From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 1 06:28:59 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 23:28:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number Message-ID: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> Cool! My son posed a mathematical puzzle, the answer to which we are calling Isaac's number until we find someone else who has posed the problem and answered it: Generate three random points on a square plane to create a triangle. What is the probability that a fourth randomly-generated point will be inside the triangle? He and I wrote sims and both get the same answer to four significant digits: 0.0764 but neither of us know how to find it in closed form. My intuition suggested that number should have been 0.125 but it differs from our sim-generated Isaac's number by about phi. Why phi? That hasta be a coincidence, ja? Come on math geeks, let us reason together, shall we? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 1 07:17:23 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 08:17:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> Message-ID: On 1 August 2017 at 07:28, spike wrote: > > Generate three random points on a square plane to create a triangle. What > is the probability that a fourth randomly-generated point will be inside the > triangle? > > He and I wrote sims and both get the same answer to four significant digits: > 0.0764 but neither of us know how to find it in closed form. My intuition > suggested that number should have been 0.125 but it differs from our > sim-generated Isaac?s number by about phi. Why phi? That hasta be a > coincidence, ja? Come on math geeks, let us reason together, shall we? > I think this gives the solution. It just needs to be translated into English! :) BillK From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 1 08:00:10 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 09:00:10 +0100 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> Message-ID: On 1 August 2017 at 08:17, BillK wrote: > On 1 August 2017 at 07:28, spike wrote: >> >> Generate three random points on a square plane to create a triangle. What >> is the probability that a fourth randomly-generated point will be inside the >> triangle? >> >> He and I wrote sims and both get the same answer to four significant digits: >> 0.0764 but neither of us know how to find it in closed form. My intuition >> suggested that number should have been 0.125 but it differs from our >> sim-generated Isaac?s number by about phi. Why phi? That hasta be a >> coincidence, ja? Come on math geeks, let us reason together, shall we? >> > > > I think this gives the solution. > It just needs to be translated into English! :) > > > > In English, :) you need to calculate the average area of the distribution of all random triangles in a square, between the maximum of half and zero. (That's what Wolfram is doing). The result comes out at 11/144. So that is the chance of a fourth random point falling within a random triangle. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 1 11:11:45 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 12:11:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Voyager spacecraft still reaching for the stars and setting records after 40 years Message-ID: August 1, 2017 Humanity's farthest and longest-lived spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, achieve 40 years of operation and exploration this August and September. Despite their vast distance, they continue to communicate with NASA daily, still probing the final frontier. Quote: Though the spacecraft have left the planets far behind?and neither will come remotely close to another star for 40,000 years?the two probes still send back observations about conditions where our Sun's influence diminishes and interstellar space begins. Voyager 1, now almost 13 billion miles from Earth, travels through interstellar space northward out of the plane of the planets. The probe has informed researchers that cosmic rays, atomic nuclei accelerated to nearly the speed of light, are as much as four times more abundant in interstellar space than in the vicinity of Earth. This means the heliosphere, the bubble-like volume containing our solar system's planets and solar wind, effectively acts as a radiation shield for the planets. Voyager 1 also hinted that the magnetic field of the local interstellar medium is wrapped around the heliosphere. Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles from Earth, travels south and is expected to enter interstellar space in the next few years. The different locations of the two Voyagers allow scientists to compare right now two regions of space where the heliosphere interacts with the surrounding interstellar medium using instruments that measure charged particles, magnetic fields, low-frequency radio waves and solar wind plasma. Once Voyager 2 crosses into the interstellar medium, they will also be able to sample the medium from two different locations simultaneously. "None of us knew, when we launched 40 years ago, that anything would still be working, and continuing on this pioneering journey," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at Caltech in Pasadena, California. "The most exciting thing they find in the next five years is likely to be something that we didn't know was out there to be discovered." ------------------- Inspiring!! BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 1 17:13:52 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 10:13:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> Message-ID: <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Subject: Re: [ExI] isaac's number On 1 August 2017 at 07:28, spike wrote: > >> Generate three random points on a square plane to create a triangle. > What is the probability that a fourth randomly-generated point will be > inside the triangle? >...I think this gives the solution. >...It just needs to be translated into English! :) >...BillK OK, so Woolhouse already claims this, in 1867. I ran 350 billion trials last night (why does that sound like an exaggeration? (It isn't.)) The answer I get from that is 0.063889013 Woolhouse's 11/144 = .076388889, equal to my Monte Carlo solution to about a part per million. Wowsers, 11/144, whooda thunk? g _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 1 18:10:30 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2017 11:10:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> Message-ID: <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- >...From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike >...OK, so Woolhouse already claims this, in 1867. >...I ran 350 billion trials last night (why does that sound like an exaggeration? (It isn't.)) The answer I get from that is 0.063889013 >...Woolhouse's 11/144 = .076388889, equal to my Monte Carlo solution to about a part per million. Correction, my sim gives .0763889013, but I found a much faster way to do the calc by generating only three points and calculating an area. Next we go on to generating three points on a unit sphere, connecting them with great circles and repeat. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 13:00:20 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 09:00:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 2:10 PM, spike wrote: >...Woolhouse's 11/144 = .076388889, equal to my Monte Carlo solution to > ? ? > about a part per million. > ? ? > Correction, my sim gives .0763889013, but I found a much faster way to do > ? ? > the calc by generating only three points and calculating an area. ? That my friend is impressive! Do you have a hardware ? ? random number generator on your computer? I didn't know software pseudorandom ? ? ones were that good ?.? ?Maybe they have hardware ones built into microprocessor chips these days. John K Clark > > -----Original Message----- > >...From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On > Behalf Of spike > > > >...OK, so Woolhouse already claims this, in 1867. > > >...I ran 350 billion trials last night (why does that sound like an > exaggeration? (It isn't.)) The answer I get from that is > > 0.063889013 > > >...Woolhouse's 11/144 = .076388889, equal to my Monte Carlo solution to > about a part per million. > > > > Correction, my sim gives .0763889013, but I found a much faster way to do > the calc by generating only three points and calculating an area. > > Next we go on to generating three points on a unit sphere, connecting them > with great circles and repeat. > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 16:04:00 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 11:04:00 -0500 Subject: [ExI] for technomancers Message-ID: Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow - by Yuval Noah Harari bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 2 16:04:01 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 09:04:01 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> Message-ID: <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2017 6:00 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] isaac's number On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 2:10 PM, spike > wrote: >>...Woolhouse's 11/144 = .076388889, equal to my Monte Carlo solution to about a part per million. ? ? Correction, my sim gives .0763889013, but I found a much faster way to do the calc by generating only three points and calculating an area. ? >?That my friend is impressive! John as much as I would like to soak up that sentiment, I can?t claim credit. The really impressive feat was the closed form solution found by Woolhouse. I went thru that Woolhouse page BillK found, estimated the probability that I would eeeeeever discover a closed form solution to that problem and every single time that probability came out to way less than 0.07639. I would be generous to estimate my probability of discovering 11/144 at less than a part per thousand. I have been learning of all the cool stuff Wesley Woolhouse did back in the 1800s. I note that he was one of Billk?s countrymen. Considering my interests in probability theory, I am astonished that I haven?t found his work before now, or rather I used some of his results without knowing where they came from. BillK thanks for finding this, me lad. >?Do you have a hardware random number generator on your computer? I didn't know software pseudorandom ? ?ones were that good? Nah I just use the rand() function in Excel VBA and my son uses the JavaScript Random(B1,B2); function. I don?t know JavaScript, but I have used the VBA rand() for over half my life and found it to be acceptable. Its limits are easy enough to discover: make a script which plots a point on a graph and put down 10k points. Your eye can easily spot the flaws. I think VBA uses a 32 bit seed, but I am not an expert at these matters. John, you are the guy I would have asked on that: is there a way to stack the rand() function in Excel to create the equivalent of a 64 bit randomizer? ?>?Maybe they have hardware ones built into microprocessor chips these days. >?John K Clark I don?t know John. I need to learn up on this, figure out how the rand() function works in VBA. Oh for a thousand lifetimes, a million. I would squander most of them digging around in the astonishing mathematical toybox this universe has given us as a priceless gift. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 16:47:56 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 17:47:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] for technomancers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 2 August 2017 at 17:04, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow - by Yuval Noah Harari > Harari does have quite a good point - that humans already live in a type of virtual reality constructed by our brains. e.g. religion can be thought of as an elaborate virtual reality game. Without the rulebook, 'holy places' are just piles of bricks and mortar. He has extended this thought to say that when AI causes mass unemployment, AI will also produce really engrossing virtual reality games for humans, so that humans can continue to explore and get the sense of achievement that they need to remain sane. Is that the future for all intelligent civilisations? BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 18:59:20 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 13:59:20 -0500 Subject: [ExI] for technomancers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 11:47 AM, BillK wrote: > On 2 August 2017 at 17:04, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow - by Yuval Noah Harari > > > > > Harari does have quite a good point - that humans already live in a > type of virtual reality constructed by our brains. e.g. religion can > be thought of as an elaborate virtual reality game. Without the > rulebook, 'holy places' are just piles of bricks and mortar. > > He has extended this thought to say that when AI causes mass > unemployment, AI will also produce really engrossing virtual reality > games for humans, so that humans can continue to explore and get the > sense of achievement that they need to remain sane. > > Is that the future for all intelligent civilisations? > > BillK > ?I think we may have to redefine 'intelligent civilization'. I don't think we have experienced one yet. I find it nearly sickening that people, not just teens or never-to-be-grown-up adults, find real achievement in battling imaginary orcs and aliens and ghosts et alia. ?At least there is some athleticism in sports, as unnecessary as that will be to our future. Are really quick thumbs going to be all that important?? > ?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 Wed Aug 2 20:05:14 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 13:05:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] for technomancers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Aug 2, 2017 12:02 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: I find it nearly sickening that people, not just teens or never-to-be-grown-up adults, find real achievement in battling imaginary orcs and aliens and ghosts et alia. ?At least there is some athleticism in sports, as unnecessary as that will be to our future. Are really quick thumbs going to be all that important?? Yes. Consider the increasing amount of drone warfare, not to mention the increased emphasis on similar tool use instead of manual labor in manufacturing, agriculture, and other such industries. Also, e-sports can provide the same spectacle and teamwork without ruining the players for subsequent employment (see football's current problems with brain trauma). And that's just scratching the surface. There is much beauty and glory - and, yes, achievement - to be had in video games. There is much potential to waste time too...but consider: if a typical father and son go fishing all afternoon but return with nothing, versus if they do the same but their tools (and video-game-trained expertise on said tools) let them return with enough fish to feed their family for a week, which outcome is better for their family and their community? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Aug 2 23:41:30 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 18:41:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] for technomancers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 3:05 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Aug 2, 2017 12:02 PM, "William Flynn Wallace" > wrote: > > I find it nearly sickening that people, not just teens or > never-to-be-grown-up adults, find real achievement in battling imaginary > orcs and aliens and ghosts et alia. > > ?At least there is some athleticism in sports, as unnecessary as that will > be to our future. Are really quick thumbs going to be all that important?? > > > > Yes. Consider the increasing amount of drone warfare, not to mention the > increased emphasis on similar tool use instead of manual labor in > manufacturing, agriculture, and other such industries. Also, e-sports can > provide the same spectacle and teamwork without ruining the players for > subsequent employment (see football's current problems with brain trauma). > And that's just scratching the surface. > > There is much beauty and glory - and, yes, achievement - to be had in > video games. There is much potential to waste time too...but consider: if > a typical father and son go fishing all afternoon but return with nothing, > versus if they do the same but their tools (and video-game-trained > expertise on said tools) let them return with enough fish to feed their > family for a week, which outcome is better for their family and their > community? > ?--------------? ?Ah, I see you are not a fisherman. Going fishing with your son is not about catching fish at all. Sitting back and letting machines do the work? What fun is that? ?What cameraderie? ? Send your AI car to the lake, ?have your AI robot ? get in the AI boat, and catch the fish while you sit home if what you want is really fish? ?. Football may be dying, pun noted. I won't miss it, any more than I would miss boxing or any sport whose aim is to do physical damage to the other team members. I suppose the old professor came out in my post. The idea of killing aliens is fine, but what are you learning? It doesn't take hundreds or thousands of hours for your thumbs to learn, does it? Glory in video games? Some kind of oxymoron there, I think. Still, if that's all a person can succeed at, they will find some fans somewhere. Can you imagine a hirer being impressed with video game expertise? I cannot. It would be a big negative to me. Could the person keep his hands off the games while working for me? Apparently many can not do so. Which is why they have the keystroke software, eh? Also, the obsessive reader came out as well. Many might say that I waste most of my time with my head in a book, but I have learned mucho from them.? ? I also suspect that the skills learned in one game do not transfer that well to another one. Data needed here. Oh well, I've had my little crabby say on the topic. Get your fun where you will.? 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 01:37:35 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 21:37:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 12:04 PM, spike wrote: ?> ? > I don?t know John. I need to learn up on this, figure out how the rand() > function works in VBA. ? You got me curious so I looked it up, it's 32 bit pseudorandom ? generator ? is called called ? "MT19937"and is considered pretty good for most uses because it has a super long period of 2^19937 -1 (a Mersenne ? prime), even Mathematica and Matlab use it so it must be good but ? i t ? is not ? good enough for ? cryptography ? because after observing just 624 iterations you could theoretically predict what the next one will be. Some say sending the output of MT19937 ? ? ? through even a simple hash function ?will? greatly improve it, although of course that would also slow things down. ?John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 3 02:28:43 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 19:28:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> Message-ID: <008201d30c00$3ad83ea0$b088bbe0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark ? Subject: Re: [ExI] isaac's number On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 12:04 PM, spike > wrote: ?> ?>?I don?t know John. I need to learn up on this, figure out how the rand() function works in VBA. ? >?You got me curious so I looked it up, it's 32 bit pseudorandom ? Generator is called called "MT19937"? Cool thanks for that. >? super long period of 2^19937 -1 (a Mersenne prime)? That comment was worth the price of admission. I recall hearing of the discovery of that Mersenne prime, way back when I was in fifth grade. I was just then learning about Mersenne primes. It made the Scholastic News for breaking the record for the largest known prime number. I was in college before that record was broken. ? ? ? >?through even a simple hash function will? greatly improve it, although of course that would also slow things down. John K Clark? I have used the Excel VBA random function since macros first appeared, which was in 1993. That too brings back fond memories, for I recall hearing that a new embedded language was coming with the new Excel 5.0, which was much more practical than the previous macro code. If you were a geek back in those days, you may recall before 1993, instruction sets resided in a worksheet. The code didn?t care if you modified that sheet. So you could write self-modifying code. That was kinda cool for some applications, but it made for extremely brittle code that could run perfectly for months, then suddenly stop working, and the programmer could never figure out what broke on it, regardless of how geeky he was. I wrote and ran a ton of Monte Carlo sims in those days. One of them was a rocket ascent program which I think Keith Henson still has and might still use. Heh. Things got better. They got waaaay better. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 3 05:52:41 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2017 22:52:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> Message-ID: <00b301d30c1c$b8c3e5a0$2a4bb0e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Subject: Re: [ExI] isaac's number From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2017 6:00 AM To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] isaac's number On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 2:10 PM, spike > wrote: >>>...Woolhouse's 11/144 = .076388889, equal to my Monte Carlo solution to about a part per million. ? ? >>>?Correction, my sim gives .0763889013, but I found a much faster way to do the calc by generating only three points and calculating an area. ? >>?That my friend is impressive! John Clark >?John as much as I would like to soak up that sentiment, I can?t claim credit. The really impressive feat was the closed form solution found by Woolhouse. spike OK, news from the geek-with-too-much-time-on-his-hands department: I took my Monte Carlo sim for the triangles and generalized it to 3 dimensions. Original question: in a unit square with three random points, what is the average area of the triangle? New question: in a unit cube with four random points, what is the volume of the tetrahedron? I studied that Woolhouse page BillK found, struggled with the integrals for a while and finally had to admit that I suck. I won?t be channeling The Donald any time soon. But I can write Monte Carlo sims of anything that moves and plenty of things that do not, so I did. I just finished it and haven?t even run it yet. Before I pull the trigger, I want to allow us to make guesses on what the answer will be. Last time, my mathematical intuition fell flat, but I want to try again. For reasons I will not explain, I now think this answer will come out somewhere around 0.00849. If you want to enter a guess, do so, or if you want to be less committed, just say higher or lower than my 0.00849. The grand prize will be my undying respect for all eternity, or until I forget, whichever comes first. If anyone here generalizes the Woolhouse integrals, I will totally bow down before you and declare my grubby self unworthy to gaze upon your brilliance. I will be seriously impressed as all hell and say good things about you. Alternative: BillK might find us another miracle page somewhere that answers the new question. Guesses? Higher or lower than 0.00849? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 08:10:29 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 09:10:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <00b301d30c1c$b8c3e5a0$2a4bb0e0$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> <00b301d30c1c$b8c3e5a0$2a4bb0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 3 August 2017 at 06:52, spike wrote: > > New question: in a unit cube with four random points, what is the volume of > the tetrahedron? > > I studied that Woolhouse page BillK found, struggled with the integrals for > a while and finally had to admit that I suck. I won?t be channeling The > Donald any time soon. But I can write Monte Carlo sims of anything that > moves and plenty of things that do not, so I did. I just finished it and > haven?t even run it yet. Before I pull the trigger, I want to allow us to > make guesses on what the answer will be. > > Last time, my mathematical intuition fell flat, but I want to try again. > For reasons I will not explain, I now think this answer will come out > somewhere around 0.00849. > > If you want to enter a guess, do so, or if you want to be less committed, > just say higher or lower than my 0.00849. The grand prize will be my > undying respect for all eternity, or until I forget, whichever comes first. > > If anyone here generalizes the Woolhouse integrals, I will totally bow down > before you and declare my grubby self unworthy to gaze upon your brilliance. > I will be seriously impressed as all hell and say good things about you. > > Alternative: BillK might find us another miracle page somewhere that answers > the new question. > Wolfram does say - 'The integral is extremely difficult to compute.' (If it is difficult for Wolfram...........) :) Wolfram gives the answer as 0.01384277..... BillK From protokol2020 at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 08:27:25 2017 From: protokol2020 at gmail.com (Tomaz Kristan) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 10:27:25 +0200 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> <00b301d30c1c$b8c3e5a0$2a4bb0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: You can experiment without a random number generator. 8 times nested for loop. (x1=0;x1+=0.01;x1<1) (y1=0;y1+=0.01;y1<1) (x2=0;x2+=0.01;x2<1) (y2=0;y2+=0.01;y2<1) (x3=0;x3+=0.01;x3<1) (y3=0;y3+=0.01;y3<1) (x4=0;x4+=0.01;x4<1) (y4=0;y4+=0.01;y4<1) if (x4,y4) is inside triangle((x1,y1),(x2,y2),(x3,y3)) insider++ else outsider++ There are some (quite drastic) optimizations possible, but that's basically that. On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 10:10 AM, BillK wrote: > On 3 August 2017 at 06:52, spike wrote: > > > > New question: in a unit cube with four random points, what is the volume > of > > the tetrahedron? > > > > I studied that Woolhouse page BillK found, struggled with the integrals > for > > a while and finally had to admit that I suck. I won?t be channeling The > > Donald any time soon. But I can write Monte Carlo sims of anything that > > moves and plenty of things that do not, so I did. I just finished it and > > haven?t even run it yet. Before I pull the trigger, I want to allow us > to > > make guesses on what the answer will be. > > > > Last time, my mathematical intuition fell flat, but I want to try again. > > For reasons I will not explain, I now think this answer will come out > > somewhere around 0.00849. > > > > If you want to enter a guess, do so, or if you want to be less committed, > > just say higher or lower than my 0.00849. The grand prize will be my > > undying respect for all eternity, or until I forget, whichever comes > first. > > > > If anyone here generalizes the Woolhouse integrals, I will totally bow > down > > before you and declare my grubby self unworthy to gaze upon your > brilliance. > > I will be seriously impressed as all hell and say good things about you. > > > > Alternative: BillK might find us another miracle page somewhere that > answers > > the new question. > > > > Wolfram does say - 'The integral is extremely difficult to compute.' > (If it is difficult for Wolfram...........) :) > > Wolfram gives the answer as 0.01384277..... > > > > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- https://protokol2020.wordpress.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 08:35:05 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 09:35:05 +0100 Subject: [ExI] for technomancers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 3 August 2017 at 00:41, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > Ah, I see you are not a fisherman. Going fishing with your son is not about > catching fish at all. Sitting back and letting machines do the work? > What fun is that? What cameraderie? > Send your AI car to the lake, have your AI robot > get in the AI boat, and catch the fish while you sit home if what you want > is really fish. > > I suppose the old professor came out in my post. The idea of killing aliens > is fine, but what are you learning? It doesn't take hundreds or thousands > of hours for your thumbs to learn, does it? > > Glory in video games? Some kind of oxymoron there, I think. Still, if > that's all a person can succeed at, they will find some fans somewhere. Can > you imagine a hirer being impressed with video game expertise? I cannot. > It would be a big negative to me. Could the person keep his hands off the > games while working for me? Apparently many can not do so. Which is why > they have the keystroke software, eh? > > I also suspect that the skills learned in one game do not transfer that well > to another one. Data needed here. > Our future after AI will be very different. For the great majority of humanity no one will be hiring them. 'Work' will not be done by humans. So what will humans do? This is not a trivial question. Perhaps some will fight with each other, out of sheer boredom. Living in a VR universe could be the best solution. If you get killed in a VR game, you can just restart, or go back to the last 'Saved' position. VR game skills are not just speed of reaction to kill aliens. Many games require a lot of strategy planning. In fact, the 'building / simulation' games are almost all strategy. BillK From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 08:53:00 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 09:53:00 +0100 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> <00b301d30c1c$b8c3e5a0$2a4bb0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 3 August 2017 at 09:10, BillK wrote: > Wolfram does say - 'The integral is extremely difficult to compute.' > (If it is difficult for Wolfram...........) :) > > Wolfram gives the answer as 0.01384277..... > > > The Wolfram article references another site that might be of interest to wander through....... BillK From atymes at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 07:49:11 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 00:49:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] for technomancers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 4:41 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Ah, I see you are not a fisherman. Going fishing with your son is not about > catching fish at all. Sitting back and letting machines do the work? Oh, it's not about letting the machines do everything. It's about fishing with the aid of the machines. Just like the old AI trope: it's not about robots instead of humans, but humans augmented by and working with computers and robots. Or, y'know, maybe tending some robot catchers while shooting the breeze with the person you're sharing the boat with. It's not like there's all that much to putting bait on the hook, plopping it in the water, and reeling in once there's a bite. Either way, it's an excuse to get out there and talk for a while. > I suppose the old professor came out in my post. The idea of killing aliens > is fine, but what are you learning? It doesn't take hundreds or thousands > of hours for your thumbs to learn, does it? There aren't that many individual games that warrant a hundred, let alone a thousand, hours of play. Those that do have play as deep as chess, at least. > Glory in video games? Some kind of oxymoron there, I think. Still, if > that's all a person can succeed at, they will find some fans somewhere. And money. https://www.esportsearnings.com/history/2016/games shows a bit over $95 million in prizes in tournaments in various games throughout 2016. Win just one of the bigger tournaments per year, and that can make for a decent living...so long as you keep winning. (Actually, win big enough and you can get enough to invest and get a modest retirement.) > Can > you imagine a hirer being impressed with video game expertise? I cannot. Depends on the job. Obviously, apply to a job where the specific games played are relevant. (Not all games are alike; not all games train the same skills.) > Could the person keep his hands off the > games while working for me? Apparently many can not do so. Do you have data for this? > Which is why > they have the keystroke software, eh? No. They have the keystroke software because they wish to treat their human employees like robots, usually because they misunderstand the work they are requesting. (And honestly, many games create as much keyboard activity as "real" work anyway, so just measuring keystrokes per second wouldn't reliably detect when someone shifts applications like that.) > Also, the obsessive reader came out as well. Many might say that I waste > most of my time with my head in a book, but I have learned mucho from them. Indeed - but if we were to apply the same lens that you have, then I would ask how spending all your time reading harlequin romances and political manifestos prepares you to help run a 3D printing shop. (As an example of how far off base your lens is.) > I also suspect that the skills learned in one game do not transfer that well > to another one. Data needed here. Depends on the game. There are large genres wherein the skills are transferable - but between genres, there tends to be limited transferability, much like how driving a car (racing games) does not by itself make you an expert at playing a musical instrument (music games). From msd001 at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 16:01:03 2017 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 12:01:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <008201d30c00$3ad83ea0$b088bbe0$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> <008201d30c00$3ad83ea0$b088bbe0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 10:28 PM, spike wrote: > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *John Clark > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] isaac's number > > > > >?You got me curious so I looked it up, it's 32 bit pseudorandom > > ? > > Generator is called called "MT19937"? > > Cool thanks for that. > > >? super long period of 2^19937 -1 (a Mersenne prime)? > > > > That comment was worth the price of admission. I recall hearing of the > discovery of that Mersenne prime, way back when I was in fifth grade. I > was just then learning about Mersenne primes. It made the Scholastic News > for breaking the record for the largest known prime number. I was in > college before that record was broken. > > > Today I saw this interesting discussion on javascript's Math.random() https://medium.com/@betable/tifu-by-using-math-random-f1c308c4fd9d -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 3 17:47:45 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 10:47:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> <00b301d30c1c$b8c3e5a0$2a4bb0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <014f01d30c80$9e165fd0$da431f70$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... > >>... Alternative: BillK might find us another miracle page somewhere that > answers the new question. >...Wolfram does say - 'The integral is extremely difficult to compute.' (If it is difficult for Wolfram...........) :) OK cool that makes me feel better. Wolfram came to one of the Extro-schmoozes. He and Max had a discussion in which he asked what we were about. They talked for a while, then he left. I got him to sign my book. >...Wolfram gives the answer as 0.01384277..... My sim gives .01384293 but I will be durned if I can figure out why. >...BillK _______________________________________________ Cool BillK thanks. This technique I used can be extended into four-space and beyond. I might try it, or I might get back to the original question, for which this was a tangent. Original question: assume a unit square with a random scattering of points. Form triangles with the points as vertices until every point is used. How many different ways can N points form triangles? My Monte Carlo approach allows me to generate the fields. spike From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 3 18:03:27 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 11:03:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> <008201d30c00$3ad83ea0$b088bbe0$@att.net> Message-ID: <015601d30c82$cf057700$6d106500$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty >?Today I saw this interesting discussion on javascript's Math.random() https://medium.com/@betable/tifu-by-using-math-random-f1c308c4fd9d Great article Mike. Anything that starts with a quote from The Donald must be good. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 3 20:25:39 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 13:25:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <014f01d30c80$9e165fd0$da431f70$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> <00b301d30c1c$b8c3e5a0$2a4bb0e0$@att.net> <014f01d30c80$9e165fd0$da431f70$@att.net> Message-ID: <000d01d30c96$acbcd300$06367900$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike >...Wolfram came to one of the Extro-schmoozes. He and Max had a discussion in which he asked what we were about. They talked for a while, then he left. I got him to sign my book. >>...Wolfram gives the answer as 0.01384277..... >...My sim gives .01384293 but I will be durned if I can figure out why. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CubeTetrahedronPicking.html >...BillK _______________________________________________ If anyone wants either of those sims I wrote, post me offlist. Perhaps you can extend the concept and do some cool tricks. We recognize that anyone who uses Excel as a programming environment is living in sin. Flimsy excuse: I am not a programmer, only an engineer. I took up Excel to do rocket ascent sims, then later to do controls calcs at work, then math geek stuff. My Excel abuse just continued to get worse and worse until I was a hopeless dismal mess, vile, a reprehensible blot was I. Have mercy upon my wretched soul, ye who write in real languages. It would be cool to have someone figure out a way to extend the concept to four-space, take five random points in a unit hypercube, form a penteract, calculate its spacetime hypervolume via Monte Carlo. spike From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 3 21:27:53 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2017 22:27:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] isaac's number In-Reply-To: <000d01d30c96$acbcd300$06367900$@att.net> References: <00fe01d30a8f$7663f620$632be260$@att.net> <008c01d30ae9$8d7b1d70$a8715850$@att.net> <00fa01d30af1$76c9d050$645d70f0$@att.net> <005101d30ba8$f62ecd70$e28c6850$@att.net> <00b301d30c1c$b8c3e5a0$2a4bb0e0$@att.net> <014f01d30c80$9e165fd0$da431f70$@att.net> <000d01d30c96$acbcd300$06367900$@att.net> Message-ID: On 3 August 2017 at 21:25, spike wrote: > If anyone wants either of those sims I wrote, post me offlist. Perhaps you > can extend the concept and do some cool tricks. We recognize that anyone > who uses Excel as a programming environment is living in sin. Flimsy > excuse: I am not a programmer, only an engineer. I took up Excel to do > rocket ascent sims, then later to do controls calcs at work, then math geek > stuff. My Excel abuse just continued to get worse and worse until I was a > hopeless dismal mess, vile, a reprehensible blot was I. Have mercy upon my > wretched soul, ye who write in real languages. > > It would be cool to have someone figure out a way to extend the concept to > four-space, take five random points in a unit hypercube, form a penteract, > calculate its spacetime hypervolume via Monte Carlo. > Wolfram has a section on Unsolved Problems. When you get into multi-dimensions, I think that is the section you are into. You could be famous with this investigation! :) BillK From pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 4 13:17:08 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 14:17:08 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Young USA men already moving to virtual reality Message-ID: Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men Abstract: Younger men, ages 21 to 30, exhibited larger declines in work hours over the last fifteen years than older men or women. Over the same period, time-use data show that younger men distinctly shifted their leisure to video gaming and other recreational computer activities. We propose a framework to answer whether improved leisure technology played a role in reducing younger men's labor supply. The starting point is a leisure demand system that parallels that often estimated for consumption expenditures. We show that total leisure demand is especially sensitive to innovations in leisure luxuries, that is, activities that display a disproportionate response to changes in total leisure time. We estimate that gaming/recreational computer use is distinctly a leisure luxury for younger men. Moreover, we calculate that innovations to gaming/recreational computing can justify on the order of half the increase in leisure for younger men over the past fifteen years, and 23 to 46 percent of their decline in market hours. -------------------- Complete Paper here: - Discussion article here: Quote: So at a time when most of the people looking for jobs find them, why are so many young men not even looking? One explanation is that they think there is no hope, but another explanation is that they would rather be playing a game. Food is cheap; living with your parents is cheap; computer games are cheap. Why work? Distinguishing the two hypotheses is not easy, but Prof Aguiar and his colleagues make a good case that the pull of video games is an important part of the story. Women and older men ? who spend less time playing games ? are more engaged with the labour market. Then again, good games do bring happiness. Joblessness is usually a reliable predictor of misery, yet men under 30 are far less likely to be unhappy than in the early 2000s. The proportion saying they?re ?very happy? or ?pretty happy? has risen from 81 to 89 per cent, almost halving the rate of unhappiness. The reverse is true for men over 30.Then again, good games do bring happiness. Joblessness is usually a reliable predictor of misery, yet men under 30 are far less likely to be unhappy than in the early 2000s. The proportion saying they?re ?very happy? or ?pretty happy? has risen from 81 to 89 per cent, almost halving the rate of unhappiness. The reverse is true for men over 30. ----------------- This is happening even before immersive VR games have come into common use. The trend should increase as VR becomes irresistible. BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 4 17:50:20 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 10:50:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Young USA men already moving to virtual reality In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <007b01d30d4a$25785360$7068fa20$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... -------------------- Complete Paper here: - Discussion article here: >>... Food is cheap; living with your parents is cheap; computer games are cheap. Why work? ... Then again, good games do bring happiness. Joblessness is usually a reliable predictor of misery, yet men under 30 are far less likely to be unhappy than in the early 2000s. ... ----------------- >...This is happening even before immersive VR games have come into common use. >...The trend should increase as VR becomes irresistible. >...BillK _______________________________________________ This explanation makes perfect sense to me. Many of us here have witnessed how computer games have evolved over the past 40 yrs. We remember the relatively lame Asteroids, Pong, PacMan and all that. Compare to how good these modern games have become. The games are analogous to chess in a way: five minutes to learn, a lifetime to master. Most of the games are free or nearly so. It doesn't require a car to play, no equipment to buy, immersive, alternate-universey, WOWsers. I can see why so many young men are missing in action, holed up in the bedrooms they have occupied since childhood. I get that. spike From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 4 22:47:09 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 15:47:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Young USA men already moving to virtual reality In-Reply-To: <007b01d30d4a$25785360$7068fa20$@att.net> References: <007b01d30d4a$25785360$7068fa20$@att.net> Message-ID: <002401d30d73$9c30cb80$d4926280$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... -------------------- Complete Paper here: - Discussion article here: >>... Food is cheap; living with your parents is cheap; computer games are cheap. Why work? ... Then again, good games do bring happiness. Joblessness is usually a reliable predictor of misery, yet men under 30 are far less likely to be unhappy than in the early 2000s. ... ----------------- BillK, over here in the states in the last few years, the Federal government has expanded our defacto assured minimal income program in the form of food stamps: a credit card a prole can use in grocery stores. The existence of all-consuming video gaming is the politician's best friend: it helps reduce unemployment rates. Reasoning: unemployment in the US is calculated based on how many job seekers fail to find employment. If a young gamer is not seeking a job, she does not count in the unemployment rate. While the gaming increases actual unemployment, it simultaneously decreases unemployment rates. Our societal attempt to relieve hunger enables young gamers to occupy themselves slaying virtual zombies, which creates actual zombies, increasing unemployment while simultaneously decreasing unemployment rates. Indeed day is night. Even Orwell didn't foresee this. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Aug 5 00:37:27 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 19:37:27 -0500 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 Message-ID: As a libertarian I must add that I have no objection at all to anyone playing any sort of game, video or otherwise. If someone wants to set a record at Pacman as their life's goal, then he has my respect as human being, of course, but no respect whatsoever otherwise. If, as Adrian says, a sort of glory can be achieved this way, then go for it, as it is likely the only sort he (and the occasional she) will achieve with that brain. Flaunting this success as a pickup line will, I am sure, meet with total awe on the part of the women he tries it on, though perhaps not the right sort of awe. As a psychologist I would have some suspicions about such a person who seems to want to rot his brain and develop no new neurons at all, but it's his brain. As a transhumanist I suggest that this is not at all the sort of person we want to develop - I suspect I will get no flak over this opinion. I am going to have to think some more about whether the age of the player is significant. I think it is. A Pacman player of 13 and one of 35 will be somewhat different. More research needed. I have played my share of solitaire on a PC. I found that it lets me think, as there is no time pressure in that game. Or it calms me down, distracting me from some worry or other. No harm done. Not to be overdone, of course. No difference between this and a garden walk. An entirely different situation occurs when the type of video game is played which requires strategy and tactics. Now this may in fact be predictive of success at other types of strategy, such as military or economic, in which case, as a psychologist, I would be interested in that data. It probably exists. What will people do, it is asked, in the future when machines do all the work? Far in the future we cannot see, but video games are slowly giving way to virtual reality, I have read. Are we going to try to breed or otherwise genetically eliminate from the current nature of man a need for some sort of achievement which contributes to society or at least the family (if families we will have and I think we will)? This is the type of person who will be glad to spend his waking hours at games. Is this what we want? Riders of the purple wage? A problem for the future is to find some ways of contributing to society when the machines do the work. It may be that making a better mouse trap is better done by people, so creativity will be a big asset. Someone mentioned reading Harlequin romances, presumably as an example of brainless pastimes. I actually did a lot of thinking about that. One thing that occurred to me is to think about what the men in those women's lives are not providing them, and what we might teach men about what women want - the eternal question. I read a Danielle Steele novel once,just to see what it was all about. The main man was intelligent, witty, well-built, polite, cultured and so on. The main woman was also perfect in many ways. My daughter tells me that this is what Steele writes about, so I suspect that one novel is much like another, like the Harlequin books, though perhaps Steele is at a different level. Dreaming, fantasy, escapism - no harm done, a bit of pleasure. Like ice cream - to be taken in rational quantities. I conclude that my main objection is the overdoing of video games, fantasy books of all kinds, something that might be hard to define in individual cases. If we conclude that Pacman-playing riders of the purple wage are OK with us, then overdoing is not possible. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 5 01:03:49 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 18:03:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008301d30d86$b3391e00$19ab5a00$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 >?As a libertarian I must add that I have no objection at all to anyone playing any sort of game, video or otherwise. If someone wants to set a record at Pacman as their life's goal, then he has my respect as human being, of course, but no respect whatsoever otherwise?bill w All of this. To BillW?s commentary, I would add a few thoughts. Video games are evolving and society is evolving. The games have become waaaay better than ever before, and we have no reason to assume that trend will reverse. Simultaneously, our society has made it far more comfortable to be destitute. Being broke isn?t nearly as boring and dangerous as it once was. Those two factors working together make it easy enough to foresee a future with even more gamers completely absorbed in their virtual worlds. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Sat Aug 5 01:46:45 2017 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 18:46:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I guess I don?t understand this concept of people not having work to do. They need to survive, win a mate, outbreed the competition and spread to new territory. Machines can help us do that better, and hopefully to other planets, but it doesn?t relieve us of the work of living. I already know of two guys whose wives divorced them because all the guys did was play video games. I?m pretty sure natural selection won?t take too long to course correct on this one?. Either that, or in the future, men may battle their avatars against one another in virtual worlds to win the maidens fair?.. in that case, winning the game is the same as winning THE game. Tara > On Aug 4, 2017, at 5:37 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > What will people do, it is asked, in the future when machines do all the work? Far in the future we cannot see, but video games are slowly giving way to virtual reality, I have read. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From csaucier at sovacs.com Sat Aug 5 05:41:30 2017 From: csaucier at sovacs.com (Christian Saucier) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 22:41:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I enjoy playing video games.? It is my way to disconnect after my brain has spent all it will at the end of the day.? As with any activity, doing it with compulsion is typically a sign of some imbalance in someone's life.? I work at 3 startup companies; if anything, the need to feel productive at all time is my #1 compulsion.? So I game.? Gaming allows me an escape.? What are some other real tangible benefits of gaming for me? 1- Stress relief; mental disconnect from daily troubles 2- Social relationships; I keep in touch with remote friends through MMOs 3- Story telling; I love games with strong story-lines.? Great sci-fi, horror, fantasy environments 4- Technological and artistic marvels; Games are interactive cinema!? 5- Domestic love; my girlfriend and I game together.? Sometimes nicely, sometimes not... *grin* We all need to decide for ourselves how to use our time.? I work hard so that I can be around to see the future.? I also play hard so that my mind stays sane and happy. Cheers! C. On 8/4/2017 6:46 PM, Tara Maya wrote: > I guess I don?t understand this concept of people not having work to > do. They need to survive, win a mate, outbreed the competition and > spread to new territory. Machines can help us do that better, and > hopefully to other planets, but it doesn?t relieve us of the work of > living. > > I already know of two guys whose wives divorced them because all the > guys did was play video games. I?m pretty sure natural selection won?t > take too long to course correct on this one?. > > Either that, or in the future, men may battle their avatars against > one another in virtual worlds to win the maidens fair?.. in that case, > winning the game is the same as winning THE game. > > Tara > > > > > >> On Aug 4, 2017, at 5:37 PM, William Flynn Wallace >> > wrote: >> >> What will people do, it is asked, in the future when machines do all >> the work?? Far in the future we cannot see, but video games are >> slowly giving way to virtual reality, I have read. ? > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Aug 5 10:24:26 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2017 11:24:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 5 August 2017 at 01:37, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > As a libertarian I must add that I have no objection at all to anyone > playing any sort of game, video or otherwise. If someone wants to set a > record at Pacman as their life's goal, then he has my respect as human > being, of course, but no respect whatsoever otherwise. If, as Adrian says, > a sort of glory can be achieved this way, then go for it, as it is likely > the only sort he (and the occasional she) will achieve with that brain. > Flaunting this success as a pickup line will, I am sure, meet with total > awe on the part of the women he tries it on, though perhaps not the right > sort of awe. > > As a psychologist I would have some suspicions about such a person who seems > to want to rot his brain and develop no new neurons at all, but it's his > brain. > > As a transhumanist I suggest that this is not at all the sort of person we > want to develop - I suspect I will get no flak over this opinion. > > Pacman and Solitaire are 5 minutes of relaxation and are not relevant to the virtual universe games that millions of people spend many hours playing. See: for more information. This is a huge industry, both in money and number of players. Quote: The global media and entertainment market has consistently been on the rise. The entire worldwide market is projected to grow from an estimated 1.72 trillion U.S. dollars in 2015 to 2.14 trillion U.S. dollars within five years. Gaming is an integral and ever-developing segment of this market. The two largest gaming regions, Asia Pacific and North America, are predicted to account for 78 percent of global revenues in 2017. Online gaming in particular is one of the branches that has evolved over the past decades. It includes social gaming, mobile gaming, as well as free-to-play and pay-to-play massively multiplayer gaming, otherwise know as MMO gaming. The latter two segments combined generated revenue of roughly 19.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2016 and, judging by the data volume of global online gaming traffic alone, which is forecast to grow from 126 petabytes in 2016 to 568 petabytes in 2020, it is safe to assume online gaming is here to stay. ---------------------- As Christian mentioned, these games are also social games where friends chat, form alliances, combat opposing groups, plan campaigns, etc. They are becoming more and more like a 'better' version of real-life, involving real people communicating with each other. And at this stage these games are played on screens. When immersive VR arrives, putting on the headsets will really be like entering a new world. When this is available it will become more and more difficult to tear off the headset and return to the grey colourless real world. BillK From tara at taramayastales.com Fri Aug 4 23:15:19 2017 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2017 16:15:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Young USA men already moving to virtual reality In-Reply-To: <002401d30d73$9c30cb80$d4926280$@att.net> References: <007b01d30d4a$25785360$7068fa20$@att.net> <002401d30d73$9c30cb80$d4926280$@att.net> Message-ID: <0A92F360-9FE9-457F-AF5C-1AF922684CB3@taramayastales.com> There?s nothing wrong with video games ? the good ones can teach persistence, teamwork and goal setting. But while gaming could probably replace academia with no loss, it can?t replace the necessity to take on real life work that demands sacrifice and give meaning. A so-called living wage can?t do that either. It?s simply another form of serfdom. It is a trap. I hope we will not go down that path. Tara > On Aug 4, 2017, at 3:47 PM, spike wrote: > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf > Of BillK ... > -------------------- > > Complete Paper here: - > ries-labor-june-2017.pdf> > > Discussion article here: > > >>> ... Food is cheap; living with your parents is cheap; computer games are > cheap. Why work? ... > Then again, good games do bring happiness. Joblessness is usually a reliable > predictor of misery, yet men under 30 are far less likely to be unhappy than > in the early 2000s. ... > ----------------- > > BillK, over here in the states in the last few years, the Federal government > has expanded our defacto assured minimal income program in the form of food > stamps: a credit card a prole can use in grocery stores. > > The existence of all-consuming video gaming is the politician's best friend: > it helps reduce unemployment rates. Reasoning: unemployment in the US is > calculated based on how many job seekers fail to find employment. If a > young gamer is not seeking a job, she does not count in the unemployment > rate. While the gaming increases actual unemployment, it simultaneously > decreases unemployment rates. > > Our societal attempt to relieve hunger enables young gamers to occupy > themselves slaying virtual zombies, which creates actual zombies, increasing > unemployment while simultaneously decreasing unemployment rates. > > Indeed day is night. Even Orwell didn't foresee this. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From pharos at gmail.com Sat Aug 5 11:35:30 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2017 12:35:30 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Sansar - New VR world from Linden Labs Message-ID: Start Building Your VR Second Life in Sansar July 31, 2017 by Jesse Damiani Quote: Second Life studio Linden Lab launches open beta for Sansar, a VR world where you build and monetize your own VR content. Well, wonder no more: today, Sansar enters its open beta. Anybody can sign up and start building for free?and building is exactly what the minds behind Sansar want you to do; that?s why they made it so easy. ?Sansar is completely drag-and-drop,? said Linden Lab VP of Product Bjorn Laurin. ?You can create things with normal 3D tools?Maya, 3D max?but you can also just go into the Sansar store. There?s no limit to your creations. It?s for everyone. You can be a hardcore Maya user, for example, and do things, but you can also come in and not know anything.? Sansar was engineered to be a creator platform for all, allowing users of all experience levels to create and share their experiences. ?Anyone will be able to sign up for free, download Sansar, and go and explore these creations that others have published or get started creating their own,? said Senior Director of Global Communications at Linden Lab Peter Gray. ?It?s easy to share your audiences with a link and bring your audience in that way. You can also choose to list your experience in our Atlas directory, which is open to the public. A lot of the experiences that our preview creators have made are listed in that directory where you can browse and explore, from games to educational spaces, historic recreations, sci-fi experiences?it?s just about everything you can imagine.? Sample video - 2.21mins. --------- VR is developing fast! :) BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Aug 5 16:41:05 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2017 11:41:05 -0500 Subject: [ExI] libertarian literary awards Message-ID: Please forgive me if I have posted this before: http://lfs.org/awards.shtml Libertarian book awards - I have read several of them = excellent bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Sat Aug 5 19:04:39 2017 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2017 12:04:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <056765C8-7BDA-4C7E-8FBF-9983EE567884@taramayastales.com> Yeah, critics of video games tend to emphasize how they keep people apart and isolated. But they can also bring people together. I mentioned one divorce I knew of that was caused by video games, but I should have added that I also know of one marriage. A friend of mine met her husband in one of the big games (it might have been WoW) and they fell in love online. He was from another country and actually moved to marry her. Kinda romantic, considering her avatar was a giant orc. LOL. My kids all play on their separate devices, but usually in the same game. My husband and I also are on the same ?team? in a game, and although we work in separate places, we can sneak into the gameroom during breaks throughout the workday to relax and play together. It?s fun. Tara > On Aug 5, 2017, at 3:24 AM, BillK wrote: > > As Christian mentioned, these games are also social games where > friends chat, form alliances, combat opposing groups, plan campaigns, > etc. They are becoming more and more like a 'better' version of > real-life, involving real people communicating with each other. > > And at this stage these games are played on screens. When immersive VR > arrives, putting on the headsets will really be like entering a new > world. When this is available it will become more and more difficult > to tear off the headset and return to the grey colourless real world. > > BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Aug 5 19:04:37 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2017 14:04:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: bill k wrote: When immersive VR arrives, putting on the headsets will really be like entering a new ? ? world. When this is available it will become more and more difficult to tear off the headset and return to the grey colourless real world. ------- BillK, maybe you need to get out and do some planting so you'll have something green to look at. Now if we can tour the Louvre, go underwater on coral reefs, stroll Japanese gardens and many others thing with VR, I will definitely buy into that, as I can't do that in reality any more. What Christian wrote is 100% psychologically healthy, I think. What I fear, for others, is that they will play games rather than have a life in the world of trees and flowers and other people. Retreating to video games or other pursuits, as many social phobics do, is *just not healthy*. Rather than play games, they need to develop social skills. Again, I tend to see this as a problem in a teen who isn't 'with it'. They need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, if necessary, into the world of people to develop those social skills necessary for most of us to to those things Tara listed for us. Are video games good or bad? YES!! bill w On Sat, Aug 5, 2017 at 5:24 AM, BillK wrote: > On 5 August 2017 at 01:37, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > As a libertarian I must add that I have no objection at all to anyone > > playing any sort of game, video or otherwise. If someone wants to set a > > record at Pacman as their life's goal, then he has my respect as human > > being, of course, but no respect whatsoever otherwise. If, as Adrian > says, > > a sort of glory can be achieved this way, then go for it, as it is likely > > the only sort he (and the occasional she) will achieve with that brain. > > Flaunting this success as a pickup line will, I am sure, meet with total > > awe on the part of the women he tries it on, though perhaps not the right > > sort of awe. > > > > As a psychologist I would have some suspicions about such a person who > seems > > to want to rot his brain and develop no new neurons at all, but it's his > > brain. > > > > As a transhumanist I suggest that this is not at all the sort of person > we > > want to develop - I suspect I will get no flak over this opinion. > > > > > > > Pacman and Solitaire are 5 minutes of relaxation and are not relevant > to the virtual universe games that millions of people spend many hours > playing. > > See: > for more information. > > This is a huge industry, both in money and number of players. > > Quote: > The global media and entertainment market has consistently been on the > rise. The entire worldwide market is projected to grow from an > estimated 1.72 trillion U.S. dollars in 2015 to 2.14 trillion U.S. > dollars within five years. Gaming is an integral and ever-developing > segment of this market. The two largest gaming regions, Asia Pacific > and North America, are predicted to account for 78 percent of global > revenues in 2017. Online gaming in particular is one of the branches > that has evolved over the past decades. It includes social gaming, > mobile gaming, as well as free-to-play and pay-to-play massively > multiplayer gaming, otherwise know as MMO gaming. The latter two > segments combined generated revenue of roughly 19.9 billion U.S. > dollars in 2016 and, judging by the data volume of global online > gaming traffic alone, which is forecast to grow from 126 petabytes in > 2016 to 568 petabytes in 2020, it is safe to assume online gaming is > here to stay. > ---------------------- > > > As Christian mentioned, these games are also social games where > friends chat, form alliances, combat opposing groups, plan campaigns, > etc. They are becoming more and more like a 'better' version of > real-life, involving real people communicating with each other. > > And at this stage these games are played on screens. When immersive VR > arrives, putting on the headsets will really be like entering a new > world. When this is available it will become more and more difficult > to tear off the headset and return to the grey colourless real world. > > 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 pharos at gmail.com Sun Aug 6 23:15:21 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 00:15:21 +0100 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 5 August 2017 at 20:04, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > BillK, maybe you need to get out and do some planting so you'll have > something green to look at. Now if we can tour the Louvre, go underwater on > coral reefs, stroll Japanese gardens and many others thing with VR, I will > definitely buy into that, as I can't do that in reality any more. > But I live in my parents basement! The only thing I can grow down here is mushrooms and they're not green. My parents think I left home years ago as they never look behind the storage cabinets in the basement. :) > What Christian wrote is 100% psychologically healthy, I think. What I fear, > for others, is that they will play games rather than have a life in the > world of trees and flowers and other people. Retreating to video games or > other pursuits, as many social phobics do, is just not healthy. > This is similar to why almost everybody uses Facebook every day. If all your relatives, friends and contacts are on Facebook then you have to go there as well to keep in touch. It will be the same in the VR world. If all your friends are spending their time there, then you will go there as well. > Rather than play games, they need to develop social skills. Again, I tend > to see this as a problem in a teen who isn't 'with it'. They need to be > dragged, kicking and screaming, if necessary, into the world of people to > develop those social skills necessary for most of us to to those things Tara > listed for us. > It is not just teens that are playing video games. The 20-30s males are heavily involved as well. Have you ever tried taking the smartphone away from a teen? The i-generation cannot live without their smartphone. It will be the same with the VR world. The thing is that people won't see the VR world as 'playing games'. The VR world will become more exciting and 'real' than their boring day-to-day existence. Social skills are needed to get along with other people in the VR world, just as in the old world. The world is shape-shifting around us. The future will be 'different'. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 13:58:37 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 08:58:37 -0500 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: billk wrote:But I live in my parents basement! The only thing I can grow down here is mushrooms and they're not green. - There's lot of people growing green things in basements, and the gov has helicopters with heat sensors looking for them. ----This is similar to why almost everybody uses Facebook every day. If all your relatives, friends and contacts are on Facebook then you have to go there as well to keep in touch. -------- Yes, and some of it is just pathetic - people checking email texts, Facebook etc. every 20 minutes, as if some dire disaster is going and feeling like a social outcast if nothing is there, and a gigaton of what is there is trivial stuff that doesn't need saying - truly gigantic wastes of time. Banal doesn't even start to describe it. But then, if you are not Popular, then you are just a nobody, right? Not in the 'in' group. My family, including me, are a bunch of introverted loners who keep in touch maybe once a week, or in some cases, only on holidays. Maybe we just have cases of very borderline Asberger's and social skills we are not interested in improving. Snobs, contrarians, elitists and often crabby. (Did you know that mood, such as being happy or crabby or sad is partly genetic? Suffice it to say that we are not Little Mary Sunshines in my family.) Frivolity is not in our vocabulary. I have little to no sympathy for those who are bored, what with the enormous opportunities available not only on the web. But to avail themselves they may have to actually learn something and maybe move off the sofa. Get a life - glad somebody coined that. VR will have to have incredible resolution to even begin to equal face to face situations, which provide the often necessary clues and hints of facial expression and body language which often give lie to words. And I would most certainly not rule out odors as something we can pick up on and interpret, if they are not covered up as usual with perfumes and the like (did you ever wonder why we are so turned off by body odors? I enjoy a woman smelling like a woman, not a gardenia, as much as I love gardenias). With more development I am certain to enjoy VR, though. I am also certain that many people will become addicted to VR, just the way they are with smartphones and pads, etc. But who am I to take away their toys? As for age, some people just don't grow up, and in some cases that's a good thing, but often it isn't. Some will be boys and never men. ----------- If all your relatives, friends and contacts are on Facebook then you have to go there as well to keep in touch ------- Have to? Uhuh. See every kitten picture and joke and the outcome of the vet visit for their tarantula? No thanks. Did I mention that I am a 99% introvert? We are basically very serious people (who like wit and satire and Spike's flights of fancy). I do not have to be entertained all the time by other people, or provide such, now that I am no longer a teacher. One reason I like this group is that it is not social media at all. bill w On Sun, Aug 6, 2017 at 6:15 PM, BillK wrote: > On 5 August 2017 at 20:04, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > BillK, maybe you need to get out and do some planting so you'll have > > something green to look at. Now if we can tour the Louvre, go > underwater on > > coral reefs, stroll Japanese gardens and many others thing with VR, I > will > > definitely buy into that, as I can't do that in reality any more. > > > > But I live in my parents basement! The only thing I can grow down here > is mushrooms and they're not green. My parents think I left home years > ago as they never look behind the storage cabinets in the basement. :) > > > > What Christian wrote is 100% psychologically healthy, I think. What I > fear, > > for others, is that they will play games rather than have a life in the > > world of trees and flowers and other people. Retreating to video games > or > > other pursuits, as many social phobics do, is just not healthy. > > > > This is similar to why almost everybody uses Facebook every day. If > all your relatives, friends and contacts are on Facebook then you have > to go there as well to keep in touch. It will be the same in the VR > world. If all your friends are spending their time there, then you > will go there as well. > > > > Rather than play games, they need to develop social skills. Again, I > tend > > to see this as a problem in a teen who isn't 'with it'. They need to be > > dragged, kicking and screaming, if necessary, into the world of people to > > develop those social skills necessary for most of us to to those things > Tara > > listed for us. > > > > It is not just teens that are playing video games. The 20-30s males > are heavily involved as well. > Have you ever tried taking the smartphone away from a teen? The > i-generation cannot live without their smartphone. It will be the same > with the VR world. > > The thing is that people won't see the VR world as 'playing games'. > The VR world will become more exciting and 'real' than their boring > day-to-day existence. Social skills are needed to get along with other > people in the VR world, just as in the old world. > > The world is shape-shifting around us. The future will be 'different'. > > 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 Mon Aug 7 14:47:41 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 07:47:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <012101d30f8c$2040c4b0$60c24e10$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... >...The thing is that people won't see the VR world as 'playing games'. The VR world will become more exciting and 'real' than their boring day-to-day existence... Understatement. The VR world can be more than games, more than education. We are on the verge of finding ways to make VR part of how we work. How many times have we been out and seen something that needs repair, and we have all the tools and qualifications to do it, but we don't because it isn't our property? That happens to me a lot. Imagine a VR equivalent of the Uber phenomenon. With Uber, people who own cars can sell their services, or not if it isn't convenient. We can use our networked system to connect people going in the same direction at the same time, then there is little inconvenience, value is added. I know the heck out of fixing things. I carry a lot of tools around with me everywhere I go. I can imagine a VR system which would report a broken irrigation system 300 meters away, can I go over, turn off the water (It would give me the combination to the valve lock box) go 2km over to the hardware store, get the stuff I need, fix it, turn the water back on.) I see someone broken down beside the road. In plenty of cases, I know what is wrong with their car. I can take care of getting them to their destination, hauling their Detroit to my tools or my tools to it, without all that much inconvenience. Yesterday I changed a tire beside the road. I am astonished at how many people today don't know how to do that simple task we all had to do only a few decades ago. Well no worries, we don't all need to know how to do that, or if we had a VR coach right there on our faces, any goofball coud do that job. We could use VR to dumb down so many jobs, enabling employers to get the job done at lower cost. Every employee doesn't need to know everything, if you have an on-demand workforce you hire as needed. This also greatly reduces management costs, where you need to keep your people busy in slack times. We could Uber-ize the workforce. >...The world is shape-shifting around us. The future will be 'different'. >...BillK _______________________________________________ Ja! Many exciting possibilities. Please, think of some things like those I mentioned above. For a thought experiment, imagine away the legal liability, for I have some VR ideas to keep armies of lawyers busy as well: they will spend most of their time suing each other. The rest of us will be inside a virtual limited liability shell corporation which isn't worth anything. spike From atymes at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 15:40:45 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 08:40:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: <012101d30f8c$2040c4b0$60c24e10$@att.net> References: <012101d30f8c$2040c4b0$60c24e10$@att.net> Message-ID: On Aug 7, 2017 9:04 AM, "spike" wrote: Please, think of some things like those I mentioned above. For a thought experiment, imagine away the legal liability, for I have some VR ideas to keep armies of lawyers busy as well: they will spend most of their time suing each other. The rest of us will be inside a virtual limited liability shell corporation which isn't worth anything. If it has all of us in it, it is worth a lot by definition. Even the temporary havoc if some lawyer took over the corp and ordered us all to pay fees would yield some money. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Aug 7 15:41:22 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 08:41:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <016e01d30f93$a064b500$e12e1f00$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace ------- Have to? Uhuh. See every kitten picture and joke and the outcome of the vet visit for their tarantula? No thanks. Did I mention that I am a 99% introvert? We are basically very serious people (who like wit and satire and Spike's flights of fancy). bill w What flights of fancy? I have never had one of those. Not in the past few days anyway. OK retract, not in the past few minutes. The problems with our flights is they are insufficiently fancy. Consider the Jetsons and the Flintstones. Separated in time by a few tens of thousands of years, both families with most of the same problems. The Jetsons had way better cars, houses, robot maids and so on, but our modern reality is in some ways better than their flight of fancy. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Aug 7 16:04:23 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 09:04:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: <012101d30f8c$2040c4b0$60c24e10$@att.net> Message-ID: <019501d30f96$d7a23800$86e6a800$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Monday, August 07, 2017 8:41 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] video games take 2 On Aug 7, 2017 9:04 AM, "spike" > wrote: Please, think of some things like those I mentioned above. For a thought experiment, imagine away the legal liability, for I have some VR ideas to keep armies of lawyers busy as well: they will spend most of their time suing each other. The rest of us will be inside a virtual limited liability shell corporation which isn't worth anything. If it has all of us in it, it is worth a lot by definition. Even the temporary havoc if some lawyer took over the corp and ordered us all to pay fees would yield some money. OK then, rev up your imagination, assume a legal system similar to the only one I know anything about, the US-ian, and figure out a way to do something like a Repair-Borg where risk costs are contained. Back in 2004 when I watched the first DARPA robot races thru the desert, a reporter commented that the technology could never be adapted for street use because of legal liability issues. Agreed that problem is more difficult than the controls problem, but I do not agree that it can never be solved. So are we ready to make the case that legal liabilities will prevent a Repair-Borg from ever existing now and forever? Can we not even imagine a way? I can. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 16:38:31 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 11:38:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] probably extremely simple physics problem Message-ID: Recall those Dutch windmills: huge area on the sails. Look at the current enormous wind machines for making electricity: so skinny. It would seem to a simpleton like me, that the more area you had, the more wind you caught - but apparently not - or something. What gives here? bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Aug 7 17:00:16 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 10:00:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] probably extremely simple physics problem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006c01d30f9e$a6859ca0$f390d5e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Monday, August 07, 2017 9:39 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] probably extremely simple physics problem Recall those Dutch windmills: huge area on the sails. Look at the current enormous wind machines for making electricity: so skinny. It would seem to a simpleton like me, that the more area you had, the more wind you caught - but apparently not - or something. What gives here? bill w The optimal solution was enabled by advanced material technology. Billw, the critical number is not the area of the blades but rather the swept area. Part of the reason is that having a wide chord, like the Dutch windmills, makes higher wind resistance, so they can?t turn as fast. The modern skinny blade windmills really get kiting around there, much more efficient for swatting birds into the next county. Note a sail plane, where gliding efficiency is everything: the wingspan is long and the chord is short: very efficient for glide ratio. The fighter plane has short wingspan, long chord: inefficient glide ratio, better for high performance in what fighter planes do. Cargo planes have the wider chord for increased lift capability, where speed isn?t critical. Different missions. The Dutch were using wind power to lift water, whereas the Yanks are using it to generate power: different missions. Now that you mention it however, please offer your take on something that has long puzzled me: why didn?t the Dutch get to powered flight first? They had way more understanding of aerodynamics than anyone because of their experience with the windmills. They were early adopters of the German Nickolaus Otto?s marvelous internal combustion engine. They had plenty of flat ground on which to build runways. They were well along in the industrial revolution, factories and such. They had worked out the notion of rigid cantilevered structures such the windmill blades. I am amazed the yanks would get powered flight off the ground first, with the French in close pursuit. I would have thought the Dutch would be the first to fly, followed by the Germans with the Yanks third and the French well back there. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 17:38:39 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 12:38:39 -0500 Subject: [ExI] probably extremely simple physics problem In-Reply-To: <006c01d30f9e$a6859ca0$f390d5e0$@att.net> References: <006c01d30f9e$a6859ca0$f390d5e0$@att.net> Message-ID: Maybe the Dutch are good at discovering things but not so good at following them up. Look at Antonie van Leeuwenhoek - first man to see bacteria etc. and yet it took hundreds of years before anybody made studies of them. The germ theory of disease was fought tooth and nail and talon well into the late 19th century. I seem to recall some notable physicist in the 1800s saying that heavier-than-air flight was impossible. BTY - I remember Connections and its sequel (???) very well and loved them, but for a history of science that is that interesting I dunno any others. Do you? Anybody? Connections was not like a complete textbook and probably would be dull if it were. bill w On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 12:00 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Sent:* Monday, August 07, 2017 9:39 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* [ExI] probably extremely simple physics problem > > > > Recall those Dutch windmills: huge area on the sails. Look at the > current enormous wind machines for making electricity: so skinny. > > > > It would seem to a simpleton like me, that the more area you had, the more > wind you caught - but apparently not - or something. > > > > What gives here? > > > > bill w > > > > > > The optimal solution was enabled by advanced material technology. Billw, > the critical number is not the area of the blades but rather the swept > area. Part of the reason is that having a wide chord, like the Dutch > windmills, makes higher wind resistance, so they can?t turn as fast. The > modern skinny blade windmills really get kiting around there, much more > efficient for swatting birds into the next county. > > > > Note a sail plane, where gliding efficiency is everything: the wingspan is > long and the chord is short: very efficient for glide ratio. The fighter > plane has short wingspan, long chord: inefficient glide ratio, better for > high performance in what fighter planes do. Cargo planes have the wider > chord for increased lift capability, where speed isn?t critical. Different > missions. > > > > The Dutch were using wind power to lift water, whereas the Yanks are using > it to generate power: different missions. > > > > Now that you mention it however, please offer your take on something that > has long puzzled me: why didn?t the Dutch get to powered flight first? > They had way more understanding of aerodynamics than anyone because of > their experience with the windmills. They were early adopters of the > German Nickolaus Otto?s marvelous internal combustion engine. They had > plenty of flat ground on which to build runways. They were well along in > the industrial revolution, factories and such. They had worked out the > notion of rigid cantilevered structures such the windmill blades. I am > amazed the yanks would get powered flight off the ground first, with the > French in close pursuit. I would have thought the Dutch would be the first > to fly, followed by the Germans with the Yanks third and the French well > back there. > > > > 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 Aug 7 19:49:27 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 20:49:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: <019501d30f96$d7a23800$86e6a800$@att.net> References: <012101d30f8c$2040c4b0$60c24e10$@att.net> <019501d30f96$d7a23800$86e6a800$@att.net> Message-ID: On 7 August 2017 at 17:04, spike wrote: > OK then, rev up your imagination, assume a legal system similar to the only > one I know anything about, the US-ian, and figure out a way to do something > like a Repair-Borg where risk costs are contained. > > Back in 2004 when I watched the first DARPA robot races thru the desert, a > reporter commented that the technology could never be adapted for street use > because of legal liability issues. Agreed that problem is more difficult > than the controls problem, but I do not agree that it can never be solved. > So are we ready to make the case that legal liabilities will prevent a > Repair-Borg from ever existing now and forever? Can we not even imagine a > way? I can. > Robot legal liability is currently being discussed by lawyers around the world. Their conclusions should be appearing in legislation within the next year or two. At present, manufacturers and installers of machinery can be held liable for injuries caused by their machinery under normal product liability law. e.g. if a factory robot malfunctions and injures an employee. Usually the employer or owner would not be sued if it was a manufacturing defect. The employer or owner could be sued if the malfunction was due to lack of proper maintenance or to not implementing place of work safety standards. Your Repair-Borg liability will also apply to robot vehicles, medical robots, etc. so we probably have to wait and see what law develops. BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 8 01:54:18 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 18:54:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] probably extremely simple physics problem In-Reply-To: References: <006c01d30f9e$a6859ca0$f390d5e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00b401d30fe9$401c9d10$c055d730$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace >?I seem to recall some notable physicist in the 1800s saying that heavier-than-air flight was impossible? Wouldn?t it be fun: a learned 1800s physicist is in the process of saying that heavier than air flight is impossible, right when a gull flies over and drops a load on his head. >?BTY - I remember Connections and its sequel (???) very well and loved them, but for a history of science that is that interesting I dunno any others. Do you?... The sequel is called The Day the Universe Changed. Both mini-series were excellent. >?Anybody? Connections was not like a complete textbook and probably would be dull if it were?bill w BillW, I have both books, and both are excellent. Burke stayed fairly close to the script when he made the TV series. I think of them as Britain?s answer to Sagan?s Cosmos. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Mon Aug 7 19:45:23 2017 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2017 12:45:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 8:41 AM, Tara Maya wrote: > I guess I don?t understand this concept of people not having work to do. They need to survive, win a mate, outbreed the competition and spread to new territory. Machines can help us do that better, and hopefully to other planets, but it doesn?t relieve us of the work of living. It might be worth the trouble to figure out where this cultureal, and very likely, genetic bias to work came from. Gregory Clark makes the case that it happened as a result of strong Darwinian selection in the stable agraian north west Europe between about 1200 and 1800. But northern winters and farmers may have biased selection to work for much longer than the 400 years Clark looked at. The ones with a drive to stack more firewood (and food) than the minimum made it through the occasonal extra hard winter. Their children repopulated the farms of the ones who froze. > I already know of two guys whose wives divorced them because all the guys did was play video games. I?m pretty sure natural selection won?t take too long to course correct on this one?. The whole biology business is not likely to extend long enough to get much selection. > Either that, or in the future, men may battle their avatars against one another in virtual worlds to win the maidens fair?.. in that case, winning the game is the same as winning THE game. I really don't know. We are no more than a generation from putting our own genetics under control. Selection in such a world will be by design. What are we going to design future humans to do? Keith From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 21:08:02 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 16:08:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] evolution Message-ID: I keep hearing about the Descent of Man. To me, that is a very value-ridden label, to which I strongly object. I think it ought to be the Ascent of Man (although in certain cases perhaps the descent is far more obvious). bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 22:50:40 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 15:50:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1C5018FA-A93B-46BC-883F-85410A4DF8DA@gmail.com> On Aug 9, 2017, at 2:08 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > I keep hearing about the Descent of Man. To me, that is a very value-ridden label, to which I strongly object. > > I think it ought to be the Ascent of Man (although in certain cases perhaps the descent is far more obvious). To you "ascent" is not value-ridden? At least "descent" has the connotation of being "descending from" as in "coming from" or "derived from" but "ascent" seems to have little else than a value-ridden connotation. Anyhow, wouldn't the value-neutral label be "evolution of" or "evolved from." Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 9 20:18:23 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 13:18:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: <019501d30f96$d7a23800$86e6a800$@att.net> References: <012101d30f8c$2040c4b0$60c24e10$@att.net> <019501d30f96$d7a23800$86e6a800$@att.net> Message-ID: On Aug 7, 2017 10:21 AM, "spike" wrote: OK then, rev up your imagination, assume a legal system similar to the only one I know anything about, the US-ian, and figure out a way to do something like a Repair-Borg where risk costs are contained. Something Uber-like, maybe even a DAC, where the corp is worth something but liability insurance is part of what it provides. Similar issues re: employee/contractor benefits and status, though. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 10 04:35:46 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2017 21:35:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: [ExI] evolution I keep hearing about the Descent of Man. To me, that is a very value-ridden label, to which I strongly object. I think it ought to be the Ascent of Man (although in certain cases perhaps the descent is far more obvious). bill w Eh, it?s a genealogy thing BillW. I descend from Isaac Newton Jones, that sorta thing. I do urge you to read Charles Darwin, excellent writer, such a proper gentleman you just want to hug him. He used that terminology a lot, back in the days when genealogy was popular because there weren?t any computer games. Darwin reminds me of Anders Sandberg: smart as a whip, nice, even-tempered, never has a negative thing to say about anyone, even if they deserve it. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 13:07:41 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:07:41 -0500 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> Message-ID: I have Darwin's magnum opus on my table. He does write well, but damn it, page after page of birds and more birds gets a little tedious. I just though 'ascent' deserved a bit of a joke - not much there, I reckon. bill w On Wed, Aug 9, 2017 at 11:35 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > ] *On Behalf Of *William Flynn > Wallace > *Subject:* [ExI] evolution > > > > I keep hearing about the Descent of Man. To me, that is a very > value-ridden label, to which I strongly object. > > > > I think it ought to be the Ascent of Man (although in certain cases > perhaps the descent is far more obvious). > > > > bill w > > > > > > > > Eh, it?s a genealogy thing BillW. I descend from Isaac Newton Jones, that > sorta thing. I do urge you to read Charles Darwin, excellent writer, such > a proper gentleman you just want to hug him. He used that terminology a > lot, back in the days when genealogy was popular because there weren?t any > computer games. Darwin reminds me of Anders Sandberg: smart as a whip, > nice, even-tempered, never has a negative thing to say about anyone, even > if they deserve it. > > > > 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 Thu Aug 10 13:57:24 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 14:57:24 +0100 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> Message-ID: On 10 August 2017 at 14:07, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > I have Darwin's magnum opus on my table. He does write well, but damn it, > page after page of birds and more birds gets a little tedious. > > I just thought 'ascent' deserved a bit of a joke - not much there, I reckon. > If you enjoyed 'Connections' you would probably like 'The Ascent of Man' by Dr. Bronowski. Quote: The Ascent of Man is a 13-part documentary television series produced by the BBC and Time-Life Films first broadcast in 1973; it was written and presented by Jacob Bronowski. Intended as a series of "personal view" documentaries in the manner of Kenneth Clark's 1969 series Civilisation, the series received acclaim for Bronowski's highly informed but eloquently simple analysis, his long unscripted monologues and its extensive location shoots. The title alludes to The Descent of Man, the second book on evolution by Charles Darwin. Over the series' 13 episodes, Bronowski travelled around the world in order to trace the development of human society through its understanding of science. The book of the series, The Ascent of Man: A Personal View, is an almost word-for-word transcript. -------------------- BillK From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 14:45:53 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 15:45:53 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. Message-ID: Wil Chang 9 Aug 2017 (10 min read). Quote: Instagram has hacked into your core social survival mechanisms as a tribal hunter-forager. It allows us to spread gossip, pursue social status, and make human connections. We now do it exponentially faster than ever before in the history of human civilization. We used to only compare ourselves to our 150 tribe members. Now we see the most successful, the most beautiful, the most fortunate of 7.5 billion people in our feed every day. Here?s the kicker: you only post when your life is fun and interesting. Your Instagram profile is a collection of the most amazing moments. It?s obvious that your photos don?t actually represent your actual monotonous daily affairs. Yet, when you start scrolling, you magically forget all of this. Your friends are all living wonderful, fulfilling lives while you?re scrolling in the elevator. Remember this: your friends are in their own elevators, thinking the same thing about you. ---------------------- Also has a reference list of good articles at the end for further reading. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 14:57:17 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 09:57:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 8:57 AM, BillK wrote: > On 10 August 2017 at 14:07, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > I have Darwin's magnum opus on my table. He does write well, but damn > it, > > page after page of birds and more birds gets a little tedious. > > > > I just thought 'ascent' deserved a bit of a joke - not much there, I > reckon. > > > > > If you enjoyed 'Connections' you would probably like 'The Ascent of > Man' by Dr. Bronowski. > > > > Quote: > The Ascent of Man is a 13-part documentary television series produced > by the BBC and Time-Life Films first broadcast in 1973; it was written > and presented by Jacob Bronowski. Intended as a series of "personal > view" documentaries in the manner of Kenneth Clark's 1969 series > Civilisation, the series received acclaim for Bronowski's highly > informed but eloquently simple analysis, his long unscripted > monologues and its extensive location shoots. > The title alludes to The Descent of Man, the second book on evolution > by Charles Darwin. Over the series' 13 episodes, Bronowski travelled > around the world in order to trace the development of human society > through its understanding of science. > The book of the series, The Ascent of Man: A Personal View, is an > almost word-for-word transcript. > -------------------- > BillK > ?This is a good example of how the mind works. I thought I had come up with a little twist on 'descent' by using 'ascent', only to find out from the ever helpful billK that it probably was in my unconscious since 1973, only to surface as something 'original'. Go figure. 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 Thu Aug 10 15:10:28 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:10:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> Message-ID: <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 6:08 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] evolution I have Darwin's magnum opus on my table. He does write well, but damn it, page after page of birds and more birds gets a little tedious. I just though 'ascent' deserved a bit of a joke - not much there, I reckon. bill w WHAT? Humor on ExI? Scandal! He was into birds, ja. Birds are cool, but not everyone is into them, no worries. Skip to that marvelous chapter 7, instinct and ants. Oh that guy was on it. Soooo on it. Bugs. On this last vacation, I finally got a good photo of the most difficult bug to photograph I have ever seen. They are extremely aware of their surroundings and are very skilled fliers. Whereas most beetles are clumsy aviators, this guy really knows his stuff in the air: spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 31622 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 10 15:34:10 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:34:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> Message-ID: <00b801d311ee$1d5896b0$5809c410$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike >?They are extremely aware of their surroundings ?spike Other bugs seem to not know or care if they are being photographed, such as this marvelous beast. I have been vacationing at Mount Rainier for 30 yrs, but have never seen this species. I looked in the vanilla-leaf clover meadows for hours, never found a second one. I don?t know what the heck this is, but just as I was leaving for vacation BillK or someone posted a link to a species identification software site. I had insufficient bandwidth to download that at the time. If some kind soul knows that link, I am ready to play with it now. I might be able to find it again. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 17504 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 15:57:57 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 16:57:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <00b801d311ee$1d5896b0$5809c410$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <00b801d311ee$1d5896b0$5809c410$@att.net> Message-ID: On 10 August 2017 at 16:34, spike wrote: > > I don?t know what the heck this is, but just as I was leaving for vacation > BillK or someone posted a link to a species identification software site. I > had insufficient bandwidth to download that at the time. If some kind soul > knows that link, I am ready to play with it now. I might be able to find it > again. > It's in the archives, but here's the link - BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 19:20:00 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 15:20:00 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 12:35 AM, spike wrote: > ?> ? > I do urge you to read Charles Darwin, excellent writer, such a proper > gentleman you just want to hug him. > > ?I agree, even if you took away his genius Darwin was the sort of person you'd want to have as a friend. Not all great scientists are like that, Newton was a very unpleasant character. ? > ?> ? > Darwin reminds me of Anders Sandberg: smart as a whip, nice, > even-tempered, never has a negative thing to say about anyone, even if they > deserve it. > > ?About the only person Darwin just couldn't stand was Richard Owen, the man who coined the word "dinosaur". Owen was in the habit of writing savage reviews of Origin Of Species anonymously (but Darwin found out who was doing it) while praising his own work in the third person. ? ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 19:30:12 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 15:30:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 11:10 AM, spike wrote: > > > Bugs. On this last vacation, I finally got a good photo of the most > difficult bug to photograph I have ever seen. They are extremely aware of > their surroundings and are very skilled fliers. Whereas most beetles are > clumsy aviators, this guy really knows his stuff in the air: > > > > > > Six-spotted tiger beetle? -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 31622 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 19:36:46 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 15:36:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <00b801d311ee$1d5896b0$5809c410$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <00b801d311ee$1d5896b0$5809c410$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 11:34 AM, spike wrote: > > > Other bugs seem to not know or care if they are being photographed, such > as this marvelous beast. I have been vacationing at Mount Rainier for 30 > yrs, but have never seen this species. I looked in the vanilla-leaf clover > meadows for hours, never found a second one. > > > > Couple more pics of that one here: http://www.inforochester.com/insects.htm from Rochester, NY, also unidentified. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 17504 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 10 19:49:25 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 12:49:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> Message-ID: <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 12:30 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] evolution On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 11:10 AM, spike > wrote: Bugs. On this last vacation, I finally got a good photo of the most difficult bug to photograph I have ever seen. They are extremely aware of their surroundings and are very skilled fliers. Whereas most beetles are clumsy aviators, this guy really knows his stuff in the air: Six-spotted tiger beetle? -Dave Sure enough, right on Dave. The name is paradoxical, since an example they show on Wiki has 8 spots: That is their real color however. This is a perfect example of why I wanted to have BillK?s entomology program running on my phone. Comment from the Wiki site: >?Although tiger beetles are not gregarious, many beetles may sometimes be seen in one suitable hunting area. The female lays her eggs in sandy patches, and the larvae burrow into the ground after they hatch. Here they lie in wait until small arthropods pass by, at which time the larvae lunge out of their burrows at their prey like jack-in-the-boxes? That would be cool to see. Had I known that, I would have looked around for a sandy area and arranged for a small arthropod to pass by. Here?s a video of what they are calling the emerald tiger beetle, which is really a better name methinks. Beetles generally don?t dart about, but this guy does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94wh7k87Vhs Here?s a video of a larval campestris nabbing an ant. Blump: http://www.arkive.org/green-tiger-beetle/cicindela-campestris/video-09.html Cool! Now, every time you see something like this, does it not make you marvel at our good fortune to have been born late enough in history that we have all this cool stuff right in front of us? We don?t even need to hike up into the mountains as I did to get the original photo. Just click and devour all that cool information. Life? is? goooooood? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 31622 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image004.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 14101 bytes Desc: not available URL: From atymes at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 15:41:59 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:41:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Your friends are all living wonderful, fulfilling lives while you?re scrolling in the elevator. Remember this: your friends are in their own elevators, thinking the same thing about you. Ah yes, this. My own version: "You never know when you're being worshipped, even by your idols." (Unless someone's being obvious about it right in front of you, but that almost never happens.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 10 20:04:51 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 13:04:51 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <00b801d311ee$1d5896b0$5809c410$@att.net> Message-ID: <018401d31213$edebab80$c9c30280$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dave Sill Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 12:37 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] evolution On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 11:34 AM, spike > wrote: >>? I looked in the vanilla-leaf clover meadows for hours, never found a second one. >?Couple more pics of that one here: http://www.inforochester.com/insects.htm from Rochester, NY, also unidentified. -Dave OK cool now to the punchline in its relevance to transhumanism. Those of us who have been into entomology for decades are experiencing a high, like being on dope only cheaper: we can carry our phones around with us and have godlike knowledge over the things we see every time we are out and about. Oh the power! It is like having a Star Trek tricorder. For all that time before about 5 yrs ago (when I got a phone with a good camera in it) I would see something like this damsel fly, and would have no way to record it or do anything, couldn?t find out what it was, where and how it lives, how to find them, none of it. That observation was an evanescent memory, experienced, then gone. In my life there are plenty of bugs I saw exactly once, just once. Good chance I will never run across another one. The damsel fly is a good example: had I not had that camera and all the new software tools, that observation would be lost forever. Now we have a way to observe, understand, record and get the info needed to do further observations. Amateur science is unleashed. The power! Buggery has never seen anything like it. I am high on that. This whole concept must be expandable to our transhuman dreams in some way. We must somehow find systematic ways to observe, tap into the transhuman equivalent of the new and marvelous entomology online toolkit. I don?t know what and I don?t know how, but I am pondering the transhuman counterpart of BillK?s bug site. Ideas please? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 20:48:04 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 16:48:04 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 3:49 PM, spike wrote: > > > That is their real color however. > A good example of structural color. This is a perfect example of why I wanted to have BillK?s entomology > program running on my phone. > > > > Comment from the Wiki site: > > > > >?Although tiger beetles are not gregarious > , many beetles may sometimes be > seen in one suitable hunting area. The female lays her eggs in sandy > patches, and the larvae burrow into > the ground after they hatch. Here they lie in wait until small arthropods > pass by, at which time the larvae lunge out of their burrows at their prey > like jack-in-the-boxes? > That reminded me of antlions...until I watched the video. That would be cool to see. Had I known that, I would have looked around > for a sandy area and arranged for a small arthropod to pass by. > > > > Here?s a video of what they are calling the emerald tiger beetle, which is > really a better name methinks. Beetles generally don?t dart about, but > this guy does: > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94wh7k87Vhs > > > > Here?s a video of a larval campestris nabbing an ant. Blump: > > > > http://www.arkive.org/green-tiger-beetle/cicindela- > campestris/video-09.html > > > > Cool! > Holy smokes, is that thing fast! > Now, every time you see something like this, does it not make you marvel > at our good fortune to have been born late enough in history that we have > all this cool stuff right in front of us? We don?t even need to hike up > into the mountains as I did to get the original photo. Just click and > devour all that cool information. > Yeah, we have libraries and librarians in our pockets. Life? is? goooooood? > There's still plenty of suck to go around, unfortunately. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Thu Aug 10 21:02:48 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 17:02:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Building the Case that Aging is Controlled from the Brain Message-ID: Found this pretty interesting: https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2017/08/07/building-the-case-that-aging-is-controlled-from-the-brain/ *Last week, a new study came out fingering the hypothalamus as locus of a clock that modulates aging. This encourages those of us who entertain the most optimistic scenarios for anti-aging medicine. Could it be that altering the biochemistry of one tiny control center might effect global rejuvenation? * *First some background?.* *I have staked my career on the interpretation that aging unfolds under the body?s full control. Even those aspects of aging that look like random damage are actually damage that is permitted to accumulate as the body pulls back its defense mechanisms late in life and dials up some biochemical processes that look an awful lot like deliberate self-destruction* *I believe that aging is governed by an internal biological clock, or several semi-independent and redundant clocks. There are* *A telomere clock, counting cell divisions on a flexible schedule, eventually producing cells with short-telomeres that poison us.* *The thymus, crucial training ground for our white blood cells, shrinks through a lifetime.* *An epigenetic clock alters gene expression over time in directions that give rise to self-destruction.* *A neuroendocrine clock in the hypothalamus* *Perhaps other clocks, yet to be identified.* *?* *A dream is to be able to reset the hands of the clock. If we?re lucky, then changing the state of some metabolic subsystem will not just temper the rate at which we age, but actually restore the body to a younger state. Most of the research in anti-aging medicine is still devoted to ways to engineer fixes for damage the body has allowed to accumulate; but I belong to a wild-eyed contingent that thinks the body can do its own fixing if we understand the signaling language well enough to speak the word ?youth? in the body?s native biochemical tongue.