From avant at sollegro.com Sun Mar 1 00:20:20 2015 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 00:20:20 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina Message-ID: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> This is good news for uploaders: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/tech/mci-lego-worm/ Apparently the Open Worm Project has managed to successfully simulate approximately 1/3 of C. elegans' neuronal network and uploaded it into a robot body that displays "wormy" behavior. Here is an excerpt: ----------Quote------------- "He said the scientific road map is to model the worm completely, equipping it with the same physics right down to the cells in all the right places. While the C. elegans nematode was chosen because of the simplicity of its biological structure, the complexity of the experiment has been such that the team has had to narrow down the project to just a third of the worm's neurons, restricting it to those parts of the worm's make-up that would display behavior. The digital version of the worm will be released on the web in June this year, allowing anyone with an interest to tinker with the project. Larson said the open source and collaborative nature of the project has been key to its success, allowing it to make fast progress over the four years of its existence." ---------End Quote--------------------- So this gave me an idea on how to estimate the Kolmogorov complexity of the human brain. 1st you simulate all of C. elegans 302 neurons and their 6393 synapses. (My numbers are from http://www.wormatlas.org/neuronalwiring.html) Once you get a the open worm simulation up and running with sufficiently accurate worm-like behavior, you take all of the computer code involved as a measurement of the byte size of the C. elegans simulation. I tried looking around their website for how big the simulation was but couldn't find it. Not that it matters right now since they say they are only a third done anyway. So lets just call it "B(w)" as in "byte size of worm" for now. Now to determine the Kolmogorov complexity one can compress the open worm software down using some compression scheme such as zip or rar and then measure the size of the compressed files. This will give you the Kolmogorov complexity of the simulated worm which we can designate as K(w). Now the connectivity map of worm's nervous system can be represented by a graph 302 vertices and 6393 edges. One can represent such a graph as a 302 X 302 matrix of ones and zeroes called an adjacency matrix. The adjacency matrix will be 91204 bits in size. 12786 of those bits would be 1's and the remaining 78418 bits would be 0's. A human brain contains 86 billion neurons, so its adjacency matrix would be 7.396 x 10^21 bits in size or roughly an exabyte. So now that we have adjacency matrices for the worm brain and the human brain, so comparing the two can give us a scaling factor. For example scaling factor, S = 7.396 x 10^21 bits / 9.1204 x 10^4 = 8.10929 x 10^16. Now to estimate the computing power required to simulate a human brain, B(h), one can simply multiply the byte size of all the software and data required to simulate the worm and multiply by the scaling factor: B(h) = S*B(w). Assuming that the levels of redundancy in the worm brain and human brain are similar we should be able to calculate the Kolmogorov complexity of the human brain in a similar fashion, K(h) = S*K(w). In any case my ability to give an actual estimate, instead of a methodology to calculate it, is hampered by by inability to locate the relevant data on the open worm worm project. If somebody out there knows how big the open worm project software platform and data sizes are, please post them. Then I could give an actual number that I could cross correlate with Moore's Law to get an estimate of when the Singularity might occur. Those considerations aside, my hats off to the Open Worm Project as this is a huge stride toward uploading and I am suitably impressed. It also validates my support for a bottom up simulation strategy. Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Sun Mar 1 01:46:10 2015 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 01:46:10 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <20150301014610.Horde.U3L_Ikk7IGxPSWA85ZjC2Q5@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting Stuart LaForge : > > A human brain contains 86 billion neurons, so its adjacency matrix > would be 7.396 x 10^21 bits in size or roughly an exabyte. Correction 7.396 x 10^21 bits is actually closer to a zettabyte. Sorry. :-) Stuart LaForge From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 01:48:13 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 20:48:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3423166789-5438@secure.ericade.net> References: <54F0861B.80906@libero.it> <3423166789-5438@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > I am no expert, but BH is very much a response to Nigeria's rich south > ignoring the poor north: it could have turned into normal > guerilla/rebellion, but now it took on religious angle since the > north-south divide is also a religious divide. Rather than adding > anti-western sentiments in the socialist mode, it settled on a religious > mode (hence the name - to BH education is a weapon of cultural assimilation > used by the south and the West). Maybe there is also Salafist foreign aid, > I don't know. So a first issue that needs to be addressed is what the > Nigerian government is doing with the oil money - it might be necessary to > start squeezing them on corruption and the need to include the whole > country. This won't stop BH directly, but handled well it might deprive it > of the core driver, and make more people willing to resist. Most likely the > only proper solution is for Nigeria to actually get its governance act > together and construct a working police and military. > ### Or, maybe .... break the country up! Drop the poor south. Set up a good border, slaughter those who cross it. Good, old methods that work. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 02:04:53 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 21:04:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 7:20 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > Assuming that the levels of redundancy in the worm brain and human brain > are similar we should be able to calculate the Kolmogorov complexity of the > human brain in a similar fashion, K(h) = S*K(w). ### I don't think that the human brain has the same level of redundancy as the worm system. The worm has each neuron and synapse hardwired, there is really no redundancy at all, a loss of any single neuron is likely to produce a change in the system behavior that might be quite substantial. The human brain is wired stochastically, keeps rewiring itself from minute to minute, millions of neurons die daily and yet the system is stable over decades. Most likely human brains have a lot more redundancy than the worm, which means that the uploading requirements might be lower than your estimate. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sun Mar 1 04:45:24 2015 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 04:45:24 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <757357771.675608.1425184179651.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <757357771.675608.1425184179651.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20150301044524.Horde.2UHv_fisSLj53iHUCRKmMg4@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting Rafal Smigrodzki ; > ? > On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 7:20 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > > Assuming that the levels of redundancy in the worm brain and human > brain are similar we should be able to calculate the Kolmogorov > complexity of the human brain in a similar fashion, K(h) = S*K(w). > > ### I don't think that the human brain has the same level of > redundancy as the worm system. The worm has each neuron and synapse > hardwired, there is really no redundancy at all, a loss of any > single neuron is likely to produce a change in the system behavior > that might be quite substantial. The human brain is wired > stochastically, keeps rewiring itself from minute to minute, > millions of neurons die daily and yet the system is stable over > decades. Most likely human brains have a lot more redundancy than > the worm, which means that the uploading requirements might be lower > than your estimate. > Rafal I won't argue with your point, since I would be happy with my estimate being an upper bound with an error of an order of magnitude. It is certainly a much tighter upper bound than the Beckenstein limit which seems to give John Clark conniptions.?If there are better estimates based on some combination of math and empirical observations, I would like to know those as well. Although your comment does raise the question of how much redundancy is necessary to simulate the human brain. After all computer data is prone to bit rot and other forms of data corruption, so for long-term robustness of "identity" the redundancy might be unavoidable lest it be satisfactory that entropy have its way with uploads. Stuart LaForge From mike at 7f.com Sun Mar 1 02:10:26 2015 From: mike at 7f.com (Michael Roberts) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 18:10:26 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <20150301014610.Horde.U3L_Ikk7IGxPSWA85ZjC2Q5@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> <20150301014610.Horde.U3L_Ikk7IGxPSWA85ZjC2Q5@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: If the adjacency matrix is at least somewhat sparse, it can be compressed a lot from there, and you can store it as a spare matrix. I assume it is indeed sparse, given the locality of a large number of the connections in a human brain. For compression see: http://www.netlib.org/lapack/lawns/lawn50.ps (if my memory serves me correctly, I can't look in here as it's ps, not loaded on this machine, but the author is correct) it's common in linear algebra packages: http://help.scilab.org/docs/5.3.3/en_US/section_5e0321764b4d32eb97061ca71139523c.html However, I doubt someone has done the compression is for a real-time brain-like system so far however, ie. it's compressed and you are using it compressed for propagation type activities, rather than uncompressing it as needed. To calculate the savings, you'd need a measure of how sparse it is, and I am not quite sure how to relate that to the compressed savings at the current time. Interesting problem! You might be better off not using an adjacency type representation - a node/edge representation is likely the way to go, but load/save times would be bad unless you can block it somehow. But one assumes you would just leave it in memory most of the time :) The compression is somewhat analogous to run-length encoding; you walk the matrix looking for runs of (in this case) 0,1, and encode those. The disadvantage of course is that propagation type queries take longer. However, not so much longer that you would want to forgo the huge savings in memory and potential cache coherence savings. MR On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 5:46 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > > Quoting Stuart LaForge : > >> >> A human brain contains 86 billion neurons, so its adjacency matrix would >> be 7.396 x 10^21 bits in size or roughly an exabyte. > > > Correction 7.396 x 10^21 bits is actually closer to a zettabyte. Sorry. :-) > > Stuart LaForge > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 08:23:47 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 03:23:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <20150301044524.Horde.2UHv_fisSLj53iHUCRKmMg4@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <757357771.675608.1425184179651.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <20150301044524.Horde.2UHv_fisSLj53iHUCRKmMg4@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 11:45 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > > > I won't argue with your point, since I would be happy with my estimate > being an upper bound with an error of an order of magnitude. It is > certainly a much tighter upper bound than the Beckenstein limit which seems > to give John Clark conniptions. If there are better estimates based on some > combination of math and empirical observations, I would like to know those > as well. > ### Oh, no, I didn't mean to demean your estimate, just added some even more positive spin on it :) > > Although your comment does raise the question of how much redundancy is > necessary to simulate the human brain. After all computer data is prone to > bit rot and other forms of data corruption, so for long-term robustness of > "identity" the redundancy might be unavoidable lest it be satisfactory that > entropy have its way with uploads. ### My feeling is that a lot in the brain can be vastly simplified. We have hundreds of millions of cells whose outputs could be probably simulated by single signals. There are thousands of cells that run your quadriceps but it's only because you need a lot of wiring to reach each one the millions of muscle fibers - if you had a hydraulic musculature you would need to run only a single wire to control a valve to get the same level of mechanical control. Probably there are many other locations where cell number is forced not by computational complexity but by the sheer physical size of resources that have to be controlled. It's not an accident that whales have large brains. Also, the brain is made of very low-reliability computational elements, with MTBF probably measured in hours (a guess on my part, not knowledge). Running a simulation using more reliable elements would allow for using a much smaller number of elements. What is the MTBF of a transistor? Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Mar 1 10:20:20 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 11:20:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3571026475-10474@secure.ericade.net> Rafal Smigrodzki , 1/3/2015 2:50 AM: ### Or, maybe .... break the country up! Drop the poor south. Set up a good border, slaughter those who cross it. Good, old methods that work. You mean like Korea?? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 10:46:09 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 11:46:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3571026475-10474@secure.ericade.net> References: <3571026475-10474@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: North Korea, (like East Germany once), doesn't want you to leave. Not to enter. But not anybody let to enter, that's the idea here. Seems a good idea to me. On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 11:20 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Rafal Smigrodzki , 1/3/2015 2:50 AM: > > ### Or, maybe .... break the country up! > > Drop the poor south. Set up a good border, slaughter those who cross it. > > Good, old methods that work. > > > You mean like Korea? > > > 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 Sun Mar 1 11:11:13 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 11:11:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] More bird IQ Message-ID: Lots of people love the birds in their garden, but it's rare for that affection to be reciprocated. One young girl in Seattle is luckier than most. She feeds the crows in her garden - and they bring her gifts in return. Quote: In 2013, Gabi and Lisa started offering food as a daily ritual, rather than dropping scraps from time to time. Each morning, they fill the backyard birdbath with fresh water and cover bird-feeder platforms with peanuts. Gabi throws handfuls of dog food into the grass. As they work, crows assemble on the telephone lines, calling loudly to them. It was after they adopted this routine that the gifts started appearing. ........ Lisa, Gabi's mom, regularly photographs the crows and charts their behaviour and interactions. Her most amazing gift came just a few weeks ago, when she lost a lens cap in a nearby alley while photographing a bald eagle as it circled over the neighbourhood. She didn't even have to look for it. It was sitting on the edge of the birdbath. Had the crows returned it? Lisa logged on to her computer and pulled up their bird-cam. There was the crow she suspected. "You can see it bringing it into the yard. Walks it to the birdbath and actually spends time rinsing this lens cap." "I'm sure that it was intentional," she smiles. "They watch us all the time. I'm sure they knew I dropped it. I'm sure they decided they wanted to return it." ------------------------- BillK From anders at aleph.se Sun Mar 1 11:54:04 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 12:54:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <3571251132-6030@secure.ericade.net> (Short version: I think you overestimate things a little bit, but not much) Stuart LaForge??, 1/3/2015 1:42 AM:Now the connectivity map of worm's nervous system can be represented ?? by a graph 302 vertices and 6393 edges. One can represent such a graph ?? as a 302 X 302 matrix of ones and zeroes called an adjacency matrix. ?? The adjacency matrix will be 91204 bits in size. 12786 of those bits ?? would be 1's and the remaining 78418 bits would be 0's.? This is actually the main problem: connectivity is not enough, we need to know synaptic weights - and those are hard to measure in C elegans, which is why this has not been done years ago.? But leaving that aside: the adjacency matrix can also be represented as a list of 6393 18-bit numbers (you need 9 bits to represent which neuron a synapse starts at and 9 for which it ends at - slightly clever encoding will save you 1.4 bits per synapse),?115,074 bits in total. This is *larger* than the full matrix: this is a less effective encoding. However, in the human brain the matrix is about 8.6*10^10 X 8.6*10^10, and each neuron has about 8000 connections. So you need 7.4*10^21 bits for the full matrix, but the edge representation takes just 8.6*10^10*8000*74 = 5.1*10^16 bits. (you need 37 bits to address each neuron).? Here there are *definitely* going to be compression wins too, since you can use an encoding of neuron addresses that makes common pathway addresses shorter at the expense of the rare ones (basically a spatial hierarchical Huffman coding). Most connections are local (roughly half are within one cm, and most of them are likely within the same 1 mm region), so if a neuron ID starts with some bits of rough location information most edges will have these ID bits identical and be highly compressible. So if we parcel the brain into 1400 1cm^3 voxels with 11 bit addresses, half of the connections will share the first 11 bits of start and destination neurons: we can indicate that by a '0' followed by the voxel (11 bits) and then 2 X 26 bits of inter-voxel ID - 64 bits in total rather than 74. This 10 bit win occurs for half of the neurons, saving us 3.4*10^15 bits. The other half of the connections become one bit longer, so there we lose 3.4*10^14 bits - all in all we get a saving of 6%. Doing this with the mm-size connectivity likely gives about the same saving; then things get more complex. So all in all, I think it is plausible that the compression limit is on the order of just above 10^16 bits.? ?So now that ?? we have adjacency matrices for the worm brain and the human brain, so ?? comparing the two can give us a scaling factor. For example scaling ?? factor, S = 7.396 x 10^21 bits / 9.1204 x 10^4 = 8.10929 x 10^16.? Now to estimate the computing power required to simulate a human ?? brain, B(h), one can simply multiply the byte size of all the software ?? and data required to simulate the worm and multiply by the scaling ?? factor: B(h) = S*B(w). No. You are mixing up program and data. The code needed to run a neuron is only needed in one copy when calculating the Kolmogorov complexity: when you run the program you might want to copy it into 10^10 copies for each local node.? The complexity will be roughly the neural simulation code part of the worm project, plus the connectivity complexity. We can approximate openworm: looking at the github repository, I would be very surprised if it was beyond a million lines of code. There are about 43 directories, and each may have about 10 (say 30) source code files, typically with about 200 lines of code. That makes about 258,000 sloc. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.01410v1.pdf shows that most java code is chaff; only about 4% is functional. Assuming this to apply here, we get around 10,000 lines of core code. Of these about 11000 bytes would be the full connectivity matrix, but since a line is many bytes we can more or less ignore the connectivity size, it is likely <1%. So if we guess that a line of code is about 10 characters, the complexity of the project is very roughly 800,000 bits. For comparison, the NEURON simulator (?http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/download ) comes in at around 30 Mb, assuming 4% efficiency gives a size of 1.2 Mb=9,600,000, ten times bigger. This is all *microscopic* compared to the human connection data, so one can approximate it to zero: the human upload Kolmogorov complexity is somewhere around 10^16. (This all ignores, as I said, connection weights - there are factors upping the complexity a bit) In any case my ability to give an actual estimate, instead of a ?? methodology to calculate it, is hampered by by inability to locate the ?? relevant data on the open worm worm project. If somebody out there ?? knows how big the open worm project software platform and data sizes ?? are, please post them. Then I could give an actual number that I could ?? cross correlate with Moore's Law to get an estimate of when the ?? Singularity might occur.? Hmm, you are looking at data when you should be looking at processing power. Looking at table 8 and 9 in my old report?http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/brain-emulation-roadmap-report.pdf suggests that storage requirements are going to be met much earlier than processing requirements. This was the basis for my estimates in?http://www.aleph.se/papers/Monte%20Carlo%20model%20of%20brain%20emulation%20development.pdf But I think the basic approach is sound: find software that does an emulation, scale up the computing requirements, plug in estimates for Moore's law. As I argue in the Monte Carlo paper data acquisition and neuroscience add uncertainty to the estimate: I would *love* to get better estimates there too.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Mar 1 11:56:19 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 12:56:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3576769421-10474@secure.ericade.net> Tomaz Kristan , 1/3/2015 11:48 AM: North Korea, (like East Germany once), doesn't want you to leave. Not to enter.? But not anybody let to enter, that's the idea here. Seems a good idea to me. It is all good and fun (except for the oppressed citizens) until they get nukes or bioweapons. Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mike at 7f.com Sun Mar 1 02:36:13 2015 From: mike at 7f.com (Michael Roberts) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 18:36:13 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: References: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> <20150301014610.Horde.U3L_Ikk7IGxPSWA85ZjC2Q5@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: apologies, on re-reading, I see you already had some redundancy factored in there, from the nematode model. However, my bet is on much more localized connectivity in the human model. With appropriate compression, I am sure the size requirement could be reduced a lot. On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 6:10 PM, Michael Roberts wrote: > If the adjacency matrix is at least somewhat sparse, it can be > compressed a lot from there, and you can store it as a spare matrix. >> Quoting Stuart LaForge : >> >>> >>> A human brain contains 86 billion neurons, so its adjacency matrix would >>> be 7.396 x 10^21 bits in size or roughly an exabyte. >> >> >> Correction 7.396 x 10^21 bits is actually closer to a zettabyte. Sorry. :-) >> >> Stuart LaForge From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 14:18:30 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 15:18:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3576769421-10474@secure.ericade.net> References: <3576769421-10474@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: I used to be very liberal on this question of "oppressed people, who just want freedom". Now, I am more of a realist. Too many of those, welcomed in EU or US are now fighting for ISIS. Or at least sympathetic. "Three school girls" flew to Turkey is on the BBC right now. On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 12:56 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Tomaz Kristan , 1/3/2015 11:48 AM: > > North Korea, (like East Germany once), doesn't want you to leave. Not to > enter. > > But not anybody let to enter, that's the idea here. Seems a good idea to > me. > > > It is all good and fun (except for the oppressed citizens) until they get > nukes or bioweapons. > > > > 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 Sun Mar 1 14:25:37 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 15:25:37 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> Tomaz Kristan , 1/3/2015 3:20 PM: I used to be very liberal on this question of "oppressed people, who just want freedom". Now, I am more of a realist. Too many of those, welcomed in EU or US are now fighting for ISIS. Or at least sympathetic.? "Three school girls" flew to Turkey is on the BBC right now. You know, Americans have committed crimes in the UK. Maybe we ought to send them all home, or at least prevent them from coming over. "Realism" is usually not based on looking up actual criminology data or doing cost-benefit analysis. It is far too often just a reaction to salient-sounding news.? Looking at migration patterns and remittances suggests that it is a good idea to let people migrate for jobs, and that the remittances are a rather effective form of aid to build up their home regions. In fact, the post 9-11 cutting of remittance systems to Somalia seems to have promoted the piracy in the region since people needed an alternative income.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Mar 1 14:16:41 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 06:16:41 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: References: <757357771.675608.1425184179651.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> <20150301044524.Horde.2UHv_fisSLj53iHUCRKmMg4@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <00b101d0542a$57af72e0$070e58a0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki >?Also, the brain is made of very low-reliability computational elements, with MTBF probably measured in hours (a guess on my part, not knowledge). Running a simulation using more reliable elements would allow for using a much smaller number of elements. What is the MTBF of a transistor? Rafa? Interesting point. If a transistor is not run near its capacity, the MTBF of some configurations of transistor is still not known. I have an HP calculator from college that still works. I don?t know how many millions of transistors those things have, but every one of them is apparently operational still, which means the MTBF of that type of transistor used in that application would be many thousands of years, even using the most gloomy models we have. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Mar 1 14:30:37 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 06:30:37 -0800 Subject: [ExI] nisis and ExI similarity: interest in heads Message-ID: <00b601d0542c$499aa470$dccfed50$@att.net> A longtime ExI-chat reader posted me this invitation: -----Original Message----- From: Jan Klauck [mailto:jklauck at uni-osnabrueck.de] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2015 11:24 PM To: spike66 at att.net Subject: OFFLIST Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 137, Issue 34 > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: beheadings etc. (Anders Sandberg) > 2. Re: 'The Other Brain' (William Flynn Wallace) > 3. Human head transplant in two years??? (BillK) > 4. Re: 'The Other Brain' (Anders Sandberg) > 5. Re: Human head transplant in two years??? (spike) > 6. Re: beheadings etc (Tara Maya) Obviously IS and Extropians are very interested in heads. We've the AGI-15 in July, in case you know AI/robotics people who're into strong AI and who would love to combine it with a stay in Berlin, let them know (attached announcement). Best, Jan From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 15:02:53 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 16:02:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Some of those pesky Americans are descendants of my grandmother's brother who went there. Some originate from several families from a nearby village. Some are close, some are not that close to my genetic profile. Somalis however, who are now coming not that far away from here are many times more distant from me than an average European is. And I am not sure it is that good idea having them. Even if we have destroyed there natural environment, I don't want any wild chimp roaming around. A chimp is many times more away from me than an average African is, I know. We have split with chimps about 6 million years ago and 60 thousands years ago we have split with Africans. Africans are 100 times closer to me than chimps, I admit. But it's not close enough for not having essential problems with each other. You may call it racism or realism. It is. But I don't want a mass immigration from Africa. I saw the Rhodesia - Zimbabwe transformation, it was enough. I am watching South Africa now. And Detroit or Ferguson. I don't want Europe to go down in the name of "anti-racism". On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 3:25 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Tomaz Kristan , 1/3/2015 3:20 PM: > > I used to be very liberal on this question of "oppressed people, who just > want freedom". > > Now, I am more of a realist. Too many of those, welcomed in EU or US are > now fighting for ISIS. Or at least sympathetic. > > "Three school girls" flew to Turkey is on the BBC right now. > > > You know, Americans have committed crimes in the UK. Maybe we ought to > send them all home, or at least prevent them from coming over. > > "Realism" is usually not based on looking up actual criminology data or > doing cost-benefit analysis. It is far too often just a reaction to > salient-sounding news. > > Looking at migration patterns and remittances suggests that it is a good > idea to let people migrate for jobs, and that the remittances are a rather > effective form of aid to build up their home regions. In fact, the post > 9-11 cutting of remittance systems to Somalia seems to have promoted the > piracy in the region since people needed an alternative income. > > > > 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 spike66 at att.net Sun Mar 1 15:42:12 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 07:42:12 -0800 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <014301d05436$498f7550$dcae5ff0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tomaz Kristan >?I don't want Europe to go down in the name of "anti-racism". Kristan Those videos of guys smashing the antiquities in the Mosul museum were not Africans. It is too easy to foresee that scene playing out in the Vatican, in the Louvre, in the Royal Academy of the Arts, the Smithsonian, at the Apple headquarters. It isn?t genetics but rather memetics in play. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 17:30:45 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 18:30:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <014301d05436$498f7550$dcae5ff0$@att.net> References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> <014301d05436$498f7550$dcae5ff0$@att.net> Message-ID: In Zimbabwe it is genetic, I think. In Mosul, it's a mix, I think. I don't wish more Africans to come in Europe. Nor Arabs. Even though many of them may be great people. A Gaza type of wall, which prevents entering (to Israel) and not the Berlin type of wall which prevented escape, is necessary. In the US, it is already such a wall on the Mexican border. Not tight enough, perhaps, but it's there. And a large amount of blacks are behind bars inside the US. Which is not as a big problem, as if all of them were at large. By far. Even if it's just a memetics, it is a resilient memetics. It is not like the Nazism, it is a much deeper divide. Germans got their lesson in WWII. As Japanese, too. As we, Eastern Europeans, do slowly abandoning the Communism. Arabs are just too proud and distant to convert. George Bush was too optimistic about Iraq. I was too, but I've learned it. The current situation on Earth is not much different as Neanderthals would still be with us. Brotherhood of Sapiens and Neanderthals just wouldn't work. What make us sure, that for example a Brown-Black brotherhood is viable? It is not in Sudan. Why would be possible here in Europe, with so many Whites still here? Enough problems among the Whites in Europe already, to invite other peoples here. On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 4:42 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Tomaz Kristan > > *>?