[ExI] sanity and connectedness, was: RE: list test

spike spike at rainier66.com
Mon Jul 29 14:35:31 UTC 2013


 

 

>. On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
.
Subject: Re: [ExI] sanity and connectedness, was: RE: list test

 

On 2013-07-29 06:38, spike wrote:

 Consider for instance this magnificent beauty.

 .  I yearned to know more about these beasts, while I was still there on
site to observe.  Later I found out it is likely a Cicindela depressula.
Kewall!


>.Indeed. The dispirited tiger beetle! (the name apparently has to do with
the "broken elbow" in the patterning, rather than any mood in the beetle) I
know the problem of photographing tiger beetles - they refuse to sit still
for a picture.

 

 

Anders, you made my point perfectly.  Having you on ExI means we all get the
benefit of your accumulated wisdom, but only after we get home.  I want my
own portable Anders to carry along always, without having to actually feed
you and give you a place to sleep.  That could get expensive.  Especially if
sushi is involved, oy.  {8^D

 

If Google Glass works as well as I am hoping it does, we might be able to
create some kind of pooled knowledge base including a wide variety of
hipsters, such that it would allow a prole to operate hundreds of different
computer operating systems for instance, or learn what to do if someone is
sick, or if one's Detroit is making some new noise, or allowing one to
identify and learn about some unfamiliar beast, or if one has the
appropriate plumbing to go into the women's locker room at the local
university or. wait, scratch that last one, too many privacy Puritans will
jump all over that one.  OK where was I?  A prole sees a wonderful
unfamiliar beast, or a rare car model, or a berry that might be edible, or a
mushroom, or one is in the mood for sushi, or one is in an unfamiliar town
and wants to know where there is fun to be found, or such as that.

 

Regarding Anders' observation of photographing tiger beetles, it took me ten
minutes to get even one decent picture.  They dart and skitter about, and
fly away at the slightest provocation.  I didn't have the right lens to get
a good photo from more than a couple meters, and they generally wouldn't
have it.  I didn't have a net either.  Next time I shall be better prepared.
I want a Bluetooth-enabled zoomer, such that I can get a reasonable image at
four meters, then send the info to a 4G enabled device and send it to my
super-interconnected hipster group.

 

It is astonishing that it has been twenty years since Gregory Stock
published Metaman, which described increased interconnectedness resulting in
the evolution of a human superorganism.  Dr. Stock was in town a few months
ago at a transhumanist schmooze up at Stanford.  We had a most pleasant
lunch, as we discussed how well that book as aged, with the basic
technologies needed for that superprole coming online now.  Sooo kewall is
this!

 

spike

 

 

 

 



An automatic species detector would be awesome. But it is tricky to get the
species right. I can imagine software recognizing the picture above as "a
cincidelid beetle", and likely homing in on a few likely species based on
color and location. But to get to Cicindela depressula you need to check the
length of the labrum and how the eybrow bristles look - and that requires a
facial closeup. Many species are even worse, you need to dissect them to
figure out what they are. So the species detector should have a micro-DNA
sample device too, in order to use DNA barcodes.

There are a few projects going in this direction:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00371-013-0782-8
http://www.ppgia.pucpr.br/~alekoe/Papers/ISM2011-Koerich.pdf
<http://www.ppgia.pucpr.br/%7Ealekoe/Papers/ISM2011-Koerich.pdf> 
http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/publications/2006/MayoSGAI_2006.pdf
<http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/%7Eml/publications/2006/MayoSGAI_2006.pdf> 
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6481468
<https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6481468&sortTyp
e%3Dasc_p_Sequence%26filter%3DAND%28p_IS_Number%3A4358066%29>
&sortType%3Dasc_p_Sequence%26filter%3DAND(p_IS_Number%3A4358066)
http://leafsnap.com/

It seems to me that sensor fusion is the way to go: use pictures,
animations, recorded birdsong, whatever to help focus the search. One could
use something like http://people.csail.mit.edu/torralba/tinyimages/ or
http://googleresearch.blogspot.se/2013/06/fast-accurate-detection-of-100000.
html to do an overall guess at what kind of critter it is, then apply local
expert software to narrow things down. In many cases it will just tell you
"some kind of cincidelid" or "little brown thing" due to lack of
information, but I suspect it will be amazingly good under the right
circumstances. 

I think we will get the system eventually. And probably sooner than it
looks. 



-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
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