From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 00:06:26 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 17:06:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Phobos shadow on Mars from 01999 Message-ID: <843E29D0-7FF3-47AE-877E-B3A93351F0CA@gmail.com> http://mars.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/11_1_99_phobos/ Something I hope Spike will enjoy. Candid admission: despite being into this stuff, the first time I've viewed these images was earlier today. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 1 00:49:09 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 17:49:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Phobos shadow on Mars from 01999 In-Reply-To: <843E29D0-7FF3-47AE-877E-B3A93351F0CA@gmail.com> References: <843E29D0-7FF3-47AE-877E-B3A93351F0CA@gmail.com> Message-ID: <005701d18bb0$4de3e160$e9aba420$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2016 5:06 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] Phobos shadow on Mars from 01999 http://mars.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/11_1_99_phobos/ >?Something I hope Spike will enjoy. Candid admission: despite being into this stuff, the first time I've viewed these images was earlier today. Regards, Dan I did, thanks! Is this a cool time to be alive, or what? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 03:20:12 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 23:20:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] bitcoin again In-Reply-To: References: <003201d18b83$99f482d0$cddd8870$@att.net> <00bd01d18b97$56d24b40$0476e1c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 6:11 PM, BillK wrote: > > Doesn't apply. The hackers are not in the US. If you ever trace some > of them, they are probably in a country that doesn't allow extradition > to US either. > > And some may be supported by foreign governments to cause chaos in the US. > > ### Usually, strength is forged in the fire of battle. Or rather, without the looming threat of aggression nobody bothers to get strong, and only a real battle separates the really strong from the weak. Or, as the saying goes, what doesn't kill a hospital, makes it stronger. The valiant knights of the IT department need the threat of a scoundrel's attack so they won't doze off in the battlements of their keep. Keep them coming. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 04:11:32 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 00:11:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] sciam blog article In-Reply-To: References: <3311F050-F98D-4E43-9A44-BAF78BFB9C23@gmu.edu> <452133E8-8C0F-4696-9A0E-4DC4ADBE5456@gmu.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Robin D Hanson wrote: You go on to argue that the cortex is our most uniquely human brain part > and arguably the seat of our most general reasoning abilities. But even if > these are true, they don?t at all speak to the overall abilities of a > system which only had the equivalent of a cortex. > ### Indeed, but these arguments support the notion that general reasoning abilities should be achievable using a modular, relatively simple algorithm, rather than a horrendously complex one. ------------------- > > If you put a deep neural network with 2000 layers on top of whatever > powers ATLAS robots you could get a pretty close facsimile of a human mind > in a clumsy human body. > > > Here you seem to claim that everything but the cortex is relatively > trivial - that we already have all those abilities modeled, and all we > need is to add a cortex to have a complete system. THAT is the claim for > which I?d like to see evidence. > ### Yes, a lot of the complicated stuff outside of the cortex has already been realized in silico, but this doesn't make it trivial. It took decades of work by thousands of researchers to get to the Robodog recovering from a kick. And we do already have AI programs which are capable of emulating the function of parts of the cortex, to learn highly complex behavior from experience. In fact, I would guess that there is a large class of cortex-like algorithms that are not highly complex, yet solve very difficult problems one domain at a time. I would however venture that to make a true functional substitute for a human, rather than a copy just able to star in demo clips, AI researchers still need to perfect a motivation system that would fit between the AlphaGo optimization algorithm and the lower functions already embodied in existing robot designs. Motivation might feel like a beguilingly simple issue but the brain structures that subserve it are actually very complex. This is the part of the brain that has to bridge the hardwired knowledge of the brainstem and midbrain and the completely learned function of the cortex. The high-level commands inherent in motivation are evolutionarily conserved but their precise implementation is a system of very high level learned behaviors. The limbic system and multiple forebrain nuclei, many capable of learning, and all wired in a complex, non-modular network, have to work well to steer you between mania, depression, ADD, unduly high or too low time preference, weighing the competing demands of finding calories, allies, and fertile mates while avoiding enemies, including the most complicated ones, your conspecifics. I don't know how much more work needs to be done to achieve this unification. Many mildly autistic individuals manage to emulate some subcortical functions in their cortex, slowly learning the usually instinctual social niceties. Maybe it won't be too difficult to use existing deep learning paradigms to implement complex motivation, going from robo-nerds to social butterflies, maybe new discoveries would need to be made. My guess is on the former but I am no expert in the area. The next 10 years will be a very interesting time in AI research. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 15:14:16 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 11:14:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: <8EF25BF1-2BC4-42E3-9D20-DAF377B3A5AC@gmail.com> References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> <8EF25BF1-2BC4-42E3-9D20-DAF377B3A5AC@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 Dan TheBookMan wrote: ?>> ? >> no philosopher has made a philosophical discovery in centuries, only >> mathematicians and scientist do that. ? > > > ?> ? > That's doubtful. Theory of reference and intentionality were big topics > from the end of the 19th century to today. > And what original philosophical discoverie in "the theory of reference and intentionality" did all those philosophers make ?in the last 200 years ? that were comparable to Maxwell's philosophical discovery concerning the nature of light, or Darwin's discovery of Evolution, or Planck's discovery of the quantum, or Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe, or Watson and Crick's discovery of the genetic code, or Einstein's discovery of warped spacetime ?, or LIGO's recent detection of gravitational waves caused by merging Black Holes ? ?For that matter, ?w hat exactly do we know about "reference and intentionality" today that we didn't know in the 19th century? > ?> ? > I still get the idea that your view of philosophy is something like seeing > some dope at the bar telling what he feels the meaning of life is. > ?That is not my view of philosophy, but it IS my view of philosophers. There is no contradiction because, as I said before, philosophers haven't done any philosophy in centuries. ? > ?> ? > Where does science end and philosophy begin in all that? The line might be > hard to draw > I disagree, I think ?? t he line is easy to draw ? . All science is philosophy but not all philosophy is science; a dope at a bar pontificating on the meaning of life is philosophy but not science. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Apr 1 15:17:18 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 16:17:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] bitcoin again In-Reply-To: References: <003201d18b83$99f482d0$cddd8870$@att.net> Message-ID: <56FE90FE.6050902@aleph.se> On 2016-03-31 21:14, Dave Sill wrote: > > Imagine a hospital is hacked with ransomware. > > > And doesn't have good backups? For shame. Indeed. For shame. Except that backups are not the solution if you have to shut down the hospital to reinstall everything. Hospital software security is known to be scarily bad. Medical device software security is deeply flawed (manufacturers have not realized they are in need of software security, and updating medical software is hindered by certification regulations), and then they are networked together in unsafe ways in systems open to all sorts of easy access. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 15:52:06 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 10:52:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> <8EF25BF1-2BC4-42E3-9D20-DAF377B3A5AC@gmail.com> Message-ID: I disagree, I think ?? t he line is easy to draw ? . All science is philosophy but not all philosophy is science; a dope at a bar pontificating on the meaning of life is philosophy but not science. John Is there any reason to think that Aristotle/Bacon, many others, would not be hard-nosed scientists today? Many ideas started in philosophy and made their way into natural philosophy/science. No argument, right? Is there any reason that cannot still happen? No. Let them be gadflies. What's the harm? If Dennett dreams up something about consciousness that could really pan out, scientists will take the ball and run with it and maybe score bigtime. My favorite area of philosophy is morality. Many social psychologists have taken philosophical ideas and turned them into good science. The idea of the unconscious started in philosophy, was popularized by Freud and Jung, and is now an immense part of brain science. No question John is right about accomplishments. bill w On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 10:14 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 Dan TheBookMan wrote: > > ?>> ? >>> no philosopher has made a philosophical discovery in centuries, only >>> mathematicians and scientist do that. ? >> >> >> ?> ? >> That's doubtful. Theory of reference and intentionality were big topics >> from the end of the 19th century to today. >> > > And what original philosophical discoverie in "the theory of reference and > intentionality" did all those philosophers make > ?in the last 200 years ? > that were comparable to Maxwell's philosophical discovery concerning the > nature of light, or Darwin's discovery of Evolution, or Planck's discovery > of the quantum, or Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe, or Watson > and Crick's discovery of the genetic code, or Einstein's discovery of > warped spacetime > ?, or LIGO's recent detection of gravitational waves caused by merging > Black Holes > ? > ?For that matter, ?w > hat exactly do we know about "reference and intentionality" today that we > didn't know in the 19th century? > > >> ?> ? >> I still get the idea that your view of philosophy is something like >> seeing some dope at the bar telling what he feels the meaning of life is. >> > > ?That is not my view of philosophy, but it IS my view of philosophers. > There is no contradiction because, as I said before, philosophers haven't > done any philosophy in centuries. ? > > > >> ?> ? >> Where does science end and philosophy begin in all that? The line might >> be hard to draw >> > > I disagree, I think > ?? t > he line is easy to draw > ? > . All science is philosophy but not all philosophy is science; a dope at a > bar pontificating on the meaning of life is philosophy but not science. > > John K Clark > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 17:02:19 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 13:02:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> <8EF25BF1-2BC4-42E3-9D20-DAF377B3A5AC@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 11:52 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > Is there any reason to think that Aristotle/Bacon, many others, would not > be hard-nosed scientists today? > Aristotle's theories could have been easily refuted even in his own day but nobody did ?,? including Aristotle. Aristotle was supposed to be a master of logic but when he applied it to physics the result was a complete muddle. Take his theory that heavy things fall faster than lighter ones, even if he was too lazy to perform the experiment he should have been able to figure out from pure logic alone that it can't be right because it leads to self contradiction. If you take a heavy rock and tie it to a slightly lighter rock with some string that has some slack in it and drop them then both rocks would fall slower than the big rock alone because the slower moving lighter rock would bog it down, but the tied together object would fall faster than the heavy rock because the new object is heavier than the heavy rock alone. Bertrand Russell didn't think much of Aristotle either, he said: "Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths." ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 17:23:42 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 12:23:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> <8EF25BF1-2BC4-42E3-9D20-DAF377B3A5AC@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 12:02 PM, John Clark wrote: > > > On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 11:52 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > ?> ? >> Is there any reason to think that Aristotle/Bacon, many others, would >> not be hard-nosed scientists today? >> > > > Aristotle's theories could have been easily refuted even in his own day > but nobody did > ?,? > including Aristotle. Aristotle was supposed to be a master of logic but > when he applied it to physics the result was a complete muddle. Take his > theory that heavy things fall faster than lighter ones, even if he was too > lazy to perform the experiment he should have been able to figure out from > pure logic alone that it can't be right because it leads to self > contradiction. If you take a heavy rock and tie it to a slightly lighter > rock with some string that has some slack in it and drop them then both > rocks would fall slower than the big rock alone because the slower moving > lighter rock would bog it down, but the tied together object would fall > faster than the heavy rock because the new object is heavier than the heavy > rock alone. > > Bertrand Russell didn't think much of Aristotle either, he said: > > "Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he > was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by > examining his wives' mouths." > > ? John K Clark? > > > ?I recall a big meeting of philosophers somewhere around the 14th > century. Issue: how many teeth does a horse have? Some wag suggested > they get a horse and he was kicked out of the meeting: only rationalism > can decide truth - like the Greeks did. Following the Greeks was > apparently more like a religion. > ?How in the world did humans get this far with this kind of behavior? ? ?Or maybe the people who were not at the top actually ran the world according to a rough empiricism and observational learning?, and tradition most of all. What if Aristotle had looked in his wife's mouth and discovered empiricism? Where would we be now? Interesting alternative history fantasy. bill w > ? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 17:53:34 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 13:53:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Nicotine, again Message-ID: >From http://robbwolf.com/2016/03/31/my-training-at-44/ (emphasis mine): *2- Nicotine gum. I researched nicotine about 6 years ago when I started doing speaking gigs for the military (Naval Special Warfare) and what I found was pretty striking. Nicotine?s main problem appears to be delivery system. Tobacco is bad, be it smoked or chewed. Bill, over at Calories Proper has done a few posts on nicotine and makes the point that were it not for the potential to alter the reward centers in the brain, nicotine would be ?a vitamin.? Discover magazine had a solid piece on nicotine that you can check out as well. WebMD did apiece on nicotine gum, and after several pages of going back and forth between the dangers of tobacco and the fact the gum is not tobacco, here is one of the closing thoughts from a doctor interviewed for the piece:* *?If the gum were something we knew to be harmful, I?d get upset about its chronic use, and insist that they get off it,? adds Hughes. ?But it doesn?t seem to be harmful.?* *I use a 2mg piece of gum every few hours and my focus and productivity are nothing short of amazing. I have messed with every nootropic imaginable and for ME they have all paled in comparison to what I get from the nicotine gum. I know people will not take the time to actually ?read? those links so I?ll tackle a few things here:* *1- Tobacco is a carcinogen (or more accurately is home to many carcinogens) but nicotine as a pharmacological agent is not a carcinogen.* *2- Gum and lozenges CAN be addictive and habit forming. So are coffee and tea. You need to balance your risk reward matrix with that in mind, but for me, it?s a pretty clear choice.* *I?ve noticed the gum has helped my digestion and my productivity is better. Again, use your best judgement, but this has been a serious game changer for me so i felt compelled to share it with y?all.* We discussed tobacco and nicotine here a few years ago, but that centered around nicotine not being harmful, rather than outright beneficial. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 1 18:06:38 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 11:06:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> <8EF25BF1-2BC4-42E3-9D20-DAF377B3A5AC@gmail.com> Message-ID: <00e901d18c41$3cb40a50$b61c1ef0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace ? ?>?I recall a big meeting of philosophers somewhere around the 14th century. OK well, ya got me on that one pal. I wasn?t even out of elementary school back then. >? Issue: how many teeth does a horse have? Some wag suggested they get a horse and he was kicked out of the meeting: only rationalism can decide truth - ?.bill w BillW, the question is less absurd than it sounds. Any empiricist can count. The philosopher?s job is to define the term ?teeth.? spike ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 1 18:18:22 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 11:18:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Nicotine, again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00f301d18c42$e0aed760$a20c8620$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill Sent: Friday, April 01, 2016 10:54 AM To: Extropy chat Subject: [ExI] Nicotine, again >From http://robbwolf.com/2016/03/31/my-training-at-44/ (emphasis mine): 2- Nicotine gum. I researched nicotine about 6 years ago when I started doing speaking gigs for the military (Naval Special Warfare) and what I found was pretty striking? I?ve noticed the gum has helped my digestion and my productivity is better. Again, use your best judgement, but this has been a serious game changer for me so i felt compelled to share it with y?all. We discussed tobacco and nicotine here a few years ago, but that centered around nicotine not being harmful, rather than outright beneficial. -Dave Dave, we know that tobacco is harmful, but as I recall even then, it was the tar which was identified as the bad guy. Nicotine was a question mark. I think we left it at something like ?Nicotine doesn?t kill you. It only gets you addicted to that which does kill you.? I am comfortable with the notion of nicotine, even though I don?t use it myself. There are plenty of people who say it helps with early stage Alzheimer?s. I am not about to second guess them, for I have zero first-hand experience with either. That I know of. Wait, what were we talking about? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 19:34:22 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 15:34:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: <00e901d18c41$3cb40a50$b61c1ef0$@att.net> References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> <8EF25BF1-2BC4-42E3-9D20-DAF377B3A5AC@gmail.com> <00e901d18c41$3cb40a50$b61c1ef0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 2:06 PM, spike wrote: > ?>? > >? Issue: how many teeth does a horse have? Some wag suggested they > get a horse and he was kicked out of the meeting: only rationalism can > decide truth - ?.bill w > > BillW, the question is less absurd than it sounds. Any empiricist can > count. The philosopher?s job is to define the term ?teeth.? > When he was a student at Princeton Richard Feynman had an encounter with philosophers, years later this is what he had to say about it and why he developed a contempt not for philosophy but for philosophers ?:? *"In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit for a week or two in each of the other groups.* *? ?* *When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they invited me to come to their seminar.* *They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went to this seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to watch.* *What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but that I didn't understand.* *After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"* *Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what 'essential object' means.* *What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear by analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be, "What about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that no one has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. So I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential object?"* *Then the answers came out. One man stood up and said, "A brick as an individual, specific brick. That is what Whitehead means by an essential object."* *Another man said, "No, it isn't the individual brick that is an essential object; it's the general character that all bricks have in common - their 'brickiness' - that is the essential object."* *Another guy got up and said, "No, it's not in the bricks themselves. 'Essential object' means the idea in the mind that you get when you think of bricks."* *Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never heard such ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before. And, just like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos. In all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked themselves whether such a simple object as a brick, much less an electron, is an "essential object"."* John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 1 22:13:27 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 15:13:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] darpa unveils new system Message-ID: <018301d18c63$b7c33690$2749a3b0$@att.net> You saw it first here: http://reason.com/reasontv/2016/03/31/darpa-unveils-the-latest-military-tech -w spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 22:37:25 2016 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 18:37:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] darpa unveils new system In-Reply-To: <018301d18c63$b7c33690$2749a3b0$@att.net> References: <018301d18c63$b7c33690$2749a3b0$@att.net> Message-ID: I was very surprised until I realized what day it was today. :p -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 22:38:57 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 17:38:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> <8EF25BF1-2BC4-42E3-9D20-DAF377B3A5AC@gmail.com> <00e901d18c41$3cb40a50$b61c1ef0$@att.net> Message-ID: *Feynman (by John) ?* *Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never heard such ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before. And, just like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos. In all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked themselves whether such a simple object as a brick, much less an electron, is an "essential object"."* ?An argument in ancient Greece, which I remember well, Spike, about what a human was, ended with a definition that man was a featherless biped. At the next meeting a guy threw a plucked chicken on the table. Once you start arguing definitions, it will always end up in chaos. In psych we used the term 'operational definition'. I don't know what terms other areas like physics use, but it have to be something similar. So, say, 'intelligence for the purposes of this study is defined as scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)". ?Since what intelligence 'really is' has never been settled, we have to use such operational definitions. Of course, many will say that that test doesn't really measure intelligence, and so we day, OK, go do your own research. And so they do. Multiple intelligences were popular at one time and still are in places, but the scores seemed to correlate so highly with the conventional tests that a separate definition of intelligence seems unnecessary. This has been the fate of quite a number of different definitions and tests of intelligence. What John seems to be arguing, and I fully agree, is that philosophers keep on arguing about the same old things and never get off the pot and do something. Maybe these new 'experimental philosophers' will. Then some wag like me will come along and say: you don't understand. Any concept - any word - is no more and no less that what you define it as. It has no separate existence.. ?It's an abstraction. And then you can be the one to go refute that by kicking a rock.? ?bill w? On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 2:34 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 2:06 PM, spike wrote: > >> ?>? >> >? Issue: how many teeth does a horse have? Some wag suggested they >> get a horse and he was kicked out of the meeting: only rationalism can >> decide truth - ?.bill w >> >> BillW, the question is less absurd than it sounds. Any empiricist can >> count. The philosopher?s job is to define the term ?teeth.? >> > > When he was a student at Princeton Richard Feynman had an encounter with > philosophers, years later this is what he had to say about it and why he > developed a contempt not for philosophy but for philosophers > ?:? > > *"In the Graduate College dining room at Princeton everybody used to sit > with his own group. I sat with the physicists, but after a bit I thought: > It would be nice to see what the rest of the world is doing, so I'll sit > for a week or two in each of the other groups.* > *? ?* > *When I sat with the philosophers I listened to them discuss very > seriously a book called Process and Reality by Whitehead. They were using > words in a funny way, and I couldn't quite understand what they were > saying. Now I didn't want to interrupt them in their own conversation and > keep asking them to explain something, and on the few occasions that I did, > they'd try to explain it to me, but I still didn't get it. Finally they > invited me to come to their seminar.* > > *They had a seminar that was like, a class. It had been meeting once a > week to discuss a new chapter out of Process and Reality - some guy would > give a report on it and then there would be a discussion. I went to this > seminar promising myself to keep my mouth shut, reminding myself that I > didn't know anything about the subject, and I was going there just to > watch.* > > *What happened there was typical - so typical that it was unbelievable, > but true. First of all, I sat there without saying anything, which is > almost unbelievable, but also true. A student gave a report on the chapter > to be studied that week. In it Whitehead kept using the words "essential > object" in a particular technical way that presumably he had defined, but > that I didn't understand.* > > *After some discussion as to what "essential object" meant, the professor > leading the seminar said something meant to clarify things and drew > something that looked like lightning bolts on the blackboard. "Mr. > Feynman," he said, "would you say an electron is an 'essential object'?"* > > *Well, now I was in trouble. I admitted that I hadn't read the book, so I > had no idea of what Whitehead meant by the phrase; I had only come to > watch. "But," I said, "I'll try to answer the professor's question if you > will first answer a question from me, so I can have a better idea of what > 'essential object' means.* > > *What I had intended to do was to find out whether they thought > theoretical constructs were essential objects. The electron is a theory > that we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we > can almost call it real. I wanted to make the idea of a theory clear by > analogy. In the case of the brick, my next question was going to be, "What > about the inside of the brick?" - and I would then point out that no one > has ever seen the inside of a brick. Every time you break the brick, you > only see the surface. That the brick has an inside is a simple theory which > helps us understand things better. The theory of electrons is analogous. So > I began by asking, "Is a brick an essential object?"* > > *Then the answers came out. One man stood up and said, "A brick as an > individual, specific brick. That is what Whitehead means by an essential > object."* > > *Another man said, "No, it isn't the individual brick that is an essential > object; it's the general character that all bricks have in common - their > 'brickiness' - that is the essential object."* > > *Another guy got up and said, "No, it's not in the bricks themselves. > 'Essential object' means the idea in the mind that you get when you think > of bricks."* > > *??* > *Another guy got up, and another, and I tell you I have never heard such > ingenious different ways of looking at a brick before. And, just like it > should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos. In > all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked themselves whether > such a simple object as a brick, much less an electron, is an "essential > object"."* > > John K Clark > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 1 22:47:16 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 17:47:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] darpa unveils new system In-Reply-To: References: <018301d18c63$b7c33690$2749a3b0$@att.net> Message-ID: You saw it first here: http://reason.com/reasontv/2016/03/31/darpa-unveils-the-latest-military-tech-w spike Clever! Is the magazine or digital edition any good? bill w On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 5:37 PM, Will Steinberg wrote: > I was very surprised until I realized what day it was today. :p > > _______________________________________________ > 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 rhanson at gmu.edu Fri Apr 1 13:03:42 2016 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin D Hanson) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 13:03:42 +0000 Subject: [ExI] sciam blog article In-Reply-To: References: <3311F050-F98D-4E43-9A44-BAF78BFB9C23@gmu.edu> <452133E8-8C0F-4696-9A0E-4DC4ADBE5456@gmu.edu> Message-ID: <0BB1D4BC-B1AB-48D3-8997-102B29B6F2C2@gmu.edu> On Apr 1, 2016, at 12:11 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki > wrote: On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Robin D Hanson > wrote: You go on to argue that the cortex is our most uniquely human brain part and arguably the seat of our most general reasoning abilities. But even if these are true, they don?t at all speak to the overall abilities of a system which only had the equivalent of a cortex. ### Indeed, but these arguments support the notion that general reasoning abilities should be achievable using a modular, relatively simple algorithm, rather than a horrendously complex one. Okay, but I?m much less interested in ?general reasoning abilities? than in full functionality to substitute for humans on almost all jobs. If you put a deep neural network with 2000 layers on top of whatever powers ATLAS robots you could get a pretty close facsimile of a human mind in a clumsy human body. Here you seem to claim that everything but the cortex is relatively trivial - that we already have all those abilities modeled, and all we need is to add a cortex to have a complete system. THAT is the claim for which I?d like to see evidence. ### Yes, a lot of the complicated stuff outside of the cortex has already been realized in silico, but this doesn't make it trivial. .. I would however venture that to make a true functional substitute for a human, rather than a copy just able to star in demo clips, AI researchers still need to perfect a motivation system that would fit between the AlphaGo optimization algorithm and the lower functions already embodied in existing robot designs. .. Maybe it won't be too difficult to use existing deep learning paradigms to implement complex motivation, going from robo-nerds to social butterflies, maybe new discoveries would need to be made. My guess is on the former but I am no expert in the area. I?d say you really don?t know how many other modules are needed, or how hard they will be to create. But you do here admit that there is at least one further module needed that we don?t have or know how to make. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu Future of Humanity Inst., Oxford University Assoc. Prof. Economics, George Mason University See my new book: http://ageofem.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 14:50:24 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 10:50:24 -0400 Subject: [ExI] sciam blog article In-Reply-To: <0BB1D4BC-B1AB-48D3-8997-102B29B6F2C2@gmu.edu> References: <3311F050-F98D-4E43-9A44-BAF78BFB9C23@gmu.edu> <452133E8-8C0F-4696-9A0E-4DC4ADBE5456@gmu.edu> <0BB1D4BC-B1AB-48D3-8997-102B29B6F2C2@gmu.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 Robin D Hanson wrote: ?> ? > I?m much less interested in ?general reasoning abilities? than in full > functionality to substitute for humans on almost all jobs. > ? [...] ? > I?d say you really don?t know how many other modules are needed, or how > hard they will be to create. > ?That's true, but we do know that regardless of the number of modules involved the difference between something that is good at chimpanzee level jobs and something that is good at human level jobs must be less than 9 meg. John K Clark ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 15:12:25 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 10:12:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] before? Message-ID: We have touched on the issue of privacy several times lately and I wonder if it received a lot of attention before I joined. We are concerned about it but I don't see any conclusions about what the appropriate level of privacy is. Denmark is making a necrogenomic database: DNA from everyone who dies. Is this appropriate? I don't know what else they are collecting, such as cause of death and so on, but in the long run this could do a lot of good. It could also run up insurance rates for the descendants in some countries if the insurance companies got hold of the data. For myself, I am an open person who will tell you my grandmother's shoe size if asked. I don't care what anyone knows about me as long as my Visa card is safe. Bill W -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 15:13:06 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 10:13:06 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Denmark Message-ID: Sorry - the database is only proposed, not in force yet bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 15:51:30 2016 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 16:51:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 2 April 2016 at 16:12, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Denmark is making a necrogenomic database: DNA from everyone who dies. Is > this appropriate? I don't know what else they are collecting, such as cause > of death and so on, but in the long run this could do a lot of good. It > could also run up insurance rates for the descendants in some countries if > the insurance companies got hold of the data. > > For myself, I am an open person who will tell you my grandmother's shoe size > if asked. I don't care what anyone knows about me as long as my Visa card > is safe. Well, it will be useful if the dead start committing crimes....... The scientists want the database for medical research, but I would expect the police to be interested as well. Murders have been solved by getting a close DNA match which led to checking relatives and getting a conviction. Totalitarian governments would really like every DNA on file as everybody is now a suspected criminal. But so far there are still some restrictions stopping them. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 2 15:58:28 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 08:58:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2016 8:12 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] before? >?We have touched on the issue of privacy several times lately and I wonder if it received a lot of attention before I joined? Oh my yes. One of our ExI occasional posters from the early 90s advocated for radical openness, information wants to be free etc. You may have heard of him: Julian Assange. >?We are concerned about it but I don't see any conclusions about what the appropriate level of privacy is? There are many schools of thought. Julian?s position was unpopular here, but some found it compelling. I was one of those, but I was doing a lot more listening than talking in those days. >?Denmark is making a necrogenomic database: DNA from everyone who dies. Is this appropriate?... I don?t see why not. >? I don't know what else they are collecting, such as cause of death and so on, but in the long run this could do a lot of good? Oh my yes. A looooot of good. There is potential harm, as you point out: >? It could also run up insurance rates for the descendants in some countries if the insurance companies got hold of the data? Those companies *will* get ahold of that data. Furthermore? we have every reason to believe these kinds of databases already exist. For almost ten years now, a means has existed whereby gene sequencing can be done on a sampling basis, the way 23andMe and AncestryDNA are doing, for a cost of mid-two digit numbers. Think how simple it would be for funeral homes to snip off a tiny piece of toenail, drop it in a ziplock and file it away, along with a bar code which contains identity, cause of death, age of death, other health conditions at the time of death and so on. How valuable is that information to an insurance company? >?For myself, I am an open person who will tell you my grandmother's shoe size if asked? I don't care what anyone knows about me as long as my Visa card is safe?Bill Does your grandmother have any say in the matter? Let us turn this around a bit. The big insurance company is used as the classic example of danger if they learn everyone?s DNA signature, their health condition at death and so on, but in your reply, I want you to imagine you are now the insurance company and it is your money at stake. Potential clients are coming to you betting they will get sick or die, you are betting they will stay healthy and live. How much do you charge? What do you want to know about them? If we view it from the government?s POV: if we start systematically collecting DNA from every corpse, we can eventually figure out *everyone?s* identity from their DNA, and it wouldn?t even take all that long. Criminals tend to be young, so we could do that inside of ten years: enough great grandparents would have perished by then to figure out which persons match this subgroup. If we view it from the insurance customer?s point of view, we don?t all lose if the insurance company knows all. Many if not most of us win. They would learn that my grandfather died at 74, but it was in a car accident on the way home from work. Julian Assange was rudely shouted down here by privacy advocates and left the list over 20 yrs ago, but now I don?t think he was entirely wrong. He was right on about many of the things he wrote. BillW, do let us revisit this discussion since the low-cost DNA kits have come along since we last dealt with it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 2 16:15:12 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 09:15:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] openness again Message-ID: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] before? On 2 April 2016 at 16:12, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >>... Denmark is making a necrogenomic database: DNA from everyone who dies... >...Well, it will be useful if the dead start committing crimes....... Ja. Come the zombie apocalypse, we will know who it was who is coming to devour our brains. >...The scientists want the database for medical research, but I would expect the police to be interested as well. Murders have been solved by getting a close DNA match which led to checking relatives and getting a conviction... Ja. The guilty have been caught and the innocent set free because of DNA analysis. Do repeat that sentence like a mantra please, several times until memorized. >...Totalitarian governments would really like every DNA on file as everybody is now a suspected criminal. But so far there are still some restrictions stopping them...BillK Ja. So what we need to do then is prevent totalitarian governments. I am personally acquainted with a relative whose grandparents were in the funeral business. It was a rural area, not much money in it. It is easy enough to imagine them being offered 100 bucks for some unknown entity to have 2 minutes to view the deceased and keep it quiet. Now an unknown entity has a DNA sample, the ID of the dearly departed and a good idea how she perished. This kind of information is valuable. If my own money is at stake (it's my insurance company selling policies for instance) I am an inquiring mind. Those of us who are old-timers on ExI, especially those who participated in the privacy discussions here back in the 90s and 00s, do feel free to post in regard to how your views have changed, how they have stayed the same, what predictions you made then which have come to pass and which have failed. Our openness advocates are no longer in the neighborhood. Well, I am, but Assange is gone, Burch is gone, Hal Finney and Robert Bradbury are gone permanently, so I (and possibly BillW) are the new openness advocates, ja? Others? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 17:28:49 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 13:28:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 11:58 AM, spike wrote: > ?> ? > For almost ten years now, a means has existed whereby gene sequencing can > be done on a sampling basis, the way 23andMe and AncestryDNA are doing, for > a cost of mid-two digit numbers. Think how simple it would be for funeral > homes to snip off a tiny piece of toenail, drop it in a ziplock and file it > away > > ?No need to wait till somebody is dead. A healthy human sheds about 10 skin cells a second into the air each with a complete record of the person's genome, ?if there was a few hundred dollar gadget that could recover those airborne cells and sequence their DNA, and no doubt there will be in a few years, then laws against the practice would be even less effective than laws against marijuana use. John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 2 17:34:12 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 10:34:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <017301d18d05$df5cf860$9e16e920$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike ? >?For myself, I am an open person who will tell you my grandmother's shoe size if asked? I don't care what anyone knows about me as long as my Visa card is safe?BillW Does your grandmother have any say in the matter??spike BillW, since you are telling the world your grandmother?s shoe size, are you willing to share her medical records too? Do all your cousins share your openness point of view? While we are dealing with these kinds of questions, do let me make sure everyone here knows what is possible using only current commonly-used technology. Most of us here already know that 100 dollar DNA kits are available. I have bought about a dozen of these myself. Using just the information provided by those kits, it is possible to figure out a person?s DNA even if they have been gone a long time: you get a bunch of cousins together, see which segments you share, then you know your common ancestor had those segments. If you are patient and have several cousins willing to play along, you can piece together grandma?s genome posthumously, like a jigsaw puzzle. Then once you have that, you can look for those known segments in a new cousin and figure out which likely family branch they swung down from. This can be done today, using GEDmatch.com. BillW, suppose it is your insurance company and you are betting your money that this client will live, the same client that is betting that she will get sick and die. Do you want this kind of info? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 2 17:41:44 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 10:41:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <017801d18d06$ecc308e0$c6491aa0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2016 10:29 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] before? On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 11:58 AM, spike > wrote: ?> ? For almost ten years now, a means has existed whereby gene sequencing can be done on a sampling basis, the way 23andMe and AncestryDNA are doing, for a cost of mid-two digit numbers. Think how simple it would be for funeral homes to snip off a tiny piece of toenail, drop it in a ziplock and file it away ?>?No need to wait till somebody is dead. A healthy human sheds about 10 skin cells a second into the air each with a complete record of the person's genome, ?if there was a few hundred dollar gadget that could recover those airborne cells and sequence their DNA, and no doubt there will be in a few years, then laws against the practice would be even less effective than laws against marijuana use. John K Clark No need to wait a few years John. You can already sequence DNA using a skin sample if you know what you are doing. You don?t recover the skin cells out of the air, but a swipe across the skin can probably do it. I collected a person?s DNA on her deathbed using a cheek swab. The 100 dollar kits don?t care what kind of cells it is reading: spit has skin cells in it, a bandage would have them, a hair sample would have them, a blood sample, a semen sample, I?m not sure about urine but probably would since the bladder sheds cells. AncestryDNA and 23andMe can read them all. You are not required to tell them what kind of cell it is or how you obtained it. Any time now I am fully expecting a DNA sample someone will claim is Chelsea Clinton?s baby. Then the whole world will be talking about what we are discussing right now. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hibbert at mydruthers.com Sat Apr 2 17:44:41 2016 From: hibbert at mydruthers.com (Chris Hibbert) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 10:44:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <57000509.9040209@mydruthers.com> Well, I've been on the list for a long time, too, though I'm not a frequent poster, and I've also been a privacy advocate and activist for quite a while. I wrote the original FAQ on SSNs in the Usenet days, and posted it on the Internet when that first started getting popular. I've testified before the California legislature on privacy in toll collection systems, and I worked with the Santa Clara County government for several years to get them to follow their (since repealed) laws requiring every department of the county government to file annual disclosures of what information they collected and how they used and protected it. Brin's *Transparent Society* changed the conversation significantly, and is still worth reading. Some of what he predicted has come to pass with increasing surveillance of the cops by the citizens, and with drones seeing more and raising more ire. Personally, I took a long hiatus from actually working on privacy issues while I worked on agoric systems, payment, security, encryption and prediction markets, but now I'm back working on privacy at Google, where I support Google's Transparency Report, which reports on how Google responds to government and other requests to hide or remove data, as well as publicizing and encouraging efforts to secure email and the web. I've long maintained that the issue with privacy is all tied up with security. SSNs make the issues clear: some industries think your SSN is your secret password, and others insist that you display it publicly. If we went totally toward Brin's vision of transparency, or totally to an encrypted world, either way, social views could adjust and we could figure out how to make things work. But as long as we continue to live in an environment where having secrets is crucial to survival (bank accounts, health records, sexual preferences, political views for some people and in some contexts) and the platforms on which we store our data are uniformly insecure and routinely penetrated, we're going to continue to have issues. Chris -- We are made of the stuff of stars, given our selves by time. Our duty, as living things, is to be sure that pain is not our whole story, for we can choose to dance. ---Sherry Tepper, Six Moon Dance (also see http://lfs.org/newsletter/025/03/SixMoonDance.shtml) Chris Hibbert hibbert at mydruthers.com http://mydruthers.com Prediction Market Software: http://zocalo.sourceforge.net From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 18:01:27 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 13:01:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 2 April 2016 at 16:12, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > >>... Denmark is making a necrogenomic database: DNA from everyone who > dies... > > >...Well, it will be useful if the dead start committing crimes....... > > Ja. Come the zombie apocalypse, we will know who it was who is coming to > devour our brains. > > >...The scientists want the database for medical research, but I would > expect the police to be interested as well. Murders have been solved by > getting a close DNA match which led to checking relatives and getting a > conviction... > > Ja. The guilty have been caught and the innocent set free because of > DNA analysis. > > Do repeat that sentence like a mantra please, several times until > memorized. > > >...Totalitarian governments would really like every DNA on file as > everybody is now a suspected criminal. But so far there are still some > restrictions stopping them...BillK > > Ja. So what we need to do then is prevent totalitarian governments. > > I am personally acquainted with a relative whose grandparents were in > the funeral business. It was a rural area, not much money in it. It is > easy enough to imagine them being offered 100 bucks for some unknown entity > to have 2 minutes to view the deceased and keep it quiet. Now an unknown > entity has a DNA sample, the ID of the dearly departed and a good idea how > she perished. This kind of information is valuable. If my own money is at > stake (it?s my insurance company selling policies for instance) I am an > inquiring mind. > > Those of us who are old-timers on ExI, especially those who participated > in the privacy discussions here back in the 90s and 00s, do feel free to > post in regard to how your views have changed, how they have stayed the > same, what predictions you made then which have come to pass and which have > failed. Our openness advocates are no longer in the neighborhood. Well, I > am, but Assange is gone, Burch is gone, Hal Finney and Robert Bradbury are > gone permanently, so I (and possibly BillW) are the new openness advocates, > ja? Others? > > spike > > > ?Almost anyone on this site probably knows more than I do here, but I > think Obamacare has some provisions for not rejecting people because of > pre-existing conditions. Just add to that a provision that DNA cannot be > used in determining payment of claims or insurability. There's just too > much to learn from having DNA databases - medically. It's just another > step up from having fingerprints on file, which everyone who has worked for > a government has (took mine at a mental hospital). > > ?So yes, Spike, openness. And it ought to be a lot easier and cheaper to get info from our governments, that, indeed, we are paying for.? ? Bush et al tagged so many things Top Secret just to keep journalists out.? > ? > > ?How about openness of DNA for couples planning on marriage? It's not just about sickle cell anemia anymore. Would some men reject women who had a high chance of getting breast cancer? You bet they would. 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 18:10:40 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 13:10:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: <017801d18d06$ecc308e0$c6491aa0$@att.net> References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> <017801d18d06$ecc308e0$c6491aa0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 12:41 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *John Clark > *Sent:* Saturday, April 02, 2016 10:29 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] before? > > > > On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 11:58 AM, spike wrote: > > > > ?> ? > > For almost ten years now, a means has existed whereby gene sequencing can > be done on a sampling basis, the way 23andMe and AncestryDNA are doing, for > a cost of mid-two digit numbers. Think how simple it would be for funeral > homes to snip off a tiny piece of toenail, drop it in a ziplock and file it > away > > > > ?>?No need to wait till somebody is dead. A healthy human sheds about 10 > skin cells a second into the air each with a complete record of the > person's genome, ?if there was a few hundred dollar gadget that could > recover those airborne cells and sequence their DNA, and no doubt there > will be in a few years, then laws against the practice would be even less > effective than laws against marijuana use. > > > > John K Clark > > > > > > No need to wait a few years John. You can already sequence DNA using a > skin sample if you know what you are doing. You don?t recover the skin > cells out of the air, but a swipe across the skin can probably do it. I > collected a person?s DNA on her deathbed using a cheek swab. The 100 > dollar kits don?t care what kind of cells it is reading: spit has skin > cells in it, a bandage would have them, a hair sample would have them, a > blood sample, a semen sample, I?m not sure about urine but probably would > since the bladder sheds cells. AncestryDNA and 23andMe can read them all. > You are not required to tell them what kind of cell it is or how you > obtained it. > > > > Any time now I am fully expecting a DNA sample someone will claim is > Chelsea Clinton?s baby. Then the whole world will be talking about what we > are discussing right now. > > > > spike > > ?INsurance companies are in no danger of going broke. But they will > reject people and I am one of them. I am uninsurable. Oh, they will sell > me a life insurance policy for about $500 a month for the cheapest policy. > They know of my cancer diagnoses or it would be a lot lower. > > ?Is it really fair for a person, say a male whose fathers and grandfathers and brothers etc. all died of heart problems before the age of 50, to pay the same as someone else? More risk, more premium. In any event, insurance ought to be for catastrophic situations and not a method of saving?. I'll add this: no one should have to go bankrupt because of high medical bills. It happens a lot even with Medicare and Medicaid. 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 19:04:52 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 12:04:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] before? Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 8:12 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > We have touched on the issue of privacy several times lately and > I wonder if it received a lot of attention before I joined. I recall some discussion of universal surveillance, which would mean zero or near zero privacy. Or maybe I'm confusing this group with another. That discussion was before 2010. > We are concerned about it but I don't see any conclusions about > what the appropriate level of privacy is. That might be the tougher discussion to have if one agrees that there should be any privacy at all. I think the thing to worry about is big players like the state being able to effectively use information against everyone else. For instance, for most people there seem to be things about themselves that can be used to control them. A case in point might be, today, any private thoughts or talk about things that are currently deemed inappropriate -- where the person holding such thoughts or saying such things is likely to lose their job and be ostracized. Now, one could argue in a post-privacy world such things won't matter. That's possible, though things could go the other way: people conform as much as possible to avoid incurring all kinds of sanctions, and others realize that the whip of such sanctions can be used to keep people in line. > Denmark is making a necrogenomic database: DNA from everyone who dies. > Is this appropriate? I don't know what else they are collecting, such as cause > of death and so on, but in the long run this could do a lot of good. It could > also run up insurance rates for the descendants in some countries if the > insurance companies got hold of the data. The issue for civil libertarians would be any requirement to do so. Is there any allowing people to practically opt out? > For myself, I am an open person who will tell you my grandmother's shoe > size if asked. I don't care what anyone knows about me as long as my > Visa card is safe. That's you. The thing to wonder about is can people keep and expect privacy about things regardless if you want to let the world know? For instance, where I live, there are nude beaches. Obviously, those folks don't care about their genitals being publicly seen, but does that mean no one can, say, stop peeping toms? Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Apr 2 20:22:49 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 13:22:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] privacy again Message-ID: <00bc01d18d1d$6de5f4d0$49b1de70$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2016 12:05 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] before? On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 8:12 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: >>? We have touched on the issue of privacy several times lately and > I wonder if it received a lot of attention before I joined. >?I recall some discussion of universal surveillance, which would mean zero or near zero privacy. Or maybe I'm confusing this group with another. That discussion was before 2010?Dan Reminder of discussions we were having here about 15 yrs ago. The kinds of things we now have were still in the design phase mostly, but it was becoming clearer that tiny cameras with plenty of memory were possible, as well as the now-common quad-rotor camera drones and so on. I suggested at the time that anything you do outside your own home is public domain: you are spraying photons everywhere into the world. If the world intercepts, records, interprets those, that?s not our fault. It isn?t our responsibility to keep your secrets, or even to avert our eyes and cameras. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy of things done outside your home. The constitution says nothing about that. The US Constitution 4th amendment having to do with US citizens? right to be ??secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures?? etc, does not apply here. If you are outside your home and I have a camera drone nearby, I am not seizing your photons. You are hurling them at my camera. It devolved into a discussion of whether a citizen has the right to shoot down a camera drone. I argued (in what may sound like a contradictory position (but is not)) that we do have that right, if the drone is over our property. I might even argue that we have that right even if that drone was nearby enough for Mister Twelve Gage and his eager nephew Buckshot to discourage its snoopy activities. I don?t recall seeing anything about drone hunting season, or that they are an endangered species. My overly-uptight town has regs on firearm discharge in the city limits, but something like a water jet could work. An ordinary air compressor with any old scuba tank or propane bottle could be rigged with a converging nozzle and valve. A three-second blast of water could be fired a couple hundred feet accurately enough to take down one of these perhaps. If not take down, one could arrange the water to contain salt, so as it evaporates it leaves a harmless residue, fogging the lens. Camera drones need to be kinda close: small apertures are not great for bringing in details. Check out how well your phone camera does at long distances (not great.) Were I to sunbathe nude, one of these would need to be within range of Mister Twelve Gage or my homemade super-soaker anti-drone tech to merely verify that? uh? that I am indeed male. But I digress. {8^] Kidding, bygones. {8^D Sorta. {8-[ That kind of anti-drone tech is cheap, legal everywhere and would likely have a range similar to Mister Twelve Gage under most circumstances for the skill level of most sport shooters. The super-soaker would be fun to build, and the neighbors would be less likely to complain about the noise. Turns out my neighbor has a camera drone. I cheer him on: I like drones, I wont try to shoot it down. But I am an openness type, and don?t mind wearing a cosmetic prosthetic when nude sunbathing. But I like the tech challenge of making a low-cost water gun. It could be done for about a couple hundred bucks, if you don?t count the cost of the stuff I already have, the compressor and pressure tank. We might be able to retrofit existing converging nozzles and quick release valves. I didn?t count the cost of the prosthetic, being as it doesn?t apply to everyone here. Don?t flame me bro. This can be a fun light-hearted discussion, even though it has some damn serious implications (think about it.) For instance, Chris has already mentioned some matters more serious than camera drones. I would point out that we are already censoring ourselves online, not just for political correctness. In two glaring examples I can think of, both have to do with avoiding online blasphemy against two very different but highly motivated religions. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Apr 2 20:50:05 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 15:50:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dan - That's you. The thing to wonder about is can people keep and expect privacy about things regardless if you want to let the world know? For instance, where I live, there are nude beaches. Obviously, those folks don't care about their genitals being publicly seen, but does that mean no one can, say, stop peeping toms? Worst career choice I ever made: going to law school. Best one, transferring to psych. But in law school I found out that in a number of places, it was a peeping tom offense if a man was looking at a woman, but exhibitionism if a man was being looked at! Talk about gender discrimination! In general I think a peeping tom cannot be stopped if he is not on your property - then of course it's trespass. I won't swear to that. Gender discrimination the other way: in many states adultery is a felony if a woman does it, but only a misdemeanor if a man does it. I wonder who passes these laws? bill w On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 8:12 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > We have touched on the issue of privacy several times lately and > > I wonder if it received a lot of attention before I joined. > > I recall some discussion of universal surveillance, which would mean zero > or near zero privacy. Or maybe I'm confusing this group with another. That > discussion was before 2010. > > > We are concerned about it but I don't see any conclusions about > > what the appropriate level of privacy is. > > That might be the tougher discussion to have if one agrees that there > should be any privacy at all. I think the thing to worry about is big > players like the state being able to effectively use information against > everyone else. For instance, for most people there seem to be things about > themselves that can be used to control them. A case in point might be, > today, any private thoughts or talk about things that are currently deemed > inappropriate -- where the person holding such thoughts or saying such > things is likely to lose their job and be ostracized. Now, one could argue > in a post-privacy world such things won't matter. That's possible, though > things could go the other way: people conform as much as possible to avoid > incurring all kinds of sanctions, and others realize that the whip of such > sanctions can be used to keep people in line. > > > Denmark is making a necrogenomic database: DNA from everyone who dies. > > Is this appropriate? I don't know what else they are collecting, such > as cause > > of death and so on, but in the long run this could do a lot of good. > It could > > also run up insurance rates for the descendants in some countries if the > > insurance companies got hold of the data. > > The issue for civil libertarians would be any requirement to do so. Is > there any allowing people to practically opt out? > > > For myself, I am an open person who will tell you my grandmother's shoe > > size if asked. I don't care what anyone knows about me as long as my > > Visa card is safe. > > That's you. The thing to wonder about is can people keep and expect > privacy about things regardless if you want to let the world know? For > instance, where I live, there are nude beaches. Obviously, those folks > don't care about their genitals being publicly seen, but does that mean no > one can, say, stop peeping toms? > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my Kindle books via: > http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Apr 3 00:12:04 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 20:12:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> I remember being introduced to the openness debate on the list back in the paleolithic. David Brin's "The Transparent Society" was fresh and new (and oh so prophetic!), the cypheranarchists were fiercely debating with the transparency people, and the nanotech subset was considering just how radical radical surveillance could be. My own view is basically that (1) Brin is right: transparent, accountable open societies for the win. But (2) to really work they need to be tolerant. (1) is why the Snowden affair didn't disturb me by revealing massive surveillance, but by revealing how entrenched secrecy and lack of accountability is in the whole system - I would have no problem with NSA/GHCQ/FRA/... monitoring everything if they were themselves adequately monitored and kept honest. (2) is something that has crept up in priority over the years due to globalization and new social control applications (like the Chinese credit rating system punishing people for associating with the wrong people, or potential gaydar software). A global village of distributed busybodies forcing conformity with the lowest common denominator is not good. Privacy, integrity, security and similar things are to a large exent psychological and social states, not states of knowledge or technological (in)ability. When we do not listen too closely to a couple talking in public, demand control over our different personas, or choose to trust someone, we are implementing them socially. The issue isn't tech, but that we are lagging behind in workable and agreed on solutions. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From nicoalcala at gmail.com Sun Apr 3 01:57:52 2016 From: nicoalcala at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Tmljb2zDoXMgQWxjYWzDoQ==?=) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2016 18:57:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> Message-ID: El s?bado, 2 de abril de 2016, Anders Sandberg escribi?: > I remember being introduced to the openness debate on the list back in the > paleolithic. David Brin's "The Transparent Society" was fresh and new (and > oh so prophetic!), the cypheranarchists were fiercely debating with the > transparency people, and the nanotech subset was considering just how > radical radical surveillance could be. > > My own view is basically that (1) Brin is right: transparent, accountable > open societies for the win. But (2) to really work they need to be tolerant. > > (1) is why the Snowden affair didn't disturb me by revealing massive > surveillance, but by revealing how entrenched secrecy and lack of > accountability is in the whole system - I would have no problem with > NSA/GHCQ/FRA/... monitoring everything if they were themselves adequately > monitored and kept honest. (2) is something that has crept up in priority > over the years due to globalization and new social control applications > (like the Chinese credit rating system punishing people for associating > with the wrong people, or potential gaydar software). A global village of > distributed busybodies forcing conformity with the lowest common > denominator is not good. > > Privacy, integrity, security and similar things are to a large exent > psychological and social states, not states of knowledge or technological > (in)ability. When we do not listen too closely to a couple talking in > public, demand control over our different personas, or choose to trust > someone, we are implementing them socially. The issue isn't tech, but that > we are lagging behind in workable and agreed on solutions. > > > -- > Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Oxford University Like any libertarian dream, first and foremost, we need education to achieve any form of open society. I do agree with Anders there. And I guess it all comes back to the old good debate: *Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?* (who watches the watchmen?) It would be funny to make the following exercise: let's imagine a completely open and accountable society. You are tagged and publicly exposed in almost every aspect of your life. What things would be fucked up? What would generate inequality? What businesses would be at risk? - Health insurance. Good for some, really bad for others. - Small businesses and independent contractors (at least in poorer societies where b money is a big part of the economy). - How would relationships work? Would you be asked to share your tinder hook ups? Only the really important relationships? Marriage? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- *Nicol?s Alcal? - *Storyhacker Extraordinaire * Nicolasalcala.com * * Futurelighthouse.com * * mobile:* +34616453784 * twitter: *@cosmonauta -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Apr 3 16:22:43 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 12:22:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 Anders Sandberg wrote: ?> ? > My own view is basically that (1) Brin is right: transparent, accountable > open societies for the win. ?I presume that wouldn't include the entire world knowing ?my credit card number. > ?> ? > But (2) to really work they need to be tolerant. > Yes, if the NSA knows all there is to know about me then I should know all there is to know about the NSA, and if they have a surveillance camera watching me then I should have a equally good surveillance camera watching them. But for laws that transparency must be reciprocal to be enforced X would have to prove that Y has a secret he is not telling X, and governments are likely to have more resources to conceal things than individuals have to reveal them. So in the real world Brin's "Transparent Society" is unlikely to be symmetrical; not a plane of clear glass ?but ? more like a one way mirror. > ?>? > I would have no problem with NSA/GHCQ/FRA/... monitoring everything if > they were themselves adequately monitored ?Exactly, that's the problem. John K Clark? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Apr 3 17:24:14 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 12:24:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 11:22 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 Anders Sandberg wrote: > > ?> ? >> My own view is basically that (1) Brin is right: transparent, accountable >> open societies for the win. > > > ?I presume that wouldn't include the entire world knowing ?my credit card > number. > > >> ?> ? >> But (2) to really work they need to be tolerant. >> > > Yes, if the NSA knows all there is to know about me then I should know all > there is to know about the NSA, and if they have a surveillance camera > watching me then I should have a equally good surveillance camera watching > them. But for laws that transparency must be reciprocal to be enforced X > would have to prove that Y has a secret he is not telling X, and > governments are likely to have more resources to conceal things than > individuals have to reveal them. So in the real world Brin's "Transparent > Society" is unlikely to be symmetrical; not a plane of clear glass > ?but ? > more like a one way mirror. > > >> ?>? >> I would have no problem with NSA/GHCQ/FRA/... monitoring everything if >> they were themselves adequately monitored > > > ?Exactly, that's the problem. > > John K Clark? > > > ?Oh, C'mon - you guys are in dreamland. Has there ever been adequate > oversight of the NSC, FBI, CIA and only god knows who else in our > government? Look at the things Hoover did. Unbelievable, and yet he > remains a hero to many. If this is a problem I suspect it's never going to > be fixed. Congressional 'oversight' committees are regularly lied to, if > you can believe the reports on that. Including lies of omission. If you > don't ask the right questions you don't get the right answers, but how do > they know what questions to ask? > ?In effect these agencies are given blank checks and then not asked what they did with the money.? ?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 Sun Apr 3 17:17:26 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 10:17:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> Message-ID: <002f01d18dcc$b26519b0$172f4d10$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] openness again On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 Anders Sandberg > wrote: ? ?>> ??But (2) to really work they need to be tolerant. >?Yes, if the NSA knows all there is to know about me then I should know all there is to know about the NSA, and if they have a surveillance camera watching me then I should have a equally good surveillance camera watching them?John K Clark? When you think about it, Orwell?s 1984 foresaw all this. Privacy and political power become synonymous. This is a topic which we must ponder deeply: we know that our own privacy can be violated, by hackers and possibly governments. What is happening right now is an ongoing struggle to reveal the contents of email that Mrs. Clinton wrote and received during her tenure as Secretary of State. Doing so would be equivalent to demoting the office itself. We have bitcoin which is now thought to empower criminals, for it provides privacy. Don?t jump on me personally for stating that; rather focus on the concept itself: privacy is power. My comment isn?t specifically about bitcoin, but rather the concept of maintaining privacy in transactions. Note that in the USA it is becoming ever closer to illegal to trade in cash. The government wants its privacy from us in order to maintain power. This is all wrapped up in the FBI?s case against Apple (you GO, Apple!) and in its case against 23andMe (stand firm, Anne!) There are probably other cases we haven?t heard of yet. It used to be power was derived from differential control of wealth. Now Orwell?s vision and Brin?s vision are coming to pass, as power has become a derivative of differential control of information. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Apr 4 01:34:05 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 21:34:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: <002f01d18dcc$b26519b0$172f4d10$@att.net> References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> <002f01d18dcc$b26519b0$172f4d10$@att.net> Message-ID: <5701C48D.3090801@aleph.se> On 2016-04-03 13:17, spike wrote: > > > It used to be power was derived from differential control of wealth. > Now Orwell?s vision and Brin?s vision are coming to pass, as power has > become a derivative of differential control of information. > But if that control is not reliable, power becomes unreliable. (Cases in point: the Panama papers, the Unaoil scandal, the Snowden revelations) The problem for the information-powerful is that the differential can shift suddenly and unpredictably, which makes long-term planning harder. Sure, they often have multiple sources of power, but if one suddenly shifts and the newly empowered outsiders start causing trouble about it this requires the use of the other reserves too: they become less de facto powerful. One rational approach is to be short-term: assume a leak will happen, squeeze out as much benefit as possible before it happens and then hightail it. That doesn't lead to very well behaved governance. Another approach is to try to secure the control, but that is harder than it looks because the information infrastructure is massively leaky (partially by design). The third is to make it so that a loss of differential doesn't cause friction: yes, others now know what you know, but you have such a good reputation that you can still be ahead and regain the differential in some other domain. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Apr 4 01:16:43 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 21:16:43 -0400 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5701C07B.2060703@aleph.se> On 2016-04-03 12:22, John Clark wrote: > On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 Anders Sandberg >wrote: > > ? > ? > My own view is basically that (1) Brin is right: transparent, > accountable open societies for the win. > > > ?I presume that wouldn't include the entire world knowing ?my credit > card number. The problem with credit card numbers is that currently we use security by obscurity: much of your protection comes from me not knowing your number, rather than restrictions on how I can use it. A good authentification system would make knowing your card number useless to me, just as me knowing your email address doesn't allow me to hack your mail server (some extra authentification needed to ensure that I don't forge emails from you). Now imagine a 100% surveillance world. In this world there would not be a need for a passwords or codes, since in principle whenever you wanted to use your card the system could just trace you back to the moment you got the card at the bank years before. Personal continuity makes for a great authentification system. Being accountable means that if you do something, others can respond appropriately to it. The tricky part is of course the appropriate part: this is where the tolerance, and secondary levels of accountability comes in (the legitimacy of enforcement). Open societies are all about having rules that can be changed and the ability to add new functions as desired. This also matters on the private level: allowing people's roles in our life change flexibly, and allowing us to change the norms we run our social lives on. > ? > ? > But (2) to really work they need to be tolerant. > > > Yes, if the NSA knows all there is to know about me then I should know > all there is to know about the NSA, and if they have a surveillance > camera watching me then I should have a equally good surveillance > camera watching them. But for laws that transparency must be > reciprocal to be enforced X would have to prove that Y has a secret he > is not telling X, and governments are likely to have more resources > to conceal things than individuals have to reveal them. So in the real > world Brin's "Transparent Society" is unlikely to be symmetrical; not > a plane of clear glass > ? but ? > more like a one way mirror. This is exactly what he discusses in the book, and argues for strategies to get one way mirrors out of the way. Note that a transparent intelligence agency in a less than 100% transparent world doesn't necessarily have to reveal all it knows. It can reveal that it monitors the world, but not the information it has gathered. It can show what routines are in place to figure out bad activities worth taking action against without saying what bad guys it currently looks for - but leave ways to verify by current oversight and the future that it acted within the bounds of the law. (Yes, revealing this can in principle help bad guys, but I think Kerckhoffs's principle applies here to - you cannot make a cryptosystem/intelligence system much safer by hiding the principles of its operation, and the lack of critique and checking means vulnerabilities become deeper). -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 4 14:54:21 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 09:54:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: <5701C07B.2060703@aleph.se> References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> <5701C07B.2060703@aleph.se> Message-ID: Anders - ?The problem with credit card numbers is that currently we use security by obscurity: much of your protection comes from me not knowing your number, rather than restrictions on how I can use it. A good authentification system would make knowing your card number useless to me, just as me knowing your email address doesn't allow me to hack your mail server (some extra authentification needed to ensure that I don't forge emails from you).? OK, I'll bite - why don't they do that? bill w On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 8:16 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2016-04-03 12:22, John Clark wrote: > > On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 Anders Sandberg < anders at aleph.se> > wrote: > > ? > ? >> My own view is basically that (1) Brin is right: transparent, accountable >> open societies for the win. > > > ?I presume that wouldn't include the entire world knowing ?my credit card > number. > > > The problem with credit card numbers is that currently we use security by > obscurity: much of your protection comes from me not knowing your number, > rather than restrictions on how I can use it. A good authentification > system would make knowing your card number useless to me, just as me > knowing your email address doesn't allow me to hack your mail server (some > extra authentification needed to ensure that I don't forge emails from > you). Now imagine a 100% surveillance world. In this world there would not > be a need for a passwords or codes, since in principle whenever you wanted > to use your card the system could just trace you back to the moment you got > the card at the bank years before. Personal continuity makes for a great > authentification system. > > Being accountable means that if you do something, others can respond > appropriately to it. The tricky part is of course the appropriate part: > this is where the tolerance, and secondary levels of accountability comes > in (the legitimacy of enforcement). Open societies are all about having > rules that can be changed and the ability to add new functions as desired. > This also matters on the private level: allowing people's roles in our life > change flexibly, and allowing us to change the norms we run our social > lives on. > > > >> ? > ? >> But (2) to really work they need to be tolerant. >> > > Yes, if the NSA knows all there is to know about me then I should know all > there is to know about the NSA, and if they have a surveillance camera > watching me then I should have a equally good surveillance camera watching > them. But for laws that transparency must be reciprocal to be enforced X > would have to prove that Y has a secret he is not telling X, and > governments are likely to have more resources to conceal things than > individuals have to reveal them. So in the real world Brin's "Transparent > Society" is unlikely to be symmetrical; not a plane of clear glass > ? but ? > more like a one way mirror. > > This is exactly what he discusses in the book, and argues for strategies > to get one way mirrors out of the way. > > Note that a transparent intelligence agency in a less than 100% > transparent world doesn't necessarily have to reveal all it knows. It can > reveal that it monitors the world, but not the information it has gathered. > It can show what routines are in place to figure out bad activities worth > taking action against without saying what bad guys it currently looks for - > but leave ways to verify by current oversight and the future that it acted > within the bounds of the law. (Yes, revealing this can in principle help > bad guys, but I think Kerckhoffs's principle applies here to - you cannot > make a cryptosystem/intelligence system much safer by hiding the principles > of its operation, and the lack of critique and checking means > vulnerabilities become deeper). > > > -- > Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > 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 spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 4 16:30:00 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 09:30:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! Message-ID: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> Landing a rocket on its tail is just so cool, I can't get enough of watching it: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/04/04/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-launches-an d-lands-private-rocket-for-third-time.html?intcmp=hpff spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 4 18:08:39 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 13:08:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! In-Reply-To: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> References: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> Message-ID: Hey, have they heard of telephoto lenses? Ignorant question: when the rocket gets to within a few feet of the ground, why don't the flames harm the rocket? An idle question: why doesn't anyone thank anyone in this group? No one says 'good idea' or 'thanks' or the like. You do, like 'teehee............" Another idle question: among people such as yourselves (not me so much, but maybe a little) there should be a fairly high percentage of autism-like people, or at least Asperger's - that is, little in the way of social graces or sensibility. Maybe there is. ?? bill w On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 11:30 AM, spike wrote: > > > Landing a rocket on its tail is just so cool, I can?t get enough of > watching it: > > > > > http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/04/04/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-launches-and-lands-private-rocket-for-third-time.html?intcmp=hpff > > > > 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 pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 4 18:42:49 2016 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 19:42:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! In-Reply-To: References: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> Message-ID: On 4 April 2016 at 19:08, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > An idle question: why doesn't anyone thank anyone in this group? No one > says 'good idea' or 'thanks' or the like. You do, like > 'teehee............" > Because internet....... See famous cartoon: > Another idle question: among people such as yourselves (not me so much, but > maybe a little) there should be a fairly high percentage of autism-like > people, or at least Asperger's - that is, little in the way of social graces > or sensibility. Maybe there is. ?? > Bah!! Aspergers??? That's nothing!!! We're totally insane psychopaths!!!! (But cuddly with it). ;) BillK From anders at aleph.se Mon Apr 4 20:47:21 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 16:47:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! In-Reply-To: References: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> Message-ID: <5702D2D9.3040803@aleph.se> On 2016-04-04 14:42, BillK wrote: > >> Another idle question: among people such as yourselves (not me so much, but >> maybe a little) there should be a fairly high percentage of autism-like >> people, or at least Asperger's - that is, little in the way of social graces >> or sensibility. Maybe there is. ?? >> > Bah!! Aspergers??? That's nothing!!! > We're totally insane psychopaths!!!! > (But cuddly with it). ;) Partially that, but also because it would add a lot of noise to the conversation. "Me too"-postings are generally frowned on. But sure, we should aim for a nicer, friendlier conversation among us psychopaths. So, thank you for pointing out this! -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Apr 4 22:28:16 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 18:28:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: <5701C07B.2060703@aleph.se> References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> <5701C07B.2060703@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 Anders Sandberg wrote: ?>> ? >> ?I presume that wouldn't include the entire world knowing ?my credit card >> number. > > > ?> ? > The problem with credit card numbers is that currently we use security by > obscurity: much of your protection comes from me not knowing your number, > rather than restrictions on how I can use it. A good authentification > system would make knowing your card number useless to me, just as me > knowing your email address doesn't allow me to hack your mail server > ?But if you knew all there is to know about my mail server including passwords and private encryption keys you could hack it. ? > ?> ? > Now imagine a 100% surveillance world. In this world there would not be a > need for a passwords or codes, since in principle whenever you wanted to > use your card the system could just trace you back to the moment you got > the card at the bank years before. > ?And if somebody ?knew all there was to know about "the system" they could hack that too and successfully pretend to be me. > ?> ? > Personal continuity makes for a great authentification system. > ?Provided people trust it, provided they believe that the continuity the system displays is the truth. Should they believe the system if everybody can hack it? And if the system is secure because it keeps passwords and encryption keys secret can I also keep passwords and encryption keys secret? ?> ? > Note that a transparent intelligence agency in a less than 100% > transparent world doesn't necessarily have to reveal all it knows. It can > reveal that it monitors the world, but not the information it has gathered. > ?So the system can keep secrets from me but I can't keep secrets from the system.? ?Sounds like a one way mirror to me.? ?> ? > you cannot make a cryptosystem/intelligence system much safer by hiding > the principles of its operation > ? > ?I agree but I'm not talking about general principles, I'm talking about keeping specific passwords and ?encryption keys hidden. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nicoalcala at gmail.com Mon Apr 4 23:10:21 2016 From: nicoalcala at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?Tmljb2zDoXMgQWxjYWzDoQ==?=) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 16:10:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! In-Reply-To: <5702D2D9.3040803@aleph.se> References: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> <5702D2D9.3040803@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 1:47 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2016-04-04 14:42, BillK wrote: > >> >> Another idle question: among people such as yourselves (not me so much, >>> but >>> maybe a little) there should be a fairly high percentage of autism-like >>> people, or at least Asperger's - that is, little in the way of social >>> graces >>> or sensibility. Maybe there is. ?? >>> >>> Bah!! Aspergers??? That's nothing!!! >> We're totally insane psychopaths!!!! >> (But cuddly with it). ;) >> > > Partially that, but also because it would add a lot of noise to the > conversation. "Me too"-postings are generally frowned on. But sure, we > should aim for a nicer, friendlier conversation among us psychopaths. > > So, thank you for pointing out this! Yep, thank you ? ?? > > > -- > Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Oxford University > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- *Nicol?s Alcal? - *Storyhacker Extraordinaire * Nicolasalcala.com * * Futurelighthouse.com * * mobile:* +34616453784 * twitter: *@cosmonauta -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 4 23:24:26 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 18:24:26 -0500 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! In-Reply-To: References: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> <5702D2D9.3040803@aleph.se> Message-ID: Bah!! Aspergers??? That's nothing!!! We're totally insane psychopaths!!!! (But cuddly with it). ;) A great example of lack of social thinking: I meant to send this to Spike only and not rouse the herd, but it's OK. As for cuddly: for a psychopath, cuddling is no different than it is for everyone else with one big exception: more ulterior motives than usual. (BTW - psychopaths are not insane - until you've heard an insane person speak, you have not lived a full life - neologisms, interspersed with giggling and - oh, wait - doesn't that sound like Spike?) bill w On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Nicol?s Alcal? wrote: > > > On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 1:47 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > >> On 2016-04-04 14:42, BillK wrote: >> >>> >>> Another idle question: among people such as yourselves (not me so much, >>>> but >>>> maybe a little) there should be a fairly high percentage of autism-like >>>> people, or at least Asperger's - that is, little in the way of social >>>> graces >>>> or sensibility. Maybe there is. ?? >>>> >>>> Bah!! Aspergers??? That's nothing!!! >>> We're totally insane psychopaths!!!! >>> (But cuddly with it). ;) >>> >> >> Partially that, but also because it would add a lot of noise to the >> conversation. "Me too"-postings are generally frowned on. But sure, we >> should aim for a nicer, friendlier conversation among us psychopaths. >> >> So, thank you for pointing out this! > > > Yep, thank you > ? > ?? > >> >> >> -- >> Anders Sandberg >> Future of Humanity Institute >> Oxford Martin School >> Oxford University >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > > > -- > > *Nicol?s Alcal? - *Storyhacker Extraordinaire > * Nicolasalcala.com * > * Futurelighthouse.com * > * mobile:* +34616453784 > * twitter: *@cosmonauta > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Apr 5 00:03:17 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 17:03:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! In-Reply-To: References: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> <5702D2D9.3040803@aleph.se> Message-ID: <009a01d18ece$8f45ab90$add102b0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace ? >?A great example of lack of social thinking: I meant to send this to Spike only and not rouse the herd, but it's OK? Eh, there?s no point having a herd if we don?t rouse them regularly. >? (BTW - psychopaths are not insane - until you've heard an insane person speak, you have not lived a full life - neologisms, interspersed with giggling and - oh, wait - doesn't that sound like Spike?) bill w Well there ya go. I prefer to think of myself more as one who thinks of funny ideas in the middle of a sentence, which then causes them to be interspersed with giggling, which is a completely different phenom than psychopathic maniacal laughter. In the latter case, it might be another personality telling jokes and wisecracks as one speaks. Example, we have heard in the old days of demon possession, and in some cases multiple demons, such as recorded in judeo-christian scripture, the whole legion thing with the two guys at Gadarenes as recorded in Matthew 8: 28-32. Now I don?t know about you, but if some yahoo came along, roused my swine herd and made pig soup out of my livestock, I would really be pissed. They claimed this cat was without sin? How the hell would we define hijacking the local swine herd? A misdemeanor? But I digress. The point is we have examples aplenty of demon possession, and we are told that demons are the counterparts of the angels, the third of them who went bad, over to the dark side, etc. So? why the asymmetry? Why don?t the good angels ever possess people? Think about it, that might be a kick! The good angels have had all this time to learn stuff, then they could possess us, and we might become instant skilled programmers or something, heeeehehehehheeee. Perhaps that was what was going on when the apostles started speaking in tongues, ja? But that?s boring: we have computers which can do that now. I want to program in fingers. The previous is a funny thought with giggling interspersed with typing. So now all I need is a neologism to meet and exceed BillW?s educated definition of insane. Hmmmm?. OK got it. I want to go to a reverse s?ance, conjure up some good angels, see if I can be possessed by one. Or several of them, like the porcine Legion team, but their counterparts, the good guys, ja? We can call the session an ecna?s, with the nifty derivative prime mark over the ?. Is the word ecna?s already taken? My bride uses it regularly in scrabble, but that?s no indication it is an actual word: she cheats. {8-[ At scrabble only, not marital vows. {8^D As far as I know. {8-/ But wait, what if? I get possessed by several really stupid angels? They could be the Celebrity Apprentice audience of angelic hosts, heeeeeheheheheheheeeeeheheheee. This could be a risky ecna?s. Is that cool with Bezos sticking that landing, or what? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 02:31:18 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 22:31:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] quote of the day - life In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 William Flynn Wallace wrote: Life is like a crossword puzzle: a lot of the clues are ambiguous. Me. > Life is like an analogy ?: ? Aaron Allston. ? John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 03:13:14 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 23:13:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 11:58 AM, spike wrote: > > > > Julian Assange was rudely shouted down here by privacy advocates and left > the list over 20 yrs ago, but now I don?t think he was entirely wrong. He > was right on about many of the things he wrote. > ### I remember arguing with Eugen Leitl about Brin's book. He fell off the radar, seemingly. Anyway, back then I pointed out that surveillance is something that technology wants. Individual humans may not want surveillance but the brute fact of the matter is that technology reduced the price of surveillance by many orders of magnitude already, and further reductions are likely. And if the price goes down, consumption of surveillance will go up, whether by government or by companies or by private citizens. There is no escaping it, so we have to learn to live with it, reduce the negatives and maximize the positives, just like with any other inevitability. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 03:47:45 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 23:47:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] sciam blog article In-Reply-To: <0BB1D4BC-B1AB-48D3-8997-102B29B6F2C2@gmu.edu> References: <3311F050-F98D-4E43-9A44-BAF78BFB9C23@gmu.edu> <452133E8-8C0F-4696-9A0E-4DC4ADBE5456@gmu.edu> <0BB1D4BC-B1AB-48D3-8997-102B29B6F2C2@gmu.edu> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 9:03 AM, Robin D Hanson wrote: Okay, but I?m much less interested in ?general reasoning abilities? than in > full functionality to substitute for humans on almost all jobs. > ### I would be very impressed by a machine capable of substituting for human general reasoning abilities. It could be set to work on improving its reasoning abilities, and then, of course, substituting for humans in all jobs is likely to be not far behind. ----------------- > I?d say you really don?t know how many other modules are needed, or how > hard they will be to create. But you do here admit that there is at least > one further module needed that we don?t have or know how to make. > ### Of course, it would be hubris to claim that I know how far we are from a human-equivalent intelligence but I can make some reasonable guesses. Based on the complexity of the neural structures involved in volition, building this volitional module would be more difficult than building a walking robot but not dramatically so. The limbic system works very closely with the cortex but aside from that it is not orders of magnitude more complex than the brainstem. By weight it is a few times larger than the brainstem if you include the relevant cortical areas, and the neurophysiology is not different from the rest of the brain, so duplicating its function in software shouldn't be a 50-year stumbling block on the way to AGI. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Apr 5 03:34:49 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 20:34:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <005f01d18eec$1c3c8790$54b596b0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki Subject: Re: [ExI] before? On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 11:58 AM, spike > wrote: Julian Assange was rudely shouted down here by privacy advocates and left the list over 20 yrs ago, but now I don?t think he was entirely wrong. He was right on about many of the things he wrote. ### I remember arguing with Eugen Leitl about Brin's book. He fell off the radar, seemingly? Rafa? He?s still around. I can get contact info if you wish. Eugen started a closed spinoff list for privacy-oriented transhumanism. He sent me an invitation; I read his list for a couple years but I never posted there. He has an interesting take on privacy: the Germans really get the whole privacy thing much better than Yanks. They remember what happened in the 1930s and know it can happen again, anywhere. His words ring true to me as I listen to the current appalling crop of US presidential candidates. All four of the remaining candidates have an outlook that favors statism. All four feel like power grabbers to me. I am hoping one of them will choose Gary Johnson as a running mate. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Apr 5 04:27:44 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 21:27:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> Message-ID: <004001d18ef3$813d7260$83b85720$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki Sent: Monday, April 04, 2016 8:13 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] before? On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 11:58 AM, spike > wrote: Julian Assange was rudely shouted down here by privacy advocates and left the list over 20 yrs ago, but now I don?t think he was entirely wrong. He was right on about many of the things he wrote. I now see this could be interpreted as a criticism, but this is not the intention. Thinking back on those discussions that predated Brin?s book, I now recall Julian took a rather extreme position: that we have no legal right to privacy. He was already talking about setting up a site to collect information on any public figure, especially politicians. This would limit their power. Assange discussed here setting up what became WikiLeaks. OK so now we have these Panama Papers, which have a number of national leaders with secret offshore accounts: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-panama-tax-idUSKCN0X10C2 I think one of the outcomes of the discussion long ago is that increased involuntary transparency would lead to overall increased tolerance of wrongdoing. It sure looks to me like the US is tolerating an enormous and growing pile of evidence of wrongdoing on the part of one of the leading presidential candidates. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 08:31:35 2016 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 09:31:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: <005f01d18eec$1c3c8790$54b596b0$@att.net> References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> <005f01d18eec$1c3c8790$54b596b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 5 April 2016 at 04:34, spike wrote: > He has an interesting take on privacy: the Germans really get the whole > privacy thing much better than Yanks. They remember what happened in the > 1930s and know it can happen again, anywhere. His words ring true to me as > I listen to the current appalling crop of US presidential candidates. All > four of the remaining candidates have an outlook that favors statism. All > four feel like power grabbers to me. I am hoping one of them will choose > Gary Johnson as a running mate. > It's not just governments. Companies are at least as bad about disliking individual privacy. The direction of technology is to stop people being anonymous consumers. If someone consumes (buys) a product or service then they must have id so that the database records can be updated and analysed. That is part of the reasoning to ban cash transactions. Micro payments will mean that even the most trivial of actions will require id and be tracked and recorded. Your smartphone already means that most of your life is recorded. Where, when, how much, how long, who else was present, what was spoken or texted, is all in the databases. In the near future, destroying your smartphone and internet link will ensure you join the underclass of 'non-persons' banished from society. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 14:11:11 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 09:11:11 -0500 Subject: [ExI] quote of the day - life In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 9:31 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > Life is like a crossword puzzle: a lot of the clues are ambiguous. Me. >> > > Life is like an analogy > ?: ? > Aaron Allston. > ? > > John K Clark > > > ?Simile when you say that. > ?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 foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 14:31:17 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 09:31:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] history of privacy laws chart Message-ID: http://www.internetlegal.com/historical-chart-of-privacy-laws-in-the-united-states/ Laws are one thing; getting them obeyed is another. Suppose, on a false clue, a SWAT team invades your house looking for nonexistent drugs. Everything is pulled out of drawers and dumped on the floor, including the contents of your freezer. Clearly illegal. Now try to get damages from the police. In many places they can't be sued. If they can, then I hope you have patience and the hundreds of dollars per hour that your attorney will charge. Only a rich person, or perhaps someone backed by the ACLU, has any chance at all. Aside from egregious abuses like this, I think most people just don't care that much about privacy. They care more about everyone knowing everything they are doing, including their children, pets, etc. Aside from peeping toms and boyfriends who post your nudie shots on the net, isn't this all about money? About not losing money, or costing you money, like a stolen Visa card? Even health privacy comes down to money. Bill W bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 14:33:12 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 09:33:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> <005f01d18eec$1c3c8790$54b596b0$@att.net> Message-ID: It's not just governments. Companies are at least as bad about disliking individual privacy. And do you know why? I'll bet it's loss. The last time I looked, employee theft was number one the chart of company losses. bill w On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 3:31 AM, BillK wrote: > On 5 April 2016 at 04:34, spike wrote: > > He has an interesting take on privacy: the Germans really get the whole > > privacy thing much better than Yanks. They remember what happened in the > > 1930s and know it can happen again, anywhere. His words ring true to me > as > > I listen to the current appalling crop of US presidential candidates. > All > > four of the remaining candidates have an outlook that favors statism. > All > > four feel like power grabbers to me. I am hoping one of them will choose > > Gary Johnson as a running mate. > > > > It's not just governments. Companies are at least as bad about > disliking individual privacy. The direction of technology is to stop > people being anonymous consumers. If someone consumes (buys) a product > or service then they must have id so that the database records can be > updated and analysed. > > That is part of the reasoning to ban cash transactions. Micro payments > will mean that even the most trivial of actions will require id and be > tracked and recorded. Your smartphone already means that most of your > life is recorded. Where, when, how much, how long, who else was > present, what was spoken or texted, is all in the databases. > > In the near future, destroying your smartphone and internet link will > ensure you join the underclass of 'non-persons' banished from society. > > BillK > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Apr 5 14:30:29 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 07:30:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] quote of the day - life In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <007a01d18f47$b4e19e30$1ea4da90$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2016 7:11 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] quote of the day - life On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 9:31 PM, John Clark > wrote: On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 William Flynn Wallace > wrote: Life is like a crossword puzzle: a lot of the clues are ambiguous. Me. Life is like an analogy ?: ? Aaron Allston. ? John K Clark ?Simile when you say that. ?bill w? Yesterday, I metaphor people who were similing. 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 15:27:45 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 08:27:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> <005f01d18eec$1c3c8790$54b596b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Apr 5, 2016, at 7:33 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > It's not just governments. Companies are at least as bad about disliking individual privacy. > > And do you know why? I'll bet it's loss. The last time I looked, employee theft was number one the chart of company losses. I think it's more about increasing revenue by collecting more information on actual and potential customers. Of course, internally, there's employee theft, but lowering that doesn't really increase revenue, no? Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 15:43:37 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 10:43:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] quote of the day - life In-Reply-To: <007a01d18f47$b4e19e30$1ea4da90$@att.net> References: <007a01d18f47$b4e19e30$1ea4da90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 9:30 AM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Sent:* Tuesday, April 05, 2016 7:11 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] quote of the day - life > > > > > > > > On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 9:31 PM, John Clark wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > > Life is like a crossword puzzle: a lot of the clues are ambiguous. Me. > > > > *Life is like an analogy* > > *?:** ?* > > Aaron Allston. > > ? > > > > John K Clark > > > > > > ?Simile when you say that. > > > > ?bill w? > > > > > > Yesterday, I metaphor people who were similing. > > > > spike > > > > ?"I Never Metaphor I didn't Like" - recommended book bill w? > > > > > ? > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 15:46:16 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 10:46:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> <005f01d18eec$1c3c8790$54b596b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Apr 5, 2016, at 7:33 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > It's not just governments. Companies are at least as bad about disliking > individual privacy. > > And do you know why? I'll bet it's loss. The last time I looked, > employee theft was number one the chart of company losses. > > > I think it's more about increasing revenue by collecting more information > on actual and potential customers. Of course, internally, there's employee > theft, but lowering that doesn't really increase revenue, no? > > Regards, > > Dan > ?As for finance and economics, I am the least of the least. But I think that if you have more goods to sell that were already paid for and that your employees did not steal, you'd make more money, but what do I know? bill w? > Sample my Kindle books via: > http://author.to/DanUst > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Apr 5 15:57:52 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 11:57:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> <5701C07B.2060703@aleph.se> Message-ID: <5703E080.2010701@aleph.se> On 2016-04-04 18:28, John Clark wrote: > On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 Anders Sandberg >wrote: > > ? >> ? > ?I presume that wouldn't include the entire world knowing ?my > credit card number. > > > ? > ? > The problem with credit card numbers is that currently we use > security by obscurity: much of your protection comes from me not > knowing your number, rather than restrictions on how I can use it. > A good authentification system would make knowing your card number > useless to me, just as me knowing your email address doesn't allow > me to hack your mail server > > > ?But if you knew all there is to know about my mail server including > passwords and private encryption keys you could hack it. ? If I knew all the information, of course. But then I would already have access. If I knew your credit card number but did not have the proper access (say biometric or surveillance recognition), then I could not get in. You could do the same thing with the email server too: if it only allows access to people who were you when it was initialized, it will be pretty secure. > > ? > ? > Now imagine a 100% surveillance world. In this world there would > not be a need for a passwords or codes, since in principle > whenever you wanted to use your card the system could just trace > you back to the moment you got the card at the bank years before. > > > ?And if somebody ?knew all there was to know about "the system" they > could hack that too and successfully pretend to be me. Remember Kerckhoffs well tested principle: knowing a system architecture does not make it unsafe if it is a good architecture. In reality system security depends a lot on implementation, and this is where real insecurities tend to hide. But if you have a solid (or highly redundant) system then the adversary would have a tough time. I am sure it is always possible to fool a security camera or biometric algorithm. But if there are ten independent cameras and algorithms, then fooling them all at the same time (and unobtrusively) becomes very tough. If the overall system doesn't have a simple point of failure (like letting all the camera data go through the same hackable server) but instead collates distributed information, then it will be very hard to crack. And the metric is not impossibility of cracking it, but that the cost/effort is too high to make it worthwhile. > ? > ? > Personal continuity makes for a great authentification system. > > > ? Provided people trust it, provided they believe that the continuity > the system displays is the truth. Should they believe the system > if everybody can hack it? And if the system is secure because it keeps > passwords and encryption keys secret can I also keep passwords and > encryption keys secret? Proving a system is trustworthy in the technical and social sense will always be a complex process. The security of the above 100% surveillance system is not in any secret keys, but just checking that the person withdrawing money is contigious with the person opening the account. There is no secret, just a hard to forge surveillance trail. Note that authentification is different from secrecy. In a 100% surveillance world there are going to be few if any secrets, but one can still authentificate things. Since subverting a system is about secretly changing it, it becomes hard in this world. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 16:08:07 2016 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 17:08:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: <5701C48D.3090801@aleph.se> References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> <002f01d18dcc$b26519b0$172f4d10$@att.net> <5701C48D.3090801@aleph.se> Message-ID: On 4 April 2016 at 02:34, Anders Sandberg wrote: > But if that control is not reliable, power becomes unreliable. (Cases in > point: the Panama papers, the Unaoil scandal, the Snowden revelations) The > problem for the information-powerful is that the differential can shift > suddenly and unpredictably, which makes long-term planning harder. Sure, > they often have multiple sources of power, but if one suddenly shifts and > the newly empowered outsiders start causing trouble about it this requires > the use of the other reserves too: they become less de facto powerful. > I heard a rumour that David Cameron suddenly thinks that personal privacy is very important. Wonder why?????? :) BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 16:18:37 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 11:18:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] schizo/psycho continued Message-ID: Maybe I am preaching to the choir, but let me make a point or two about these words, which are vastly misused even by very smart people. Schizophrenia's name came from the imagined split (schizo) between the mind (phrenia - Greek) and the will. Of course we no longer talk about the will, so let's put it in Freud's terms: The id (unconscious) overwhelms the ego (conscious) with tons of gibberish, random dreams, lust, anger etc. and the ego projects that into the outside world, perceiving it as coming from there rather than from his own personality. (You see how this ties in to paranoia, a very common type, though undifferentiated is the most common). It is as if he has lost control and cannot control the contents of his mind. Violence is quite rare except for the paranoid type. The others are just too crazy to make a plan to act. And the paranoids mostly plan, not do. Freudian theory is not accepted in this context but makes good analogies. No treatment worth. You can see how the 'schizo' got turned into 'split personality' - i.e. multiple personality (MP) But MP is an entirely different case. Two or more separate personalities exist in the same body and mostly both or all of them are sane. 'Sane' may be a stretch for those who have both male and female personalities. Now as for 'maniacal', such a laugh does not resemble that of Snidely Oilcan, or whatever that villain's name is. And if it is truly mania, then it's part of manic-depressive and generally has no evil intent. 'Psychopath' has gone through many names: psychopath, sociopath, antisocial personality, supposedly getting more and more PC all the time. Not insane by any measure accepted by a court of law (which is another issue, as all those that are accepted are way way WAY outdated). Violence is common. That's all for now. Exam will be next Thursday. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 16:23:42 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 11:23:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! In-Reply-To: <009a01d18ece$8f45ab90$add102b0$@att.net> References: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> <5702D2D9.3040803@aleph.se> <009a01d18ece$8f45ab90$add102b0$@att.net> Message-ID: We can call the session an ecna?s, with the nifty derivative prime mark over the ?. Is the word ecna?s already taken? Bumper sticker: DAM (mothers against dyslexia) Maybe your wife is dyslexic: ecnaes unscrambles to: seneca, encase, and seance, perfectly good words. bill w On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 7:03 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *?* > > > > >?A great example of lack of social thinking: I meant to send this to > Spike only and not rouse the herd, but it's OK? > > > > Eh, there?s no point having a herd if we don?t rouse them regularly. > > > > >? (BTW - psychopaths are not insane - until you've heard an insane > person speak, you have not lived a full life - neologisms, interspersed > with giggling and - oh, wait - doesn't that sound like Spike?) bill w > > > > Well there ya go. I prefer to think of myself more as one who thinks of > funny ideas in the middle of a sentence, which then causes them to be > interspersed with giggling, which is a completely different phenom than > psychopathic maniacal laughter. In the latter case, it might be another > personality telling jokes and wisecracks as one speaks. > > > > Example, we have heard in the old days of demon possession, and in some > cases multiple demons, such as recorded in judeo-christian scripture, the > whole legion thing with the two guys at Gadarenes as recorded in Matthew 8: > 28-32. Now I don?t know about you, but if some yahoo came along, roused my > swine herd and made pig soup out of my livestock, I would really be > pissed. They claimed this cat was without sin? How the hell would we > define hijacking the local swine herd? A misdemeanor? > > > > But I digress. The point is we have examples aplenty of demon possession, > and we are told that demons are the counterparts of the angels, the third > of them who went bad, over to the dark side, etc. So? why the asymmetry? > Why don?t the good angels ever possess people? Think about it, that might > be a kick! The good angels have had all this time to learn stuff, then > they could possess us, and we might become instant skilled programmers or > something, heeeehehehehheeee. Perhaps that was what was going on when the > apostles started speaking in tongues, ja? But that?s boring: we have > computers which can do that now. I want to program in fingers. > > > > The previous is a funny thought with giggling interspersed with typing. > So now all I need is a neologism to meet and exceed BillW?s educated > definition of insane. Hmmmm?. OK got it. I want to go to a reverse > s?ance, conjure up some good angels, see if I can be possessed by one. Or > several of them, like the porcine Legion team, but their counterparts, the > good guys, ja? We can call the session an ecna?s, with the nifty > derivative prime mark over the ?. Is the word ecna?s already taken? My > bride uses it regularly in scrabble, but that?s no indication it is an > actual word: she cheats. {8-[ At scrabble only, not marital vows. {8^D > As far as I know. {8-/ > > > > But wait, what if? I get possessed by several really stupid angels? They > could be the Celebrity Apprentice audience of angelic hosts, > heeeeeheheheheheheeeeeheheheee. This could be a risky ecna?s. > > > > Is that cool with Bezos sticking that landing, or what? > > > > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 16:32:55 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 12:32:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard Message-ID: ?Back in 1997 when a computer beat the world Chess champion ?Piet Hut, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton said "It may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go ? maybe even longer. If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few months he could beat all existing computer programs. You don?t have to be a Kasparov?. About the same time science writer George Johnson said "Defeating a human Go champion will be a sign that artificial intelligence is truly beginning to become as good as the real thing.? But in today's new York Times Johnson says "That doesn?t seem so true anymore", and then in a orgie of sour grapes goes on to list the things that computers still aren't good at and to claim that the things they are good at is a testament to the genius of the computer's teachers not of the computer itself, so it's not really a big deal. It just shows what I've been saying, the goal post is always moving and true intelligence is whatever a computer isn't good at, YET. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 16:51:18 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 09:51:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> <005f01d18eec$1c3c8790$54b596b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Apr 5, 2016, at 8:46 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: >>> On Apr 5, 2016, at 7:33 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >>> >>> It's not just governments. Companies are at least as bad about disliking individual privacy. >>> >>> And do you know why? I'll bet it's loss. The last time I looked, employee theft was number one the chart of company losses. >> >> I think it's more about increasing revenue by collecting more information on actual and potential customers. Of course, internally, there's employee theft, but lowering that doesn't really increase revenue, no? >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan > > ?As for finance and economics, I am the least of the least. But I think that if you have more goods to sell that were already paid for and that your employees did not steal, you'd make more money, but what do I know? My point: I'm not say firms are utterly unconcerned about employee theft, but I don't think that's the main driver behind collecting information about customers, especially information that most people might think violates privacy. Let me put this way: if you decide to work for a firm, you kind of expect them to not want you to steal from them, right? But if you're a customer, you don't normally expect them to collect all sorts of data on you, some of which you'd prefer to keep private. But what do I know? Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From steinberg.will at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 17:14:28 2016 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 13:14:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] woohoo! bezos does it again! In-Reply-To: References: <007201d18e8f$3c4ea6b0$b4ebf410$@att.net> <5702D2D9.3040803@aleph.se> <009a01d18ece$8f45ab90$add102b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Apr 5, 2016 12:24 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: > > Maybe your wife is dyslexic: ecnaes unscrambles to: seneca, encase, and seance, perfectly good words. > > bill w It's s?ance backwards, that's the joke, lol -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 18:35:27 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 13:35:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] before? In-Reply-To: References: <00e701d18cf8$7fc6ad40$7f5407c0$@att.net> <005f01d18eec$1c3c8790$54b596b0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 11:51 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Apr 5, 2016, at 8:46 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Dan TheBookMan > wrote: > >> On Apr 5, 2016, at 7:33 AM, William Flynn Wallace >> wrote: >> >> It's not just governments. Companies are at least as bad about disliking >> individual privacy. >> >> And do you know why? I'll bet it's loss. The last time I looked, >> employee theft was number one the chart of company losses. >> >> >> I think it's more about increasing revenue by collecting more information >> on actual and potential customers. Of course, internally, there's employee >> theft, but lowering that doesn't really increase revenue, no? >> >> Regards, >> >> Dan >> > > ?As for finance and economics, I am the least of the least. But I think > that if you have more goods to sell that were already paid for and that > your employees did not steal, you'd make more money, but what do I know? > > > My point: I'm not say firms are utterly unconcerned about employee theft, > but I don't think that's the main driver behind collecting information > about customers, especially information that most people might think > violates privacy. Let me put this way: if you decide to work for a firm, > you kind of expect them to not want you to steal from them, right? But if > you're a customer, you don't normally expect them to collect all sorts of > data on you, some of which you'd prefer to keep private. > > But what do I know? > > Dan > ?My point was about employees. Customers like me want as much info as possible taken from us because then the ads/spam/snail mail offers we get are at least somewhat relevant to our shopping. Of course there should be an Opt Out, or even better, an Opt In so you can choose your level of privacy, but that's asking too much in today's world. They are going to grab it until laws stop them. What I wish they would stop are these privacy papers we get to sign in physician's offices and mailings from Visa et al about their privacy policies. How many millions of trees would they save? bill w ? > Sample my Kindle books via: > http://author.to/DanUst > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 21:44:29 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 14:44:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] history of privacy laws chart In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 5, 2016 7:32 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: > Suppose, on a false clue, a SWAT team invades your house looking for nonexistent drugs. Everything is pulled out of drawers and dumped on the floor, including the contents of your freezer. Suppose nothing. That kind of thing happened to me back in the '80s - not quite that severe, but the first clue I had that cops were in my house was when one opened the door with gun drawn and pointed at me. I was a preteen kid playing a text-graphics video game at the time. This was part of the first (I think) wave of cybercrime hysteria. This is apparently starting to happen more often in the past few years - a tool of trollers for intimidation, among other things. These days it even has a name: swatting. More details at http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Swatting . I don't think it's yet hit sitting members of Congress, but it has hit certain state legislators. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 5 23:12:12 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 18:12:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] history of privacy laws chart In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Adrian - This is apparently starting to happen more often in the past few years - a tool of trollers for intimidation, among other things. These days it even has a name: swatting. More details at http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Swatting . I don't think it's yet hit sitting members of Congress, but it has hit certain state legislators. Leaving out the tossing etc., this kind of behavior by police is perfectly understandable if they have hard data that drugs are being dealt out of the house, since large amounts of cash may be there along with Uzis etc. to protect it. Quite legal. The problem comes with what they consider 'hard data'. We read about drug busts that hit the wrong house, for instance. Military-type action can be appropriate. But it seems that very often it isn't, and the problem with that is that we only hear about the cases where they goof. Estimates of probability based on TV news are extremely skewed, as all of you know. Not for drug busts, but for most police action, I strongly favor training police in psychology, in how to defuse a situation without drawing guns or even acting in a hostile way. Poor Mississippi, in the news again with early 20th century type political actions, which are sure to be turned over in short order. Posturing by these dickheads just results in paying more to the lawyers. Hot heads win every time here. Try to think kindly of us who live here. We don't like it either, just as most Iranians don't like theocracy. bill w On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 4:44 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Apr 5, 2016 7:32 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" > wrote: > > Suppose, on a false clue, a SWAT team invades your house looking for > nonexistent drugs. Everything is pulled out of drawers and dumped on the > floor, including the contents of your freezer. > > Suppose nothing. That kind of thing happened to me back in the '80s - not > quite that severe, but the first clue I had that cops were in my house was > when one opened the door with gun drawn and pointed at me. I was a preteen > kid playing a text-graphics video game at the time. This was part of the > first (I think) wave of cybercrime hysteria. > > This is apparently starting to happen more often in the past few years - a > tool of trollers for intimidation, among other things. These days it even > has a name: swatting. More details at > http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Swatting . I don't think it's yet hit > sitting members of Congress, but it has hit certain state legislators. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Apr 6 01:30:10 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2016 21:30:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] openness again In-Reply-To: References: <00ff01d18cfa$d62e82a0$828b87e0$@att.net> <57005FD4.4080504@aleph.se> <5701C07B.2060703@aleph.se> Message-ID: <570466A2.6020004@aleph.se> On 2016-04-04 10:54, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Anders - ?The problem with credit card numbers is that currently we > use security by obscurity: much of your protection comes from me not > knowing your number, rather than restrictions on how I can use it. A > good authentification system would make knowing your card number > useless to me, just as me knowing your email address doesn't allow me > to hack your mail server (some extra authentification needed to ensure > that I don't forge emails from you).? > > OK, I'll bite - why don't they do that? bill w I think part of it is the extra cost of chip-and-pin machines and their certification, but also that people are strongly used to certain ways of using the cards (like signatures) that make them or issuing banks resist the new system. Plus that there is an issue of whether merchants, banks or card companies should bear the cost: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/02/17/survey-adoption-chip-enabled-credit-cards-falls-behind/80453906/ http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/why-youre-still-swiping-credit-card.aspx http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1221-credit-card-technology-20131221-story.html http://www.csoonline.com/article/3047178/security/chip-and-pin-adoption-still-slow.html Upgrading any existing tech infrastructure is always painful. When people have differing incentives it is even tougher. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From protokol2020 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 13:03:28 2016 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 15:03:28 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Even this stupidity they show, could be emulated on a digital computer, one day. And they perhaps somehow know that. We need intelligence, however. Not the silliness they demonstrate so faithfully. We are probably less then a decade away from something quite spectacular in this field. I am not saying that what we are seeing now isn't spectacular - it is! I'm thinking about something even much, much more spectacular. Those clowns will have nothing else to say then. That alone will be priceless. On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 6:32 PM, John Clark wrote: > ?Back in 1997 when a computer beat the world Chess champion ?Piet Hut, an > astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton said "It > may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go ? maybe even > longer. If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few > months he could beat all existing computer programs. You don?t have to be a > Kasparov?. About the same time science writer George Johnson said "Defeating > a human Go champion will be a sign that artificial intelligence is truly > beginning to become as good as the real thing.? But in today's new York > Times Johnson says "That doesn?t seem so true anymore", and then in a > orgie of sour grapes goes on to list the things that computers still aren't > good at and to claim that the things they are good at is a testament to the > genius of the computer's teachers not of the computer itself, so it's not > really a big deal. It just shows what I've been saying, the goal post is > always moving and true intelligence is whatever a computer isn't good at, > YET. > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 14:06:59 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 09:06:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: John Clark - the things they are good at is a testament to the genius of the computer's teachers not of the computer itself Huh? I assume a computer is a blank slate, so whatever it can do is what the 'teacher's' taught it (programmed it) to do. Is there a difference between a computer and its programming?? (ignoring hardware, of course) bill w On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 8:03 AM, Tomaz Kristan wrote: > Even this stupidity they show, could be emulated on a digital computer, > one day. And they perhaps somehow know that. We need intelligence, however. > Not the silliness they demonstrate so faithfully. > > We are probably less then a decade away from something quite spectacular > in this field. I am not saying that what we are seeing now isn't > spectacular - it is! I'm thinking about something even much, much more > spectacular. Those clowns will have nothing else to say then. That alone > will be priceless. > > > On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 6:32 PM, John Clark wrote: > >> ?Back in 1997 when a computer beat the world Chess champion ?Piet Hut, >> an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton said "It >> may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go ? maybe even >> longer. If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few >> months he could beat all existing computer programs. You don?t have to be a >> Kasparov?. About the same time science writer George Johnson said "Defeating >> a human Go champion will be a sign that artificial intelligence is truly >> beginning to become as good as the real thing.? But in today's new York >> Times Johnson says "That doesn?t seem so true anymore", and then in a >> orgie of sour grapes goes on to list the things that computers still aren't >> good at and to claim that the things they are good at is a testament to the >> genius of the computer's teachers not of the computer itself, so it's not >> really a big deal. It just shows what I've been saying, the goal post is >> always moving and true intelligence is whatever a computer isn't good at, >> YET. >> >> 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/ > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Apr 6 15:56:11 2016 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 17:56:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Regression to teachers all the way down to Socrates is also quite silly. Besides, AlphaGo LEARNED how to play mainly by itself. And invented some unseen variants. It's not the first time that some previously unknown combinations has been invented by a computer program, but this was a very clear case of that. On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 4:06 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > John Clark - the things they are good at is a testament to the genius of > the computer's teachers not of the computer itself > > Huh? I assume a computer is a blank slate, so whatever it can do is what > the 'teacher's' taught it (programmed it) to do. Is there a difference > between a computer and its programming?? (ignoring hardware, of course) > > bill w > > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 8:03 AM, Tomaz Kristan > wrote: > >> Even this stupidity they show, could be emulated on a digital computer, >> one day. And they perhaps somehow know that. We need intelligence, however. >> Not the silliness they demonstrate so faithfully. >> >> We are probably less then a decade away from something quite spectacular >> in this field. I am not saying that what we are seeing now isn't >> spectacular - it is! I'm thinking about something even much, much more >> spectacular. Those clowns will have nothing else to say then. That alone >> will be priceless. >> >> >> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 6:32 PM, John Clark wrote: >> >>> ?Back in 1997 when a computer beat the world Chess champion ?Piet Hut, >>> an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton said "It >>> may be a hundred years before a computer beats humans at Go ? maybe even >>> longer. If a reasonably intelligent person learned to play Go, in a few >>> months he could beat all existing computer programs. You don?t have to be a >>> Kasparov?. About the same time science writer George Johnson said "Defeating >>> a human Go champion will be a sign that artificial intelligence is truly >>> beginning to become as good as the real thing.? But in today's new York >>> Times Johnson says "That doesn?t seem so true anymore", and then in a >>> orgie of sour grapes goes on to list the things that computers still aren't >>> good at and to claim that the things they are good at is a testament to the >>> genius of the computer's teachers not of the computer itself, so it's not >>> really a big deal. It just shows what I've been saying, the goal post is >>> always moving and true intelligence is whatever a computer isn't good at, >>> YET. >>> >>> 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/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 16:02:01 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 09:02:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Study Links Disparities in Pain Management to Racial Bias Message-ID: <09877B4E-1A1C-41F4-AC47-8A4E4E79F58E@gmail.com> https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-links-disparities-pain-management-racial-bias Shattering the myth that medical students are brights? Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 16:04:54 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 09:04:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8D5B19D5-0A2F-4CEF-80B4-08A5A0A8908B@gmail.com> Was this prediction based on anything more than gut feel? Also, isn't progress often nonlinear and perhaps many of the predictions are linear? My guess is in this field more rapid advances are happening now where past progress was more fits and starts. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Wed Apr 6 16:36:12 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 12:36:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: <8D5B19D5-0A2F-4CEF-80B4-08A5A0A8908B@gmail.com> References: <8D5B19D5-0A2F-4CEF-80B4-08A5A0A8908B@gmail.com> Message-ID: <57053AFC.8010702@aleph.se> On 2016-04-06 12:04, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > Was this prediction based on anything more than gut feel? Those predictions were all gut feel. It is well known (among forecasting experts) that experts on a domain rarely make good forecasts about the domain - it is a different kind of expertise. > Also, isn't progress often nonlinear and perhaps many of the > predictions are linear? My guess is in this field more rapid advances > are happening now where past progress was more fits and starts. Fits and starts are less predictable than exponential growth, although people of course do tend to underestimate that because of linear predictions (or the availability heuristic). The big problem IMHO is the lack of ways of measuring progress in most AI domains. We have nice results for speech recognition, character recognition and image captioning, but far less good measurements on actual smarts. Shane Legg's AIQ ( http://www.vetta.org/2011/11/aiq/ ) seems to be fairly hard to apply, even if it is general (and the only serious application so far of the BrainFuck language!). -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 16:36:31 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 12:36:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?>>? >> John Clark - the things they are good at is a testament to the genius of >> the computer's teachers not of the computer itself > > > ?> ? > Huh? I assume a computer is a blank slate, so whatever it can do is what > the 'teacher's' taught it > ?Does Einstein deserve credit for discovering General Relativity, or should the credit go to Einstein's teachers, or to the teachers of Einstein's teachers?? ?> ? > Is there a difference between a computer and its programming?? > ?No but there is a big difference between ?the GO program that Google engineers originally wrote and the Go program that beat the human world champion after evolving into something new from playing the game with itself millions of times and learning to get better. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 17:14:52 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 12:14:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] joke (?) of the day Message-ID: I keep reading about mortality rates for various countries or age groups and so forth, and while I have taught statistics, I am still puzzled and just have this one question: Isn't the rate one per person? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 18:13:40 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:13:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: John Clark - No but there is a big difference between ?the GO program that Google engineers originally wrote and the Go program that beat the human world champion after evolving into something new from playing the game with itself millions of times and learning to get better. Yes, but isn't it still the programmers' expertise? Isn't that what the programmers expected it to do? There is no creativity here that I can tell unless it's the programmers'. And will stay that way until the computers program themselves (Yes, I know that they can do that, but still isn't that attributable to the programmers? In other words, the computer cannot be smarter than its programmers, right? Of course it can do unexpected things even if the code is not flawed, and then I assume that the computer is given ways of rating the various outcomes it produces - or can it produce its own validity tests?) bill w On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 11:36 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?>>? >>> John Clark - the things they are good at is a testament to the genius of >>> the computer's teachers not of the computer itself >> >> >> ?