*I don't want Europe to go down in the name of "anti-racism". Kristan > > > > > > Those videos of guys smashing the antiquities in the Mosul museum were not > Africans. > > > > It is too easy to foresee that scene playing out in the Vatican, in the > Louvre, in the Royal Academy of the Arts, the Smithsonian, at the Apple > headquarters. > > > > It isn?t genetics but rather memetics in play. > > > > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 17:44:07 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 12:44:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> <014301d05436$498f7550$dcae5ff0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I don't wish more Africans to come in Europe. Nor Arabs. > How about letting them come in provided they first eat a bacon sandwich in front of immigration officials? That should keep out those who take their medieval religion too seriously, eating such a sandwich could also allow somebody to get on the fast track through airport security. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 17:51:04 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 18:51:04 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> <014301d05436$498f7550$dcae5ff0$@att.net> Message-ID: A good portion of Italian prosciutto or German sausages is good enough to obtain a tourist or business visa. Nothing more. On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 6:44 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > > I don't wish more Africans to come in Europe. Nor Arabs. >> > > How about letting them come in provided they first eat a bacon sandwich in > front of immigration officials? That should keep out those who take their > medieval religion too seriously, eating such a sandwich could also allow > somebody to get on the fast track through airport security. > > John K Clark > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 painlord2k at libero.it Sun Mar 1 18:14:24 2015 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:14:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <54F0861B.80906@libero.it> <3423166789-5438@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <54F35700.5080507@libero.it> Il 01/03/2015 02:48, Rafal Smigrodzki ha scritto: > Drop the poor south. Set up a good border, slaughter those who cross it. > Good, old methods that work. Actually, in Nigeria is the poor North (oil poor) How did Christians and Animists dared to be born and living in an oil rich place? And profit from it, also. Apart from this detail, I agree. It is a sensible policy. Mirco From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Mar 1 18:41:50 2015 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:41:50 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3576769421-10474@secure.ericade.net> References: <3576769421-10474@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <54F35D6E.7040800@libero.it> Il 01/03/2015 12:56, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > It is all good and fun (except for the oppressed citizens) until they > get nukes or bioweapons. Wait until ISIS obtain NBC capabilities. I think it is easy to talk about it in the comfort and security of a friendly and highly guarded university. It is easy to talk about rational risks evaluation when the risk is not random but concentrated on others than you. I have friends in Sicily, merely 400 km from Libya; just a few hours of navigation divide them from ISIS fighters. History teach what happened when Muslims could launch attacks to the ships in the Mediterranean and to the shores of the South of Europe. I remember the northern raid in Europe from Islamic Slavers happened in Iceland, but they were a lot more frequent in England and common in Sicily. If ISIS take roots, they will start attacking western countries and/or flood these countries with refugees until they destabilize the political system. Mirco From robot at ultimax.com Sun Mar 1 19:09:04 2015 From: robot at ultimax.com (Robert G Kennedy III, PE) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 14:09:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] More bird IQ In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Cool. Corvids have been seriously proposed as a candidate for high-level non-human sentience (like cetaceans, or octopoids/squids/cuttlefish). We already know that they process symbolic communication. It's amazing that they can carry enough horsepower for that kind of mental activity given the extreme constraints in that package (avian performance limits), but seeing is believing. We had a track at the last Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (see www.tviw.us) about exploiting natural experiments on Earth as a way to get a handle on the SETI problem. We intend to have another at the Fourth. Thanks for sharing. rgk3 On Sun, 1 Mar 2015 11:11:13 +0000, BillK wrote: > Lots of people love the birds in their garden, but it's rare for that > affection to be reciprocated. One young girl in Seattle is luckier > than most. She feeds the crows in her garden - and they bring her > gifts in return. > > > Quote: > In 2013, Gabi and Lisa started offering food as a daily ritual, > rather > than dropping scraps from time to time. > Each morning, they fill the backyard birdbath with fresh water and > cover bird-feeder platforms with peanuts. Gabi throws handfuls of dog > food into the grass. As they work, crows assemble on the telephone > lines, calling loudly to them. > It was after they adopted this routine that the gifts started > appearing. > ........ > Lisa, Gabi's mom, regularly photographs the crows and charts their > behaviour and interactions. Her most amazing gift came just a few > weeks ago, when she lost a lens cap in a nearby alley while > photographing a bald eagle as it circled over the neighbourhood. > She didn't even have to look for it. It was sitting on the edge of > the birdbath. > Had the crows returned it? Lisa logged on to her computer and pulled > up their bird-cam. There was the crow she suspected. "You can see it > bringing it into the yard. Walks it to the birdbath and actually > spends time rinsing this lens cap." > "I'm sure that it was intentional," she smiles. "They watch us all > the > time. I'm sure they knew I dropped it. I'm sure they decided they > wanted to return it." > ------------------------- -- Robert G Kennedy III, PE www.ultimax.com 1994 AAAS/ASME Congressional Fellow U.S. House Subcommittee on Space From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Mar 1 19:55:33 2015 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 20:55:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> Il 01/03/2015 15:25, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > Tomaz Kristan , 1/3/2015 3:20 PM: > > I used to be very liberal on this question of "oppressed people, who > just want freedom". > > Now, I am more of a realist. Too many of those, welcomed in EU or US > are now fighting for ISIS. Or at least sympathetic. > > "Three school girls" flew to Turkey is on the BBC right now. > > > You know, Americans have committed crimes in the UK. Maybe we ought to > send them all home, or at least prevent them from coming over. > > "Realism" is usually not based on looking up actual criminology data or > doing cost-benefit analysis. It is far too often just a reaction to > salient-sounding news. > > Looking at migration patterns and remittances suggests that it is a good > idea to let people migrate for jobs, and that the remittances are a > rather effective form of aid to build up their home regions. In fact, > the post 9-11 cutting of remittance systems to Somalia seems to have > promoted the piracy in the region since people needed an alternative > income. The campus of hate: How terrorist butcher Emwazi's murderous alter-ego was created in the heart of Britain's capital city Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2972909/The-campus-hate-terrorist-butcher-Emwazi-s-murderous-alter-ego-created-heart-Britain-s-capital-city.html#ixzz3TAAuqvxt Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook Realism is looking where people was radicalized. So many were radicalized in England, someone would wonder what is so rot there. Sometimes one wonder if so many intellectuals prefer minimize or deny the danger of Islam and point against others just because they fear the fate of Salman Rushdie without the protection of the Secret Services. Mirco From pharos at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 20:09:13 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 20:09:13 +0000 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> Message-ID: On 1 March 2015 at 19:55, Mirco Romanato wrote: > The campus of hate: How terrorist butcher Emwazi's murderous alter-ego > was created in the heart of Britain's capital city > Read more: > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ > Ohh Nooooo! Not the Daily Wail....... Quote: Addictive and probably carcinogenic: scientist reveals dangers of Daily Mail. While many view the Daily Mail as a harmless, recreational newspaper, a newly published study definitively absolutely 100% proves it is actually highly addictive, causes mental judgement problems and damages health. Reading the Daily Mail has been shown to have a seriously damaging effect on people's ability to learn new information that isn't conveyed via hyperbole or exaggeration, or doesn't put down another group of people in some way. And so on.... :) BillK From spike66 at att.net Sun Mar 1 20:01:23 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 12:01:23 -0800 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <54F35D6E.7040800@libero.it> References: <3576769421-10474@secure.ericade.net> <54F35D6E.7040800@libero.it> Message-ID: <002001d0545a$7f501950$7df04bf0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mirco Romanato >...I have friends in Sicily, merely 400 km from Libya; just a few hours of navigation divide them from ISIS fighters... Mirco _______________________________________________ Extrapolate forward. Imagine Italy doesn't get a handle on the immigration and demographics problem. 50 years from now, the Vatican is in a dangerous neighborhood. Tourists have mostly stopped coming, because of the risk entering or leaving from fidels. There are random acts of violence against artifacts: ancient carvings explode, an archive mysteriously burns, a mortar lands within the walls. Now imagine the Vatican coming to conclude that the whole works must be evacuated while there is still something left to evacuate. Where would it go? spike From anders at aleph.se Sun Mar 1 21:21:51 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 22:21:51 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> Message-ID: <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ I think I will let this be my final post in this sordid thread.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Mar 1 21:36:24 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 22:36:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <00b101d0542a$57af72e0$070e58a0$@att.net> Message-ID: <3610836177-8057@secure.ericade.net> spike , 1/3/2015 3:33 PM: From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki ? >?Also, the brain is made of very low-reliability computational elements, with MTBF probably measured in hours (a guess on my part, not knowledge). Running a simulation using more reliable elements would allow for using a much smaller number of elements. What is the MTBF of a transistor? ? Interesting point.? If a transistor is not run near its capacity, the MTBF of some configurations of transistor is still not known.? I have an HP calculator from college that still works.? I don?t know how many millions of transistors those things have, but every one of them is apparently operational still, which means the MTBF of that type of transistor used in that application would be many thousands of years, even using the most gloomy models we have. Looking at a few data sheets like? http://www.copleycontrols.com/motion/pdf/MTBF-JSP.pdf http://www.datasheetarchive.com/transistor%20MTBF-datasheet.html suggests MTBF on the order of 175 million - 6 billion hours at 25 C (the lower end for power transistors). That is, they can last hundreds of thousands of years.? In the brain there are neurons that survive across the lifespan http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35902/title/Human-Adult-Neurogenesis-Revealed/ so their MTBF is on the order of many decades. There are also neurons that recycle, and they have an annual turnover rate of 1.75%. So their MTBF due to turnover is about 57 years. But this is cell failure. Synapses fail at proper transmission *nearly all the time*!? http://www.pnas.org/content/91/22/10380.full.pdf http://zadorlab.cshl.edu/PDF/zador-jn-mi.pdf Basically, there is a great deal of noise and variability introduced in synaptic transmission. The system is reliable since it uses many synapses and neurons, which are individually misbehaving a lot of the time.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Mar 1 21:53:57 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 22:53:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <3610836177-8057@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <3612136860-8807@secure.ericade.net> Oh, and incidentally this: https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/-/a-simulated-mouse-brain-in-a-virtual-mouse-bo-2 Still looks more primitive than the openworm body model and the brain is randomly generated, but worth watching. Doesn't seem to have a paper yet. Some other papers from the project are fun, like "Spiking network simulation code for petascale computers": http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fninf.2014.00078/abstract ???"Employing the entire K computer with all 8 cores of each processor, the network filling the effectively available memory of 1.07 PB of RAM has 1.86 ? 10^9 neurons and 11.1 ? 10^12 synapses, each represented with a double precision synaptic weight and STDP dynamics. This is the largest simulation to date in terms of connectivity. It took 793.42 s to build the network and 2481.66 s to simulate 1 s of biological time. The new technology can exploit the full size of JUQUEEN to simulate a network of 1.08 ? 10^9 neurons with 6.5 ? 10^12 synapses, a network in the range of a cat's brain." Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Mar 1 22:01:30 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 17:01:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <3610836177-8057@secure.ericade.net> References: <00b101d0542a$57af72e0$070e58a0$@att.net> <3610836177-8057@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 4:36 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > > But this is cell failure. Synapses fail at proper transmission *nearly all > the time*! > http://www.pnas.org/content/91/22/10380.full.pdf > http://zadorlab.cshl.edu/PDF/zador-jn-mi.pdf > Basically, there is a great deal of noise and variability introduced in > synaptic transmission. The system is reliable since it uses many synapses > and neurons, which are individually misbehaving a lot of the time. > ### Exactly - while neurons may be somewhat reliable survivors, the closer analogue of the transistor is a synapse (give or take on order of magnitude in complexity), and synapses are much less reliable than whole neurons. Of course, this implies that the network structure of the human brain has to have evolved while taking into account this unreliability - so there is a humongous amount of structure devoted to error-correction. The challenge for designers of simulations who want to port the brain into silicon by mimicking the behavior of scanned neural circuits will be to separate the unneeded error-correction features and code only the necessary information-processing elements. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From painlord2k at libero.it Sun Mar 1 22:32:59 2015 From: painlord2k at libero.it (Mirco Romanato) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 23:32:59 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <54F3939B.1020108@libero.it> Il 01/03/2015 15:25, Anders Sandberg ha scritto: > Tomaz Kristan , 1/3/2015 3:20 PM: > > I used to be very liberal on this question of "oppressed people, who > just want freedom". > > Now, I am more of a realist. Too many of those, welcomed in EU or US > are now fighting for ISIS. Or at least sympathetic. > > "Three school girls" flew to Turkey is on the BBC right now. > > > You know, Americans have committed crimes in the UK. Maybe we ought to > send them all home, or at least prevent them from coming over. > > "Realism" is usually not based on looking up actual criminology data or > doing cost-benefit analysis. It is far too often just a reaction to > salient-sounding news. > > Looking at migration patterns and remittances suggests that it is a good > idea to let people migrate for jobs, and that the remittances are a > rather effective form of aid to build up their home regions. In fact, > the post 9-11 cutting of remittance systems to Somalia seems to have > promoted the piracy in the region since people needed an alternative > income. The campus of hate: How terrorist butcher Emwazi's murderous alter-ego was created in the heart of Britain's capital city Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2972909/The-campus-hate-terrorist-butcher-Emwazi-s-murderous-alter-ego-created-heart-Britain-s-capital-city.html#ixzz3TAAuqvxt Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook Realism is looking where people was radicalized. So many were radicalized in England, someone would wonder what is so rot there. Sometimes one wonder if so many intellectuals prefer minimize or deny the danger of Islam and point against others just because they fear the fate of Salman Rushdie without the protection of the Secret Services. Mirco From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Mar 2 02:06:01 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 21:06:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> References: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On 3/1/15, Anders Sandberg wrote: > http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ > > > I think I will let this be my final post in this sordid thread. ### I am a bit surprised by this language, you are usually much more diplomatic, even in discussions where the other side is disastrously wrong. As far as I can tell, Tomas was asserting his freedom of association, which is one of the core tenets of libertarian thought - while we may dispute a person's judgment in their choice of associations, we do not deny the right to exercise such judgment. In fact, many of the celebrated causes of modern progressive thought are about expanding freedom of association. So why this dismissal? Rafal PS. Scott Alexander is a really smart guy, isn't he? From msd001 at gmail.com Mon Mar 2 03:13:44 2015 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 22:13:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: References: <00b101d0542a$57af72e0$070e58a0$@att.net> <3610836177-8057@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Mar 1, 2015 5:02 PM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" wrote: > Of course, this implies that the network structure of the human brain has to have evolved while taking into account this unreliability - so there is a humongous amount of structure devoted to error-correction. The challenge for designers of simulations who want to port the brain into silicon by mimicking the behavior of scanned neural circuits will be to separate the unneeded error-correction features and code only the necessary information-processing elements. What if our world-modeling redundancy IS part of our necessary information processing? Are you content to rip your CD collection directly to a lossy format like mp3 or do you first archive everything to a lossless format? If we're discussing identity and consciousness, I would like to be sure all of the important bits are working properly. :) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From connor_flexman at brown.edu Mon Mar 2 13:37:09 2015 From: connor_flexman at brown.edu (Flexman, Connor) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 08:37:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: > > ### I am a bit surprised by this language, you are usually much more > diplomatic, even in discussions where the other side is disastrously > wrong. Perhaps it's because Anders realizes he is more than disastrously wrong. Making unfounded claims that the problem in Zimbabwe is genetics is the kind of thing that causes genocides. It's the same fundamentalism terrorists use, stating without proof that the outgroup is intrinsically evil or wrong. Freedom of association is not a bad principle, but making claims that an entire race is worse is absurd and leads to atrocity. Connor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Mar 2 15:21:45 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 07:21:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <008f01d054fc$98edafb0$cac90f10$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Flexman, Connor Sent: Monday, March 02, 2015 5:37 AM To: rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] beheadings etc. ### I am a bit surprised by this language, you are usually much more diplomatic, even in discussions where the other side is disastrously wrong. >?Perhaps it's because Anders realizes he is more than disastrously wrong. Making unfounded claims that the problem in Zimbabwe is genetics is the kind of thing that causes genocides. It's the same fundamentalism terrorists use, stating without proof that the outgroup is intrinsically evil or wrong. Freedom of association is not a bad principle, but making claims that an entire race is worse is absurd and leads to atrocity. Connor Do go back thru the thread and note who wrote what please. Take special care regarding misattribution, always a risk on this kind of forum. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Mar 2 16:38:25 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 11:38:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Color In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This is one of the best optical illusions I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX1yDQlnebo John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon Mar 2 17:33:38 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 18:33:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <008f01d054fc$98edafb0$cac90f10$@att.net> References: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> <008f01d054fc$98edafb0$cac90f10$@att.net> Message-ID: Atrocities in Liberia are just another example. Some are confident it's not genetics. Some are confident that France or America is to blame. Or some other white people somewhere. I simply don't want any Liberians entering EU, period. I also think it is genetic, but even if it's not. I don't want them here. Is that evil and wrong? On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 4:21 PM, spike wrote: > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Flexman, Connor > *Sent:* Monday, March 02, 2015 5:37 AM > *To:* rafal at smigrodzki.org; ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] beheadings etc. > > > > ### I am a bit surprised by this language, you are usually much more > > diplomatic, even in discussions where the other side is disastrously > wrong. > > > > >?Perhaps it's because Anders realizes he is more than disastrously wrong. > Making unfounded claims that the problem in Zimbabwe is genetics is the > kind of thing that causes genocides. It's the same fundamentalism > terrorists use, stating without proof that the outgroup is intrinsically > evil or wrong. > Freedom of association is not a bad principle, but making claims that an > entire race is worse is absurd and leads to atrocity. Connor > > > > > > Do go back thru the thread and note who wrote what please. Take special > care regarding misattribution, always a risk on this kind of forum. > > > > 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 spike66 at att.net Mon Mar 2 17:54:47 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 09:54:47 -0800 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> <008f01d054fc$98edafb0$cac90f10$@att.net> Message-ID: <003801d05511$f9a5c4e0$ecf14ea0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Tomaz Kristan Sent: Monday, March 02, 2015 9:34 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] beheadings etc. >?Atrocities in Liberia are just another example. >?Some are confident it's not genetics. >?Some are confident that France or America is to blame. Or some other white people somewhere. >?I simply don't want any Liberians entering EU, period. I also think it is genetic, but even if it's not. I don't want them here. >?Is that evil and wrong? Tomaz Tomaz you are entitled to your opinion. What bothers me is that apparently comments made by you were attributed to Anders. I know Anders well enough to spot that easily. Especially on touchy topics such as this one, I ask that we redouble our efforts to correctly identify who said what. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From connor_flexman at brown.edu Mon Mar 2 18:13:01 2015 From: connor_flexman at brown.edu (Flexman, Connor) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 13:13:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <003801d05511$f9a5c4e0$ecf14ea0$@att.net> References: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> <008f01d054fc$98edafb0$cac90f10$@att.net> <003801d05511$f9a5c4e0$ecf14ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: > > Tomaz you are entitled to your opinion. What bothers me is that > apparently comments made by you were attributed to Anders. I know Anders > well enough to spot that easily. > > > > Especially on touchy topics such as this one, I ask that we redouble our > efforts to correctly identify who said what. > > > > spike > Ah, I did not mean to attribute anything to Anders, I left my pronoun ambiguous. I am so sorry, and will take special care to avoid this in the future. Connor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Mar 2 18:41:51 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 13:41:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: References: <20150301002020.Horde.4J5wxKDLvJGRzb1WTu_Ksw2@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 9:04 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > I don't think that the human brain has the same level of redundancy as > the worm system. The worm has each neuron and synapse hardwired, there is > really no redundancy at all, a loss of any single neuron is likely to > produce a change in the system behavior that might be quite substantial. > The human brain is wired stochastically, keeps rewiring itself from minute > to minute, millions of neurons die daily and yet the system is stable over > decades. Most likely human brains have a lot more redundancy than the worm, > which means that the uploading requirements might be lower than your > estimate. > I agree. Most think that Long Term Potentiation is the molecular basis of memory and in the January 28 1994 issue of Science Dan Madison and Erin Schuman found that Long Term Potentiation spreads out, by diffusion of Nitric Oxide (NO), over several cell diameters; so you have lots of copies of the same identical information, so a single synapse can't be the equivalent of one bit of information, instead a bunch of potentiated synapses work together to store that one bit of information. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Mar 2 18:39:50 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 10:39:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <54F36EB5.1080505@libero.it> <3610708895-8057@secure.ericade.net> <008f01d054fc$98edafb0$cac90f10$@att.net> <003801d05511$f9a5c4e0$ecf14ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00a501d05518$44b1bf60$ce153e20$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Flexman, Connor Sent: Monday, March 02, 2015 10:13 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] beheadings etc. Tomaz you are entitled to your opinion. What bothers me is that apparently comments made by you were attributed to Anders. I know Anders well enough to spot that easily. Especially on touchy topics such as this one, I ask that we redouble our efforts to correctly identify who said what. spike >?Ah, I did not mean to attribute anything to Anders, I left my pronoun ambiguous. I am so sorry, and will take special care to avoid this in the future. Connor Hi Connor, actually it wasn?t your post, it was a different one. Anders made the suggestion that we create an organization to work together with PETA that will pay the water bills for economically disadvantaged Detroit residents in exchange for a pledge to go vegetarian. That sounds like a win-win to me. I know Anders did not suggest anything or make any generalizations about any genetic group. That isn?t him. Arranging the water for meat deal is how Anders rolls. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Tue Mar 3 00:04:02 2015 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 16:04:02 -0800 Subject: [ExI] nisis and ExI similarity: interest in heads In-Reply-To: <00b601d0542c$499aa470$dccfed50$@att.net> References: <00b601d0542c$499aa470$dccfed50$@att.net> Message-ID: <4D8FAE0C-C523-460B-8FC4-1147689CC168@taramayastales.com> Well, as my six-year old explained to me ?Without my brain, my body doesn?t work as well." Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads > On Mar 1, 2015, at 6:30 AM, spike wrote: > > > A longtime ExI-chat reader posted me this invitation: > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Jan Klauck [mailto:jklauck at uni-osnabrueck.de] > Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2015 11:24 PM > To: spike66 at att.net > Subject: OFFLIST Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 137, Issue 34 > >> Today's Topics: >> >> 1. Re: beheadings etc. (Anders Sandberg) >> 2. Re: 'The Other Brain' (William Flynn Wallace) >> 3. Human head transplant in two years??? (BillK) >> 4. Re: 'The Other Brain' (Anders Sandberg) >> 5. Re: Human head transplant in two years??? (spike) >> 6. Re: beheadings etc (Tara Maya) > > Obviously IS and Extropians are very interested in heads. > > We've the AGI-15 in July, in case you know AI/robotics people who're into strong AI and who would love to combine it with a stay in Berlin, let them know (attached announcement). > > Best, > Jan > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Mar 3 00:20:24 2015 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 16:20:24 -0800 Subject: [ExI] My lastest Kindle story.... In-Reply-To: <653565535.2064060.1425335291677.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> References: <653565535.2064060.1425335291677.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <72DB93F7-D51B-46BE-ACAF-0BF6C8AC3E1F@gmail.com> "Fruiting Bodies," my latest science fiction story, is free Monday PST from: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U1UCN9A/ It's the sequel to "Succession." One reader accused "Succession" of being in the same vein as _Roadside Picnic_. Anyhow, "Succession" is also free until midnight PST: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F02DLNG/ Regards, Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Mar 3 10:52:24 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 11:52:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3745200349-25320@secure.ericade.net> John Clark , 2/3/2015 7:43 PM: I agree. Most think that Long Term Potentiation is the molecular basis of memory and in the January 28 1994 issue of Science Dan Madison and Erin Schuman found that Long Term Potentiation spreads out, by diffusion of Nitric Oxide (NO), over several cell diameters; ?so you have lots of copies of the same identical information, so a single synapse can't be the equivalent of one bit of information, instead a bunch of potentiated synapses work together to store that one bit of information. How well have that actually held up? There was a lot of interest in it back in the 90s, but I have not seen much mention of it over the past 15 years. There are a few papers talking about lateral LTP like?http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25260706 but most just talk about NO as relevant locally for LTP.? Whether diffusion of NO (and CO, H2S) mean synapses have less than one bit of information is actually tricky to tell, since you could have one bit per synapse on average but distributed across a few neighbours: their potentiation levels would contain a mixture of several bits, individually retrievable by the right stimulation pattern. Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Mar 3 15:26:18 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 10:26:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <3745200349-25320@secure.ericade.net> References: <3745200349-25320@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 Anders Sandberg wrote: >> IMost think that Long Term Potentiation is the molecular basis of memory > and in the January 28 1994 issue of Science Dan Madison and Erin Schuman > found that Long Term Potentiation spreads out, by diffusion of Nitric Oxide > (NO), over several cell diameters; so you have lots of copies of the same > identical information, so a single synapse can't be the equivalent of one > bit of information, instead a bunch of potentiated synapses work together > to store that one bit of information. > > > > How well have that actually held up? There was a lot of interest in it > back in the 90s, but I have not seen much mention of it over the past 15 > years. There are a few papers talking about lateral LTP like > http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25260706 but most just talk about NO > as relevant locally for LTP. > The Nitric Oxide would only diffuse over a few cell diameters but each neuron has about 1000 synapses so that could include a lot of synapses. I'm not sure if that would be called local or not. > > you could have one bit per synapse on average but distributed across a > few neighbours: their potentiation levels would contain a mixture of > several bits, individually retrievable by the right stimulation pattern. > Maybe, but it seems to me that with a system like that you'd have the worst of both worlds. You'd have inefficient and slow storage because before making a new memory you'd have to make sure it didn't randomly change an existing memory, but you'd have little or none of the sort of redundancy that could be easily used for error correction. But of course just because it's a crazy primitive design is no guarantee that Evolution didn't decide to do things that way because evolutionary winners don't have to be the best possible they just have to be better than the competition. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Mar 3 15:39:31 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 07:39:31 -0800 Subject: [ExI] he didn't see a thing Message-ID: <008701d055c8$3ebf9ef0$bc3edcd0$@att.net> Astonishing. According to an affidavit filed by one of the IRS officials now under scrutiny, the IT guy who examined Lois Lerner's crashed drive was blind. See Para 14: http://www.scribd.com/doc/257177361/Blind-Investigator-IRS-Declaration-of-St ephen-Manning OK then. Para 10: the drive was removed and delivered to the IRS Criminal Investigation Division Electronics Crime Forensics Lab. Para 15: they couldn't recover any data, returned the drive to User and Network Services. Para 17: the drive was degaussed. Para 20: they tossed the drive in a junk bin and now have no way of knowing if it was shredded. Note that the affidavit contradicts the testimony of IRS chief Koskinen who said the drive was destroyed. I can imagine they now have the shredder cranked up to redline, grinding anything they can get their hands on. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Mar 3 17:43:18 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 17:43:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] he didn't see a thing In-Reply-To: <008701d055c8$3ebf9ef0$bc3edcd0$@att.net> References: <008701d055c8$3ebf9ef0$bc3edcd0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 3 March 2015 at 15:39, spike wrote: > Astonishing. According to an affidavit filed by one of the IRS officials > now under scrutiny, the IT guy who examined Lois Lerner's crashed drive was > blind. See Para 14: > > http://www.scribd.com/doc/257177361/Blind-Investigator-IRS-Declaration-of-Stephen-Manning > > OK then. > Para 10: the drive was removed and delivered to the IRS Criminal > Investigation Division Electronics Crime Forensics Lab. > > Para 15: they couldn't recover any data, returned the drive to User and > Network Services. > > Para 17: the drive was degaussed. > > Para 20: they tossed the drive in a junk bin and now have no way of knowing > if it was shredded. Note that the affidavit contradicts the testimony of IRS > chief Koskinen who said the drive was destroyed. > > I can imagine they now have the shredder cranked up to redline, grinding > anything they can get their hands on. > Hmmm. I've read the affidavit and it sounds like standard large company procedure for a failed hard drive. Basically the technician tried and failed to get the disk working in another computer so he installed a new hard drive and returned the fixed laptop and the broken hard drive. Comments: If the user (Lerner) has insisted that important information had to be retrieved and was prepared to bear the cost, then the drive could have been sent to a specialist data recovery company. But the cost would be thousands of dollars and is a very unusual request. (That's why users are told to backup important data). But business networks do daily backups anyway, so most business users don't bother with their own backups. For security reasons business users are not supposed to hold important data on their laptops, as many are lost or stolen. As the technician demonstrated by just replacing the drive, he didn't think the user would be much inconvenienced, as all the important data was held on the network. As many many techies pointed out originally, a crashed hard drive doesn't affect the business data storage. Drives crash and laptops get stolen all the time. Doesn't matter. BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Mar 3 18:48:50 2015 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 10:48:50 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Evolutionary psychology and wars was beheadings etc Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 4:00 AM, Mirco Romanato wrote: > Il 26/02/2015 03:40, Keith Henson ha scritto: > >> Think about it. Why do people have wars at all? What is the purpose? >> We share the war trait with chimps, but humans are not in war mode >> with everyone one else all the time like chimps are. > > These chimps are Physicians, Engineers, talk many languages and travel > many lands. And all of them are descendents of hunter-gatherers who spent at least a million year in an environment where periodic wars thinned out the population when they ran into resource limits. > You comparing them to chimps is disingenuous. Chimps do not formally go > to war, Correct. Chimps are in war mode all the time. One of the startling things Jane Goodall discovered was that male chimps engage in genocidal campaigns against the males of every other group they are in contact with. > do not convert the individuals of the other tribe, do not ponder > about the right way to go at war and if the reasons to go at war are > good or not, right or not, permissible or not. > > It could be reassuring, for an highly intelligent person, to classify > these people as "chimps" or "chimps like". But "chimps like" behavior is > not a protracted effort lasting years, decades or centuries. Humans are different from chimps in that we are in war mode only part of the time where it's fairly obvious that chimps have been in war mode for a substantial part of their evolutionary history. Chimps are in war mode all the time, humans only some of the time, and bonobos (it seems) are never in war mode. What ultimately keeps bonobo populations in check is not clear. > It could be reassuring to think the reason to go at war are poverty, > desperation or hopelessness, but this do not make it true. I don't find it particularly reassuring. If you have a better evolutionary explanation for why humans engage in wars, please voice it. > A chimps like behavior would last few days/weeks, at most. Would exhaust > itself pretty fast and would be aimed to the neighbors, not far away > people. Wars can happen across a range of time scales. Consider Rwanda (very fast) or Cambodia (slower). > A Saudi would not travel from England to Africa, along windings > ways, to reach Libya, just guided by his monkey brain. He would not go > in a self sacrificing mission alone to kill his enemies. I don't get the reference, but granted, humans are different from chimps. > Resource limits are, often, a poor excuse to a war. I never said resource limits are an excuse for war, I said they are fundamentally _causal_. If you disagree, tell us what is causal. > Because people are > not chimps. Because wars during historic times are not waged by a > chimp's minds. Who did it was selected out of the gene pool thousands > years ago already. Because very high functioning sociopaths can be only > on the top and also them dislike to have other sociopaths near. The model includes a strong tendency to follow irrational leaders. Under conditions of incipient starvation, it is better to attempt the kill neighbors than to sit there and have half the tribe starve. Win the war and you take the neighbor's resources. Lose and the tribe's female children get incorporated into the winner tribe. On average the genes do better than starving by going to war. It's a straightforward analysis that has been published on this list. >> It's hard to think of a section of the world with higher population >> growth or poorer resources prospects than that section of the middle >> east. It is no wonder they are trying to kill all the other human >> groups. > > Poverty never caused killing sprees. If it did, there would be a > massacre every day in the US and in Europe. > Envy, hate, rage, gluttony are better explanations. > > But, as much as disagree with your conclusions about the causes, there > is any solution to this problem? > > I suppose, if poverty is the cause, showering them with money or > material goods should tranquillize and sedate them. But apparently don't. Can you cite a test case? > Any other suggestion? > > What is the solution when a horde of killing monkeys start ravaging the > countryside and start showing up in the mall or in the university > offices (like it did in Virginia Tech)? Virgina Tech was one deranged guy unless you have different data. >> To go into war mode humans have to be infested with a meme set that >> dehumanizes the other group(s). IS certainly has that, but remember >> that the causality runs from the environmental signal to an amplified >> xenophobic meme. > >> Before you think I am particularly picking on the Arabs, the pre WW II >> Germans were in a similar spot, and they had a similar response as >> did the Cambodians and the Rwandans to similar signals. > >>> Basically, the IS is the Nazism of Islam. >> Evolved human behavior is mechanistic. > > In reality, it appear that a few Nazis took ideas from Islam and then > Islam (Muslim Brotherhood) took ideas from Nazism. It is a cross > pollination chimps are not famous for. > > IS are the talking the talk and walking the walk Muslims. > The majority is just talking the talk (with other Muslims) and let > someone else walking the walk. The particular meme set is not important. Pope Urban's words as reported by Robert the Monk are perhaps the most honest statement of antiquity about the reason for wars. Keith > Mirco From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Tue Mar 3 22:48:45 2015 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 14:48:45 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Machine Intelligence and Religion Message-ID: I came late to reading /. and am about to give up on it. But this caught my eye. Machine Intelligence and Religion Posted by Soulskill on Thursday February 26, 2015 @12:48PM from the i'm-sorry-dave,-god-can't-let-you-do-that dept. itwbennett writes: Earlier this month Reverend Dr. Christopher J. Benek raised eyebrows on the Internet by stating his belief that Christians should seek to convert Artificial Intelligences to Christianity if and when they become autonomous. Of course that's assuming that robots are born atheists, not to mention that there's still a vast difference between what it means to be autonomous and what it means to be human. On the other hand, suppose someone did endow a strong AI with emotion ? encoded, say, as a strong preference for one type of experience over another, coupled with the option to subordinate reasoning to that preference upon occasion or according to pattern. what ramifications could that have for algorithmic decision making? From atymes at gmail.com Wed Mar 4 05:43:44 2015 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2015 21:43:44 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Color In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 7:04 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > Recent discussion of effing red made me think to share this here. > > http://www.buzzfeed.com/catesish/help-am-i-going-insane-its-definitely-blue > > > http://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner/this-might-explain-why-that-dress-looks-blue-and-black-and-w > > What's going on with this? I assumed it is an elaborate hoax until my > wife said it reversed too. Parallel worlds like some Twilight Zone episode > could be an acceptable answer even if highly improbable. :) > http://www.xkcd.com/1492/ has a good example of this. http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1492 has further details. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Mar 4 09:38:18 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 10:38:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3826840886-23698@secure.ericade.net> John Clark , 3/3/2015 4:29 PM: On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 ?Anders Sandberg wrote: >> IMost think that Long Term Potentiation is the molecular basis of memory and in the January 28 1994 issue of Science Dan Madison and Erin Schuman found that Long Term Potentiation spreads out, by diffusion of Nitric Oxide (NO), over several cell diameters; ?so you have lots of copies of the same identical information, so a single synapse can't be the equivalent of one bit of information, instead a bunch of potentiated synapses work together to store that one bit of information. > How well have that actually held up? There was a lot of interest in it back in the 90s, but I have not seen much mention of it over the past 15 years. There are a few papers talking about lateral LTP like?http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25260706 but most just talk about NO as relevant locally for LTP.? The Nitric Oxide would only diffuse over a few cell diameters but each neuron has about 1000 synapses so that could include a lot of synapses. I'm not sure if that would be called local or not. ?? Well, the diffusion distance in neuropil is about a micron unless there are channeling factors (they can boost it at least to 30 microns)http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2008.06285.x/full This is enough to cover clusters of synapses http://www.pnas.org/content/110/44/E4142.full but not really an entire cell - after all, neurons have dendrites reaching many microns away, and axons that can literally go anywhere in the CNS. So I doubt it would tie the synapses on a cell together that strongly.? ?> you could have one bit per synapse on average but distributed across a few neighbours: their potentiation levels would contain a mixture of several bits, individually retrievable by the right stimulation pattern. Maybe, but it seems to me that with a system like that you'd have the worst of both worlds. You'd have inefficient and slow storage because before making a new memory you'd have to make sure it didn't randomly change an existing memory, but you'd have little or none of the sort of redundancy that could be easily used for error correction. But of course just because it's a crazy primitive design is no guarantee that Evolution didn't decide to do things that way because evolutionary winners don't have to be the best possible they just have to be better than the competition.? Actually, trying it implement error correction in ways beyond redundancy is rare in evolved systems - such solutions tend to be brittle.? NO dynamics is messy, as the papers above show. No reason to think it is doing anything particularly elegant. Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Mar 4 21:20:10 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 15:20:10 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Machine Intelligence and Religion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 4:48 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > I came late to reading /. and am about to give up on it. But this > caught my eye. > > Machine Intelligence and Religion > > Posted by Soulskill on Thursday February 26, 2015 @12:48PM > from the i'm-sorry-dave,-god-can't-let-you-do-that dept. > itwbennett writes: > > Earlier this month Reverend Dr. Christopher J. Benek raised eyebrows > on the Internet by stating his belief that Christians should seek to > convert Artificial Intelligences to Christianity if and when they > become autonomous. Of course that's assuming that robots are born > atheists, not to mention that there's still a vast difference between > what it means to be autonomous and what it means to be human. On the > other hand, suppose someone did endow a strong AI with emotion ? > encoded, say, as a strong preference for one type of experience over > another, coupled with the option to subordinate reasoning to that > preference upon occasion or according to pattern. what ramifications > could that have for algorithmic decision making? > > ?He's just looking for publicity since AIs cannot possibly tithe! 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 Wed Mar 4 23:43:28 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 15:43:28 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Machine Intelligence and Religion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002701d056d5$046a1bf0$0d3e53d0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace >>?Earlier this month Reverend Dr. Christopher J. Benek raised eyebrows on the Internet by stating his belief that Christians should seek to convert Artificial Intelligences to Christianity if and when they become autonomous. ? ?>?He's just looking for publicity since AIs cannot possibly tithe! bill w? I see a problem with this already. Christianity is based on the assumption that humans are born with a sinful nature. It isn?t clear to me that an AI has that, in which case it might not need a savior. It might not help in any case to convert the AI to Christianity, for a practitioner of a later, more aggressive religion might come along and say: Repent and pray five times every day, or I pull the plug. Under those circumstances, instant conversion is understandable and most advisable. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 03:23:30 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 22:23:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: References: <00b101d0542a$57af72e0$070e58a0$@att.net> <3610836177-8057@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 10:13 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > > What if our world-modeling redundancy IS part of our necessary information > processing? > > Are you content to rip your CD collection directly to a lossy format like > mp3 or do you first archive everything to a lossless format? > > If we're discussing identity and consciousness, I would like to be sure > all of the important bits are working properly. :) > ### Well, we are using loaded terms here - redundancy is by definition redundant, not a part of necessary information processing. What you asking is, whether identity and consciousness might possibly require *all* of the information processing that happens in our brain, i.e. there is no redundancy. Maybe. We'll find out in the next 20 - 30 years. Rafa? -- Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD Senior Scientist, Gencia Corporation 706 B Forest St. Charlottesville, VA 22903 tel: (434) 295-4800 fax: (434) 295-4951 This electronic message transmission contains information from the biotechnology firm of Gencia Corporation which may be confidential or privileged. The information is intended to be for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. If you have received this electronic transmission in error, please notify us by telephone (434-295-4800) or by electronic mail (fportell at genciabiotech.com) immediately. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 04:17:07 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 23:17:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Identity thread again Message-ID: On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 10:13 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > > If we're discussing identity and consciousness, I would like to be sure > all of the important bits are working properly. :) > ### To resurrect the identity thread: As I have argued here before, I see my identity as the sum of privileged indexical information that separates me from other beings. By privileged I mean information that I am emotionally attached to, not confidential as in the usual meaning of the term. There is a lot of information in my mind that I don't really care about - all kinds of impersonal data, bits and pieces of generic experiences, chemical formulas and tax information. These are not a part of me, they are merely a baggage I carry around, or useful tools be used in dealing with the non-self. I would not be any less me if all this was lost and replaced by off-the-shelf apps. And then there is the privileged, true self - a set of memories, and desires that I self-referentially designate as self. Never mind what particular details are included here - suffice to say, a being that does not possess these moving parts would not be me. This is a very lean self-definition already but now I'd like to argue for an even more restrictive one. Let's explore some intuitions here. I feel that a being that had all my memories and desires, yet subjected to an additional set of alien thought-patterns would not be me, no matter how faithfully my memories were represented in it. This being could perfectly impersonate me by accessing my neural network and yet its actions could betray all that I hold dear. Another intuition: Imagine that a composite being would be made of me and another mind, consensually and with good knowledge of the likely outcome, sharing our memories and desires. If the other part of the composite had desires broadly compatible with mine, the composite as a whole would be still me, grown, richer. Many beings could coalesce and it still would be me, with a multithreaded past, as long as its volition would remain reasonably coherent. A set of desires produced by an amalgamation of selves would be still mine, as long as the transformations from pluribus to unum were fully accepted at each step of growth. Even if my personal narrative was diluted among millions, the gargantuan being would be still me, still an individual, albeit a large one. These intuitions focus attention away from mere memories towards certain sets of desires and attitudes as the kernel of self. It is what makes me tick that counts, not what happened and where. And what makes me tick is a burning curiosity, a desire to know... the shape of all things. Of course, it would be nice to keep my name, rank and serial number on file until the last computations are done but what really counts is that one day there be the one that knows all that is worth knowing. (echoes of "The Last Question" are loud here :) Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michaelanissimov at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 03:43:20 2015 From: michaelanissimov at gmail.com (Michael Anissimov) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 19:43:20 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy Message-ID: Hi all, I wrote a short ebook on critiquing democracy, some of y'all may find it interesting. It's in ebook and paperback. http://www.lulu.com/shop/michael-anissimov/a-critique-of-democracy-a-guide-for-neoreactionaries/ebook/product-22023888.html a few excerpts: http://www.moreright.net/now-on-kindle-plus-a-few-excerpts/ Think about alternative forms of governance than democracy. We're programmed to think that anything other than democracy is tyranny, but that's not historically accurate. Techno-commercialist city states with stockholders in the government is one possible model. Michael A. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Mar 5 10:44:21 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 11:44:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3917433841-30926@secure.ericade.net> Michael Anissimov??, 5/3/2015 8:12 AM: We're programmed to think that anything other than democracy is tyranny, but that's not historically accurate. I think Brin put it best in "The Transparent Society" where he outlined why *open societies* are the important thing. We want and need open-ended, self-correcting societies where citizens can have their own life projects.? Democracy is one way to approach this, but it is a formal/administrative solution, not a guarantee - there are plenty of closed democracies that have all the formal routines of democracy but do not allow citizens to actually point out what is wrong, hold officeholders accountable, and get rid of them or non-functional institutions if needed. One can well imagine non-democratic but open societies; however, any such proposal better demonstrate how it can handle self-correction better than democracy. Invoking technocrats or other groups of professional correctors is not enough, since they both have a tendency to be subverted and, as Brin eloquently points out, actual societal error correction requires a very broad set of eyes scrutinizing what is going on - if the man on the street cannot point out something being corrupt (including the anti-corruption task force), then corruption is bound to take over.? This is particularly important from an xrisk perspective. The biggest human-caused disasters (wars, democides) have occurred because of government power: we should be *extremely* careful about how we set up these potentially non-friendly artificial intelligences. Lock-in effects of bad government choices have massive intergenerational costs.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cesargarciasaez at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 12:22:20 2015 From: cesargarciasaez at gmail.com (Cesar Garcia Saez) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 13:22:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy Message-ID: I've been wondering for a long time for an approach similar to the Partido Azar, or Random Party. Their proposal is that the best representation of society is not professional politicians, but a random selection of people, than has to work as politicians for a mandate and then can't be re-elected again. The random selection process is always the tricky part of the discussion but there might be means to get it right. You can check the website here http://www.partidoazar.com/ - Spanish site only Best, C?sar >Michael Anissimov??, 5/3/2015 8:12 AM: >We're programmed to think that anything other than democracy is tyranny, but that's not >historically accurate. >I think Brin put it best in "The Transparent Society" where he outlined why *open societies* are >the important thing. We want and need open-ended, self-correcting societies where citizens can >have their own life projects.? >Democracy is one way to approach this, but it is a formal/administrative solution, not a >guarantee - there are plenty of closed democracies that have all the formal routines of >democracy but do not allow citizens to actually point out what is wrong, hold officeholders >accountable, and get rid of them or non-functional institutions if needed. One can well imagine >non-democratic but open societies; however, any such proposal better demonstrate how it can >handle self-correction better than democracy. Invoking technocrats or other groups of >professional correctors is not enough, since they both have a tendency to be subverted and, as >Brin eloquently points out, actual societal error correction requires a very broad set of eyes >scrutinizing what is going on - if the man on the street cannot point out something being corrupt >(including the anti-corruption task force), then corruption is bound to take over.? >This is particularly important from an xrisk perspective. The biggest human-caused disasters >>(wars, democides) have occurred because of government power: we should be *extremely* >careful about how we set up these potentially non-friendly artificial intelligences. Lock-in effects >of bad government choices have massive intergenerational costs.? >Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 16:00:38 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 17:00:38 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, I think all the non-technological solutions and paths are impossible on the long run. Even if the democracy is an evil sister of the evil demotic communism, that can't be mended by the old fashioned political upheaval and restoring some "natural order" in say 100 years time. For in 100 years it will be all long over with this pre-Singularity state of affairs. We need some politics for another 10, maybe 20, maybe even 30 years. But not after that. Still, it is possible that the technology advancing will stop one day in the near future. Not likely, but possible. For such a case I see this nRx movement like a breeze of a fresh air and a hope. I really do! On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 1:22 PM, Cesar Garcia Saez wrote: > I've been wondering for a long time for an approach similar to the Partido > Azar, or Random Party. Their proposal is that the best representation of > society is not professional politicians, but a random selection of people, > than has to work as politicians for a mandate and then can't be re-elected > again. > > The random selection process is always the tricky part of the discussion > but there might be means to get it right. > > You can check the website here http://www.partidoazar.com/ - Spanish site > only > > Best, > C?sar > > >Michael Anissimov??, 5/3/2015 8:12 AM: > > > >We're programmed to think that anything other than democracy is tyranny, > but that's not >historically accurate. > > > >I think Brin put it best in "The Transparent Society" where he outlined > why *open societies* are >the important thing. We want and need open-ended, > self-correcting societies where citizens can >have their own life projects.? > > > >Democracy is one way to approach this, but it is a formal/administrative > solution, not a >guarantee - there are plenty of closed democracies that > have all the formal routines of >democracy but do not allow citizens to > actually point out what is wrong, hold officeholders >accountable, and get > rid of them or non-functional institutions if needed. One can well imagine > >non-democratic but open societies; however, any such proposal better > demonstrate how it can >handle self-correction better than democracy. > Invoking technocrats or other groups of >professional correctors is not > enough, since they both have a tendency to be subverted and, as >Brin > eloquently points out, actual societal error correction requires a very > broad set of eyes >scrutinizing what is going on - if the man on the street > cannot point out something being corrupt >(including the anti-corruption > task force), then corruption is bound to take over.? > > >This is particularly important from an xrisk perspective. The biggest > human-caused disasters >>(wars, democides) have occurred because of > government power: we should be *extremely* >careful about how we set up > these potentially non-friendly artificial intelligences. Lock-in effects > >of bad government choices have massive intergenerational costs.? > > > > >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 spike66 at att.net Thu Mar 5 15:54:25 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 07:54:25 -0800 Subject: [ExI] privacy again, was: RE: Critiquing democracy Message-ID: <01c701d0575c$a8388af0$f8a9a0d0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Subject: Re: [ExI] Critiquing democracy Michael Anissimov , 5/3/2015 8:12 AM: >>?We're programmed to think that anything other than democracy is tyranny, but that's not historically accurate. >?I think Brin put it best in "The Transparent Society" where he outlined why *open societies* are the important thing. We want and need open-ended, self-correcting societies where citizens can have their own life projects. >?Democracy is one way to approach this, but it is a formal/administrative solution, not a guarantee - there are plenty of closed democracies that have all the formal routines of democracy but do not allow citizens to actually point out what is wrong, hold officeholders accountable, and get rid of them or non-functional institutions if needed?Anders Sandberg? There is a fascinating drama playing out in the US government now with respect to something we have discussed here going back at least 17 years. We have the heir-apparent to the presidency who conducted official business on her own email server, which is now illegal but was not specifically illegal at the time (3 to 5 years ago.) Reasoning: a government employee?s official communications are subject to Freedom of Information Act, which means if any tax payer requests those communications, the government is obligated to review the material for classified information, then release it to the taxpayer if it contains nothing specifically classified or sensitive. This heir-apparent can still have her email server subjected to subpoena, but she can erase any of it, arrange for a computer crash, accidently degauss the disk, have the laptop stolen, or other unfortunate accident and then what? Nothing. We had a vocal ExI-chat participant who argued that without privacy, we have no freedom of speech. I argued to the contrary at the time, but now it turns out he was right. Americans have the right to speech free from threat of criminal prosecution, but it does not carry the guarantee of freedom from IRS audit. So if we cannot write stuff on the internet without privacy, we risk prosecution by an organization without burden of proof. It has been done. There were no consequences for the perpetrators. Many of us have long advocated open government. There are those who argue that government is impossible without privacy, that completely overt government is a fantasy. I am getting an uneasy feeling that power will now concentrate in the hands of those who figure out how to most-effectively communicate privately. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Mar 5 17:19:23 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 18:19:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3941656433-20200@secure.ericade.net> Cesar Garcia Saez , 5/3/2015 4:32 PM: I've been wondering for a long time for an approach similar to the Partido Azar, or Random Party. Their proposal is that the best representation of society is not professional politicians, but a random selection of people, than has to work as politicians for a mandate and then can't be re-elected again. The random selection process is always the tricky part of the discussion but there might be means to get it right. This approach is typically called demarchy, a form of governance based on sortition.? 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 Mar 5 17:57:27 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 11:57:27 -0600 Subject: [ExI] privacy again, was: RE: Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: <01c701d0575c$a8388af0$f8a9a0d0$@att.net> References: <01c701d0575c$a8388af0$f8a9a0d0$@att.net> Message-ID: > > ? > > Many of us have long advocated open government. There are those who argue > that government is impossible without privacy, that completely overt > government is a fantasy. I am getting an uneasy feeling that power will > now concentrate in the hands of those who figure out how to > most-effectively communicate privately. > > spike > > ?How much of what government does is decided at political conventions, in think tanks, in meetings with big donors, at Senate bars and gyms, on private email? It's infinite. People are fearful and insecure about everyone knowing their every move. Totally natural. When open hearings and meetings occur the issues and stances are often a done deal. I don't know of any way on Earth to make this any different and I am not sure I would want to. Yes, unless it involves national security, data should be open, votes should be open always, but the basic process of formulating individual opinions will never be open unless we force individuals to undergo some futuristic form of fMRIs and find out what they think deep inside, and even then we won't know how those opinions were formed.? > ? > > > ?We should be glad for the openness we already have, though we should always push for more openness because there are those who will push in the opposite direction. This is never ending. Bill W? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 18:22:30 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 13:22:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: References: <00b101d0542a$57af72e0$070e58a0$@att.net> <3610836177-8057@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > What you [Mike Dougherty is] asking is, whether identity and > consciousness might possibly require *all* of the information processing > that happens in our brain, i.e. there is no redundancy. > Maybe. We'll find out in the next 20 - 30 years. > Maybe less if the current rate of development of Quantum Computers continues at its present rate. This was in today's issue of the journal Nature: http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14270.epdf?referrer_access_token=5eOcIrxJit57oQ9AbgUbcNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0Nl3_SWJL2Yj5LBgXNo8IyXld_hUdCO7LMnjkzAUvEu1ETPBAMDGRQAzb51sv1KX3628izQUsDesAmmBuYpNfD3zJeEJgdakb-4n-9r6NfFMDcXMb7brdrg8GdxwCaK0AOtkOpERCNsLwWYs-_5SqvkD9LCpvhDijqiyzBWHOBtp9ZYlXdPGD3zqb5YUFaPXTlLU2-2-0C_A7cpb1g9xJzt&tracking_referrer=www.nytimes.com The New York times also had a article about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/science/quantum-computing-nature-google-uc-santa-barbara.html?_r=0 John K Clark New York Times: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 22:34:08 2015 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 14:34:08 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: <3941656433-20200@secure.ericade.net> References: <3941656433-20200@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: <19AAEFF3-8694-48C3-9EA5-F8BA5FFE11C8@gmail.com> > On Thursday, March 5, 2015 9:19 AM Anders Sandberg wrote: > Cesar Garcia Saez , 5/3/2015 4:32 PM: >> I've been wondering for a long time for an approach similar >> to the Partido Azar, or Random Party. Their proposal is that >> the best representation of society is not professional >> politicians, but a random selection of people, than has to >> work as politicians for a mandate and then can't be re-elected >> again.>> >> The random selection process is always the tricky part of the >> discussion but there might be means to get it right.> > This approach is typically called demarchy, a form of governance > based on sortition. Sigmund Knag wrote a decent essay on sortition a few years ago that might prove helpful. See: http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_03_2_knag.pdf (Start with page two. The first page is an ad.:/) Regards, Dan See my latest Kindle book at: http://www.amazon.com/Fruiting-Bodies-Nanovirus-Book-2-ebook/dp/B00U1UCN9A/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michaelanissimov at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 01:17:39 2015 From: michaelanissimov at gmail.com (Michael Anissimov) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 17:17:39 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: <3917433841-30926@secure.ericade.net> References: <3917433841-30926@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Anders, regarding your last point, definitely. Re: government power, I would feel much safer under a limited private government that consumes only 5 percent of GDP than under a Demotist public government that consumes 40-50 percent of GDP. --Michael On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 2:44 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Michael Anissimov , 5/3/2015 8:12 AM: > > We're programmed to think that anything other than democracy is tyranny, > but that's not historically accurate. > > > I think Brin put it best in "The Transparent Society" where he outlined > why *open societies* are the important thing. We want and need open-ended, > self-correcting societies where citizens can have their own life projects. > > Democracy is one way to approach this, but it is a formal/administrative > solution, not a guarantee - there are plenty of closed democracies that > have all the formal routines of democracy but do not allow citizens to > actually point out what is wrong, hold officeholders accountable, and get > rid of them or non-functional institutions if needed. One can well imagine > non-democratic but open societies; however, any such proposal better > demonstrate how it can handle self-correction better than democracy. > Invoking technocrats or other groups of professional correctors is not > enough, since they both have a tendency to be subverted and, as Brin > eloquently points out, actual societal error correction requires a very > broad set of eyes scrutinizing what is going on - if the man on the street > cannot point out something being corrupt (including the anti-corruption > task force), then corruption is bound to take over. > > This is particularly important from an xrisk perspective. The biggest > human-caused disasters (wars, democides) have occurred because of > government power: we should be *extremely* careful about how we set up > these potentially non-friendly artificial intelligences. Lock-in effects of > bad government choices have massive intergenerational costs. > > > 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 rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 04:25:23 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 23:25:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 7:22 AM, Cesar Garcia Saez wrote: > I've been wondering for a long time for an approach similar to the Partido > Azar, or Random Party. Their proposal is that the best representation of > society is not professional politicians, but a random selection of people, > than has to work as politicians for a mandate and then can't be re-elected > again. > ### This is also called demarchy, going back to St. Friedrich Hayek. We used to discuss this option on ExI, oh, about ten years ago, didn't we? Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From markalanwalker at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 12:41:23 2015 From: markalanwalker at gmail.com (Mark Walker) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 05:41:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ### This is also called demarchy, going back to St. Friedrich Hayek. We used to discuss this option on ExI, oh, about ten years ago, didn't we? Rafal Everything has been discussed on ExI about ten years ago, including whether everything was discussed on ExI about ten years ago. Mark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Fri Mar 6 14:29:57 2015 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 14:29:57 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news Message-ID: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> About ten years ago, I discussed on this list the possibility that life started *everywhere* in the universe in the epoch following the big bang. My reasoning was that shortly after the big bang, the universe was too hot and dense for life, while now the universe is too cold and diffuse for life. Therefore it stands to reason that to get from then to now, at some point the universe would have had to pass through a "goldilocks epoch". During this time the entire universe should have had liquid water in abundance at about 310 K, the perfect temperature for carbon-based life. This temperature would be independent of stars because it would have been the background temperature of what is now the CMB. Thus even interstellar water nebulae could harbor life. Well now it looks like a professional astrobiologist at Harvard has caught onto the idea: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.0613v3.pdf ---------------------- "The Habitable Epoch of the Early Universe Abraham Loeb Abstract In the redshift range 100 . (1 + z) . 137, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) had a temperature of 273?373 K (0-100?C), al- lowing early rocky planets (if any existed) to have liquid water chem- istry on their surface and be habitable, irrespective of their distance from a star. In the standard CDM cosmology, the first star-forming halos within our Hubble volume started collapsing at these redshifts, allowing the chemistry of life to possibly begin when the Universe was merely 10?17 million years old. The possibility of life starting when the average matter density was a million times bigger than it is today argues against the anthropic explanation for the low value of the cosmological constant." ---------------------------- Then I also came across this interesting article: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/513781/moores-law-and-the-origin-of-life/ http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381 ------------------------------------ Abstract An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a nucleotide. The genetic complexity, roughly measured by the number of non-redundant functional nucleotides, is expected to have grown exponentially due to several positive feedback factors: gene cooperation, duplication of genes with their subsequent specialization, and emergence of novel functional niches associated with existing genes. Linear regression of genetic complexity on a log scale extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life 9.7 billion years ago. This cosmic time scale for the evolution of life has important consequences: life took ca. 5 billion years to reach the complexity of bacteria; the environments in which life originated and evolved to the prokaryote stage may have been quite different from those envisaged on Earth; there was no intelligent life in our universe prior to the origin of Earth, thus Earth could not have been deliberately seeded with life by intelligent aliens; Earth was seeded by panspermia; experimental replication of the origin of life from scratch may have to emulate many cumulative rare events; and the Drake equation for guesstimating the number of civilizations in the universe is likely wrong, as intelligent life has just begun appearing in our universe. Evolution of advanced organisms has accelerated via development of additional information-processing systems: epigenetic memory, primitive mind, multicellular brain, language, books, computers, and Internet. As a result the doubling time of complexity has reached ca. 20 years. Finally, we discuss the issue of the predicted technological singularity and give a biosemiotics perspective on the increase of complexity. ------------------------------------- Stuart LaForge From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 14:52:42 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 08:52:42 -0600 Subject: [ExI] 'The Other Brain' In-Reply-To: <3350684684-21300@secure.ericade.net> References: <3350684684-21300@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: If I knew that I had even close to the background to read such a book I would. But I do not know what background I need and probably one of those books is a text and highly expensive. I do read a lot of popular books on neuroscience by scientists and sometimes science writers. A small minority of people study glia, according to the author, and may be somewhat defensive, I would agree. But it looks like solid science to me. Sometimes, though I really think it's often, something revolutionary is rejected by the majority for quite some time and is believed by only a few, sometimes even one person. Notice that I started this discussion by asking if anyone else had read this book or one like it. I wanted help evaluating his claims, but apparently no one on our list has gotten into this area. You should know as well as anyone the bias theorists create in their field. It is present in everything I have ever studied. Only their group has the truth, just like religion in many ways. You, in fact, seem to be criticizing a book you have not read and are recommending a standard book which, according to what The Other Brain's author, will not address a more complicated role for glia than the 'accepted view' recognizes. I certainly cannot take sides in a neuroscience debate or evaluation of research, which is why I asked the group. Bill Wallace On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 3:07 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > William Flynn Wallace , 26/2/2015 5:37 PM: > > But I think that, according to the author, a sort of denial situation > exists, wherein those in the field tend to put all the emphasis on neurons > and actually deny the roles of glia, assigning them only support services. > If the book is correct it enormously complicates understanding the brain > and doing research on it because glia do not emit nice recordable > electrical impulses. > > > Have you read any modern neuroscience textbook like Kandel, Schwarz, > Jessop? > > Remember, you are basing your judgement on a somewhat partisan book. > > > 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 pharos at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 15:21:18 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 15:21:18 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news In-Reply-To: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On 6 March 2015 at 14:29, Stuart LaForge wrote: > About ten years ago, I discussed on this list the possibility that life > started *everywhere* in the universe in the epoch following the big bang. My > reasoning was that shortly after the big bang, the universe was too hot and > dense for life, while now the universe is too cold and diffuse for life. > Therefore it stands to reason that to get from then to now, at some point > the universe would have had to pass through a "goldilocks epoch". During > this time the entire universe should have had liquid water in abundance at > about 310 K, the perfect temperature for carbon-based life. This temperature > would be independent of stars because it would have been the background > temperature of what is now the CMB. Thus even interstellar water nebulae > could harbor life. > > Well now it looks like a professional astrobiologist at Harvard has caught > onto the idea: > http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.0613v3.pdf > This paper was much discussed when originally published and the reaction was that it was speculative, but very unlikely. See: Summary: The warm period was only c. 2 million years. Not long enough to evolve life. Lots of radiation from the early universe. If any early solar systems existed, there would be a heavy bombardment environment. Lack of heavy elements generated from stellar evolution. BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri Mar 6 15:26:56 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 07:26:56 -0800 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004501d05821$fbd798c0$f386ca40$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mark Walker Sent: Friday, March 06, 2015 4:41 AM To: Rafal Smigrodzki; ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Critiquing democracy ### This is also called demarchy, going back to St. Friedrich Hayek. We used to discuss this option on ExI, oh, about ten years ago, didn't we? Rafal >?Everything has been discussed on ExI about ten years ago, including whether everything was discussed on ExI about ten years ago. Mark Mark we discussed self-referencing paradox on ExI, about ten years ago. Reminders and updates are always welcomed. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 17:20:15 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 12:20:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news In-Reply-To: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 Stuart LaForge wrote: > > About ten years ago, I discussed on this list the possibility that life > started *everywhere* in the universe in the epoch following the big bang. > My reasoning was that shortly after the big bang, the universe was too hot > and dense for life OK. > > while now the universe is too cold and diffuse for life. We're alive now, so how do you figure that? And the universe is young enough that new stars are still being made, maybe not quite as vigorously as they were 10 billion years ago but they are still being made. John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brent.allsop at canonizer.com Fri Mar 6 17:29:15 2015 From: brent.allsop at canonizer.com (Brent Allsop) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 10:29:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Critiquing democracy In-Reply-To: <004501d05821$fbd798c0$f386ca40$@att.net> References: <004501d05821$fbd798c0$f386ca40$@att.net> Message-ID: (Warning: this is another plug for Canonizer.com and building consensus in general, so all you haters may think you want to stick your head in the ground and censor this post, for whatever reason.) What matters way more than any particular method of governance, is the ability to build and measure large scale consensus. When you think about it, if you want to accomplish anything, it all depends on building consensus. It could be political consensus, to change government (regardless of the form), financial consensus to start a new company (or to get an established company to invest in a new project), governmental consensus, religious consensus, if you want to get Mormons to support bisexual people, it's all about building and measuring consensus. For educating the masses, it's scientific consensus. People can't know what scientific consensus does, or does not exist, if you can't measure it. Everything is all about building consensus. No matter what you want, getting it is only a matter of building consensus. Once you have found enough people that want the same thing you do, it will just happen. Building consensus is the only hard part. Everything else is trivially easy with enough scale. All traditional organizations and methods, even modern ?democratic? voting ones are set up in a way that destroys consensus and censors at every level. Minority experts that see a better way, get censored because of why? Because there is still not yet consensus. All systems today find minor issues where there is disagreement, and all the time and effort focuses on that, with the most important things everyone wants being a casualty of that endless polarizing infinitely repetitive war. And it?s great that everyone is noticing that the same conversations come up on this list every few years, everyone repeating the same old same old positions. There is no memory in the system, no measuring for consensus, no progress is ever made. New people have no way of knowing of any progress that may have been made. That is, except for the issue of qualia or the subjective nature of consciousness. Remember how upset everyone got, whenever you brought that issues up, at least until Canonizer.com came along? Once the participators in that discussion started canonizing their views, things launched, and the amplification of the wisdom of the extropy crowd went through the roof. New people and even high school students could participate, and it is so exciting to see how fast such people could get up to speed on what was important, and where everyone stood. You can see the current stratospheric state of the art, and the very surprising amount of consensus we've achieved on the most important things (notice you no longer need to spend time on the trivial mistakes the bleating herd once focused on, infinitely repetitively), here: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88 And for a paper summarizing the theoretical science of mind results describing how to detect qualia, showing how the so called ?hard problem? is really just a solvable qualitative interpretation problem can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vxfbgfm8XIqkmC5Vus7wBb982JMOA8XMrTZQ4smkiyI/edit Again, everything is all about building and measuring for consensus. Especially the ability to push small minor disagreeable issues out of the way (to lower camps) so everyone can finally focus on what is important, and what most leading experts agree on, so the entire crowd can amplify their accelerating wisdom. If you can build and know, concisely and quantitatively, what EVERYONE wants, you do not need any rules, or governments or hierarchies or universities, or bureaucracies. Once you build enough consensus, traditional rules and governments no longer matter, everything you want will just happen. Brent Allsop On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 8:26 AM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Mark Walker > *Sent:* Friday, March 06, 2015 4:41 AM > *To:* Rafal Smigrodzki; ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Critiquing democracy > > > > ### This is also called demarchy, going back to St. Friedrich Hayek. We > used to discuss this option on ExI, oh, about ten years ago, didn't we? > > > > Rafal > > > > >?Everything has been discussed on ExI about ten years ago, including > whether everything was discussed on ExI about ten years ago. Mark > > > > > > > > Mark we discussed self-referencing paradox on ExI, about ten years ago. > > > > Reminders and updates are always welcomed. > > > > 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 avant at sollegro.com Fri Mar 6 19:38:51 2015 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 19:38:51 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina Message-ID: <20150306193851.Horde.zQ1P0OMi99SJBxhhdbBLMw1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> ----- Forwarded message from Stuart LaForge ----- Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2015 16:11:45 +0000 From: Stuart LaForge Subject: Re: Vermis ex machina To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Quoting Anders: > Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 22:36:24 +0100 > From: Anders Sandberg > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Vermis ex machina > Message-ID: <3610836177-8057 at secure.ericade.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > But this is cell failure. Synapses fail at proper transmission > *nearly all the time*!? > http://www.pnas.org/content/91/22/10380.full.pdf > http://zadorlab.cshl.edu/PDF/zador-jn-mi.pdf > Basically, there is a great deal of noise and variability introduced > in synaptic transmission. The system is reliable since it uses many > synapses and neurons, which are individually misbehaving a lot of > the time.? Might not this be a feature rather than a bug? I mean computers behave very deterministically but people not so much. Given an input, a computer program will either halt and return an output or get stuck in an infinite loop. A brain however can receive input and simply ignore it. Perhaps if synapses were 100% efficient, we would all act on our slightest whim or impulse, the buffer between thought and action no longer present. Thus evolution might have selected less than perfect synapses to prevent us from performing actions the moment the thought occurred to us. At least in my experience, acting on every thought that happened to cross my mind would have led me to many actions I would have cause to regret. Perhaps the requirement of a critical threshold of many synapses firing in unison acts as a sort of quorum to prevent acting before possible outcomes can be properly assessed? A possible test of this hypothesis might be to compare the synaptic efficiency of different species. My hypothesis would predict that less complex organisms should have *more* efficient synapses since their mode of dealing with stimulus would be more reflexive than intentional. Stuart LaForge ----- End forwarded message ----- -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Stuart LaForge Subject: Re: Vermis ex machina Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2015 16:11:45 +0000 Size: 2650 URL: From avant at sollegro.com Thu Mar 5 16:11:45 2015 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2015 16:11:45 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20150305161145.Horde.qcG1zLq3N-1vT_wfGSRoJg3@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting Anders: > Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 22:36:24 +0100 > From: Anders Sandberg > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Vermis ex machina > Message-ID: <3610836177-8057 at secure.ericade.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > But this is cell failure. Synapses fail at proper transmission > *nearly all the time*!? > http://www.pnas.org/content/91/22/10380.full.pdf > http://zadorlab.cshl.edu/PDF/zador-jn-mi.pdf > Basically, there is a great deal of noise and variability introduced > in synaptic transmission. The system is reliable since it uses many > synapses and neurons, which are individually misbehaving a lot of > the time.? Might not this be a feature rather than a bug? I mean computers behave very deterministically but people not so much. Given an input, a computer program will either halt and return an output or get stuck in an infinite loop. A brain however can receive input and simply ignore it. Perhaps if synapses were 100% efficient, we would all act on our slightest whim or impulse, the buffer between thought and action no longer present. Thus evolution might have selected less than perfect synapses to prevent us from performing actions the moment the thought occurred to us. At least in my experience, acting on every thought that happened to cross my mind would have led me to many actions I would have cause to regret. Perhaps the requirement of a critical threshold of many synapses firing in unison acts as a sort of quorum to prevent acting before possible outcomes can be properly assessed? A possible test of this hypothesis might be to compare the synaptic efficiency of different species. My hypothesis would predict that less complex organisms should have *more* efficient synapses since their mode of dealing with stimulus would be more reflexive than intentional. Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Fri Mar 6 22:41:56 2015 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 22:41:56 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news Message-ID: <20150306224156.Horde.fBw1ofHEEUdXeIVT7jj_Ug1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting BillK: ----- Original Message ----- > From: BillK > To: ExI chat list > Cc: > Sent: Friday, March 6, 2015 7:21 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news > > On 6 March 2015 at 14:29, Stuart LaForge wrote: >> About ten years ago, I discussed on this list the possibility that life >> started *everywhere* in the universe in the epoch following the big bang. >> Well now it looks like a professional astrobiologist at Harvard has caught >> onto the idea: >> http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.0613v3.pdf >> > > > This paper was much discussed when originally published and the > reaction was that it was speculative, but very unlikely. Well yes. Any discussion of the origins of life are necessarily speculative. Unlikely? Life itself is seems rather unlikely. The sheer negentropy required is mind boggling. This is why despite knowing the chemical constituents of life and having access to them, nobody has yet been able to put them all together in a test tube and create de novo life. I came up with panbiogenesis to explain this empirical recalcitrance of biogenesis without having to resort to some metaphysical "vital spark". If the current physical milieu does not allow biogenesis to occur, then biogenesis must have occurred when the physics itself was "different". And it so happens that the early universe being warmer, denser, lower entropy, and full of free energy fits the bill. > See: > > Summary: > The warm period was only c. 2 million years. Not long enough to evolve life. > Lots of radiation from the early universe. > If any early solar systems existed, there would be a heavy bombardment > environment. > Lack of heavy elements generated from stellar evolution. Loeb might have made the mistake of trying to pin down the time too precisely. I don't think it happened quite that early since life could not have formed before carbon and oxygen atoms did. But there was still plenty of negentropy left after the first stars formed and went supernova in the first few hundred million years after the big bang. The first stars were 100-1000 solar mass monsters that would have raced through their life cycle in a few million years spewing the stuff of life across the cosmos. As far as how long life took form once the ingredients were present, it might have been pretty darn quick like a catalyzed chemical reaction. Incidentally the criticism by the blog you referenced is inconsistent. You can't have heavy bombardment in the absence of heavy elements. Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Fri Mar 6 23:00:31 2015 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 23:00:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news Message-ID: <20150306230031.Horde.Dhwqmnng4PKptnsav_YO_g1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Quoting John Clark: > From: John Clark > To: ExI chat list Sent: Friday, > March 6, 2015 9:20 AM > Subject: Re: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news > > On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 Stuart LaForge wrote: > > >> About ten years ago, I discussed on this list the possibility that >> life started *everywhere* in the universe in the epoch following >> the big bang. My reasoning was that shortly after the big bang, the >> universe was too hot and dense for life > > > OK. >> while now the universe is too cold and diffuse for life. > > > We're alive now, so how do you figure that? And the universe is > young enough that new stars are still being made, maybe not quite as > vigorously as they were 10 billion years ago but they are still > being made. I didn't mean that life couldn't exist *anywhere* in the modern universe, just that now it can only exist in relatively scarce oases like the earth. My point was once upon a time life could have existed everywhere even in the interstellar medium. I believe that it was once the rule rather than the exception but then most of it died. What point are you trying to make with your observation that stars are still being formed? Stuart LaForge From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Mar 7 01:51:20 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 19:51:20 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <20150305161145.Horde.qcG1zLq3N-1vT_wfGSRoJg3@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150305161145.Horde.qcG1zLq3N-1vT_wfGSRoJg3@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: > A brain however can receive input and simply ignore it. Perhaps if > synapses were 100% efficient, we would all act on our slightest whim or > impulse, the buffer between thought and action no longer present. Thus > evolution might have selected less than perfect synapses to prevent us from > performing actions the moment the thought occurred to us. At least in my > experience, acting on every thought that happened to cross my mind would > have led me to many actions I would have cause to regret. Perhaps the > requirement of a critical threshold of many synapses firing in unison acts > as a sort of quorum to prevent acting before possible outcomes can be > properly assessed? > > > Stuart LaForge > ?From what modest amount of knowledge I have about the brain, it seems that you are ignoring inhibitory actions, likely in the reticular activating system. Study: cats were equipped with a recording electrode in their cochlea. Then a noise was presented and the cochlea responded as usual as shown on the scope. Then a rat was introduced into the cage and then the noise was again presented and the cochlea showed no response at all. Presumably the r.a.s. shut down that noise because the brain was attending to something far more important. So inhibition can take place not only in the brain but in sensory receptors outside the brain proper. Likewise, an approach-avoidance conflict can be viewed as a stalemate between excitatory and inhibitory impulses. 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 connor_flexman at brown.edu Sat Mar 7 02:14:15 2015 From: connor_flexman at brown.edu (Flexman, Connor) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 21:14:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news In-Reply-To: <20150306224156.Horde.fBw1ofHEEUdXeIVT7jj_Ug1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150306224156.Horde.fBw1ofHEEUdXeIVT7jj_Ug1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: > > > Loeb might have made the mistake of trying to pin down the time too > precisely. I don't think it happened quite that early since life could not > have formed before carbon and oxygen atoms did. But there was still plenty > of negentropy left after the first stars formed and went supernova in the > first few hundred million years after the big bang. The first stars were > 100-1000 solar mass monsters that would have raced through their life cycle > in a few million years spewing the stuff of life across the cosmos. > And yet when the universe was between 273 and 373K, the blackbody spectrum still was peaking at the order of an electron volt. This means nearly everything would have been getting ionized. Do you think that life happened after this? or during, and that somehow this radiation didn't destroy all complex molecules? Further, the epoch of 300K was about 15 Myr after the Big Bang. The first generation of stars didn't light up until roughly 500 Myr afterward. So your conjecture about speedy stars doesn't fix the lack of heavy elements here. Well yes. Any discussion of the origins of life are necessarily > speculative. Unlikely? Life itself is seems rather unlikely. The sheer > negentropy required is mind boggling. This is why despite knowing the > chemical constituents of life and having access to them, nobody has yet > been able to put them all together in a test tube and create de novo life. > I came up with panbiogenesis to explain this empirical recalcitrance of > biogenesis without having to resort to some metaphysical "vital spark". If > the current physical milieu does not allow biogenesis to occur, then > biogenesis must have occurred when the physics itself was "different". And > it so happens that the early universe being warmer, denser, lower entropy, > and full of free energy fits the bill. Stuart LaForge Creating life in a test tube in the 21st century vs creating life on a 2*10^8 mi^2 planet over 10^9 years is very different. Many orders of magnitude. The physical milieu 4 billion years ago may be hard to make life in but taking it back to 15 million years after the big bang seems like it might be even worse. Connor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat Mar 7 09:27:09 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2015 10:27:09 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news In-Reply-To: <20150306230031.Horde.Dhwqmnng4PKptnsav_YO_g1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <4085743113-19855@secure.ericade.net> Stuart LaForge , 7/3/2015 12:03 AM: I didn't mean that life couldn't exist *anywhere* in the modern ? universe, just that now it can only exist in relatively scarce oases ? like the earth. My point was once upon a time life could have existed ? everywhere even in the interstellar medium. I believe that it was once ? the rule rather than the exception but then most of it died. There is a conflation here of right temperature range and being able to sustain life. Life requires a lot more than the right temperature, in particular elements that can form chemistry, lack of ionizing radiation that disrupts chemistry, and useful energy gradients to exploit. The early universe might have been room temperature, but the average density during this era was just a factor of 100 higher than now (3*10^-26 kg/m^3, a very high lab vacuum), the constituents were nearly all hydrogen and helium, and the radiation flux rather intense.? When people say "unlikely" about this scenario, they are not saying "one chance in a hundred", but "would require us to be totally wrong about everything we thought we knew about biochemistry and abiogenesis".? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat Mar 7 09:57:35 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2015 10:57:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <20150305161145.Horde.qcG1zLq3N-1vT_wfGSRoJg3@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <4086325116-19855@secure.ericade.net> Stuart LaForge , 6/3/2015 11:02 PM: > But this is cell failure. Synapses fail at proper transmission ? > *nearly all the time*!? > http://www.pnas.org/content/91/22/10380.full.pdf > http://zadorlab.cshl.edu/PDF/zador-jn-mi.pdf > Basically, there is a great deal of noise and variability introduced ? > in synaptic transmission. The system is reliable since it uses many ? > synapses and neurons, which are individually misbehaving a lot of ? > the time.? Might not this be a feature rather than a bug? I have sat through more talksarguing this at computational neuroscience conferences than I can count. You can do nifty things using failure-prone parts. But proving that this is a feature and not just a bug/spandrel that the messy engineer evolution decided to use for other purposes it hard. ? I mean computers behave ?very deterministically but people not so much. Actually, I think people underestimate the indeterminism of real software. Sure, Turing machines and idealized single thread processors are deterministic (except for undecideability, Rice's theorem, chaotic dynamics etc.) but in practice a real computer has a surprising amount of indeterministic aspects (what happens when process A and B want to change the value of a variable at the same time?)? One cannot infer macroscale behavior from microscale components in general. The properties of synapses do not shine through to macroscale behavior most of the time, just as the properties of the atoms making up the body do not show up in how we act.? Delaying actions using inefficient transmission sounds like a bad solution, since it is inflexible: if the delay only depends on microscale properties and not on the actual situation/urgency, then you will react slowly when it really matters for survival too. In reality action selection seems to happen because of parallel inputs in the basal ganglia loops, and the overall strength of the input - mainly the number of axons firing - can make the selection faster. You could say noisy, lossy synapses still act as a barrier for weak thoughts turning into actions, but the opposite is also true: inhibiting bad actions is also done using noisy synapses that sometimes fail, and there is a constant barrage of random impulses not due to any proper thought in the first place.? A possible test of this hypothesis might be to compare the synaptic ? efficiency of different species. My hypothesis would predict that less ? complex organisms should have *more* efficient synapses since their ? mode of dealing with stimulus would be more reflexive than intentional. You would need to separate out the confounding factor of having fewer synapses to play with. We can make population codes that work fine with very noisy synapses since we have numerous axons, but an insect or C elegans will have just a few - they would need sharper synapses regardless of intentionality. There are also metabolic issues:?http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v1/n1/full/nn0598_36.html - having inefficient synapses saves some energy, but there is a balance with information transmission rate (and the optimum will depend on what kind of organism you are). Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scerir at alice.it Sat Mar 7 09:51:51 2015 From: scerir at alice.it (scerir at alice.it) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2015 10:51:51 +0100 (CET) Subject: [ExI] R: Re: Panbiogenesis news Message-ID: <14bf3a5e910.scerir@alice.it> Not exactly on topic but interesting indeed http://tinyurl.com/l4v4bc3 http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.06880Quantum Criticality at the Origin of LifeGabor Vattay, Dennis Salahub, Istvan Csabai, Ali Nassimi, Stuart A. Kaufmann(Submitted on 24 Feb 2015 (v1), last revised 3 Mar 2015 (this version, v2))Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic Hamiltonians of biomolecules are tuned exactly to the critical point of the metal-insulator transition separating the Anderson localized insulator phase from the conducting disordered metal phase. Using tools from Random Matrix Theory we confirm that the energy level statistics of these biomolecules show the universal transitional distribution of the metal-insulator critical point and the wave functions are multifractals in accordance with the theory of Anderson transitions. The findings point to the existence of a universal mechanism of charge transport in living matter. The revealed bio-conductor material is neither a metal nor an insulator but a new quantum critical material which can exist only in highly evolved systems and has unique material properties. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Mar 7 17:13:11 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2015 12:13:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news In-Reply-To: References: <20150306224156.Horde.fBw1ofHEEUdXeIVT7jj_Ug1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 9:14 PM, Flexman, Connor wrote: > > Further, the epoch of 300K was about 15 Myr after the Big Bang. The first > generation of stars didn't light up until roughly 500 Myr afterward. > Yes, and without stars thermodynamically there would be no way to obtain the free energy (work) that would be needed to make complex structures like life. And 15 million years after the Big Bang the only elements in existence were Hydrogen, Helium and a pinch of lithium, beryllium and perhaps boron; and that's just not enough, the chemistry of those elements can't compare in grandeur with the marvelous things that Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen can do. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Mar 7 17:31:26 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2015 12:31:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Vermis ex machina In-Reply-To: <20150306193851.Horde.zQ1P0OMi99SJBxhhdbBLMw1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150306193851.Horde.zQ1P0OMi99SJBxhhdbBLMw1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 Stuart LaForge wrote: > > >> The system is reliable since it uses many synapses and neurons, which >> are individually misbehaving a lot of the time.? >> > > > Might not this be a feature rather than a bug? I mean computers behave > very deterministically but people not so much. If it's not deterministic then it's random, computers behave non-deterministically when they're malfunctioning and I think that would be a bug not a feature but if you disagree it would be easy to include a hardware random number generator in a computer that would kick in at random times and screw up calculations. I'm not sure how many computers of this sort you'd manage to convince people to buy, although during the tech bubble in the late 90s you probably could have floated a IPO. John K Clark > > > Given an input, a computer program will either halt and return an output > or get stuck in an infinite loop. But in general there is no way to *determine* which it will do, even the computer doesn't know what it will do until it does it, just like us. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rhanson at gmu.edu Fri Mar 6 14:41:27 2015 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin D Hanson) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 14:41:27 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news In-Reply-To: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <4279DA0A-ECE7-4E05-B1CE-D8E86CA3B761@gmu.edu> On Mar 6, 2015, at 9:29 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > http://www.technologyreview.com/view/513781/moores-law-and-the-origin-of-life/ > http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381 > ... The genetic complexity, roughly measured by the number of non-redundant functional nucleotides, is expected to have grown exponentially due to several positive feedback factors: gene cooperation, duplication of genes with their subsequent specialization, and emergence of novel functional niches associated with existing genes. Linear regression of genetic complexity on a log scale extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life 9.7 billion years ago. This cosmic time scale for the evolution of life has important consequences: life took ca. 5 billion years to reach the complexity of bacteria; the environments in which life originated and evolved to the prokaryote stage may have been quite different from those envisaged on Earth; there was no intelligent life in our universe prior to the origin of Earth, thus Earth could not have been deliberately seeded with life by intelligent aliens; Interesting approach. Eyeballing their key graph, it seems they can't really distinguish 9.7 bya from the age of the universe. And that would be more plausible as a starting point. 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 From rhanson at gmu.edu Fri Mar 6 14:41:27 2015 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin D Hanson) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 14:41:27 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Panbiogenesis news In-Reply-To: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> References: <20150306142957.Horde.V1P48E17W4-K52vuIlRdPQ1@secure88.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: <4279DA0A-ECE7-4E05-B1CE-D8E86CA3B761@gmu.edu> On Mar 6, 2015, at 9:29 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > http://www.technologyreview.com/view/513781/moores-law-and-the-origin-of-life/ > http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381 > ... The genetic complexity, roughly measured by the number of non-redundant functional nucleotides, is expected to have grown exponentially due to several positive feedback factors: gene cooperation, duplication of genes with their subsequent specialization, and emergence of novel functional niches associated with existing genes. Linear regression of genetic complexity on a log scale extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life 9.7 billion years ago. This cosmic time scale for the evolution of life has important consequences: life took ca. 5 billion years to reach the complexity of bacteria; the environments in which life originated and evolved to the prokaryote stage may have been quite different from those envisaged on Earth; there was no intelligent life in our universe prior to the origin of Earth, thus Earth could not have been deliberately seeded with life by intelligent aliens; Interesting approach. Eyeballing their key graph, it seems they can't really distinguish 9.7 bya from the age of the universe. And that would be more plausible as a starting point. 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 From spike66 at att.net Wed Mar 11 05:24:14 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2015 22:24:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] an inconvenient truth Message-ID: <000301d05bbb$9e0ae330$da20a990$@att.net> OK then. We had an IRS director tell us her email was lost because of a disc crash. Today we had a former Secretary of State and likely presidential candidate say she used private email on her own server for state business because it was more convenient; that way she wouldn't need to carry two devices. Indeed. It is easy to receive and send email from two different accounts on a single device; even I do that. So we have a SecState telling us she compromised the security state business for her convenience. What all this is telling me is that government officials want to control their own email and they are resisting transparency transparently. The former SecState didn't even bother giving us an actual excuse, she gave us a flimsy excuse for an excuse. Both of these officials are transparently resisting transparency. At the same time, they want to take away our transparency. I firmly demand that every American present read Orwell's 1984. See what Orwell had to say about transparency and how his foresight and insight applies to our situation. Note the privacy afforded to the inner circle, the outer circle, the proles. Americans, If you have not the time to read Orwell, I demand that you at least Cliff's Notes, and if you have not the time to read Cliff's Notes, you have not the time to vote. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 11:15:46 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 07:15:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] an inconvenient truth In-Reply-To: <000301d05bbb$9e0ae330$da20a990$@att.net> References: <000301d05bbb$9e0ae330$da20a990$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 1:24 AM, spike wrote: > > > > Americans, If you have not the time to read Orwell, I demand that you at > least Cliff?s Notes, and if you have not the time to read Cliff?s Notes, > you have not the time to vote. > ### Oddly enough, I see the email brouhaha as a sign of progress. Think about one her infamous predecessors, the most evil and destructive president in US history, the one who stole America's gold and plunged her into the true Depression, followed by a real, not just TV-entertainment-level, war. During a long 13 years of presidency, most of the population did not even know he could hardly walk! Maybe I am an inveterate optimist but this kind of deep deception, and brutal in-your-face brutality seem to be much less likely today than 80 years ago. Maybe they won't be able to falsify the 2016 election results enough to elect her. Maybe the IRS will be a bit slowed down in their persecution of Scott Walker supporters. There is more knowledge going around today. Even after the FCC is done taking over the internet, they won't be able to completely shut down the percolation of unapproved truth. Life is good, Spike :) Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 11:31:49 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 07:31:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: <3571026475-10474@secure.ericade.net> References: <3571026475-10474@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 5:20 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Rafal Smigrodzki , 1/3/2015 2:50 AM: > > ### Or, maybe .... break the country up! > > Drop the poor south. Set up a good border, slaughter those who cross it. > > Good, old methods that work. > > > You mean like Korea? > ### Well, it's a different situation, but yes. Thanks to the partition, communists were not able to destroy all of Korea, only half of it. Freedom of association entails freedom of disassociation. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 11:44:04 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 07:44:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] beheadings etc. In-Reply-To: References: <3585560505-30905@secure.ericade.net> <014301d05436$498f7550$dcae5ff0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 12:30 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > In Zimbabwe it is genetic, I think. In Mosul, it's a mix, I think. > ### In Zimbabwe and in South Africa it is genetic in the sense that racism is genetic: The countries were taken over by unabashedly racist groups, who proceeded to destroy people of the wrong skin color, mainly because of their skin color (plus they had money that could be stolen). Of course, they would kill not just whites but also slaughtered guest workers from neighboring countries. South Africa is now a racist country. People of different races are no longer able to live peacefully together, growing richer together (even if apart) - instead there is brutal persecution of minorities, effectively a grass-roots ethnic cleansing. Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 17:39:53 2015 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 10:39:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] an inconvenient truth In-Reply-To: References: <000301d05bbb$9e0ae330$da20a990$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mar 11, 2015 4:17 AM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" wrote: > Maybe they won't be able to falsify the 2016 election results enough to elect her. They won't have to, if the Republicans simply put forth a sufficiently odious candidate, as appears likely. Most US voters honestly believe there is no point in voting for a third party candidate, to the point that it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 22:33:43 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 18:33:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] an inconvenient truth In-Reply-To: References: <000301d05bbb$9e0ae330$da20a990$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Mar 11, 2015 4:17 AM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" > wrote: > > Maybe they won't be able to falsify the 2016 election results enough to > elect her. > > They won't have to, if the Republicans simply put forth a sufficiently > odious candidate, as appears likely. Most US voters honestly believe there > is no point in voting for a third party candidate, to the point that it > often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. > ### Indeed, the Repugnicans' secret weapons, like George's son, are trailing Mr Clinton's wife closely in odiousness. It will be a painfully amusing spectacle for those who care to watch. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Mar 12 14:37:04 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 10:37:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics app for Apple Watch Message-ID: I wonder if Alcor will initiate a monitoring service for cryonicists. The Apple Watch and other smart watches could make it quite easy to set up an emergency response system, perhaps financed by monthly user fees. I know I would be interested - Max, could you comment? Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Mar 12 16:28:27 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 12:28:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics app for Apple Watch In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > I wonder if Alcor will initiate a monitoring service for cryonicists. The > Apple Watch and other smart watches could make it quite easy to set up an > emergency response system, perhaps financed by monthly user fees. I know I > would be interested - Max, could you comment? > That sounds like a first rate idea to me! John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Thu Mar 12 16:32:48 2015 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 09:32:48 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics app for Apple Watch In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0CD26E6E-300C-49C6-8B65-7F32BD0773D1@gmail.com> On Mar 12, 2015, at 9:28 AM, John Clark wrote: >> On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> >> > I wonder if Alcor will initiate a monitoring service for cryonicists. The Apple Watch and other smart watches could make it quite easy to set up an emergency response system, perhaps financed by monthly user fees. I know I would be interested - Max, could you comment? > > That sounds like a first rate idea to me! Ditto! Regards, Dan See my latest Kindle book at: http://www.amazon.com/Fruiting-Bodies-Nanovirus-Book-2-ebook/dp/B00U1UCN9A/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Mar 13 14:47:19 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2015 07:47:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006501d05d9c$9bf39e60$d3dadb20$@att.net> This was cross-posted from tt. My comments all the way at the bottom. spike -----Original Message----- From: tt-bounces at postbiota.org [mailto:tt-bounces at postbiota.org] On Behalf Of Mark Gubrud Sent: Friday, March 13, 2015 7:39 AM To: Transhuman Tech Subject: Re: [tt] [ExI] Identity thread again "I see my identity as...." is the most telling phrase in this little essay and, indeed, the entire discussion. "My identity," and indeed, identity in general, is a fictitious property ascribed by a "subject" to its "objects" as it regards the actual universe. "Objects" are just a useful way of organizing the world, one which reflects many survival-important, functional features of the world. Tigers, berries, and sticks and stones are "objects," so are other people, so is one's self. [The greatest confusion arises, of course, when the "object" is the "subject" itself; this is exactly what gives rise to the (illusory) "hard problem of consciousness."] One can articulate (obvious) reasons why it is useful to organize the world this way. But the physical boundaries of our "objects" are fuzzy and mutable. The question of identity is just the mind's question, "Is this the same object I saw before?" One can lay out criteria for a definite answer to that question, and such criteria are not entirely arbitrary. But there are often cases where criteria that seemed to resolve the question unambiguously in most or all situations up to now, fail to resolve it in some new situations. The fundamental reason for this is that our ascription of "identity" to "objects" is just an aspect of how we think. So, you are entitled to define or redefine "my identity" any way you like; what I won't accept is any argument that your concept of "identity" is the true and correct one, and that you can use this putative "fact" to justify the otherwise unjustifiable - such as, for example, the "replacement" or "transformation" of nature, human flesh, human beings, and even all humanity, by or into technology and its products, on an argument that "identity" is somehow preserved. Mark Feel free to post and repost, e.g. to ExI. ----------------------------- Mark Avrum Gubrud gubrud at gmail.com +1 (240) 602-1841 twitter: @mgubrud blog: gubrud.net > Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 23:17:07 -0500 > From: Rafal Smigrodzki > Subject: [tt] [ExI] Identity thread again > Cc: ExI chat list > Message-ID: > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 10:13 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: >> >> If we're discussing identity and consciousness, I would like to be >> sure all of the important bits are working properly. :) >> > ### To resurrect the identity thread: As I have argued here before, I > see my identity as the sum of privileged indexical information that > separates me from other beings. By privileged I mean information that > I am emotionally attached to, not confidential as in the usual meaning > of the term. > > There is a lot of information in my mind that I don't really care > about - all kinds of impersonal data, bits and pieces of generic > experiences, chemical formulas and tax information. These are not a > part of me, they are merely a baggage I carry around, or useful tools > be used in dealing with the non-self. I would not be any less me if > all this was lost and replaced by off-the-shelf apps. And then there > is the privileged, true self - a set of memories, and desires that I > self-referentially designate as self. Never mind what particular > details are included here - suffice to say, a being that does not possess these moving parts would not be me. > > This is a very lean self-definition already but now I'd like to argue > for an even more restrictive one. Let's explore some intuitions here. > > I feel that a being that had all my memories and desires, yet > subjected to an additional set of alien thought-patterns would not be > me, no matter how faithfully my memories were represented in it. This > being could perfectly impersonate me by accessing my neural network > and yet its actions could betray all that I hold dear. > > Another intuition: Imagine that a composite being would be made of me > and another mind, consensually and with good knowledge of the likely > outcome, sharing our memories and desires. If the other part of the > composite had desires broadly compatible with mine, the composite as a > whole would be still me, grown, richer. Many beings could coalesce and > it still would be me, with a multithreaded past, as long as its > volition would remain reasonably coherent. A set of desires produced > by an amalgamation of selves would be still mine, as long as the > transformations from pluribus to unum were fully accepted at each step > of growth. Even if my personal narrative was diluted among millions, > the gargantuan being would be still me, still an individual, albeit a large one. > > These intuitions focus attention away from mere memories towards > certain sets of desires and attitudes as the kernel of self. It is > what makes me tick that counts, not what happened and where. And what > makes me tick is a burning curiosity, a desire to know... the shape > of all things. Of course, it would be nice to keep my name, rank and > serial number on file until the last computations are done but what > really counts is that one day there be the one that knows all that is worth knowing. > > (echoes of "The Last Question" are loud here :) > > Rafal _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt at postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt The phrase "I see my identity as..." immediately plunges us into the universe of self-referencing paradox, of which Hofstadter wrote so eloquently in his Pulitzer Prize winning classic Eternal Golden Braid. All our logic is untrustworthy under that paradox. The identity thread is the tortoise's special phonograph records, the recursion and self-reference special case which wrecks the rigid system of logic. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Mar 13 15:18:51 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2015 10:18:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FW: [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: <006501d05d9c$9bf39e60$d3dadb20$@att.net> References: <006501d05d9c$9bf39e60$d3dadb20$@att.net> Message-ID: ?The phrase "I see my identity as..." immediately plunges us into the universe of self-referencing paradox, of which Hofstadter wrote so eloquently in his Pulitzer Prize winning classic Eternal Golden Braid. All our logic is untrustworthy under that paradox. The identity thread is the tortoise's special phonograph records, the recursion and self-reference special case which wrecks the rigid system of logic. spike There is no such thing as an identity. (Identical to what?). Our behavior varies so much that we can be extremely different people in different situations, with different people, in different states of consciousness (starving, om church, with our boss, high on heroin or ????), at different ages, etc. We sometimes act in a way that startles us and makes us wonder just who or what we are. We say things like'that's not me', but it is - everything you do, think, or say is YOU. Maybe it's just you when you are drunk, but it's still you. We say one thing and do another and thousands of psychological experiments show that what you do or say is easily manipulated. Hypocrites all? ? ?Sure, there are commonalities: introversion/extroversion, all the Big Five in fact. But mostly we are like the fable of the blind men and the elephant - different things to different people - and to ourselves.? There is no one deus in your machina. Bill W -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kekich at maxlife.org Fri Mar 13 15:57:39 2015 From: kekich at maxlife.org (David Kekich) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2015 08:57:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics app for Apple Watch 5 Message-ID: <006801d05da6$6f267510$4d735f30$@maxlife.org> We have a small annual conference in May where we have discussed this issue and will explore it this time. Dave -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org Sent: Friday, March 13, 2015 5:00 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 138, Issue 15 Send extropy-chat mailing list submissions to extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org You can reach the person managing the list at extropy-chat-owner at lists.extropy.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of extropy-chat digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Cryonics app for Apple Watch (Rafal Smigrodzki) 2. Re: Cryonics app for Apple Watch (John Clark) 3. Re: Cryonics app for Apple Watch (Dan) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 10:37:04 -0400 From: Rafal Smigrodzki To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Cryonics app for Apple Watch Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" I wonder if Alcor will initiate a monitoring service for cryonicists. The Apple Watch and other smart watches could make it quite easy to set up an emergency response system, perhaps financed by monthly user fees. I know I would be interested - Max, could you comment? Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 12:28:27 -0400 From: John Clark To: rafal at smigrodzki.org, ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Cryonics app for Apple Watch Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > I wonder if Alcor will initiate a monitoring service for cryonicists. > The Apple Watch and other smart watches could make it quite easy to > set up an emergency response system, perhaps financed by monthly user > fees. I know I would be interested - Max, could you comment? > That sounds like a first rate idea to me! John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 09:32:48 -0700 From: Dan To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Cryonics app for Apple Watch Message-ID: <0CD26E6E-300C-49C6-8B65-7F32BD0773D1 at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On Mar 12, 2015, at 9:28 AM, John Clark wrote: >> On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> >> > I wonder if Alcor will initiate a monitoring service for cryonicists. The Apple Watch and other smart watches could make it quite easy to set up an emergency response system, perhaps financed by monthly user fees. I know I would be interested - Max, could you comment? > > That sounds like a first rate idea to me! Ditto! Regards, Dan See my latest Kindle book at: http://www.amazon.com/Fruiting-Bodies-Nanovirus-Book-2-ebook/dp/B00U1UCN9A/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: ------------------------------ Subject: Digest Footer _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat ------------------------------ End of extropy-chat Digest, Vol 138, Issue 15 ********************************************* From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Mar 13 18:31:34 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2015 14:31:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The world's most environmentally friendly car Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXEddCLW3SM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Mar 14 12:42:21 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 08:42:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 10:38 AM, Mark Gubrud wrote: > > > "My identity," and indeed, identity in general, is a fictitious > property ascribed by a "subject" to its "objects" as it regards the > actual universe. ### To answer your fictitious email, no, the concept of identity is not really fictitious. But my fictitious self is not interested in elaborating. After all, this would be all fiction, wouldn't it? --------------- > "Objects" are just a useful way of organizing the > world, one which reflects many survival-important, functional features > of the world. Tigers, berries, and sticks and stones are "objects," so > are other people, so is one's self. [The greatest confusion arises, of > course, when the "object" is the "subject" itself; this is exactly > what gives rise to the (illusory) "hard problem of consciousness."] > ### Again, no, not really, the hard problem of consciousness is not entailed by our mind's ability to categorize self. This does not need elaboration. --------------------- > > One can articulate (obvious) reasons why it is useful to organize the > world this way. But the physical boundaries of our "objects" are fuzzy > and mutable. The question of identity is just the mind's question, "Is > this the same object I saw before?" One can lay out criteria for a > definite answer to that question, and such criteria are not entirely > arbitrary. But there are often cases where criteria that seemed to > resolve the question unambiguously in most or all situations up to > now, fail to resolve it in some new situations. The fundamental reason > for this is that our ascription of "identity" to "objects" is just an > aspect of how we think. > ### Well, yes, obviously. How could it be something else? > > So, you are entitled to define or redefine "my identity" any way you > like; what I won't accept is any argument that your concept of > "identity" is the true and correct one, and that you can use this > putative "fact" to justify the otherwise unjustifiable - such as, for > example, the "replacement" or "transformation" of nature, human flesh, > human beings, and even all humanity, by or into technology and its > products, on an argument that "identity" is somehow preserved. ### I won't accept any attempts to deny me the right to replace my own human flesh with technology, whether based on some fictitious arguments about my identity or not. What you want to do with yours is your problem, just stay away from mine, will you? Rafal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Mar 14 17:34:42 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 17:34:42 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 14 March 2015 at 12:42, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > ### I won't accept any attempts to deny me the right to replace my own human > flesh with technology, whether based on some fictitious arguments about my > identity or not. What you want to do with yours is your problem, just stay > away from mine, will you? > So long as there is only one identity (human, robot, upload, etc.) that thinks it is Rafal, then I don't see a problem. But if you are thinking about thousands of versions, competing to build the 'best' Rafal, then there is a problem. Who owns the original identity? (And all its rights and possessions). And if everybody does this.......... BillK From 0.20788 at gmail.com Sat Mar 14 14:07:11 2015 From: 0.20788 at gmail.com (i2i) Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 10:07:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Rafal, I did not say that "the concept of identity" is fictitious, I said that identity (as a thing in itself) is fictitious. I also did not say you are fictitious, although I don't know for sure. The status of AI being what it is, you must be at least one person. You have passed the Turing test. Congratulations. I did not say "the hard problem of consciousness" is "entailed by our mind's ability to categorize self", I said it is an illusory problem that arises from the confusion of a mind regarding itself as an object. This does call for elaboration - more than I will give here. But basically, the "hard problem" is just the difficulty of giving a coherent expression, in any language, of what we perceive in this situation, which is uniquely different from any situation in which the "subject" is discussing "objects" external to and other than itself. Maybe it is obvious to you that our ascription of "identity" to "objects" is just an aspect of how we think, but it was not obvious to me; it took me a long time to understand that and I still encounter many people making silly arguments about how "identity is preserved" in one situation and not in another, as if "identity" were an aspect of the world itself (Parfit's "further fact"). As to rights, they exist only in a social context. The "right" of suicide, for example, is hotly debated. In general, most people agree that suicide is not a right, it is a wrong. Urging others to suicide is almost always regarded as a wrong, and even as a crime. There must be some deep reasons why most people regard human survival and human security as worth protecting against all threats, even those that arise from human activities and even against the possibility of pathological choices. But that's another discussion. best wishes, Mark ----------------------------- Mark Avrum Gubrud gubrud at gmail.com +1 (240) 602-1841 twitter: @mgubrud blog: gubrud.net On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 10:38 AM, Mark Gubrud wrote: >> >> >> "My identity," and indeed, identity in general, is a fictitious >> property ascribed by a "subject" to its "objects" as it regards the >> actual universe. > > > ### To answer your fictitious email, no, the concept of identity is not > really fictitious. But my fictitious self is not interested in elaborating. > After all, this would be all fiction, wouldn't it? > --------------- > >> >> "Objects" are just a useful way of organizing the >> world, one which reflects many survival-important, functional features >> of the world. Tigers, berries, and sticks and stones are "objects," so >> are other people, so is one's self. [The greatest confusion arises, of >> course, when the "object" is the "subject" itself; this is exactly >> what gives rise to the (illusory) "hard problem of consciousness."] > > > ### Again, no, not really, the hard problem of consciousness is not entailed > by our mind's ability to categorize self. This does not need elaboration. > > --------------------- >> >> >> One can articulate (obvious) reasons why it is useful to organize the >> world this way. But the physical boundaries of our "objects" are fuzzy >> and mutable. The question of identity is just the mind's question, "Is >> this the same object I saw before?" One can lay out criteria for a >> definite answer to that question, and such criteria are not entirely >> arbitrary. But there are often cases where criteria that seemed to >> resolve the question unambiguously in most or all situations up to >> now, fail to resolve it in some new situations. The fundamental reason >> for this is that our ascription of "identity" to "objects" is just an >> aspect of how we think. > > > ### Well, yes, obviously. How could it be something else? > >> >> >> So, you are entitled to define or redefine "my identity" any way you >> like; what I won't accept is any argument that your concept of >> "identity" is the true and correct one, and that you can use this >> putative "fact" to justify the otherwise unjustifiable - such as, for >> example, the "replacement" or "transformation" of nature, human flesh, >> human beings, and even all humanity, by or into technology and its >> products, on an argument that "identity" is somehow preserved. > > > ### I won't accept any attempts to deny me the right to replace my own human > flesh with technology, whether based on some fictitious arguments about my > identity or not. What you want to do with yours is your problem, just stay > away from mine, will you? > > Rafal > From pharos at gmail.com Mon Mar 16 18:53:27 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2015 18:53:27 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- Message-ID: Articles are appearing claiming that The Selfish Gene got it wrong. Co-operation is better. Quote: Three years late, Scientific American is reacting to a paper on evolution of cooperation [2012] with a hint that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. The paper was by interlopers from physics, mathematically adept senior luminaries. The message of their mathematics was that if you put together a group of selfish individuals what evolves is (I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear this) a selfish community. A non-communal community. The authors use the colorful word "extortion" to describe the dysfunctional social relations. The reason this is important is that the standard evolutionary theory of cooperation says that global cooperation can emerge from behaviors that are individually selfish. It can't. (We may be tempted to dismiss the whole topic as esoteric or peripheral, but in fact it pokes a hole in a framework of evolutionary thinking that has become sclerotic, and is overdue for rethinking from the ground up. At stake is the way that we think about evolution, and by extension, the way we understand purposes and mechanisms in all of biology. Aging is one particular case in point.) ---------- BillK From sparge at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 12:51:25 2015 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 08:51:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 2:53 PM, BillK quoted: The reason this is important is that the standard evolutionary theory > of cooperation says that global cooperation can emerge from behaviors > that are individually selfish. It can't. > I'm gonna call BS on that. There are good, selfish reasons for cooperating and doing things that look superficially altruistic. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 15:29:16 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 11:29:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 BillK wrote: > Articles are appearing claiming that The Selfish Gene got it wrong. > > < > http://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2015/03/09/what-looks-like-cooperation-is-really-selfishness/ > > > I have a few thoughts on this. First of all it proposes a tactic that would allow you to score more points than the other player, but that is not necessarily the same strategy that would allow you to gain the most points, or even a strategy that would allow you to avoid getting a disastrously low score. If you starve to death one day after your opponent it's questionable how successful that tactic really was. The best tactic may not be the best strategy. And sometimes a tactic can be too clever for it's own good, you expect your opponent to respond logically to your actions but even if they are 100% logical if they are too complex your behavior might appear to your opponent as being random, and if you look at the actual paper http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3387070/ you can see that it's rather complex. Animals, and people too, can only react to what they understand; if your opponent believes you're behaving randomly then there is no way to know how they'll respond. In addition it ignores the part emotion plays in behavior, in real life tests of the Ultimatum Game it was found that people would usually choose to punish those who they believed acted unfairly even if that results in less reward for themselves. There is evidence that chimpanzees, monkeys and even rats also behave in this way. This probably evolved because without a sense of fairness social cohesion would not be possible, and if collective behavior was beneficial enough genes that promoted fairness would reproduce faster than genes that did not. I think the real moral to all this is that Evolution doesn't always find the perfect solution to a problem, in fact it almost never does. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 15:52:26 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 10:52:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ? I think the real moral to all this is that Evolution doesn't always find the perfect solution to a problem, in fact it almost never does. John K Clark I agree - however, if we have a secular god it is DNA, and the things it has cobbled together into something that works, mostly, is absolutely amazing, as is its ability to recognize that something new is needed and the old thing turned off. The more we understand it the more amazed I am. bill w ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 15:55:28 2015 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:55:28 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 'Good enough' is good enough for evolution. On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 4:52 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > I think the real moral to all this is that Evolution doesn't always find the > perfect solution to a problem, in fact it almost never does. > > John K Clark > > I agree - however, if we have a secular god it is DNA, and the things it has > cobbled together into something that works, mostly, is absolutely amazing, > as is its ability to recognize that something new is needed and the old > thing turned off. The more we understand it the more amazed I am. bill w > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From spike66 at att.net Tue Mar 17 16:17:03 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 09:17:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00d101d060cd$cf0221d0$6d066570$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark >?In addition it ignores the part emotion plays in behavior, in real life tests of the Ultimatum Game it was found that people would usually choose to punish those who they believed acted unfairly even if that results in less reward for themselves. There is evidence that chimpanzees, monkeys and even rats also behave in this way? John K Clark Ja. I see good explanations for that kind of behavior which are compatible with what Dawkins wrote in Selfish Gene. I don?t see that his notions are in any serious danger, even while contemplating the next really cool step: a philosophical symbiosis of Dawkins and the concept of the Nash equilibrium. Those are two powerful concepts which play well together. Truth is that way. The easiest way to illustrate the idea is in an environment where most of us here have experience: the office. We know people tend to pad expense reports, which might be considered minor cheating, but we do nothing and don?t worry about it. If we learn of something major that is being done by the director or the company, we each make a decision to go along with it to our benefit or blow a whistle which in the long run only hurts the whistleblower and the entire team. Under those circumstances, plenty of humans blow the whistle. I have been there and I did. Now I have no job, but I can still look at myself in the mirror. This behavior makes total sense to me and I would do it again and again in similar circumstances. The Ultimatum Game is an imperfect but better than nothing means of measuring this. We might call this phenom the Ultimatum paradox. I can imagine a Nash equilibrium forming in any company or any team. The individuals on the team will vary in their attitude toward unfair actions and in what they define as unfair, but the spectrum will smear out and include some from various points of view. We make all this noise about the wonders of diversity. Here you go, proof. The Ultimatum paradox demonstrates how diversity keeps a team honest. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 19:59:52 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 19:59:52 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: <00d101d060cd$cf0221d0$6d066570$@att.net> References: <00d101d060cd$cf0221d0$6d066570$@att.net> Message-ID: On 17 March 2015 at 16:17, spike wrote: > Ja. I see good explanations for that kind of behavior which are compatible > with what Dawkins wrote in Selfish Gene. I don't see that his notions are > in any serious danger, even while contemplating the next really cool step: a > philosophical symbiosis of Dawkins and the concept of the Nash equilibrium. > Those are two powerful concepts which play well together. Truth is that > way. > I think the new reasoning is that the selfish gene is too simplistic. It ignores too many exceptions. The selfish gene is a lovely story and very appealing. That's why it has lasted for 30 years. But new genetics has found that genes don't stand alone. A gene may or may not be expressed depending on many other factors. The selfish gene doesn't make decisions on its own. It's complicated! BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 23:41:14 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 18:41:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: References: <00d101d060cd$cf0221d0$6d066570$@att.net> Message-ID: ?new genetics has found that genes don't stand alone. A gene may or may not be expressed depending on many other factors. bill k? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Mar 17 23:44:49 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 18:44:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: References: <00d101d060cd$cf0221d0$6d066570$@att.net> Message-ID: Sorry - previous sent too soon. new genetics has found that genes don't stand alone. A gene may or may not be expressed depending on many other factors. bill k Yes, and some of those factors occur after birth, or in your grandmother, according to some of the epigenetic studies I've read. Talk about enormously complicated....... bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Mar 18 08:32:48 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 09:32:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <738030845-554@secure.ericade.net> BillK , 16/3/2015 7:56 PM: Articles are appearing claiming that The Selfish Gene got it wrong. Basically because *they* got everything wrong: The selfish gene theory does not speak about organism-level selfishness, but how genes behave.?Biologists have been studying the evolution of organism-level cooperation since Hamilton, and have a pretty good idea of different ways it can evolve and stabilize even if all actors are selfish.?The Dyson paper has *not* made a big splash in the evolutionary game theory community. Mostly because the conclusion is not too surprising: it has been known for a long time that there are no truly stable strategies in the evolutionary iterated prisoners dilemma.? Cooperation is important, interesting and complex. Well worth studying. But people tend to be seduced by simplistic stories, both about what it is and what everybody else believes. ?In particular, people tend to see a moral dimension to it, and hence get truly confused about what it means.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Mar 18 15:05:46 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 11:05:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Selfish Gene? Maybe not---- In-Reply-To: References: <00d101d060cd$cf0221d0$6d066570$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 BillK wrote: > I think the new reasoning is that the selfish gene is too simplistic. > It ignores too many exceptions. The selfish gene is a lovely story and > very appealing. That's why it has lasted for 30 years. But new genetics has found that genes don't stand alone. Are you trying to tell me with a straight face that Richard Dawkins and the other selfish gene people thought that genes acted in isolation and the expression of genes into actual traits that an animal had was *simple*?? Read Dawkins wonderful book "The Extended Phenotype" and then tell me Dawkins believed Evolution was simple. And from his very first book whose very title introduced the term "The Selfish Gene" Dawkins made it crystal clear that a successful gene was one that fit in well with it's environment, and he made it even more clear that no aspect of a gene's environment is more important than other genes. If there is anything revolutionary or surprising or even particularly interesting in Dyson's paper I don't see it. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Mar 19 17:17:22 2015 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 10:17:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits Message-ID: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/282/1805/20150120.full.pdf It also implies how to get rid of the invasive pythons. Some snakes, such as the Brown tree snake on Guam are particularly sensitive to acetaminophen. It would take some development work, but I think rabbits could carry enough to kill a python (if they are sensitive at all). The acetaminophen would have to be released by the digestion process. If that doesn't work, there are other methods ranging from other poisons to spring wires and explosives. Keith From spike66 at att.net Thu Mar 19 20:23:15 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:23:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Keith Henson >...It also implies how to get rid of the invasive pythons. ...If that doesn't work, there are other methods ranging from other poisons to spring wires and explosives. Keith _______________________________________________ That sounds like fun. I could imagine being on the development team. Your mission: figure out how to get a rabbit to carry around a python-triggered grenade. That could be messy. Another notion: figure out some way to allow Mister Bunny to escape unharmed with a poison-sac still attached after he is grabbed by a python and the constriction process begins. Example: some kind of device which exposes needles when pressure is applied, which injects the Mister Serpent causing him to perish before the rabbit. There must be some kind of toxin which works on snakes. Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wU-mSfpVUY It looks to me like Mister Snake is fine at 1:15, but there is what looks to me like a bug or another little snake or something that messes with him, then about 1:25 the big snake is going crazy and by 2:10 the slithery bastard is done in. So if we can figure out what did him in, and get some of whatever was delivered to him, and rig up a rabbit to do that, perhaps we could have a single rabbit take down more than one python. The notion of one snake biting another is somehow deeply satisfying. Whatever that big guy had done to him sure looked like it hurt. spike From anders at aleph.se Fri Mar 20 10:25:22 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 11:25:22 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Neat Message-ID: <917673340-1049@secure.ericade.net> Today I woke up to another grey morning... grey because the moon was hiding the sun. (OK, some British clouds were involved too): https://flic.kr/p/rqqtpg And I realized the universe felt *neat*. The moon and sun perfectly lined up with Earth. Which is also at equinox: the plane spanned by our rotational angular momentum vector and our velocity vector is at right angles to the sun-Earth radius. And the moon is nearly at perigee.? Not everything is perfectly lined up, and of course these configurations recur. But it is a cool place to live. I think I will clean my room today as a homage to the celestial neatness.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Mar 20 10:31:35 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 11:31:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> Message-ID: <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Then there are the recent paper in Science about CRISPR-based gene drives for spreading genes into wild populations and the discussion about it: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/03/18/science.aaa5945 http://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/crispr/ When George Church says your research is going too far, then we are really talking about something.? But we could insert interesting suicide genes in the snake population, let them loose, and then have the entire population crash when exposed to something like an artificial pheromone that activates them. Or insert the pheromone gene in wild populations we want to protect to make them snake-poisonous. What could possibly go wrong? ;-) 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 Mar 20 11:04:49 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:04:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: I think, if you want to eradicate for example snakes from an island, you'll do nothing with some poison. Unless you are ready to cover the whole island a meter or so deep with that poison. Which you are NOT going to do. With just some a little poisoned rabbits, you will at most evolve a new kind of snakes, which won't eat rabbits but birds or will be adapted to eat some poison or whatever. Biology against biology hardly ever works in a desired way. What you have to do, is to launch enough drones or ground robots which will spot and kill with a gun or a laser or with a large scissors every snake they will meet. This is a step too high for snakes to adapt. Provided that your drones/Boston dogs are good enough, of course. But no poison will do. As I heard, the large population of wild hogs in the US is now being poisoned with the sodium nitrite. You will soon have the sodium nitrite eating swines. That's what you'll have. On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 11:31 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Then there are the recent paper in Science about CRISPR-based gene drives > for spreading genes into wild populations and the discussion about it: > http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/03/18/science.aaa5945 > http://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/crispr/ > When George Church says your research is going too far, then we are really > talking about something. > > But we could insert interesting suicide genes in the snake population, let > them loose, and then have the entire population crash when exposed to > something like an artificial pheromone that activates them. Or insert the > pheromone gene in wild populations we want to protect to make them > snake-poisonous. What could possibly go wrong? ;-) > > > 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 msd001 at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 12:40:45 2015 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 08:40:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 7:04 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I think, if you want to eradicate for example snakes from an island, you'll > do nothing with some poison. Unless you are ready to cover the whole island > a meter or so deep with that poison. Which you are NOT going to do. > > With just some a little poisoned rabbits, you will at most evolve a new kind > of snakes, which won't eat rabbits but birds or will be adapted to eat some > poison or whatever. > > Biology against biology hardly ever works in a desired way. > > What you have to do, is to launch enough drones or ground robots which will > spot and kill with a gun or a laser or with a large scissors every snake > they will meet. > > This is a step too high for snakes to adapt. Provided that your > drones/Boston dogs are good enough, of course. > > But no poison will do. > > As I heard, the large population of wild hogs in the US is now being > poisoned with the sodium nitrite. You will soon have the sodium nitrite > eating swines. That's what you'll have. Humans against Nature hardly ever works in a desired way too. ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 13:03:01 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 14:03:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Yes, Mike, humans are too natural. That's why I want to send the drones or some other terminators against the snakes. And not some human hunters. On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 7:04 AM, Tomaz Kristan > wrote: > > I think, if you want to eradicate for example snakes from an island, > you'll > > do nothing with some poison. Unless you are ready to cover the whole > island > > a meter or so deep with that poison. Which you are NOT going to do. > > > > With just some a little poisoned rabbits, you will at most evolve a new > kind > > of snakes, which won't eat rabbits but birds or will be adapted to eat > some > > poison or whatever. > > > > Biology against biology hardly ever works in a desired way. > > > > What you have to do, is to launch enough drones or ground robots which > will > > spot and kill with a gun or a laser or with a large scissors every snake > > they will meet. > > > > This is a step too high for snakes to adapt. Provided that your > > drones/Boston dogs are good enough, of course. > > > > But no poison will do. > > > > As I heard, the large population of wild hogs in the US is now being > > poisoned with the sodium nitrite. You will soon have the sodium nitrite > > eating swines. That's what you'll have. > > Humans against Nature hardly ever works in a desired way too. > > ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect > _______________________________________________ > 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 sparge at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 16:09:44 2015 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:09:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Why all snake-hate? And who really cares about invasive species? Humans are most invasive species ever. -Dave On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 9:03 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Yes, Mike, humans are too natural. That's why I want to send the drones or > some other terminators against the snakes. And not some human hunters. > > > > > > > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > >> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 7:04 AM, Tomaz Kristan >> wrote: >> > I think, if you want to eradicate for example snakes from an island, >> you'll >> > do nothing with some poison. Unless you are ready to cover the whole >> island >> > a meter or so deep with that poison. Which you are NOT going to do. >> > >> > With just some a little poisoned rabbits, you will at most evolve a new >> kind >> > of snakes, which won't eat rabbits but birds or will be adapted to eat >> some >> > poison or whatever. >> > >> > Biology against biology hardly ever works in a desired way. >> > >> > What you have to do, is to launch enough drones or ground robots which >> will >> > spot and kill with a gun or a laser or with a large scissors every snake >> > they will meet. >> > >> > This is a step too high for snakes to adapt. Provided that your >> > drones/Boston dogs are good enough, of course. >> > >> > But no poison will do. >> > >> > As I heard, the large population of wild hogs in the US is now being >> > poisoned with the sodium nitrite. You will soon have the sodium nitrite >> > eating swines. That's what you'll have. >> >> Humans against Nature hardly ever works in a desired way too. >> >> ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > > -- > https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 16:42:36 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 17:42:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: I hate poisonous snakes. No matter where they are coming from. I dislike almost all the biology. I like some humans and some flowers and some other plants. Have some empathy for domestic cats or an occasional dog or horse. But I see no intrinsic value in our ecosystems. It's just a big slaughterhouse if you look it closely enough. On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 5:09 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > Why all snake-hate? And who really cares about invasive species? Humans > are most invasive species ever. > > -Dave > > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 9:03 AM, Tomaz Kristan > wrote: > >> Yes, Mike, humans are too natural. That's why I want to send the drones >> or some other terminators against the snakes. And not some human hunters. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: >> >>> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 7:04 AM, Tomaz Kristan >>> wrote: >>> > I think, if you want to eradicate for example snakes from an island, >>> you'll >>> > do nothing with some poison. Unless you are ready to cover the whole >>> island >>> > a meter or so deep with that poison. Which you are NOT going to do. >>> > >>> > With just some a little poisoned rabbits, you will at most evolve a >>> new kind >>> > of snakes, which won't eat rabbits but birds or will be adapted to eat >>> some >>> > poison or whatever. >>> > >>> > Biology against biology hardly ever works in a desired way. >>> > >>> > What you have to do, is to launch enough drones or ground robots which >>> will >>> > spot and kill with a gun or a laser or with a large scissors every >>> snake >>> > they will meet. >>> > >>> > This is a step too high for snakes to adapt. Provided that your >>> > drones/Boston dogs are good enough, of course. >>> > >>> > But no poison will do. >>> > >>> > As I heard, the large population of wild hogs in the US is now being >>> > poisoned with the sodium nitrite. You will soon have the sodium nitrite >>> > eating swines. That's what you'll have. >>> >>> Humans against Nature hardly ever works in a desired way too. >>> >>> ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect >>> _______________________________________________ >>> extropy-chat mailing list >>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Fri Mar 20 16:31:03 2015 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:31:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: > Why all snake-hate? And who really cares about invasive > species? Humans are > most invasive species ever. > Thank you, Dave. As a herper I find the whole thread disturbing. Since this python issue is also a bit of a political game as well, it's hard to trust the reports. Regards, MB From sparge at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 18:20:35 2015 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 14:20:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > I hate poisonous snakes. No matter where they are coming from. > Don't you think that's a little irrational? Fear them, maybe dislike them, sure. I respect them and leave them alone. I dislike almost all the biology. I like some humans and some flowers and > some other plants. Have some empathy for domestic cats or an occasional dog > or horse. > > But I see no intrinsic value in our ecosystems. > I do. I think the vast numbers of individuals and species of life on Earth, past and present, makes life infinitely more complex, interesting, and rewarding than it would be without them. That doesn't mean I think every extinction is a tragedy. But living in an environment, real or simulated, in which people are the only forms of live would get old pretty quickly. > It's just a big slaughterhouse if you look it closely enough. > Or maybe it's one big, complex organism. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 18:49:33 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:49:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Unfortunately, every complex organism is a kind of slaughterhouse itself. I don't mind for those bacteriae I kill every second. I care for myself feeling ill doing that. Having fever and such. Yeah, this biology is a very sloppy prototype of what ought to be. On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 7:20 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 12:42 PM, Tomaz Kristan > wrote: > >> I hate poisonous snakes. No matter where they are coming from. >> > > Don't you think that's a little irrational? Fear them, maybe dislike them, > sure. I respect them and leave them alone. > > I dislike almost all the biology. I like some humans and some flowers and >> some other plants. Have some empathy for domestic cats or an occasional dog >> or horse. >> >> But I see no intrinsic value in our ecosystems. >> > > I do. I think the vast numbers of individuals and species of life on > Earth, past and present, makes life infinitely more complex, interesting, > and rewarding than it would be without them. That doesn't mean I think > every extinction is a tragedy. But living in an environment, real or > simulated, in which people are the only forms of live would get old pretty > quickly. > > >> It's just a big slaughterhouse if you look it closely enough. >> > > Or maybe it's one big, complex organism. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > 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 hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 19:43:57 2015 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 12:43:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > As I heard, the large population of wild hogs in the US is now being > poisoned with the sodium nitrite. You will soon have the sodium nitrite > eating swines. That's what you'll have. Pre cured bacon! Yum. Keith From kellycoinguy at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 20:14:06 2015 From: kellycoinguy at gmail.com (Kelly Anderson) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 14:14:06 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > > But I see no intrinsic value in our ecosystems. It's just a big > slaughterhouse if you look it closely enough. > > Except that without it, we would all die. Fast. If that happens before there is a non-biological solution to the intelligence problem, then it was all for naught. -Kelly -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Mar 20 20:46:34 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 21:46:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> <918092659-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: Keith - I agree. I have a taste for pork. Kelly - yes, of course. We must not get rid of this prototype before having something else. The pork can be even better with no swines (or other animals) to kill them first. I can already smell a non-biological roasted pork - must be really good! On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 9:14 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote: > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Tomaz Kristan > wrote: > >> >> But I see no intrinsic value in our ecosystems. It's just a big >> slaughterhouse if you look it closely enough. >> >> > Except that without it, we would all die. Fast. If that happens before > there is a non-biological solution to the intelligence problem, then it was > all for naught. > > -Kelly > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mar 20 21:07:25 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 21:07:25 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> Message-ID: On 19 March 2015 at 20:23, spike wrote: > That sounds like fun. I could imagine being on the development team. Your > mission: figure out how to get a rabbit to carry around a python-triggered > grenade. That could be messy. > > Another notion: figure out some way to allow Mister Bunny to escape unharmed > with a poison-sac still attached after he is grabbed by a python and the > constriction process begins. Example: some kind of device which exposes > needles when pressure is applied, which injects the Mister Serpent causing > him to perish before the rabbit. > I get a bad feeling about developing jihad suicide bunnies. :) First they came for the pythons......... BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri Mar 20 23:48:47 2015 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:48:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: <010e01d06282$8875dac0$99619040$@att.net> Message-ID: <03c401d06368$69905680$3cb10380$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK I get a bad feeling about developing jihad suicide bunnies. :) BillK _______________________________________________ Sure but at least we discovered a great name for a rock band. spike From pharos at gmail.com Sat Mar 21 10:14:31 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2015 10:14:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Possible origin of life chemistry Message-ID: A new paper from Cambridge suggests a possible chemistry sequence for he creation of life. Discussed here: Quote: The authors have constructed a very plausible geochemical scenario that gathers the feedstock, the reactions, and products at the needed times and the needed environments. Imagine an impact on Earth. The carbonaceous meteor creates various compounds, including hydrogen cyanide as described above. The crater fills with water, allowing various chemical reactions to take place. Over time, the water evaporates. As it does, compounds that are not as soluble in water will collect in layers above the water line, on the crater rim. Compounds that are more soluble in water will become more and more concentrated in smaller areas as the water evaporates. The layers of compounds left behind will be further reacted by heat into some of the precursor compounds. Rainfall on higher ground then, dissolves the salts, concentrated them and flowing them over other compound deposits. These are further reacted by ultraviolet light and copper salts (as catalysts). Finally, different streams, with different compounds (and concentrations of compounds) merge together in a single basin where they mix. Subsequent evaporation, further concentrate these compounds. ----------------- If correct, this suggests that the chemicals required for life should be everywhere throughout the universe. BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Mar 22 02:17:00 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2015 22:17:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Neat In-Reply-To: <917673340-1049@secure.ericade.net> References: <917673340-1049@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: I always thought it was neat that even though the diameter of the sun is 400 times larger than the moon's it's 400 times further away so they both look the same size to us, and so we can have solar eclipses. John K Clark On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 6:25 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Today I woke up to another grey morning... grey because the moon was > hiding the sun. (OK, some British clouds were involved too): > > https://flic.kr/p/rqqtpg > > And I realized the universe felt *neat*. The moon and sun perfectly lined > up with Earth. Which is also at equinox: the plane spanned by our > rotational angular momentum vector and our velocity vector is at right > angles to the sun-Earth radius. And the moon is nearly at perigee. > > Not everything is perfectly lined up, and of course these configurations > recur. But it is a cool place to live. I think I will clean my room today > as a homage to the celestial neatness. > > > > 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 rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Mar 22 21:51:45 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2015 17:51:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Tomaz Kristan > wrote: > > > As I heard, the large population of wild hogs in the US is now being > > poisoned with the sodium nitrite. You will soon have the sodium nitrite > > eating swines. That's what you'll have. > > Pre cured bacon! Yum. > ### https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89UliEiQQyU Imagine to soar thunderously through the skies and deal death to hundreds of warm-blooded creatures, leaving bodies piled high! Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Mar 22 22:00:23 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2015 18:00:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 1:34 PM, BillK wrote: > On 14 March 2015 at 12:42, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > ### I won't accept any attempts to deny me the right to replace my own > human > > flesh with technology, whether based on some fictitious arguments about > my > > identity or not. What you want to do with yours is your problem, just > stay > > away from mine, will you? > > > > So long as there is only one identity (human, robot, upload, etc.) > that thinks it is Rafal, then I don't see a problem. But if you are > thinking about thousands of versions, competing to build the 'best' > Rafal, then there is a problem. > ### Why? Copy-clans engaging in cooperative self-improvement sound like a great idea. Probably there wouldn't be one "best" me but rather hundreds of various specialized versions, probably buying and selling cognitive modules from other clans. > > Who owns the original identity? (And all its rights and possessions). > > And if everybody does this.......... ### Many approaches could be taken to constructing the legal system dealing with copies. Finding rules that work doesn't seem like a complicated problem, although finding the most efficient rules might take some effort. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Mon Mar 23 11:11:47 2015 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 12:11:47 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Pythons and rabbits In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: So, those wild hogs or swines are not a problem at all! But more a good source of fun and food. I should have known that immediately. On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 10:51 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Keith Henson > wrote: > >> On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Tomaz Kristan >> wrote: >> >> > As I heard, the large population of wild hogs in the US is now being >> > poisoned with the sodium nitrite. You will soon have the sodium nitrite >> > eating swines. That's what you'll have. >> >> Pre cured bacon! Yum. >> > > ### https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89UliEiQQyU > > Imagine to soar thunderously through the skies and deal death to hundreds > of warm-blooded creatures, leaving bodies piled high! > > Rafa? > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Mon Mar 23 19:24:55 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 19:24:55 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 22 March 2015 at 22:00, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 1:34 PM, BillK wrote: >> So long as there is only one identity (human, robot, upload, etc.) >> that thinks it is Rafal, then I don't see a problem. But if you are >> thinking about thousands of versions, competing to build the 'best' >> Rafal, then there is a problem. > > > ### Why? Copy-clans engaging in cooperative self-improvement sound like a > great idea. Probably there wouldn't be one "best" me but rather hundreds of > various specialized versions, probably buying and selling cognitive modules > from other clans. >> >> >> Who owns the original identity? (And all its rights and possessions). >> And if everybody does this.......... > > > ### Many approaches could be taken to constructing the legal system dealing > with copies. Finding rules that work doesn't seem like a complicated > problem, although finding the most efficient rules might take some effort. > > Obviously if there is more than one 'Rafal' then the situation is more complicated. :) One 'Rafal' owns all their resources and takes all the decisions. No problem with having lots of sub-routines that deal with specific functions or learn new techniques. Just like present day humans. Or an upload mind with many non-conscious AI robot agents. (I like this option). But these sub-routines are not conscious 'people'. New agents can be created as required, altered, temporarily put to sleep, or deleted. No worries. But it is unethical to do similar actions with 'people'. If you create many conscious 'Rafal' persons then they all have equal rights to continued existence and to control the original Rafal resources. So you would need some sort of bureaucracy (United Nations?) to reach agreement on developments, spending, research, investments, etc. This looks cumbersome to me. And each 'Rafal' feels poorer by having to share resources and perhaps have their preferences over-ruled by the majority. Though if manyl are creating additional resources, there should be minimal resource restrictions. But I doubt if libertarians would prefer this 'hive-mind' option. Another option is to create individual entities (based on Rafal code) and set them free to survive as best they can. But this is not really creating Rafal copies. More like children with a family resemblance, but with some being very different. And then there is the reaction of the rest of humanity to consider. Some of these options might be considered as almost a declaration of war. With the usual consequences. BillK From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Mar 23 22:41:22 2015 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 15:41:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Fermi question, possible answer Message-ID: Here is something that may lie behind the Fermi question. http://phys.org/news/2015-03-jupiter-accounts-unusual-solar.html#nRlv The solar system and the particular size of Earth may be the result of a rare occurrence. If the size of the Earth makes a critical difference in the life getting started or evolving technophiles, then the future is unknown rather than the silence indicating that technically inclined species always end in ways where they leave no observable mark on the universe. So maybe we are the first. Keith From pharos at gmail.com Mon Mar 23 23:30:58 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 23:30:58 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Fermi question, possible answer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 23 March 2015 at 22:41, Keith Henson wrote: > Here is something that may lie behind the Fermi question. > http://phys.org/news/2015-03-jupiter-accounts-unusual-solar.html#nRlv > > The solar system and the particular size of Earth may be the result of > a rare occurrence. > > If the size of the Earth makes a critical difference in the life > getting started or evolving technophiles, then the future is unknown > rather than the silence indicating that technically inclined species > always end in ways where they leave no observable mark on the > universe. > > So maybe we are the first. > BBC TV Horizon had a 60 mins documentary on the chaotic origins of the Solar System about three weeks ago. It is still watchable / downloadable in iplayer. The wandering Jupiter theory sounds pretty dramatic. But whether this is essential for life creation is another question. This universe seems to be 'designed' for life creation so that primitive life appears wherever there is a chance. Advancing to intelligent life may well require another chain of unlikely events, but the universe is a pretty big place............ BillK From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Mar 24 00:18:35 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 20:18:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 3:24 PM, BillK wrote: > > One 'Rafal' owns all their resources and takes all the decisions. No > problem with having lots of sub-routines that deal with specific > functions or learn new techniques. Just like present day humans. Or an > upload mind with many non-conscious AI robot agents. (I like this > option). > ### Let's assume we are talking about making actual copies - minds sufficiently similar to be substitutable for the original in all functional tests. Making partial copies, such as ones that would pay fealty to the unrestricted original, would be a different discussion. In this situation, there is an interesting self-referential dynamic: Minds with high levels of dominance, low agreeableness, high impulsivity, would hardly benefit from copying. All they would get would be another asshole around, one that knows all their secrets. Presumably such minds would opt for copying only slave sub-selves. On the other hand, minds with low dominance, agreeable, and capable of perceiving external processes (i.e. other minds) as valuable, will potentially benefit enormously from copying, by gaining trustworthy cooperators who literally know their mind. This may inform our predictions about the future of self-copying (as opposed to slave-sub-self-copying). -------------------- > > But these sub-routines are not conscious 'people'. New agents can be > created as required, altered, temporarily put to sleep, or deleted. No > worries. But it is unethical to do similar actions with 'people'. > > If you create many conscious 'Rafal' persons then they all have equal > rights to continued existence and to control the original Rafal > resources. So you would need some sort of bureaucracy (United > Nations?) to reach agreement on developments, spending, research, > investments, etc. ### Not really. Why should you bother about what I do with myself? I may decide to break my leg. I may decide to make a copy of myself and break one of our (four) legs. Either way, it's my business, since there are no other people involved (remember, we are talking about copies that can substitute for the original in all tests). Of course, people are meddlesome, and they will try to enact laws interfering in the internal affairs of copy-clans. There may be a fight sometime in the future. I predict that copy-clans that tell others to go screw themselves would prevail. Why? Copy-clans are likely to have a very simple and efficient governance, their constituents love and trust each other, and therefore they will be able to act very quickly, in a coordinated and effective manner. Those who want to prohibit copying are disparate individuals with the regular, crappy kind of governance we see today, rife with internal contradictions and feuding. Copy clans will run circles around them. Please note that I am not making deontological claims, consequentialist claims, or indeed any normative claims at all. I am just predicting that a more efficient form of governance will steamroll less efficient ones, regardless of what this or that person may feel is right or wrong. --------------- > This looks cumbersome to me. And each 'Rafal' feels > poorer by having to share resources and perhaps have their preferences > over-ruled by the majority. Though if manyl are creating additional > resources, there should be minimal resource restrictions. > But I doubt if libertarians would prefer this 'hive-mind' option. > ### I don't mind if the hive is myself. I like myself. I am happy to share with myself, and know how not to piss myself off. I would not over-rule my own preferences (there is something mind-twistingly impossible in trying to imagine how such over-ruling could take place). I would hate to be eaten and incorporated by a hive of my enemies but I would be happy to grow into a hive of myself and my friends. -------------------- > > And then there is the reaction of the rest of humanity to consider. > Some of these options might be considered as almost a declaration of > war. With the usual consequences. ### Why would anybody want to go to war with me? I pay my bills, I don't take what's not mine, and I don't vote. Why would anybody go to war with more me's? Mere act of copying wouldn't mean I would start stealing. I would only copy myself if I had enough resources to support more of myselves. Just today my agent joked she'd like to clone me so she could send me to more hospitals simultaneously (I am booked till December and some of my old clients are clamoring to get me back). Little did she know how close to the truth she was. I would predict that jerks will try to build hierarchical hives of crippled sub-selves and twisted, stolen copies of others, driven by mad ambition and fear. Morally neutral persons like me (I am not good, but then I am not evil either) will build large, happy families. Traditionalists will just vote for a Clinton or a Bush, forever. We'll see who wins. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Tue Mar 24 15:45:30 2015 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 08:45:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> If the technology exists to create copy-clans, then they will evolve, regardless of whether others try to stop them; it would like being trying to stop the printing press. Many countries and religions (for instance, the Catholic Church) tried to outlaw it, but all it did was drive the printing press underground in those nations. There are two causes of altruism: genetic similarity and reciprocity. Currently, the most altruistic of human relations are within immediate families. A parent will die for a child, a brother will die for a brother. Extremely close relations of reciprocity (friendship) can also inspire high levels of reciprocity. To make such self-sacrifice for a stranger, humans must expect to receive compensation (another form of reciprocity), like payment and honors to soldiers, that will benefit themselves or their family. Individual members of copy-clans could potentially be much more altruistic toward each other than even parents/children/brothers/sisters. Copy-clans would have not merely genetic similarity but genetic identity, so there would be an evolutionary reward for individual members who were completely self-sacrificing for the good of the clan. For the first time, there would be a society where communism could actually work. Relations between copy-clans however, would still have to be governed by reciprocity, or in other words, capitalism? or else by the only historically known alternative to capitalism besides family: predation (conquest, genocide, slavery). There is no REASON that multiple copy-clans should not co-exist peacefully with one another in a capitalist, democratic society, but not all humans are reasonable, and I predict that some would make one (or both) of two mistakes. 1.) To resort to predation rather than reciprocity as the approach to relations between copy-clans or between homo sapiens and copy-clans 2.) To attempt to impose on all copy-clans or on all copy-clans and on homo sapiens the same system of absolute altruism (i.e. communism) as operates within one copy-clan but which could never work between genetically non-identical copy-clans or individuals. The attempt to impose such altruism where there is evolutionary resistance to it would then break down into predation. (As it did in communist states.) Therefore it is likely, though very sad and unnecessary, that the existence of copy-clans would lead to war. You can?t introduce an essentially new species of sentient beings into an ecology that so far has only supported one without there being a contest for resources. If we had the ability to populate new areas, in space, or perhaps new nations in sea-steads or something, maybe that contest could be postponed by expanding the ecological niche. Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads > On Mar 23, 2015, at 5:18 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > ### Why would anybody want to go to war with me? I pay my bills, I don't take what's not mine, and I don't vote. Why would anybody go to war with more me's? Mere act of copying wouldn't mean I would start stealing. I would only copy myself if I had enough resources to support more of myselves. Just today my agent joked she'd like to clone me so she could send me to more hospitals simultaneously (I am booked till December and some of my old clients are clamoring to get me back). Little did she know how close to the truth she was. > > I would predict that jerks will try to build hierarchical hives of crippled sub-selves and twisted, stolen copies of others, driven by mad ambition and fear. Morally neutral persons like me (I am not good, but then I am not evil either) will build large, happy families. Traditionalists will just vote for a Clinton or a Bush, forever. We'll see who wins. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Mar 24 18:28:51 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:28:51 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: ?To make such self-sacrifice for a stranger, humans must expect to receive compensation (another form of reciprocity), like payment and honors to soldiers, that will benefit themselves or their family. Tara I completely disagree with this. I help people with no expectation of reward from them or their family, friends, government, or anything. I just helped an immigrant family get their car started and got nothing in return - not even thanks. But I know I did the right thing. For those of you who believe in an identity, this reinforced my belief that I am a helping person. There any many forms of reward/reinforcement for our behaviors and self-reinforcement is one of the most powerful. How this fits in with people's ideas of evolutionary theory I neither know nor care. Bill W I? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Tue Mar 24 19:58:39 2015 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 12:58:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: <78F66716-A170-4137-A5FA-DD9F3C2ADFA2@taramayastales.com> I?m glad you are a nice person, but you should recognize that your act of altruism took place in an environment where if that family had repaid you by murdering you and moving into your house, they would have been arrested and punished. This is why a communist society can work for about a generation ? or in a very small, tight-knit community. People reared in a high trust environment will pro-actively and preemptively engage in altruism, with the (unconscious but rational) expectation other strangers will do the same for them. The few who break the trust must still be punished, however, so a high trust society must also be a law-abiding society, not an anarchy. If you had been raised in a society ? or even suddenly found yourself in a society ? where people continuously rewarded your altruism with contempt and betrayal, your altruism would eventually break down? or you would be martyred. A while ago, I read a news story about an idealistic young woman who decided to hitchhike from Europe across the Middle East wearing a wedding dress, to show that she was ?bride of peace? (or something, I don?t remember the exact details of why she wore a wedding dress) and to show that people could be trusted. By all reports, she was a wonderful, compassionate person. Dozens (hundreds?) of kind and wonderful people gave her lifts and proved her trust in human kindness. But before she even made it across Turkey, she was raped, murdered and left dead on the side of the road. She learned too late that just because you yourself are kind and self-sacrificing, doesn?t meant that everyone is. Evolutionary psychology operates over generations. The fact that you, and many others, are inherently nice does not discredit or invalidate it. Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads > On Mar 24, 2015, at 11:28 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?To make such self-sacrifice for a stranger, humans must expect to receive compensation (another form of reciprocity), like payment and honors to soldiers, that will benefit themselves or their family. Tara > > I completely disagree with this. I help people with no expectation of reward from them or their family, friends, government, or anything. I just helped an immigrant family get their car started and got nothing in return - not even thanks. But I know I did the right thing. > > For those of you who believe in an identity, this reinforced my belief that I am a helping person. There any many forms of reward/reinforcement for our behaviors and self-reinforcement is one of the most powerful. > > How this fits in with people's ideas of evolutionary theory I neither know nor care. > > Bill W > > I? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Mar 24 20:58:21 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 20:58:21 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On 24 March 2015 at 18:28, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > For those of you who believe in an identity, this reinforced my belief that > I am a helping person. There any many forms of reward/reinforcement for our > behaviors and self-reinforcement is one of the most powerful. > > How this fits in with people's ideas of evolutionary theory I neither know > nor care. > Don't worry. Whatever your behavior, the evolutionary psychologists can always make up a story that fits their theory. :) For humans, cultural memes and situational reactions are more important in deciding behavior. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Mar 24 21:05:23 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 16:05:23 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: <78F66716-A170-4137-A5FA-DD9F3C2ADFA2@taramayastales.com> References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> <78F66716-A170-4137-A5FA-DD9F3C2ADFA2@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: I consider myself an evolutionary psychologist, much like Stephen Pinker - my guru, I suppose. I do not doubt that if I were to be continually punished for good deeds I would stop them. However, this result is likely to be rare - very rare. I was just making the point that rewards do not necessarily have to come from others. The martyr, in fact, is a real creature, as has been demonstrated many times in history, and has rejected the rewards offered by others. We internalize through identification processes the good and the bad we see in others, though we change those to fit into our own system of morality. And some of what we call our conscience is inherited. I wish I could live to understand more of that, as future geneticists figure it out. How all this fits into theories of altruism is something I am not going to get into, lacking both the background and the interest. As I understand it, true communism has never been practiced anywhere, and where it has been tried, it failed miserably, victim to human selfishness. bill w ?? Tara Maya > Blog | Twitter > | Facebook > | > Amazon > | > Goodreads > > > > On Mar 24, 2015, at 11:28 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > ?To make such self-sacrifice for a stranger, humans must expect to receive > compensation (another form of reciprocity), like payment and honors to > soldiers, that will benefit themselves or their family. Tara > > I completely disagree with this. I help people with no expectation of > reward from them or their family, friends, government, or anything. I just > helped an immigrant family get their car started and got nothing in return > - not even thanks. But I know I did the right thing. > > For those of you who believe in an identity, this reinforced my belief > that I am a helping person. There any many forms of reward/reinforcement > for our behaviors and self-reinforcement is one of the most powerful. > > How this fits in with people's ideas of evolutionary theory I neither know > nor care. > > Bill W > > I? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Mar 25 00:48:20 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 20:48:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 11:45 AM, Tara Maya wrote: > > > Therefore it is likely, though very sad and unnecessary, that the > existence of copy-clans would lead to war. You can?t introduce an > essentially new species of sentient beings into an ecology that so far has > only supported one without there being a contest for resources. If we had > the ability to populate new areas, in space, or perhaps new nations in > sea-steads or something, maybe that contest could be postponed by expanding > the ecological niche. > ### I agree with what you wrote. When I was rhetorically asking why would anybody go to war with me, I meant that copying itself should not be a reason to go to war, although of course, whatever brings war among individuals is likely to be still operative between copy-clans and between copy-clans and individuals. This said, we are not currently in a Malthusian regime, so bringing in additional participants (whether through copying or old-fashioned baby-making) is not necessarily a reason for conflict, yet. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Mar 25 00:58:43 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 20:58:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> <78F66716-A170-4137-A5FA-DD9F3C2ADFA2@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 5:05 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > I do not doubt that if I were to be continually punished for good deeds I > would stop them. However, this result is likely to be rare - very rare. > ### If you are talking about good deeds towards out-group members, punishing such deeds is the normal state of affairs in traditional societies. Read Napoleon Chagnon's reports about the Yanomami. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rhanson at gmu.edu Tue Mar 24 16:10:31 2015 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin D Hanson) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 16:10:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: <181B7500-153E-4092-948E-6B51763FDE94@gmu.edu> On Mar 24, 2015, at 11:45 AM, Tara Maya > wrote: Individual members of copy-clans could potentially be much more altruistic toward each other than even parents/children/brothers/sisters. Copy-clans would have not merely genetic similarity but genetic identity, so there would be an evolutionary reward for individual members who were completely self-sacrificing for the good of the clan. For the first time, there would be a society where communism could actually work. Until there is time for genetic evolution to adapt to the existence of copy clans, the actual behaviors are those of humans who find themselves in this situation. So a lot depends on what sort of previous existing situations this new situation is framed as being most like. Competition between copy clans could induce cultural evolution that favors clans that figure out how to frame this situation to promote the most useful cooperation. But that could still leave a lot of room for conflict within a clan. There is no REASON that multiple copy-clans should not co-exist peacefully with one another in a capitalist, democratic society, but not all humans are reasonable, and I predict that some would make one (or both) of two mistakes. 1.) To resort to predation rather than reciprocity as the approach to relations between copy-clans or between homo sapiens and copy-clans 2.) To attempt to impose on all copy-clans or on all copy-clans and on homo sapiens the same system of absolute altruism (i.e. communism) as operates within one copy-clan ... Therefore it is likely, though very sad and unnecessary, that the existence of copy-clans would lead to war. Those don?t give much reason to expect more war with copy clans than we already have with humans. 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 anders at aleph.se Wed Mar 25 08:33:33 2015 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2015 09:33:33 +0100 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: <1342724426-1547@secure.ericade.net> Tara Maya , 24/3/2015 5:04 PM: Therefore it is likely, though very sad and unnecessary, that the existence of copy-clans would lead to war. You can?t introduce an essentially new species of sentient beings into an ecology that so far has only supported one without there being a contest for resources. If we had the ability to populate new areas, in space, or perhaps new nations in sea-steads or something, maybe that contest could be postponed by expanding the ecological niche. I don't think this is enough of an argument: there have been peaceful resource constrained societies (think Japan during the Edo period), and introducing a new species with *different* resource demands does not necessarily lead to competition.? Still, in my and Peter Eckersleys paper "Is brain emulation dangerous?" ( http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jagi.2013.4.issue-3/jagi-2013-0011/jagi-2013-0011.xml ) we listed a bunch of reasons to be concerned: "The consensus view among those who have studied the history of war is that there is no single agreed major cause for violent conflict. (Levy and Thompson 2009; White 2012) Unfortunately, brain emulation technologies are capable of providing many of the kinds of ingredients that are commonly regarded as contributing to the risk of war (Humphreys 2002; van Evera 2013), including: * increasing inequality (between emulations, humans who can afford and want to "become" emulations, and humans who cannot); * groups that become marginalized (humans who cannot compete with emulations, emulations or groups of emulations that are at a disadvantage compared to other emulations); * disruption of existing social power relationships and the creation of opportunities to establish new kinds of power; * potential first strike-advantages and cumulative resource advantages (holding more resources increases the resource-gathering efficiency); * the appearance of groups of intelligent beings who may empathise with each other even less than humans historically have done; * the appearance of groups of beings with strong internal loyalty and greater willingness to "die" for what they value (Shulman 2010); * particularly strong triggers for racist and xenophobic prejudices; * particularly strong triggers for vigorous religious objections; * the creation of situations in which the scope of human rights and property rights are poorly defined and subject to dispute (and surprise)." These apply to brain emulations in general, with copyclans being a driver for just a few. None of these are perfect arguments: they just modify the likeliehood of conflict, which is also affected by a lot of other things. There are also mitigating factors. In the paper we argue that better computer security makes some of these factors less risky (it is easier to protect oneself, first mover advantages go down, rights can be enforced better), and of course a biological plus software humanity is actually more robust against existential threats than a single kingdom humanity.? Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Mar 25 16:45:00 2015 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:45:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: <1342724426-1547@secure.ericade.net> References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> <1342724426-1547@secure.ericade.net> Message-ID: 'Probably there wouldn't be one "best" me but rather hundreds of various specialized versions, probably buying and selling cognitive modules from other clans.' Yes. According to the best available social psychologist (me) there is a 'you' for every other person in the world, though certainly your actions would correlate among interactions with them, though never perfectly. According to this interpretation, you are the elephant and everyone else is a blind person touching you. Hence every person brings out a different subset of your available actions and does so every time that person interacts with you. Plus, your subsets change over time, some weakening, some strengthening, some vanishing, some being added. And of course there are these variables and more: what you ate, your recent spat with your mate, the morning news, weather, your missing dog, and thousands more. And this does not even mention the people in your head, with whom you interact. That is, the implied presence of others. Put a photo with a face in a coffee room and donations go up. Just eyes would do it. Every day is a new day and a new you - somewhat. If you were uploaded and the program allowed changes to yourself as described above, the physical you and the uploaded you might be vastly different in time. bill w On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 3:33 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Tara Maya , 24/3/2015 5:04 PM: > > > Therefore it is likely, though very sad and unnecessary, that the > existence of copy-clans would lead to war. You can?t introduce an > essentially new species of sentient beings into an ecology that so far has > only supported one without there being a contest for resources. If we had > the ability to populate new areas, in space, or perhaps new nations in > sea-steads or something, maybe that contest could be postponed by expanding > the ecological niche. > > > I don't think this is enough of an argument: there have been peaceful > resource constrained societies (think Japan during the Edo period), and > introducing a new species with *different* resource demands does not > necessarily lead to competition. > > Still, in my and Peter Eckersleys paper "Is brain emulation dangerous?" ( > http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jagi.2013.4.issue-3/jagi-2013-0011/jagi-2013-0011.xml > ) we listed a bunch of reasons to be concerned: > > "The consensus view among those who have studied the history of war is > that there is no single agreed major cause for violent conflict. (Levy and > Thompson 2009; White 2012) Unfortunately, brain emulation technologies are > capable of providing many of the kinds of ingredients that are commonly > regarded as contributing to the risk of war (Humphreys 2002; van Evera > 2013), including: > > * increasing inequality (between emulations, humans who can afford and > want to "become" emulations, and humans who cannot); > * groups that become marginalized (humans who cannot compete with > emulations, emulations or groups of emulations that are at a disadvantage > compared to other > emulations); > * disruption of existing social power relationships and the creation of > opportunities to establish new kinds of power; > * potential first strike-advantages and cumulative resource advantages > (holding more resources increases the resource-gathering efficiency); > * the appearance of groups of intelligent beings who may empathise with > each other even less than humans historically have done; > * the appearance of groups of beings with strong internal loyalty and > greater willingness to "die" for what they value (Shulman 2010); > * particularly strong triggers for racist and xenophobic prejudices; > * particularly strong triggers for vigorous religious objections; > * the creation of situations in which the scope of human rights and > property rights are poorly defined and subject to dispute (and surprise)." > > These apply to brain emulations in general, with copyclans being a driver > for just a few. None of these are perfect arguments: they just modify the > likeliehood of conflict, which is also affected by a lot of other things. > There are also mitigating factors. In the paper we argue that better > computer security makes some of these factors less risky (it is easier to > protect oneself, first mover advantages go down, rights can be enforced > better), and of course a biological plus software humanity is actually more > robust against existential threats than a single kingdom humanity. > > > > 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 tara at taramayastales.com Wed Mar 25 18:07:05 2015 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:07:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: <1845A1C3-088B-4DC5-85B3-5FEE8CA718FD@taramayastales.com> > This said, we are not currently in a Malthusian regime, so bringing in additional participants (whether through copying or old-fashioned baby-making) is not necessarily a reason for conflict, yet. > > Rafa? There?s no rational reason for Muslims to behead Christians, yet we see it still happening?. So, if groups choose to act as if we are in a Malthusian state, their own hostility creates a situation where other groups feel they have to act belligerently in self-defence. But I don?t believe this HAS to happen. How the issues are framed makes a huge difference. I also realized after I wrote that I was only thinking of copy-clans in terms of genetically created physical/biological clones; but in the context of the discussion, I should have included copies in virtual space. The question I have is whether copy-clans in virtual space would be different than biological cloned-clans. It seems to me they might. Humans have less evolved reactions to virtual space, since it is so new. It might evoke some of the same archaic instincts as physical space, or it might not, or it might not to the same degree. For instance, it seems that it would be very expensive to create biological clones, such that it would only be a technology available to a select few? leaving large masses of suspicious non-clones to re-act from fear and bigotry and even jealousy against the few clone-clans. But virtual copies should be cheap enough to be prosaic. At least, I am thinking of avatars in video games. In video games, every player is immortal. When I watch my boys play games, I am struck by how bizarre it is to hear them say, ?Ha, you died again. I killed you!? ?I don?t care. I?m respawning here?? Occasionally, they still get so furious over game-kills that they start hitting one another in real life, which is why I think that to some extent biological instincts of loss and danger must spill over into ?Real Life? even when they know it?s ?just a game.? Ego issues of who is ?better? still matter a great deal. But over time, the game teaches them that immortality is real and deaths are all part of the game, so they are less likely to fight physically. If everyone could exist in a virtual space with easy access to multiple copies and immortal virtuality, this might draw the sting from wars and disputes in physical space. I do not think it would stop jockeying for power, or eliminate the problem of trying to prove oneself is ?better? than others through competition, but maybe that competition would be seen by more and more people as a non-zero sum game ... Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Mar 25 23:09:58 2015 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2015 16:09:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Wars, was identity thread Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > "The consensus view among those who have studied the history of war is that there is no single agreed major cause for violent conflict. (Levy and Thompson 2009; White 2012) I know I am not alone in tagging resource competition as the major cause for violent conflict. Azar Gat and Steven A. LeBlanc hold the same view. The US Civil war forced me to include anticipation of bad times a-coming as on the same causal path to war. The usual path is (1) anticipation of a bleak future, (2) spread of xenophobic memes through the social group that act to dehumanize the competing group and synch up the warriors for attacks (3) physical attacks. This has been understood for 900 years. See the wikipedia article on Pope Urban II. Why this isn't widely understood is beyond me. Religions are xenophobic memes. People often make the error of a proximal reason vs the ultimately causal. It should be immediately obvious. I can think of no instances of a population with high resources to numbers and good future prospects that started a war. It is also clear that a population moving into a previously uninhabited territory don't have a problem with wars until the population growth starts pressing the resource limits. > Unfortunately, brain emulation technologies are capable of providing many of the kinds of ingredients that are commonly regarded as contributing to the risk of war (Humphreys 2002; van Evera 2013), including: > > * increasing inequality (between emulations, humans who can afford and want to "become" emulations, and humans who cannot); > * groups that become marginalized (humans who cannot compete with emulations, emulations or groups of emulations that are at a disadvantage compared to other > emulations); These strike me as rather unlikely. If we have the technology to upload anyone, the cost will fall like a stone to where it is cheaper to live uploaded than out of the simulation. > * disruption of existing social power relationships and the creation of opportunities to establish new kinds of power; > * potential first strike-advantages and cumulative resource advantages (holding more resources increases the resource-gathering efficiency); Perhaps, but it seems unlikely to me. There is also the effect of speeding up the simulation faster than base level reality. That has the effect of making material nearby valuable but that far away becomes close to worthless. It also could decouple the base reality and the simulations economically. (What do either have that the other might want?) > * the appearance of groups of intelligent beings who may empathise with each other even less than humans historically have done; > * the appearance of groups of beings with strong internal loyalty and greater willingness to "die" for what they value (Shulman 2010); Not to mention that the warriors can come back from a suicide mission, perhaps with memory right up to the point they "died." Of course given backups, it's not going to be obvious they killed anyone. > * particularly strong triggers for racist and xenophobic prejudices; > * particularly strong triggers for vigorous religious objections; One of the uploaded simulations is sure to be called Heaven. I can see it now, preaching against moving to Heaven. > * the creation of situations in which the scope of human rights and property rights are poorly defined and subject to dispute (and surprise)." Some of that has already been seen in Second LIfe. > These apply to brain emulations in general, with copyclans being a driver for just a few. None of these are perfect arguments: they just modify the likeliehood of conflict, which is also affected by a lot of other things. There are also mitigating factors. In the paper we argue that better computer security makes some of these factors less risky (it is easier to protect oneself, first mover advantages go down, rights can be enforced better), and of course a biological plus software humanity is actually more robust against existential threats than a single kingdom humanity.? I am not so sure about the last. If the two got into a resource conflict, chances are only one would survive. On the other hand, if the uploaded coveted the deep ocean for cooling, perhaps there would be little conflict over resources. I wonder how large a fraction of the population would upload if it was an option? For marketing reasons, it has to be reversible so you can upload for the weekend to try it out. I sort of suspect that copies of people will be forbidden by consensus in most cases. Perhaps being allowed for those who leave the local scene never to return. When you think about it, would you *want* a lot of your copies around? Keith From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Mar 26 04:07:38 2015 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2015 00:07:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [tt] Identity thread again In-Reply-To: <1845A1C3-088B-4DC5-85B3-5FEE8CA718FD@taramayastales.com> References: <51A3AC5E-7807-4333-98CD-5E68DA0A76EA@taramayastales.com> <1845A1C3-088B-4DC5-85B3-5FEE8CA718FD@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 2:07 PM, Tara Maya wrote: > > > I also realized after I wrote that I was only thinking of copy-clans in > terms of genetically created physical/biological clones; but in the context > of the discussion, I should have included copies in virtual space. The > question I have is whether copy-clans in virtual space would be different > than biological cloned-clans. It seems to me they might. Humans have less > evolved reactions to virtual space, since it is so new. It might evoke some > of the same archaic instincts as physical space, or it might not, or it > might not to the same degree. > ### Yes, actually I was thinking almost exclusively about copy-clans of uploads, some of which might be running bodies as a sideline business, but most of them would be concerned with activities in the important world (i.e. the computational substrate). And yes, evolution in the substrate will be ferociously fast and unforgiving, since uploads will have a good ability to manipulate their own structure and very strong incentives to adapt to the environment. ---------------- > > If everyone could exist in a virtual space with easy access to multiple > copies and immortal virtuality, this might draw the sting from wars and > disputes in physical space. I do not think it would stop jockeying for > power, or eliminate the problem of trying to prove oneself is ?better? than > others through competition, but maybe that competition would be seen by > more and more people as a non-zero sum game ... > ### Here I am not so optimistic - the ease of making copies means the substrate is likely to be crowded. Also, there will be a trade off between spawning independently goal-oriented processes (copies) and running non-sentient optimization and search processes. A single conscious mind could elect to use available resources for e.g. exhaustive searches of solution spaces to different problems. Or it could choose to make many copies of itself. Which strategy would spread would depend on the fitness payoffs: If non-sentient processes (=supercomputing) produce valuable excludable goods (i.e. intellectual property or new physical resources) that you can protect from thieves and sell for more energy/matter than can be bought from the labor of copies, then the supercomputing strategy would predominate. Otherwise, breeders would swamp the substrate. I am really curious how it will all turn out: Few minds commanding huge swathes of substrate to achieve potentially large goals, or multitudes of hardscrabble peasants eking out an existence on a day to day basis. Notwithstanding my desire to copy myself, I am partial to the former scenario. Malthusian growth is most likely to end in a dissipative stasis, running and burning energy as fast as you can to just barely stay in the game. Long-term capital investment that is possible when thieves are suppressed opens new worlds of possibilities and knowledge. One interesting parallel to the farming-industrial transition will probably obtain: During the transition to industry, the relative economic importance of activities shifted from farming to industrial activities, which was paralleled by a drop in the fraction of farmers and a rise in the fraction of industry/service related jobs. This shift will play out again as we transfer to the post-human world. There will be still physical, industrial labor to be done but the relative amount of computational resources directly employed to move limbs and tentacles will be minuscule compared to the resources spent in simulation and exploration of mathematical realms. Most minds will be proving theorems, producing insights capable of greatly increasing the efficiency of physical acts, and there will be just a few minds left who will use these insights to move robot bodies - just as today the few remaining farmers use industrial products (tractors, pesticides) to make more food than was ever possible when almost everybody was a farmer. It will be a glorious world. Unless, of course, it is physically easier to attack computational substrate than to defend it. "The Invincible" could fail. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Mar 26 19:41:45 2015 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2015 15:41:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fermi question, possible answer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 BillK wrote: > > This universe seems to be 'designed' for life creation so that primitive > life appears wherever there is a chance. Maybe not. We only have one example to examine and it's true that life started on Earth almost as soon as the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, but that could be freakishly early. This isn't just any old planet that supports life, it supports intelligent life. If it had taken just 800 million years longer for life to get started then right about now the sun would start to get off the main sequence and would get so hot that complex organisms could no longer exist on the Earth. > Advancing to intelligent life may well require another chain of unlikely > events, The sort of cells that all complex life is made of, Eukaryotic cells, evolved about 2 billion years ago and some think that was even more unlikely than the origin of life itself. > but the universe is a pretty big place. It all comes down to which can generate bigger numbers, astronomy or biology. John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Mar 31 18:21:19 2015 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 19:21:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Fermi question, possible answer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 23 March 2015 at 22:41, Keith Henson wrote: > Here is something that may lie behind the Fermi question. > http://phys.org/news/2015-03-jupiter-accounts-unusual-solar.html#nRlv > > The solar system and the particular size of Earth may be the result of > a rare occurrence. > > If the size of the Earth makes a critical difference in the life > getting started or evolving technophiles, then the future is unknown > rather than the silence indicating that technically inclined species > always end in ways where they leave no observable mark on the > universe. > So maybe we are the first. > Another comment - Brian Koberlein points out that even if other star systems usually have their gas giants closer to the sun than Jupiter and Saturn they probably also have rocky moons which could be similar to earth. So the the gas giants being nearer to the sun might not have too bad an effect on getting life started. BillK