From angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com Fri Aug 1 16:29:48 2014 From: angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Angel_Arturo_Ramirez_Su=C3=A1rez?=) Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 11:29:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Existential hysteria [Mirco Romanato] Message-ID: I like the idea of the Thorium reactors. Didn't know such a thing existed but now I'm interested. I believe it doesn't necessarily has to be solar energy what marks the next phase of human development but rather any tech that can get the job done and has less negative impact than fossil fuels is good. But we should also keep working on solar and seeking other alternatives, with the rate of development of technology it may become profitable one of these days too. http://www.gizmag.com/solar-array-hottest-supercritical-steam-world-record/32371/ >Because economy is about the seen and the unseen. I would also say "the glamorous" and the "unglamorous". ?>? Policymakers, more than people, are all interested in the "seen", what is "glamorous", "cool" and useful for their career. ?Which is why changing our culture it's important. We can't have people caring only about the glamurous, cool and useful making decisions that affect everyone of us. ?> Because if a culture can be imposed from the top to the bottom, by fiat of a cadre of leaders, today will be conservation, tomorrow will be mass slaughter of unbelievers. If YOU can do the former YOU can do the latter. And if YOU can do it, then others also can do it. Don't take me wrong but that's a pretty dumb argument. We're rational people and there are laws and societies built so that certain limits aren't crossed. Proof of that is that our societies these days are somewhat functional and we aren't going around with a club imposing our will on others. I like to think we're better than those fanatic nutjobs that protest everyday. But agree with you that it must be self sustainable, but we have to start somewhere. Both in developing the technology and ?helping people understand how their actions impact the environment. ?> The differences is my patients damage mainly themselves with their obsession and marginally others. These people damage mainly others and marginally themselves. But it is always someone else fault things do not work as they would like. I don't see what your patients have to do with it. Policies have to be discussed obviously, and as I wrote above we can't have self interest taking the central role in discussions or let our leaders decide based on them. ? -- *"Nuestras aspiraciones son nuestras posibilidades" - Robert Browning* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 2 00:00:47 2014 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 20:00:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ?Existential hysteria (John Clark) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 1:35 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > I agree with you on the need for cheaper, and thorium might do the job. > The most optimistic number I have seen for ground or even > StratoSolar in future decades is about 8 cents per kWh, more than twice as > much as coal. Then it is doomed, nobody will invest the MASSIVE amounts of money needed to develop it and even if they did nobody would buy the damn thing. And how is that electricity efficiently stored so it can be used at night? > On the other hand, have you not paid any attention to my talking about > space based solar for the last several years? If it is worth doing at all, > the eventual cost needs to get down around 2-3 cents per kWh. That takes > cheap transport to GEO. > VERY cheap transport to GEO! Easier said than done. > > The artwork on Google drive shows a Skylon cargo container being added > to a second stage. People have been talking about hypersonic ramjets for years but they have proven to be enormously difficult to make; I'm starting to think they will always be 20 years in the future, just like fusion power. > The second slide shows the cargo under way using VASIMR engines making > the purple glow. The engines are powered by microwave from the ground. > First use this technology to put a paperclip into Low Earth Orbit and then maybe we can talk meaningfully about how much it would cost to put a supertanker sized object into Geostationary Orbit. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Aug 2 00:38:50 2014 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 17:38:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?Existential hysteria (John Clark) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Aug 1, 2014 5:01 PM, "John Clark" wrote: > On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 1:35 PM, Keith Henson wrote: >> > On the other hand, have you not paid any attention to my talking about space based solar for the last several years? If it is worth doing at all, the eventual cost needs to get down around 2-3 cents per kWh. That takes cheap transport to GEO. > > > VERY cheap transport to GEO! Easier said than done. So you say you want lunar manufacturing? I've been invited to give a talk at the Lunar CubeSat Workshop in October about my launch service company CubeCab, and one topic being considered is how us plus one of the CubeSat propulsion modules being developed - say, Accion's or the CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster - can let someone put a small payload on the Moon in under a year (once CubeCab is in full service) for less than $1M. Only about 1 kg or so, but what could you bootstrap from that? (If you need more, you can send multiple, just so long as you can break them into ~kg components. No bawwing about "but you can't pack large optics" will be given credence: besides the ability to manufacture stuff from regolith, people have been finding ways to fold lenses and use arrays of individually small optics.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Aug 2 20:50:18 2014 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2014 13:50:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?Existential hysteria Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 2, 2014 at 5:00 AM, John Clark wrote: snip > People have been talking about hypersonic ramjets for years but they have > proven to be enormously difficult to make; I'm starting to think they will > always be 20 years in the future, just like fusion power. The Reaction Engines people agree with you. However, Skylon engines are not hypersonic ramjets. They are precooled combined cycle engines where the technology (except for the precooler) is very similar to conventional turbine engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SABRE_%28rocket_engine%29 >> The second slide shows the cargo under way using VASIMR engines making >> the purple glow. The engines are powered by microwave from the ground. > > First use this technology to put a paperclip into Low Earth Orbit and then > maybe we can talk meaningfully about how much it would cost to put a > supertanker sized object into Geostationary Orbit. Ion engines do not work in the atmosphere, not at all. But they work great in a vacuum. That is what the Dawn spacecraft used to visit Vesta and is using on its way to Ceres. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_%28spacecraft%29#Propulsion_system It has been flying for almost 7 years now. I.e., ion engines are not new technology. And while 15,000 tons of payload is considerable (about half the mass of one power satellite), it's a long way from a 250,000 tons supertanker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker#Supertankers_.28VLCC.29_and_.28ULCC.29 Keith From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Aug 3 14:40:45 2014 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 16:40:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Existential hysteria [Mirco Romanato] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53DE49ED.4040200@libero.it> Il 01/08/2014 18:29, Angel Arturo Ramirez Su?rez ha scritto: > ?>? > Policymakers, more than people, are all interested in the "seen", what > is "glamorous", "cool" and useful for their career. > ?Which is why changing our culture it's important. We can't have people > caring only about the glamurous, cool and useful making decisions that > affect everyone of us. This will not happen because we just talk about it. You do not change culture by sheer force of will. Not even if the will is the will of many people. The existing culture will try hard to stay alive and continue. It could mutate to adapt to the challenge in many ways, not all favorable to you. For example, Rodney Stark, in his books about Christianity and civilization give a very interesting and documented theory of how Christianity was successfully spread in the Roman Empire. And the strategy is, for me, reminiscent of the articles of Diego Gambetta on trust and trust development in society. The main big advantage of Christianity, at the time, was it cared of every human life whatsoever. So they adopted abandoned, orphan children (Romans would have, at best, taken them as slaves), they didn't practices exposition of the infants (so they had less dead children and more surviving one). They were altruistic and cared of their own and other's poor. And when plagues hit the cities, the clergy of the other gods flew away in the country leaving their own and every one else to die. Christians were willing to risk and die to take care of the others. So, in the end, after very plague, more people were cared and exposed to the behavior of Christians. Some would convert, some would change their attitude to them from negative to neutral to friendly. They had this rule, left by St. Paul, about "who do not work shall not eat". So they were industrious and hard working (the first religion, I think, conceiving manual labor as a way to heaven). These rules made them more fit, as a whole, than the heathens. >> Because if a culture can be imposed from the top to the bottom, by fiat >> of a cadre of leaders, today will be conservation, tomorrow will be mass >> slaughter of unbelievers. If YOU can do the former YOU can do the >> latter. And if YOU can do it, then others also can do it. > Don't take me wrong but that's a pretty dumb argument. We're rational > people and there are laws and societies built so that certain limits > aren't crossed. Proof of that is that our societies these days are > somewhat functional and we aren't going around with a club imposing our > will on others. My understanding is different: you have the rules before and the society after. You can not have a society where these rules are not understood and enforced before any formal arrangement is spoken or written. It is a fundamental question of trust; if I do not trust you to keep your word, I will not trust you to keep the words written on dead trees by dead men. You exchanged the cause for the effect (it is easy to do so when there is a feedback loop). > I like to think we're better than those fanatic nutjobs that protest > everyday. Surely we are different from them. Better? Probably. But person have many different facets and we could be better about something and they could be better than us about something else. > But agree with you that it must be self sustainable, but we have to > start somewhere. Both in developing the technology and ?helping people > understand how their actions impact the environment. My opinion is different: we need to help people, better if the right people, to understand because a better environment is good for them. If they buy the idea, they will, by themselves, act to obtain a better (for themselves) environment. They will be willing to pay more than their fair share to obtain their goals. But more people join, more they will be able to obtain reducing the cost of obtaining it at the same time. It start will the wealthy and then go down to the less wealthy. >> The differences is my patients damage mainly themselves with their >> obsession and marginally others. These people damage mainly others and >> marginally themselves. But it is always someone else fault things do not >> work as they would like. > I don't see what your patients have to do with it. Policies have to be > discussed obviously, and as I wrote above we can't have self interest > taking the central role in discussions or let our leaders decide based > on them. Psychiatric patients, if you observe them enough, are not so different from normal people. Their reactions to the environment are just to strong, too weak or malformed with reality. The nutjobs protesting all day are not so different from us and they are not different from psychiatric cases. Their genetics and their environment (parents and society included) shaped their personality as shaped ours. For example: why we need to leaders to decide (for us? for all?) when we also must check them not to take the wrong decision? Maybe it is better, in some matter, not have any leader deciding for and imposing his decisions on others. Thinking there is the need of leaders to decide for us and others was imprinted on you and you probably didn't even think about it rationally because you just take the idea as given; an axiom, not a theorem. If you take the time and effort, you could explain the concepts to the people; many will understand it rationally but they will not get it emotionally (many more than you think - but if you start looking at it around you will notice a lot of people acting in this way). For example: Andreas Antonopulous talked about this phenomenon when he explain how bitcoin work. They ask "Who control Bitcoin". You explain Bitcoin is decentralized, P2P, open source, mathematically proof, etc. They say "ok. I get it. .... But who control it?" "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Is he a good person?" These are not psychotic persons, but they have a delusion anyway. They are unable to get out a certain train of thoughts even if you bring them logically out, they will fall back. If you actually force them out they could become angry, sad, etc. Do not get me wrong, the mechanism is useful, or we would always reevaluate everything every time, and this would be exhausting 99% of the time. But on a Bell curve distribution someone will be easier to sway out of their train of thinking than others. Someone will be very hard and someone near impossible or impossible. Others will be easy to sway wherever you like. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Aug 3 15:19:45 2014 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 17:19:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] ?Existential hysteria In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53DE5311.3070304@libero.it> Il 02/08/2014 22:50, Keith Henson ha scritto: > And while 15,000 tons of payload is considerable (about half the mass > of one power satellite), it's a long way from a 250,000 tons > supertanker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker#Supertankers_.28VLCC.29_and_.28ULCC.29 About the supertanker thing... http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/07/renewed-hope-for-emdrive-with-nasa.html Renewed hope for EmDrive with NASA validation ... is this a Chicago Pile moment ? "I have background on what EmDrive would mean below from articles in 2009. Success and validation that aligns with what is believed about EmDrive means powerful mainly static thrust. It would be an alternative way to achieve effects that would mimic antigravity. It would enable super efficient planes, better flying cars, and cloud city like applications in a full expression of a mature EmDrive. In the nearer term it would be better satellite propulsion." Mirco From spike66 at att.net Sun Aug 3 15:40:55 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 08:40:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Existential hysteria [Mirco Romanato] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <05dc01cfaf31$514071f0$f3c155d0$@att.net> >? On Behalf Of Angel Arturo Ramirez Su?rez Subject: Re: [ExI] Existential hysteria [Mirco Romanato] >?I like the idea of the Thorium reactors?But we should also keep working on solar and seeking other alternatives?. http://www.gizmag.com/solar-array-hottest-supercritical-steam-world-record/32371/ > Ja, we can do them all. We need to plant nukes as fast as we can get them in the ground, but during that process we will be burning coal and oil. There are some parts of the globe were solar is better than nuclear, such as the Sahara. Plenty of sun, cloudless skies and open land there and plenty of reasons to not put nuclear plants. I can see nukes being a big player in our energy future, but not the only player. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Aug 3 17:27:22 2014 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 13:27:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Existential hysteria [Mirco Romanato] In-Reply-To: <05dc01cfaf31$514071f0$f3c155d0$@att.net> References: <05dc01cfaf31$514071f0$f3c155d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 11:40 AM, spike wrote: http://www.gizmag.com/solar-array-hottest-supercritical-steam-world-record/32371/ > The hotter the better because the efficiency is better, and 570C is very hot for solar, conventional nuclear reactors only operate at about 330C; unfortunately to achieve this high solar heat they needed 600 optically precise and very expensive heliostats. A first generation LFTR would operate at 700C which would give a thermal-electric efficiency of 45% compared with existing solid fuel nuclear reactors which are about 32%. And as we advanced up the learning curve it would get better, that is to say hotter; a molten salt reactor operated at 860C for 100 hours as far back as 1954; the liquid Fluoride doesn't boil till 1400C so there is still a huge safety margin. And although hot it is not under pressure which also helps with the safety and makes the plumbing much cheaper. John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sun Aug 3 17:36:19 2014 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 18:36:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Existential hysteria [Mirco Romanato] In-Reply-To: <53DE49ED.4040200@libero.it> References: <53DE49ED.4040200@libero.it> Message-ID: On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 3:40 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > The main big advantage of Christianity, at the time, was it cared of every > human life whatsoever. So they adopted abandoned, orphan children (Romans > would have, at best, taken them as slaves), they didn't practices exposition > of the infants (so they had less dead children and more surviving one). They > were altruistic and cared of their own and other's poor. And when plagues > hit the cities, the clergy of the other gods flew away in the country > leaving their own and every one else to die. > Christians were willing to risk and die to take care of the others. So, in > the end, after very plague, more people were cared and exposed to the > behavior of Christians. Some would convert, some would change their attitude > to them from negative to neutral to friendly. I don't disagree with the above, but... > They had this rule, left by St. Paul, about "who do not work shall not eat". > So they were industrious and hard working (the first religion, I think, > conceiving manual labor as a way to heaven). > These rules made them more fit, as a whole, than the heathens. > I don't think early Christians were particularly hard working. The hard work ethic didn't appear until the Protestant Reformation in the Middle Ages. Early Christians emphasised the early Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world. Any idea of accumulating worldly goods and riches was frowned upon. The quotation of Paul to the Thessalonians has to be seen in context. Paul was making up the rules for his new religion as he went along and his first letter had talked about the imminent Second Coming. This led to the problem that some Thessalonians stopped doing anything to help the new Christian community, so he had to tell the Thessalonians to stop feeding the freeloaders. Just common sense, not a spiritual rule on how to live your life. BillK From angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com Mon Aug 4 18:46:10 2014 From: angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Angel_Arturo_Ramirez_Su=C3=A1rez?=) Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 13:46:10 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Existential hysteria: Message-ID: >My opinion is different: we need to help people, better if the right people, to understand because a better environment is good for them. If they buy the idea, they will, by themselves, act to obtain a better (for themselves) environment. They will be willing to pay more than their fair share to obtain their goals. But more people join, more they will be able to obtain reducing the cost of obtaining it at the same time. It start will the wealthy and then go down to the less wealthy. ?Which is exactly the same thing I'm talking about.? ?