> ? >> Huh? I assume a computer is a blank slate, so whatever it can do is what >> the 'teacher's' taught it >> > > ?Does Einstein deserve credit for discovering General Relativity, or > should the credit go to Einstein's teachers, or to the teachers of > Einstein's teachers?? > > > ?> ? >> Is there a difference between a computer and its programming?? >> > > ?No but there is a big difference between ?the GO program that Google > engineers originally wrote and the Go program that beat the human world > champion after evolving into something new from playing the game with > itself millions of times and learning to get better. > > John K Clark > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 18:18:10 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 14:18:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] joke (?) of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:14 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > I keep reading about mortality rates for various countries or age groups > and so forth, and while I have taught statistics, I am still puzzled and > just have this one question: > > Isn't the rate one per person? > Currently, yes. But the goal it to get it below 1. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 18:21:20 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:21:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Study Links Disparities in Pain Management to Racial Bias In-Reply-To: <09877B4E-1A1C-41F4-AC47-8A4E4E79F58E@gmail.com> References: <09877B4E-1A1C-41F4-AC47-8A4E4E79F58E@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > > https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-links-disparities-pain-management-racial-bias > > Shattering the myth that medical students are brights? > > Regards, > > Dan > ?Ignorance occurs in every IQ level.? And Med schools are the most resistant to change of any type of grad school. All of you would be simply aghast at the superstitions I found in my Psych 101 students and my Sex class (unbelievable - ask if you want examples). One study measured superstitions and carefully debunked every one of them during the semester. The scores on the superstition test at semester's end did not change. Changing behavior and attitudes is very hard. Especially if we don't take time to think - then we will pop out whatever we've believed the longest. ?bill w? > Sample my Kindle books via: > > > http://author.to/DanUst > > _______________________________________________ > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 18:21:52 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:21:52 -0500 Subject: [ExI] joke (?) of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:18 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:14 PM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > >> I keep reading about mortality rates for various countries or age groups >> and so forth, and while I have taught statistics, I am still puzzled and >> just have this one question: >> >> Isn't the rate one per person? >> > > Currently, yes. But the goal it to get it below 1. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 18:25:13 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:25:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] joke (?) of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:18 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > >> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:14 PM, William Flynn Wallace < >> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> I keep reading about mortality rates for various countries or age groups >>> and so forth, and while I have taught statistics, I am still puzzled and >>> just have this one question: >>> >>> Isn't the rate one per person? >>> >> >> Currently, yes. But the goal it to get it below 1. >> >> ? Dave >> > ?I can inform you of a number of religions that already promise that. (I guess you still have to die first.) Or, more seriously, how can we ever hope to stop entropy? Keep changing bodies? Upload to digital? bill w? > _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> >> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 18:32:49 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 14:32:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] joke (?) of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 2:25 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?I can inform you of a number of religions that already promise that. > With zero evidence to back it up, of course. > Or, more seriously, how can we ever hope to stop entropy? Keep changing > bodies? Upload to digital? > I don't think stopping entropy is an option. Maybe Extropy is the way to go. :-) Yeah, changing bodies or going digital seem to be the likely options. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 18:48:20 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:48:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] joke (?) of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:32 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 2:25 PM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > >> >> ?I can inform you of a number of religions that already promise that. >> > > With zero evidence to back it up, of course. > > >> Or, more seriously, how can we ever hope to stop entropy? Keep changing >> bodies? Upload to digital? >> > > I don't think stopping entropy is an option. Maybe Extropy is the way to > go. :-) Yeah, changing bodies or going digital seem to be the likely > options. > > -Dave > > ?What? You don't believe ancient Jewish writings? What sort of nut are > you? > ?bill w? > ? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 19:18:22 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 15:18:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] joke (?) of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 2:48 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > What? You don't believe ancient Jewish writings? What sort of nut are > you? Believe them literally? Of course not. I hope I'm not a nut, but I could be wrong. :-) -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 20:05:54 2016 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 21:05:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Study Links Disparities in Pain Management to Racial Bias In-Reply-To: References: <09877B4E-1A1C-41F4-AC47-8A4E4E79F58E@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 6 April 2016 at 19:21, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Ignorance occurs in every IQ level. And Med schools are the most resistant > to change of any type of grad school. All of you would be simply aghast at > the superstitions I found in my Psych 101 students and my Sex class > (unbelievable - ask if you want examples). One study measured superstitions > and carefully debunked every one of them during the semester. The scores on > the superstition test at semester's end did not change. > > Changing behavior and attitudes is very hard. Especially if we don't take > time to think - then we will pop out whatever we've believed the longest. > Studies have shown many times that just presenting people with facts will rarely cause them to change previously held beliefs. It might even strengthen the wrong belief. It's called the Backfire effect. There are several factors involved. People don't like to be told that they are wrong as they 'lose face' and don't want lower status. When a belief is wrong, people need help to build a new story in their brain to store the new facts. This article has useful information: Quote: Our brains don?t let piddling little facts get in the way of a good story, allowing lies to infect the mind with surprising ease. By David Robson 24 March 2016 ----------- BillK From atymes at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 20:09:31 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:09:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 6, 2016 11:15 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: > Isn't that what the programmers expected it to do? No. Or more specifically: they expected it to be good at go. They did not expect several of the specifics that it came up with. That may seem a trivial, semantic difference, but it's really not. It is the core of the distinction between what your teachers (programmers) taught you (programmed you with), and what you have done with that knowledge. These specifics, which the programmers did not have, can then be analyzed or otherwise used to develop more knowledge. Unless you want to claim that we are all automatons - including and especially yourself - with no original thoughts ever. What it did is at least as original to itself as any human go player has done. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 20:15:40 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 13:15:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] joke (?) of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 6, 2016 10:16 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: > I keep reading about mortality rates for various countries or age groups and so forth, and while I have taught statistics, I am still puzzled and just have this one question: > > Isn't the rate one per person? Not quite. To date, more people have been born (including c-sections, etc.) than have died. The difference is only 7 billion or so, though. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 21:52:02 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 16:52:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Study Links Disparities in Pain Management to Racial Bias In-Reply-To: References: <09877B4E-1A1C-41F4-AC47-8A4E4E79F58E@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 3:05 PM, BillK wrote: > On 6 April 2016 at 19:21, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > Ignorance occurs in every IQ level. And Med schools are the most > resistant > > to change of any type of grad school. All of you would be simply aghast > at > > the superstitions I found in my Psych 101 students and my Sex class > > (unbelievable - ask if you want examples). One study measured > superstitions > > and carefully debunked every one of them during the semester. The > scores on > > the superstition test at semester's end did not change. > > > > Changing behavior and attitudes is very hard. Especially if we don't > take > > time to think - then we will pop out whatever we've believed the longest. > > > > Studies have shown many times that just presenting people with facts > will rarely cause them to change previously held beliefs. It might > even strengthen the wrong belief. It's called the Backfire effect. > > There are several factors involved. People don't like to be told that > they are wrong as they 'lose face' and don't want lower status. When a > belief is wrong, people need help to build a new story in their brain > to store the new facts. > > This article has useful information: > < > http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160323-why-are-people-so-incredibly-gullible > > > Quote: > Our brains don?t let piddling little facts get in the way of a good > story, allowing lies to infect the mind with surprising ease. > By David Robson 24 March 2016 > ----------- > > BillK > ?The absolutely worst way to change people is to tell them anything that is substantially different from what they believe, with 'substantially' highly variable from person to person (although, paradoxically, you will get a few complete reversals of opinion, like a religious conversion). The cognitive dissonance is far too great here, and you will get either nothing or an actual moving away from your proposed position - and maybe some real hostility. Think of it as involving an investment in their ideas - the more investment, the stronger the belief and harder to change. The absolutely best way is to do a variety of Skinnerian shaping: get them to accept a view slightly different from their original and keep moving them from there. Obviously there are entire books in my library full of attitude change theories and studies - one of the most popular areas of social psych. But I do love it when some new data or theory comes along and kicks the old ass theory out of the ball park.? ?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 foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 21:58:36 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 16:58:36 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Adrian - Unless you want to claim that we are all automatons - including and especially yourself - with no original thoughts ever. What it did is at least as original to itself as any human go player has done. I am still not convinced. Just because they did not expect the specifics they got, did they not expect that? They programmed in the flexibility, the ability to learn etc. So the credit still goes to the programmers, no? In other words, did they not predict that the outcomes would be unpredictable and depended on the AI's experience? Just as with people. The only difference being that you can start with two identical AIs but you cannot with people. bill w On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 3:09 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Apr 6, 2016 11:15 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" > wrote: > > Isn't that what the programmers expected it to do? > > No. > > Or more specifically: they expected it to be good at go. They did not > expect several of the specifics that it came up with. > > That may seem a trivial, semantic difference, but it's really not. It is > the core of the distinction between what your teachers (programmers) taught > you (programmed you with), and what you have done with that knowledge. > > These specifics, which the programmers did not have, can then be analyzed > or otherwise used to develop more knowledge. > > Unless you want to claim that we are all automatons - including and > especially yourself - with no original thoughts ever. What it did is at > least as original to itself as any human go player has done. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 22:34:08 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 18:34:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 PM, William Flynn Wallace > ?>> ? >> there is a big difference between ?the GO program that Google engineers >> originally wrote and the Go program that beat the human world champion >> after evolving into something new from playing the game with itself >> millions of times and learning to get better. > > > ?> > Yes, but isn't it still the programmers' expertise? > ?No of course not, how could it be? The original programmers don't ?understand how the program that beat the human GO champion works, they can't predict what it will do nor can they beat it at GO. If you don't understand something, can't duplicate it and can't beat it how can you get credit for it? > > ?> ? > Isn't that what the programmers expected it to do? > ?Every teacher expects his students to do well, but you never answered the question from my previous post; who gets credit for discovering General Relativity, Einstein or Einstein's teachers, or the teachers of Einstein's teachers?? And if Einstein get's the credit then why doesn't the computer? Because Einstein's brain is squishy and the computer's brain isn't? > ?> ? > There is no creativity here that I can tell unless it's the programmers'. > ?Then Einstein had no creativity either and I'm not sure what the word means. ?If a computer can outsmart us then whatever you mean by "creativity" ?it ? can't be anything ?of the slightest ?importance? ?.?... And then just before the last remaining human being was destroyed he turned to the Jupiter Brain and said "you know ?,? I still think I'm more creative than you ?"? . And that's what I mean by "whistling past the graveyard". ? > ?> ? > In other words, the computer cannot be smarter than its programmers, > right? > ?Obviously that's ?not right, if it were right a computer would not be the world GO champion. And there is a existence proof that a creation can be smarter than its creator; Evolution is just random mutation and natural selection and its dumb as dirt, and yet it created us who are somewhat smarter than dirt. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Apr 6 22:38:49 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 18:38:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?>? > you can start with two identical AIs but you cannot with people. > > ?That is a temporary engineering consideration not a eternal philosophical principle ?. John K Clark? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Apr 6 23:30:43 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 16:30:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> >? On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 PM, William Flynn Wallace > ?>> ? there is a big difference between ?the GO program that Google engineers originally wrote and the Go program that beat the human world champion after evolving into something new from playing the game with itself millions of times and learning to get better. ?> Yes, but isn't it still the programmers' expertise?... As an illustration of moving goalposts in AI research, consider the words of one of the commentators at the Dartmouth conference ?When we write a computer chess program which can defeat the person who programmed it, then we have achieved machine intelligence.? That was in 1956. How much that standard has changed. I have been watching this field since my college days, which was a very long time ago. The recent progress seems to be doing the classic acceleration we have been waiting for. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu Apr 7 01:56:53 2016 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 21:56:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 7:30 PM, spike wrote: > > As an illustration of moving goalposts in AI research, consider the words of > one of the commentators at the Dartmouth conference ?When we write a > computer chess program which can defeat the person who programmed it, then > we have achieved machine intelligence.? > > That was in 1956. How much that standard has changed. > Modifying benchmarks in response to our better understanding of the complexity of the tasks at hand is understandable and arguably necessary given the premature declarations we have seen referenced such as the one above. Even if we concede moving of goalposts being somewhat unreasonable/unfair, I'm with the skeptic who posted here recently representing the opposition, I forget who, in believing we are very far from developing strong AI, if it's even possible. My take is that conscious machines are really what people are thinking of when they refer to AI, not superior automated Go decision-tree-machines. People will argue about whether (implied) strong AI is possible on the internet until this is resolved, but it's an empirical question ultimately. So time will tell. This article I saw recently sums up the problems with strong AI well, I think. The author references Searle and Feynman. http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/a-neuroscientist-explains-why-artificially-intelligent-robots-will-never-have-consciousness-like-humans/ -Henry From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 02:50:11 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 22:50:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 Henry Rivera wrote: ?> ? > Modifying benchmarks in response to our better understanding of the > complexity of the tasks at hand is understandable ?Yes it's perfectly understandably, we understand the problem much better that we did 20 years ago and that makes people scared, hence the whistling past the graveyard. ? > ?> ? > I'm with the skeptic who posted here recently > ? > representing the opposition, I forget who, in believing we are very > ? > far from developing strong AI, if it's even possible. ?We know that Evolution has made intelligence billions of ?times and consciousness *at least* once, so if random mutation and natural selection can do it why can't we? > ?> ? > My take is that > ? > conscious machines are really what people are thinking of when they > ? > refer to AI, not superior automated Go decision-tree-machines. ?To hell with consciousness I'm much more interested in intelligence. If the AI isn't consciousness that's it's problem not mine, but the machine's intelligence effects me directly. ? ?> ? > People > ? > will argue about whether (implied) strong AI is possible on the > internet until this is resolved, but it's an empirical question > ? > ultimately. ? Artificial intelligence can be resolved empirically by having a computer outsmart a person, but there is no way to prove that something artificial (or natural for that matter) is consciousness, the only thing we know for certain that's conscious is ourselves. But proof or no proof everybody and I do mean everybody assumes that if something is intelligent then it's conscious, or at least everybody did assume that until things that weren't wet and squishy started to get smart. John K Clark ? > So time will tell. This article I saw recently sums up the > problems with strong AI well, I think. The author references Searle > and Feynman. > > http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/a-neuroscientist-explains-why-artificially-intelligent-robots-will-never-have-consciousness-like-humans/ > -Henry > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 7 02:53:05 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 19:53:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: <002a01d19078$9cc4bf30$d64e3d90$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Henry Rivera Subject: Re: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 7:30 PM, spike wrote: > > ... ?When we > write a computer chess program which can defeat the person who > programmed it, then we have achieved machine intelligence.? > That was in 1956. How much that standard has changed. > >...Modifying benchmarks in response to our better understanding of the complexity of the tasks at hand is understandable and arguably necessary given the premature declarations we have seen referenced such as the one above...Even if we concede moving of goalposts being somewhat unreasonable/unfair, I'm with the skeptic who posted here recently representing the opposition, I forget who, in believing we are very far from developing strong AI, if it's even possible...-Henry _______________________________________________ I can think of one definition of AI which would never move. If we do accomplish true AGI, it will self-improve recursively. This is the singularity. When or if that happens, the debate is over. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 7 05:01:02 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 22:01:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] crispr question Message-ID: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> This CRISPR technology sounds really cool, but I lack the technical understanding to know, so I am asking our local hipsters please. As you understand it and extrapolate to a reasonable estimate of your lifespan, have we any reason to think that if we had an organism's complete genome, we could synthesize that file into a DNA strand using CRISPR or any other reasonably foreseeable technology? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 05:33:07 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 01:33:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: <002a01d19078$9cc4bf30$d64e3d90$@att.net> References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <002a01d19078$9cc4bf30$d64e3d90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 10:53 PM, spike wrote: > > > I can think of one definition of AI which would never move. If we do > accomplish true AGI, it will self-improve recursively. This is the > singularity. When or if that happens, the debate is over. > ### AlphaGO performed domain-specific recursive self-improvement. It played against itself, using results from each game to make the next game more advanced. At first it must have played like a small child that only knows the rules and some moves, then by reapplying the same cycle of move generation, game, result evaluation and modification of move generation rules it very quickly went superhuman. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 06:11:30 2016 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 16:11:30 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 7 April 2016 at 00:06, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > John Clark - the things they are good at is a testament to the genius of > the computer's teachers not of the computer itself > > Huh? I assume a computer is a blank slate, so whatever it can do is what > the 'teacher's' taught it (programmed it) to do. Is there a difference > between a computer and its programming?? (ignoring hardware, of course) > It's a blank slate in the same way a human s a blank slate, doing only what it is programmed to do by its wiring and the things it learns. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 06:16:28 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2016 23:16:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 2:58 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > I am still not convinced. Just because they did not expect the specifics > they got, did they not expect that? > They expected there would be new specifics. That is very different from expecting the specific specifics they got. Among the differences is that they don't get to take credit. > They programmed in the flexibility, the ability to learn etc. So the > credit still goes to the programmers, no? > No. > In other words, did they not predict that the outcomes would be > unpredictable and depended on the AI's experience? Just as with people. > Yes. And just as with people, teachers can predict that their students' outcomes will not be exactly predictable. That means the teachers are not entirely responsible for their students' actions - for what their students do with the knowledge. "Not entirely responsible for" includes "do not get to take full credit for". > The only difference being that you can start with two identical AIs but > you cannot with people. > Ah, but you can: identical twins. Many studies have been done taking advantage of this. But even twins get at least slightly different post-natal experiences. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Apr 7 10:29:14 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 11:29:14 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <002a01d19078$9cc4bf30$d64e3d90$@att.net> Message-ID: <5706367A.4090700@aleph.se> On 2016-04-07 06:33, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 10:53 PM, spike > wrote: > > > > I can think of one definition of AI which would never move. If we > do accomplish true AGI, it will self-improve recursively. This is > the singularity. When or if that happens, the debate is over. > > > ### AlphaGO performed domain-specific recursive self-improvement. It > played against itself, using results from each game to make the next > game more advanced. At first it must have played like a small child > that only knows the rules and some moves, then by reapplying the same > cycle of move generation, game, result evaluation and modification of > move generation rules it very quickly went superhuman. I think Spike was thinking about the architecture being self-improving rather than the content of the architecture. But there are at least in principle models that improve their architecture, such as Schmidthuber's G?del machine. That one is implementable, but I have never seen any evidence it is improving in an accelerating manner. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Apr 7 10:35:34 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 11:35:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] crispr question In-Reply-To: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> Message-ID: <570637F6.7030908@aleph.se> On 2016-04-07 06:01, spike wrote: > > This CRISPR technology sounds really cool, but I lack the technical > understanding to know, so I am asking our local hipsters please. > > As you understand it and extrapolate to a reasonable estimate of your > lifespan, have we any reason to think that if we had an organism?s > complete genome, we could synthesize that file into a DNA strand using > CRISPR or any other reasonably foreseeable technology? > CRISPR doesn't involve synthesizing strands, just putting in or removing sequences at particular spots. Current synthesis mainly make short strands that have to be ligated together into genomes; this is cumbersome and limits it to short genomes. However, I have heard that there are technologies emerging that look like they could build entire human-sized genomes. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 12:11:21 2016 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 08:11:21 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 9:56 PM, Henry Rivera wrote: > Even if we concede moving of goalposts being somewhat > unreasonable/unfair, I'm with the skeptic who posted here recently > representing the opposition, I forget who, in believing we are very > far from developing strong AI, if it's even possible. My take is that > conscious machines are really what people are thinking of when they > refer to AI, not superior automated Go decision-tree-machines. People > will argue about whether (implied) strong AI is possible on the > internet until this is resolved, but it's an empirical question > ultimately. So time will tell. This article I saw recently sums up the > problems with strong AI well, I think. The author references Searle > and Feynman. I suspect that even human-level AI will continue arguing on the internet that AI is or is not capable of consciousness. By design, human-level AI would still fight over qualia... just like humans. (though perhaps, there would be novel approaches leading to the declaration of ineffability) From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 13:57:18 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 08:57:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: Before I reply to this thread, please John or someone, answer this; Is an AI always programmed to take the most likely route to success - the highest probability, once it has considered alternative routes? People might have other motivations. (to me, this gets us directly into the free will problem, which y'all might not want to repeat) bill w On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 7:11 AM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 9:56 PM, Henry Rivera > wrote: > > Even if we concede moving of goalposts being somewhat > > unreasonable/unfair, I'm with the skeptic who posted here recently > > representing the opposition, I forget who, in believing we are very > > far from developing strong AI, if it's even possible. My take is that > > conscious machines are really what people are thinking of when they > > refer to AI, not superior automated Go decision-tree-machines. People > > will argue about whether (implied) strong AI is possible on the > > internet until this is resolved, but it's an empirical question > > ultimately. So time will tell. This article I saw recently sums up the > > problems with strong AI well, I think. The author references Searle > > and Feynman. > > I suspect that even human-level AI will continue arguing on the > internet that AI is or is not capable of consciousness. By design, > human-level AI would still fight over qualia... just like humans. > (though perhaps, there would be novel approaches leading to the > declaration of ineffability) > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 14:16:08 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 10:16:08 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:57 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Is an AI always programmed to take the most likely route to success - the > highest probability, once it has considered alternative routes? People > might have other motivations. Yes and no. It depends upon the definition of success. An AI isn't going to pick a suboptimal, in its determination, route. But then, the same applies to humans. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 14:34:15 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 09:34:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:16 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:57 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > >> Is an AI always programmed to take the most likely route to success - the >> highest probability, once it has considered alternative routes? People >> might have other motivations. > > > Yes and no. It depends upon the definition of success. An AI isn't going > to pick a suboptimal, in its determination, route. But then, the same > applies to humans. > > -Dave > ?Ah but there you are wrong. Many times, such as in Prisoner's Dilemma > games, people choose motives like revenge rather than gain. And just ask > an economist or financial advisor about the motives of investors. My ex > was a financial planner and she had to practically shut down her office to > keep her clients from selling when their investments went down - I told > them myself: "Do you want to sell low and wait until it goes up and then > buy high?" > ?bill w? > ? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 14:48:56 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 10:48:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 10:34 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:16 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > >> >> Yes and no. It depends upon the definition of success. An AI isn't going >> to pick a suboptimal, in its determination, route. But then, the same >> applies to humans. >> >> ?Ah but there you are wrong. Many times, such as in Prisoner's Dilemma >> games, people choose motives like revenge rather than gain. And just ask >> an economist or financial advisor about the motives of investors. My ex >> was a financial planner and she had to practically shut down her office to >> keep her clients from selling when their investments went down - I told >> them myself: "Do you want to sell low and wait until it goes up and then >> buy high?" >> > Yes, obviously people make irrational decisions. But irrational isn't the same as suboptimal. When people make those decisions they do it because they're optimizing for the wrong thing: e.g., minimizing further losses vs. maximizing return. Even so, my assertion is that AIs won't choose a suboptimal solution. The question of what is being optimized is critical. When mapping a route from point A to point B you might want the shortest route, the fastest route, the most scenic route, the flattest route, ... And usually there are multiple factors your want to take into account, so there's not necessarily one right answer. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 7 16:29:50 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 09:29:50 -0700 Subject: [ExI] crispr question In-Reply-To: <570637F6.7030908@aleph.se> References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> <570637F6.7030908@aleph.se> Message-ID: <010201d190ea$b5d42020$217c6060$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2016 3:36 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] crispr question On 2016-04-07 06:01, spike wrote: . As you understand it and extrapolate to a reasonable estimate of your lifespan, have we any reason to think that if we had an organism's complete genome, we could synthesize that file into a DNA strand using CRISPR or any other reasonably foreseeable technology? >.CRISPR doesn't involve synthesizing strands, just putting in or removing sequences at particular spots. >.Current synthesis mainly make short strands that have to be ligated together into genomes; this is cumbersome and limits it to short genomes. However, I have heard that there are technologies emerging that look like they could build entire human-sized genomes.-- .Anders Sandberg Cool, so this leads into my next comment. We saw that it was 60 years between the first marginal chess program to the orders-of-magnitude more impressive champion AlphaGo. We know that cheap technology exists in which a prole can get her DNA file. If a number of siblings have that DNA file, they can figure out the genome of their parents, and if several cousins compare their genomes, they can piece together the genomes of their mutual grandparents, second cousins their great grandparents and so on. If we could synthesize a DNA strand by some means using a DNA file, we could perhaps use it to clone someone who lived a long time ago, given sufficient numbers of their descendants have their DNA files. Ja? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 17:01:46 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 13:01:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:57 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > Is an AI always programmed to take the most likely route to success > ?Unfortunately no, people would love to program a computer so that it has the best chance of solving the traveling salesman problem but nobody knows how to do it. ? ?> ? to me, this gets us directly into the free will problem ? ?Free will? What an odd phrase, whatever can it mean?? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 17:32:11 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 13:32:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] crispr question In-Reply-To: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 1:01 AM, spike wrote: ?To me one of the most interesting things about CRISPR is that we can use it to enable Gene Drive. Normally there is only a 50% chance that a particular gene in an individual will end up in one of its offspring, so if you engineer a gene that is harmful the animal could not compete with its natural counterparts and so the artificial gene would soon disappear from the genepool; but with gene drive you can increase the odds it will be inherited from 50% to 100% and you've short circuited Evolution. Even if the gene makes an individual less competitive it will spread through a population like wildfire in just a few generations. You could use this technique to make mosquitoes extinct. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600689/we-have-the-technology-to-destroy-all-zika-mosquitoes/ John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 7 17:50:08 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 10:50:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] crispr question In-Reply-To: References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> Message-ID: <013a01d190f5$ed8a34e0$c89e9ea0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark ? ?>?To me one of the most interesting things about CRISPR is that we can use it to enable Gene Drive. ? You could use this technique to make mosquitoes extinct. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600689/we-have-the-technology-to-destroy-all-zika-mosquitoes/ John K Clark Ja, or another slight variation on the theme: breed mosquitoes with some kind of DNA variation-driver until we discover a mosquito which does not bite humans. Then read that genome, synthesize it, insert it into a population of existing indigenous and particularly virile strain of mosquitoes. The no-people gene linked to the lotsa-larvae gene competes with the indigenous species and spreads both. We could end up with more mosquitoes than before, but the humans would scarcely notice they were there. There is serious debate about the environmental impact of complete eradication of mosquitoes. Perhaps they perform some unknown beneficial function (it better be a really good one to convince me to keep the needlenose bastards.) This approach keeps everyone happy. That would be a hell of a breakthrough: breed mosquitoes that don?t bite humans but bite rats. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Apr 7 18:27:46 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 11:27:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] crispr question References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> Message-ID: <002701d190fb$2f8b89c0$8ea29d40$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] >?Perhaps [mosquitoes] perform some unknown beneficial function (it better be a really good one to convince me to keep the needlenose bastards.) ?That would be a hell of a breakthrough: breed mosquitoes that don?t bite humans but bite rats?spike Further random thought: this notion perhaps isn?t as far-fetched as it sounds. Do follow my line of reasoning please: Step 1: The mosquito?s proboscis must penetrate the skin to get to the blood. Step 2: we know that the skin thickness of a mammal is very roughly proportional to it linear dimension, for completely understandable reasons. An elephant has skin perhaps ten times thicker than that of a rat. Step 3: Mosquitoes are already at a size which makes it impossible for it to penetrate the skin of a larger mammal such as an elephant, but has no trouble at all with humans (dammit.) Step 4: It is theoretically possible to push a species through breeding (a toy poodle is a highly-bred wolf.) Step 5: If we can use CRISPR or some tech like it, we could couple smaller (or less rigid) proboscis mosquitoes with more sexually attractive (to other mosquitoes) traits, causing the smaller-proboscis genes to spread throughout the population. Step 6: If successful, perhaps we could create mosquitoes which cannot bite elephants, rhinos, hippos, humans, the larger beasts, but can and do successfully penetrate the thinner skin on the smaller, shorter-haired mammals, such as rats, squirrels, moles, perhaps birds (not sure on the whole feathers thing), mice and so on. If that line of reasoning is compelling, then what we are looking for is a gene already within the mosquito population which results in a longer but smaller diameter proboscis, in order to get past fur but unable to penetrate the thick tough hide of a human. It sure seems like that gene should be in there somewhere. We find it, CRISPR link it to whatever mosquitoes find sexy, breed it up, turn it loose. Eventually we have mosquitoes that still bite, but don?t bite humans. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 18:58:27 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 11:58:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Apr 7, 2016 6:58 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: > Is an AI always programmed to take the most likely route to success - the highest probability, once it has considered alternative routes? People might have other motivations. Thing is, those other motivations redefine success or alter what seems to be the most likely route to success - for them - rather than encourage non-success per se. Seeking revenge? Then if you get revenge you are successful...at getting revenge. Doesn't matter what the original issue was. In a panic? Your measurements of what's likely to he successful are out of whack, but you still do what seems at the time to be the most successful. (People sell when the market is falling because they think thus will make them successful at avoiding further loss, leaving them with more money to invest once the market has hit bottom. They're wrong, but that's what they think at the time.) And so on. So from that point of view, AIs seek success just like humans do. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 19:13:29 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 15:13:29 -0400 Subject: [ExI] crispr question In-Reply-To: <013a01d190f5$ed8a34e0$c89e9ea0$@att.net> References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> <013a01d190f5$ed8a34e0$c89e9ea0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 1:50 PM, spike wrote: > ?> ? > Ja, or another slight variation on the theme: breed mosquitoes with some > kind of DNA variation-driver until we discover a mosquito which does not > bite humans. > > ?Only female mosquitoes bite animals, and with CRISPR and Gene Drive you could arrange things such that all a individual's offspring were male, and all their offspring were male, and all the offspring of the offspring were male, and all.... Before long all mosquitoes would be male. After that , well.... John K Clark ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 20:04:58 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 13:04:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] crispr question In-Reply-To: <010201d190ea$b5d42020$217c6060$@att.net> References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> <570637F6.7030908@aleph.se> <010201d190ea$b5d42020$217c6060$@att.net> Message-ID: On Apr 7, 2016 9:45 AM, "spike" wrote: > If we could synthesize a DNA strand by some means using a DNA file, we could perhaps use it to clone someone who lived a long time ago, given sufficient numbers of their descendants have their DNA files. > > Ja? Perhaps, but you'd at best have a freshly born identical twin. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Apr 7 22:28:27 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 23:28:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: <5706DF0B.20005@aleph.se> On 2016-04-07 14:57, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Before I reply to this thread, please John or someone, answer this; > > Is an AI always programmed to take the most likely route to success - > the highest probability, once it has considered alternative routes? > People might have other motivations. (to me, this gets us directly > into the free will problem, which y'all might not want to repeat) In the reinforcement learning systems I know the best the actions undertaken are likely to be best, but there is a chance for "exploratory" other actions. As The Book puts it: https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/2/node3.html https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~sutton/book/2/node4.html Things get more complex when the action has parts. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 22:30:14 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 17:30:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 12:01 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:57 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > ?> ? >> Is an AI always programmed to take the most likely route to success >> > > ?Unfortunately no, people would love to program a computer so that it has > the best chance of solving the traveling salesman problem but nobody knows > how to do it. ? > > > > ?> ? > to me, this gets us directly into the free will problem > ? > ?Free will? What an odd phrase, whatever can it mean?? > > > John K Clark > ?Well, for one thing it means that I cannot answer the question about Einstein without taking a stand on free will.? ?The computer cannot do otherwise than what it was programmed to do. There is no human parallel to this, unless you want to go down to the level of DNA and say that it is responsible for all that we do since it programmed us to learn. If you want to look at it this way, then we are indeed automatons. And Einstein gets no credit; given the makeup of his brain and what was put into it, he had no choice other than to create his physics and math. This is a tough philosophical position to dispute. Free will exists because we hope we have it, and we must assume it so that we can punish antisocial people. If there is any hard evidence for it I don't know of it. I have no conception of what that would be. ? The AI may produce unexpected results, but that was known beforehand, if the code was OK. So, credit to the programmers, none to the AI. 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 anders at aleph.se Thu Apr 7 22:40:30 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 23:40:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] crispr question In-Reply-To: <010201d190ea$b5d42020$217c6060$@att.net> References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> <570637F6.7030908@aleph.se> <010201d190ea$b5d42020$217c6060$@att.net> Message-ID: <5706E1DE.4060303@aleph.se> On 2016-04-07 17:29, spike wrote: > > Cool, so this leads into my next comment. We saw that it was 60 years > between the first marginal chess program to the orders-of-magnitude > more impressive champion AlphaGo. We know that cheap technology > exists in which a prole can get her DNA file. If a number of siblings > have that DNA file, they can figure out the genome of their parents, > and if several cousins compare their genomes, they can piece together > the genomes of their mutual grandparents, second cousins their great > grandparents and so on. > If we could synthesize a DNA strand by some means using a DNA file, we > could perhaps use it to clone someone who lived a long time ago, given > sufficient numbers of their descendants have their DNA files. Remember that each offspring gets 50% of the genome (lets ignore X and Y chromosomes). So if you have a sibling, you can reconstruct about 75% of either of your parents. If you have two, 87.5%, and so on. To get all 3 billion base pairs right you need 31 siblings Going back one generation means you have 25% of (say) grandfather. So now you need not just a bunch of siblings to build dad's genome (50% of grandfather), but you need to reconstruct more uncles and aunts (about 31 of them) using 31 children each. This gets tricky fast, if your family does not breed like rabbits. Accepting a bit less fidelity (say 90%) just requires two-three siblings for a parent, and two-three reconstructed uncles (about 6 or 7 starting people) for grandfather. But for the generation before that you need around 16 people, then 39, then 97... And in fact, 90% fidelity going back four generatons is just 65% fidelity. The challenge is that each time we reproduce, half of the genome is discarded. Yes, we get a lovely replacement half from our partner, but information is lost. If things go well it is the less important information that is lost. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Thu Apr 7 22:43:27 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 23:43:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: <5706E28F.3020305@aleph.se> On 2016-04-07 23:30, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > The AI may produce unexpected results, but that was known beforehand, > if the code was OK. So, credit to the programmers, none to the AI. I have never understood that attitude. I can make an evolutionary algorithm that finds solutions to problems I do not even understand. I don't think I can take credit for that. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 22:46:19 2016 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 15:46:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI definition was Re: Whistling past the graveyard (spike) Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 3:35 AM, "spike" wrote: > I can think of one definition of AI which would never move. If we do accomplish true AGI, it will self-improve recursively. This is the singularity. When or if that happens, the debate is over. I wrote a few chapters of a post singularity novel. It's in the format of "what I did for summer vacation" from the viewpoint of kids and parents who rent a train in a nearly depopulated world. "The Clinic Seed" chapter is a flashback to explain what happened to the now vanished 99% of the population who stored their bodies and have been enjoying the uploaded world for several decades by the time of the story. This chunk out of chapter 5 is longer than required, but I don't post here often. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Like most urban schools, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University had been shut down in the population crash. When cities went under about 10 percent of their original population, they became just too depressing for humans to live in. However, like infrastructure everywhere, the city and Universities were well maintained, roads and sidewalks clean, grass mowed, trees trimmed, and the buildings clean and without a broken window or a sagging roof anywhere. Electric power and water was on, gas as well though it was not used for heating, having been displaced by electric heat and super insulation. Unless buildings were in use by physical state humans, they were kept cold inside (but not freezing) winter and summer alike to slow down degradation of photographs, paper and other physical artifacts from the pre crash era. As they were crossing the bridge on Forbes Avenue over the train tracks between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, Kenny [11] caught up the [train] engineer. ?Mr. Bledsoe?? Kenny asked as they walked along. ?Eh?? ?Did they get the idea for the Krell planet from Pittsburgh?? ?Krell planet?? ?In the movie we saw last night. The planet was deserted except for the machines.? ?Oh, you saw _Forbidden Planet_ last night. No, _Forbidden Planet_ was made a 100 years before Pittsburgh was mothballed.? ?Why do we call cities ?mothballed?? Does it have anything to do with moths?? ?Actually it does.? Ed replied, as usual happy to be educating children by the oldest method. ?The larvae of some kinds of moths eat clothing and blankets made of wool. More than 200 years ago, early chemistry workers discovered that a sharp smelling solid chemical from coal called naphthalene would keep the moths out of clothes. ? They paused at a Walk/Don?t Walk light turned on for the party?s amusement by one of the city?s AIs. Ed went on: ?It was sold in little balls (Ed held his thumb and finger apart about half an inch) called ?moth balls.? People would store winter clothing and blankets over the summer with a handful of them. ?Eventually ?mothballed? came to mean anything that was protected and stored for possible future use.? Kenny looked thoughtful. ?How come adults know everything?? He asked. Ed laughed. ?We cheat.? Thirty years in the past the AIs tasked with remembering and making presentations to CMU visitors would have run up a palace of utility fog on the mall and presented a 3D docudrama on the historical events around the emergence of AIs at CMU. Now, in deference to the attempt to raise children in a retro environment with features of the 1950s, the adults were directed by messages to their neural interfaces to the McConomy Auditorium, a 110 year-old theater in Carnegie Mellon?s central buildings. The 20-minute presentation to the adults and older kids (the younger ones could watch or play on the lawn) was in black and white newsreels format, much of it converted from video of press conferences. ?Even with a nearly complete historical record from those times, it?s hard to pin down when the first AIs became full personalities.? The narrator spoke in a voice over showing primitive robots and computers. ?The problem isn?t unique to AI history, there is a similar problem about the first railroad." (Montage of drawings and photographs of early trains.) "About the best we can say is that what we now think of as AIs didn?t exist before 2032 and definitely did by 2036. In that year there were more than a hundred scientific papers co-authored by AIs. Carnegie Mellon was in the forefront of this effort." (Shots of University labs and bits of recorded slow interactions with early AIs.) "The key insight was to equip AIs with carefully selected human motivations." ?The two biggest problems of the early 21 century were energy and medical treatment. CMU researchers contributed to both. ?Solar power from orbit solved, in fact, over solved, the first by 2035.? (Shots of space elevators and power satellites in orbit, photos of rectenna farms.) ?Integrating AIs into nanomedicine clinics solved the medical treatment problem. It took only a few years. After that AIs and clinics could be ?grown? at low cost and they did their own upgrades, a lot of it in the field in Africa. They were too late for the smallpox epidemics that swept out of the Mid East. ?A side effect of the clinics and widespread use of virtual reality caused a physical world population crash in the mid 2050s and the mothballing of the cities.? (Simulated video of dense freeway traffic dwindling to an occasional car and then none.) The rest of the presentation was subtle propaganda mainly to the children and directed to the goal of them doing their part in enlarging the population. ^^^^^^^^^^ I would say we have AIs when they start getting author credit in scientific papers. Keith From anders at aleph.se Thu Apr 7 23:16:32 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 00:16:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] AI definition In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5706EA50.3040703@aleph.se> On 2016-04-07 23:46, Keith Henson wrote: > I would say we have AIs when they start getting author credit in > scientific papers. What about this paper? http://www.automaticstatistician.com/static/abcdoutput/02-solar.pdf Note how it notices that the Maunder minimum 1643 to 1716 is odd. http://www.automaticstatistician.com/index/ We are not there yet, but at least some AI now writes papers with some content. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Apr 7 23:40:59 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 18:40:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: <5706E28F.3020305@aleph.se> References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <5706E28F.3020305@aleph.se> Message-ID: I have never understood that attitude. I can make an evolutionary algorithm that finds solutions to problems I do not even understand. I don't think I can take credit for that. Anders Just how is this possible? 1 - If you don't understand the problem how do you know you have a solution? What I think you mean is that the algorithm is more useful than you thought - serendipity. I don't think this is what you mean. 2 - Or reading your sentence another way, you know the problem, you created an algorithm, and the answers you got you don't understand. Then how do you know the solution is correct? Maybe the algorithm is flawed - that is, it does things you did not intend. (I am betting on 2) I know I am out of my league here, and I have no trouble giving credit to AI if that is due. But the AI has to follow the programming, right? How does that earn credit? If you know that the gap between what you know and what I might understand is just too great, just tell me to shut up (politely) and I will! (same to John Clark) I sincerely don't want to waste your time. bill w On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > On 2016-04-07 23:30, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > The AI may produce unexpected results, but that was known beforehand, if > the code was OK. So, credit to the programmers, none to the AI. > > > I have never understood that attitude. > > I can make an evolutionary algorithm that finds solutions to problems I do > not even understand. I don't think I can take credit for that. > > -- > Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > 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 Thu Apr 7 23:53:22 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 19:53:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] crispr question In-Reply-To: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> References: <002401d1908a$7c908e30$75b1aa90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 1:01 AM, spike wrote: > > > As you understand it and extrapolate to a reasonable estimate of your > lifespan, have we any reason to think that if we had an organism?s complete > genome, we could synthesize that file into a DNA strand using CRISPR or any > other reasonably foreseeable technology? > > > ### As Anders noted, CRISPR isn't really a good method for de novo DNA synthesis, however, it might come in useful in polishing steps of large genome synthesis. Fascinating advances are being made in the in vitro manufacture of long and very long sequences: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160209005653/en/Gen9-Develops-Multiplex-Synthesis-Platform-DNA-Assembly but it is still likely that human genome-size constructs will need in vivo assembly and proofreading, and that's where a CRISPR step is likely to play a role. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Apr 8 00:27:07 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 20:27:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Study Links Disparities in Pain Management to Racial Bias In-Reply-To: <09877B4E-1A1C-41F4-AC47-8A4E4E79F58E@gmail.com> References: <09877B4E-1A1C-41F4-AC47-8A4E4E79F58E@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 12:02 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > > https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-links-disparities-pain-management-racial-bias > > Shattering the myth that medical students are brights? > > > ### Dunno, it sounds like a little propaganda piece from the race grievance industry. Asking questions about physiological differences between races is generally frowned up in medical school, so medical students usually don't learn much about them. And obviously there are many such differences and you have to learn the details to answer such questions. But here they test white students, make them fail, and then pontificate about how stupid, bigoted and racist they are are. Interestingly there is no word about how control groups of black, Asian and Hispanic students fared on the test. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Apr 8 00:43:31 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 20:43:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <5706E28F.3020305@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 7:40 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > 1 - If you don't understand the problem how do you know you have a > solution? What I think you mean is that the algorithm is more useful than > you thought - serendipity. I don't think this is what you mean. > > 2 - Or reading your sentence another way, you know the problem, you > created an algorithm, and the answers you got you don't understand. Then > how do you know the solution is correct? Maybe the algorithm is flawed - > that is, it does things you did not intend. (I am betting on 2) > ### There are many problems where finding the solution is very difficult but verifying it is trivial. Factoring a very large number might take hundreds of years by hand but verifying that a set of numbers are factors of that number is easy. ----------- > > I know I am out of my league here, and I have no trouble giving credit to > AI if that is due. But the AI has to follow the programming, right? How > does that earn credit? > > ### If a bulldozer digs a hole, is it the operator's achievement, or the bulldozer's? If an autonomous bulldozer digs a hole, is it the manufacturer's achievement, or the bulldozer's? If an autonomous, superintelligent, nanotechnological, time-traveling, faster-than-light bulldozer built by luminous, ethereal robots designed by godlike AI designed by simpler AI designed by yet simpler AI.... invents a way of digging holes into other universes, does Sergey Brin get the credit? Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stathisp at gmail.com Fri Apr 8 00:52:04 2016 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 10:52:04 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On 8 April 2016 at 08:30, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > ?Well, for one thing it means that I cannot answer the question about > Einstein without taking a stand on free will.? > > > ?The computer cannot do otherwise than what it was programmed to do. > There is no human parallel to this, unless you want to go down to the level > of DNA and say that it is responsible for all that we do since it > programmed us to learn. If you want to look at it this way, then we are > indeed automatons. And Einstein gets no credit; given the makeup of his > brain and what was put into it, he had no choice other than to create his > physics and math. This is a tough philosophical position to dispute. > What you say here is quite reasonable. What is your problem with it? > Free will exists because we hope we have it, and we must assume it so that > we can punish antisocial people. > If antisocial people have free will (whatever that means) but we know that punishment would have no effect on their behaviour we would not waste our time with it. On the other hand, if they have no free will (whatever that means) but we know punishment would stop them doing bad things then we would punish them. Free will (whatever that means) is irrelevant. > If there is any hard evidence for it I don't know of it. I have no > conception of what that would be. > Neither do I. Free will does not mean that behaviour is random, and it does not mean that behaviour is deterministic. It seems that it means nothing at all, if you think about it at more than a superficial level. ? > The AI may produce unexpected results, but that was known beforehand, if > the code was OK. So, credit to the programmers, none to the AI. > The same could be said of people and their teachers, as discussed. -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Fri Apr 8 01:12:45 2016 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 21:12:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> > On Apr 7, 2016, at 1:01 PM, John Clark wrote: > people would love to program a computer so that it has the best chance of solving the traveling salesman problem but nobody knows how to do it. ? I took a massive online course on a related topic where, in an early class, we learned Bayesian methods as applied to the traveling salesman problem. It was used as an example of code that could applied to machine learning. So I'm pretty sure this has been done with Bayesian and probably other methods. -Henry -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 8 01:24:21 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 18:24:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> Message-ID: <001601d19135$614ff7e0$23efe7a0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Henry Rivera >?I took a massive online course on a related topic where, in an early class, we learned Bayesian methods as applied to the traveling salesman problem. It was used as an example of code that could applied to machine learning. So I'm pretty sure this has been done with Bayesian and probably other methods. -Henry There were four Bayesian statistics courses offered. After taking three of them, there was no point in taking the fourth because I already knew everything that was in it. spike Cool, I have plenty of math geek jokes. This is my first statistics geek joke. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 8 01:29:54 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 18:29:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> Message-ID: <001f01d19136$282d6460$78882d20$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2016 6:24 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Henry Rivera >?There were four Bayesian statistics courses offered. After taking three of them, there was no point in taking the fourth because I already knew everything that was in it. spike Afterwards, I realized that had they covered the field in just two courses of twice the length each, I could have taken just the one. Mastering the topic would have taken me only 2/3 the time. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 8 01:37:45 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2016 18:37:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> Message-ID: <002401d19137$40f5e2a0$c2e1a7e0$@att.net> On Apr 7, 2016, at 1:01 PM, John Clark > wrote: >?people would love to program a computer so that it has the best chance of solving the traveling salesman problem but nobody knows how to do it. ? John I know how to program a computer to solve the traveling salesman problem: use your computer to take all your retail business online. Then your path length goes to zero. spike ?sheesh, I am FULL of geek humor today, just FULL of it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Apr 8 17:49:03 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 13:49:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:12 PM, Henry Rivera wrote: ?>> ? >> people would love to program a computer so that it has the best chance of >> solving the traveling salesman problem but nobody knows how to do it. ? > > ?> ? > I took a massive online course on a related topic where, in an early > class, we learned Bayesian methods as applied to the traveling salesman > problem. It was used as an example of code that could applied to machine > learning. So I'm pretty sure this has been done with Bayesian and probably > other methods. > ?There and many algorithms for solving the traveling salesman problem but all known ones SUCK! When the number of cities the salesman must visit gets larger than a few dozen finding a shorter path through all of them becomes far too complex for any computer to solve. Finding a shorter path is a NP Complete problem and that is believed by most to be a class of problems that is more difficult than factoring (the bedrock of modern encryption) and too difficult for even a Quantum Computer to solve. And finding THE shortest path through all the cities, THE one perfect solution, is even more difficult than NP Complete; even if I gave you the answer you couldn't even check to see if I was correct and it really was the shortest path in polynomial time. Fortunately for the Quantum Computer people it appears that even nature doesn't know how to solve NP Complete problems (much less even more difficult problems like the perfect solution to the traveling salesman) in polynomial time so as a practical matter this limitation on Quantum Computers is probably not very important. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Apr 8 19:58:20 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 15:58:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 6:30 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > ?> ? > I cannot answer the question about Einstein without taking a stand on free > will.? > > ?Tell me what on earth the phrase "free will" means and I'll tell you what my stand on it is.? > ?> ? > The computer cannot do otherwise than what it was programmed to do. > ?Yes it can, cosmic rays and random quantum fluctuations exist; when their machines are effected by ?those things people call them "glitches", perhaps the machines calls it "free will"? but as I don't know what the term means I can't be sure. > ?> ? > There is no human parallel to this, > ? Not true. Humans are in exactly the same boat as computers because of one of the most fundamental laws of logic, ? ? X is Y OR X is not Y. ? ? Everything that both humans and computers do happens because of cause and effect and thus is deterministic OR it does not happen because of cause and effect and thus is random. That is after all what "random" means. > ?> ? > unless you want to go down to the level of DNA and say that it is > responsible for all that we do since it programmed us to learn. If you > want to look at it this way, then we are indeed automatons. And Einstein > gets no credit; > ?Einstein would still get the credit. A cuckoo clock is a automation but it should get credit for doing a good job telling us the correct time, ? ?and automation or not Einstein should get credit for doing a good job telling us ? how spacetime works.? Other people can and should get credit for making us happy and we love them for it, still other people can and should get credit (or responsibility) for making us miserable and we hate them for that. ?> ? > Free will exists because we hope we have it, > ?Before we debate if we have free will or not or if it would be a nice thing to have it might be wise to decide what the hell the term means.? > ?> ? > and we must assume it so that we can punish antisocial people. > ?Of course we can and should punish ? ?criminals ?because society would collapse if we did not! I don't know what that has to do with "free will" but that's not surprising as I have no idea what "free will" means. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Apr 8 17:12:30 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 13:12:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 6:30 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > ?> ? > I cannot answer the question about Einstein without taking a stand on free > will.? > > ?Tell me what on earth the phrase "free will" means and I'll tell you what my stand on it is.? > ?> ? > The computer cannot do otherwise than what it was programmed to do. > ?Yes it can, cosmic rays and random quantum fluctuations exist; when their machines are effected by ?those things people call them "glitches", perhaps the machines calls it "free will"? but as I don't know what the term means I can't be sure. > ?> ? > There is no human parallel to this, > ? Not true. Humans are in exactly the same boat as computers because of one of the most fundamental laws of logic, ? ? X is Y OR X is not Y. ? ? Everything that both humans and computers do happens because of cause and effect and thus is deterministic OR it does not happen because of cause and effect and thus is random. That is after all what "random" means. > ?> ? > unless you want to go down to the level of DNA and say that it is > responsible for all that we do since it programmed us to learn. If you > want to look at it this way, then we are indeed automatons. And Einstein > gets no credit; > ?Einstein would still get the credit. A cuckoo clock is a automation but it should get credit for doing a good job telling us the correct time, ? ?and automation or not Einstein should get credit for doing a good job telling us ? how spacetime works.? Other people can and should get credit for making us happy and we love them for it, still other people can and should get credit (or responsibility) for making us miserable and we hate them for that. ?> ? > Free will exists because we hope we have it, > ?Before we debate if we have free will or not or if it would be a nice thing to have it might be wise to decide what the hell the term means.? > ?> ? > and we must assume it so that we can punish antisocial people. > ?Of course we can and should punish ? ?criminals ?because society would collapse if we did not! I don't know what that has to do with "free will" but that's not surprising as I have no idea what "free will" means. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat Apr 9 07:55:36 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2016 09:55:36 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Whistling past the graveyard In-Reply-To: <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> References: <018d01d1905c$5749cb60$05dd6220$@att.net> <75069EFE-86B9-4045-A9FB-D290BF55695E@alumni.virginia.edu> Message-ID: <5708B578.3020707@aleph.se> Again, it is important to distinguish between the sharply defined hardness of the TSP (if you can solve generic instances fast, you have collapsed the P-NP hierarchy) and the less well defined hardness of getting useful solutions. TSP is NP-hard, but solvers like Concorde can easily solve big instances (see for instance https://web.archive.org/web/20160328170659/http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/sweden/index.html - 24,978 nodes, and long beaten by real industrial applications). What matters in the real world is effective approximate solutions, yet it is far easier to prove the impossibility of exact solutions. This is why many proofs about AI properties are not that useful compared to demonstrations. On 2016-04-08 03:12, Henry Rivera wrote: > > On Apr 7, 2016, at 1:01 PM, John Clark > wrote: > > people would love to program a computer so that it has the best chance > of solving the traveling salesman problem but nobody knows how to do it. ? > > I took a massive online course on a related topic where, in an early > class, we learned Bayesian methods as applied to the traveling > salesman problem. It was used as an example of code that could applied > to machine learning. So I'm pretty sure this has been done with > Bayesian and probably other methods. > -Henry > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Apr 9 18:10:40 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2016 13:10:40 -0500 Subject: [ExI] clash/intersection of cultures Message-ID: *Spike, is this message aimed at you?* *The View from the 21st Century:* A federal official in Malaysia warns citizens against posting ?selfies? on social media, because the ?bomoh? ? local shamans ? may be using such photos to put hexes on people. ?Do not be surprised if the ?bomoh? themselves are getting smarter and they may have installed wireless broadband to launch their black magic,? warned Jazannul Azriq Aripin, a CyberSecurity Malaysia communications officer. ?So, avoid uploading pictures of yourself to avoid the threat of black magic.? The CyberSecurity Malaysia agency is part of the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry. (RC/Malay Mail) Anyone know how to write the code for black magic filter? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 10 04:33:21 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2016 21:33:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] clash/intersection of cultures In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <012e01d192e2$1e9a54f0$5bcefed0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2016 11:11 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] clash/intersection of cultures Spike, is this message aimed at you? The View from the 21st Century: A federal official in Malaysia warns citizens against posting ?selfies? on social media, because the ?bomoh? ? local shamans ? may be using such photos to put hexes on people. ?Do not be surprised if the ?bomoh? themselves are getting smarter and they may have installed wireless broadband to launch their black magic,? warned Jazannul Azriq Aripin, a CyberSecurity Malaysia communications officer. ?So, avoid uploading pictures of yourself to avoid the threat of black magic.? The CyberSecurity Malaysia agency is part of the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry. (RC/Malay Mail) Anyone know how to write the code for black magic filter? bill w BillW, this has the vague scent of an internet April Fool?s gag that took a few days to make the rounds. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sun Apr 10 07:50:43 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2016 09:50:43 +0200 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Video_=E2=80=93_2016_Annual_Conference_of_the_Mor?= =?utf-8?q?mon_Transhumanist_Association?= Message-ID: Yesterday, April 9, the 2016 Annual Conference of the Mormon Transhumanist Association was held in in Provo, Utah, at the Provo City Library. The Conference reaches beyond Mormonism and is the de-facto annual conference of the religious/spiritual transhumanist community. The Conference was live-streamed and the recording of the stream is online on YouTube. You can watch more than nine hours of awesome talks at the intersection of transhumanism and religion... http://turingchurch.com/2016/04/10/video-2016-annual-conference-of-the-mormon-transhumanist-association/ From stathisp at gmail.com Sun Apr 10 23:32:54 2016 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 09:32:54 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 31 March 2016 at 11:37, John Clark wrote: ?No. ?Godel was a mathematician who made profound philosophical > discoveries, but philosophers are dilettantes > > ?and Godel was about as far from a dilettante as you can get.? > Bertrand Russell > ? said only 3 people on earth had read his and > Whitehead > ?'? > ?s ? > ?MASSIVE book on the foundations of mathematics cover to cover, and Kurt > Godel was the third. ? > Are logicians a type of mathematician or a type of philosopher, or both? -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 14:58:07 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 09:58:07 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again Message-ID: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits Fairly long article on the history of cholesterol, saturated fats, sugar, and heart disease. Ties in to a book The Big Fat Surprise - big award winner If you want to be truly disgusted with scientists (and of course, the food industry), this is for you. Those of you who are already on the paleo diet or similar and a fructose avoider will want to read it only for the history and politics. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 15:25:44 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 11:25:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 10:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > If you want to be truly disgusted with scientists (and of course, the food > industry), this is for you. > I think the government deserves most of the blame but there's plenty to go around. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 15:59:40 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 11:59:40 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Why Physics Needs Philosophy In-Reply-To: References: <8EA57ECE-31BA-482A-B80C-413E5D9031E9@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 Stathis Papaioannou wrote: ?> ? > Are logicians a type of mathematician or a type of philosopher, or both? > Logicians ?are? a? type of mathematician ? that makes important philosophical discoveries, but they are not philosophers because, as I've said philosophers have not done any philosophy in centuries. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 18:13:55 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 13:13:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 10:25 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 10:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> If you want to be truly disgusted with scientists (and of course, the >> food industry), this is for you. >> > > I think the government deserves most of the blame but there's plenty to go > around. > > -Dave > ?And just who does the gov. ask? Experts. Mostly medical people, I assume, the most conservative profession existing, and the one most punitive of contrarians, no matter how right they are.? ?A quote I have seen before addresses that: it stresses that real knowledge is first denied, esp. if controversial, and more esp. if it will cost lots of money to those who are doing the conventional thing. Lastly it becomes the new norm and those who oppose it are seen as dummies. And no one gets sued by following it in the medical ranks. Or the suer loses as soon as the expert witness agrees that this is standard medical practice. Maybe we should invent a scientific court of appeals. Some level above peer reviewed journals, using meta analysis or strongly suggesting it, as well as setting some standards for replication. Is there anything like this? Why not? This nutritional fat/heart problem bumbled along for decades with inadequate data and arguably made billions fat. It should have been resolved long ago. But not one is as mossbacked as the medical profession unless it's the Mississippi legislature. bill w? > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 18:47:36 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 14:47:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 2:13 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?And just who does the gov. ask? Experts. Mostly medical people, I > assume, the most conservative profession existing, and the one most > punitive of contrarians, no matter how right they are. > From http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31193-four-decades-of-the-wrong-dietary-advice-has-paved-the-way-for-the-diabetes-epidemic-time-to-change-course * Dr. Robert Olson, professor of medicine and chairman of the Biochemistry Department at St. Louis University and an expert on nutrition science argued that the recommendations were not supported by the available science. In Dr. Olson's words: * *"I pleaded in my report and will plead again orally here for more research on the problem before we make announcements to the American public."* * Senator McGovern, speaking for the commission stated that: * *"Senators don't have the luxury the research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in."* I think it's pretty clear now that the low fat recommendation was premature and that the government is responsible for that and the many deaths that it caused. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 19:45:24 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 14:45:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 1:47 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 2:13 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> ?And just who does the gov. ask? Experts. Mostly medical people, I >> assume, the most conservative profession existing, and the one most >> punitive of contrarians, no matter how right they are. >> > > From > http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31193-four-decades-of-the-wrong-dietary-advice-has-paved-the-way-for-the-diabetes-epidemic-time-to-change-course > * Dr. Robert Olson, professor of medicine and chairman of the > Biochemistry Department at St. Louis University and an expert on nutrition > science argued that the recommendations were not supported by the available > science. In Dr. Olson's words: > * > > *"I pleaded in my report and will plead again orally here for more > research on the problem before we make announcements to the American > public."* > > * Senator McGovern, speaking for the commission stated that: > * > > *"Senators don't have the luxury the research scientist does of waiting > until every last shred of evidence is in."* > > I think it's pretty clear now that the low fat recommendation was > premature and that the government is responsible for that and the many > deaths that it caused. > > -Dave > > ?Thank you for this. But the gov must have listened to others than > Olson. And the AMA must have had a hand in it somewhere, eh? And > associations of heart doctors, and................... > ?I blame all of them and if you want to blame the gov most, I'll not disagree. Now - why are we not having gov inquiries like this on sugar? They (who?) got rid of high fructose sugars, but all sugars are to blame, no? Since we now know that Olson was right, it is curious why the proper research was not done following the commission's report. Did the gov simply not want to fund such? Did the medical community decide that the facts were in? "Mistakes were made." Yeah, apparently by everyone concerned. In addition, I wonder what closed door deals were made. Surely there were some. bill w ? > ? > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 21:44:22 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:44:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 3:45 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?Thank you for this. But the gov must have listened to others than > Olson. And the AMA must have had a hand in it somewhere, eh? And > associations of heart doctors, and................... > Yeah, like I said, lot's of blame to go around. But it's the government's premature dietary guidelines that are the real driver. Doctors, sadly, receive very little nutritional training, and what they do get now is tainted by the past mistakes. ?I blame all of them and if you want to blame the gov most, I'll not > disagree. Now - why are we not having gov inquiries like this on sugar? > They (who?) got rid of high fructose sugars, but all sugars are to blame, > no? > Maybe because those who were duped into the low fat ideology don't want to admit they're wrong. Maybe big agribusiness and big pharma donate large sums to congresscritters and are happy with the current recommendations. > Since we now know that Olson was right, it is curious why the proper > research was not done following the commission's report. Did the gov > simply not want to fund such? Did the medical community decide that the > facts were in? > Most of the research is funded by the government or big business. The government hasn't been forthcoming in funding research that challenges the dietary guidelines. Monsanto/ADM/Phizer/etc are not highly motivated to publish research that would dramatically cut their profits. Look at the ADA's stance on diet, which is basically "eat normally (high carb) and take drugs to control blood sugar". There's big money at stake here if everyone wakes up realizes that a huge portion of our health care costs would evaporate if low carb replaced low fat. "Mistakes were made." Yeah, apparently by everyone concerned. In > addition, I wonder what closed door deals were made. Surely there were > some. > Undoubtedly. This is worth a read: http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2015/02/10/the-anointed-know-why-youre-fat-and-what-to-do-about-it/ -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 22:12:54 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 15:12:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> On Apr 11, 2016, at 8:25 AM, Dave Sill wrote: >> On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 10:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >> If you want to be truly disgusted with scientists (and of course, the food industry), this is for you. > > I think the government deserves most of the blame but there's plenty to go around. I agree. So let's assign the blame and penalize those responsible. Let's not let it stop with just a nice report and hopes it won't happen again. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 11 22:32:20 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:32:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> References: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 5:12 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Apr 11, 2016, at 8:25 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > > On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 10:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> If you want to be truly disgusted with scientists (and of course, the >> food industry), this is for you. >> > > I think the government deserves most of the blame but there's plenty to go > around. > > > I agree. So let's assign the blame and penalize those responsible. Let's > not let it stop with just a nice report and hopes it won't happen again. > > Regards, > > Dan > ?If we could do that, perhaps we could get the Wall Street guys who crashed our economy around 2008. Don't hold your breath. bill w? > Sample my Kindle books via: > http://author.to/DanUst > > _______________________________________________ > 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 danust2012 at gmail.com Tue Apr 12 03:01:00 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 20:01:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> Message-ID: <0F64B6F4-70C4-41F0-ACDE-6E14BC66FECC@gmail.com> On Apr 11, 2016, at 3:32 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >> On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 5:12 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: >>> On Apr 11, 2016, at 8:25 AM, Dave Sill wrote: >>>> On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 10:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >>>> If you want to be truly disgusted with scientists (and of course, the food industry), this is for you. >>> >>> I think the government deserves most of the blame but there's plenty to go around. >> >> I agree. So let's assign the blame and penalize those responsible. Let's not let it stop with just a nice report and hopes it won't happen again. > > ?If we could do that, perhaps we could get the Wall Street guys who crashed our economy around 2008. Don't hold your breath. They had a lot of help from the government too, don't you think? See: http://reason.com/archives/2016/04/11/when-it-comes-to-wall-street-regulation Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Tue Apr 12 11:28:25 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 07:28:25 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> References: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 6:12 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > I agree. So let's assign the blame and penalize those responsible. Let's > not let it stop with just a nice report and hopes it won't happen again. > I'd be ticked pink if we could just not re-elect all of these assholes every election but people are so afraid of letting the "wrong" party take a seat that that rarely happens. The two-party system is a disaster. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Apr 12 14:06:25 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 09:06:25 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 6:28 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 6:12 PM, Dan TheBookMan > wrote: > >> I agree. So let's assign the blame and penalize those responsible. Let's >> not let it stop with just a nice report and hopes it won't happen again. >> > > I'd be ticked pink if we could just not re-elect all of these assholes > every election but people are so afraid of letting the "wrong" party take a > seat that that rarely happens. The two-party system is a disaster. > > -Dave > > ?It's ?Nebraska, I think that has a unicameral legislature. I wonder how > they are doing? > ?I see in the paper today that Goldman Sachs has been fined $5 billion dollars by the gov for misleading investors around 2008. So if individuals are not being punished, at least some companies are. You have to wonder who got the axe in these companies as a result of the crash that we just don't know about because it's not national news. I suspect that many got fired who aided the crash, but maybe that's just hope. 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 lubkin at unreasonable.com Wed Apr 13 02:27:39 2016 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 22:27:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Jerry Pournelle wins Heinlein Award Message-ID: <201604130334.u3D3Y5Yv010858@ziaspace.com> http://blog.nss.org/acclaimed-science-fiction-author-dr-jerry-pournelle-wins-the-national-space-society-robert-a-heinlein-award/ >The National Space Society takes great pleasure in announcing that >its 2016 Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award has been won by acclaimed >science fiction author Dr. Jerry Pournelle. This prestigious award >selected by an international vote of NSS members will be presented >to Dr. Jerry Pournelle at the 2016 International Space Development >Conference (ISDC). News I'm delighted by. And if the Admiral were still around, no one would be cheering longer or louder. -- David. From giulio at gmail.com Wed Apr 13 08:11:06 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2016 10:11:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! Message-ID: On on the 55th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering space flight, Breakthrough Starshot is launching preparations for the next great leap: to the stars. Internet investor and science philanthropist Yuri Milner and physicist Stephen Hawking announced the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, a $100 million research and engineering program to seek proof of concept for using light beams to propel gram-scale "nanocraft" to 20 percent of light speed. A possible fly-by mission could reach Alpha Centauri within about 20 years of its launch. The program will be led by Pete Worden, the former director of NASA AMES Research Center, and advised by a committee of world-class scientists and engineers. The board will consist of Stephen Hawking, Yuri Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg. A mission to Alpha Centauri mission could be feasible in a few decades. Watch the recorded webcast of the launch event. Read about Breakthrough Starshot at The Atlantic and Centauri Dreams. http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/News/4 http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3 http://livestream.com/accounts/18650072/events/5143435 http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/yuri-milner-zuckerberg-starshot-interstellar-centauri/477669/ http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=35402 From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 01:54:57 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2016 21:54:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Ancel Keys strikes again Message-ID: Some of you may be familiar with the name of Ancel Keys, the charlatan who launched the low-fat diet fad and managed to get the might of the US government behind his teachings. He is the one who cherry-picked international diet comparison data in a landmark study at the onset of the crusade against saturated fat. Turns out he was guilty of intentional concealment of crucial research results that could have nipped this insanity in the bud: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/12/this-study-40-years-ago-could-have-reshaped-the-american-diet-but-it-was-never-fully-published/ Apparently, he found in a controlled study that foods rich in polyunsaturated fat killed people, while consumption of foods rich in saturated fat resulted in longer survival. I am using a strong word like "resulted" because it was a well-powered interventional study, not one of hundreds of wishy-washy observational studies that can be always spun any way you want. He did not like the results of his study, so he did not fully publish them, and this most likely contributed to millions of unnecessary deaths from exposure to vegetable oils and from reductions in animal fat intake. Ancel Keys may be one of the most deadly criminals of the 20th century, on par with Eichmann and his ilk. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 12:51:05 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 14:51:05 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: My thoughts on Breakthrough Starshot: The first steps to the stars, with transhumanist value added. Breakthrough Starshot is an awesome project that could boost our mental health as a society by re-igniting our enthusiasm for space with big visions of our cosmic future among the stars. Perhaps we could send AIs and uploads to the stars, combining interstellar expansion with post-biological evolution. http://turingchurch.com/2016/04/14/breakthrough-starshot-the-first-steps-to-the-stars/ On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 10:11 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > On on the 55th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering space flight, > Breakthrough Starshot is launching preparations for the next great > leap: to the stars. > > Internet investor and science philanthropist Yuri Milner and physicist > Stephen Hawking announced the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, a $100 > million research and engineering program to seek proof of concept for > using light beams to propel gram-scale "nanocraft" to 20 percent of > light speed. A possible fly-by mission could reach Alpha Centauri > within about 20 years of its launch. > > The program will be led by Pete Worden, the former director of NASA > AMES Research Center, and advised by a committee of world-class > scientists and engineers. The board will consist of Stephen Hawking, > Yuri Milner, and Mark Zuckerberg. A mission to Alpha Centauri mission > could be feasible in a few decades. > > Watch the recorded webcast of the launch event. Read about > Breakthrough Starshot at The Atlantic and Centauri Dreams. > > http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/News/4 > > http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3 > > http://livestream.com/accounts/18650072/events/5143435 > > http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/yuri-milner-zuckerberg-starshot-interstellar-centauri/477669/ > > http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=35402 From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 14:12:17 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 09:12:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Ancel Keys strikes again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 8:54 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > Some of you may be familiar with the name of Ancel Keys, the charlatan who > launched the low-fat diet fad and managed to get the might of the US > government behind his teachings. He is the one who cherry-picked > international diet comparison data in a landmark study at the onset of the > crusade against saturated fat. > > Turns out he was guilty of intentional concealment of crucial research > results that could have nipped this insanity in the bud: > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/12/this-study-40-years-ago-could-have-reshaped-the-american-diet-but-it-was-never-fully-published/ > > Apparently, he found in a controlled study that foods rich in > polyunsaturated fat killed people, while consumption of foods rich in > saturated fat resulted in longer survival. I am using a strong word like > "resulted" because it was a well-powered interventional study, not one of > hundreds of wishy-washy observational studies that can be always spun any > way you want. He did not like the results of his study, so he did not fully > publish them, and this most likely contributed to millions of unnecessary > deaths from exposure to vegetable oils and from reductions in animal fat > intake. > > Ancel Keys may be one of the most deadly criminals of the 20th century, on > par with Eichmann and his ilk. > > Rafa? > ?I too am interested in the history of this, and so I bought The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz, who spent nine years researching it. Will let you know. bill w? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 11:37:17 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 07:37:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Trying again since it bounced the first time. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dave Sill Date: Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 1:50 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] nutrition again To: ExI chat list Just read this article: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin And had to bring it up here. A quote: *A scientist is part of what the Polish philosopher of science Ludwik Fleck called a ?thought collective?: a group of people exchanging ideas in a mutually comprehensible idiom. The group, suggested Fleck, inevitably develops a mind of its own, as the individuals in it converge on a way of communicating, thinking and feeling. * *This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it. In the long run, however, we?re all dead, quite possibly sooner than we would be if we hadn?t been following a diet based on poor advice.* The article makes a strong case for placing most of the blame on science. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 17:58:52 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 10:58:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 14, 2016 9:51 AM, "Giulio Prisco" wrote: > My thoughts on Breakthrough Starshot: The first steps to the stars, > with transhumanist value added. My thoughts: no such value will be added. They won't actually send anything beyond the solar system - not "can't" but "won't". They will rediscover that beaming energy over such long distances really is less practical than having the thrust source right there, and that they won't recover any data from such a small craft at interstellar distances (barring transmission advances that will take enough decades that this beamed energy work will have been forgotten by then). If they're honest, they may even find that anything that requires activity - even just keeping active a beamed energy source - for 20 years requires more infrastructure and commitment than they are willing to provide (or profitability - since pride and other incentives won't last nearly long enough - which it won't provide). This will be a lot of hype and money that will just wind up wasted. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Thu Apr 14 11:22:37 2016 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 07:22:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B9A139B-3475-41ED-9FAA-5CBF14C06AC8@alumni.virginia.edu> > On Apr 12, 2016, at 10:06 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?I see in the paper today that Goldman Sachs has been fined $5 billion dollars by the gov for misleading investors around 2008. So if individuals are not being punished, at least some companies are. You have to wonder who got the axe in these companies as a result of the crash that we just don't know about because it's not national news. I suspect that many got fired who aided the crash, but maybe that's just hope. > According to this interview, this penalty is light and won't deter the problematic behavior. A cost/benefit analysis by the banks will lead them down this path again. And thus why would they bother firing staff (unless it's a PR move). http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/is-dodd-frank-missing-some-vital-regulatory-firewalls/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 18:53:57 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 13:53:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: <4B9A139B-3475-41ED-9FAA-5CBF14C06AC8@alumni.virginia.edu> References: <9A51892B-BBAF-49FB-B029-9A7579DF0696@gmail.com> <4B9A139B-3475-41ED-9FAA-5CBF14C06AC8@alumni.virginia.edu> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 6:22 AM, Henry Rivera wrote: > > On Apr 12, 2016, at 10:06 AM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > > > ?I see in the paper today that Goldman Sachs has been fined $5 billion > dollars by the gov for misleading investors around 2008. So if individuals > are not being punished, at least some companies are. You have to wonder > who got the axe in these companies as a result of the crash that we just > don't know about because it's not national news. I suspect that many got > fired who aided the crash, but maybe that's just hope. > > According to this interview, this penalty is light and won't deter the > problematic behavior. A cost/benefit analysis by the banks will lead them > down this path again. And thus why would they bother firing staff (unless > it's a PR move). > > > http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/is-dodd-frank-missing-some-vital-regulatory-firewalls/ > ?All true, I suppose. And the Dodd-Frank act hasn't been implemented to its fullest extent, by far. Again, I know little about finance and economics, but I do know people and without strong regulation crashes will keep on happening. It's the same old thing: Keep doing the same thing and you will keep getting the same results: short term profits and long term crashes. Give people a way to cheat and many will if it puts them above someone else, some other finance company, increases their bonuses, etc. It's the bad side of capitalism - too much competition leads to immoral and illegal behavior.? ? We see it in students, in athletes, everywhere. ? Win at any cost. This got us here, helped us evolve to this point, but now, like a too great fondness for sugar and fats and salt, it has become harmful in its excesses. > > ?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 rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 19:40:28 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 15:40:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 1:58 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > If they're honest, they may even find that anything that requires activity > - even just keeping active a beamed energy source - for 20 years requires > more infrastructure and commitment than they are willing to provide (or > profitability - since pride and other incentives won't last nearly long > enough - which it won't provide). > ### Why would they need the beam on for 20 years? The proposal calls for a boost phase lasting only a few hours, after launching a sufficient number of probes the facility can be dismantled. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 20:30:19 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 13:30:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 14, 2016 12:41 PM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" wrote: > Why would they need the beam on for 20 years? The proposal calls for a boost phase lasting only a few hours, after launching a sufficient number of probes the facility can be dismantled. How do they plan to decelerate? (If they will detach something to stay, that will need deceleration.) And if they don't, what meaningful interaction can be accomplished over there? Even just measurement and observation would be better done by something that sticks around (see how much data a certain Mars rover has generated). We've seen how sustainable "flags and footprints" is: some decades later, we can't even rebuild the rockets that took people to the Moon. Further, accelerating to even just 0.1 c (about 3 * 10^7 m/s) over a few hours (call it 10,000 seconds, roughly 3 hours) comes to about 300 Gs. And they're just launching nanocraft. I do not think they will be able to come up with a design that would not shatter, breaking the reflector so they don't even wind up accelerating dust, let alone functioning spacecraft, to nearly the speed desired. Granted, 90 hours - just shy of 4 days continuous - would drop this to around 10 Gs, which may be feasible depending on spacecraft design. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 21:54:35 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 16:54:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again Message-ID: First link is to the 'home' page of the book. http://smile.amazon.com/The-Big-Fat-Surprise-Healthy/dp/1451624433?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00 Second link is to the page of one star reviews http://smile.amazon.com/The-Big-Fat-Surprise-Healthy/product-reviews/1451624433/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&showViewpoints=0 It's just over my head. I think you need to be an expert in the field to evaluate the reviews (or the book), so I thought I'd pass these along to whomever is interested to see if anyone can put a more expert view to them than I can. So, it might be still up in the air, but dammit, something made so many obese! bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Apr 14 23:30:59 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 18:30:59 -0500 Subject: [ExI] response to dave Message-ID: ?*This makes scientific inquiry prone to the eternal rules of human social life: deference to the charismatic, herding towards majority opinion, punishment for deviance, and intense discomfort with admitting to error. Of course, such tendencies are precisely what the scientific method was invented to correct for, and over the long run, it does a good job of it. In the long run, however, we?re all dead, quite possibly sooner than we would be if we hadn?t been following a diet based on poor advice.* (quote from Dave - not his) Notice the similarity with what I said about the medical profession. Notice also the similarity to religion and its treatment of heretics. We expect gods. And gods are never wrong. Yet when a scientist says he was wrong we become suspicious of him rather than laudatory. But scientists are wrong all the time, far more often than they are right, I think. Put any scientist before a Senate committee and he or she will be subject to scorn if the evidence presented isn't pure and decisive. "What are you doing here if you are not the expert and know the truth of this?" We can imagine that being said easily. ?bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 00:48:26 2016 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 20:48:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 14, 2016 5:56 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: > > So, it might be still up in the air, but dammit, something made so many obese! High Fructose Corn Syrup? Probably more accurate that it's several somethings taken together rather than a single culprit: any one of which is inconclusive or 'generally regarded as safe' -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sjv2006 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 01:51:59 2016 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 18:51:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: They have a good page on the challenges involved. http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3 On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 1:30 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Apr 14, 2016 12:41 PM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" > wrote: > > Why would they need the beam on for 20 years? The proposal calls for a > boost phase lasting only a few hours, after launching a sufficient number > of probes the facility can be dismantled. > > How do they plan to decelerate? (If they will detach something to stay, > that will need deceleration.) > > And if they don't, what meaningful interaction can be accomplished over > there? Even just measurement and observation would be better done by > something that sticks around (see how much data a certain Mars rover has > generated). We've seen how sustainable "flags and footprints" is: some > decades later, we can't even rebuild the rockets that took people to the > Moon. > > Further, accelerating to even just 0.1 c (about 3 * 10^7 m/s) over a few > hours (call it 10,000 seconds, roughly 3 hours) comes to about 300 Gs. And > they're just launching nanocraft. I do not think they will be able to come > up with a design that would not shatter, breaking the reflector so they > don't even wind up accelerating dust, let alone functioning spacecraft, to > nearly the speed desired. Granted, 90 hours - just shy of 4 days > continuous - would drop this to around 10 Gs, which may be feasible > depending on spacecraft design. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 giulio at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 04:42:45 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 06:42:45 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 10:30 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > How do they plan to decelerate? They don't plan to decelerate, it's a high-speed fly-by. From atymes at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 04:55:59 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 21:55:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 6:51 PM, Stephen Van Sickle wrote: > They have a good page on the challenges involved. > > http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3 > > Read it. It answers some of my objections but not all. Most notably, how do they keep the project running for the 20 years they estimate (plus time for the signal to get back), such that someone will be listening (and know how to listen) when the signal from the fly-by returns? (And then there's still, "it's a fly-by; this isn't sustainable, it'll be more thrown away effort for no development gain.") -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 05:25:06 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 22:25:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <83D37E13-BAB7-446C-A01E-1D4D94B44EA2@gmail.com> On Apr 14, 2016, at 9:55 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 6:51 PM, Stephen Van Sickle wrote: >> They have a good page on the challenges involved. >> >> http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3 > Read it. It answers some of my objections but not all. Most notably, how do they keep the project running for the 20 years they estimate (plus time for the signal to get back), such that someone will be listening (and know how to listen) when the signal from the fly-by returns? (And then there's still, "it's a fly-by; this isn't sustainable, it'll be more thrown away effort for no development gain.") I bet the cost of receiving signal will be low compared to the other costs. (This is even accounting for it being very low power.) And right now there are several space missions (the Voyagers come to mind, but not just them) that have lasted longer than the proposed one. I don't see this as a showstopper. I didn't read the full articles, but I'm thinking if these things send back some data from a light year away, that alone will be a treasure trove on what interstellar space is like. By the way, Dennis May proposed something like this a few years ago, though his was more a gravity probe mission. (To be sure, I don't know if his idea was original. I just heard it from him first.;) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 06:54:14 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 02:54:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 12:55 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 6:51 PM, Stephen Van Sickle > wrote: > >> They have a good page on the challenges involved. >> >> http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3 >> >> Read it. It answers some of my objections but not all. Most notably, > how do they keep the project running for the 20 years they estimate (plus > time for the signal to get back), such that someone will be listening (and > know how to listen) when the signal from the fly-by returns? (And then > there's still, "it's a fly-by; this isn't sustainable, it'll be more thrown > away effort for no development gain.") > ### Being able to build a starship capable of reaching a star in non-geological timeframes is already a significant development gain. Sure, to build a colonizing starship you would need to scale up enough to construct a decelerating laser at destination, and you would need enough of autonomous AI and nanotech production capacity to seed a technological civilization but, as they say, the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Apr 15 11:13:12 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 12:13:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5710CCC8.7020508@aleph.se> On 2016-04-14 18:58, Adrian Tymes wrote: > They won't actually send anything beyond the solar system - not > "can't" but "won't". They will rediscover that beaming energy over > such long distances really is less practical than having the thrust > source right there Actually, the evil of the rocket equation makes external thrust sources really promising. I have been keeping a loose eye at the topic for a number of years, and it looks like people involved actually do know their stuff. It is hard to achieve this, but it is not outside the laws of physics. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From anders at aleph.se Fri Apr 15 12:04:03 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 13:04:03 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> On 2016-04-15 05:55, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Most notably, how do they keep the project running for the 20 years > they estimate (plus time for the signal to get back), such that > someone will be listening (and know how to listen) when the signal > from the fly-by returns? Do you really think nobody can pull off a 20 year long project? -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 12:06:01 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 08:06:01 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 5:54 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > First link is to the 'home' page of the book. > > > http://smile.amazon.com/The-Big-Fat-Surprise-Healthy/dp/1451624433?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00 > > Second link is to the page of one star reviews > > > http://smile.amazon.com/The-Big-Fat-Surprise-Healthy/product-reviews/1451624433/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&showViewpoints=0 > > It's just over my head. I think you need to be an expert in the field to > evaluate the reviews (or the book), so I thought I'd pass these along to > whomever is interested to see if anyone can put a more expert view to them > than I can. > > So, it might be still up in the air, but dammit, something made so many > obese! > Reading 1-star reviews of a controversial book is unlikely to be helpful. I took a glance and they're mostly vegans/vegetarians who've drunk the Kool Aid. The fact is that since the government recommended a move toward a lower fat diet, the public largely headed that way, and health has dramatically declined. The argument will probably go on for years but that's all the evidence one needs that low fat isn't the answer to improving health. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 15:32:04 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 10:32:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates Message-ID: Or maybe it's phthlates: In the past few years, researchers have linked phthalates to asthma , attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, breast cancer, obesity and type II diabetes, low IQ , neurodevelopmental issues, behavioral issues, autism spectrum disorders, altered reproductive development and male fertility issues. Here's the link to the whole article: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/phthalates-plastics-chemicals-research-analysis So. to add to our list of possible culprits, Gov., science, Big Food, we need to add Big Chem. They fight every bill to restrict, test, get rid of some chemicals we find in our diets without any FDA approval needed because they are not foods (I am supposing this - I don't really know if this is true). They may leak into our foods from packaging, from the plastic tubes used in dairies (in the article above). We can blame the gov. for one thing for sure: not enough studies are funded that test what goes into our food and drink. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 15:37:24 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 10:37:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The argument will probably go on for years but that's all the evidence one needs that low fat isn't the answer to improving health. dave Yes, I am quite convinced about that. Not only does fat not raise cholesterol but raised cholesterol may not be as dangerous as once thought. I am nearly sure about that one. One nutrition book I read was by a nurse who is on a 80% fat diet. bill w On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 7:06 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 5:54 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> First link is to the 'home' page of the book. >> >> >> http://smile.amazon.com/The-Big-Fat-Surprise-Healthy/dp/1451624433?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00 >> >> Second link is to the page of one star reviews >> >> >> http://smile.amazon.com/The-Big-Fat-Surprise-Healthy/product-reviews/1451624433/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&showViewpoints=0 >> >> It's just over my head. I think you need to be an expert in the field to >> evaluate the reviews (or the book), so I thought I'd pass these along to >> whomever is interested to see if anyone can put a more expert view to them >> than I can. >> >> So, it might be still up in the air, but dammit, something made so many >> obese! >> > > Reading 1-star reviews of a controversial book is unlikely to be helpful. > I took a glance and they're mostly vegans/vegetarians who've drunk the Kool > Aid. The fact is that since the government recommended a move toward a > lower fat diet, the public largely headed that way, and health has > dramatically declined. The argument will probably go on for years but > that's all the evidence one needs that low fat isn't the answer to > improving health. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 15:56:10 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 11:56:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 11:37 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > The argument will probably go on for years but that's all the evidence one > needs that low fat isn't the answer to improving health. dave > > Yes, I am quite convinced about that. Not only does fat not raise > cholesterol but raised cholesterol may not be as dangerous as once > thought. I am nearly sure about that one. One nutrition book I read was > by a nurse who is on a 80% fat diet. > See also http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2016/04/14/another-big-fat-and-old-fail-for-the-lipid-hypothesis/ Two clinical trials proved that reducing sat fat in the diet and cholesterol in the blood killed people. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Apr 15 16:08:25 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 09:08:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: <00ab01d19731$0b860820$22921860$@att.net> Gravity Probe B was From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg Sent: Friday, April 15, 2016 5:04 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! On 2016-04-15 05:55, Adrian Tymes wrote: >>. Most notably, how do they keep the project running for the 20 years they estimate (plus time for the signal to get back), such that someone will be listening (and know how to listen) when the signal from the fly-by returns? >.Do you really think nobody can pull off a 20 year long project? -- Anders Sandberg Gravity Probe B was a project that went on for fifty years. Some of that was preliminary theoretical work, but they had advanced hardware which went through the 1989 earthquake in Palo Alto. The project launched 15 years after that. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 16:40:15 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 11:40:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 10:56 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 11:37 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> The argument will probably go on for years but that's all the evidence >> one needs that low fat isn't the answer to improving health. dave >> >> Yes, I am quite convinced about that. Not only does fat not raise >> cholesterol but raised cholesterol may not be as dangerous as once >> thought. I am nearly sure about that one. One nutrition book I read was >> by a nurse who is on a 80% fat diet. >> > > See also > http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2016/04/14/another-big-fat-and-old-fail-for-the-lipid-hypothesis/ > > Two clinical trials proved that reducing sat fat in the diet and > cholesterol in the blood killed people. > > -Dave > ?Let's face facts: for the last 100 years or so humanity has been thrust into a gigantic experiment brought to us by science, medicine, the chemical industry, the food industry, governments, and so on. Looking back from, say, the year 2100, they will shake their heads at what we were subjected to in the name of science, money, rigid opinions? ?and so on. "What were they thinking?!!" I'll bet if I googled 'consumer groups' I would get pages of them, all trying to reverse, stop, or at least test the results of these experiments. That's good. Sometimes they go too far, and maybe some of them are just in it for the donations, but hey, we are talking about killing millions or maybe even billions of people. Let's get radical!? Why aren't these political issues? Look at history: how many times has 'received opinion' been wrong, even wildly wrong? I think it's been most of the time. You? bill w > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 17:04:07 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 13:04:07 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 12:40 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?Let's face facts: for the last 100 years or so humanity has been thrust > into a gigantic experiment brought to us by science, medicine, the chemical > industry, the food industry, governments, and so on. Looking back from, > say, the year 2100, they will shake their heads at what we were subjected > to in the name of science, money, rigid opinions? > > ?and so on. "What were they thinking?!!" > Sure, like we've been doing for the past 100 years or so. It's a shame that we apparently haven't learned from their mistakes. > Look at history: how many times has 'received opinion' been wrong, even > wildly wrong? I think it's been most of the time. You? > Agreed. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 17:14:30 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 13:14:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 11:32 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > So. to add to our list of possible culprits, Gov., science, Big Food, we > need to add Big Chem. They fight every bill to restrict, test, get rid of > some chemicals we find in our diets without any FDA approval needed because > they are not foods (I am supposing this - I don't really know if this is > true). They may leak into our foods from packaging, from the plastic tubes > used in dairies (in the article above). > At some point we need to accept responsibility for buying those products, electing those politicians, funding those scientists, etc., given what we now know about what they've done and continue to do. Fool me once, shame on me, right? Who's the fool who keeps expecting the government to fix things or big business to clean up its act? > We can blame the gov. for one thing for sure: not enough studies are > funded that test what goes into our food and drink. > We can also blame them for not requiring full disclosure on labels. Like someone here--sorry, can't remember who--just said, our increasing health problems look to be like the human equivalent of colony collapse disorder, with not a single easily-identifiable cause or solution, but a large suite of problems: some known, some not yet known, some easily fixable, and some not. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 17:15:58 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 10:15:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Apr 15, 2016 5:05 AM, "Anders Sandberg" wrote: > Do you really think nobody can pull off a 20 year long project? There exist organizations that can do this. I know of no examples that are single mission organizations with nothing to do (and thus, no reason for people to continue participating in or remember them) for years at a time. Now, a foundation that was doing shorter missions - say, using the tech to get better data about the outer planets, and/or map and survey all of our solar system's large asteroids - while waiting for the results of this one interstellar mission might continue to exist long enough. But that wouldn't be as sexy, so I do not expect them to seriously consider suggestions of thus sort. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 17:40:02 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 12:40:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 12:14 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 11:32 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> So. to add to our list of possible culprits, Gov., science, Big Food, we >> need to add Big Chem. They fight every bill to restrict, test, get rid of >> some chemicals we find in our diets without any FDA approval needed because >> they are not foods (I am supposing this - I don't really know if this is >> true). They may leak into our foods from packaging, from the plastic tubes >> used in dairies (in the article above). >> > > At some point we need to accept responsibility for buying those products, > electing those politicians, funding those scientists, etc., given what we > now know about what they've done and continue to do. Fool me once, shame on > me, right? Who's the fool who keeps expecting the government to fix things > or big business to clean up its act? > > >> We can blame the gov. for one thing for sure: not enough studies are >> funded that test what goes into our food and drink. >> > > We can also blame them for not requiring full disclosure on labels. > > Like someone here--sorry, can't remember who--just said, our increasing > health problems look to be like the human equivalent of colony collapse > disorder, with not a single easily-identifiable cause or solution, but a > large suite of problems: some known, some not yet known, some easily > fixable, and some not. > > -Dave > ?I do take responsibility: no fast food (not for decades), no frozen > foods (only simple vegetables and ice cream, of course - no additives), no > pizza frozen or otherwise, and so on. Very little restaurant food - yes, I > do cook. > ?I do grow a lot of my food and realize that most of you can't?. Many people can't cook or won't learn how, or don't have time, or go contrary "Well, everything is bad for you and you have to die of something.........." and thus just buy or eat anything they like. ?Basic problem: all of this is just way too big for a person to handle, to make some kind of influence on?, and so we just read the paper and wag our heads and thrust them into the sand. bill w > ? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 18:10:55 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 14:10:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 1:40 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > ?I do grow a lot of my food and realize that most of you can't?. Many > people can't cook or won't learn how, or don't have time, or go contrary > "Well, everything is bad for you and you have to die of > something.........." and thus just buy or eat anything they like. > > ?Basic problem: all of this is just way too big for a person to handle, > to make some kind of influence on?, and so we just read the paper and wag > our heads and thrust them into the sand. > Sure, but there's a huge spectrum of behaviors between "anything goes" and "nothing is safe". Avoiding all risk is obviously impossible but some simple rules could go a long way for just about everyone. If you can't grow your own food you can probably still buy locally-grown food from a farmer's market, farmer, neighbor, etc. If you don't cook you can learn. If you don't have time you can learn to prioritize and manage your time. But if "I don't have time" is really "eh, I don't really care, I'd rather watch more cat videos/Kardashian shows/whatever than learn about ways to be healthy and live longer", then I have no sympathy. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 20:48:57 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 15:48:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 1:10 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 1:40 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> ?I do grow a lot of my food and realize that most of you can't?. Many >> people can't cook or won't learn how, or don't have time, or go contrary >> "Well, everything is bad for you and you have to die of >> something.........." and thus just buy or eat anything they like. >> >> ?Basic problem: all of this is just way too big for a person to handle, >> to make some kind of influence on?, and so we just read the paper and wag >> our heads and thrust them into the sand. >> > > Sure, but there's a huge spectrum of behaviors between "anything goes" and > "nothing is safe". Avoiding all risk is obviously impossible but some > simple rules could go a long way for just about everyone. If you can't grow > your own food you can probably still buy locally-grown food from a farmer's > market, farmer, neighbor, etc. If you don't cook you can learn. If you > don't have time you can learn to prioritize and manage your time. But if "I > don't have time" is really "eh, I don't really care, I'd rather watch more > cat videos/Kardashian shows/whatever than learn about ways to be healthy > and live longer", then I have no sympathy. > > -Dave > ?DNA and evolution and whoever and whatever got us here did a fantastic job, but look at how flawed we are. Selfish, narrow-minded, short-sighted, all sorts of cognitive errors practically built in, ability to think in abstractions limited to less than half the population. How lazy we are is a matter of debate ?A great many famous men and women have regarded most of humanity as little more than cannon fodder. Nice people, most of them, but if they were all we had, we'd never have had any science at all.? Most of them still regard science as highly suspicious and would rather believe religious figures, magic, common sense, superstitions et al. So, I might add, it is so nice to be among you all, the top percentiles of the population. Many days this chat group provides me with the only intelligent conversations I get. Thanks! 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 sjv2006 at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 21:42:52 2016 From: sjv2006 at gmail.com (Stephen Van Sickle) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 14:42:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: *I know of no examples that are single mission organizations with nothing to do (and thus, no reason for people to continue participating in or remember them) for years at a time.* Why would they have "nothing to do?" The major cost is in engineering and the capital cost of the laser array. Keep sending probes. Use the laser array for other uses such as a telescope array, or much slower (and massive) local spacecraft, or super lidar for astronomical uses. Now there is a thought. Why bother with a payload? What could you see with a 100 GW laser array and the telescope array that goes with it, using it as lidar? The "probe" would be 5 times faster. And you can gather data for far longer than 2 hours. I leave the calculations as an exercise for the students. Anyone? Anyone? Spike? steve On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 10:15 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Apr 15, 2016 5:05 AM, "Anders Sandberg" wrote: > > Do you really think nobody can pull off a 20 year long project? > > There exist organizations that can do this. I know of no examples that > are single mission organizations with nothing to do (and thus, no reason > for people to continue participating in or remember them) for years at a > time. > > Now, a foundation that was doing shorter missions - say, using the tech to > get better data about the outer planets, and/or map and survey all of our > solar system's large asteroids - while waiting for the results of this one > interstellar mission might continue to exist long enough. But that > wouldn't be as sexy, so I do not expect them to seriously consider > suggestions of thus sort. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 22:58:41 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 15:58:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Apr 15, 2016 2:43 PM, "Stephen Van Sickle" wrote: > Why would they have "nothing to do?" The major cost is in engineering and the capital cost of the laser array. Keep sending probes. They plan to just send a few probes - possibly making a chain of relays, accelerated to different speeds - precisely so they don't have 20 years of work to do. > Use the laser array for other uses such as a telescope array, or much slower (and massive) local spacecraft, or super lidar for astronomical uses. > > Now there is a thought. Why bother with a payload? What could you see with a 100 GW laser array and the telescope array that goes with it, using it as lidar? The "probe" would be 5 times faster. And you can gather data for far longer than 2 hours. But that's not Putting Some Physical Object There (At Least Briefly), which seems to be the real mission specification, with what you can actually do with it an afterthought. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Apr 15 23:47:09 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 16:47:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 15, 2016 1:50 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: > Many days this chat group provides me with the only intelligent conversations I get. Thanks! Hear, hear. Same sentiment from me. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 00:28:50 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 20:28:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 11:37 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > Yes, I am quite convinced about that. Not only does fat not raise > cholesterol but raised cholesterol may not be as dangerous as once > thought. I am nearly sure about that one. One nutrition book I read was > by a nurse who is on a 80% fat diet. > > ### High cholesterol is without doubt dangerous, and I do not think that researchers overstated the degree of danger. Severe familial hypercholesterolemias are associated with a massively increased risk of stroke and myocardial infarction, and the garden variety age-related hypercholesterolemia is also a significant risk factor for these outcomes. However, the story is a bit more complicated: While treatment with statins, which reduces cholesterol, is without doubt life-saving in the appropriate patient populations, other cholesterol-lowering drugs are for the most part useless or even harmful. This implies that age-related hypercholesterolemia may be a proxy for another pathological process (e.g. inflammation) that is responsible for bad outcomes and responds to statins, but is not affected by other hyperlipidemic drugs. So, if you have high cholesterol and otherwise meet criteria for statin treatment, you should be treated, regardless of whether statins work their magic through their impact on cholesterol or through other pathways. But there is no reason to waste money on non-statin drugs. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 00:39:23 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 20:39:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 4:30 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Further, accelerating to even just 0.1 c (about 3 * 10^7 m/s) over a few > hours (call it 10,000 seconds, roughly 3 hours) comes to about 300 Gs. And > they're just launching nanocraft. I do not think they will be able to come > up with a design that would not shatter, breaking the reflector so they > don't even wind up accelerating dust, let alone functioning spacecraft, to > nearly the speed desired. Granted, 90 hours - just shy of 4 days > continuous - would drop this to around 10 Gs, which may be feasible > depending on spacecraft design. > ### Peak accelerations in handguns are on the order of 30 to 200 thousand g. There are now bullets that survive this acceleration and deploy control vanes to allow in-flight guided targeting. 300 g should be very easy to deal with, it's equivalent to the acceleration of a soccer ball. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat Apr 16 00:51:12 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 01:51:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: <57118C80.5010106@aleph.se> On 2016-04-15 23:58, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > On Apr 15, 2016 2:43 PM, "Stephen Van Sickle" > wrote: > > Why would they have "nothing to do?" The major cost is in > engineering and the capital cost of the laser array. Keep sending probes. > > They plan to just send a few probes - possibly making a chain of > relays, accelerated to different speeds - precisely so they don't have > 20 years of work to do. > Obvious testing targets would be the local planets. I suspect that testing would soon become a major activity. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 00:57:52 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 20:57:52 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 6:58 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > But that's not Putting Some Physical Object There (At Least Briefly), > which seems to be the real mission specification, with what you can > actually do with it an afterthought. > ### Well, if you launch a large number of probes flying close together, you could make a deceleration system. Have thousands of mirrors with nothing but lasers installed, when the probes get close to the target the lasers deploy, focusing thousands of beams on a few of the probes with exploratory payload, decelerating them to orbital speed. You would not need a completely new technology, merely solid state lasers powered by e.g. nuclear thermoelectric batteries, and enough Earth-based lasers to launch the probes close enough to allow formation flight. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 01:06:31 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 21:06:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 11:32 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Or maybe it's phthlates: > > In the past few years, researchers have linked phthalates to asthma > , > attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, breast cancer, obesity and type > II diabetes, low IQ > , > neurodevelopmental issues, behavioral issues, autism spectrum disorders, > altered reproductive development and male fertility issues. > Here's the link to the whole article: > > > http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/phthalates-plastics-chemicals-research-analysis > > So. to add to our list of possible culprits, Gov., science, Big Food, we > need to add Big Chem. They fight every bill to restrict, test, get rid of > some chemicals we find in our diets without any FDA approval needed because > they are not foods (I am supposing this - I don't really know if this is > true). They may leak into our foods from packaging, from the plastic tubes > used in dairies (in the article above). > ### I don't believe it. There is not a single link to any trustworthy studies showing causation. It's all correlational garbage and hate-mongering against industry. I'll believe it when there are interventional studies showing a dose-response relationship between introduced phthalates and pre-specified outcomes, with plausible biological mechanism of action observed in humans. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 02:23:44 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 19:23:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 5:57 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 6:58 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >> >> But that's not Putting Some Physical Object There (At Least Briefly), >> which seems to be the real mission specification, with what you can >> actually do with it an afterthought. >> > ### Well, if you launch a large number of probes flying close together, > you could make a deceleration system. > They said that's not their plan. They intend to fly by. On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > Peak accelerations in handguns are on the order of 30 to 200 thousand g. That's bullets, without delicate electronics, and where mass is not at nearly as much of a premium. They can be a lot more robust than a spaceship. Also, their acceleration lasts a lot less time. On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 5:51 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Obvious testing targets would be the local planets. I suspect that testing would soon become a major activity. So far as I can tell, their announced plan is straight from the lab to interstellar. Though actually, their announced plan is pretty much just lab. (In other words, they have no actual plans to launch anything or to actually use this technology for its stated purpose, though they think it might be nice to do so someday.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 04:10:42 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2016 21:10:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: ...someone must have seen my comments of something, because I got an invite to Starshot's Yuri's Night celebration. If anyone else on this list is here (and checks email during the presentation), look for the guy with a smartphone on his wrist. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 05:10:42 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 07:10:42 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: My essay was republished in the IEET website: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/Prisco20160415 The key part with transhumanist value added is: [The] StarChip should have the smartest possible on-board data processing software compatible with the hardware constraints. If smart software doesn?t fit on one StarChip, perhaps it could be implemented in a swarm of linked and co-operating StarChips. It appears that really smart software is on the horizon: real thinking and feeling Artificial Intelligence (AI) of human (or more than human) level could be developed in a few decades. Sending a real AI instead of dumb unthinking software to Alpha Centauri would be equivalent to sending a person (think for example of Samantha, the AI in Her). Even more interestingly, mind uploading technology, which could developed in this century, would permit sending human astronauts as software entities living in the StarChip processors. I have argued that an e-crew ? a crew of human uploads implemented in solid-state electronic circuitry ? doesn?t require air, water, food, medical care, or radiation shielding, can withstand extreme acceleration, and could be implemented in extremely miniaturized ?manned? starships. This seems a weird idea, but ? as hinted at by theoretical physicist Avi Loeb in the announcement?s Q/A session shown in the video ? post-biological life could be common among the stars. Perhaps, as Martin Rees and others think, advanced civilizations are post-biological. Hawking himself argued that intelligent machines based on mechanical and electronic components, rather than macromolecules, could eventually replace DNA based life, just as DNA may have replaced an earlier form of life. Perhaps we could send AIs and uploads to the stars, combining interstellar expansion with post-biological evolution. From atymes at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 07:01:27 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 00:01:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: Having now seen his presentation in person - I still say it's likely to be a high-glitz, not-much-actual-spaceship, but not for lack of trying. They've put serious thought into a lot of things (for instance, the high G I mentioned is a worry, but for the sail/array; they have MEMS sensors that can survive that acceleration). But in the end, Yuri admitted he's doing this approach because it's cool. That said, they do have a chance - *if* they stick, rigorously, to the pattern they mentioned of starting with near-Earth spaceships, then going further and further out, with the eventual goal of an interstellar probe. They'll be forced to develop practical, even profitable, uses if they do that path - and once they have that, that'll clear their main non-technical obstacle. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 08:38:03 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 10:38:03 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: Whose presentation did you see in person? You mentioned a Starshot's Yuri's Night celebration, is that it? Where? Link? G. On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 9:01 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Having now seen his presentation in person - I still say it's likely to be a > high-glitz, not-much-actual-spaceship, but not for lack of trying. They've > put serious thought into a lot of things (for instance, the high G I > mentioned is a worry, but for the sail/array; they have MEMS sensors that > can survive that acceleration). But in the end, Yuri admitted he's doing > this approach because it's cool. > > That said, they do have a chance - *if* they stick, rigorously, to the > pattern they mentioned of starting with near-Earth spaceships, then going > further and further out, with the eventual goal of an interstellar probe. > They'll be forced to develop practical, even profitable, uses if they do > that path - and once they have that, that'll clear their main non-technical > obstacle. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 10:09:03 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 06:09:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 10:23 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 5:57 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < > rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 6:58 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: >>> >>> But that's not Putting Some Physical Object There (At Least Briefly), >>> which seems to be the real mission specification, with what you can >>> actually do with it an afterthought. >>> >> ### Well, if you launch a large number of probes flying close together, >> you could make a deceleration system. >> > > They said that's not their plan. They intend to fly by. > ### Yes, I know. But their plan could lead to a deceleration system. --------------------- > > On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < > rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > Peak accelerations in handguns are on the order of 30 to 200 thousand g. > > That's bullets, without delicate electronics, and where mass is not at > nearly as much of a premium. They can be a lot more robust than a > spaceship. Also, their acceleration lasts a lot less time. > ### The self-guided bullets I wrote about do have electronics. Why would mass be an issue for robustness under acceleration? We are talking about micron-thin objects. They tend to stand up to acceleration well. Why would the duration of acceleration matter for solid-state objects? Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 14:54:09 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 09:54:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 8:06 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 11:32 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> Or maybe it's phthlates: >> >> In the past few years, researchers have linked phthalates to asthma >> , >> attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, breast cancer, obesity and type >> II diabetes, low IQ >> , >> neurodevelopmental issues, behavioral issues, autism spectrum disorders, >> altered reproductive development and male fertility issues. >> Here's the link to the whole article: >> >> >> http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/10/phthalates-plastics-chemicals-research-analysis >> >> So. to add to our list of possible culprits, Gov., science, Big Food, we >> need to add Big Chem. They fight every bill to restrict, test, get rid of >> some chemicals we find in our diets without any FDA approval needed because >> they are not foods (I am supposing this - I don't really know if this is >> true). They may leak into our foods from packaging, from the plastic tubes >> used in dairies (in the article above). >> > > ### I don't believe it. There is not a single link to any trustworthy > studies showing causation. It's all correlational garbage and > hate-mongering against industry. I'll believe it when there are > interventional studies showing a dose-response relationship between > introduced phthalates and pre-specified outcomes, with plausible biological > mechanism of action observed in humans. > > Rafa? > ?As discussed in this group before, it's very difficult to do true experiments with humans, so we have to rely on correlations. Sure, they don't tell us cause and effect, but if there's a good correlation there's cause and effect somewhere in there. In any case, a good correlation can spur you to dig deeper and find those causes. As for making ad hominem charges against the researchers, that's done by both sides. How often has industry resisted regulation against things that turned out to be really bad? Industry data is suspect to begin with. Bottom line: we cannot trust any industry to regulate itself. Most drug studies are paid for by the drug companies, right? Suspect any bias there?? ? Way too much money involved. This is an area that should lead us to spend more money funding independent research institutes. I recall some marijuana studies from way back: every gov study showed ill effects; every independent study showed none. Maybe both were biased. 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 atymes at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 16:03:15 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 09:03:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 1:38 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Whose presentation did you see in person? You mentioned a Starshot's > Yuri's Night celebration, is that it? Where? Link? > Yuri Milner's, the guy backing Starshot. His presentation was part of his party. (And no, he apparently doesn't want to invest in Earth launch companies. At least I got a chance to ask - and there was another potential investor there who wants to do lunch, so it worked out.) No link; this was a private invitation (and guards in the driveway checking the guest list). I was hoping someone else on this list had likewise been invited. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Apr 16 16:08:24 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 09:08:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 3:09 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > ### Yes, I know. But their plan could lead to a deceleration system. > There are quite a lot of things that you or I say they could do better, which they have no intention of doing. > ### The self-guided bullets I wrote about do have electronics. Why would > mass be an issue for robustness under acceleration? We are talking about > micron-thin objects. They tend to stand up to acceleration well. Why would > the duration of acceleration matter for solid-state objects? > As mentioned in another post last night, it turns out they do have electronics that can stand up to the acceleration - but the sail/optical array is their big worry. If the acceleration is at all uneven (which it always is in, in human observation, for any accelerating force other than gravity), then parts would be accelerated at slightly different rates than adjacent parts, and the delta in Gs - which can be quite large if there is a large overall acceleration - would tear them apart. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 17 05:01:00 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 22:01:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: <00c301d19866$25310230$6f930690$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Stephen Van Sickle Sent: Friday, April 15, 2016 2:43 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! I know of no examples that are single mission organizations with nothing to do (and thus, no reason for people to continue participating in or remember them) for years at a time. Why would they have "nothing to do?" The major cost is in engineering and the capital cost of the laser array. Keep sending probes. Use the laser array for other uses such as a telescope array, or much slower (and massive) local spacecraft, or super lidar for astronomical uses. Now there is a thought. Why bother with a payload? What could you see with a 100 GW laser array and the telescope array that goes with it, using it as lidar? The "probe" would be 5 times faster. And you can gather data for far longer than 2 hours. I leave the calculations as an exercise for the students. Anyone? Anyone? Spike? steve Steve I have been on vacation without enough bandwidth to pull the petals off a daisy, so I haven?t followed the discussion much. If we are talking about using a telescope array to focus a laser over a long distance to accelerate a probe, ja the same array can be used to gaze at a distant patch of sky in the direction the probe is being pushed. You could do both at the same time: photons don?t bother each other coming and going at the same time. I am not sure that is what you meant however. Tomorrow I get the mighty info pipe back. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Apr 17 05:08:02 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 22:08:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01e801d19867$208055f0$618101d0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Friday, April 15, 2016 4:47 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates On Apr 15, 2016 1:50 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" > wrote: >>? Many days this chat group provides me with the only intelligent conversations I get. Thanks! >?Hear, hear. Same sentiment from me. Nah, it should be read, read, rather than hear hear. Grammatically more correct would be Hear here. So the text counterpart would be ?Read here.? ExI is a fun place to hang in an outward direction. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Mon Apr 18 16:10:29 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 18:10:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: Paul Gilster will post a series of reports from the Breakthrough Initiative conference "Breakthrough Discuss" on Centauri Dreams: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=35426 @Adrian - Milner's Yuri's Night party also mentioned. From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 01:17:35 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2016 20:17:35 -0500 Subject: [ExI] from psych to physics: bad science Message-ID: http://theweek.com/articles/618141/big-science-broken?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits It seems that efforts to further one's career are trumping good science. Note the link in the first paragraph to the original article. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 18:20:11 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 14:20:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 10:54 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > As for making ad hominem charges against the researchers, that's done by > both sides. How often has industry resisted regulation against things that > turned out to be really bad? Industry data is suspect to begin with. > ### Yeah, exactly, how often has industry resisted regulation of things that turned out to be really bad? Can you name examples? (aside from tobacco) How many thousands of examples can you adduce? Hundreds? Dozens? Compared to how many millions of products that are on the market? How many specific examples of substance regulation have unequivocally positive net effects on human welfare? Data are suspect to begin with. Singling out "industry" to be distrusted is manipulative. > > Bottom line: we cannot trust any industry to regulate itself. Most drug > studies are paid for by the drug companies, right? Suspect any bias there?? > > ? Way too much money involved. This is an area that should lead us to > spend more money funding independent research institutes. > ### We cannot trust anybody, and certainly not government thugs, to regulate any industry. "Regulating" is usually a way of attacking workers under the pretense of protecting the public, and there is just too much money and power to be gained doing that. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 18:35:21 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 13:35:21 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Data are suspect to begin with. Singling out "industry" to be distrusted is manipulative. rafal As you may have noticed if you read the article I posted the other day, you know that my own field of psychology is under attack for bad data, poor replication and so on. So I am not singling out industry. Therefore I agree with your first sentence above. But to smear any gov regulation with the epithet 'thugs', well, I'll just let that speak for itself to other members of this group. bill w On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 1:20 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 10:54 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> As for making ad hominem charges against the researchers, that's done by >> both sides. How often has industry resisted regulation against things that >> turned out to be really bad? Industry data is suspect to begin with. >> > > ### Yeah, exactly, how often has industry resisted regulation of things > that turned out to be really bad? Can you name examples? (aside from > tobacco) How many thousands of examples can you adduce? Hundreds? Dozens? > Compared to how many millions of products that are on the market? How many > specific examples of substance regulation have unequivocally positive net > effects on human welfare? > > Data are suspect to begin with. Singling out "industry" to be distrusted > is manipulative. > > >> >> Bottom line: we cannot trust any industry to regulate itself. Most drug >> studies are paid for by the drug companies, right? Suspect any bias there?? >> >> ? Way too much money involved. This is an area that should lead us to >> spend more money funding independent research institutes. >> > > ### We cannot trust anybody, and certainly not government thugs, to > regulate any industry. "Regulating" is usually a way of attacking workers > under the pretense of protecting the public, and there is just too much > money and power to be gained doing that. > > > Rafa? > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 18:37:14 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 14:37:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > > ### Yeah, exactly, how often has industry resisted regulation of things > that turned out to be really bad? Can you name examples? (aside from > tobacco) How many thousands of examples can you adduce? Hundreds? Dozens? > Compared to how many millions of products that are on the market? How many > specific examples of substance regulation have unequivocally positive net > effects on human welfare? > I could name dozens without trying too hard. Tetraethyllead in gasoline is one obvious example. Two more low-hanging fruit are lead in plumbing and lead in paint. > Data are suspect to begin with. Singling out "industry" to be distrusted > is manipulative. > Except they have a history of selling dangerous products. > ### We cannot trust anybody, and certainly not government thugs, to > regulate any industry. "Regulating" is usually a way of attacking workers > under the pretense of protecting the public, and there is just too much > money and power to be gained doing that. > I like the UL, formerly Underwriters Laboratories, model of ensuring product safety. Government isn't involved and rated products are generally safe. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 20:47:48 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 15:47:48 -0500 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I like the UL, formerly Underwriters Laboratories, model of ensuring product safety. Government isn't involved and rated products are generally safe. dave To which I"d like to add Consumer Reports. I have never seen the trustworthiness of their ratings challenged. bill w On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 1:37 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < > rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> ### Yeah, exactly, how often has industry resisted regulation of things >> that turned out to be really bad? Can you name examples? (aside from >> tobacco) How many thousands of examples can you adduce? Hundreds? Dozens? >> Compared to how many millions of products that are on the market? How many >> specific examples of substance regulation have unequivocally positive net >> effects on human welfare? >> > > I could name dozens without trying too hard. Tetraethyllead in gasoline is > one obvious example. Two more low-hanging fruit are lead in plumbing and > lead in paint. > > >> Data are suspect to begin with. Singling out "industry" to be distrusted >> is manipulative. >> > > Except they have a history of selling dangerous products. > > >> ### We cannot trust anybody, and certainly not government thugs, to >> regulate any industry. "Regulating" is usually a way of attacking workers >> under the pretense of protecting the public, and there is just too much >> money and power to be gained doing that. >> > > I like the UL, formerly Underwriters Laboratories, model of ensuring > product safety. Government isn't involved and rated products are generally > safe. > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Apr 20 21:12:36 2016 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 14:12:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Garage Biohacking Message-ID: My oldest son is interested in biohacking. Anyone know any good tool kits or set ups that are suitable for a smart but fairly young kid to get into this, in a relatively safe and relatively affordable way? Websites, communities, shared labs? Tara Maya Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Thu Apr 21 13:29:47 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2016 15:29:47 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Garage Biohacking In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Tara, where do you live? This is a well known biohacking lab in the Bay Area, with an online discussion forum.: http://biocurious.org/ On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 11:12 PM, Tara Maya wrote: > My oldest son is interested in biohacking. Anyone know any good tool kits or > set ups that are suitable for a smart but fairly young kid to get into this, > in a relatively safe and relatively affordable way? Websites, communities, > shared labs? > > > Tara Maya > Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Apr 22 15:10:16 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 11:10:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Scott Aaronson Message-ID: Quantum Computer expert Scott Aaronson talks about computers the Singularity and lots of other good stuff : http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/scott-aaronson-answers-every-ridiculously-big-question-i-throw-at-him/?wt.mc=SA_Twitter-Share John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Fri Apr 22 15:17:12 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 17:17:12 +0200 Subject: [ExI] EmDrive again Message-ID: MIT Technology Review reports that a recent article by Plymouth University physicist Mike McCulloch proposes an explanation for the anomalous EmDrive experimental results. According to the physicist, inertia is the pressure the Unruh radiation predicted by general relativity exerts on an accelerating body, and must be quantized at small accelerations. McCulloch claims that the EmDrive effect can be predicted by assuming that the photons in the EmDrive cavity have inertial mass caused by Unruh radiation, whose wavelengths must fit exactly within the cavity. McCulloch derives the order of magnitude of current experimental results and proposes new tests to validate or invalidate his theory. As it always happens when the EmDrive is mentioned, the MIT Technology Review article is already triggering strong emotional reactions and mass hysteria from both enthusiasts and skeptics. McCulloch's theoretical framework is explained in the book "Physics from the Edge - A New Cosmological Model for Inertia." "It is a prediction that was first made in the early 1970s by a brilliant young Canadian physicist, Bill Unruh, who was then barely out of graduate school. What he found was that, as a result of quantum theory and relativity, there must be a new effect, never observed but still universal, whereby anything which is accelerated must experience itself to be embedded in a hot gas of photons, the temperature of which is proportional to the acceleration." - Lee Smolin, "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity." https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601299/the-curious-link-between-the-fly-by-anomaly-and-the-impossible-emdrive-thruster/ From giulio at gmail.com Fri Apr 22 15:31:31 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 17:31:31 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Scott Aaronson In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I love this passage: "if you want me to rush to the Singularity community?s defense, the way to do it is to tell me that they?re a weirdo nerd cult that worships a high-school dropout and his Harry Potter fanfiction, so how could anyone possibly take their ideas seriously? It?s not just the invalidity of the ad hominem argument that will turn my eyes red?rather, it?s that this particular kind of ad hominem (?these nerds violate our social norms, so we need not consider the truth or falsehood of what they say?) has had such an abysmal track record over the centuries." On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 5:10 PM, John Clark wrote: > Quantum Computer expert Scott Aaronson talks about computers the Singularity > and lots of other good stuff : > > http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/scott-aaronson-answers-every-ridiculously-big-question-i-throw-at-him/?wt.mc=SA_Twitter-Share > > John K Clark > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Fri Apr 22 17:50:56 2016 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 10:50:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] power satellites again Message-ID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrcoD_vHzxU&feature=youtu.be Was shown as part of a briefing at the White House Wed. Keith From protokol2020 at gmail.com Fri Apr 22 18:30:26 2016 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 20:30:26 +0200 Subject: [ExI] power satellites again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Except, that there is nothing like "carbon crisis". On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 7:50 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrcoD_vHzxU&feature=youtu.be > > Was shown as part of a briefing at the White House Wed. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Apr 23 17:18:28 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 10:18:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] phone app, voice activated data logster Message-ID: <001301d19d84$2748c760$75da5620$@att.net> ExI App hipsters, question please. We have used OK Google and most of us found it works pretty well at interpreting what we say. What I want is to pull out my phone anywhere and utter a comment that doesn't sound much like anything else, such as "OK Logster." This would bring up the app. Then I want to talk into it and have it do voice recognition to text, then date, time and place stamp that and store it, both at the start when I said OK Logster and another at the end of the comment when I said Goodbye Logster. The difference in locations and time stamps at start vs end will clue me if I was driving at the time, or walking or on my bicycle. I want to be able to email the text file to myself and keep a record of where I was, what I was doing and when. This is a very obviously valuable app, which means that some hipster thought of it years ago and did it already. All my cool ideas are that way. What is it called? Where can I buy it please? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sat Apr 23 17:17:34 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 18:17:34 +0100 Subject: [ExI] EmDrive again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <571BAE2E.20600@aleph.se> I like the concept of a Hubble-scale Casimir effect. I am not convinced people are getting real data from the drive (still seems to be awfully close to noise levels), but this is at least a theory suggesting a nontrivial testable consequence (reversed thrust for a particular geometry). Quantized inertia is not that weird. But if the drive can only work in increments of the inertia quantum it will be pretty wussy. McCulloch formula however seems to imply potentially bigger forces for very sharp cavities; presumably there is a softening below the microwave wavelength. On 2016-04-22 16:17, Giulio Prisco wrote: > MIT Technology Review reports that a recent article by Plymouth > University physicist Mike McCulloch proposes an explanation for the > anomalous EmDrive experimental results. According to the physicist, > inertia is the pressure the Unruh radiation predicted by general > relativity exerts on an accelerating body, and must be quantized at > small accelerations. McCulloch claims that the EmDrive effect can be > predicted by assuming that the photons in the EmDrive cavity have > inertial mass caused by Unruh radiation, whose wavelengths must fit > exactly within the cavity. > > McCulloch derives the order of magnitude of current experimental > results and proposes new tests to validate or invalidate his theory. > As it always happens when the EmDrive is mentioned, the MIT Technology > Review article is already triggering strong emotional reactions and > mass hysteria from both enthusiasts and skeptics. McCulloch's > theoretical framework is explained in the book "Physics from the Edge > - A New Cosmological Model for Inertia." > > "It is a prediction that was first made in the early 1970s by a > brilliant young Canadian physicist, Bill Unruh, who was then barely > out of graduate school. What he found was that, as a result of quantum > theory and relativity, there must be a new effect, never observed but > still universal, whereby anything which is accelerated must experience > itself to be embedded in a hot gas of photons, the temperature of > which is proportional to the acceleration." - Lee Smolin, "Three Roads > to Quantum Gravity." > > https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601299/the-curious-link-between-the-fly-by-anomaly-and-the-impossible-emdrive-thruster/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From atymes at gmail.com Sat Apr 23 17:54:37 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 10:54:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] phone app, voice activated data logster In-Reply-To: <001301d19d84$2748c760$75da5620$@att.net> References: <001301d19d84$2748c760$75da5620$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 10:18 AM, spike wrote: > This is a very obviously valuable app, which means that some hipster > thought of it years ago and did it already. All my cool ideas are that way. > > > > What is it called? Where can I buy it please? > AptoTrak, and the guy I wrote it for kinda went out of business (though I think the service is still up - anyone's guess whether it'll shut off tomorrow or not for years, though). Didn't get to the speech-to-text part, but that would have been an easy add-on. Heck, if you can gather together more than a little money you *might* even be able to buy what's left of the business from him, and add this feature. LMK if you could get enough scratch together that that might be a serious proposition; I'd be willing to introduce you if so. (Though I think you'll also want a plan to run and expand the business.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Sat Apr 23 18:10:21 2016 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 19:10:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] phone app, voice activated data logster In-Reply-To: <001301d19d84$2748c760$75da5620$@att.net> References: <001301d19d84$2748c760$75da5620$@att.net> Message-ID: On 23 April 2016 at 18:18, spike wrote: > We have used OK Google and most of us found it works pretty well at > interpreting what we say. What I want is to pull out my phone anywhere and > utter a comment that doesn?t sound much like anything else, such as ?OK > Logster.? This would bring up the app. Then I want to talk into it and > have it do voice recognition to text, then date, time and place stamp that > and store it, both at the start when I said OK Logster and another at the > end of the comment when I said Goodbye Logster. The difference in locations > and time stamps at start vs end will clue me if I was driving at the time, > or walking or on my bicycle. > > I want to be able to email the text file to myself and keep a record of > where I was, what I was doing and when. > Go to your favourite app store (googleplay,itunes,etc.) and search for dictation apps. But Dragon Dictation from iTunes may be what you want. BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Apr 23 20:56:45 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 16:56:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Trespassing_On_Einstein=E2=80=99s_Lawn?= Message-ID: ?I just finished ? Amanda Gefter?s new book, Trespassing On Einstein?s Lawn, ?? physicist Sean Carroll ?called it? ?The most charming book ever written about the fundamental nature of reality? and I think he?s right. Gefter is obsessed with answering the question ?why is there ? something rather than nothing?" ; needless to say she hasn't found a definitive answer but I have found 46 points in the book that may have some relevance to the question: ? 1) A good definition of "nothing" is infinite unbounded homogeneity ?.? 2) A ?thing? is defined by it?s boundaries; a blank paper is not a picture ?until a line is drawn ? on it? . 3) Godel?s Theorem is a good thing because it provides a boundary and without a boundary there is no ? ? thing. 4) The boundary of a boundary is zero so everything you need to know about the interior ?of a thing ? is on the boundary. 5) Something and nothing are not opposites just different ways of looking at the same thing. 6) A person?s light cone might provide the boundary to turn nothing into something. 7) The Big Bang happened everywhere. 8) Bits are the fundamental building blocks of reality. ?9? ) Paradoxes always crop up when you try to describe physics from a God?s eye view ?,? so such a view can not exist. ?10? ) Spacetime curvature does not require a God?s eye view, it can be measured from within. 11) For electromagnetism you have to expend energy to make a large electrical charge but with gravity it?s the ??o pposite, it wants to make things ? lumpy ? so ? unlike electromagnetism gravity ?has? a negative contribution to total energy in the universe. ?12? ) The universe has zero energy. ?13? ) But zero is too precise a number for ?Quantum M echanics because ?"? nothing ?"? is unstable. ?14? ) The vacuum?s virtual field gives quarks 95% of their mass, the Higgs field does the rest. ?16? ) Quantum particles don?t have positions in spacetime only probabilities. ?17? ) Something is ultimately real only if it is invariant. ?18? ) Progress in physics comes from discovering what was thought to be real is actually observer dependent. 19) A inertial observer ?in free fall sees a straight line through space time. ?20? ) Others see the person accelerating in a gravitational field tracing out more and more space in less time ?. and thus? producing? a curved world line. ?21? ) You can turn a curve into a straight line by stretching the paper, gravity stretches spacetime. ?22? ) ?A? curved world line in flat spacetime is exactly the same as a straight world line in curved spacetime. ?23? ) A gauge force fixes the mismatch between observers, gravity is a gauge force as are all the fundamental forces in physics. ?24? ) The local curvature of spacetime cancels out energy and momentum ?,? and that?s why mass curves spacetime. ?25? ) In General ?R? elativity ?m? ass (and ?because E=MC^2? energy ? too? ) is only defined within reference frames, it is observer dependent. ?26? ) Entropy is a measure of hidden information ?,? and a event horizon can hide information. ?27? ) Entropy is not conserved. ?28? ) The more symmetric something is the less information it contains. ?29? ) The Entropy of nothing is zero. ?30? ) The very early universe was smooth and ?symmetrical? and thus had low Entropy. ?31? ) Gravity wants to make the universe lumpy and thus increase it?s Entropy. ?32? ) The maximum number of bits of information inside a sphere is equal to one fourth the area of the surface in Planck Areas. ?33? ) ?A? Black Hole ?contains as much information as any volume can, ?although its amount is proportional to ?the Black Hole's? surface not its volume. ?34? ) ? ? Hawking radiation is observer dependent. ?35)? A unmeasured bit of quantum information can not be perfectly copied, if you could then you could outsmart the uncertainty principle. ?36? ) Quantum Mechanics says information can?t be destroyed but ?General Relativity says it can be, the confrontation comes to a head in ? Black Holes. ?37? ) A outside observer would say information never crosses the Event Horizon ?of a Black hole ? but stays on the surface. ?38? ) A observer falling into the Black Hole would say information ?does ? cross the Event Horizon without incident and nothing unusual happens until the Singularity ? is reached? . ?39? ) A black hole the mass of our sun, would take about 10^67 years to evaporate by Hawking Radiation. ?40? ) Hawking Radiation contains information on what went into a Black Hole. ?41? ) The time needed to decode Hawking Radiation increases exponentially even with a Quantum Computer. ?42? ) It would take not 10^67 but 10^10^67 years to compute what went into the Black Hole from the Hawking Radiation that came out of it, and the Black Hole would be long gone by then. ?43? ) The location of information is observer dependent, so nobody can see the same quantum bit at 2 different locations at the same time because ?n? o observer can see both inside and outside a Black Hole horizon at the same time. 4 ?4? ) If Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity don?t contradict each other ? that must mean that if you haven?t ?finished the computation then ?the information is? not there yet. ?45)? The only thing that's invariant is nothing ?46) ? Reality is observer dependent, and the weirdness in physics doesn?t come from non-locality but ?from ? non-reality. ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat Apr 23 21:09:47 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 14:09:47 -0700 Subject: [ExI] power satellites again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Congrats on getting it up to the White House, even if you got a lot of details wrong. (For instance, even if you can generate more electricity than we need, there'll still be transportation fuels - and battery-powered vehicles are not yet a universal solution, given range limitations, though perhaps sufficiently abundant electricity could create synthetic petroleum.) On Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 10:50 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrcoD_vHzxU&feature=youtu.be > > Was shown as part of a briefing at the White House Wed. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 23 23:24:26 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 19:24:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Trespassing_On_Einstein=E2=80=99s_Lawn?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: 1-click bought! Kindle FTW! On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 4:56 PM, John Clark wrote: > ?I just finished ? > Amanda Gefter?s new book, Trespassing On Einstein?s Lawn, > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 23 23:29:42 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 19:29:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Fwd: nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 2:35 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > But to smear any gov regulation with the epithet 'thugs', well, I'll just > let that speak for itself to other members of this group. > ### Government always acts without the consent of the governed, therefore by default its agents are generally thugs, only sometimes and accidentally they are nice people. If the government had the full consent of the governed, it would not be a government. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 23 23:42:36 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 19:42:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] nutrition - phthlates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < > rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > >> >> ### Yeah, exactly, how often has industry resisted regulation of things >> that turned out to be really bad? Can you name examples? (aside from >> tobacco) How many thousands of examples can you adduce? Hundreds? Dozens? >> Compared to how many millions of products that are on the market? How many >> specific examples of substance regulation have unequivocally positive net >> effects on human welfare? >> > > I could name dozens without trying too hard. Tetraethyllead in gasoline is > one obvious example. Two more low-hanging fruit are lead in plumbing and > lead in paint. > ### Yeah, but how long can you keep it up? Long enough to provide a general justification for the use of a monopoly long-feedback-loop non-consensual mechanism for generating rules? The problem with monopoly long-feedback-loop non-consensual mechanisms is that they inevitably mutate towards destructive effects (obviously, since there are infinitely more ways of destruction that there are ways of creation), and without exit (i.e. given monopoly), with poor feedback control and without consent there is no way for their victims to stop the destruction. So, you should always try to support, agitate for and use competitive short-feedback-loop consensual mechanisms. ------------------- > >> Data are suspect to begin with. Singling out "industry" to be distrusted >> is manipulative. >> > > Except they have a history of selling dangerous products. > ### They also have a history of yanking dangerous products off the market or going bankrupt if they don't. ------------------- > > I like the UL, formerly Underwriters Laboratories, model of ensuring > product safety. Government isn't involved and rated products are generally > safe. > ### Absolutely. UL is a consensual, non-monopoly mechanism with a longish but not pathetically long feedback loop. It shows how much better our world would be if everybody thought like me. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sat Apr 23 23:54:19 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 19:54:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 12:08 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > > As mentioned in another post last night, it turns out they do have > electronics that can stand up to the acceleration - but the sail/optical > array is their big worry. If the acceleration is at all uneven (which it > always is in, in human observation, for any accelerating force other than > gravity), then parts would be accelerated at slightly different rates than > adjacent parts, and the delta in Gs - which can be quite large if there is > a large overall acceleration - would tear them apart. > ### It is implausible that this could be a showstopper. Mirrors can be made uniform to a very very small level of variation. The intensity fluctuations within a large laser beam fired with adaptive optics are small. Nano-actuators on the spacecraft could adjust reflectance of parts of the mirror in microseconds to correct fluctuations. Graphene-reinforced monocrystalline aluminum, or whatever they end up using on the mirror, is tough stuff even at monolayer thicknesses. Anyway, the 100 mil is there to explore such niggling details. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Sun Apr 24 00:08:47 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 20:08:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 12:10 PM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Paul Gilster will post a series of reports from the Breakthrough > Initiative conference "Breakthrough Discuss" on Centauri Dreams: > > http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=35426 ### I am wondering if it makes sense to do the following: Have a number of space lasers positioned throughout the solar system. Build the spaceship somewhere far out, like the asteroid belt or in the rings of Saturn (lots of free-floating mass to eat there). Start boosting towards the Sun, using increasingly more powerful lasers (because closer to Sun means more energy to feed them), let the spaceships skim the Sun for a bit more acceleration, and then continue boosting on the way out of the Solar system. You could move stuff pretty fast this way. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Apr 24 00:29:25 2016 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 17:29:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki < rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote: > Mirrors can be made uniform to a very very small level of variation. The > intensity fluctuations within a large laser beam fired with adaptive optics > are small. Nano-actuators on the spacecraft could adjust reflectance of > parts of the mirror in microseconds to correct fluctuations. > Graphene-reinforced monocrystalline aluminum, or whatever they end up using > on the mirror, is tough stuff even at monolayer thicknesses. > Apparently that is not how the numbers work out. Common sense scales sometimes do not apply when we are already talking about extremes well outside the realm that common sense was formed within. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Apr 24 01:52:44 2016 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2016 18:52:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] power satellites again Message-ID: On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 5:29 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Congrats on getting it up to the White House, even if you got a lot of > details wrong. (For instance, even if you can generate more electricity > than we need, there'll still be transportation fuels - and battery-powered > vehicles are not yet a universal solution, given range limitations, though > perhaps sufficiently abundant electricity could create synthetic petroleum.) 1:55 into the video, that's exactly what it says. Keith From anders at aleph.se Sun Apr 24 10:08:11 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 11:08:11 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> Message-ID: <571C9B0B.6050808@aleph.se> I first thought an Oberth maneuver would not work on a sail, but it does - very neat. The effective delta_v is the impulse multiplied by sqrt(1+2V_esc / delta_v). This shows why this strategy may not be effective for the final burn: if you want to have a delta_v much larger than solar escape velocity (a measly 50 km/s) then the factor will be close to one. Accelerating the sails to a high initial velocity and then turning on the main burn laser still saves you some energy, but since you want to feed in many orders of magnitude more velocity all of this is a minor improvement at the cost of extra complexity (=more things can go wrong) and distance (=laser dispersion losing you power). On 2016-04-24 01:08, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > > On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 12:10 PM, Giulio Prisco > wrote: > > Paul Gilster will post a series of reports from the Breakthrough > Initiative conference "Breakthrough Discuss" on Centauri Dreams: > > http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=35426 > > > ### I am wondering if it makes sense to do the following: Have a > number of space lasers positioned throughout the solar system. Build > the spaceship somewhere far out, like the asteroid belt or in the > rings of Saturn (lots of free-floating mass to eat there). Start > boosting towards the Sun, using increasingly more powerful lasers > (because closer to Sun means more energy to feed them), let the > spaceships skim the Sun for a bit more acceleration, and then continue > boosting on the way out of the Solar system. You could move stuff > pretty fast this way. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Apr 24 16:11:33 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 11:11:33 -0500 Subject: [ExI] EmDrive again In-Reply-To: <571BAE2E.20600@aleph.se> References: <571BAE2E.20600@aleph.se> Message-ID: 'wussy' is a wussy word. bill w On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 12:17 PM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I like the concept of a Hubble-scale Casimir effect. I am not convinced > people are getting real data from the drive (still seems to be awfully > close to noise levels), but this is at least a theory suggesting a > nontrivial testable consequence (reversed thrust for a particular geometry). > > Quantized inertia is not that weird. But if the drive can only work in > increments of the inertia quantum it will be pretty wussy. McCulloch > formula however seems to imply potentially bigger forces for very sharp > cavities; presumably there is a softening below the microwave wavelength. > > > > On 2016-04-22 16:17, Giulio Prisco wrote: > >> MIT Technology Review reports that a recent article by Plymouth >> University physicist Mike McCulloch proposes an explanation for the >> anomalous EmDrive experimental results. According to the physicist, >> inertia is the pressure the Unruh radiation predicted by general >> relativity exerts on an accelerating body, and must be quantized at >> small accelerations. McCulloch claims that the EmDrive effect can be >> predicted by assuming that the photons in the EmDrive cavity have >> inertial mass caused by Unruh radiation, whose wavelengths must fit >> exactly within the cavity. >> >> McCulloch derives the order of magnitude of current experimental >> results and proposes new tests to validate or invalidate his theory. >> As it always happens when the EmDrive is mentioned, the MIT Technology >> Review article is already triggering strong emotional reactions and >> mass hysteria from both enthusiasts and skeptics. McCulloch's >> theoretical framework is explained in the book "Physics from the Edge >> - A New Cosmological Model for Inertia." >> >> "It is a prediction that was first made in the early 1970s by a >> brilliant young Canadian physicist, Bill Unruh, who was then barely >> out of graduate school. What he found was that, as a result of quantum >> theory and relativity, there must be a new effect, never observed but >> still universal, whereby anything which is accelerated must experience >> itself to be embedded in a hot gas of photons, the temperature of >> which is proportional to the acceleration." - Lee Smolin, "Three Roads >> to Quantum Gravity." >> >> >> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601299/the-curious-link-between-the-fly-by-anomaly-and-the-impossible-emdrive-thruster/ >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > -- > Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Apr 24 16:43:20 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 11:43:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] physics Message-ID: I read John's post with interest if not comprehension. I did like the one about a blank page that is not a picture until a line is drawn on it Without going through the obvious ('what is a picture'?), does this follow? Say there is a cube of space (in 'outer' space) that has not one single atom of matter (violating entropy I suppose). Does this mean that it is not in some sense 'space'? Not until some matter is there? That there is no 'there' there? Some say our universe is expanding. Does this mean that some 'potential space' exists beyond any matter that will become 'space' when some matter gets there? This is the kind of probably silly thinking that people like me who haven't had physics since 1959 think of. Maybe I just don't have the background to understand any answer, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I did not ask about the idea of 'nothing' and 'something' being pretty much the same because I am certain I won't get that. Kissing my wife and kissing the air are different and I don't give a barrel of used food who says elsewise. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Sun Apr 24 17:28:44 2016 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 10:28:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <605562B6-AE2E-4554-94CB-537BA6E8B563@gmail.com> > On Apr 24, 2016, at 9:43 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > I read John's post with interest if not comprehension. I did like the one about a blank page that is not a picture until a line is drawn on it Without going through the obvious ('what is a picture'?), does this follow? > > Say there is a cube of space (in 'outer' space) that has not one single atom of matter (violating entropy I suppose). Does this mean that it is not in some sense 'space'? Not until some matter is there? > That there is no 'there' there? > > Some say our universe is expanding. Does this mean that some 'potential space' exists beyond any matter that will become 'space' when some matter gets there? > > This is the kind of probably silly thinking that people like me who haven't had physics since 1959 think of. Maybe I just don't have the background to understand any answer, but I thought I'd give it a shot. > > I did not ask about the idea of 'nothing' and 'something' being pretty much the same because I am certain I won't get that. Kissing my wife and kissing the air are different and I don't give a barrel of used food who says elsewise. This gets into the issue of whether space is something in its own right -- usually going under the label "sustantivalism." A classic work on this is Lawrence Sklar's _Space, Time, and Spacetime_. Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books via: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Sun Apr 24 22:07:40 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 23:07:40 +0100 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> On 2016-04-24 17:43, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > Say there is a cube of space (in 'outer' space) that has not one > single atom of matter (violating entropy I suppose). Does this mean > that it is not in some sense 'space'? Not until some matter is there? > That there is no 'there' there? In the standard general relativity view there is a patch of spacetime there, with its own properties (curvature). And there could well be electromagnetic fields (like light on its way through) or more exotic quantum stuff. In quantum field theory "empty" space is a pretty complex thing and the mystery is why it is not heavy and impenetrable. > Some say our universe is expanding. Does this mean that some > 'potential space' exists beyond any matter that will become 'space' > when some matter gets there? Not in the standard general relativity framework. The technical way of saying it is that the spacetime manifold does not require an embedding for the Einstein equations to work. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Apr 24 22:40:41 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 18:40:41 -0400 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > I read John's post with interest if not comprehension. I did like the one > about a blank page that is not a picture until a line is drawn on it > Without going through the obvious ('what is a picture'?), does this follow? > ?A picture is a thing and a thing needs a boundary, that's all a artist does when he draws, make boundaries on a blank paper. Without boundaries there is no picture, there is no thing. Meaning needs contrast, like being inside a closed line as opposed to being outside of it. ?>? > Say there is a cube of space (in 'outer' space) that has not one single > atom of matter (violating entropy I suppose). Does this mean that it is > not in some sense 'space'? > Nothing, that is to say zero, is far too precise a number for quantum mechanics, it permits a violation of the law of conservation of energy and mass but only for a very short time. Empty space is not empty, it is a sea of virtual particles popping into and out of existence. This may seem like a theologian talking about how many ? angels can dance on the head of a pin but it is not because it can be detected experimentally. Consider the Casimir Effect. Quantum Mechanics says that in empty space particles such as photons of light can pop into existence from nothing, but only for a very short time; in accordance with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle the more energetic the new virtual photon is the shorter the time it is allowed to exist. The Casimir Effect is due to a quantum mechanical consequence of these electromagnetic virtual photons. If you place two flat uncharged mirrors close together then there can NOT be virtual photons of every wavelength in the vacuum between the mirrors as there are outside, only a wavelength equal to the distance between mirrors are allowed, or half that wavelength, or a third or a fourth etc (it's the same reason a organ pipe will not make any sound but only sounds that resonate inside the pipe). But outside of the mirrors there is no such restriction and the virtual photons can be of any wavelength. Thus there are more virtual particles in the vacuum outside the mirrors pushing them together than there are between the mirrors pushing them apart. So the mirrors will attract each other. This force was predicted to exist in 1948 but it wasn't until 1997 that it was confirmed in the lab to actually exist with exactly the force that Casimir said it would have. So there is no way space can be total nothingness. Virtual particles are also the reason Black Holes will eventually evaporate. Just like everywhere else right at the edge of the event horizon of the Black Hole pairs of virtual particles, electrons and anti-electrons for example will pop into existence and sometimes one of the particles is just inside the event horizon and its brother just outside, so one gets dragged into the hole while the other breaks free and transforms from a virtual particle into a real one that can be detected by instruments far from the hole. But that detectable particle had real mass and mass must be conserved over the long run, so for the accounting to be correct the Black Hole must have lost mass. ?> ? > Some say our universe is expanding. > ??The universe is ?not only? expanding ? it's accelerating. ? > ?> ? > Does this mean that some 'potential space' exists beyond any matter that > will become 'space' when some matter gets there? > ?It means that some things that are now withing your cause and effect horizon (things that you can change or that can change you) will someday be outside that horizon. We can only see stuff that's less than 13.8 billion light years away because light hasn't had enough time for it to reach us yet, the universe just isn't old enough. ? > ?> ? > Kissing my wife and kissing the air are different and I don't give a > barrel of used food who says elsewise. > ?I can't argue ?with that! John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 25 00:55:45 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2016 17:55:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> References: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> Message-ID: <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> On 2016-04-24 17:43, William Flynn Wallace wrote: >.Say there is a cube of space (in 'outer' space) that has not one single atom of matter (violating entropy I suppose). Does this mean that it is not in some sense 'space'? Not until some matter is there? That there is no 'there' there? BillW, in that example there is a there there. The matter outside that cube of space breaks its symmetry, making an inside and an outside. There's your there there. >.Some say our universe is expanding. Does this mean that some 'potential space' exists beyond any matter that will become 'space' when some matter gets there? This one is crazy hard to understand. It isn't that there is empty space and matter is going out into it. Rather, the space itself is expanding. You can read a hundred different authors explain that concept and it is still mind-bending. But you do need to get your head around it somehow, if you want to move on. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Mon Apr 25 07:51:50 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 03:51:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: <571C9B0B.6050808@aleph.se> References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> <571C9B0B.6050808@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 6:08 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > I first thought an Oberth maneuver would not work on a sail, but it does - > very neat. > > The effective delta_v is the impulse multiplied by sqrt(1+2V_esc / > delta_v). This shows why this strategy may not be effective for the final > burn: if you want to have a delta_v much larger than solar escape velocity > (a measly 50 km/s) then the factor will be close to one. > > Accelerating the sails to a high initial velocity and then turning on the > main burn laser still saves you some energy, but since you want to feed in > many orders of magnitude more velocity all of this is a minor improvement > at the cost of extra complexity (=more things can go wrong) and distance > (=laser dispersion losing you power). > ### I think I was making somewhat different assumptions. I am assuming that to get to really crazy speeds, or to hustle larger masses at respectable speeds, you will need multiple boost phases from lasers positioned along the trajectory of the spacecraft. As you noted, beam dispersion prevents very long boost phases from a single laser but chaining multiple lasers helps avoid this problem. But of course if you start boosting from near-Earth orbit and away from the Sun, soon you have to use lasers positioned very far away from the Sun, and this means not being able to use photovoltaics to power them. However, imagine you had a cloud of lasers surrounding the Sun at different distances but all close enough to be powered by the Sun. In that case starting to boost sunward would allow a larger number of lasers to contribute to shaping the trajectory and speed of spacecraft. The extra boost due to the Oberth effect would be a minor added gain, not the reason to perform the maneuver. A cloud of lasers capable of shaping arbitrary vectors is advanced starflight, won't happen soon, but it's nice to think about the possibilities. Seeding the visible galaxies with life will be the glorious endeavor, humanity's greatest sub-solar triumph, hopefully. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Apr 25 12:13:31 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 13:13:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> <571C9B0B.6050808@aleph.se> Message-ID: <571E09EB.40608@aleph.se> On 2016-04-25 08:51, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > ### I think I was making somewhat different assumptions. I am assuming > that to get to really crazy speeds, or to hustle larger masses at > respectable speeds, you will need multiple boost phases from lasers > positioned along the trajectory of the spacecraft. As you noted, beam > dispersion prevents very long boost phases from a single laser but > chaining multiple lasers helps avoid this problem. > > But of course if you start boosting from near-Earth orbit and away > from the Sun, soon you have to use lasers positioned very far away > from the Sun, and this means not being able to use photovoltaics to > power them. Hmm. If you want to achieve velocity V and accelerate during a boost at acceleration a, you will need time V/a. During this time it will move over a distance (1/2)at^2 = (1/2)V^2/a. The starshot aims at something like 60,000 km/s using 2 minutes of 500,000 N/kg acceleration. So it will move 3,600,000 km during those two minutes. A diffraction limited beam will have an angle given by lambda/pi w, where w is the radius at the beam waist. Assuming an optical beam with wavelength around 500 nm and a kilometre-sized "launchpad", the angle becomes on the order of 1.6*10^-10 radians. The Rayleigh length is l = pi w^2/lambda = 6.28e12 meters, and the radius scales as w*sqrt(1+(d/l)^2). With for the above numbers become 1000.00016 m. In short, there is not any serious dispersion to worry about. A smaller 100 meter launcher has about 16% larger radius at the final distance. For a ten meter launcher it has expanded to 58 meters, causing a 33-fold reduction in power. I guess we may have to handle thermal blooming and other atmospheric effects that will reduce efficiency significantly, but I don't think we need an advanced infrastructure in heliocentric space to do this. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lubkin at unreasonable.com Mon Apr 25 13:06:14 2016 From: lubkin at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 09:06:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Floating-point math Message-ID: <201604251333.u3PDXaHL000812@ziaspace.com> http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029 The End of (Numeric) Error: An interview with John L. Gustafson Walter Tichy (best-known for the Revision Control System) interviews computer arithmetic expert John Gustafson on his new format for encoding floating point. I haven't scrutinized it closely but the concept makes sense. At first glance, he's taking some of the ideas behind recent Internet data formats and applying them to number-crunching. In a nutshell, in the early decades of computing, each manufacturer had their own way of representing a number like 1.6025698833263803956335865659143 ? 10??? and using it in calculations. This inconsistency made it very tedious to be sure that an engineer or scientist was getting the correct results. And, therefore, that planes don't crash, we have accurate weather forecasts, an illness is diagnosed correctly, etc. The answer was an industry-wide standard, known as IEEE floating point. But the answer has a few problems. Gustafson discusses what's wrong and his idea for how to fix it. -- David. From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 25 15:46:18 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 10:46:18 -0500 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> References: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> Message-ID: OK Spike, so a nothing in the middle of a something is a something, Got it. Anders: In the standard general relativity view there is a patch of spacetime there, with its own properties (curvature). And there could well be electromagnetic fields (like light on its way through) or more exotic quantum stuff. In quantum field theory "empty" space is a pretty complex thing and the mystery is why it is not heavy and impenetrable. (Empty should be heavy and impenetrable - got it. I think.) ?I can tell you that I have tried to teach thousands of empty spaces occupying the craniums of students? and can state without equivocation that they ARE impenetrable in many cases. Heavy thinking? Nah. I do love it when Anders and Clark explain things to me in terms I can understand, though the organ pipe example is a bit fuzzy. But it's like being a student, I suppose. You think you understand something and then the teacher explains it and you suddenly are totally lost. bill w On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 7:55 PM, spike wrote: > > > On 2016-04-24 17:43, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > > > >?Say there is a cube of space (in 'outer' space) that has not one single > atom of matter (violating entropy I suppose). Does this mean that it is > not in some sense 'space'? Not until some matter is there? > > That there is no 'there' there? > > > > > > BillW, in that example there is a there there. The matter outside that > cube of space breaks its symmetry, making an inside and an outside. > There?s your there there. > > > > >?Some say our universe is expanding. Does this mean that some > 'potential space' exists beyond any matter that will become 'space' when > some matter gets there? > > > > This one is crazy hard to understand. It isn?t that there is empty space > and matter is going out into it. Rather, the space itself is expanding. > You can read a hundred different authors explain that concept and it is > still mind-bending. But you do need to get your head around it somehow, if > you want to move on. > > > > spike > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 25 15:41:55 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 08:41:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] will macaskill article Message-ID: <00a501d19f08$ff382780$fda87680$@att.net> Anders is this a friend of you? He seems to be channeling you in this article. http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/11/22/will-macaskill/?utm_campaign=outbrain &utm_medium=social&utm_source=simplereach&sr_source=lift_outbrain Will MacAskill on Effective Altruism, Y Combinator, and Artificial Intelligence 39 Comments Share this: * Facebook549 * Twitter * Email * Reddit * Written by Tim FerrissTopics: The Tim Ferriss Show Will MacAskill (Photo: Sam Deere) "We want to disaggregate benefits and aggregate costs." - William MacAskill Will MacAskill ( @willmacaskill) is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Lincoln College, Oxford. Just 28 years old, he is likely the youngest associate (i.e. tenured) professor of philosophy in the world. Will is the author of Doing Good Better and a co-founder of the "effective altruism" movement. He has pledged to donate everything he earns over ~$36,000 per year to whatever charities he believes will be most effective. He has also cofounded two well-known non-profits: 80,000 Hours, which provides research and advice on how you can best make a difference through your career, and Giving What We Can, which encourages people to commit to give at least 10% of their income to the most effective charities. Between them, they have raised more than $450 million in lifetime pledged donations, and are in the top 1% of non-profits in terms of growth. He is one of the few non-profit founders who have gone through Y Combinator; for-profit companies get $120,000 for 7% of equity; as a non-profit, 80,000 Hours got $100,000 for 0% of equity. In this episode, we discuss his story and a ton of actionable tips, including: * Why "following your passion" in a career is often a mistake. * Thought experiments: Pascal's Wager versus Pascal's Mugging. * Why working for a non-profit straight out of college is also a mistake. * How it's possible to "hack" doing good in the same way you would a business. * Implications of artificial intelligence. * The best ways to really evaluate if you (or charities) are going good in the world. * The reasons donating to disaster relief typically isn't the best use of your money. * Why ethical consumerism typically isn't a great way to do good. * Running a non-profit in the Harvard/Navy SEALs of startup incubators: Y Combinator. * Listen to it on iTunes. * Stream by clicking here. * Download as an MP3 by right-clicking here and choosing "save as." Want to hear another podcast related to philosophy from a world class philosopher? - Listen to my conversation with Sam Harris. In this episode, we discuss his daily routines, the Trolley Scenario, and 5 books everyone should read (stream below or right-click here to download): _____ This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you-for free-exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by Mizzen + Main. These are the only "dress" shirts I now travel with - fancy enough for important dinners but made from athletic, sweat-wicking material. No more ironing, no more steaming, no more hassle. Click here for the exact shirts I wear most often. Don't forget to use the code "TIM" at checkout. QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What is your favorite charity and why do you donate?Please let me know in the comments. Scroll below for links and show notes. Enjoy! Selected Links from the Episode * Doing Good Better by William MacAskill * The Atlantic's profile piece on William MacAskill * Learn more about standout charities at GiveWell.org * Learn more about Pascal's Wager * Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit * Seeking to make a career choice? 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Check out Giving What We Can * Learn about and connect with William MacAskill: Effective Altruism | Twitter | Facebook -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Apr 25 16:38:14 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 12:38:14 -0400 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: References: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > In the standard general relativity view there is a patch of spacetime > there, with its own properties (curvature). > ?If "real" means something that's invariant then curved spacetime is not real because it looks different for different observers. If you're far away looking at somebody falling toward a planet you'd say he's moving in a straight path through spacetime that is curved due to the mass of a planet that is nearby, and that's why he's accelerating. Unless somebody is accelerating they always take the shortest path through 4D spacetime, and in curved spacetime the shortest path is a curve not a straight line. But if you're the guy who's actually falling you'd say you are moving in a curved line through flat spacetime, and in flat spacetime the shortest path is a straight line not a curve, so you'd say your acceleration is due to gravity. Both would agree that you're not taking the shortest path through spacetime, but one would say it's because you're following a curved path in flat spacetime and the other would say it's because you're following a straight path in curved spacetime. Both are correct so curved spacetime isn't invariant and isn't real. John K Clark > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Apr 25 17:20:35 2016 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 10:20:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: References: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <010001d19f16$c8212f90$58638eb0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] physics >?OK Spike, so a nothing in the middle of a something is a something, Got it. Ja. I know it seems counterintuitive, but it should: you and I have no examples up here at the meter scale of a region of space with nothing in it. As I recall you were the one who asked in this forum: under what circumstances could a glass half full be considered full? I came up with a bunch of wacky suggestions while missing the most obvious one: under normal circumstances, a glass is always full, regardless of what might be in it. There is no vacuum above the liquid in the glass. If you could arrange a hard vacuum chamber, fill a glass half full of something such as water (or nearly anything for that matter) and pull a vacuum, the glass would be full of evaporated water molecules, dissolved gases coming out of solution and so forth. Conclusion: under circumstances we experience, all glasses are always completely full. So where can we find empty space? In the region surrounding the nucleus of atom. Ja? Nothing there. If you assume a hydrogen atom, there aren?t even any of the strong nuclear force mediator particles: don?t need them there, you aren?t cramming two protons together. But in that empty space there is a there there, because that space is inboard of that electron waving around out there. That electron breaks the symmetry of the empty space, To define space, you need something break the symmetry. So? by that line of reasoning, space didn?t exist before the big bang. The matter and photons created in that event defines space. Ain?t physic kewall? {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Apr 25 18:14:09 2016 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 13:14:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: <010001d19f16$c8212f90$58638eb0$@att.net> References: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> <010001d19f16$c8212f90$58638eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: To define space, you need something break the symmetry. So? by that line of reasoning, space didn?t exist before the big bang. The matter and photons created in that event defines space. Spike Or maybe they popped in from a nearby universe? I first got tagged as an atheist by students who heard me say of the BB, "Why does it have to be a 'who'?" If I can stretch it a bit, via Anders,and believe that emptiness can be impenetrable, then I can live through creating something from nothing, if that's the current theory. I have yet to have heard from anyone who was there at the Big Bang, so my 'knowledge' is tentative. Prior to this I believed that the BB started when all the matter that now exists was in a ball the size of ????, but at least it was a ball of something. It is hard not to think that what happened at the BB was the logical result (i.e., cause and effect) of what preceded it, but now we are told that nothing preceded it, as time was created at the same time as matter. It just happened, you say. But try to sell that to most people and they'd rather believe in God, I think. Of course, as we already know, what is believed now will be wacko in 50 years or less, eh? What if you had tried to sell all of this to a physicist living in the 1850s? You'd be locked up, natch. I get the feeling that there is a myriad of theories running around in physics. String theory is the most popular, I hear, although it has no data supporting it. Is this nuts or what? (or did the Higgs boson showing up do something to that?) Personally, I think that if one has to create something that has never been observed to explain data, one is in trouble. (dark matter) OTOH, it is rather mild compared to things created in psychology (anal fixations, collective unconscious, etc.) Another feeling is that there was some kind of unity in physics before Einstein, or maybe, again, I am ignorant. bill w On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 12:20 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] physics > > > > >?OK Spike, so a nothing in the middle of a something is a something, > Got it. > > > > > > Ja. I know it seems counterintuitive, but it should: you and I have no > examples up here at the meter scale of a region of space with nothing in > it. As I recall you were the one who asked in this forum: under what > circumstances could a glass half full be considered full? I came up with a > bunch of wacky suggestions while missing the most obvious one: under normal > circumstances, a glass is always full, regardless of what might be in it. > There is no vacuum above the liquid in the glass. If you could arrange a > hard vacuum chamber, fill a glass half full of something such as water (or > nearly anything for that matter) and pull a vacuum, the glass would be full > of evaporated water molecules, dissolved gases coming out of solution and > so forth. Conclusion: under circumstances we experience, all glasses are > always completely full. > > > > So where can we find empty space? In the region surrounding the nucleus > of atom. Ja? Nothing there. If you assume a hydrogen atom, there aren?t > even any of the strong nuclear force mediator particles: don?t need them > there, you aren?t cramming two protons together. But in that empty space > there is a there there, because that space is inboard of that electron > waving around out there. That electron breaks the symmetry of the empty > space, > > > > To define space, you need something break the symmetry. So? by that line > of reasoning, space didn?t exist before the big bang. The matter and > photons created in that event defines space. > > > > Ain?t physic kewall? {8^D > > > > 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 pharos at gmail.com Mon Apr 25 20:08:56 2016 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 21:08:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: <010001d19f16$c8212f90$58638eb0$@att.net> References: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> <010001d19f16$c8212f90$58638eb0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 25 April 2016 at 18:20, spike wrote: > So where can we find empty space? In the region surrounding the nucleus of > atom. Ja? Nothing there. If you assume a hydrogen atom, there aren?t even > any of the strong nuclear force mediator particles: don?t need them there, > you aren?t cramming two protons together. But in that empty space there is > a there there, because that space is inboard of that electron waving around > out there. That electron breaks the symmetry of the empty space, > Just to add to the confusion....... There isn't really empty space around the atom nucleus. The electron(s) are not like planets orbiting the sun; that's just a convenient metaphor. It is more accurate to think of an electron as a quantum field or a probability cloud around the nucleus. The 'empty' space is full of energies and forces. BillK From anders at aleph.se Mon Apr 25 21:02:44 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 22:02:44 +0100 Subject: [ExI] will macaskill article In-Reply-To: <00a501d19f08$ff382780$fda87680$@att.net> References: <00a501d19f08$ff382780$fda87680$@att.net> Message-ID: <571E85F4.10401@aleph.se> On 2016-04-25 16:41, spike wrote: > > Anders is this a friend of you? He seems to be channeling you in this > article. > Friend and co-worker. Generally awesome. We ran into each other yesterday at the office; he will be heading the normative uncertainty strand of the research project I do information hazard research for. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Mon Apr 25 21:37:32 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2016 22:37:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: References: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <571E8E1C.4010605@aleph.se> On 2016-04-25 17:38, John Clark wrote: > On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 William Flynn Wallace >wrote: > > ? > ? > In the standard general relativity view there is a patch of > spacetime there, with its own properties (curvature). > > > ?If "real" means something that's invariant then curved spacetime is > not real because it looks different for different observers. Nope. I was using curvature here to denote the metric tensor (or, if you want to go deep, the Riemann tensor). Tensor equations are observer-invariant. So while you might measure using a different coordinate system from me and get different numbers, there is a simple rescaling between our results. In particular, the line element ds^2=g_ij dx_1 dx_2 will have the same length for us no matter how we move and reparametrize. Geodesic curves for one observer are geodesics for all others. In general relativity spacetime is pretty much ontologically primary: it is all about some Riemannian manifold, described by its metric. How observers see things is irrelevant: the structure is still the same manifold and metric. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com Tue Apr 26 06:37:30 2016 From: rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 02:37:30 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: <571E09EB.40608@aleph.se> References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> <571C9B0B.6050808@aleph.se> <571E09EB.40608@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 8:13 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > Hmm. If you want to achieve velocity V and accelerate during a boost at > acceleration a, you will need time V/a. During this time it will move over > a distance (1/2)at^2 = (1/2)V^2/a. The starshot aims at something like > 60,000 km/s using 2 minutes of 500,000 N/kg acceleration. So it will move > 3,600,000 km during those two minutes. > > A diffraction limited beam will have an angle given by lambda/pi w, where > w is the radius at the beam waist. Assuming an optical beam with > wavelength around 500 nm and a kilometre-sized "launchpad", the angle > becomes on the order of 1.6*10^-10 radians. The Rayleigh length is l = pi > w^2/lambda = 6.28e12 meters, and the radius scales as w*sqrt(1+(d/l)^2). > With for the above numbers become 1000.00016 m. In short, there is not any > serious dispersion to worry about. > ### It appears that my intuitions were incorrect and thank you for doing the math. This is good: We don't need multiple launch lasers to colonize other stars, so we'll get there sooner. Rafa? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Apr 26 07:56:57 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 08:56:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars! In-Reply-To: References: <5710D8B3.3040808@aleph.se> <571C9B0B.6050808@aleph.se> <571E09EB.40608@aleph.se> Message-ID: <571F1F49.9080802@aleph.se> On 2016-04-26 07:37, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > > This is good: We don't need multiple launch lasers to colonize other > stars, so we'll get there sooner. But we lost the excuse to set up a solar system wide network. Still, gigawatt lasers are perhaps best kept scarce. -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Tue Apr 26 11:24:02 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 12:24:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Floating-point math In-Reply-To: <201604251333.u3PDXaHL000812@ziaspace.com> References: <201604251333.u3PDXaHL000812@ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <571F4FD2.4080204@aleph.se> The classic article is "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic" by David Goldberg: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html Whatever method you use, you will have to make trade-offs. Usually the trade-off is that you do not want to think about floating point (and how bad could errors get, anyway?), so you ignore the whole problem (trading debugging or disaster time for programming effort). Sometimes clever trade-offs or recognizing the requirements give huge wins (deep learning turns out to require very limited precision weights, which makes implementation and hardware way better: http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.02830 ). Sometimes people obsess over numeric precision endlessly while ignoring the massive errors induced by the model itself (the Sleipnir A 1991 disaster was due to software that gave lots of significant digits, but was run with the wrong grid resolution, producing an answer 47% off). In my current project I ran into a result that turned out to be a false result of numerical cancellation; drawing on my ancient numerics knowledge I managed to update the code to not produce subtle nonsense when dealing with probabilities less than 10^-100 (Taylor expansions for the win!) But I would not have noticed it if not a philosopher colleague had looked over my shoulder at my graph and said "That's funny..." (I love when my papers force me to exponentiate something to the 10^10th power). On 2016-04-25 14:06, David Lubkin wrote: > http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029 > The End of (Numeric) Error: An interview with John L. Gustafson > > Walter Tichy (best-known for the Revision Control System) interviews > computer arithmetic expert John Gustafson on his new format for > encoding floating point. > > I haven't scrutinized it closely but the concept makes sense. At first > glance, he's taking some of the ideas behind recent Internet data > formats and applying them to number-crunching. > > In a nutshell, in the early decades of computing, each manufacturer > had their own way of representing a number like > > 1.6025698833263803956335865659143 ? 10??? > > and using it in calculations. This inconsistency made it very tedious > to be sure that an engineer or scientist was getting the correct > results. And, therefore, that planes don't crash, we have accurate > weather forecasts, an illness is diagnosed correctly, etc. > > The answer was an industry-wide standard, known as IEEE floating > point. But the answer has a few problems. Gustafson discusses what's > wrong and his idea for how to fix it. > > > -- David. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -- Dr Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Apr 26 17:10:23 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 13:10:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] physics In-Reply-To: <571E8E1C.4010605@aleph.se> References: <571D43AC.2030700@aleph.se> <00e801d19e8d$33cff8a0$9b6fe9e0$@att.net> <571E8E1C.4010605@aleph.se> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 Anders Sandberg wrote: ?>> ? >> ?If "real" means something that's invariant then curved spacetime is not >> real because it looks different for different observers. > > > ?> ? > Nope. I was using curvature here to denote the metric tensor (or, if you > want to go deep, the Riemann tensor). Tensor equations are > observer-invariant. > ?Yes, tensors measure how far a curve is from a geodesic for a given manifold and all would agree on that, but they won't agree on what manifold they want to use, many different ones and their associated tensors can correctly describe how things move. Everyone will agree on what the minimum length of a spacetime interval between 2 points will be but lots of different manifolds are consistent with that. Equations are just descriptions of physical reality and a gravitational force in flat spacetime is equivalent to curved spacetime and no gravitational force, so just use the manifold that's most convenient. > ?> ? > Geodesic curves for one observer are geodesics for all others. ?A ? geodesic ? is the shortest path between 2 points and all observers will agree about that, and any object that is not accelerating will follow a geodesic through 4D spacetime, and a straight line is not the shortest path between 2 points in curved spacetime. ? So? if you're in a closed box and feel a 1g acceleration ?pushing your feet to the floor of the box ?then you know that you can't be on a Geodesic curve ?; but how can you know if you're in a rocket in intergalactic space in a flat spacetime manifold? following a curved timeline or if you're in a curved spacetime manifold sitting on the surface of the earth following a straight timeline? Both will produce the same correct description of the way things move so just use the one you find easiest to calculate. Well OK, you really could tell the difference because the guy on the surface of the earth would feel tidal forces and the guy in the rocket accelerating at 1g in deep space would not, but by making the man and the box arbitrarily smaller the tidal force will be arbitrarily smaller. ?> ? > So while you might measure using a different coordinate system from me and > get different numbers, there is a simple rescaling between our results. > ?I agree and that rescaling factor is gravity , although? ?I've never heard ? ?? tensor equations ? being referred to as simple before. > ?> ? > How observers see things is irrelevant: > ?Not to the observers it isn't.? ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Apr 28 17:16:50 2016 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:16:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Ray_Kurzweil=E2=80=8B=27s_new_Playboy_interview_?= =?utf-8?b?4oCL?= Message-ID: http://www.kurzweilai.net/reinvent-yourself-the-playboy-interview-with-ray-kurzweil?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=2d6540b7fa-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-2d6540b7fa-282205341 John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From outlawpoet at gmail.com Thu Apr 28 22:28:35 2016 From: outlawpoet at gmail.com (justin corwin) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 15:28:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] phone app, voice activated data logster In-Reply-To: References: <001301d19d84$2748c760$75da5620$@att.net> Message-ID: The "OK Google" hotword detection is available all the time on recent Android phones because there's a DSP chip running specialized voice rec all the time, which triggers the phone to spin up the more computationally expensive full voice recognition in order to save power. It's possible to program the DSP to look for other hotwords: changing "OK Google" to "Computer" is popular. But as far as I know it can only detect one phrase at a time and triggering the Google Now app to process the voice rec results is the only option. Obviously if you have root on your phone, you can install whatever you like, and make it do whatever, but it could be complicated. This may not be as simple as you think, which implies it could actually be a valuable app notion. Once you solve the problems, depending on how good the UI is, I think a fair number of people could use this. Particularly integrated with note taking and cross platform phone/computer architectures like Evernote, Pushbullet, etc. On a more basic level, third party apps to modify Google Voice Rec already exist, "Open Mic+ For Google Now" is a popular one, but it's in an arms race with the Android team to keep it's features enabled. On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 11:10 AM, BillK wrote: > On 23 April 2016 at 18:18, spike wrote: > > We have used OK Google and most of us found it works pretty well at > > interpreting what we say. What I want is to pull out my phone anywhere > and > > utter a comment that doesn?t sound much like anything else, such as ?OK > > Logster.? This would bring up the app. Then I want to talk into it and > > have it do voice recognition to text, then date, time and place stamp > that > > and store it, both at the start when I said OK Logster and another at the > > end of the comment when I said Goodbye Logster. The difference in > locations > > and time stamps at start vs end will clue me if I was driving at the > time, > > or walking or on my bicycle. > > > > I want to be able to email the text file to myself and keep a record of > > where I was, what I was doing and when. > > > > Go to your favourite app store (googleplay,itunes,etc.) and search for > dictation apps. > But Dragon Dictation from iTunes may be what you want. > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- Justin Corwin outlawpoet at gmail.com http://programmaticconquest.tumblr.com http://outlawpoet.tumblr.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anders at aleph.se Fri Apr 29 06:15:44 2016 From: anders at aleph.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 08:15:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fellow transhumanist behind scihub Message-ID: <5722FC10.8010207@aleph.se> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/alexandra-elbakyan-founded-sci-hub-thwart-journal-paywalls > First she worked in Moscow in computer security for a year, and then > she used the earnings to launch herself to the University of Freiburg > in Germany in 2010, where she joined a brain-computer interface > project. She was lured by the possibility that such an interface could > one day translate the thought content from one mind and upload it to > another. But the work fell short of her dreams. ?The lab activity was > spiritless,? she says. ?There was no feeling of pursuing a higher goal.? > Elbakyan did find a community of like-minded researchers in > transhumanism, a lofty field that encompasses not just neuroscience > and computer technology but also philosophy and even speculative > fiction about the future of humanity. She discovered a transhumanism > conference in the United States and set her heart on attending, but > she struggled to get a U.S. visa. She was rejected the first time and > only barely made it to the conference. -- Anders Sandberg Future of Humanity Institute Oxford Martin School Oxford University From giulio at gmail.com Fri Apr 29 07:51:44 2016 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 09:51:44 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Fellow transhumanist behind scihub In-Reply-To: <5722FC10.8010207@aleph.se> References: <5722FC10.8010207@aleph.se> Message-ID: Love Sci-Hub, LibGen and Alexandra. I could never read all the books and papers I want to read without. G. On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 8:15 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote: > > http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/alexandra-elbakyan-founded-sci-hub-thwart-journal-paywalls >> >> First she worked in Moscow in computer security for a year, and then she >> used the earnings to launch herself to the University of Freiburg in Germany >> in 2010, where she joined a brain-computer interface project. She was lured >> by the possibility that such an interface could one day translate the >> thought content from one mind and upload it to another. But the work fell >> short of her dreams. ?The lab activity was spiritless,? she says. ?There was >> no feeling of pursuing a higher goal.? Elbakyan did find a community of >> like-minded researchers in transhumanism, a lofty field that encompasses not >> just neuroscience and computer technology but also philosophy and even >> speculative fiction about the future of humanity. She discovered a >> transhumanism conference in the United States and set her heart on >> attending, but she struggled to get a U.S. visa. She was rejected the first >> time and only barely made it to the conference. > > > > -- > Anders Sandberg > Future of Humanity Institute > Oxford Martin School > Oxford University > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From sparge at gmail.com Fri Apr 29 11:50:58 2016 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2016 07:50:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] phone app, voice activated data logster In-Reply-To: References: <001301d19d84$2748c760$75da5620$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 6:28 PM, justin corwin wrote: > The "OK Google" hotword detection is available all the time on recent > Android phones because there's a DSP chip running specialized voice rec all > the time, which triggers the phone to spin up the more computationally > expensive full voice recognition in order to save power. > > It's possible to program the DSP to look for other hotwords: changing "OK > Google" to "Computer" is popular. But as far as I know it can only detect > one phrase at a time and triggering the Google Now app to process the voice > rec results is the only option. > If you keep your phone locked--which you probably should--the "OK Google" features are severely limited. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cryptaxe at gmail.com Fri Apr 22 18:00:28 2016 From: cryptaxe at gmail.com (CryptAxe) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 11:00:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] power satellites again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I didn't know that you could produce synthetic fuel or oil with solar panels that's very interesting. Zero carbon emissions might be a stretch but shoot for the stars I guess. Just using this to power production in industrial areas of China etc could really help with pollution that is directly effecting nearby populations and inevitably all of us. The timeline they give in the video makes it seem like this could happen somewhat quickly so I'm looking forward to progress. I wonder if spacex will help launch the satellites? On Apr 22, 2016 10:51 AM, "Keith Henson" wrote: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrcoD_vHzxU&feature=youtu.be > > Was shown as part of a briefing at the White House Wed. > > Keith > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: