:16:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: On 29 February 2012 09:40, Eugen Leitl wrote: > There are already quite acceptable meat substitutes from plant sources > for people who need them. Animal cell culture will never work (=be > cost-effective) > for food production. It's expensive enough for medical and biotech purposes > already. > I am on a permanent paleo-diet, so the only vegetable products I (sparsely) eat are those who do not really require cultivating and processing. But besides animalist concerns, breeding animals would appear a terrible waste if the goal is simply that of producing animal proteins, not of operating a full-fledged Darwinian machine. Think of all the calories that got lost in non-edible parts or in metabolic and behavioural processes that serve no real purpose... Having said that, yes, I demand that the nutritional and gastronomic quality of vial-grown meat be *superior* to that of an ideal steak. Were this the case, I would be happily ready to pay *more* for that. Heck, perhaps the meat factories-to-be have their business model all wrong. Instead of trying and offer a low-cost alternative to animal hamburgers and chicken breasts, they should perhaps be going for luxury products. Say, "enhanced" caviar could be a good target, since the savage one besides being illegal appear to have reached a price of 12,000 per kg in the black market... How much vials and nutrients do you buy with this kind of money? :-) -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 29 11:23:56 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:23:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <1330201603.28318.YahooMailNeo@web164506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <00da01ccf414$666c2b30$33448190$@att.net> <1330380003.19357.YahooMailNeo@web164503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <20120228072720.GR7343@leitl.org> <4F4D34CB.9050006@libero.it> Message-ID: <20120229112356.GB7343@leitl.org> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 12:39:37AM -0700, Kelly Anderson wrote: > > Maybe, the fact they ask and need subsides to sell PV solar Subsidies are being cut as we speak, because the utilities are pooping their pants in sheer terror. This will bring them nothing, because PV is headed for grid parity in many locations by 2015 http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3072 Presumably porkbarrel offshore wind subsidies and tax-backed/guaranteed buy big projects like Desertec will be their action of last resort. We'll see. > > installations is a give away of the fact solar is costly and not really > > competitive in a free open market. > > Solar is VERY expensive on a per house retrofit basis. And that is how FWIW, some 40% of new German installations by power are small and invidually owned. It's about over half if you consider the farmers. > it is normally approached in the USA. Medium sized 200-500 household > installations is an entirely different animal, and that's going to be > competitive in the next decade. Germany is at 20% renewable now, but it's only electricity. Too little too late. If US thinks they can wait, well, consider the outcome if that assumption is wrong. > >> it is certainly less expensive than new nuclear, > > > > If you make the solar jump in the loops as you do with new nuclear > > plants it would be much more expensive than new nuclear. Er. New nuclear is expensive because of safety requirements. Obviously PV panels don't have corium as main failure mode and millions of pipe welds to control. > Nuclear won't work because of the tree huggers. It's DOA, despite > being highly reasonable technology. The only reasonable technology is a sustainable one. To qualify as borderline sustainable nuclear needs breeders, and breeders (whatever fuel cycle) are the most expensive and unsafe power sources known to man, and they breed pitifully to boot. If you don't have breeders, and ramp up you'll get peak uranium before 2040. That means we don't have to bother, as these will probably never EROEI nor ROI. > > Do any foundry use solar for producing aluminium or steel or whatever? Of course. > > At what costs? > > A lot of aluminum is smelted near large hydroelectric dams. The TVA Geothermal in Iceland produces very cheap and plentiful power, but Hulduf?lk (and Sigur Ros) hate aluminium plants. > dams were originally built to this purpose. If hydroelectric isn't > solar, what is... ;-) > > >> Solar PV will be cheaper than dirty coal in less than 10 years, at > >> which point the whole debate will look very silly in the retrospect. > > > > In the next ten years is not now. > > We don't have a huge problem right now. If we did, we would have $15 a > gallon gasoline. We have 1.70 EUR/l at the moment, FWIW. > > If wishes were horses we would be endangered by their manure. > > When, in ten years, PV will produce power at rates lower or comparable > > with dirty coal or dirty nuclear we will see. In the interim, it is not > > true. > > > > If I'm in high water, being able to swim the next week will not prevent > > me from drowning now. > > Who is drowning now? I bought gasoline today. It was reasonably > priced. It's all hyped up for political reasons. Do we need a national Increasing inability to meet demand at declining EROEI are hardly political reasons. Given lack of electrified rail in many locations in the world one is looking forward to LA riot level of disruption when there's not just price ballistically penetrating the ceiling, but also actual rationing. > energy policy? You bet. Let's stop subsidizing the oil industry. Other > than that, let's just let the market work.a Markets don't work in areas like long-term planning (30-40 years) or public infrastructure. I don't know why people hate on FiTs, we wouldn't have these cheap PV panels if Germany hadn't kickstart the market single-handedly. Now the work's done. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Feb 29 11:28:08 2012 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:28:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Hallo Heimatlandsicherheitsdienst In-Reply-To: References: <20120229100700.GY7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20120229112808.GC7343@leitl.org> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 11:16:16AM +0000, BillK wrote: > On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote excitedly: > > > > > > You forgot to add ---- > > Forward this to 50 contacts and DHS will send you their favourite cat photo. The smartest thing they can do is to not whitelist due to false positives, but bump back your status to pristine to avoid gaming. From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 12:35:12 2012 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:35:12 -0300 Subject: [ExI] RES: coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> Message-ID: <006701ccf6de$98d3ed20$ca7bc760$@gmail.com> Oh this is cool.? I will be the first in line to devour these things: http://singularityhub.com/2012/02/28/lab-grown-burger-to-be-served-in-six-mo nths/?utm_source=The+Harvest+Is+Bountiful&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6120 fa3769-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN Lab-Grown Burger To Be Served In Six Months Please tell me they?re calling it Big Petri... From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 29 15:53:20 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 07:53:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <004501ccf6fa$43281920$c9784b60$@att.net> ... >... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Subject: Re: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 01:34:51PM -0800, spike wrote: >>... This is the first I have seen them state an actual near term time-frame. I hope they make it. {8-] >...There are already quite acceptable meat substitutes from plant sources for people who need them. Animal cell culture will never work (=be cost-effective) for food production. It's expensive enough for medical and biotech purposes already... The medical/lab uses of this tech is expensive because of all the restrictions and controls we put on it. If it is created in high quantities the cost will come down. We can take the meat substitutes currently made and mix it with cell cultures perhaps, to keep the cost below beast-based meats and still have the taste of fat which is mostly missing from substitutes. >...Much more intersting problem: make something like quorn, but with a meat taste and texture. This is what I anticipate. We could culture the stronger flavored meats, then use those to flavor rice, potatoes and such. >...Bonus: make above from single-cell algae grown in a photobioreactor on your roof, which uses your exhaled CO2 and flue gases for carbon input... I wouldn't be too surprised if it turns out a rooftop food production facility is a better use of scarce solar resources than is converting it to electricity. In most cases, the family food bill is far higher than the electricity bill. More to the point, a calorie in food is more valuable than a calorie of electricity. BOTECs: a sack of potatoes, low cost end of the food spectrum, about 50 cents a pound, and about 25 calories per ounce so that's 400 calories in 50 cents or 800C/$. A kilowatt hour is about 860 nutritional calories, so potatoes are about a buck a kwh. (Nutritional calories are actually a kilocalorie.) My highest tier power rate is about 44 cents a kwh, so food at its lowest is about twice the cost of electricity at its highest. On the farm, electricity is 7.9 cents a kwh flat rate regardless of how much I use, so on the farm, food at its cheapest is about 12 times the cost of the energy equivalent in electricity. So good thinking Gene, if we figure out how to grow food on the rooftop, it is way more valuable than converting that sun energy to electricity. Rice is also about 50 cents US per pound, and its energy content is a little higher than potatoes, more like 35 to 40 calories per ounce instead of 25 for potatoes, so the low end food price is about 8 times the energy price of electricity, but beef is a different story. That stuff is now typically around 50 cents an ounce, and 50 calories per ounce, so energy cost of lean beef is about 10 times the energy cost of the highest tier, or about 50 times the cost of electricity if we assume farm rates. To solve the world's energy problems, we need to focus on food production. We can solve the ape-hauler problem, the home lighting problems, and the rest of it. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 29 16:10:21 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:10:21 -0800 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> Message-ID: <004601ccf6fc$a3bce980$eb36bc80$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] >... >...BOTECs: a sack of potatoes, low cost end of the food spectrum, about 50 cents a pound...so on the farm, food at its cheapest is about 12 times the cost of the energy equivalent in electricity. So good thinking Gene, if we figure out how to grow food on the rooftop, it is way more valuable than converting that sun energy to electricity...Rice is also about 50 cents US per pound, and its energy content is a little higher than potatoes...To solve the world's energy problems, we need to focus on food production. We can solve the ape-hauler problem, the home lighting problems, and the rest of it. spike Someone check my numbers, since I did these on the fly. Use metric units, compare local low end food costs and high end to lowest tier and highest tier local electricity rates. Never mind caviar, just regular unprocessed foods, such as sliced beef, cereal, grain, etc. I am getting food is on the order of 10 to 100 times the cost of electricity. spike From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 16:30:37 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:30:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <004501ccf6fa$43281920$c9784b60$@att.net> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> <004501ccf6fa$43281920$c9784b60$@att.net> Message-ID: On 29 February 2012 16:53, spike wrote: > We could culture the stronger flavored meats, > then use those to flavor rice, potatoes and such. > ... assuming that you should eat any at all of such in the first place. :-) The only real rationale to do that being that you would be otherwise starve to death. -- Stefano Vaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 29 16:24:56 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:24:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] RES: coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <006701ccf6de$98d3ed20$ca7bc760$@gmail.com> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> <006701ccf6de$98d3ed20$ca7bc760$@gmail.com> Message-ID: <004a01ccf6fe$ad0f02f0$072d08d0$@att.net> ... On Behalf Of Henrique Moraes Machado >>...Lab-Grown Burger To Be Served In Six Months >...Please tell me they're calling it Big Petri... There are several product names being explored. I proposed the artifish sandwich. Or failing that, the hamboger. spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 29 16:41:18 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:41:18 -0800 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> <004501ccf6fa$43281920$c9784b60$@att.net> Message-ID: <005401ccf700$f6de82a0$e49b87e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj Subject: Re: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat On 29 February 2012 16:53, spike wrote: >>.We could culture the stronger flavored meats, then use those to flavor rice, potatoes and such. >... assuming that you should eat any at all of such in the first place. :-) >The only real rationale to do that being that you would be otherwise starve to death. -- Stefano Vaj Sure but keep in mind Stefano that much of humanity and most wild beasts are always hungry. I hear the world human population is coming up on 7 billion last October. My memories are still fresh from a dozen years ago of reaching 6 billion. We wouldn't be very far off if we say in general, humankind lives on rice and potatoes. Regarding my previous BOTECs, low end food is about twice the cost of high end electricity, with high end unprocessed food cost about 100 times the cost of low end electricity. Anyone else get those numbers? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Feb 29 18:10:39 2012 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:10:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Future Day = March 1, 2012 Message-ID: <1DCCBD25-0CCD-48B0-8955-BAEB8B4CED4F@mac.com> What will you do on the very 1st Future Day to celebrate, observe, reflect, meet with like minded folks, spread the word, envision and dedicate to bringing what you envision into reality? I think a day set aside to focus on these things, to bring them to wider attention and to celebrate what is within our grasp is a fabulous idea! How do you plan to observe Future Day? - samantha -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Feb 29 18:21:33 2012 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:21:33 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Future Day = March 1, 2012 In-Reply-To: <1DCCBD25-0CCD-48B0-8955-BAEB8B4CED4F@mac.com> References: <1DCCBD25-0CCD-48B0-8955-BAEB8B4CED4F@mac.com> Message-ID: <8252EF90-D3E9-458A-AB26-1182CFE4AAF3@mac.com> Forgot the link. http://futureday.org/ On Feb 29, 2012, at 10:10 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > What will you do on the very 1st Future Day to celebrate, observe, reflect, meet with like minded folks, spread the word, envision and dedicate to bringing what you envision into reality? I think a day set aside to focus on these things, to bring them to wider attention and to celebrate what is within our grasp is a fabulous idea! > > How do you plan to observe Future Day? > > - samantha > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Feb 29 18:26:20 2012 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:26:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3B1A6381-C605-4229-935F-ABAC3B419E4B@mac.com> Oil is not going to 1000x current value anytime soon. It is likely to go past $200/bbl if Iran is attacked though. Note that the US produces about half of all the oil it uses. But no, we can't bring alternatives online that quickly. It takes years, about 10, just to bring a new refinery online. How long you think it would take to bring enough plants online to provide alternate IC fuels including the retooling of pipelines, tanker trucks, and delivery systems that might be needed for some of those fuels? It would take even longer to phase out IC engines complete in favor of electrics, if we find the energy and get the grid in shape to supply the load and handle all those hopefully fast charging units. - samantha On Feb 24, 2012, at 3:00 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 2:30 PM, The Avantguardian > wrote: >> I just had a sobering thought while in the shower. Since most costs of doing business or even basic survival are tied to oil prices, then the cost of researching and developing alternative energies is also proportional to the price of oil. > > Only to a point. If the price of crude oil were to skyrocket to 1000 > times its present level, there are already solutions that could and > would be brought online quickly, capping the price of "oil" as you're > using it here. Yes, there would be a crunch during the transition, > but crude oil is not so completely irreplaceable that the lack of it > would be a holocaust. > > More importantly, the oil companies themselves would be the > most hurt by this crunch. That's why they're hedging their bets > with alternative fuels, in so far as this crunch seems likely. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 18:08:05 2012 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:08:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <005401ccf700$f6de82a0$e49b87e0$@att.net> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> <004501ccf6fa$43281920$c9784b60$@att.net> <005401ccf700$f6de82a0$e49b87e0$@att.net> Message-ID: 2012/2/29 spike > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj > >... assuming that you should eat any at all of such in the first place. :-) > >The only real rationale to do that being that you would be otherwise starve to death. -- Stefano Vaj > > Sure but keep in mind Stefano that much of humanity and most wild beasts are always hungry.? I hear the world human population is coming up on 7 billion last October.? My memories are still fresh from a dozen years ago of reaching 6 billion.? We wouldn?t be very far off if we say in general, humankind lives on rice and potatoes. Yes. This is why I qualified my stance as above. And I also keep well in mind that it is only the relative "abundance" of food granted by the neolithic revolution that allowed us to develop the so-called "higher cultures", with settled communities, division of labour, further technological progress, infrastructures, etc. It is just tragic that we had to pay (and we still pay, as long as we do not live as hunter-and-gatherers, or at the opposite end as affluent, enlightened members of our richest societies) with dire health consequences and reduced lifespans. Of course, the true transhumanist attitude is demanding the proceeds of pies and refusing to eat it too. :-) -- Stefano Vaj From anders at aleph.se Wed Feb 29 18:40:15 2012 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:40:15 +0000 Subject: [ExI] AI milestones Message-ID: <4F4E710F.9040303@aleph.se> I have been asked to make a list of milestones in AI development. This is my current list, what have I missed? And what *actually* matters? Academic papers easily overstate their importance or rig demos, actual use is often hidden inside industry (few papers or reports), and impressiveness might correlate very loosely with real importance. 1950 First serious analysis of whether machines can think. Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind, 59:433?460, 1950. 1955-1956 Logic Theorist by Allen Newell, Herbert Simon and J. C. Shaw. Intended to mimic human problem solving skills. It eventually proved 38 of the first 52 theorems in Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica (with new and more elegant proofs for some). They later developed the General Problem Solver for more general domains. http://shelf1.library.cmu.edu/IMLS/MindModels/logictheorymachine.pdf McCorduck, Pamela (2004), Machines Who Think (2nd ed.), Natick, MA: A. K. Peters, Ltd., p. 167 1959 Arthur Samuel?s checkers program. Originally written in 1952, the 1955 version incorporated machine learning. First demonstration of a program that could learn to play a game better than its creator. Samuel, Arthur L. (July 1959), "Some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers", IBM Journal of Research and Development 3 (3): 210?219, doi:10.1147/rd.33.0210 Schaeffer, Jonathan. One Jump Ahead:: Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers, 1997,2009, Springer, ISBN 978-0-387-76575-4. Chapter 6. 1964 ELIZA by Joseph Weizenbaum demonstrates a conversation interface and that humans are very easily fooled into believing there is intelligence behind it. Jospeh Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1976) 1964 ANALOGY by Thomas G. Evans solves geometric analogy problems of the same kind as found in standard intelligence tests. Performance was about the level of a dull Grade 9 student. Thomas G. Evans, A heuristic program to solve geometric-analogy problems, AFIPS '64 (Spring) Proceedings of the April 21-23, 1964, spring joint computer conference, ACM New York, NY, USA 1975 The Meta-Dendral learning program produced new results in chemistry (some rules of mass spectrometry) the first scientific discoveries by a computer to be published in a refereed journal. 1979 The first human killed in an industrial robot accident. $10 Million Awarded To Family Of U.S. Plant Worker Killed By Robot", Ottawa Citizen, August 11, 1983, p14 1979 The backgammon program BKG by Hans Berliner defeats the reigning world champion. This was the first computer program to defeat a world champion in any game (although Berliner stated that it was due to luck with the dice rolls). Berliner, Hans, et al. "Backgammon program beats world champ", ACM SIGART Bulletin, Issue 69. January 1980. pp 6-9. 1979 MYCIN, an expert system, demonstrates performance within its own domain (bacterial infection) as good as some experts and better than general practitioners. Yu, V.L., et al. (1979). "Antimicrobial selection by a computer: a blinded evaluation by infectious disease experts". Journal of the American Medical Association 242 (12): 1279?1282. PMID 480542. 1979 Cordell Green, David Barstow, Elaine Kant and others at Stanford demonstrated the CHI system for automatic programming. http://aaai.org/AITopics/BriefHistory 1981-1982 Douglas Lenat?s heuristic program Eurisko wins the United States Traveller TCS championship both years, forcing rule changes due to its unorthodox strategies. Douglas B. Lenat, Eurisko: A program that learns new heuristics and domain concepts: The nature of Heuristics III: Program design and results, Artificial Intelligence, vol 21:1-2, March 1983, p. 61-98 Douglas B. Lenat, Learning program helps win national fleet wargame tournament, ACM SIGART Bulletin Issue 79, January 1982 Malcolm Gladwell, How David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules, May 11 2009 http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all 1991 The DART tool for automated logistics planning and scheduling was used during Operation Desert Storm with great success, sometimes surprising military planners. DARPA claims this single application more than paid back their 30 year investment in AI. Cross, Stephen E.; Edward, Walker (1994). Zweben, Monte; Fox, Mark S.. eds. Intelligent Scheduling. University of Michigan: Morgan Kaufmann. pp. 711?729. Reese Hedberg, Sarah (2002). "DART: Revolutionizing Logistics Planning". IEEE Intelligent Systems (IEEE) 17 (3): 81?83 1992 The backgammon program TD-Gammon by Gerry Tesauro reaches championship-level ability through reinforcement learning and self-play. Tesauro, Gerald (March 1995). "Temporal Difference Learning and TD-Gammon". Communications of the ACM 38 (3). 1994 Automatic speech recognition reaches range of human transcription errors for air travel planning kiosk speech. http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/mig/publications/ASRhistory/index.html 1996 Genetic algorithms evolve analog electronic circuits competitive with human designers. Koza, J.R.; Bennett, F.H., III; Andre, D.; Keane, M.A.; Four problems for which a computer program evolved by genetic programming is competitive with human performance, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation, 1996., 20-22 May 1996 Nagoya, pp. 1 - 10 1997 The Deep Blue chess machine beats the world chess champion, Garry Kasparov.Since then chess computers have increased in power. Monty Newborn, Beyond Deep Blue; chess in the stratosphere, Springer 2011 1999 The crossword-solving program Proverb better than the average crossword-solver. Proverb: The probabilistic cruciverbalist. By Greg A. Keim, Noam Shazeer, Michael L. Littman, Sushant Agarwal, Catherine M. Cheves, Joseph Fitzgerald, Jason Grosland, Fan Jiang, Shannon Pollard, and Karl Weinmeister. 1999. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 710-717. Menlo Park, Calif.: AAAI Press. 2000 Marcus Hutter?s universal artificial intelligence agent (AIXI), a theoretical but well-defined agent that behaves optimally in any computable environment. A computable but still impractical algorithm (AIXItl) has been implemented. http://www.hutter1.net/ai/paixi.htm 2001 The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Global Hawk made the first autonomous non-stop flight over the Pacific Ocean from Edwards Air Force Base in California to RAAF Base Edinburgh in Southern Australia. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-01d.html 2001 Robotic trading agents consistently beat humans in a commodities trading game. Robots Beat Humans in Trading Battle. BBC.com (August 8th, 2001) news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1481339.stm Agent-Human Interactions in the Continuous Double Auction", IBM T.J.Watson Research Center, August, 2001 http://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-kephart/AgentHuman.pdf 2002 Scrabble playing software exceeds best human players. Sheppard, B. (2002). "World-championship-caliber Scrabble". Artificial Intelligence 134: 241?275. doi:10.1016/S0004-3702(01)00166-7 2004 Automatic speech recognition of broadcast English reaches 10% word error rate. http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/mig/publications/ASRhistory/index.html 2004-2007 The DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous vehicles. In 2004 none of the vehicles succeeded the course (the furthest distance travelled before getting stuck was a little over 11 km). In 2005 five vehicles successfully navigated the 240 km course (the Stanford vehicle completed it in 6:54). In 2007 the urban challenge had a 96 km course in urban terrain with other vehicles and a requirement to follow traffic rules; the winning vehicle completed it in 4:10. Sebastian Thrun, Mike Motemerlo, Hendrik Dahlkamp et al., Stanley: The Robot that Won the DARPA Grand Challenge, Journal of Robotic Systems - Special Issue on the DARPA Grand Challenge, Part 2, Volume 23 Issue 9, September 2006 Martin Buehler, Karl Iagnemma, Sanjiv Singh (eds.) The DARPA Urban Challenge, Springer tracts in advanced robotics 56, 2009 2005-2006 Bridge playing software is on par with the best bridge teams. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_bridge#Computers_versus_humans 2007 The STANDUP pun generator is found consistently entertaining by children. Graeme Ritchie, Ruli Manurung, Helen Pain, Annalu Waller, Rolf Black, Dave O'Mara. "A practical application of computational humour." In Cardoso, A. & Wiggins, G. (Ed.) Proceedings of the 4th. International Joint Workshop on Computational Creativity, London, UK, 2007, pp. 91-98. http://inf.abdn.ac.uk/research/standup/ 2009 OCR accuracy for commercial OCR software between 71% to 98% for typeset text. For ISO 1073-1:1976 and similar typefaces intended for OCR performance is human-equivalent. Holley, Rose (April 2009). "How Good Can It Get? Analysing and Improving OCR Accuracy in Large Scale Historic Newspaper Digitisation Programs". D-Lib Magazine. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march09/holley/03holley.html 2010 Demonstration that a surgical robot can learn tasks from human examples, smooth them and perform them 7-10 times faster, reaching superhuman performance on these tasks. van den Berg, J.; Miller, S.; Duckworth, D.; Hu, H.; Wan, A.; Xiao-Yu Fu; Goldberg, K.; Abbeel, P.; Superhuman performance of surgical tasks by robots using iterative learning from human-guided demonstrations, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 3-7 May 2010, Anchorage, AK. P. 2074 - 2081 2010 The May 6 ?Flash crash?, where the Dow Jones descended 600 points only to return to norml after a few minutes. Algorithmic and high frequency trading were blamed as contributing. High frequency trading corresponds to more than 73% of US trading by volume, and financial news are increasingly presented in computer-readable form for the trading algorithms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading 2010 The VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge, a 13,000 km test run of autonomous vehicles. Four driverless electric vans successfully ended the drive from Italy to China, arriving at the Shanghai Expo on 28 October, 2010. It was the first intercontinental trip ever with autonomous vehicles. http://viac.vislab.it/ 2010 A jigsaw-puzzle solver handles 400 piece arbitrary image puzzles. http://people.csail.mit.edu/ taegsang/JigsawPuzzle.html 2011 Sentiment analysis for online text at the same level at human reliability. Andrew L Maas, Raymond E Daly, Peter T Pham, Dan Huang, Andrew Y Ng, Christopher Potts, Learning Word Vectors for Sentiment Analysis Computational Linguistics (2011) Volume: 31, Issue: Jne 19-24, 2011, Publisher: Association for Computational Linguistics, Pages: 142-150 2011 Heuristics evolved using genetic algorithms produce a solver for the NP-hard solitaire game FreeCell, able to beat high-ranking human players. Achiya Elyasaf, Ami Hauptmann, Moshe Sipper, GA-FreeCell: Evolving Solvers for the Game of FreeCell, GECCO?11, July 12?16, 2011, Dublin, Ireland. 2011 IBM?s Watson defeats the two greatest Jeopardy! Champions during an exhibition match. 2011 Computer poker players remain sub-human for full ring Texas hold 'em but approaching strong super-human in simpler versions of poker. Rubin, Jonathan; Watson, Ian (2011). "Computer poker: A review". Artificial Intelligence. doi:10.1016/j.artint.2010.12.005. 2012 The Zen series of go-playing programs reaches rank 4-5 dan (strong amateur level). http://blog.printf.net/articles/2012/02/23/computers-are-very-good-at-the-game-of-go -- Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 29 19:05:58 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:05:58 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Future Day = March 1, 2012 In-Reply-To: <8252EF90-D3E9-458A-AB26-1182CFE4AAF3@mac.com> References: <1DCCBD25-0CCD-48B0-8955-BAEB8B4CED4F@mac.com> <8252EF90-D3E9-458A-AB26-1182CFE4AAF3@mac.com> Message-ID: <00ab01ccf715$2c3ab2c0$84b01840$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Samantha Atkins Subject: Re: [ExI] Future Day = March 1, 2012 Forgot the link. http://futureday.org/ On Feb 29, 2012, at 10:10 AM, Samantha Atkins wrote: How do you plan to observe Future Day? - samantha Samantha, the link supplied above sends me off to some sleazy Paris Hilton sex video site, which didn't even work right. Please offer a link to an actual Paris Hilton sex video, thanks. spike Update: ooops never mind, it's working now. Update 2: Sleazy Paris Hilton video still welcome. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 29 19:36:20 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:36:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] AI milestones In-Reply-To: <4F4E710F.9040303@aleph.se> References: <4F4E710F.9040303@aleph.se> Message-ID: <00c301ccf719$69cc6df0$3d6549d0$@att.net> >... >...2010 Demonstration that a surgical robot can learn tasks from human examples, smooth them and perform them 7-10 times faster, reaching superhuman performance on these tasks...-- Anders Sandberg, Surgical robot watches operation, performs heart swap in 38 seconds between patient and screaming doctor. If the surgery is gender reassignment, I wouldn't let one of those things anywhere near the operating room. spike From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 20:07:38 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:07:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] AI milestones In-Reply-To: <00c301ccf719$69cc6df0$3d6549d0$@att.net> References: <4F4E710F.9040303@aleph.se> <00c301ccf719$69cc6df0$3d6549d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 2:36 PM, spike wrote: > Surgical robot watches operation, performs heart swap in 38 seconds between > patient and screaming doctor. > > If the surgery is gender reassignment, I wouldn't let one of those things > anywhere near the operating room. still too slow. I won't be satisfied until the machine can do the job without skipping a beat. From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 20:15:59 2012 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:15:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] coming this fall, lab grown meat In-Reply-To: <004501ccf6fa$43281920$c9784b60$@att.net> References: <00e101ccf660$ce059f30$6a10dd90$@att.net> <20120229084015.GV7343@leitl.org> <004501ccf6fa$43281920$c9784b60$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 10:53 AM, spike wrote: > To solve the world's energy problems, we need to focus on food production. > We can solve the ape-hauler problem, the home lighting problems, and the > rest of it. Can sunlight be carried long distance over fiber-optic cables? I imagine something like a 'nightlight' literally powered by imported day light. FiOS looks even better than Cable if it means i can get rid of those CFLs and electricity-for-light usage too. Though they'd probably take 5x the current cost via "intangible transmission charges" From sjatkins at mac.com Wed Feb 29 20:33:57 2012 From: sjatkins at mac.