>?Thinking there is the need of leaders to decide for us and others was imprinted on you and you probably didn't even think about it rationally because you just take the idea as given; an axiom, not a theorem. It's true that leadership and the structured society we live in is most probably an artificial construct. But we have it because it works. You're assuming everyone is interested and wants to change and what's better for the environment, which is not always the case. Even less so when ignorance gets in the way, hence the need for a cultural change and if necessary, leaders to step in during the transitional change. The most optimist ideal I think is a descentralized society where everyone participates and wants to work towards the goal of a better future for everyone, but reality is different. If we don't work considering all aspects we have then we really work under a delusion and are no different from the patients you talk about. >Ja, we can do them all. We need to plant nukes as fast as we can get them in the ground, but during that process we will be burning coal and oil. There are some parts of the globe were solar is better than nuclear, such as the Sahara. Plenty of sun, cloudless skies and open land there and plenty of reasons to not put nuclear plants. I can see nukes being a big player in our energy future, but not the only player. Agreed! -- *"Nuestras aspiraciones son nuestras posibilidades" - Robert Browning* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Aug 4 20:21:59 2014 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 22:21:59 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Existential hysteria [Mirco Romanato] In-Reply-To: References: <53DE49ED.4040200@libero.it> Message-ID: <53DFEB67.6080808@libero.it> Il 03/08/2014 19:36, BillK ha scritto: > On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 3:40 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: >> They had this rule, left by St. Paul, about "who do not work shall not eat". >> So they were industrious and hard working (the first religion, I think, >> conceiving manual labor as a way to heaven). >> These rules made them more fit, as a whole, than the heathens. > I don't think early Christians were particularly hard working. The > hard work ethic didn't appear until the Protestant Reformation in the > Middle Ages. Wrong, It date back at least 800 years, when the "Salterio" of Utrecth (830) was inked by a Benedictine monk and the illustration showed the small army of the goods and the large army of the wicked sharpening their swords. But the evils used a hand sharpener where the faithfuls used a rotating sharpeners (just introduced from China). Message--> technological innovation is the will of God. Saint Benedict, in the sixth century (three centuries before Uthrecth), after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, introduced the "ora et labora" (pray and work) rules in his monastic order. > Early Christians emphasized the early Second Coming of Christ and the > end of the world. Any idea of accumulating worldly goods and riches > was frowned upon. Early Christians in what context? First century, second, fifth? Hard work was a way to perfect themselves, with liturgic prayers and meditation of the Scriptures. Wealth was just a by-product. > The quotation of Paul to the Thessalonians has to be seen in context. > Paul was making up the rules for his new religion as he went along and > his first letter had talked about the imminent Second Coming. This led > to the problem that some Thessalonians stopped doing anything to help > the new Christian community, so he had to tell the Thessalonians to > stop feeding the freeloaders. Just common sense, not a spiritual rule > on how to live your life. Your interpretation or mine of the motives of St.Paul to give this rule is unimportant. What matter is the rule and how it was publicly interpreted after it was given. The interpretation given was no one can claim other are obligated to support him when he is doing his religious duties. This is a stark difference from other religions of the time where obligations were collective and were enforced. If salvation is individual, no individual can claim other must support his salvation at their expenses. Mirco From tara at taramayastales.com Mon Aug 4 20:37:28 2014 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 13:37:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Existential hysteria [Mirco Romanato] In-Reply-To: References: <53DE49ED.4040200@libero.it> Message-ID: On Aug 3, 2014, at 10:36 AM, BillK wrote: > On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 3:40 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: >> The main big advantage of Christianity, at the time, was it cared of every >> human life whatsoever. So they adopted abandoned, orphan children (Romans >> would have, at best, taken them as slaves), they didn't practices exposition >> of the infants (so they had less dead children and more surviving one). They >> were altruistic and cared of their own and other's poor. And when plagues >> hit the cities, the clergy of the other gods flew away in the country >> leaving their own and every one else to die. >> Christians were willing to risk and die to take care of the others. So, in >> the end, after very plague, more people were cared and exposed to the >> behavior of Christians. Some would convert, some would change their attitude >> to them from negative to neutral to friendly. > Buddhism and Jainism also value all life, including all non-human life. I'll argue that the best thing Christianity did for Europe was enforce monogamy. This indirectly led to the eradication of slavery (until the Europeans joined back into the African slave trade a millennia later) in Europe, because by Roman law, the child took on the condition of the mother: A slave woman gave birth to a slave, a free woman to a free child. So men preferentially married free women. The upper class, because they were limited to one wife, could only monopolize one free woman each, leaving enough free women for lower class men to marry them. (Daughters who were born slaves often had to be freed by the owners in order to marry.) Thus, within a few centuries, Europe went from having a huge slave population to having no slaves left. Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Mon Aug 4 20:36:53 2014 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 16:36:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dim vision of the future Message-ID: <201408042133.s74LXiVL021047@andromeda.ziaspace.com> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101876655 Welcome to the mall of 2039: It's nothing like today What retail shopping will be like in 25 years. There's nothing that we weren't discussing among extropians and technophiles 25 years ago. I shouldn't be surprised how feeble a prediction this is, but it does still surprise me when others have such myopia. -- David. From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 4 22:42:55 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 00:42:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dim vision of the future In-Reply-To: <201408042133.s74LXiVL021047@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <2737866122-15531@secure.ericade.net> Compare this with this week's talkie in my networks:http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ 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 Aug 5 05:03:46 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 22:03:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] turing movie Message-ID: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> Hey cool! There's an Alan Turing movie coming in four months: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/ Cool, this might be excellent. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 5 08:06:34 2014 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 09:06:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dim vision of the future In-Reply-To: <2737866122-15531@secure.ericade.net> References: <201408042133.s74LXiVL021047@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <2737866122-15531@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 11:42 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Compare this with this week's talkie in my networks: > http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ > > I think that piece just defined TLDR. :) I liked this bit: Quote: So I agree with Robin Hanson. This is the dream time. This is a rare confluence of circumstances where we are unusually safe from multipolar traps, and as such weird things like art and science and philosophy and love can flourish. As technological advance increases, the rare confluence will come to an end. New opportunities to throw values under the bus for increased competitiveness will arise. New ways of copying agents to increase the population will soak up our excess resources and resurrect Malthus' unquiet spirit. Capitalism and democracy, previously our protectors, will figure out ways to route around their inconvenient dependence on human values. And our coordination power will not be nearly up to the task, assuming something much more powerful than all of us combined doesn't show up and crush our combined efforts with a wave of its paw. ------------ So I dream on for a while................. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 5 14:49:39 2014 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 09:49:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] unconscious In-Reply-To: <1699238308-17503@secure.ericade.net> References: <1699238308-17503@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Anders Sandberg wrote: > > So I think making the unconscious conscious is not the way to higher > > intelligence. Quite the opposite. We might want more layers! > > ?People in this group, I have observed, are focused on intelligence and cognitive biases, and maybe too much so. There is an ancient battle here still being played out because of our genetics: intelligence versus emotion. Take a look at Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases and think just which of them involves emotion. Quite a few. Take an obvious one: fundamental attribution error. Isn't this about the person manufacturing biases because of his feelings? He wants to feel superior and good and attribute inferior and bad to the other person. And he does this while unaware that he is being irrational. I have in mind a future in which genetic changes allow us to reach further into our unconscious, not so far as to mess up basic bodily functions, but enough so that we can have more control over, mostly stopping?, emotions. Anger can usually veto any thought or reason and produce irrational actions. Temper means the process that holds our emotions, in check, esp. anger. Who would not want a better emotion checker? Schizophrenia is often misconstrued as split personality. It is a split, all right, but between the emotions and the will. It was thought that the person could not stop hallucinations and delusions, and of course in that they were right. Neither can a normal person exercise good control over thoughts and especially feelings. These well up from our unconscious and intrude upon our conscious mind and are very often unwanted. Want better purely intellectual workings? Get control over emotions. We are not better off not knowing about the angers, fears, inferiorities, etc. but we are better off if we can consider and acknowledge them and then put them out of mind. Bill W -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Aug 5 16:46:57 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 18:46:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Dim vision of the future In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <2802816515-15497@secure.ericade.net> BillK??, 5/8/2014 10:11 AM: Quote:? So I agree with Robin Hanson. This is the dream time. ...-----? So I dream on for a while.................? No, we should learn lucid dreaming and kill Moloch. And then dream wonderful dreams. Learning how to harness complex, adaptive, superintelligent systems seems to be a key goal, whether one thinks of them as markets, AGI, evolution or the development of civilizations. We need to learn what limits there are, how much things can be predicted, and find new intervention methods. Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rtomek at ceti.pl Tue Aug 5 20:07:40 2014 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 22:07:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> Message-ID: <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> On Mon, Aug 04, 2014 at 10:03:46PM -0700, spike wrote: > > > Hey cool! There's an Alan Turing movie coming in four months: > > > > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/ > > > > Cool, this might be excellent. This WILL be excellent. Just think of it. Turing and Knightley are being parachuted into the dark heart of nazi Germany. Turing uses his magical knowledge of "mahetmacits" to help them avoid the chase by SS-men. Y'know, game theory, chaos theory, cool Mandelbrot pictures drawn by automaton in his suitcase - he looks at it and he says "now we go 500 meters left, and jump into the baloon". WTF, thinks Knightley, but they go there and hoopla, the milkboy has just left his milk delivery baloon unattended (because we can deliver milk to the street but then someone has to go out and deliver bottle of milk to the door). As they go, Knightley shoots SS-men from her crossbow, equipped with sniper lunette, capable of downing a man from thousand meters thanks to top-secret "ultrawolframic" arrows. Then they start a romance, because Knightley is the very hottie. So after about an hour into the movie Turing says to her "you know, I was experimenting in bed with men and wanted to kill Hitler, but now I look at you and I really wonder, could we be happy together?" and she says "yes! and fuck Hitler" - to which he protests "noo! not him!". Then they land the baloon into the barn somewhere in Westfalia or Bavaria and are happy together (alas, the screen goes dark, at least in PG-13 version but there are some deleted scenes saved for DVD-edition). On the next day they rob the bank, using his magicothematics and her crossbow (he also wakes up the beast inside him and kicks a lot vanDamme/ChuckNorris style). Then they steal another baloon and run away to some neutral country. To spice it all up, they are chased by Turing lookalike who is a robot powered by sophisticated mechanism with springs and pendulums and whose springs have to be rewinded every few days (like in mechanical clock) so he goes to prostitutes and they rewind him for money. Why prostitutes? Because they are in every bigger city and every country, which cannot be said about car repair man and watchmaker. The robot also happens to be a fanatic nazi and Hitler's sycophant, so he knows a lot of secrets. After the war he is being captured, a USB port is soldered into his nose, they reboot him with foot in a boot and install Windows 0.43 onto his mechanical brain and he reveals all the secret knowledge he posesses, but also he goes crank because Windows is in permament beta (like, certain things never change). So they put him into some Disneyland attraction, tunnel of love or something and this is his end. Or maybe they connect him to the net and maybe he even subscribes to ExI. Then just before closing captions it is being revealed that it was real Turing which ended up on ExI/Disneyland while nazi-Turing lived with Knightley in Switzerland and they had robo-pshychopatic children who are going to take over the planet. The Turings switched places during bank robbery which was a masterpiece intrigue of dark genius nazirobot, who used his own Mandelbrot suitcase automaton to his own advantage. Some piece by Wagner, something about human sacrifices and burning the world ends the film as the screen goes very very dark... I consider my version of this movie much more interesting. It's nonsense of course, but then what the mob will actually see in the cinema is going to be nonsense too. And mine would be at least somewhat funny, with anachronisms (Mandelbrot) and fancy inventions a'la impossible geometry. And the mob wouldn't care, since they can't tell one nonsense from another. Now go watch the movie, then reread this email and cry because after Chaplin silent movies the cinema went downhill accelerating. -- 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 Aug 5 20:16:24 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 13:16:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] shockley's lab Message-ID: <05d401cfb0ea$21efc030$65cf4090$@att.net> I am explaining to Isaac why this spot is ground zero for the entire electronics revolution, 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/Explaining.jpg Anders took all these photos except this one: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/Happy%20team.jpg Astonishing, appalling decay in a building where the integrated circuit was born: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/Interior2.jpg After Shockley went crazy, several of his employees rebelled and started their own company called Fairchild Semiconductor. The Milpitas annex of Fairchild invented the LCD. The Mountain View lab later became a Mexican vegetable and produce stand, then later a Halal butcher shop. Clearly the last occupants were economizing on signs, by repurposing the taped-lettered La Fiesta Super Market and painting over La Fiesta rather than getting a ladder and peeling off the tape: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/Market%20forces.jpg About 20 yrs ago, there was a big debate at the local historical society. They just couldn?t decide if the lab in which the integrated circuit was invented was worthy of preservation. They saved a 1950s era neon sign of a diving woman in front of a local motel, this being a fine example of suburban tackiness. The one-piece bathing suit and rubber bathing cap were all the rage in those benighted times. The historical society saved a hotdog stand on the periphery of San Jose State U, which was shaped like an orange. Indeed. It dated back to the 1930s as a hotdog stand. The orange d?cor was added in the late 40s. This made it historic by the Silicon Valley?s standards. Both the tacky diving woman and the orange hotdog stand were saved. But Shockley?s lab, which spawned our modern world failed to make the cut. Merely inventing our modern world was deemed insufficiently significant from the historical society?s point of view. Someone came up with the money to do this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/Plaque.jpg Knowing that I was on hallowed ground, I removed my shoes and covered my head in accordance with Exodus chapter 3 verse 5. None of the local bushes were on fire, but I felt a burning within my heart, at how truthy was this place. Deeming myself unworthy of touching this sacred ground with my bare feet, I employed a bit if cardboard. Being temporarily without a yarmulke, I pressed into service one of my socks: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/Prayer2.jpg I fall prostrate in humble supplication before the sacred shrine as my son plays on his i-Pad, pretending to not know me: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/Sacred%20ground.jpg I am astonished that this decaying hulk is the actual site of the start of the revolution: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/The%20Place.jpg There is a sketchy plan involves restoring the site as much as possible to its 1956 appearance and possibly building a structure above and around it to create a museum at the site. Parking is limited, so the investors would need to buy the property to the north of the lab for a parking structure. Saving this place in Mountain View will not be cheap, but there is money that thinks it is worth doing. I don?t know the current status of the project. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 5 21:09:40 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2014 14:09:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> Message-ID: <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Tomasz Rola Subject: Re: [ExI] turing movie On Mon, Aug 04, 2014 at 10:03:46PM -0700, spike wrote: > >> Hey cool! There's an Alan Turing movie coming in four months: > >> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/ > >> Cool, this might be excellent. >...This WILL be excellent. Just think of it. Turing and Knightley are being parachuted into the dark heart of nazi Germany...Now go watch the movie, then reread this email and cry because after Chaplin silent movies the cinema went downhill accelerating. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- Well yes, the probability that they will mess up the story in order to sell it to the unwashed mass approaches unity. But hey, movie people need to make a living. Or rather they need to make insane profit; it's the way Hollyweird operates. Evolved that way, nothing they can do about it. But it does leave a number of questions such as: Why do we assume the masses are unwashed? What if the masses wash regularly? How does one differentiate oneself? By not washing? Similar questions arise with faceless masses, for as one approaches a crowd of such, one sees that every single one of them have a face, and likely are washed. So now does one need to lose face in order to escape being one of them? Consider also that I made the same cynical comments as in the first paragraph when I heard a movie was being made of Card's Enders Game. I went to the theatre for the first time in several years because my company gave me tickets. I was so pleasantly surprised to find that the moviemakers did an excellent job of translating that terrific book into video, even fixing some of Card's most vexing problems. (Sorry Mr. Card, they did. It was one of those very rare cases when an excellent book spawned an even better movie.) Hollyweird had a wonderful opportunity here, with this historical narrative. They can take the actual truth, a most compelling story, where the enigma machine was cracked by mathematical technology, use the actual facts, no real embellishment. They get a gay character for free, no need to write one in with the often-clumsy way moviemakers do, they get an actual genius rather than some hokey made-up Will Hunting character, they get an actual war with millions of living breathing beings whose lives are hanging on the success of that project. They get it all from real life history; don't need for silly car chases or helicopter crashes, they don't need shootouts (the actual war supplies all those), they don't even need shot-in-the-dark speculation, since plenty of historic documentation of Bletchley Park exists from eye-witness accounts. So please, I beg them, just tell the actual story. The beautiful Keira Knightley is a gift, a bonus. The actual historic truth is all this compelling story needs. Please, please don't screw up this, oh Hollyweird producers, I beseech the hell outta thee, don't do it; just tell the truth, tell it. We will buy it, and we will love it. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Aug 6 16:40:37 2014 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 12:40:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 5:09 PM, spike wrote: > > Hollyweird had a wonderful opportunity here, with this historical narrative. They can take the actual truth, a most compelling story, where the enigma machine was cracked by mathematical technology, use the actual facts, no real embellishment. They get a gay character for free, no need to write one in with the often-clumsy way moviemakers do Yes but I hope the moviemakers realize that the most interesting thing about Turing wasn't that he was gay, lots of people are gay, it's that he was a genius, and lots of people aren't geniuses . > I was so pleasantly surprised to find that the moviemakers did an > excellent job of translating that terrific book [Enders Game] into video > I agree the moviemakers did a very good job with Enders Game, but they were punished for their excellent work, the movie was not a box office success. They'll never do that again. >even fixing some of Card's most vexing problems. (Sorry Mr. Card, they > did. It was one of those very rare cases when an excellent book spawned an > even better movie.) > There were a few times in the weightless war room were it seemed to me that Mr. Card might have been a little confused as to the difference between weight and mass, Is that what you were referring to? Of course the physics of the Ansible is also impossible but that's different; I think it was Isaac Asimov who said that it's OK for a SF writer to violate the laws of physics, but he must be aware that he's doing so. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 6 17:36:06 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 10:36:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> Message-ID: <021101cfb19c$e808d060$b81a7120$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2014 9:41 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] turing movie On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 5:09 PM, spike wrote: > > Hollyweird?get(s) a gay character for free, no need to write one in with the often-clumsy way moviemakers do? >?Yes but I hope the moviemakers realize that the most interesting thing about Turing wasn't that he was gay, lots of people are gay, it's that he was a genius, and lots of people aren't geniuses? Ja. They could make only a passing reference to it, which would enhance the story instead of distract. They could even inject a little humor in a gentle way. Turing: I think I will go to Oxford and study Riemann geometries. Rock Hudson and Jim Neighbors: We are going to Bletchley Park to study cryptography. Alan, you should come with us. Turing gazing wistfully at both: I think I will go to Bletchley and study cryptography? >>? I was so pleasantly surprised to find that the moviemakers did an excellent job of translating that terrific book [Enders Game] into video >?I agree the moviemakers did a very good job with Enders Game, but they were punished for their excellent work, the movie was not a box office success. They'll never do that again? Oh so sad. Such a good movie. >>?even fixing some of Card's most vexing problems. (Sorry Mr. Card, they did. It was one of those very rare cases when an excellent book spawned an even better movie.) >?There were a few times in the weightless war room were it seemed to me that Mr. Card might have been a little confused as to the difference between weight and mass, Is that what you were referring to?... No. He messed up conservation of angular momentum. This was a critically important miss for this kind of scenario, having a shootout in weightlessness. A spacecraft controls engineer could very well be called an angular momentum manager, because attitude control in space is all about control of angular momentum. You can?t make that stuff. You can hurl some of it away if you have propulsion mass, but once gone it stays gone. Conservation of momentum is not just a helpful suggestion, it?s the law. >? Of course the physics of the Ansible is also impossible but that's different; I think it was Isaac Asimov who said that it's OK for a SF writer to violate the laws of physics, but he must be aware that he's doing so?John K Clark OK sure. Many of us here read Madeleine L?Engle?s A Wrinkle in Time in our childhood perhaps. There she had a story which was not hard sci-fi because that part of it really wasn?t the point of the book. Making it hard sci-fi would take away from the story, even for us hardcore physics types. So L?Engle intentionally injected witchcraft and such along with the whole wrinkle in the 4th dimension bit to tip us off that it wasn?t hard sci-fi. I get the feeling Card specifically wanted to steer the reader away from hard sci-fi with a number of devices. Making Ender and Bean 7 yrs old was one. Kids that age just don?t have some of the mental circuitry ready to do some of the things they did, especially Bean. Even extraordinary highly selected children will not be there by age 7. The super-elite at 12 to 14, that is far more believable. In the arena, when two guys are approaching and grasp each other, there will be angular momentum left over. Card had them hold their legs in such a way as to cancel the momentum. Nature doesn?t do that. In hard sci-fi, they would be shooting at moving targets. When you think of it, that in itself could be one hell of a cool on-orbit game: 3D team style laser tag. You would grab a really tall guy and hold him by one foot, and have him stretch out with hands over his head. This would slow down your mutual rotation by increasing the moment of inertia as much as possible. Then you can shoot more effectively. In general, in the Space Opera format of nearly everything from our misspent youth, Star Trek and such, stars are far apart. You can?t get much of anywhere in a five year mission unless you suspend the laws of physics. So we look the other way as writers do violence to known physical concepts. There?s no other way to do it: space is too big, light is too slow, lives are too short and the rocket equation is just too cruel. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com Wed Aug 6 18:11:02 2014 From: angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Angel_Arturo_Ramirez_Su=C3=A1rez?=) Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 13:11:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Unconscious [William Flynn Wallace] Message-ID: I'll have to agree. Emotion doesn't? appear to be that necessary for the correct functioning of modern humans, it would be nice to get higher control and awareness of our lower level functions. ? -- ? ? *"Nuestras aspiraciones son nuestras posibilidades" - Robert Browning* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 6 19:14:01 2014 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 12:14:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unconscious [William Flynn Wallace] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Aug 6, 2014 11:35 AM, "Angel Arturo Ramirez Su?rez" < angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com> wrote: > I'll have to agree. Emotion doesn't? appear to be that necessary for the correct functioning of modern humans, it would be nice to get higher control and awareness of our lower level functions. Eh. It's a useful heuristic, especially for the vast majority of humanity that wouldn't have the first clue what to do with direct awareness of, let alone control of, lower level functions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 7 08:09:07 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 10:09:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Unconscious [William Flynn Wallace] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <2944424007-25368@secure.ericade.net> Angel Arturo Ramirez Su?rez , 6/8/2014 8:39 PM: I'll have to agree. Emotion doesn't? appear to be that necessary for the correct functioning of modern humans, it would be nice to get higher control and awareness of our lower level functions. Ever read Antonio Damasio's "Descartes' Error"? The neuroscience consensus is that the emotion systems are essential for correct functioning - including for "purely" cognitive tasks. One key reason is that they provide a value evaluation for states: if you have to *think* about why losing your job or spending hours repeating the same mental operation is bad, your functioning will be impaired.? It would sometimes be nice to be able to turn off boredom. But there better be a timer for that feature, or you will find yourself doing taxes forever.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 7 08:20:33 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 10:20:33 +0200 Subject: [ExI] shockley's lab In-Reply-To: <05d401cfb0ea$21efc030$65cf4090$@att.net> Message-ID: <2944840342-26727@secure.ericade.net> spike , 5/8/2014 10:32 PM: ?I am explaining to Isaac why this spot is ground zero for the entire electronics revolution, 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View: ?https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50947659/Shockley%20lab/Explaining.jpgIt is interesting what spots we find the beginnings of our era in. Behind my office, on the wall of the not-so-impressive Westgate shopping center is this plaque commemorating that Roger Bacon invented the experimental scientific method here:?https://flic.kr/p/4sxh3P Over in Manchester they have a marker in the university area where the first civilian computer was built:?https://flic.kr/p/t5P7z and not far away where the atom was split:?https://flic.kr/p/4uckqE (Of course, not all plaques commemorate big events:?https://flic.kr/p/58dsNw and some are just philosophy in-jokes https://flic.kr/p/t5P7z ) ?There is a sketchy plan involves restoring the site as much as possible to its 1956 appearance and possibly building a structure above and around it to create a museum at the site.? Parking is limited, so the investors would need to buy the property to the north of the lab for a parking structure.? Saving this place in Mountain View will not be cheap, but there is money that thinks it is worth doing.? I don?t know the current status of the project. They better hurry before Walmart and the nearby developments reach it.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Aug 7 14:30:54 2014 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 09:30:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Unconscious [William Flynn Wallace] In-Reply-To: <2944424007-25368@secure.ericade.net> References: <2944424007-25368@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 3:09 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > Ever read Antonio Damasio's "Descartes' Error"? The neuroscience consensus > is that the emotion systems are essential for correct functioning - > including for "purely" cognitive tasks. One key reason is that they provide > a value evaluation for states: if you have to *think* about why losing your > job or spending hours repeating the same mental operation is bad, your > functioning will be impaired. > > It would sometimes be nice to be able to turn off boredom. But there > better be a timer for that feature, or you will find yourself doing taxes > forever. > > > Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford > University > > ?Yes, I read all Damasio's books. I am not arguing with you at all on this point. However, there are many cases in which the emotions rule and logic goes out the window. Anger especially can overwhelm good sense. I would never want to shut emotions off. In some cases I'd argue for stronger emotions, just not the bad ones, like jealousy, for instance, which leads to murders every day worldwide. Perhaps we can learn to inhibit certain emotions with the genes we have now. I don't want to see thousands of clinical psychologists swarming schools, but teaching morality, which often includes inhibiting desires, deserves to be taught somewhere. I'd start in kindergarten (or before) when pushes and shoves start. I just don't see much in the way of research on emotional control and it is so important to good reasoning. bill w ? > _______________________________________________ > 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 Thu Aug 7 17:32:50 2014 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 11:32:50 -0600 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 10:40 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 5:09 PM, spike wrote: > > > > Hollyweird had a wonderful opportunity here, with this historical > narrative. They can take the actual truth, a most compelling story, where > the enigma machine was cracked by mathematical technology, use the actual > facts, no real embellishment. They get a gay character for free, no need > to write one > in with the often-clumsy way moviemakers do > > Yes but I hope the moviemakers realize that the most interesting thing > about Turing wasn't that he was gay, lots of people are gay, it's that he > was a genius, and lots of people aren't geniuses . > But the fact that he was gay will undoubtedly play a major roll in the movie. It is a keystone to the Hollywood agenda, so it's unavoidable. Not to say that I have anything against that part of the Hollywood agenda. I haven't. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 7 19:03:55 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 12:03:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Unconscious [William Flynn Wallace] In-Reply-To: <2944424007-25368@secure.ericade.net> References: <2944424007-25368@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <037701cfb272$56d8ac10$048a0430$@att.net> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >?if you have to *think* about why losing your job or spending hours repeating the same mental operation is bad, your functioning will be impaired. >?It would sometimes be nice to be able to turn off boredom. But there better be a timer for that feature, or you will find yourself doing taxes forever. ?Anders Sandberg But Anders, we do taxes forever already. There is no way to turn that off. {8-[ {8^D Thanks me lad, your commentary is among the most profound insights I have read in some time. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at harveynewstrom.com Thu Aug 7 21:05:03 2014 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 17:05:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> Message-ID: <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> On Thursday, August 07, 2014 1:33 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote, > But the fact that he was gay will undoubtedly play a major roll in the movie. It > is a keystone to the Hollywood agenda, so it's unavoidable. I don't know how they can leave out such an important part of the story. Turing was only 40 years old and still working on secret cryptography for the British government when he was arrested for being gay. (A police officer investigating a burglary at Turing's home noticed his relationship.) The heroic and genius accomplishments that everybody wants to see highlighted in the movie should have continued for several more decades and assisted in future wars. But instead, the government that he helped in defeating the Nazis decided that *Turing* was the security threat and that to protect our way of life, *he* should be barred from any further work on government encryption programs. He was dead of an apparent suicide two years later. I don't know how we can tell this heroic story of Turing's career in government encryption without mentioning how it came to an end. I don't know how we celebrate this man's tremendous life giving to the British government and the Allies in fighting the Nazis without mentioning how they repaid him and treated him in return, resulting in his death. These seem to be two sides of the same story. Telling only one side would be telling only half the story. -- Harvey Newstrom www.HarveyNewstrom.com From rtomek at ceti.pl Thu Aug 7 21:44:29 2014 From: rtomek at ceti.pl (Tomasz Rola) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 23:44:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> Message-ID: <20140807214429.GA27136@tau1.ceti.pl> On Tue, Aug 05, 2014 at 02:09:40PM -0700, spike wrote: > [...] > > But it does leave a number of questions such as: Why do we assume > the masses are unwashed? What if the masses wash regularly? How > does one differentiate oneself? By not washing? Similar questions > arise with faceless masses, for as one approaches a crowd of such, > one sees that every single one of them have a face, and likely are > washed. So now does one need to lose face in order to escape being > one of them? Yes I realize that you are right and in the mob there are quite a lot of sentient beings. But this realization doesn't make the mob more amiable. > Consider also that I made the same cynical comments as in the first > paragraph when I heard a movie was being made of Card's Enders Game. > I went Thanks for a hint. I will remember about it. I must admit, however, that after watching too many BS-sf I've decided I'd rather wait until my cable transmits all the new hits - when they do, they are not so new but I don't think I have ever thought to myself "hey I wish I bought that ticket five years ago" - not even once during last 20 years, I'm afraid. I have bought some dvds *after* I watched them on the cable and decided they are worth it really. But overally, the money spent on a book is invested while the money spent on a movie is... spent. Some of the stuff I didn't bother to buy was quite well made but I could live without it, so no problem. Some, like this BS about biorobot failing in love with violent purple lass on some forbidden planet was a waste of time, even made me a bit angry because I don't like being duped. [...] > So please, I beg them, just tell the actual story. The beautiful > Keira Knightley is a gift, a bonus. The actual historic truth is > all this compelling story needs. Please, please don't screw up > this, oh Hollyweird producers, I beseech the hell outta thee, don't > do it; just tell the truth, tell it. We will buy it, and we will > love it. Huh? It is all too easy to claim things like "homo sap-sap is suspiciously happy to run away from reality whenever she can". But that's not true, because to run away from reality one has to notice its existence first and care enough. So those demands of yours are cruelist and demandistic. It took us only 2 million years to go from cooking on Earth to cooking on the Moon. Sure, we could have done it 10 times faster but nobody is complaining (except for some never happy complainistic naisayerists). And in mere 10 million years we will be invading neighbouring star systems, like overgrown bacterial colony, doubling size every n years. Or some kind of cancerous tissue mixed up with fiberglass and cell phones, ignoring anything that has not been generated inside it. There is no need to keep one's eyes open, quite the opposite, closing them will make us there faster, maybe only 9 million years will be enough. So Spike, please don't be cruel demandist. I really don't understand what's the big deal about finding joys in analysing what is really "out there" - as opposed to distorting it in our heads to make us more lazy and stupid. But oh so much happier. In case of doubt, learn from the cows. Are they not happy? -- 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 angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com Thu Aug 7 23:09:02 2014 From: angelarturo911216.1991 at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Angel_Arturo_Ramirez_Su=C3=A1rez?=) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 18:09:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Unconscious Message-ID: >Ever read Antonio Damasio's "Descartes' Error"? The neuroscience consensus is that the emotion systems are essential for correct functioning - including for "purely" cognitive tasks. One key reason is that they provide a value evaluation for states: if you have to *think* about why losing your job or spending hours repeating the same mental operation is bad, your functioning will be impaired.? It would sometimes be nice to be able to turn off boredom. But there better be a timer for that feature, or you will find yourself doing taxes forever.? ? Haven't read it but will along with the AI book you recommended, thanks for the suggestion as those seem to be very complete materials. But how about dealing with the lack of emotions in the same way the AI field is developing?? For example the eternal task loop could be solved by setting interrupts in the brain so that if a certain activity kept giving the same results with no signs of improvement, a signal was sent for the brain to break the task and start analysis anew. Or instead of time a more qualitative variable such as "results" could be issued. ? In a more hybrid system a greater level of control over our emotional processes could also result in an application of ?fuzzy rules so that if a certain "anger" treshold was reached (based on certain chemicals or synapses) a safeguard took over. ? It would become very beneficial for humans, not only computers or robots.? -- ? *"Nuestras aspiraciones son nuestras posibilidades" - Robert Browning* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 8 00:49:44 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 17:49:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <012601cfb2a2$a5f7f2d0$f1e7d870$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Harvey Newstrom >...Turing was only 40 years old and still working on secret cryptography for the British government when he was arrested for being gay... the government that he helped in defeating the Nazis decided that *Turing* was the security threat and that to protect our way of life, *he* should be barred from any further work on government encryption programs. He was dead of an apparent suicide two years later... -- Harvey Newstrom www.HarveyNewstrom.com _______________________________________________ No doubt they will tell the rest of it, as they should. I haven't followed the research, but last I heard there is reasonable doubt Turing committed suicide. I don't know how the theory has held up; perhaps someone here knows or knows a reference. There is a possibility Turing perished by accidental poisoning from a chemistry experiment he was doing. My reasoning goes thus: I am one who is deeply interested in many things. Doing any kind of experimentation is the physical manifestation of curiosity. If one is sufficiently despondent to be driven to self-destruction, my intuition tells me that curiosity and experimentation would be the first casualty, and would have disappeared at least weeks before the suicide. Perhaps psychology hipsters among us, such as BillW could comment, but it seems to me unlikely that one would go from performing chemistry experiments to suicide in the same week. This is not denying Turing was treated abominably for all the wrong reasons by the British government; clearly he was. To this day, that government has failed to fully own the shame of that disgraceful affair. Perhaps a good cinematic treatment of Turing's life, which just tells the unembellished truth, will help bring about resolution. spike From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Aug 8 04:31:25 2014 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2014 22:31:25 -0600 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <012601cfb2a2$a5f7f2d0$f1e7d870$@att.net> References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> <012601cfb2a2$a5f7f2d0$f1e7d870$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 6:49 PM, spike wrote: > This is not denying Turing was treated abominably for all the wrong reasons > by the British government; clearly he was. To this day, that government > has > failed to fully own the shame of that disgraceful affair. Perhaps a good > cinematic treatment of Turing's life, which just tells the unembellished > truth, will help bring about resolution. > That would be a very good thing! My daughter is a huge fan of the lead actor, so I know we'll be seeing this in first run. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Aug 8 08:19:02 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 10:19:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> Message-ID: <3030996969-15067@secure.ericade.net> Harvey Newstrom??, 7/8/2014 11:25 PM: I don't know how we can tell this heroic story of Turing's career in government encryption without mentioning how it came to an end. ?I don't know how we celebrate this man's tremendous life giving to the British government and the Allies in fighting the Nazis without mentioning how they repaid him and treated him in return, resulting in his death. ?These seem to be two sides of the same story. ?Telling only one side would be telling only half the story.? Turing's life is tricky to depict, since the more relateable heroism/betrayal part mainly makes sense in the light of profound intellectual achievements that most viewers/readers will have a hard time to understand. One could treat them as a black box and just make a gay-hero-treated-badly story, but then one would have to leave out a large chunk of motivation and internals. Leaving them in would make a rather demanding story: not impossible, but tough to do. (Has anybody ever done a good film about a mathematician's life that actually is a cohesive whole? "A Hill on the Dark Side of the Moon" left out nearly all math, for example.) I have blogged a bit about the ethics of the UK government's attempt at pardoning him posthumously:http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/12/sui-generis-or-generic-gay-pardoning-alan-turing/http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/12/tis-the-season-of-pardons/What disturbs me in the above farce is the idea that *because* he was so awesome he should be pardoned (non-awesome gays do not benefit). The actual motivations of the involved people are all good, trying to express our currently more enlightened values, but the means are not very sensible and does get bad ideas into the discourse. Any way, I now have few splinters from Shockley's lab next to the soil from Bletchley park in my computer science reliquary. Next time my computer crashes I will wave the relics over it and see if it works again. Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Fri Aug 8 09:12:07 2014 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 11:12:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <012601cfb2a2$a5f7f2d0$f1e7d870$@att.net> References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> <012601cfb2a2$a5f7f2d0$f1e7d870$@att.net> Message-ID: re "To this day, that government has failed to fully own the shame of that disgraceful affair." - some time ago the UK government said (in perfect British style;-) that Turing's homosexual lifestyle was illegal at the time, so legally speaking he deserved punishment. Of course, they distanced themselves from the UK laws of the 1950s. On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 2:49 AM, spike wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf > Of Harvey Newstrom > > >>...Turing was only 40 years old and still working on secret cryptography > for the British government when he was arrested for being gay... the > government that he helped in defeating the Nazis decided that *Turing* was > the security threat and that to protect our way of life, *he* should be > barred from any further work on government encryption programs. He was dead > of an apparent suicide two years later... > -- > Harvey Newstrom www.HarveyNewstrom.com > _______________________________________________ > > > No doubt they will tell the rest of it, as they should. > > I haven't followed the research, but last I heard there is reasonable doubt > Turing committed suicide. I don't know how the theory has held up; perhaps > someone here knows or knows a reference. There is a possibility Turing > perished by accidental poisoning from a chemistry experiment he was doing. > > My reasoning goes thus: I am one who is deeply interested in many things. > Doing any kind of experimentation is the physical manifestation of > curiosity. If one is sufficiently despondent to be driven to > self-destruction, my intuition tells me that curiosity and experimentation > would be the first casualty, and would have disappeared at least weeks > before the suicide. Perhaps psychology hipsters among us, such as BillW > could comment, but it seems to me unlikely that one would go from performing > chemistry experiments to suicide in the same week. > > This is not denying Turing was treated abominably for all the wrong reasons > by the British government; clearly he was. To this day, that government has > failed to fully own the shame of that disgraceful affair. Perhaps a good > cinematic treatment of Turing's life, which just tells the unembellished > truth, will help bring about resolution. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From anders at aleph.se Fri Aug 8 10:45:02 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 12:45:02 +0200 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3039031682-2972@secure.ericade.net> Giulio Prisco??, 8/8/2014 11:16 AM:re "To this day, that government has failed to fully own the shame of? that disgraceful affair." - some time ago the UK government said (in? perfect British style;-) that Turing's homosexual lifestyle was? illegal at the time, so legally speaking he deserved punishment. Of? course, they distanced themselves from the UK laws of the 1950s.? Which is sensible. Laws in the past have been immoral, but they were procedurally correct. That is, modern society acknowledges the validity of past society administration decision, at least back to some long time horizon or constitutional shift. Decisions can technically be made in the present to annul past decisions, but this is actually risky: stuff tends to build on decisions, so annulling something far back can have far-reaching consequences. For example, if the UK government decided to retroactively make homosexuality legal in the past, it could presumably open itself up for lawsuits for unlawful incarceration (yes, it could patch that obvious problem by a bill, but there would be lots of other holes - many administrative decision such as appointments would retroactively become unlawful, and hence their consequences also cast into doubt).? As far as I know, the Swedish government still is legally responsible for the witch burnings in the 1600s. However, the fact that witchcraft is now legal and that we deplore what happened doesn't mean it makes sense to pardon the witches.? Recognizing the difference between law, morals and ethics is important. Thanks to ethical discussion and societal shifts in morality we have changed laws to be more in line with what we think are truer or at least more up-to-date norms. We might wish we had done so earlier, but we cannot. If we want to show loyalty with those harmed by past bad decisions we can do a bunch of things in the present (like the UK is doing with establishing gay marriage or inclusiveness policies, or by celebrating Turing officially). But trying to change the past is futile: the pardon doesn't help Turing, is unfair to every other past oppressed homosexual who doesn't get the pardon, messes up legal logic and is even a bit of a cheap trick for current politicians to get off the hook.? Some moral things are illegal. That doesn't mean that we should wish some remote future retroactively pardons us for doing it, since it does not change the present at all. Instead we should work to make the laws in the present that mirror what we think is moral. But since we are fallible about morality this means we need accept that some of the morality we impose might indeed be misguided. Which is why banning things should not be done lightly.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Aug 8 12:16:48 2014 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 08:16:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <3030996969-15067@secure.ericade.net> References: <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> <3030996969-15067@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 4:19 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > demanding story: not impossible, but tough to do. (Has anybody ever done a > good film about a mathematician's life that actually is a cohesive whole? "A > Hill on the Dark Side of the Moon" left out nearly all math, for example.) A Beautiful Mind ? From test at ssec.wisc.edu Fri Aug 8 12:35:41 2014 From: test at ssec.wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 07:35:41 -0500 (CDT) Subject: [ExI] computer science reliquary (was turing movie) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Anders Sandberg wrote: > Any way, I now have few splinters from Shockley's lab > next to the soil from Bletchley park in my computer > science reliquary. Next time my computer crashes I > will wave the relics over it and see if it works again. Cool. I've got this: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/aberdeen/aberdeen.html From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Aug 8 15:38:34 2014 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 11:38:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] A new chip from IBM called TrueNorth Message-ID: In yesterday's issue of the journal Science there is a research article about IBM's new chip called "TrueNorth" that has logical architecture similar to the mammalian neocortex. It has 256 million electronic synapses; that's about as complex as the brain of a bee. The power density of TrueNorth is only .02 Watts per cm^2 of chip area, for a conventional CPU it it's close to 100 Watts. Terrence J. Sejnowski, director of the Salk Institute?s Computational Neurobiology Laboratory said "The TrueNorth chip is like the first transistor, it will take many generations before it can compete, but when it does, it will be a scalable architecture that can be delivered to cellphones". Horst Simon, deputy director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said "It is a remarkable achievement in terms of scalability and low power consumption". The following is the abstract of the August 8 2014 article: *"Inspired by the brain?s structure, we have developed an efficient, scalable, and flexible non?von Neumann architecture that leverages contemporary silicon technology. To demonstrate, we built a 5.4-billion-transistor chip with 4096 neurosynaptic cores interconnected via an intrachip network that integrates 1 million programmable spiking neurons and 256 million configurable synapses. Chips can be tiled in two dimensions via an interchip communication interface, seamlessly scaling the architecture to a cortexlike sheet of arbitrary size. The architecture is well suited to many applications that use complex neural networks in real time, for example, multiobject detection and classification. With 400-pixel-by-240-pixel video input at 30 frames per second, the chip consumes 63 milliwatts. *" John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 8 15:26:26 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 08:26:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> <012601cfb2a2$a5f7f2d0$f1e7d870$@att.net> Message-ID: <026001cfb31d$1f2fbf00$5d8f3d00$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Subject: Re: [ExI] turing movie >...re "To this day, that government has failed to fully own the shame of that disgraceful affair." - some time ago the UK government said (in perfect British style;-) that Turing's homosexual lifestyle was illegal at the time, so legally speaking he deserved punishment. Of course, they distanced themselves from the UK laws of the 1950s. Ja, that does not suffice. The US government had such a crime in its past: we allowed slavery. We fought a brutal war against ourselves to end it, and we won. That's repudiating a past sin, full-on repentance, complete with sincere self-flagellation. We (and Britain, and others) need to recognize that we have sins in our past, we recognize the legal system was what it was, but the legal system was wrong then. By extrapolation, we know there are things in our legal system that are wrong now. Our recent nationwide bitter experience with the IRS is a perfect example. It needs to be fixed forthwith. Wherever and whenever we can, we need to patch things with those who were wronged in the past and are being wronged today. I will temper my next comments with the caveat that it is way outside my area of expertise and my usual area I follow. I think gays have made good progress in acceptance in popular culture in the USA and the part of the world I know and the historical era in which I live. From a human rights standpoint, it appears gays are losing ground in some areas of the world, but in many important ways, heteros are losing ground there too. I don't know what to do on that, but I am always open to suggestion. spike From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 8 16:29:26 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 09:29:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <3039031682-2972@secure.ericade.net> References: <3039031682-2972@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <027501cfb325$ec0a65e0$c41f31a0$@att.net> >? On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] turing movie Giulio Prisco , 8/8/2014 11:16 AM: re "To this day, that government has failed to fully own the shame of that disgraceful affair." - some time ago the UK government said (in perfect British style;-) that Turing's homosexual lifestyle was illegal at the time, so legally speaking he deserved punishment. Of course, they distanced themselves from the UK laws of the 1950s. >?Which is sensible. Laws in the past have been immoral ?Some moral things are illegal. That doesn't mean that we should wish some remote future retroactively pardons us for doing it, since it does not change the present at all. Instead we should work to make the laws in the present that mirror what we think is moral. But since we are fallible about morality this means we need accept that some of the morality we impose might indeed be misguided. Which is why banning things should not be done lightly. Excellent post Anders, thanks for this. An ironic thought occurred to me as I read it. We talk about those long past having been harmed by flaws in the legal process of their times and how it is impossible to redress the wrongs in the present. Now as we enter the age of cryonics, the whole notion takes on new meaning. Imagine our collective ethics changes (it always does) and the change has direct impact on those currently awaiting uploading. We are no longer necessarily dealing with only the progeny, legacy and the memory of the deceased, but also her actual mind. Astonishing thought. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Aug 8 16:43:32 2014 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 11:43:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] turing movie In-Reply-To: <026001cfb31d$1f2fbf00$5d8f3d00$@att.net> References: <034901cfb06a$a3a7f870$eaf7e950$@att.net> <20140805200740.GA24636@tau1.ceti.pl> <062101cfb0f1$92d456b0$b87d0410$@att.net> <003001cfb283$428becc0$c7a3c640$@harveynewstrom.com> <012601cfb2a2$a5f7f2d0$f1e7d870$@att.net> <026001cfb31d$1f2fbf00$5d8f3d00$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 10:26 AM, spike wrote: > From a human rights > standpoint, it appears gays are losing ground in some areas of the world, > but in many important ways, heteros are losing ground there too. I don't > know what to do on that, but I am always open to suggestion. > > spike > > ?To me, homosexuality per se is not the issue. It's whether the religious right can pass laws against what they consider sin, against what the secular people are willing to tolerate. Clearly Islam is not now and maybe not ever going to give on this issue (or the Baptists either). Even among the nonreligious in Asia, for one, some sins are considered unnatural rather than sins. "Be fruitful and multiply" is not only a religious statement - it's an evolutionary statement that is built into all of us. So it would seem to most that homosexuals are a detriment to being fruitful. But evolutionary theory has shown that homosexuality can actually? ? be an asset to the community, and maybe if that is taught in schools (no time soon, I'll bet) some good will come of it.? > ?bill w? > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Aug 8 17:49:42 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 10:49:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] computer science reliquary (was turing movie) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <02bc01cfb331$23101660$69304320$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Bill Hibbard Subject: [ExI] computer science reliquary (was turing movie) Anders Sandberg wrote: >>... Any way, I now have few splinters from Shockley's lab next to the soil > from Bletchley park in my computer science reliquary. Next time my > computer crashes I will wave the relics over it and see if it works > again. >...Cool. I've got this: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/aberdeen/aberdeen.html _______________________________________________ I had a notion regarding the creation of geek relics. A number of years ago, a milestone Mersenne prime was discovered, the prime which won the discoverer the first cash prize put up by the EFF. On the GIMPS forum we were congratulating the winner. The details of the computer were offered: nothing extraordinary at the time (late 1990s): a generic Intel 486 processor running at ordinary speed. Someone posted a comment "I'll give you 20 thousand bucks for that computer." The owner posted back "Ha ha. Serious offers only please." That exchange of a few words spawned a discussion here which Hal Finney participated. We recognized the ambiguity of the reply. The discoverer was not a regular in the math geek online social scene. We recognized that he may have no idea the machine itself had become a valuable museum piece, worth every bit of 20k. He might have simply thought of the offer as a joke, someone offering 20k for a machine with a resale value of perhaps 200 dollars by that time. Or he might have over-estimated its value into the 50k range and thought he was being low-balled. In either case, Hal recognized that in principle it is possible to arrange a game or parallel online effort such that value can be computed into existence. Bitcoin followers know how the rest of that story unfolded. Regarding the notion of geek relics: I can imagine if someone had an original Apple II, by now they could take out the motherboard, desolder the chips (they are all plated thru-hole tech from those benighted times), place the chips in plastic resin to create conversation pieces and desk decorations, the general debris that math and computer types like to collect and give each other, geeky gifts for geeky geeks, so that they might prove geeky geekiness, establish geek dominance, that sorta thing. spike From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Aug 9 11:00:34 2014 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 04:00:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Subsidy for Burning Coal Message-ID: 2061 May 4 (Found on a new disk that must have fallen through a time warp.) Subsidy for Burning Coal? It is amusing to consider how the press for CO2 in the atmosphere has seesawed back and forth in the past 60 years. In the teens, CO2 was the devil incarnate, causing the ice caps to melt and trapping heat to warm the world to an intolerable level. The rapid switch from fossil fuels to space based solar power that occurred between 2025 and 2035 ended the build up. Near the end of that time, construction switched away from older structural materials. Concrete and steel gave way to grown diamond and nanotubes. At first, there was no concern since the CO2 level was much higher than the pre industrial level. Withdrawing CO2 from the atmosphere started at a modest level. It doubled again and again. Both surface and underground construction raided the built up atmospheric CO2 for material. By 2056, the CO2 was back to pre industrial levels. If it were not for the oceans giving up vast amounts they had absorbed in previous decades, the fall would have been even faster. Crop yields would have been seriously hurt, except food production had moved underground. That was in the aftermath of weather disruptions from three closely space volcanic eruptions. (Tunnel farms, of course, used vast amounts of carbon to build the arches.) There it was possible to concentrate the CO2 remaining in the atmosphere. The crops grew under artificial lights. Letting the surface go back to grasslands and forests was another big sink for CO2. Now the CO2 has declined to the point we face an incipient ice age. The mountain glaciers have grown at several hundred meters per year for the last several years. The snow fields in the north are staying on the ground year round. The surface of the Arctic Ocean is again solid pack ice. Humanity remaining on the planet has two choices. (Assuming we don't want another ice age.) We can build reflectors in space to increase the solar irradiation, or we can put more CO2 into the atmosphere. Our grandfathers knew how to mine coal and burn it on a grand scale. How much subsidy must we offer to do it again? From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 9 23:45:03 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 16:45:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] cool, skylon in mainstream news Message-ID: <010e01cfb42b$f220c120$d6624360$@att.net> Check it out, Skylon has gone mainstream: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/08/tech/innovation/spaceship-reinvented/index.htm l?hpt=hp_c3 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Sun Aug 10 18:30:41 2014 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 11:30:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature Message-ID: I don't recall seeing this factor discussed here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/10/the-diminishing-influence-of-increasing-carbon-dioxide-on-temperature/#more-114325 -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Aug 10 21:16:01 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 14:16:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <015d01cfb4e0$4a331750$de9945f0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Max More Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2014 11:31 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature I don't recall seeing this factor discussed here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/10/the-diminishing-influence-of-increasing-carbon-dioxide-on-temperature/#more-114325 -- Max More, PhD Cool thanks Max. I was wondering about this when the ExI list was having those discussions a few yrs ago and I was pondering negative feedback loops to explain why the earth hadn?t ever gone into a runaway greenhouse effect in the past. I was looking that the absorption spectra of carbon dioxide back then and came to a similar conclusion: the existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already absorbing most of the reflected energy it can absorb, even if there was a loooooot more CO2 released. I need to dig around in my green notebooks and see if I can find those calcs; I think it was from about 6 to 8 yrs ago. At the time I looked at the negative feedback balancing the increased absorption: the radiation to space using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. I concluded that the reason CO2 has never caused a runaway greenhouse effect is that it cannot. Even if CO2 retains *all* the energy in its absorption band, that T^4 term still overpowers everything else. Granted it might get a few degrees warmer before that happens, but hey, this is a cold planet. The estimated increase using only single digit estimates was in the 2-4 C range as I recall. We will do more water skiing and less snow skiing. Florida will likely look a lot different. Might hafta move a few cities. We can deal. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 11 13:02:41 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:02:41 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <015d01cfb4e0$4a331750$de9945f0$@att.net> Message-ID: <3307324291-14007@secure.ericade.net> spike , 10/8/2014 11:35 PM: ? ?I need to dig around in my green notebooks and see if I can find those calcs; I think it was from about 6 to 8 yrs ago.? At the time I looked at the negative feedback balancing the increased absorption: the radiation to space using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.? I concluded that the reason CO2 has never caused a runaway greenhouse effect is that it cannot.? Even if CO2 retains *all* the energy in its absorption band, that T^4 term still overpowers everything else. ? I think this is right; it is the water vapour feedback that is needed for a runaway greenhouse.? Raymond T. Pierrehumbert's excellent "Principles of Planetary Climate" has a nice treatment of the Ingersoll-Kobayashi limit (basically, with enough water vapor the stable fixed point disappears). I think he discussed a "pure" CO2 greenhouse too, but in that case there is no sudden jump to overheating.? In any case, the reason there has not been any overheating so far might have been that Earth in the past was closer to the outer range of the life zone than we previously believed. Although the combined geological-biological-climatological system can be rather unpredictable; see some of the papers at http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~bloh/evol/? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robot at ultimax.com Mon Aug 11 13:28:45 2014 From: robot at ultimax.com (Robert G Kennedy III, PE) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 09:28:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Explain Venus, please. Robert -- Robert G Kennedy III, PE www.ultimax.com 1994 AAAS/ASME Congressional Fellow U.S. House Subcommittee on Space From painlord2k at libero.it Mon Aug 11 20:55:37 2014 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 22:55:37 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <3307324291-14007@secure.ericade.net> References: <3307324291-14007@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <53E92DC9.6070108@libero.it> Il 11/08/2014 15:02, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > spike , 10/8/2014 11:35 PM: > > I need to dig around in my green notebooks and see if I can find > those calcs; I think it was from about 6 to 8 yrs ago. At the time > I looked at the negative feedback balancing the increased > absorption: the radiation to space using the Stefan-Boltzmann > equation. I concluded that the reason CO2 has never caused a > runaway greenhouse effect is that it cannot. Even if CO2 retains > **all** the energy in its absorption band, that T^4 term still > overpowers everything else. > > > I think this is right; it is the water vapor feedback that is needed > for a runaway greenhouse. > > Raymond T. Pierrehumbert's excellent "Principles of Planetary Climate" > has a nice treatment of the Ingersoll-Kobayashi limit (basically, with > enough water vapor the stable fixed point disappears). I think he > discussed a "pure" CO2 greenhouse too, but in that case there is no > sudden jump to overheating. > > In any case, the reason there has not been any overheating so far might > have been that Earth in the past was closer to the outer range of the > life zone than we previously believed. Although the combined > geological-biological-climatological system can be rather unpredictable; > see some of the papers at http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~bloh/evol/ Did anyone took note of the Methane Clathrate effect on climate? Higher temperature melt more ice, sea water rise, pressure on the bottom of ocean increase and the quantity of Methane Clathrate increase (it increase for increasing pressure or lowering temperature) and the methane in the atmosphere decrease decreasing the greenhouse effect. Increasing water vapor increase the greenhouse effect but increase cloud light reflection before it reach Earth surface. Now, if the real problem is increasing water vapor, what should we do? Reduce Carbon emissions? Mirco From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 11 21:51:27 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 23:51:27 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <53E92DC9.6070108@libero.it> Message-ID: <3338192012-17294@secure.ericade.net> Mirco Romanato , 11/8/2014 11:11 PM: Now, if the real problem is increasing water vapor, what should we do? Reduce Carbon emissions? If you have a system with multiple components and multiple phases interacting nonlinearly, if you want to control one variable you might want to change some non-obvious parameters. After all, whitening clouds by spraying seawater might lower temperature (the desired variable) by changed albedo, despite increasing vapour (a potentially bad variable).? If we think the real problem is runaway greenhouse warming, then we are the doomiest climate doomsters ever.? I am increasingly worried about ocean acidification rather than temperature increases: cold water invertebrates use aragonite rather than calcite, and are pretty sensitive to pH shifts. Since their reproduction rate is a powerful driver of ecology this might have huge effects (this is after all a nonlinear system with explicit positive feedback loops due to reproduction - think of the azolla event). If we find trouble in the northern waters we are unlikely to be able to slow things south for the calcite shell organisms (and normal albedo-based geoengineering won't help). So watch those Alaska fisheries reports closely (adjusting for iron seeding confounders).? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Aug 11 23:16:45 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 01:16:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Confounding the rationality and ethics of cryonics Message-ID: <3343833560-4797@secure.ericade.net> By the way, we got some fun discussion going about cryonics on our office blog: http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/08/freezing-critique-privileged-views-and-cryonics/ The main point of my essay was that cryonics has a funny disadvantage: by aiming for a scientific rationality it opens itself up for criticism in a way religions do not, and this might actually give it a disadvantage as people mix up "being possible to criticise" with "is not morally desirable". It might not be a deep ethical claim, but we get into some fun trans-temporal population ethics in the comments. 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 Aug 12 01:03:14 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 18:03:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <53E92DC9.6070108@libero.it> References: <3307324291-14007@secure.ericade.net> <53E92DC9.6070108@libero.it> Message-ID: <039e01cfb5c9$323bfd80$96b3f880$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato ... >...Now, if the real problem is increasing water vapor, what should we do? Reduce Carbon emissions? Mirco _______________________________________________ I can imagine market pressure on agro-biz to reduce water cannon use for irrigation. It wouldn't even be to reduce global warming so much as it is that water is too valuable to hurl into the air so that some of it evaporates. It's also energy inefficient to do it that way. Irrigating with more water and energy efficiency costs more up front but pays in the long run. spike From dan_ust at yahoo.com Tue Aug 12 02:47:14 2014 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 19:47:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <039e01cfb5c9$323bfd80$96b3f880$@att.net> References: <3307324291-14007@secure.ericade.net> <53E92DC9.6070108@libero.it> <039e01cfb5c9$323bfd80$96b3f880$@att.net> Message-ID: <1407811634.10777.YahooMailNeo@web161604.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> On Monday, August 11, 2014 6:20 PM, spike wrote: > I can imagine market pressure on agro-biz to reduce water cannon > use for irrigation.? It wouldn't even be to reduce global warming > so much as it is that water is too valuable to hurl into the air > so that some of it evaporates.? It's also energy inefficient to > do it that way.? Irrigating with more water and energy efficiency > costs more up front but pays in the long run. A simple way to ameliorate a bit of that waste would be to stop subsidizing water use in the US, especially in the West where that's popular. Without subsidization, some might still waste, but for many it would be an immediate negative feedback signal, no? (Not to mention those in the Southwest "irrigating" their lawns and golf courses. They might continue to do so, but at higher cost and that might spur some innovations in cutting waste.) Regards, Dan My latest "libertarianish" SF Kindle book: http://www.amazon.com/Hills-Rendome-Dan-Ust-ebook/dp/B00LIIVLO2/? From protokol2020 at gmail.com Tue Aug 12 10:52:49 2014 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 12:52:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <039e01cfb5c9$323bfd80$96b3f880$@att.net> References: <3307324291-14007@secure.ericade.net> <53E92DC9.6070108@libero.it> <039e01cfb5c9$323bfd80$96b3f880$@att.net> Message-ID: > Explain Venus, pleas Explain high temperatures in deep holes/coal mines on Earth! It is easy, it is volcanism. Tick rocks are a good insulator. As a tick layer of CO2 is. On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 3:03 AM, spike wrote: > > >... On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato > ... > > >...Now, if the real problem is increasing water vapor, what should we do? > Reduce Carbon emissions? Mirco > _______________________________________________ > > > I can imagine market pressure on agro-biz to reduce water cannon use for > irrigation. It wouldn't even be to reduce global warming so much as it is > that water is too valuable to hurl into the air so that some of it > evaporates. It's also energy inefficient to do it that way. Irrigating > with more water and energy efficiency costs more up front but pays in the > long run. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 12 13:20:31 2014 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 14:20:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <3338192012-17294@secure.ericade.net> References: <53E92DC9.6070108@libero.it> <3338192012-17294@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 10:51 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I am increasingly worried about ocean acidification rather than temperature > increases: cold water invertebrates use aragonite rather than calcite, and > are pretty sensitive to pH shifts. Since their reproduction rate is a > powerful driver of ecology this might have huge effects (this is after all a > nonlinear system with explicit positive feedback loops due to reproduction - > think of the azolla event). If we find trouble in the northern waters we are > unlikely to be able to slow things south for the calcite shell organisms > (and normal albedo-based geoengineering won't help). So watch those Alaska > fisheries reports closely (adjusting for iron seeding confounders). > It is not just ocean acidification. There is pollution, micro-plastic pollution, over-fishing, warming temperatures, no-oxygen dead areas. etc. See: Quote: In the 1970s, when Earle last dove in the Coral Sea, she fell in love with its vibrant reef, idyllic in its remote location far off the northeast Australia coast. "The whole point of going there was to find a really healthy, beautiful system to come to the end of this film, and we can go: 'ta-dah, there's reason for hope,'" Earle told Co.Exist in an interview. Instead, when a still-spry Earle and her companions hit the water in their SCUBA gear, they encountered a wasteland. No colors. No fish. No life. "We were shocked. We were really shocked," says co-director and producer Fisher Stevens ------------------- BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Aug 12 17:32:06 2014 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 13:32:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Confounding the rationality and ethics of cryonics In-Reply-To: <3343833560-4797@secure.ericade.net> References: <3343833560-4797@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > cryonics has a funny disadvantage: by aiming for a scientific rationality it opens itself up for criticism in a way religions do not Yes, the same people who say that Cryonics shouldn't even be considered because we can't be certain it will work will then get on their knees on Sunday because they are certain that will work and enable them to live forever. Being certain is easy but being correct is not; I don't know if Cryonics will work but I am certain that burning a brain or letting it rot will not work, and I might even be correct too. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Aug 13 04:46:03 2014 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 21:46:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: References: <3307324291-14007@secure.ericade.net> <53E92DC9.6070108@libero.it> <039e01cfb5c9$323bfd80$96b3f880$@att.net> Message-ID: <1407905163.97582.YahooMailNeo@web161603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 4:01 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: >> Explain Venus, pleas > > Explain high temperatures in deep holes/coal mines on Earth! It is > easy, it is volcanism. > > Tick rocks are a good insulator. > > As a tick layer of CO2 is. Venus also has an orders of magnitude slower rotation rate, is much closer to Sun, and seems to have lost all its water. I also wonder about the wobble of its axis. Earth's seems very stable, but is Venus long-term stable? And is there any way Venus could have been much more Earth-like on its present orbit? Regards, Dan My latest Kindle book: http://www.amazon.com/Hills-Rendome-Dan-Ust-ebook/dp/B00LIIVLO2/ From dan_ust at yahoo.com Wed Aug 13 14:39:42 2014 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 07:39:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Iranian mathematician is first female winner for Fields maths medal Message-ID: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28739373 Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Aug 13 23:57:34 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 01:57:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <1407905163.97582.YahooMailNeo@web161603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3518582223-13196@secure.ericade.net> Dan??, 13/8/2014 6:50 AM: And is there any way Venus could have been much more Earth-like on its present orbit Certainly. At a distance of 0.72 AU Venus planetary blackbody equilibrium temperature would just have been 17% larger than Earth (it scales as 1/sqrt(d)). Given the basic blackbody temperature of 256 K for Earth, this would be 299 K - nice and cosy. This is of course without taking the 31 K greenhouse factor into account. But albedo can fix this fairly well: the blackbody temperature scales as (1-a)^(1/4), so with an albedo of 0.46 (Earth is around 0.32) and identical greenhouse level it would have had the same temperature. In practice, things are messier since temperature affects albedo. And different layers of the atmosphere have different temperatures. Very soon you will just want to run a simulation and tweak the parameters... and before long you realize that circulation really matters in this case due to the slow rotation. There are many papers on atmospheric models for terrestrial worlds and how they predict different life zones: I think the best conclusion right now is that the issue is somewhat in flux.? Venus would likely have resisted hydrogen loss if it (1) had a magnetic field, (2) had a functioning stratospheric cold trap keeping photo-dissociation of water from releasing hydrogen in the exosphere. As far as I can tell at a glance, the Jeans escape formula is not super-sensitive to temperature - and Earth's exosphere is already 1000 K.? Overall, I think the problem with Venus was that higher tidal forces (2.7 times what Earth has) slowed its rotation, and once it got slow the magnetic field dropped and the atmosphere started eroding, removing water at a high rate. As it dried up and overheated plate tectonics broke down, and we got periodic crustal melts that really turned it into a hellhole.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 14 02:43:36 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 19:43:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <3518582223-13196@secure.ericade.net> References: <1407905163.97582.YahooMailNeo@web161603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <3518582223-13196@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <012a01cfb769$8cadc040$a60940c0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg >?There are many papers on atmospheric models for terrestrial worlds and how they predict different life zones: I think the best conclusion right now is that the issue is somewhat in flux? Anders Sandberg Heresy! Anders, didn?t you get the memo? The science is settled. We know everything there is to know about climate models. Except clouds. We don?t understand clouds yet. But other than that, the science is settled. Anyone who says otherwise is a flat-earther or a TEA partier. Our government told us, so it must be true. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Aug 14 10:49:05 2014 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:49:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <012a01cfb769$8cadc040$a60940c0$@att.net> References: <1407905163.97582.YahooMailNeo@web161603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <3518582223-13196@secure.ericade.net> <012a01cfb769$8cadc040$a60940c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <53EC9421.8050403@libero.it> Il 14/08/2014 04:43, spike ha scritto: > *From:*extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Anders Sandberg > > ** > > ** > > *>?*There are many papers on atmospheric models for terrestrial worlds > and how they predict different life zones: I think the best conclusion > right now is that the issue is somewhat in flux? Anders Sandberg > > Heresy! > > Anders, didn?t you get the memo? The science is settled. We know > everything there is to know about climate models. Except clouds. We > don?t understand clouds yet. But other than that, the science is > settled. Anyone who says otherwise is a flat-earther or a TEA partier. > Our government told us, so it must be true. Never believe something until it is officially denied. Mirco From protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu Aug 14 12:24:39 2014 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 14:24:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <53EC9421.8050403@libero.it> References: <1407905163.97582.YahooMailNeo@web161603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <3518582223-13196@secure.ericade.net> <012a01cfb769$8cadc040$a60940c0$@att.net> <53EC9421.8050403@libero.it> Message-ID: My take on this. http://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/venus-debate/ On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 14/08/2014 04:43, spike ha scritto: > >> *From:*extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On >> Behalf Of *Anders Sandberg >> >> ** >> >> ** >> >> *>?*There are many papers on atmospheric models for terrestrial worlds >> >> and how they predict different life zones: I think the best conclusion >> right now is that the issue is somewhat in flux? Anders Sandberg >> >> Heresy! >> >> Anders, didn?t you get the memo? The science is settled. We know >> everything there is to know about climate models. Except clouds. We >> don?t understand clouds yet. But other than that, the science is >> settled. Anyone who says otherwise is a flat-earther or a TEA partier. >> Our government told us, so it must be true. >> > > Never believe something until it is officially denied. > > Mirco > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From soorajshekhar at gmail.com Thu Aug 14 04:35:04 2014 From: soorajshekhar at gmail.com (Sooraj Bhatia) Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 22:35:04 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <012a01cfb769$8cadc040$a60940c0$@att.net> References: <1407905163.97582.YahooMailNeo@web161603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <3518582223-13196@secure.ericade.net> <012a01cfb769$8cadc040$a60940c0$@att.net> Message-ID: I once took a class on climate science. It suggested Anders is right. On Aug 13, 2014 8:57 PM, "spike" wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Anders Sandberg > > > > *>?*There are many papers on atmospheric models for terrestrial worlds > and how they predict different life zones: I think the best conclusion > right now is that the issue is somewhat in flux? Anders Sandberg > > > > Heresy! > > > > Anders, didn?t you get the memo? The science is settled. We know > everything there is to know about climate models. Except clouds. We don?t > understand clouds yet. But other than that, the science is settled. > Anyone who says otherwise is a flat-earther or a TEA partier. Our > government told us, so it must be true. > > > > 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 anders at aleph.se Fri Aug 15 00:16:40 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 02:16:40 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3606337081-29739@secure.ericade.net> Tomaz Kristan , 14/8/2014 2:29 PM: My take on this. http://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/venus-debate/ Measured wind speed profiles look like they have maxima around 60 km height, with 100 m/s velocities.?http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/view_picture.asp?id=1103Earth has a maximum around 10 km, with a maximum of a few tens of m/s. Venus scale height is 15.9 km, Earth's average 7.64 km. So the Venusian wind maximum is 3.77 scale heights up, while on Earth it is 1.3. At first that seems to suggest that there could not be much transfer since the atmosphere would be pretty attenuated. But remember the 92.1 bar pressure at the surface!?exp(-3.77)*92.1=2.1 bar: at this altitude the atmosphere has twice Earth pressure, and it is significantly denser. So the total heat transfer capacity is several times, perhaps an order of magnitude, larger.? The advection timescale (vind velocity / radius) of Earth and Venus are both of the same size, far shorter than the radiative timescales and hence producing a circulation-dominated temperature distribution:?http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/uploads/media/6._Planeto_dynamics.pdf Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Aug 15 07:21:56 2014 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 09:21:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <3606337081-29739@secure.ericade.net> References: <3606337081-29739@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Anders! Those winds are not nearly enough, to transfer the day heat to the night side or to polar regions. We have about the same high temperature everywhere on Venus all the time, As we have about the same temperature everywhere here on Earth, but deep down, Tanks to magma. To transfer the Sun's heat in real time everywhere on the planet, one would need a super-heat-conducter. Venus "surface" is in fact deep down in the stuff. Sun has nearly nothing to do with the temperature there, it's geothermic. On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 2:16 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Tomaz Kristan , 14/8/2014 2:29 PM: > > My take on this. > > http://protokol2020.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/venus-debate/ > > > > Measured wind speed profiles look like they have maxima around 60 km > height, with 100 m/s velocities. > http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/view_picture.asp?id=1103 > Earth has a maximum around 10 km, with a maximum of a few tens of m/s. > > Venus scale height is 15.9 km, Earth's average 7.64 km. So the Venusian > wind maximum is 3.77 scale heights up, while on Earth it is 1.3. At first > that seems to suggest that there could not be much transfer since the > atmosphere would be pretty attenuated. But remember the 92.1 bar pressure > at the surface! exp(-3.77)*92.1=2.1 bar: at this altitude the atmosphere > has twice Earth pressure, and it is significantly denser. So the total heat > transfer capacity is several times, perhaps an order of magnitude, larger. > > The advection timescale (vind velocity / radius) of Earth and Venus are > both of the same size, far shorter than the radiative timescales and hence > producing a circulation-dominated temperature distribution: > http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/uploads/media/6._Planeto_dynamics.pdf > > > > 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 > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Aug 15 09:34:43 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 11:34:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3636509310-25988@secure.ericade.net> Tomaz Kristan , 15/8/2014 9:26 AM: Venus "surface" is in fact deep down in the stuff. Sun has nearly nothing to do with the temperature there, it's geothermic. Hmm. Let's see: if it is geothermic dominated, then the planet will radiate way more energy than it gets from the sun. Assuming it to be a blackbody it will radiate A*sigma*T^4 Watts, where A is the total surface area (~5e14 m^2) , sigma is 5.67e-8 W/m^2K^4 and T is the average atmosphere temp (737 K). I get 7.85e18 Watts. The total solar input hitting it is I*a, where I is the solar irradiance (2613.9 W/m^2) and a is the cross sectional area (1.17e14 m^2): 3.07e17 W. That is a factor of 25. So clearly this is missing something. Or I made an error. But if we estimate the geothermal flux as what is missing, we get 15,000 W/m^2! Earth has 0.087 W/m^2. Now, I can imagine more geothermal on Venus due to a bit stronger tidal forces, but most geothermal heat is due to radioactive decay and the compositions are not too different. But 5 orders of magnitude?15 kW/m^2 is not sustainable for long - if Venus was a lava ocean it would cool off within a geologically short timescale.? What is going on? The most likely answer is that the naive blackbody model above is too simple. If we instead refine it so that there is an atmosphere layer that lets through sunlight to deep levels/the surface, and then acts opaque for infrared (which we do know is true for CO2 from lab experiments), then the thermal balance starts looking saner.? Let Ts be the surface/troposphere temperature and Ta be the high altitude atmosphere temperature. Then energy balance requires S + sigma Ta^4 =sigma Ts^4 (solar + atmosphere downwards = surface upwards) and sigma Ts^4 = 2 sigma Ta^4 (surface upwards = atmosphere up + down radiation). The last equation makes Ts = 2^(1/4) Ta = 1.19 Ta: adding the layer increases surface temperatures by nearly 20% *regardless of solar input*. And given that the optical depth of Venus' atmosphere is about 80, one could argue that there should be many such layers! If we have multiple layers, then the outermost could have the equilibrium Venusian blackbody temperature 238 K and energy balance would work, while the average temperature below could be way higher.?Each layer would make the stuff beneath warmer.?In?practice the layers would be grey and there would be some messy interactions (i.e. time to write simulator code), but it is not hard to see that this kind of insulation could produce a high temperature at the surface/troposphere even for a modest solar influx. So I would be surprised if geothermal had a huge influence on Venusian surface temperatures. The solar input is on the order of 2613 W/m^2: to measure up you need a geothermal flow higher than Io's 2 W/m^2 - by a factor of a thousand! I think we would notice those eruptions. Also, that would assume an optically thin atmosphere, which we know is not true given observations. One can of course tone down the geothermal and make the atmosphere more opaque, but it seems that when we start to reach scenarios compatible with a solid surface we will already have added enough greenhouse to make geothermal rather moot. (Thanks Tomaz, this was fun to work through - at first I thought a mere paragraph would be enough to dismiss your idea, but it actually demonstrates just how quickly even fairly simple atmosphere models get nontrivial. ) Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Aug 15 09:48:07 2014 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 11:48:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <3636509310-25988@secure.ericade.net> References: <3636509310-25988@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Anders: > if it is geothermic dominated, then the planet will radiate way more energy than it gets from the sun. That is not true. Earth gets - let say 1000 W per square meter - from the Sun and emits let say 1001 W per square meter out to the space. This 1 W/m2 is relatively small compared to 1000 from the Sun. It comes from the Earth's interior. Still the high temperatures deep down ARE dominated by geothermic, not "suntermic" factors. High temperatures do not imply high energy per second. On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:34 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Tomaz Kristan , 15/8/2014 9:26 AM: > > Venus "surface" is in fact deep down in the stuff. Sun has nearly nothing > to do with the temperature there, it's geothermic. > > > > Hmm. Let's see: if it is geothermic dominated, then the planet will > radiate way more energy than it gets from the sun. Assuming it to be a > blackbody it will radiate A*sigma*T^4 Watts, where A is the total surface > area (~5e14 m^2) , sigma is 5.67e-8 W/m^2K^4 and T is the average > atmosphere temp (737 K). I get 7.85e18 Watts. The total solar input hitting > it is I*a, where I is the solar irradiance (2613.9 W/m^2) and a is the > cross sectional area (1.17e14 m^2): 3.07e17 W. > > That is a factor of 25. So clearly this is missing something. Or I made an > error. > > But if we estimate the geothermal flux as what is missing, we get 15,000 > W/m^2! Earth has 0.087 W/m^2. Now, I can imagine more geothermal on Venus > due to a bit stronger tidal forces, but most geothermal heat is due to > radioactive decay and the compositions are not too different. But 5 orders > of magnitude?15 kW/m^2 is not sustainable for long - if Venus was a lava > ocean it would cool off within a geologically short timescale. > > What is going on? The most likely answer is that the naive blackbody model > above is too simple. If we instead refine it so that there is an atmosphere > layer that lets through sunlight to deep levels/the surface, and then acts > opaque for infrared (which we do know is true for CO2 from lab > experiments), then the thermal balance starts looking saner. > > Let Ts be the surface/troposphere temperature and Ta be the high altitude > atmosphere temperature. Then energy balance requires S + sigma Ta^4 =sigma > Ts^4 (solar + atmosphere downwards = surface upwards) and sigma Ts^4 = 2 > sigma Ta^4 (surface upwards = atmosphere up + down radiation). The last > equation makes Ts = 2^(1/4) Ta = 1.19 Ta: adding the layer increases > surface temperatures by nearly 20% *regardless of solar input*. > > And given that the optical depth of Venus' atmosphere is about 80, one > could argue that there should be many such layers! If we have multiple > layers, then the outermost could have the equilibrium Venusian blackbody > temperature 238 K and energy balance would work, while the average > temperature below could be way higher. Each layer would make the stuff > beneath warmer. In practice the layers would be grey and there would be > some messy interactions (i.e. time to write simulator code), but it is not > hard to see that this kind of insulation could produce a high temperature > at the surface/troposphere even for a modest solar influx. > > So I would be surprised if geothermal had a huge influence on Venusian > surface temperatures. The solar input is on the order of 2613 W/m^2: to > measure up you need a geothermal flow higher than Io's 2 W/m^2 - by a > factor of a thousand! I think we would notice those eruptions. Also, that > would assume an optically thin atmosphere, which we know is not true given > observations. One can of course tone down the geothermal and make the > atmosphere more opaque, but it seems that when we start to reach scenarios > compatible with a solid surface we will already have added enough > greenhouse to make geothermal rather moot. > > > (Thanks Tomaz, this was fun to work through - at first I thought a mere > paragraph would be enough to dismiss your idea, but it actually > demonstrates just how quickly even fairly simple atmosphere models get > nontrivial. ) > > > > 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 > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 15 12:54:56 2014 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:54:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <3636509310-25988@secure.ericade.net> References: <3636509310-25988@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > So I would be surprised if geothermal had a huge influence on Venusian > surface temperatures. The solar input is on the order of 2613 W/m^2: to > measure up you need a geothermal flow higher than Io's 2 W/m^2 - by a factor > of a thousand! I think we would notice those eruptions. Also, that would > assume an optically thin atmosphere, which we know is not true given > observations. One can of course tone down the geothermal and make the > atmosphere more opaque, but it seems that when we start to reach scenarios > compatible with a solid surface we will already have added enough greenhouse > to make geothermal rather moot. > I found some more articles agreeing with you and with even more juicy equations for your delectation. BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Aug 18 19:15:54 2014 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 12:15:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Ebola Message-ID: Cowpox immunizes people against smallpox. I wonder if Ebola Reston (which does not seem to cause disease in humans) would protect against the nasty versions of Ebola? 13 people have seroconverted without getting sick. I sent this to John Markoff of NYT and the CDC. If you have any other ideas . . . . Keith From steinberg.will at gmail.com Mon Aug 18 20:17:49 2014 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 16:17:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Ebola In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Aug 18, 2014 3:17 PM, "Keith Henson" wrote: > > Cowpox immunizes people against smallpox. > > I wonder if Ebola Reston (which does not seem to cause disease in > humans) would protect against the nasty versions of Ebola? 13 people > have seroconverted without getting sick. > > I sent this to John Markoff of NYT and the CDC. > > If you have any other ideas . . . . > > Keith > Isn't there a chance of horizontal gene transfer giving airborne abilities to the deadly strain? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 19 14:52:49 2014 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 09:52:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scifi search Message-ID: I stopped reading fantasy (except for Terry Pratchett) and scifi about 1980 or so, and took it up again very recently. Mostly I have depended on Amazon ('people who bought this book also bought...') for other suggestions. Then I branched out to winners of Hugos, Nebulas, etc. Then I found allreaders.com where they have a search engine where you put in your preferences for plot, characters, writing style and so forth and then you get a list of books. I'd like to know if there are other such search engines you know of. Also, is there a reverse engine? That is, you put in the book's title and you get the characteristics of the book, like war or war, magic or no magic, etc. I can state with authority (Spike's) that there are several scifi readers on this list, and so I am asking you if you can answer the above questions. I thank you very much. Bill Wallace -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 19 16:15:50 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 09:15:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <014201cfbbc8$d88f3170$89ad9450$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace >?I'd like to know if there are other such search engines you know of. Also, is there a reverse engine? That is, you put in the book's title and you get the characteristics of the book, like war or war, magic or no magic, etc?Bill Wallace Recall a couple yrs ago or more, we had a discussion on something like this: a product that is to literature as Pandora is to music. Another way to look at it is a more sophisticated version of Amazon?s People who bought that also bought this. The problem with Amazon?s approach is that it doesn?t differentiate between books you read for yourself and gifts for others. For instance, Amazon keeps recommending all these books on bizarre sexual practices. All because of my generosity to friends you understand. I buy them books, now Amazon thinks I am? like? you know? them, those other guys, my? um? friends, who like that kind of thing. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 19 17:45:41 2014 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 18:45:41 +0100 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: <014201cfbbc8$d88f3170$89ad9450$@att.net> References: <014201cfbbc8$d88f3170$89ad9450$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 5:15 PM, spike wrote: > Recall a couple yrs ago or more, we had a discussion on something like this: > a product that is to literature as Pandora is to music. Another way to look > at it is a more sophisticated version of Amazon's People who bought that > also bought this. The problem with Amazon's approach is that it doesn't > differentiate between books you read for yourself and gifts for others. > > For instance, Amazon keeps recommending all these books on bizarre sexual > practices. All because of my generosity to friends you understand. I buy > them books, now Amazon thinks I am... like... you know... them, those other guys, > my... um... friends, who like that kind of thing. > You know, of course, that since the Snowdon NSA scandal broke there has been a dramatic reduction in 'sensitive' Google searches? (Use DuckDuckGo instead). Here are two links to thousands of free ebooks. BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 19 20:37:38 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 13:37:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: References: <014201cfbbc8$d88f3170$89ad9450$@att.net> Message-ID: <02c301cfbbed$6bae9300$430bb900$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK >...since the Snowdon NSA scandal broke there has been a dramatic reduction in 'sensitive' Google searches? ...BillK _______________________________________________ That and two cases where Google searches were introduced as evidence against a defendant in criminal court. In both cases, the evidence was ruled admissible, which does something interesting. It means that nothing you write in email, nothing you search on any search engine is now done with a reasonable expectation of privacy. The US government has forced openness on us, yet is resisting openness on itself. We have an IRS which "lost" email, we have a more recent case where a Health and Human Services director instructing recipients in the first line "Please delete this email but see if we can work on call script." When the current president promised his would be the most transparent administration in history, what he really meant is that this administration would make you transparent, while it became opaque. spike From anders at aleph.se Tue Aug 19 23:19:07 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 01:19:07 +0200 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4035521890-2788@secure.ericade.net> William Flynn Wallace??, 19/8/2014 4:58 PM: I'd like to know if there are other such search engines you know of.? Also, is there a reverse engine?? That is, you put in the book's title and you get the characteristics of the book, like war or war, magic or no magic, etc. A bit like the keywords at IMDB? The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi has a search function where you can search by tag. Enter something like 'cyborg' and you get a list of novels with cyborgs. I don't think it can do negation (so no searches for "no cyborgs"), but it is pretty powerful.? Spike, the trick is to get your other friends to order books for your friends, in exchange for you ordering ?books for them. So I can order the erotic stuff for your friends so you don't have to be embarrassed, and you can order the lefty political stuff for my friends so I don't have to get adverts for Piketty. Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Aug 20 02:07:21 2014 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 22:07:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: <4035521890-2788@secure.ericade.net> References: <4035521890-2788@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Aug 19, 2014 7:50 PM, "Anders Sandberg" wrote: > Spike, the trick is to get your other friends to order books for your friends, in exchange for you ordering books for them. So I can order the erotic stuff for your friends so you don't have to be embarrassed, and you can order the lefty political stuff for my friends so I don't have to get adverts for Piketty. That's Tor. Using it will get you and your associated FoaFs on a watchlist. (Not an enumeration of wristworn timepieces) Interestingly those who disconnect from the transparent internet show no signature afterwards. Has anyone heard from Eugen in however many months...? I assume his dissapearance was by choice rather than by disaster. How does a good netizen check in on digital neighbors? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 20 03:26:27 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 20:26:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: <4035521890-2788@secure.ericade.net> References: <4035521890-2788@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <001701cfbc26$8a76bbd0$9f643370$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg ? >?Spike, the trick is to get your other friends to order books for your friends, in exchange for you ordering books for them. So I can order the erotic stuff for your friends so you don't have to be embarrassed, and you can order the lefty political stuff for my friends so I don't have to get adverts for Piketty?Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University OK cool thanks for the offer Anders. Next time I need to order erotic gifts for my friends, I will drop you an email with my bitcoins and such. Hey that gives me an idea. We get a group of friends together and everyone signs up for some sensitive subject they don?t mind the NSA knowing about that person buying. We get the local bachelor to buy all the porn aimed at hetero men, the group bachelorette to order all the erotic male stuff for anyone who wants it, get a chemist to order anything that looks like it belongs in the Anarchist Cookbook and so forth. Then when it comes up in court such questions as ?Please sir, why did you buy 28 copies of ?Nekkid Space Babes from Outer Space??? the answer will be ?I am the designated buyer for that genre. It is big in my social circles. Green Orion animal women are quite popular.? I, on the other hand, would be most abashed, if I am under oath and must confess I rewound and watched the whole green chick and Kirk scene (episode 69, Whom the Gods Destroy, season three) so many times the tape wore out in that spot. Hey it was the days before we could do the same thing on YouTube without wearing out anything. Life is good. Regarding internet privacy, I am having acceptable results by allowing a couple dozen people use my internet account. As it turns out, one of the previous criminal cases where the prosecutors brought in Google searches as evidence ended up springing a pretty obviously guilty defendant by having the defense point out they had no proof the defendant was the one doing the searches. So be a couple dozen people. Have your friends post stuff to chat groups using your email account. You don?t know if I wrote this or someone else did. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Aug 20 08:40:57 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 10:40:57 +0200 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> Mike Dougherty , 20/8/2014 4:12 AM: On Aug 19, 2014 7:50 PM, "Anders Sandberg" wrote: > Spike, the trick is to get your other friends to order books for your friends, in exchange for you ordering ?books for them. So I can order the erotic stuff for your friends so you don't have to be embarrassed, and you can order the lefty political stuff for my friends so I don't have to get adverts for Piketty. That's Tor.? Using it will get you and your associated FoaFs on a watchlist. (Not an enumeration of wristworn timepieces) And if you do it in real life? I know some people who switch fare cards.? Getting lots of people on watchlists might of course be a fun way of reducing the efficiency of any surveillance system. The bottleneck for them is not getting the information (we can safely assume it is all snarfed up), but to have analysts trying to tell who is just cheeky, paranoid or actually up to no good - or has switched between the categories. That is costly, especially since if you try to automate it you will get machine-generated blind spots that might bite you later.? The problem is not being on watchlists, but the probability of somebody making the wrong call and actually bringing down trouble on you. I suspect the best remedy against that is actually social capital: if the trouble will be visible and has costs, then they will think twice. Unless it is a different account or department, of course. Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 20 09:05:37 2014 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 10:05:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> References: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 9:40 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Getting lots of people on watchlists might of course be a fun way of > reducing the efficiency of any surveillance system. The bottleneck for them > is not getting the information (we can safely assume it is all snarfed up), > but to have analysts trying to tell who is just cheeky, paranoid or actually > up to no good - or has switched between the categories. That is costly, > especially since if you try to automate it you will get machine-generated > blind spots that might bite you later. > > The solution for government is to treat everyone as a possible terrorist. That's why cameras watch and record everywhere. Look at the personal assaults you undergo to get on a plane. You can be stopped and searched if you look 'odd'. "Papers Please!" Smartphones are tracked and recorded, etc. etc. The USA now has over 1 million names on the Terrorist Watch List. Small town police in the USA now have tanks and grenade launchers. Why? Because the public are enemies of the state who have to be controlled by force. The main problem is the continual creeping loss of freedoms. More and more cases where you have to get permission, certificates, passes... from officials. Behaviour becomes more and more restricted until the pressure cooker blows. BillK From msd001 at gmail.com Wed Aug 20 12:16:03 2014 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 08:16:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: References: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 5:05 AM, BillK wrote: > The main problem is the continual creeping loss of freedoms. More and > more cases where you have to get permission, certificates, passes... > from officials. Behaviour becomes more and more restricted until the > pressure cooker blows. I agree on the main problem. I don't think the pressure cooker will blow (at least not soon). I feel like pressure is released under controlled outbursts. The militarized police state is more effective when there is a high degree of fear in the population. The takeaway is that it doesn't matter if good people are caught in a bad situation... so do your best to be nowhere near whatever is happening. Is this view negative because we're pessimists or because reality is kind of depressing? Has it gotten worse over 30 years or are we just more worn-down by it? From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 20 14:27:37 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 07:27:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scifi search Message-ID: <010b01cfbc82$e4f3b160$aedb1420$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike at rainier66.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2014 8:24 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] scifi search From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty >?Interestingly those who disconnect from the transparent internet show no signature afterwards. Has anyone heard from Eugen in however many months...? Regularly, ja. Eugen didn?t disappear, he just got tired of us. >? I assume his dissapearance was by choice rather than by disaster. How does a good netizen check in on digital neighbors? He isn?t hiding. Google on Transhumanist Tech. Eugen is from a country which knows what happens when governments get out of control. America is bigger and more powerful than Germany was in the 1930s. There are a lot of Americans slipping into the shadows, with all the Snowden revelations coming out on a regular basis. spikr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 20 14:40:29 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 07:40:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: References: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <011801cfbc84$b115bad0$13413070$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty Subject: Re: [ExI] scifi search On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 5:05 AM, BillK wrote: >>... The main problem is the continual creeping loss of freedoms. More and > more cases where you have to get permission, certificates, passes... > from officials. Behaviour becomes more and more restricted until the > pressure cooker blows. >...I agree on the main problem. I don't think the pressure cooker will blow (at least not soon)... Depends on who you ask. Plenty of the residents of Fergusen Missouri would argue it has already blown. It is sad that the minority community, which already has way too many challenges, has to fight with the constables as well. >...Is this view negative because we're pessimists or because reality is kind of depressing? Has it gotten worse over 30 years or are we just more worn-down by it? _______________________________________________ Mike what I find most alarming about the last 30 yrs of US history is a phenomenon where the government is claiming the defendant's advantage. In our court system there is an inherent advantage for the defendant, for the plaintiff must prove the case. Our laws are getting ever more complicated, and defense attorney's advantage only increases with time, as we have more free flow of knowledge on methods of clogging the system and getting the case dismissed or negotiated (usually a win for the defense.) In cases such as the IRS scandal and now other executive branch bureaucracies, the government just does whatever it wants, then it is up to the citizen to sue the bureaucracy. The government has all the defendant advantages, and notice the citizens are winning very few cases, which are treated as political and can drag on for years. In the case of the NSA, their attitude seems to be they can do all the surveillance they want on anyone they want. If we don't like it, we are invited to sue. This is a dangerous precedent. What are Germans to do if the NSA watches them and sells the intel to the German government? spike From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 20 15:58:42 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 08:58:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: <011801cfbc84$b115bad0$13413070$@att.net> References: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> <011801cfbc84$b115bad0$13413070$@att.net> Message-ID: <019c01cfbc8f$9fa0e260$dee2a720$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of spike In cases such as the IRS scandal and now other executive branch bureaucracies, the government just does whatever it wants, then it is up to the citizen to sue the bureaucracy...In the case of the NSA, their attitude seems to be they can do all the surveillance they want on anyone they want. If we don't like it, we are invited to sue. This is a dangerous precedent...spike _______________________________________________ We tend to think of government misbehavior in terms of surveillance and suppression of its perceived enemies, but recognize that the US government set up the internet and the US government can tweak it to do whatever it wants. Imagine you went to find info on a particular topic and the search results were always filtered by a government agent trying to make sure the results were fair and balanced. That agency gets to make the call on the definition of fair and balanced of course. Would everyone here be OK with it if you suddenly noticed 2/3 of your search results are connected in some way to FoxNews? To Huffington Post? Or if you can't seem to get any results from Reason.com? What would you do? How do we know this isn't already being done? spike From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Wed Aug 20 16:38:31 2014 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 10:38:31 -0600 Subject: [ExI] One of these things is not like the other Message-ID: http://coinmarketcap.com/ Pick the right one, and you could make a LOT of money. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Aug 21 01:00:03 2014 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 21:00:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: <019c01cfbc8f$9fa0e260$dee2a720$@att.net> References: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> <011801cfbc84$b115bad0$13413070$@att.net> <019c01cfbc8f$9fa0e260$dee2a720$@att.net> Message-ID: On Aug 20, 2014 12:12 PM, "spike" wrote: > suddenly noticed 2/3 of your search results are connected in some way to > FoxNews? To Huffington Post? Or if you can't seem to get any results from > Reason.com? What would you do? How do we know this isn't already being > done? So you ARE making the case that things that are bad are getting worse as quickly as things that are good are getter better? I can look forward to being unemployed but phenomally healthy while playing the mind-blowingly awesome immersive virtual reality games at the same time the real world becomes a police state where merely leaving the house with the wrong expression on your face could send you to prison or killed by militarized police. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 21 09:31:00 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 11:31:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] social control In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4158148322-7555@secure.ericade.net> BillK , 20/8/2014 11:09 AM: The solution for government is to treat everyone as a possible terrorist. There are two kinds of "possible terrorist". One is the sceptical epistemic position: anybody could be a terrorist, so take precautions and investigate. That produces a nosy and somewhat paranoid government, but it is not necessarily pathological as long as it runs on "trust but verify". The other one is to actually treat everybody as a terrorist until the opposite has been proven (typically by getting a security clearance - since people will security clearances are "one of us" and will never ever betray). This produces a pathological response where the government does regard the citizenry as enemies, and tries to discipline them in a Foucaultian way to behave.? Reality is of course a mixture model between these two views (and the rational view that terrorists are vanishingly rare and actually doesn't matter much). Behaviour becomes more and more restricted until the pressure cooker blows. That is the problem. The modern surveillance state is likely increasingly good at inhibiting the typical Hollywood resistance: a team of people performing surgical operations against a key part of the oppressive infrastructure (or just terrorism). It might not be able to *stop* them, but after the fact everybody involved (and anybody they ever talked to) can be rounded up. So in principle it would prevent organised resistance. However, this system is unable to handle blowing pressure cookers. When people stop being rational about personal risk and just explode en masse it doesn't matter if you can document it perfectly. Of course, smart governments try to keep people from boiling over and are researching ways of social control. The problem here might be diffusion: those techniques will also become known to opposing groups in time. The real issue how they scale: can a nucleus of some dissenters (not necessarily coordinated) subvert the stabilization program? A lot hinges on scaling properties in economics, surveillance and memetics, and it is not clear how they actually look. Worth investigating.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 21 09:45:17 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 11:45:17 +0200 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4159554914-22923@secure.ericade.net> Mike Dougherty , 21/8/2014 3:05 AM: So you ARE making the case that things that are bad are getting worse as quickly as things that are good are getter better? I can look forward to being unemployed but phenomally healthy while playing the mind-blowingly awesome immersive virtual reality games at the same time the real world becomes a police state where merely leaving the house with the wrong expression on your face could send you to prison or killed by militarized police. This is the problem with most fiction (getting back to the original topic): it has to be entirely dystopian, utopian or "normal", it cannot have a high amplitude mix of good and bad. That kind of story confuses people. James Martin definitely confused people in his books and talks by warning of a resource and climate disaster with suitcase nukes *plus* awesome ecoaffluence, a renaissance in the Siberian climate refugee cities, superintelligence and lots of other radical changes: it makes the future really strange. If we look at the present state of the world it is this kind of awesome/awful situation. Comparing to when I grew up the world is far richer and more peaceful, there are three simultaneous huge humanitarian disasters going on, the Cold War just *ended* but an uprising in some remote country can have direct repercussions on my life, we have fantastic technological powers that also subject us to surveillance way beyond the nightmare visions in the 70s debate - and most people and governments are fine with it, health is getting better and better while practically everybody I know has a diagnosis of some kind... Yes, I think the variance is going up.? In short, we are living in a bad scifi novel. Or an experimental one.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 21 16:43:15 2014 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 17:43:15 +0100 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: References: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> <011801cfbc84$b115bad0$13413070$@att.net> <019c01cfbc8f$9fa0e260$dee2a720$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 2:00 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > I can look forward to being unemployed but phenomally healthy while playing > the mind-blowingly awesome immersive virtual reality games at the same time > the real world becomes a police state where merely leaving the house with > the wrong expression on your face could send you to prison or killed by > militarized police. > Yup, that's the near term future planned for you. One of the implications of much extended lifespan is that you won't take dangerous risks. So the outdoors 'exciting' stuff would be avoided anyway. And virtual reality gives you the same adrenalin rush in any case. However, once life extension has been solved, the next step is making your body less fragile, even tending towards indestructible. It may not be a biological body, though a heavily protected biological body is probably the first step. Once you have an extremely tough body you can then venture outdoors again. But by that time you might well not want to. BillK From painlord2k at libero.it Thu Aug 21 18:11:50 2014 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 20:11:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] social control In-Reply-To: <4158148322-7555@secure.ericade.net> References: <4158148322-7555@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <53F63666.4030101@libero.it> Il 21/08/2014 11:31, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > Of course, smart governments try to keep people from boiling over and > are researching ways of social control. The problem here might be > diffusion: those techniques will also become known to opposing groups in > time. The real issue how they scale: can a nucleus of some dissenters > (not necessarily coordinated) subvert the stabilization program? A lot > hinges on scaling properties in economics, surveillance and memetics, > and it is not clear how they actually look. Worth investigating. The resistance become not a direct confrontation with the government but an indirect attack to its power base. You do not use violence against the government or its allies and agents, you take away a bit a a time (in an exponential mode it work better) what the government need to function. Even Hitler could not force Germans to stop smoking and not even Stalin could force Russian to stop drinking. Neither could make them work hard enough to match the US productivity. Mirco From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Aug 21 18:59:32 2014 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 13:59:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: References: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> <011801cfbc84$b115bad0$13413070$@att.net> <019c01cfbc8f$9fa0e260$dee2a720$@att.net> Message-ID: a police state where merely leaving the house with the wrong expression on your face could send you to prison or killed by militarized police. ?Around here (Mississippi) you can get shot just by being unarmed and unthreatening but mentally ill. Whatever they are using to screen potential police men and women are not doing the job. We do not need warriors and with a shoot 'em up mentality. We need people who are friendly, do not reflexively get angry when dissed or threatened. Black culture demands that black people not be nice to police. They are going to back talk and the police need to know that and that they should not respond in kind. I have read studies where police are extremely likely to use very excessive force if there is a chase, particularly a long one where the police get angrier and angrier. So what we need are emotionally stable people who can keep their heads under stress. Wee need police that are not into being a controller of others. But it seems that they will take anyone who can pass their military type training. Interesting to note: the group mostly likely to enter a mental institution (as a percentage of their group) are psychiatric attendants and psychiatrists. Again, poor selection of people for the job. What is the likelihood of police becoming criminals? Higher than you would expect. Again - wrong types are being hired.? ? In cases way too much similarity between the mentally ill, criminals or people thought to be so? ?, and the police. Now you are going to expect me to say that we need to raise salaries so as to attract a better class of person to the job - and I will not disappoint you.? ? You pay for what you get, as in everything else. bill w? > _______________________________________________ > 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 sparge at gmail.com Thu Aug 21 22:09:44 2014 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 18:09:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: <4159554914-22923@secure.ericade.net> References: <4159554914-22923@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 5:45 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > In short, we are living in a bad scifi novel. Or an experimental one. > "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way ? in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu Aug 21 22:13:13 2014 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 18:13:13 -0400 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: References: <4069198793-21127@secure.ericade.net> <011801cfbc84$b115bad0$13413070$@att.net> <019c01cfbc8f$9fa0e260$dee2a720$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 2:59 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Whatever they are using to screen potential police men and women are not > doing the job. I think the problem is more due to the salary that police work pays and the type of person who's attracted to that work at low pay. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Aug 22 20:33:21 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 22:33:21 +0200 Subject: [ExI] scifi search In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4284669010-31657@secure.ericade.net> Dave Sill , 22/8/2014 12:17 AM: On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 2:59 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: Whatever they are using to screen potential police men and women are not doing the job. I think the problem is more due to the salary that police work pays and the type of person who's attracted to that work at low pay. In The Economist's coverage of the current US trouble they point out that police in the US kill people at a rate about a hundred times above places in Europe like Germany (and Japanese police has killed one person in six years!) But this is likely not because they are *bad*, but because they are very nervous - there are a lot of guns around, so it is rational for the police to use a lot of force if there is even a slight chance of danger. Which of course causes plenty of collateral and false positive damage. While I think we can reduce police violence significantly by having them wear cameras (look at?http://www.policefoundation.org/sites/g/files/g798246/f/201303/The%20Effect%20of%20Body-Worn%20Cameras%20on%20Police%20Use-of-Force.pdf and current UK experiments) it doesn't solve the above jitteriness problem. Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 23 04:39:44 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 21:39:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] space-x falcon 9 fails Message-ID: <08d401cfbe8c$437f7880$ca7e6980$@att.net> Damn. {8-[ http://www.space.com/26919-spacex-rocket-explodes-falling-debris-captured-on -video.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat Aug 23 07:27:01 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 09:27:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] space-x falcon 9 fails In-Reply-To: <08d401cfbe8c$437f7880$ca7e6980$@att.net> Message-ID: <29547918-4975@secure.ericade.net> spike , 23/8/2014 6:59 AM: Damn.? {8-[ ? http://www.space.com/26919-spacex-rocket-explodes-falling-debris-captured-on-video.html The real test of any technological program is how it handles disasters.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Sun Aug 24 15:59:44 2014 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 09:59:44 -0600 Subject: [ExI] space-x falcon 9 fails In-Reply-To: <29547918-4975@secure.ericade.net> References: <29547918-4975@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <53FA0BF0.9020701@canonizer.com> It looks to me like this was just a test launch, where they were purposely trying to push the parameters, to see if it would work. Brent On 8/23/2014 1:27 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > spike , 23/8/2014 6:59 AM: > > Damn. {8-[ > > http://www.space.com/26919-spacex-rocket-explodes-falling-debris-captured-on-video.html > > > > The real test of any technological program is how it handles disasters. > > > 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Tue Aug 26 22:05:18 2014 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 00:05:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Diminishing influence of increasing carbon dioxide on temperature In-Reply-To: <3338192012-17294@secure.ericade.net> References: <3338192012-17294@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <53FD049E.3010407@libero.it> Il 11/08/2014 23:51, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > Mirco Romanato , 11/8/2014 11:11 PM: > > > Now, if the real problem is increasing water vapor, what should we > do? Reduce Carbon emissions? > > > If you have a system with multiple components and multiple phases > interacting nonlinearly, if you want to control one variable you > might want to change some non-obvious parameters. After all, > whitening clouds by spraying seawater might lower temperature (the > desired variable) by changed albedo, despite increasing vapour (a > potentially bad variable). Australian scientist calls for ?heads to roll? over adjusted temperature data http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/26/australian-scientist-calls-for-heads-to-roll-over-adjusted-temperature-data/ > She writes: HEADS need to start rolling at the Australian Bureau of > Meteorology. The senior management have tried to cover-up serious > tampering that has occurred with the temperatures at an experimental > farm near Rutherglen in Victoria. Retired scientist Dr Bill Johnston > used to run experiments there. He, and many others, can vouch for the > fact that the weather station at Rutherglen, providing data to the > Bureau of Meteorology since November 1912, has never been moved. > Senior management at the Bureau are claiming the weather station > could have been moved in 1966 and/or 1974 and that this could be a > justification for artificially dropping the temperatures by 1.8 > degree Celsius back in 1913. We continue to catch Warmers tampering with the data. I would suggest, before describing a "system with multiple components and multiple phases interacting nonlinearly" to check if the data is trustworthy. Without trustworthy data, descriptions are moot. Mirco From anders at aleph.se Wed Aug 27 07:08:56 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 09:08:56 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Better than CR? Message-ID: <373754672-23559@secure.ericade.net> A paper in PLOS Geneticshttp://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0040013shows that the?Ras/cAMP/PKA/Rim15/Msn2/4 and the Tor/Sch9/Rim15/Gis1 pathways are major mediators of the calorie restriction-dependent stress resistance and life span extension in yeast (but I think they are pretty well conserved - Tor is after all heavily studied in mammals). They found that inactivating them had a bigger effect than CR itself.? Of course, whether this can be useful in humans remains to be seen. Lots of snarly cross-connections that might have undesirable side effects (cAMP and PKA are involved in *everything*), and there is the issue of how good CR actually is in humans. But still, nice piece of information.? "The yeast mutants lacking Ras2, Tor1, or Sch9 are long-lived. The anti-aging effect observed in these mutants depends on the protein Rim15 and several key regulators of gene expression that are essential in inducing cellular protection under stress. The beneficial effects of calorie restriction are much smaller in yeast that are missing these proteins, indicating their essential role in promoting longevity. Our study also showed that by combining the genetic manipulation and calorie restriction intervention, yeast can reach a life span ten times that of those grown under standard conditions. " Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Wed Aug 27 18:46:50 2014 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 20:46:50 +0200 Subject: [ExI] space-x falcon 9 fails In-Reply-To: <53FA0BF0.9020701@canonizer.com> References: <29547918-4975@secure.ericade.net> <53FA0BF0.9020701@canonizer.com> Message-ID: <53FE279A.6070807@libero.it> Il 24/08/2014 17:59, Brent Allsop ha scritto: > > It looks to me like this was just a test launch, where they were > purposely trying to push the parameters, to see if it would work. And when it would break. It is important to know WHEN it will broke down and why. Mirco From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 28 08:56:42 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:56:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Even better memory modification Message-ID: <466662271-16209@secure.ericade.net> Neat Nature paper where they use optogenetics to flip the emotional valence of a location:http://www.wired.com/2014/08/scientists-turn-bad-mice-memories-into-goodhttp://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13725.html This is separate from the earlier reconsolidation experiments that can destabilize memory traces or change their content. Those experiments are pretty interesting, although it is chillingly easy to induce false memories without any biomedical tools - just a bit of psychology. At least you notice when you get kinase inhibitors or fibre optics in your skull. Of course, I was writing about it *years* ago (the academic smugly said):http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/normativity-of-memory-modification.pdf Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 28 12:32:16 2014 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 13:32:16 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Even better memory modification In-Reply-To: <466662271-16209@secure.ericade.net> References: <466662271-16209@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Neat Nature paper where they use optogenetics to flip the emotional valence > of a location: > http://www.wired.com/2014/08/scientists-turn-bad-mice-memories-into-good > http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13725.html > > This is separate from the earlier reconsolidation experiments that can > destabilize memory traces or change their content. Those experiments are > pretty interesting, although it is chillingly easy to induce false memories > without any biomedical tools - just a bit of psychology. At least you notice > when you get kinase inhibitors or fibre optics in your skull. > > Of course, I was writing about it *years* ago (the academic smugly said): > http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/normativity-of-memory-modification.pdf > Good news and bad news. Might help in post-traumatic stress disorder cases. But remembering bad things as 'bad' serves a very useful function. i.e. Well, I won't do that again! The Ministry of Love could use this to make sure you really love Big Brother. Changing how you feel about things you have done and things that other people do to you, effectively changes you into a different person. BillK From dan_ust at yahoo.com Thu Aug 28 15:50:39 2014 From: dan_ust at yahoo.com (Dan Ust) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 08:50:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] It's alive? Message-ID: <5FC6115B-F561-4450-9896-34296FCE1EC7@yahoo.com> http://m.mic.com/articles/88441/cambridge-study-reveals-how-life-could-have-started-from-nothing Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From max at maxmore.com Thu Aug 28 18:41:54 2014 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 11:41:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now Message-ID: I am both sad and happy to tell you that long-time Extropy Institute/Extropy magazine/Extropy chat list member -- and honored cypherpunk and Bitcoin pioneer ? was declared clinically dead this morning and is now being cryopreserved. Hal was diagnosed with ALS five years ago. He made it clear that once he lost the ability to communicate, he did not want his vital functions supported any further but should be allowed to cease functioning and promptly be cryopreserved. Hal and Fran Finney arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona on Tuesday where he was checked into ICU of a hospital near Alcor. After administration of drugs to ensure no consciousness, his ventilator was removed. Although the doctors expected all breathing to cease within an hour, Hal?s body kept going until shortly before 9:00 am this morning, August 28, 2014. Immediately after pronouncement of legal death, Alcor?s standby team went into action, restoring circulation, ventilation, administering an array of medications, and initiating external cooling. Surgery is currently underway to enable us to replace Hal?s blood and interstitial fluids with cryoprotectant. Once perfusion is finished we will be able to plunge Hal?s temperature down past the freezing point without any significant ice formation. Once he is down to around -110 degC we will slow cooling and take a couple more days to reach the final storage temperature of -196 degC. After that, Hal will be placed in long-term storage and cared for until the day when repair and revival may be possible. Hal?s wife, Fran (also an Alcor member) has stayed by Hal?s side throughout and is observing our procedures firsthand. Since Hal is open about his Alcor membership and said that he would be happy for us to tell people about his choice if it might be good for cryonics, we will be issuing a press release, as well as writing something more extensive for *Cryonics* magazine and elsewhere. If you have thoughts on Hal and his life and work, please send them to me. Hal, I know I speak for many when I say that I look forward to speaking to you again sometime in the future and to throwing a party in honor of your revival. --Max -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 28 19:22:36 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 21:22:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <504101871-2532@secure.ericade.net> Hal will be missed. At least until we figure out cryoresuscitation. I just noticed (via James Clement) the Forbes story about him from earlier this year, which contains some nice sentiments:http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/03/25/satoshi-nakamotos-neighbor-the-bitcoin-ghostwriter-who-wasnt/ Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Aug 28 19:34:34 2014 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 15:34:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I'm very sorry to hear about Hal's death; when I first joined the Extropian list, back when giant reptiles ruled the earth, Hal Finney was one of the first people I communicated with. I hope his Cryopreservation goes well. John K Clark On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 2:41 PM, Max More wrote: > I am both sad and happy to tell you that long-time Extropy > Institute/Extropy magazine/Extropy chat list member -- and honored > cypherpunk and Bitcoin pioneer ? was declared clinically dead this > morning and is now being cryopreserved. > > > > Hal was diagnosed with ALS five years ago. He made it clear that once he > lost the ability to communicate, he did not want his vital functions > supported any further but should be allowed to cease functioning and > promptly be cryopreserved. Hal and Fran Finney arrived in Scottsdale, > Arizona on Tuesday where he was checked into ICU of a hospital near Alcor. > After administration of drugs to ensure no consciousness, his ventilator > was removed. Although the doctors expected all breathing to cease within an > hour, Hal?s body kept going until shortly before 9:00 am this morning, > August 28, 2014. > > > > Immediately after pronouncement of legal death, Alcor?s standby team went > into action, restoring circulation, ventilation, administering an array of > medications, and initiating external cooling. Surgery is currently underway > to enable us to replace Hal?s blood and interstitial fluids with > cryoprotectant. Once perfusion is finished we will be able to plunge Hal?s > temperature down past the freezing point without any significant ice > formation. Once he is down to around -110 degC we will slow cooling and > take a couple more days to reach the final storage temperature of -196 > degC. After that, Hal will be placed in long-term storage and cared for > until the day when repair and revival may be possible. > > > > Hal?s wife, Fran (also an Alcor member) has stayed by Hal?s side > throughout and is observing our procedures firsthand. > > > > Since Hal is open about his Alcor membership and said that he would be > happy for us to tell people about his choice if it might be good for > cryonics, we will be issuing a press release, as well as writing something > more extensive for *Cryonics* magazine and elsewhere. If you have > thoughts on Hal and his life and work, please send them to me. > > > > Hal, I know I speak for many when I say that I look forward to speaking to > you again sometime in the future and to throwing a party in honor of your > revival. > > > > --Max > > -- > Max More, PhD > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, *The Transhumanist Reader* > > http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader > President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Thu Aug 28 19:44:51 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:44:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <022701cfc2f8$896e0300$9c4a0900$@att.net> On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 2:41 PM, Max More wrote: I am both sad and happy to tell you that long-time Extropy Institute/Extropy magazine/Extropy chat list member -- and honored cypherpunk and Bitcoin pioneer ? was declared clinically dead this morning and is now being cryopreserved. --Max Hal, may your rest be in peace and be temporary. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 28 19:55:29 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 12:55:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: <504101871-2532@secure.ericade.net> References: <504101871-2532@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <022c01cfc2fa$059ea7d0$10dbf770$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 12:23 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now Hal will be missed. At least until we figure out cryoresuscitation. I just noticed (via James Clement) the Forbes story about him from earlier this year, which contains some nice sentiments: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/03/25/satoshi-nakamotos-neighbor-the-bitcoin-ghostwriter-who-wasnt/ Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University Anders and you other guys from a long time ago, remember Hal posting stuff about the Bitcoin concept back in the 1990s? Those were fun exciting times. I have missed that for a while, but in the last couple years I get the unexplainable feeling that another wave of anticipation of new cool fun stuff is about to crash upon us. I don?t even have a specific example of what I mean, but it just feels like the early days of the internet, when a lot of us were discovering all the cool uses and new possibilities. Anders your effective philanthropy conference really lit up those feelings. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Aug 28 22:17:34 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 00:17:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: <022c01cfc2fa$059ea7d0$10dbf770$@att.net> Message-ID: <514653662-9783@secure.ericade.net> spike??, 28/8/2014 10:11 PM: ? Anders and you other guys from a long time ago, remember Hal posting stuff about the Bitcoin concept back in the 1990s?? Those were fun exciting times.? I have missed that for a while, but in the last couple years I get the unexplainable feeling that another wave of anticipation of new cool fun stuff is about to crash upon us.? I don?t even have a specific example of what I mean, but it just feels like the early days of the internet, when a lot of us were discovering all the cool uses and new possibilities. ? Anders your effective philanthropy conference really lit up those feelings. I think one thing that is happening now is that some people who were around in the 90s now have made it big - and even those of us who have merely become staid pillars of society were deeply influenced by the ideas that were brewing back then. That means that now there is a second generation of futurists on our wavelength, supported to some extent by the first generation. The same thing for technology: a lot of platforms have been created, and now we are starting to explore them - the WWW might be way less exciting than in the 90s, but now it forms a useful backbone on which the weird bitcoin platforms might run; the clouds have settled, making big data and deep learning possible. We still don't know what they will actually be good for, but there is enormous potential here.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aware at awareresearch.com Thu Aug 28 21:24:45 2014 From: aware at awareresearch.com (Aware Research) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:24:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now Message-ID: Hal exemplified key extropian values and I am proud to have known him. Thanks Max for sharing this. - Jef From mail at harveynewstrom.com Fri Aug 29 03:12:39 2014 From: mail at harveynewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 23:12:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003201cfc337$182e2a50$488a7ef0$@harveynewstrom.com> He will definitely be missed. I remember him from the earliest days on several important mailing lists. -- Harvey Newstrom www.HarveyNewstrom.com From rhanson at gmu.edu Thu Aug 28 20:17:17 2014 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin D Hanson) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 20:17:17 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hal was, and hopefully still is, a very class act. The more cryonics customers there are, the more likely that any one of them will be revived, and the more easily that more new customers can buy the product at a lower cost. So to help Hal, and to help a world of people who may otherwise die, do become a cryonics customer. On Aug 28, 2014, at 2:41 PM, Max More > wrote: I am both sad and happy to tell you that long-time Extropy Institute/Extropy magazine/Extropy chat list member -- and honored cypherpunk and Bitcoin pioneer ? was declared clinically dead this morning and is now being cryopreserved. Hal was diagnosed with ALS five years ago. He made it clear that once he lost the ability to communicate, he did not want his vital functions supported any further but should be allowed to cease functioning and promptly be cryopreserved. Hal and Fran Finney arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona on Tuesday where he was checked into ICU of a hospital near Alcor. After administration of drugs to ensure no consciousness, his ventilator was removed. Although the doctors expected all breathing to cease within an hour, Hal?s body kept going until shortly before 9:00 am this morning, August 28, 2014. Immediately after pronouncement of legal death, Alcor?s standby team went into action, restoring circulation, ventilation, administering an array of medications, and initiating external cooling. Surgery is currently underway to enable us to replace Hal?s blood and interstitial fluids with cryoprotectant. Once perfusion is finished we will be able to plunge Hal?s temperature down past the freezing point without any significant ice formation. Once he is down to around -110 degC we will slow cooling and take a couple more days to reach the final storage temperature of -196 degC. After that, Hal will be placed in long-term storage and cared for until the day when repair and revival may be possible. Hal?s wife, Fran (also an Alcor member) has stayed by Hal?s side throughout and is observing our procedures firsthand. Since Hal is open about his Alcor membership and said that he would be happy for us to tell people about his choice if it might be good for cryonics, we will be issuing a press release, as well as writing something more extensive for Cryonics magazine and elsewhere. If you have thoughts on Hal and his life and work, please send them to me. Hal, I know I speak for many when I say that I look forward to speaking to you again sometime in the future and to throwing a party in honor of your revival. --Max -- Max More, PhD Strategic Philosopher Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat Robin Hanson http://hanson.gmu.edu Res. Assoc., Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford Univ. Assoc. Professor, George Mason University Chief Scientist, Consensus Point MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 29 05:49:48 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 22:49:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] wellbeing with less wealth, was: RE: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now Message-ID: <038d01cfc34d$0c20fba0$2462f2e0$@att.net> >? On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now spike , 28/8/2014 10:11 PM: >>? in the last couple years I get the unexplainable feeling that another wave of anticipation of new cool fun stuff is about to crash upon us? >? the clouds have settled, making big data and deep learning possible. We still don't know what they will actually be good for, but there is enormous potential here. ? Anders Sandberg Let me give an example. Recently one of the ExI posters made a comment about a future in which they couldn?t get a job but they could have a pretty decent life in their poverty anyway because of the astonishing amount of IP available free. Something to that effect. Who wrote that please? Do find it por favor, in your sent mail and repost the comment. I want to review that and share some thoughts it has stirred up in me. Here?s what happened. My car air conditioner hasn?t been working for a couple years now. Rather it does work after I drive around for 15 to 20 minutes. Then it suddenly kicks on. There was no ice on the evaporator, but I charged it anyway, no change. I checked the system pressure; both the high pressure side and the low pressure side were nominal. I found the high and low pressure sensors and shorted the high, opened the low; no change. Then I found a comment online when I googled on ?car air conditioner, delayed start.? Someone commented that a compressor relay can go bad. So I looked in the relay box, found one marked AC, noticed there were three other relays with the same part number. So I swapped a couple of them. The AC immediately started working, COOL! But now the car quit running after about 15 seconds, damn. So I put that one back and swapped out a different one. Air conditioner working, car running fine, COOL! But now it wouldn?t go in gear, damn. Mister Lincoln has shift by wire. So I have one last chance, swapped out the last remaining one, AC works, car runs, goes into gear, COOL! I didn?t know what I had disabled, but I reasoned that whatever that relay did, it takes some kind of low current signal, such as from a switch inside the passenger compartment, and uses it to run a high current device in the car, examples being the air conditioner compressor, the fuel pump, the transmission actuator, and something else. It finally occurred to me that it is probably the horn. Sure enough, the horn doesn?t work. Or at least not right away. So now if some yahoo pulls into my lane, I lay on the horn, of course nothing happens. Now I need to hope that 15 to 20 minutes later I am not in the middle of a pack of Hells Angels. The point of all that: back in the old days, we would need to take the Detroit to a repair shop, and she would charge 600 bucks, absolutely regardless of what was wrong. They always charge 600 some bucks. I don?t know how that became a price point. Now most of the time, a prole can fix his own car by getting on Google and taking his best guess at what will take him to the right site. This represents well-being. It saves a lot of money. Similarly, the medical info we have at our disposal now is astonishing. Our access to information should count as wealth in a sense. I ordered a used replacement relay for my horn, 11 bucks, free shipping. The new one was 29. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Fri Aug 29 07:29:49 2014 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 09:29:49 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This is vary sad. Hal's life, and his brave fight against formidable adversities in the last 5 years, will remain a great example for all transhumanists. Max, if any version of me is still around at that time, please invite me to Hal's revival party, I want to shake his hand. Please share the press release when it's issued, it should be posted also to the Bitcoin Forums and covered by Bitcoin news. On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 8:41 PM, Max More wrote: > I am both sad and happy to tell you that long-time Extropy Institute/Extropy > magazine/Extropy chat list member -- and honored cypherpunk and Bitcoin > pioneer ? was declared clinically dead this morning and is now being > cryopreserved. > > > > Hal was diagnosed with ALS five years ago. He made it clear that once he > lost the ability to communicate, he did not want his vital functions > supported any further but should be allowed to cease functioning and > promptly be cryopreserved. Hal and Fran Finney arrived in Scottsdale, > Arizona on Tuesday where he was checked into ICU of a hospital near Alcor. > After administration of drugs to ensure no consciousness, his ventilator was > removed. Although the doctors expected all breathing to cease within an > hour, Hal?s body kept going until shortly before 9:00 am this morning, > August 28, 2014. > > > > Immediately after pronouncement of legal death, Alcor?s standby team went > into action, restoring circulation, ventilation, administering an array of > medications, and initiating external cooling. Surgery is currently underway > to enable us to replace Hal?s blood and interstitial fluids with > cryoprotectant. Once perfusion is finished we will be able to plunge Hal?s > temperature down past the freezing point without any significant ice > formation. Once he is down to around -110 degC we will slow cooling and take > a couple more days to reach the final storage temperature of -196 degC. > After that, Hal will be placed in long-term storage and cared for until the > day when repair and revival may be possible. > > > > Hal?s wife, Fran (also an Alcor member) has stayed by Hal?s side throughout > and is observing our procedures firsthand. > > > > Since Hal is open about his Alcor membership and said that he would be happy > for us to tell people about his choice if it might be good for cryonics, we > will be issuing a press release, as well as writing something more extensive > for Cryonics magazine and elsewhere. If you have thoughts on Hal and his > life and work, please send them to me. > > > > Hal, I know I speak for many when I say that I look forward to speaking to > you again sometime in the future and to throwing a party in honor of your > revival. > > > > --Max > > > -- > Max More, PhD > Strategic Philosopher > Co-editor, The Transhumanist Reader > http://www.amazon.com/Transhumanist-Reader-Contemporary-Technology-Philosophy/dp/1118334310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372225570&sr=1-1&keywords=the+transhumanist+reader > President & CEO, Alcor Life Extension Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 29 14:02:56 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 07:02:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <049b01cfc391$f04ff580$d0efe080$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Subject: Re: [ExI] Hal Finney being cryopreserved now >...This is vary sad... please invite me to Hal's revival party, I want to shake his hand. >...Please share the press release when it's issued, it should be posted also to the Bitcoin Forums and covered by Bitcoin news... There was some interesting discussion on Hacker News of Hal and cryonics. Jan Klauck sent this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8239129 spike From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 29 15:44:53 2014 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 08:44:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] wellbeing with less wealth, was: RE: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: <038d01cfc34d$0c20fba0$2462f2e0$@att.net> References: <038d01cfc34d$0c20fba0$2462f2e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 10:49 PM, spike wrote: > I ordered a used replacement relay for my horn, 11 bucks, free shipping. > The new one was 29. > I would be interested to get your impression of http://poorcraft.com/ . It's a much more extreme version of the notion you present. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 29 15:56:25 2014 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 08:56:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] wellbeing with less wealth, was: RE: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now In-Reply-To: References: <038d01cfc34d$0c20fba0$2462f2e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <04ff01cfc3a1$caa67010$5ff35030$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Friday, August 29, 2014 8:45 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] wellbeing with less wealth, was: RE: Hal Finney being cryopreserved now On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 10:49 PM, spike wrote: I ordered a used replacement relay for my horn, 11 bucks, free shipping. The new one was 29. >?I would be interested to get your impression of http://poorcraft.com/ . It's a much more extreme version of the notion you present. Ah, excellent Adrian. They made the point with way fewer words, better chosen: Being broke doesn?t have to suck. {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Aug 31 09:51:31 2014 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 11:51:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Feynman lectures are now online Message-ID: <729315468-22660@secure.ericade.net> They have made a web version freely available: http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sun Aug 31 17:09:00 2014 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 19:09:00 +0200 Subject: [ExI] The Feynman lectures are now online In-Reply-To: <729315468-22660@secure.ericade.net> References: <729315468-22660@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: The Feynman Lectures were my favorite physics textbook. There are also full PDFs, easy to find on the torrent sites. I recommend also Susskind's Theoretical Minimum, many good video lectures and two books so far. "The Theoretical Minimum is a series of Stanford Continuing Studies courses taught by world renowned physicist Leonard Susskind. These courses collectively teach everything required to gain a basic understanding of each area of modern physics including all of the fundamental mathematics." http://theoreticalminimum.com/ The name "Theoretical Minimum" is taken from Lev Landau's physics courses and books. On Sun, Aug 31, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > They have made a web version freely available: > http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ > > > 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 >