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:33:57 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: No, you are not the only one. Although the last time I drove a tractor was in my teens. My maternal grandfather ran a pretty large spread until well into his 70s. Every summer I and my siblings got recruited to help out. I have fond memories of wrecking part of his chicken coop when he first tried to teach me to drive it at age 9. :) - samantha On Feb 28, 2012, at 6:34 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 5:00 AM, The Avantguardian > wrote: > > snip > >>> Can you point me to a State where electric tractors are being used extensively for farming? I don't recall ever seeing one. Thanks.? >> >> I can't do that but I can point you to a state where electric tractors haul thousands of tons of freight?hundreds of miles per day. That state is?California and the specific location is the?Port of Los Angeles.?Electric beats any internal combustion for "stop and go" because there is 0 idle cost. They can haul something like fifty tons per load. In any case farming involves lots of stop and go no?? > > No. > > Most of the time a farm tractor is in the field, it is at close to > full throttle. > > I wonder if I am the only one on the list with direct experience with > farming? (Though in my case it is because two of my uncles and one > aunt were farmers.) > > Keith > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Wed Feb 29 20:35:59 2012 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:35:59 -0800 Subject: [ExI] AI milestones In-Reply-To: References: <4F4E710F.9040303@aleph.se> <00c301ccf719$69cc6df0$3d6549d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00ca01ccf721$bf3bcad0$3db36070$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] AI milestones On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 2:36 PM, spike wrote: >>... Surgical robot watches operation, performs heart swap in 38 seconds between patient and screaming doctor. > >...still too slow. I won't be satisfied until the machine can do the job without skipping a beat. _______________________________________________ Ja sure, but think through the consequences: learning surgical robot watches heart transplant, watches gender reassignment, unfriendly AI comes along, infects robot, switches us all just to be a ro-bastard. Imagine the chaos. This was an interesting bit in Anders' list, robot kills human: http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/01/0125robot-kills-worker/ It isn't really all that clear, since the notion of a robot is a bit fuzzy. In a sense, a heat seeking missile is a robot after it is fired, and it sure as all hell kills people, or tries to, or rather does what it is programmed to do. Industrial equipment has had automated controls for a long time. Nearly a century ago we had automated continuous miners and coal drilling equipment, which would occasionally spark a coal dust explosion which killed plenty of guys. Autopilots are robots in a sense, and they have been known to fail, killing planeloads of proles. You can probably think of examples that predated 1979. spike From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Feb 29 20:34:01 2012 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:34:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <3B1A6381-C605-4229-935F-ABAC3B419E4B@mac.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <3B1A6381-C605-4229-935F-ABAC3B419E4B@mac.com> Message-ID: <1330547641.89391.YahooMailNeo@web164505.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Samantha Atkins > To: ExI chat list > Cc: The Avantguardian > Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 10:26 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) > > Oil is not going to 1000x current value anytime soon.? It is likely to go past > $200/bbl if Iran is attacked though.? Note that the US produces about half of > all the oil it uses.? ? But no, we can't bring alternatives online that > quickly.? It takes years, about 10, just to bring a new refinery online.? How > long you think it would take to bring enough plants online to provide alternate > IC fuels including the retooling of pipelines, tanker trucks, and delivery > systems that might be needed for some of those fuels?? It would take even longer > to phase out IC engines complete in favor of electrics, if we find the energy > and get the grid in shape to supply the load and handle all those hopefully fast > charging units.? Precisely. Which makes me all the more outraged that the United States allows itself to be held hostage Middle Eastern hydraulic?despots that?don't like us only so that a narrow cross-section of industry can profit.?Forget the Middle East. WE are the promised land of milk and honey.?Stop walking the streets of Sodom without pants and open up the Energy Markets to fair and free competition before it is too late! Stuart LaForge ? "The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides. From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Feb 29 21:14:41 2012 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:14:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil) In-Reply-To: <3B1A6381-C605-4229-935F-ABAC3B419E4B@mac.com> References: <20120224211652.GM7343@leitl.org> <1330122650.78329.YahooMailNeo@web164502.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <3B1A6381-C605-4229-935F-ABAC3B419E4B@mac.com> Message-ID: <4F4E9541.90504@libero.it> Il 29/02/2012 19:26, Samantha Atkins ha scritto: > Oil is not going to 1000x current value anytime soon. Agree > It is likely to go past $200/bbl if Iran is attacked though. This depend. How much Iran is really able to interdict Hormuz? How long? What would the US administration do? > Note that the US produces about half of all the oil it uses. But no, > we can't bring alternatives online that quickly. Quickly is an undefined term. Quickly in months probably not. Quickly in few years? Sure. > It takes years, about 10, just to bring a new refinery online. One wonder how the US was able to win the WW2 if this was true. It take years if there is not the will to go fast. Just trash the legislation preventing or slowing the building and on-lining of refinery, nuclear reactors, chemical factories and so on. In the 1950s they built nuclear reactors for power production in three years. Anything longer, today, is only due to political reason. The only real peak oil I'm concerned is political peak oil. > How long you think it would take to bring enough plants online to > provide alternate IC fuels including the retooling of pipelines, > tanker trucks, and delivery systems that might be needed for some of > those fuels? Not so much, if the market is allowed to work freely. A few years would be enough. If it is prevented to do its job? It will never deliver anything useful. > It would take even longer to phase out IC engines > complete in favor of electrics, if we find the energy and get the > grid in shape to supply the load and handle all those hopefully fast > charging units. You don't need to phase out all IC cars. You need to phase out just the most used cars. Some of these cars are used so heavily they are scrapped after a year or two at most. These are the cars you (and the people using them for work) want phase out first because they give you the most saving. Then you move down the food chain, replacing the cars and vehicles travelling longer distances in the shorter time first and the other after. The electric power will be there, just build nuclear reactors in three years instead of thirteen or twenty-three. Mirco From anders at aleph.se Wed Feb 29 21:03:34 2012 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:03:34 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: New position with the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F4E92A6.1050901@aleph.se> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: New position with the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:59:44 +0000 From: Sean O'Heigeartaigh To: fhi_bepjobs at maillist.ox.ac.uk , littlegate-staff at maillist.ox.ac.uk The Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology is pleased to announce a new research position: *James Martin Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: * *Socio-economic Impacts of Technological Change with the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology* * *University of Oxford Faculty of Philosophy The Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford Martin School Grade 7: ?29,099??39,107 per annum Protocol reference number: HUM/11043F/E Applications are invited for a Research Fellowship within the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, an interdisciplinary programme within the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University. This Fellowship is available on a one year full-time or two years part-time fixed term basis. The Programme, directed by Professor Nick Bostrom, analyzes possibilities related to long-range technological change and potential social impacts of future transformative technologies. Research foci include the future of computing and machine intelligence, existential risks, predictive and evaluative uncertainty, and related philosophical issues. The postholder will conduct research on socio-economic and strategic impacts of potentially transformative or disruptive future technological innovations, including (but not limited to) advances in computing and machine intelligence, biosecurity and surveillance technology. Academic background is open. Potential areas include economics, political science, legal theory, and sociology; other relevant areas include environmental economics, game theory, and risk management. A multidisciplinary background would be favourable. For further particulars and application details, please see: http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/vacancies or contact: futuretech at philosophy.ox.ac.uk The deadline for applications is *Monday 9^th April.* Dr. Se?n ? h?igeartaigh Academic Project Manager, Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology Oxford Martin School & Faculty of Philosophy Suite 8, Littlegate House St Ebbe?s Street Oxford OX1 1PT Website: http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk Email: sean.oheigeartaigh at philosophy.ox.ac.uk Telephone: 01865 286269 / 07712638318 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 21:43:03 2012 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:43:03 +0000 Subject: [ExI] AI milestones In-Reply-To: <4F4E710F.9040303@aleph.se> References: <4F4E710F.9040303@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 6:40 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I have been asked to make a list of milestones in AI development. This is my > current list, what have I missed? And what *actually* matters? Academic > papers easily overstate their importance or rig demos, actual use is often > hidden inside industry (few papers or reports), and impressiveness might > correlate very loosely with real importance. > > Gmail put your email in my spam folder. I wonder what frightened the mail AI? Three references to poker? BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Feb 29 23:25:36 2012 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:25:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Farming Message-ID: On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Samantha Atkins wrote: > No, you are not the only one. ?Although the last time I drove a tractor was in my teens. ?My maternal grandfather ran a pretty large spread until well into his 70s. ?Every summer I and my siblings got recruited to help out. ? I have fond memories of wrecking part of his chicken coop when he first tried to teach me to drive it at age 9. ?:) We are, however, just about the last with farm experience. My children have virtually no experience since by the time they were growing up the farming relatives had retired or died. Even the children of current farmers don't have much experience with anything but the pointy end of a large industrial farming support system. Keith