* *Some of these clocks are more accessible and easier to manipulate than others. The epigenetic clock is most daunting, because it presents the spectre of a global network of signal molecules circulating in the blood, transcription factors that mutually support one another in a state of slowly-shifting homeostasis. This system could be so complex that it might take decades to understand, and then hundreds of different signal molecules in the blood would need to be re-balanced in order to recreate homeostasis in a younger condition. (For several years, the Mike and Irina Conboy have been looking for a small subset of molecules that might control the rest, but in a private conversation they recently told me they are less optimistic that a small number of factors controls all the rest.)* *At the other end of the spectrum, the hypothalamic clock presents the most optimistic scenario. It is tightly localized in a tiny region of the brain, and might be relatively easy to manipulate, with consequences that rejuvenate the entire body. The hypothalamic clock hypothesis is an attractive target for research because, if correct, it will offer direct and straightforward control over the body?s metabolic age.* *That aging unfolds according to an internal clock remains a controversial claim, but what everyone agrees is that the body has some way to know how old it is. There has to be a clock for development that determines when growth surges and stops, when sex hormones turn on and, if it?s not too great a stretch, when fertility ends and menopause unfolds.* *The clock that governs growth and development has yet to be elucidated?a major metabolic mystery by my lights. The clock that we know about and (sort of) understand is the circadian day-night clock that governs sleep and waking, giving us energy at some times of the day but not others.* *Is the life history clock linked to the circadian clock? Maybe the body just counts days to tell how old it is? This possibility was eliminated, at least for flies, using experiments with cycles of light and dark that were consistently longer or shorter than 24 hours. Flies living with fast day-night cycles (less than 24 hours) lived shorter, as predicted; but flies living with long day-night cycles failed to have longer lifetimes, In fact, deviation from 24 hours in either direction shorten the fly?s lifespan [2005]. * *But this study suggests the short-term clock and the long-term clock may be linked in a way that is less straightforward. Melatonin may be another reason to expect a connection. Melatonin is the body?s cue for sleep, and Russian studies have documented a role for melatonin in aging. A third motivation comes from the fact that aging disrupts sleep cycles, and (in a downward spiral) disrupted sleep cycles are also a risk factor for mortality and diseases of old age.* *Cells seem to have their own, built-in daily rhythms. I want to say ?transcriptional rhythms?, adding the idea that gene transcription is the locus of control; however, red blood cells are the counterexample?they exhibit daily cycles, even though they have no DNA to transcribe [2011]. Individual cycles are designed to be 24 hours, but they would soon drift out of phase with day and night if they weren?t centrally coordinated. The reference clock that keeps the others in line is in the SCN, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a handful of nerve cells in a neuroendocrine part of the brain called the hypothalamus.* *Think of a million pendulums that are all tuned to swing with a period of 24 hours. All that it takes is a tiny nudge to all these pendulums each day to keep them in phase with one another, so they are all swinging together. The SCN provides this nudge in a smart way, based on information from the eyes (light and dark) and endocrine signals that indicate activity and sleep. The SCN is upstream of the pineal gland, and supplies the signal that tells the pineal gland when it?s time to make melatonthematic index of scarsonatas. The natural resonances of individual cells become entrained in a body-wide response.* *What does all this have to do with aging?* *Experiments in the 1980s and 90s showed that the SCN is related to annual cycles, but the relationship seems to be not as strong or as simple or as direct. For example, squirrels in which the SCN was removed had no daily sleep-wake cycles at all, but their annual cycles of fertility and oscillations of weight were affected inconsistently, more in some animals than others. Transplanting a SCN from young hamsters into old hamsters cut their mortality rate by more than half, and extended their life expectancies by 4 months [1998].* *I have written in this column [one, two] about research from the laboratory of Claudia Cavadas (U of Coimbra, near Lisbon) indicating that inflammation and inflammatory cytokines in the hypothalamus are at the headwaters of a cascade of signals that lead to whole-body aging. They have emphasized the role of TGF? binding to ALK5 and of the neurotransmitter NPY. We usually think of inflammation as a source of damage throughout the body, but in the hypothalamus, inflammation seems to have a role that is more insidious than this, with full-body repercussions. Blocking inflammation in the hypothalamus is a promising anti-aging strategy.* *New Paper on micro RNAs from the Hypothalamus* *Along with Cavadas, Dongshen Cai (Einstein College of Medicine) has been a leader in exploring neuroendocrine control of aging that originates in the hypothalamus. Several years ago, Cai?s group demonstrated that aging could be slowed in mice by inhibiting the inflammatory cytokine NF-kB and the related cytokine IKK-? just in one tiny area of the brain, the hypothalamus. ?In conclusion, the hypothalamus has a programmatic role in ageing development via immune?neuroendocrine integration?? They summarized findings from their own lab, suggesting that metabolic syndrome, glucose intolerance, weight gain and hypertension could all be exacerbated by signals from the inflamed hypothalamus. In agreement with Cacadas, they identified GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone) as one downstream target, and were able to delay aging simply by treatment with this one hormone. IKK-? is produced by microglial cells in the hypothalamus of old mice but not young mice. Genetically modified IKK-? knock-out mice developed normally but lived longer and retained youthful brain performance later in life.* *In the new paper, Cai?s group identified micro-RNAs, secreted by the aging hypothalamus and circulating through the spinal fluid, that contribute to aging. A small number of stem cells in the hypothalamus were found to keep the mouse young, in part by secreting these micro-RNAs. Mice in which these stem cells were ablated had foreshortened life spans; old mice that were treated with implants of hypothalamic stem cells from younger mice were rejuvenated and lived longer. A class of neuroendocrine stem cells from the third ventricle wall of the hypothalamus (nt-NSC?s) was identified as having a powerful programmatic effect on aging. These cells are normally lost with age, and restoring these cells alone in old mice extended their life spans.* *Exosomes are little packets of signal chemicals. Micro-RNAs from stem cells in the hypothalamus are collected into exosomes and shipped down through the spinal fluid. These exosomes seem to constitute a feedback loop. On the one hand, they are generated by the hypothalamic stem cells. On the other hand, they play a role in keeping these same cells young, and producing more exosomes.* *Life extension of about 12% was impressive given that there was just one intervention when the mice were more than 1? years old, but of course it?s not what we would hope for if the master aging clock were reset. For really large increases in lifespan, we will probably need to reset two or even three of the clocks at once.* *The Bottom Line* *The reason the body has multiple, redundant aging clocks is to assure that natural selection can?t defeat aging by throwing a single switch. That means the clocks must be at least somewhat independent. Nevertheless, I judge it is likely that there is some crosstalk among clocks, because that?s how biology usually works. To effect rejuvenation, we will have to address all aging clocks, but we see some benefit from resetting even one, and expect more significant benefit from resetting two or more.* *The most challenging target is the epigenetic clock,built on a homeostasis of transcription and signaling among hundreds of hormones that each affect levels of the others. Reverse engineering this tangle will be a bear.* *The idea of a centralized aging clock in the hypothalamus seems far more accessible, and is promising for the medium term. Still, it does not suggest immediate application to remedies. The hypothalamus is deep in the brain, and you and I might be reluctant to accept a treatment that required drilling through the skull. A treatment based on circulating proteins and RNAs from the hypothalamus would be less invasive, but even that might have to be intravenous, and include some chemistry for penetrating the blood-brain barrier. RNA exosomes seem to be our best opportunity* *As Cavadas?s group has already pointed out, it is inflammation in the hypothalamus that is amplified by signaling to become most damaging to the entire body. This raises the interesting question: could it be that the modest anti-aging power of NSAIDs is entirely due to their action within the brain? In other words, maybe ?inflammaging? is largely localized to the hypothalamus.* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Thu Aug 10 20:19:22 2017 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 16:19:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> Message-ID: <250c59210ba5444891d11e38af69e03d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> > That would be cool to see. Had I known that, I would have > looked around for a sandy area and arranged for a small > arthropod to pass by. > Oh spike, where did you grow up???? That's similar to what doodlebugs do, only thay make a pit-trap for the ant to fall into, then they catch them. Surely you recall that from your childhood? Regards, MB From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 10 21:14:52 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 14:14:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <01f601d3121d$b600e5a0$2202b0e0$@att.net> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. Your friends are all living wonderful, fulfilling lives while you?re scrolling in the elevator. Remember this: your friends are in their own elevators, thinking the same thing about you. >?Ah yes, this. My own version: "You never know when you're being worshipped, even by your idols." (Unless someone's being obvious about it right in front of you, but that almost never happens.) Ha, Adrian you should be one of my idols. I would fall prostrate before you and beg forgiveness of my abject failure to solve the random tetrahedron integrals. Bystanders would all be like ??whaaat in the heeeellllll??? My idols don?t enjoy being worshiped as much as I would think. They are often seen fleeing whenever they see me coming at the local Extro-schmoozes and such. Adrian, don?t worry man, you are one of my highly esteemed colleagues. I won?t do the I?m unworthy thing on the floor but I will buy the beer next time. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 10 21:43:26 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 14:43:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <250c59210ba5444891d11e38af69e03d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> <250c59210ba5444891d11e38af69e03d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> Message-ID: <022601d31221$b35a59e0$1a0f0da0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of MB Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 1:19 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] evolution > That would be cool to see. Had I known that, I would have looked > around for a sandy area and arranged for a small arthropod to pass by. > Oh spike, where did you grow up???? That's similar to what doodlebugs do, only thay make a pit-trap for the ant to fall into, then they catch them. Surely you recall that from your childhood? Regards, MB _______________________________________________ Of course! We called them ant lions, but since you mention that particular beast, I have an a fun story from the 1960s. You recall elementary school back in the day perhaps if you are old enough: if the teacher was feeling lazy she (they were all she back then) would put on a film in the old time projector and kick back for half an hour. You might recall plenty of those science films were full of baloney. For instance, the one that comes to mind is an anthropology film which claimed the thing that sets humans apart from all other species was his ability to make tools. They mentioned the notion was challenged by the observation of chimps stripping a twig to make a termite-extraction tool. Afterwards in the discussion, I questioned that too. Plenty of beasts make tools. We could witness one creating a tool and using it right outside the door without having to go on a field trip. My open-minded teacher indulged me and allowed the class to witness, as I stepped out, dug an ant lion out of the ground, poured the sand away to isolate the ant lion, placed him on the sand. We watched him flick sand to create an inverted cone ant trap. There ya go: beast making a tool. Then I took an ant, put her in the trap, ant lion flipped the sand, grabbed the ant: beast using a tool. My teacher didn't even attempt to claim that act didn't count as tool making. The discussion evolved into birds gathering twigs to make a nest. A home is a tool. A spider's web is a tool. The beaver makes a dam which is a tool for backing up water, providing a barrier to trap fish. The orcas work together to create a bubble curtain to herd schools of fish. Orcas are in a whole nuther category: those guys work together to do all kindsa cool stuff. Whoever made that film displayed a remarkable lack of imagination. If you look closely enough, we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, and many of them make tools. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 00:56:24 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 19:56:24 -0500 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <022601d31221$b35a59e0$1a0f0da0$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> <250c59210ba5444891d11e38af69e03d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <022601d31221$b35a59e0$1a0f0da0$@att.net> Message-ID: spike wrote we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, and many of them make tools. ?There is a problem here with interpretation. If a person, aka human, used a tool, he must have learned it somehow, watching, experimenting - aka learning either from others or just from messing around. I think that anyone who has worked on cars has invented a tool, perhaps using two different tools to do a job. The examples you gave of tool use were all instincts - aka not learned. The thing about people is their adaptability. We can create tools or use tools for something other than their intended purpose. Animals - aka other animals - tend to do the same thing over and over, and the behavior does not vary much at all from one individual to another. For you to show that animals do use tools in much the same way we do, you'll have to show changes in their instinctive behaviors and I don't think you can do that. A spider won't build a different web if the one she has stays empty. And the tool use will have to be relatively unique - unlike other individuals of that species. So show me learning to use tools and I'll be happy with that. bill w ? On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 4:43 PM, spike wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On > Behalf > Of MB > Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 1:19 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] evolution > > > > That would be cool to see. Had I known that, I would have looked > > around for a sandy area and arranged for a small arthropod to pass by. > > > > > Oh spike, where did you grow up???? That's similar to > what doodlebugs do, only thay make a pit-trap for the ant > to fall into, then they catch them. Surely you recall > that from your childhood? > > > Regards, > MB > _______________________________________________ > > > > Of course! We called them ant lions, but since you mention that particular > beast, I have an a fun story from the 1960s. You recall elementary school > back in the day perhaps if you are old enough: if the teacher was feeling > lazy she (they were all she back then) would put on a film in the old time > projector and kick back for half an hour. > > You might recall plenty of those science films were full of baloney. For > instance, the one that comes to mind is an anthropology film which claimed > the thing that sets humans apart from all other species was his ability to > make tools. They mentioned the notion was challenged by the observation of > chimps stripping a twig to make a termite-extraction tool. Afterwards in > the discussion, I questioned that too. Plenty of beasts make tools. We > could witness one creating a tool and using it right outside the door > without having to go on a field trip. > > My open-minded teacher indulged me and allowed the class to witness, as I > stepped out, dug an ant lion out of the ground, poured the sand away to > isolate the ant lion, placed him on the sand. We watched him flick sand to > create an inverted cone ant trap. There ya go: beast making a tool. Then > I > took an ant, put her in the trap, ant lion flipped the sand, grabbed the > ant: beast using a tool. > > My teacher didn't even attempt to claim that act didn't count as tool > making. The discussion evolved into birds gathering twigs to make a nest. > A home is a tool. A spider's web is a tool. The beaver makes a dam which > is a tool for backing up water, providing a barrier to trap fish. The > orcas > work together to create a bubble curtain to herd schools of fish. Orcas > are > in a whole nuther category: those guys work together to do all kindsa cool > stuff. > > Whoever made that film displayed a remarkable lack of imagination. If you > look closely enough, we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, > and > many of them make tools. > > 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 Fri Aug 11 01:25:23 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 18:25:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> <250c59210ba5444891d11e38af69e03d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <022601d31221$b35a59e0$1a0f0da0$@att.net> Message-ID: <8DBEDEE7-C7EC-4A31-ADE5-FA54C696CA16@gmail.com> What about the evidence of crows fashioning wires for use? And of other primates using tools -- where they seem to learn as humans do by watching others? Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap > On Aug 10, 2017, at 5:56 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > spike wrote we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, and > many of them make tools. > > ?There is a problem here with interpretation. If a person, aka human, used a tool, he must have learned it somehow, watching, experimenting - aka learning either from others or just from messing around. I think that anyone who has worked on cars has invented a tool, perhaps using two different tools to do a job. > > The examples you gave of tool use were all instincts - aka not learned. The thing about people is their adaptability. We can create tools or use tools for something other than their intended purpose. Animals - aka other animals - tend to do the same thing over and over, and the behavior does not vary much at all from one individual to another. > > For you to show that animals do use tools in much the same way we do, you'll have to show changes in their instinctive behaviors and I don't think you can do that. A spider won't build a different web if the one she has stays empty. And the tool use will have to be relatively unique - unlike other individuals of that species. > > So show me learning to use tools and I'll be happy with that. > > bill w > > ? > > >> On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 4:43 PM, spike wrote: >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf >> Of MB >> Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 1:19 PM >> To: ExI chat list >> Subject: Re: [ExI] evolution >> >> >> > That would be cool to see. Had I known that, I would have looked >> > around for a sandy area and arranged for a small arthropod to pass by. >> > >> >> >> Oh spike, where did you grow up???? That's similar to >> what doodlebugs do, only thay make a pit-trap for the ant >> to fall into, then they catch them. Surely you recall >> that from your childhood? >> >> >> Regards, >> MB >> _______________________________________________ >> >> >> >> Of course! We called them ant lions, but since you mention that particular >> beast, I have an a fun story from the 1960s. You recall elementary school >> back in the day perhaps if you are old enough: if the teacher was feeling >> lazy she (they were all she back then) would put on a film in the old time >> projector and kick back for half an hour. >> >> You might recall plenty of those science films were full of baloney. For >> instance, the one that comes to mind is an anthropology film which claimed >> the thing that sets humans apart from all other species was his ability to >> make tools. They mentioned the notion was challenged by the observation of >> chimps stripping a twig to make a termite-extraction tool. Afterwards in >> the discussion, I questioned that too. Plenty of beasts make tools. We >> could witness one creating a tool and using it right outside the door >> without having to go on a field trip. >> >> My open-minded teacher indulged me and allowed the class to witness, as I >> stepped out, dug an ant lion out of the ground, poured the sand away to >> isolate the ant lion, placed him on the sand. We watched him flick sand to >> create an inverted cone ant trap. There ya go: beast making a tool. Then I >> took an ant, put her in the trap, ant lion flipped the sand, grabbed the >> ant: beast using a tool. >> >> My teacher didn't even attempt to claim that act didn't count as tool >> making. The discussion evolved into birds gathering twigs to make a nest. >> A home is a tool. A spider's web is a tool. The beaver makes a dam which >> is a tool for backing up water, providing a barrier to trap fish. The orcas >> work together to create a bubble curtain to herd schools of fish. Orcas are >> in a whole nuther category: those guys work together to do all kindsa cool >> stuff. >> >> Whoever made that film displayed a remarkable lack of imagination. If you >> look closely enough, we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, and >> many of them make tools. >> >> spike >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu Fri Aug 11 01:35:18 2017 From: hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu (Henry Rivera) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 21:35:18 -0400 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> <250c59210ba5444891d11e38af69e03d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <022601d31221$b35a59e0$1a0f0da0$@att.net> Message-ID: <9A1C27F0-EF5E-4B7C-909C-BEFE4A21B5A9@alumni.virginia.edu> Bill, I can't tell how strict you are being here, so this may just be a matter of you having a very high standard of what constitutes tool use/creating tools/learning to use tools, but there are plenty of scholarly articles, web pages indexed by google, and videos demonstrating various degrees of tool use by non-human animals. Just search for "ethology tool use" to see what I mean. Or "birds using tools" on YouTube. Some of these are quite impressive IMHO. -Henry > On Aug 10, 2017, at 8:56 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > spike wrote we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, and > many of them make tools. > > ?There is a problem here with interpretation. If a person, aka human, used a tool, he must have learned it somehow, watching, experimenting - aka learning either from others or just from messing around. I think that anyone who has worked on cars has invented a tool, perhaps using two different tools to do a job. > > The examples you gave of tool use were all instincts - aka not learned. The thing about people is their adaptability. We can create tools or use tools for something other than their intended purpose. Animals - aka other animals - tend to do the same thing over and over, and the behavior does not vary much at all from one individual to another. > > For you to show that animals do use tools in much the same way we do, you'll have to show changes in their instinctive behaviors and I don't think you can do that. A spider won't build a different web if the one she has stays empty. And the tool use will have to be relatively unique - unlike other individuals of that species. > > So show me learning to use tools and I'll be happy with that. > > bill w > > ? > > >> On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 4:43 PM, spike wrote: >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf >> Of MB >> Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2017 1:19 PM >> To: ExI chat list >> Subject: Re: [ExI] evolution >> >> >> > That would be cool to see. Had I known that, I would have looked >> > around for a sandy area and arranged for a small arthropod to pass by. >> > >> >> >> Oh spike, where did you grow up???? That's similar to >> what doodlebugs do, only thay make a pit-trap for the ant >> to fall into, then they catch them. Surely you recall >> that from your childhood? >> >> >> Regards, >> MB >> _______________________________________________ >> >> >> >> Of course! We called them ant lions, but since you mention that particular >> beast, I have an a fun story from the 1960s. You recall elementary school >> back in the day perhaps if you are old enough: if the teacher was feeling >> lazy she (they were all she back then) would put on a film in the old time >> projector and kick back for half an hour. >> >> You might recall plenty of those science films were full of baloney. For >> instance, the one that comes to mind is an anthropology film which claimed >> the thing that sets humans apart from all other species was his ability to >> make tools. They mentioned the notion was challenged by the observation of >> chimps stripping a twig to make a termite-extraction tool. Afterwards in >> the discussion, I questioned that too. Plenty of beasts make tools. We >> could witness one creating a tool and using it right outside the door >> without having to go on a field trip. >> >> My open-minded teacher indulged me and allowed the class to witness, as I >> stepped out, dug an ant lion out of the ground, poured the sand away to >> isolate the ant lion, placed him on the sand. We watched him flick sand to >> create an inverted cone ant trap. There ya go: beast making a tool. Then I >> took an ant, put her in the trap, ant lion flipped the sand, grabbed the >> ant: beast using a tool. >> >> My teacher didn't even attempt to claim that act didn't count as tool >> making. The discussion evolved into birds gathering twigs to make a nest. >> A home is a tool. A spider's web is a tool. The beaver makes a dam which >> is a tool for backing up water, providing a barrier to trap fish. The orcas >> work together to create a bubble curtain to herd schools of fish. Orcas are >> in a whole nuther category: those guys work together to do all kindsa cool >> stuff. >> >> Whoever made that film displayed a remarkable lack of imagination. If you >> look closely enough, we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, and >> many of them make tools. >> >> spike >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 11 01:46:42 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 18:46:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> <250c59210ba5444891d11e38af69e03d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <022601d31221$b35a59e0$1a0f0da0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00ad01d31243$af5f6610$0e1e3230$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] evolution spike wrote we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, and many of them make tools. ?>?There is a problem here with interpretation. If a person, aka human, used a tool, he must have learned it somehow, watching, experimenting - aka learning either from others or just from messing around? So show me learning to use tools and I'll be happy with that. bill w ? I don?t have a reference, but the chimps might be our best bet: the mother chimps show their offspring how to make a termite catching stick by choosing a long straight twig and stripping the leaves. Some chimps never learn how to do that. Jared Diamond (I think he was the one) observed that chimps seem to learn that skill easier than humans do. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tara at taramayastales.com Thu Aug 10 23:37:20 2017 From: tara at taramayastales.com (Tara Maya) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 16:37:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5CC0CFE9-7FAA-4062-8038-CD05687A9676@taramayastales.com> > > On Aug 7, 2017, at 12:45 PM, Keith Henson wrote: > > > Gregory Clark makes the case that it happened as a result of strong > Darwinian selection in the stable agraian north west Europe between > about 1200 and 1800. Maybe we aren?t talking about the same thing. Clark seems to be referring to a cultural work ethic. I?m referring to the fact that life takes work. That?s a biological feature that?s evolved as a result of strong Darwinian selection over the last 3.5 billion years. Any species that deludes itself this isn?t true will go extinct. Tara From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 13:33:30 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 08:33:30 -0500 Subject: [ExI] evolution In-Reply-To: <00ad01d31243$af5f6610$0e1e3230$@att.net> References: <005401d31176$d3c2f9e0$7b48eda0$@rainier66.com> <00c301d31192$239bd930$6ad38b90$@att.net> <009d01d311ea$cddd05b0$69971110$@att.net> <016e01d31211$c5a75c20$50f61460$@att.net> <250c59210ba5444891d11e38af69e03d.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> <022601d31221$b35a59e0$1a0f0da0$@att.net> <00ad01d31243$af5f6610$0e1e3230$@att.net> Message-ID: I can't tell how strict you are being here, so this may just be a matter of you having a very high standard of what constitutes tool use/creating tools/learning to use tools, but there are plenty of scholarly articles, web pages indexed by google, and videos demonstrating various degrees of tool use by non-human animals. Just search for "ethology tool use" to see what I mean. Or "birds using tools" on YouTube. Some of these are quite impressive IMHO. -Henry *Hey, I never said that there weren't any lower animals using tools, but I did have problem with spiders and beaver dams.* *The toughest problem with discerning instinct from learned behavior is that to qualify for instinctive, the behavior has to be unlearned (among other criteria). It's hard to prove that. If a baby chimp watches his mother use a stick as a tool, is he learning? Well, certainly he can, which proves nothing. Would he have grown up to use that tool anyway? * *Some studies have separated babies from parents to see what the kid will do without opportunities to learn, and complex patterns that show up are then instinctive. Unless, of course, you have raised a critter that is different because of having no parents around.* * In sum, it's hard to prove that some behavior is learned and it's hard to prove it's not.* *I believe in the continuity of abilities down the phylogenetic scale. * *bill w * On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 8:46 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] evolution > > > > spike wrote we may find that most beasts use tools in some way, and > > many of them make tools. > > > > ?>?There is a problem here with interpretation. If a person, aka human, > used a tool, he must have learned it somehow, watching, experimenting - aka > learning either from others or just from messing around? > > > > So show me learning to use tools and I'll be happy with that. > > > > bill w > > > > ? > > > > > > I don?t have a reference, but the chimps might be our best bet: the mother > chimps show their offspring how to make a termite catching stick by > choosing a long straight twig and stripping the leaves. Some chimps never > learn how to do that. Jared Diamond (I think he was the one) observed that > chimps seem to learn that skill easier than humans do. > > > > 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 Fri Aug 11 14:22:45 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 15:22:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Bad News for Fermi Paradox? Message-ID: The implications of cosmic silence August 11, 2017 by Bob Whitby Quote: "I taught astronomy for 37 years," said Whitmire. "I used to tell my students that by statistics, we have to be the dumbest guys in the galaxy. After all we have only been technological for about 100 years while other civilizations could be more technologically advanced than us by millions or billions of years." Recently, however, he's changed his mind. By applying a statistical concept called the principle of mediocrity ? the idea that in the absence of any evidence to the contrary we should consider ourselves typical, rather than atypical ? Whitmire has concluded that instead of lagging behind, our species may be average. That's not good news. In a paper published Aug. 3 in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Whitmire argues that if we are typical, it follows that species such as ours go extinct soon after attaining technological knowledge. (The paper is also available on Whitmire's website.) By Whitmire's definition we became "technological" after the industrial revolution and the invention of radio, or roughly 100 years ago. According to the principle of mediocrity, a bell curve of the ages of all extant technological civilizations in the universe would put us in the middle 95 percent. In other words, technological civilizations that last millions of years, or longer, would be highly atypical. Since we are first, other typical technological civilizations should also be first. The principle of mediocrity allows no second acts. The implication is that once species become technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them. --------------------- BillK From stathisp at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 14:38:39 2017 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 14:38:39 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Bad News for Fermi Paradox? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 12 Aug 2017 at 12:25 am, BillK wrote: > The implications of cosmic silence > August 11, 2017 by Bob Whitby > > > > Quote: > > "I taught astronomy for 37 years," said Whitmire. "I used to tell my > students that by statistics, we have to be the dumbest guys in the > galaxy. After all we have only been technological for about 100 years > while other civilizations could be more technologically advanced than > us by millions or billions of years." > > Recently, however, he's changed his mind. By applying a statistical > concept called the principle of mediocrity ? the idea that in the > absence of any evidence to the contrary we should consider ourselves > typical, rather than atypical ? Whitmire has concluded that instead of > lagging behind, our species may be average. That's not good news. > > In a paper published Aug. 3 in the International Journal of > Astrobiology, Whitmire argues that if we are typical, it follows that > species such as ours go extinct soon after attaining technological > knowledge. (The paper is also available on Whitmire's website.) > > By Whitmire's definition we became "technological" after the > industrial revolution and the invention of radio, or roughly 100 years > ago. According to the principle of mediocrity, a bell curve of the > ages of all extant technological civilizations in the universe would > put us in the middle 95 percent. In other words, technological > civilizations that last millions of years, or longer, would be highly > atypical. Since we are first, other typical technological > civilizations should also be first. The principle of mediocrity allows > no second acts. The implication is that once species become > technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them. Isn't this a variant of the Doomsday Argument? > > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 14:41:20 2017 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 10:41:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Bad News for Fermi Paradox? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:22 AM, BillK wrote: > Since we are first, other typical technological > civilizations should also be first. Huh? Parse error. > The principle of mediocrity allows > no second acts. What? > The implication is that once species become > technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them. > That could well be the case. We seem to be headed that way. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 15:04:02 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 16:04:02 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Bad News for Fermi Paradox? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11 August 2017 at 15:41, Dave Sill wrote: > On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:22 AM, BillK wrote: >> >> Since we are first, other typical technological >> civilizations should also be first. > > > Huh? Parse error. > >> >> The principle of mediocrity allows >> no second acts. > > > What? > I only quoted a few paragraphs. What he is saying is that all the earlier civilisations in the galaxy would have reached the same point as us. i.e. Becoming the first tech civ on their planet. And then they disappeared. (as we see no trace of them). BillK >> >> The implication is that once species become >> technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them. > > > That could well be the case. We seem to be headed that way. > > -Dave > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From dsunley at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 15:30:26 2017 From: dsunley at gmail.com (Darin Sunley) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 09:30:26 -0600 Subject: [ExI] Bad News for Fermi Paradox? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, turning your entire terrestrial planet into computronium, but never quite getting the hang of stellar engineering or reliable interstellar travel, and living happily ever after for extremely large values of "ever after", isn't a /terrible/ fate, as these things go. On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 9:04 AM, BillK wrote: > On 11 August 2017 at 15:41, Dave Sill wrote: > > On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:22 AM, BillK wrote: > >> > >> Since we are first, other typical technological > >> civilizations should also be first. > > > > > > Huh? Parse error. > > > >> > >> The principle of mediocrity allows > >> no second acts. > > > > > > What? > > > > > I only quoted a few paragraphs. What he is saying is that all the > earlier civilisations in the galaxy would have reached the same point > as us. i.e. Becoming the first tech civ on their planet. And then they > disappeared. (as we see no trace of them). > > BillK > > > >> > >> The implication is that once species become > >> technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them. > > > > > > That could well be the case. We seem to be headed that way. > > > > -Dave > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > 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 pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 15:34:12 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 16:34:12 +0100 Subject: [ExI] DeepMind AI teaches itself about the world by watching videos Message-ID: Daily news 10 August 2017 By Matt Reynolds Quotes: ?We want to build machines that continuously learn about their environment in an autonomous manner,? says Pulkit Agrawal at the University of California, Berkeley. Agrawal, who wasn?t involved with the work, says this project takes us closer to the goal of creating AI that can teach itself by watching and listening to the world around it. While the AI in the DeepMind project doesn?t interact with the real world, Agarwal says that perfecting self-supervised learning will eventually let us create AI that can operate in the real world and learn from what it sees and hears. But until we reach that point, self-supervised learning might be a good way of training image and audio recognition algorithms without input from vast amounts of human-labelled data. The DeepMind algorithm can correctly categorise an audio clip nearly 80 per cent of the time, making it better at audio-recognition than many algorithms trained on labelled data. Such promising results suggest that similar algorithms might be able to learn something by crunching through huge unlabelled datasets like YouTube?s millions of online videos. ?Most of the data in the world is unlabelled and therefore it makes sense to develop systems that can learn from unlabelled data,? Agrawal says. ---------------- Maybe it's just me, but letting AI learn how best to survive in the world by watching videos on the web sounds like a disaster waiting to happen! What is the AI going to select as the 'best' role models? Trump?? Stalin???? Pop Eye???? BillK From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 11 16:13:58 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 09:13:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] DeepMind AI teaches itself about the world by watching videos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00ae01d312bc$d77c3730$8674a590$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] DeepMind AI teaches itself about the world by watching videos https://www.newscientist.com/article/2143498-deepmind-ai-teaches-itself-about-the-world-by-watching-videos/> Quotes: ?We want to build machines that continuously learn about their environment in an autonomous manner,? ... ---------------- >...What is the AI going to select as the 'best' role models? Trump?? Stalin???? Pop Eye???? BillK _______________________________________________ Popeye, now there's an idea. A few hours of those things it would make comments such as: AI yam what AI yam. Hey, don't blame me, ExI-ers. BillK set me up for that punchline; there is no way I could resist. Such a great straight man is that lad. Imagine an AI being trained on a typical 1930s era Popeye cartoon titled I Yam What I Yam. The final scene is described in a fashion we might today consider a bit politically incorrect: >...Meanwhile, Olive Oyl is successfully fighting off dozens of the Indians piling into the cabin, still screaming for Popeye's help. Popeye arrives at the cabin, dodging a barrage of arrows and fighting off dozens of Indians, even grabbing an entire group of them and delivering a punch that transforms them into a pile of Indian Nickels. With the bulk of the Indians defeated, one last batch of them is left to deal with, who shoot Popeye full of arrows, which he is completely unharmed by. Popeye promptly pulls out a can of spinach, eating both the vegetable and the can itself. He punches the row of remaining Native Americans, causing a domino effect. The final gag shows Popeye punching out the giant tribal chief, causing him to lose his outfit and become another type of Indian, Mahatma Gandhi. The cartoon ends with Popeye singing "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man!". Ok then. It is easy enough to imagine early AIs being insulting as all hell. If they are in the form of words on a computer, we will deal with it the way we laugh off 1930s era Popeye cartoons. But what if the AIs are put in androids that look like humans? We need a paradigm shift. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Aug 11 16:44:38 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 11:44:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Bad News for Fermi Paradox? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > > The implication is that once species become > technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them. > billk There is actually a short story by Isaac Asimov in which an intergalactic organization goes around testing civilizations. As soon as the technology gets nuclear the planet is invited to join the galactic group. Just when Earth was about to get the invitation they discovered that we were using nuclear power to bomb each other. And so we were the only ones ever to have done this. bill w On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:30 AM, Darin Sunley wrote: > Well, turning your entire terrestrial planet into computronium, but never > quite getting the hang of stellar engineering or reliable interstellar > travel, and living happily ever after for extremely large values of "ever > after", isn't a /terrible/ fate, as these things go. > > On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 9:04 AM, BillK wrote: > >> On 11 August 2017 at 15:41, Dave Sill wrote: >> > On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 10:22 AM, BillK wrote: >> >> >> >> Since we are first, other typical technological >> >> civilizations should also be first. >> > >> > >> > Huh? Parse error. >> > >> >> >> >> The principle of mediocrity allows >> >> no second acts. >> > >> > >> > What? >> > >> >> >> I only quoted a few paragraphs. What he is saying is that all the >> earlier civilisations in the galaxy would have reached the same point >> as us. i.e. Becoming the first tech civ on their planet. And then they >> disappeared. (as we see no trace of them). >> >> BillK >> >> >> >> >> >> The implication is that once species become >> >> technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them. >> > >> > >> > That could well be the case. We seem to be headed that way. >> > >> > -Dave >> > >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > 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 >> > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 11 17:45:11 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 10:45:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Bad News for Fermi Paradox? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <010501d312c9$95b945b0$c12bd110$@att.net> >? On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] Bad News for Fermi Paradox? The implication is that once species become technological, they flame out and take the biosphere with them. billk There is actually a short story by Isaac Asimov in which an intergalactic organization goes around testing civilizations. As soon as the technology gets nuclear the planet is invited to join the galactic group. Just when Earth was about to get the invitation they discovered that we were using nuclear power to bomb each other. And so we were the only ones ever to have done this. bill w Thanks BillW; it?s one of Asimov?s shortest short stories, called Silly Asses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_Asses In Asimov?s writings, always be aware of his subtle skill in writing allegory. Sagan was a like-minded writer who had skills in popularizing science, but he had not a fraction of Asimov?s skill in weaving subtle messages into compelling fiction. With that in mind, think of a work many of us read in our misspent youth, the Foundation trilogy. If viewed as well-written allegory with subtle references to so many of western civilization?s memetic notions (all the way down to the term ?foundation?) we see Asimov?s brilliant fiction in a whole new light. spike (WOWsers, someone triggered an Asimov discussion! We haven?t had one of those in a long time, ja?) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sat Aug 12 03:29:30 2017 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 20:29:30 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya) Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 11:00 AM, Tara Maya wrote: >> Gregory Clark makes the case that it happened as a result of strong >> Darwinian selection in the stable agrarian north west Europe between >> about 1200 and 1800. > > Maybe we aren?t talking about the same thing. Clark seems to be referring to a cultural work ethic. Not at all. He is talking specifically about genetic selection. Particularly for the kind of personality traits that contributed to the capitalist industrial revolution. > I?m referring to the fact that life takes work. Right, but in the particular environment that led up to the industrial revolution, to be genetically successful you needed a set of personality traits (which he lists) that are quite different from the ones that were successful in previous times. > That?s a biological feature that?s evolved as a result of strong Darwinian selection over the last 3.5 billion years. > > Any species that deludes itself this isn?t true will go extinct. I kind of doubt "delusion" or even beliefs are involved here. It's just that people who had the personality traits to obtain modest wealth in such an environment had far more surviving children than the poor. Those of us with an English (or more generally Northern European) genetic background are very much shaped to this day by this selection. http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf I strongly recommend you read it. As some of you know, I have been very much influenced by evolutionary psychology. That field makes the case that a large fraction of human psychological traits (examples, capture-bonding and those leading to wars) were shaped in the stone age. Clark makes a case that there has been rather recent strong selection for a list of traits. How strong? The selection seems to have been as strong and persisted over a similar number of generation as those applied to the tame Russian foxes. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 12 16:17:07 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 09:17:07 -0700 Subject: [ExI] found it! Message-ID: <008301d31386$739d2420$5ad76c60$@att.net> Cool! Neutrinos detected using a cool new instrument: https://www.livescience.com/60058-neutrinos-never-before-seen-interaction.ht ml?utm_source=notification We have to wait for independent verification of course, but Live Science has been a pretty good source. If this turns out to be correct, Collar's group is deeeeep into Nobel Prize territory. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 12 17:15:35 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 13:15:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: <5CC0CFE9-7FAA-4062-8038-CD05687A9676@taramayastales.com> References: <5CC0CFE9-7FAA-4062-8038-CD05687A9676@taramayastales.com> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 7:37 PM, Tara Maya wrote: > ?> ? > I?m referring to the fact that life takes work. ? That's ? ? true for most humans but it's never been true for all humans. The children of rich parents don't need to work to live. In the near future no human will need to work to live and in fact won't be able to live even if they work unless the tiny number of ultra rich people decide to throw them a few scraps. That's why the shrinking middle class and the growing and accelerating gap between the very rich and the poor is so disturbing. ?> ? > That?s a biological feature that?s evolved as a result of strong Darwinian > selection over the last 3.5 billion years. 3.5 billion years ?is a long time and that's the trouble with ? Darwinian ?Evolution, it's far too slow to have any significant effect on the human genome in the next 50 years. But CRISPER which has revolutionized gene editing technology and was only used for the first time in 2013 and is getting better every day is not too slow for that. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 12 17:36:15 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 13:36:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] found it! In-Reply-To: <008301d31386$739d2420$5ad76c60$@att.net> References: <008301d31386$739d2420$5ad76c60$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 12:17 PM, spike wrote: > ?> ? > Cool! Neutrinos detected using a cool new instrument: > > > > https://www.livescience.com/60058-neutrinos-never-before- > seen-interaction.html?utm_source=notification > > > > We have to wait for independent verification of course, but Live Science > has been a pretty good source. If this turns out to be correct, Collar?s > group is deeeeep into Nobel Prize territory. > ?I agree. Unless somebody makes a 100 Qbit quantum computer before then I think the LIGO people should get the physics Nobel in 2017 and ?Collar?s group in 2018. Both are masterpieces of experimental science. It occurs to me that the military might be interested in Collar's work, his neutrino detector is very small light and portable, and nuclear reactors produce lots and lots of neutrinos, and nuclear submarines have nuclear reactors.... John K Clark > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 12 18:08:00 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 11:08:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] found it! In-Reply-To: References: <008301d31386$739d2420$5ad76c60$@att.net> Message-ID: <005901d31395$efb4e160$cf1ea420$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 10:36 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] found it! On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 12:17 PM, spike > wrote: ?> ? Cool! Neutrinos detected using a cool new instrument: https://www.livescience.com/60058-neutrinos-never-before-seen-interaction.html?utm_source=notification ? >?It occurs to me that the military might be interested in Collar's work, his neutrino detector is very small light and portable, and nuclear reactors produce lots and lots of neutrinos, and nuclear submarines have nuclear reactors.... John K Clark Ja, John perhaps you can clarify on the next part: fissile material even way below critical mass, not reacting much at all, still creates high neutrino flux. How high? I haven?t calculated how many and the probability of detection, but if that flux is high enough and we find ways to tweak Collar?s instrument, perhaps we can create a mobile neutrino detector. Something sticks in my mind from one of the books written by Emilio Segre about when the first plutonium core was delivered to Los Alamos. He commented that the plutonium was slightly warm to the touch. Look at plutonium?s density (or thermal mass) and conductivity, that core would have felt cool to the touch unless skerjillions of fissions warmed all that thermal mass. Hmmm, how many? Going from memory, Pu239 has a half life of about 90 yrs, figure a subcritical fissile core is about, I don?t know, 20kg? I don?t want to Google around on this stuff and get Mister NSA snooping down my neck wondering what I am up to, EVEN THOUGH I AM A FRIEND OF GOOD OLD MISTER NSA and wish him all the best and may he and his family be well and so on, so let?s just say 20 kg and let it go at that, and so 239 grams of that stuff is 6E23 atoms and so close enough to 100 moles or 6e25 atoms for single digit BOTECs in our heads, ja? So about half of that or 3E25 of those decay in 100 times 3E7 seconds, or about close enough to about 1e16 decays per second in that subcritical core; tack on a factor of about 2 if you want a more precise exponential. If we get an instrument which can detect one neutrino in a trillion at one meter, it should pick up a ten thousandth of that from 100 meters, which would be about a neutrino per second, ja? If we get something like this or we somehow tweak up Collar?s detectors, we could perhaps come up with fly-by drones which swoop past container ships sniffing for anomalous neutrinos, WHICH IS THE ONLY REASON I AM DOING THIS FLIGHT OF FANCY, GOOD OLD MISTER NSA old pal, if you are listening in (peace be upon you etc) completely peacefully speculating on a flight of fancy, which I am known to do, hoping we can use this tech to find bad guys with nukes of which I am not one, never was, never will be. John, help us here. Do we have any data on Collar?s marvelous new instrument? How often it detects a neutrino? As I write this, I get thinking and fear that my one in a trillion estimate is crazy optimistic: neutrinos don?t care enough about us to interact that often. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 12 20:00:04 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 13:00:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Keith Henson Subject: Re: [ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya) >... It's just that people who had the personality traits to obtain modest wealth in such an environment had far more surviving children than the poor... So it's genetic. Now criticism of capitalism is racism. Cool! >...Those of us with an English... I am that! British to the core! BillK and I are practically brothers. >...(or more generally Northern European)... I am a quarter Swedish! Wait, is Sweden in Europe? Or am I conflating it with Swaziland? We yanks don't really know much about geography. >... genetic background are very much shaped to this day by this selection... Keith Oh I love that kind of talk. I find the term "buttloads of money" most titillating. We should have a specific term for getting turned on by merely visualizing big curvaceous voluptuous piles of money. We could make sexbots who utter comments such as: Hey you big handsome carbon unit, I have some bedroom moves you will find most profitillating. Such as that. And Dr. Jill Stein's looks. Oh we will make a buttload of money. Pardon me, I need to... uh... take a shower... spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat Aug 12 22:23:47 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 17:23:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya) In-Reply-To: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> References: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> Message-ID: http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/09/542215646/video-games-may-affect-the-brain-differently-depending-on-what-you-play?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits Video games help/hurt the brain. Take your pick, but I say that shrinking the hypothalamus is not a good result no matter how you look at it. bill w On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 3:00 PM, spike wrote: > >... On Behalf Of Keith Henson > Subject: Re: [ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya) > > >... It's just that people who had the personality traits to obtain modest > wealth in such an environment had far more surviving children than the > poor... > > So it's genetic. Now criticism of capitalism is racism. Cool! > > >...Those of us with an English... > > I am that! British to the core! BillK and I are practically brothers. > > >...(or more generally Northern European)... > > I am a quarter Swedish! Wait, is Sweden in Europe? Or am I conflating it > with Swaziland? We yanks don't really know much about geography. > > >... genetic background are very much shaped to this day by this > selection... Keith > > Oh I love that kind of talk. I find the term "buttloads of money" most > titillating. We should have a specific term for getting turned on by > merely > visualizing big curvaceous voluptuous piles of money. We could make > sexbots > who utter comments such as: Hey you big handsome carbon unit, I have some > bedroom moves you will find most profitillating. > > Such as that. And Dr. Jill Stein's looks. Oh we will make a buttload of > money. Pardon me, I need to... uh... take a shower... > > 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 Sat Aug 12 23:32:31 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 00:32:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya) In-Reply-To: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> References: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 12 August 2017 at 21:00, spike wrote: > So it's genetic. Now criticism of capitalism is racism. Cool! > > Oh I love that kind of talk. I find the term "buttloads of money" most > titillating. We should have a specific term for getting turned on by merely > visualizing big curvaceous voluptuous piles of money. We could make sexbots > who utter comments such as: Hey you big handsome carbon unit, I have some > bedroom moves you will find most profitillating. > > Such as that. And Dr. Jill Stein's looks. Oh we will make a buttload of > money. Pardon me, I need to... uh... take a shower... > Sorry, but I'm afraid I have to disagree. Clark is an economist - not a geneticist. He has thought of a biological theory without any biology. When he says 'genes did it', he's just making it up out of his imagination. There is no evidence that genetics had anything to do with the Protestant work ethic. The Protestant Reformation and other institutional changes are far more likely causes. i.e.'memes' not 'genes'. The rich are likely to be enthusiastic about the idea that they have 'better' genes than the miserable peasants. But what they really have is inherited wealth and power that gives them access to better food, better health, better education and contacts with other rich people in positions of power. Clark researched wills at a time when the poor were mostly not even registering births and deaths. And they didn't have any property requiring making a will. The poor were having very large families (just like the third world nowadays) because they knew many children would die. Even when a third of the children died, the undocumented poor still had more surviving children than the rich. And there were far more poor families than rich families. I think you will find that nowadays after all the criticism his theory received even Clark himself is placing a lot less emphasis on the 'genes' side of his theory. BillK From spike66 at att.net Sun Aug 13 00:06:53 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike66) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 17:06:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 Message-ID: <828468.29947.bm@smtp111.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone ?...That's why the shrinking middle class and the growing and accelerating gap between the very rich and the poor is so disturbing... ?John K Clark John your dystopian visions appear to be playing out in realtime in venezuela... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 00:35:48 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 20:35:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] found it! In-Reply-To: <005901d31395$efb4e160$cf1ea420$@att.net> References: <008301d31386$739d2420$5ad76c60$@att.net> <005901d31395$efb4e160$cf1ea420$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 2:08 PM, spike wrote: > > ?>? > if that flux is high enough and we find ways to tweak Collar?s > instrument, perhaps we can create a mobile neutrino detector. > > ?His detector only weighs ? 32 lbs ? so it should be easy to put a thousand ?of them on even the smallest navy ship, and then it would be a thousand times as sensitive. > ?> ? > Going from memory, Pu239 has a half life of about 90 yrs, > > ? Actually it's 24,100 years for Pu-239 and for U-235, the working material of most nuclear reactors ?,? it's 700 million years. And you can't really compare a decay process with fission. When Pu-239 decays after 24,100 ?years ? it just transforms into slightly lighter U-235, but when it undergoes fission it's much more dramatic, it splits roughly in half producing much lighter elements like Barium and Krypton and produces far more energy and neutrinos than a mere decay. ? So a reactor that isn't operating isn't going to produce a lot of neutrinos; it would make some but probably about a million times less than when its on. > ?> ? > figure a subcritical fissile core is about, I don?t know, 20kg? > > ?In a bomb it's 11 kg at ? Plutonium's ? normal density but less than half of that if you cleverly shape the chemical explosives around the Plutonium so it compress the Plutonium ? sphere to more than normal density. The critical mass can also be reduced by surrounding the sphere with a beryllium neutron reflector. ? With North Korea in the news this fact has been on my mind lately. If you want to make a really big and really hot fission bomb, the sort needed for the detonator of a fusion H-bomb ?,? you're also going to need U-235 too because it has a much higher critical mass of 52 kg. The idea is ?to ? have a hollow sphere of U-235 (stuffed with Lithium Deuteride if you want to get fancy) surrounded by a larger but much thinner sphere of Pu-239 surrounded by a heavy sphere of common U-238 ?to be used as a tamper to slow down the expansion and give the chain reaction more time, ? surrounded by a ?aluminium ?pusher sphere to even out the implosion, surrounded by a chemical explosive. The Pu-239 will become critical first and so compress the U-235 far more than a chemical explosive alone ever could ?and that ? greatly increasing the efficiency and more important ?ly? ? the heat? , ? and heat is what what you need ? if it is to be used as the match to start the fusion reaction in a H-bomb. If North Korea has reach this point they would't need any additional exotic material to make a real honest to ? god Teller-Ulam style H-bomb, just Lithium and deuterium, and ? both easy to get. They would need to perform some non-trivial calculations to ?figure out a good way to place the internal components but the Soviets calculated them well enough in 1961 to set off a ?57 megatons bomb and they had nothing better than slide rules ? to help them. ? North Korea ?claims they already have a H-bomb, maybe they do but they haven't tested one, we'd certainly know if they had.? > > ?> ? > John, help us here. Do we have any data on Collar?s marvelous new > instrument? How often it detects a neutrino? > > ?I don't have that figure but I do know this new neutrino-matter interaction that Collar has detected for the first time scales with the square the number of neutrons in the nucleus ? of the target material, he uses c esium ? (with 88 neutrons)? and iodine ? (with 74)?. And Collar says his new detector might be used for " non-intrusive nuclear reactor monitoring ?".? > ?> ? > As I write this, I get thinking and fear that my one in a trillion > estimate is crazy optimistic: neutrinos don?t care enough about us to > interact that often. > > ?That's OK, a typical ?3000 MW ? nuclear reactor produces ?about ? ?6* 10 ?^? 2 ?1? ?neutrinos a second (actually ? anti ?-? neutrinos ?,? ?but never mind), so if we miss a few no big deal. ? ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 01:32:36 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 21:32:36 -0400 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 In-Reply-To: <828468.29947.bm@smtp111.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <828468.29947.bm@smtp111.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 8:06 PM, spike66 wrote: ?> ? > John your dystopian visions appear to be playing out in realtime in > venezuela.. > ?No need to worry, the president says he has a military solution for the Venezuela ? problem that I'm sure will work just as well as the ? military solution ? ?he keeps talking about for the ?North Korea problem. John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 01:58:46 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 21:58:46 -0400 Subject: [ExI] probably extremely simple physics problem In-Reply-To: <006c01d30f9e$a6859ca0$f390d5e0$@att.net> References: <006c01d30f9e$a6859ca0$f390d5e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:00 PM, spike wrote: > ?> ? > Now that you mention it however, please offer your take on something that > has long puzzled me: why didn?t the Dutch get to powered flight first? > They had way more understanding of aerodynamics than anyone because of > their experience with the windmills. They were early adopters of the > German Nickolaus Otto?s marvelous internal combustion engine. They had > plenty of flat ground on which to build runways. They were well along in > the industrial revolution, factories and such. They had worked out the > notion of rigid cantilevered structures such the windmill blades. I am > amazed the yanks would get powered flight off the ground first, with the > French in close pursuit. I would have thought the Dutch would be the first > to fly, followed by the Germans with the Yanks third and the French well > back there. > > Your intuition is good Spike, ? he wasn't the first but ?it turns out ? Anthony Fokker ? of World War 1 Fokker ?T riplane ? fame was Dutch not German ?as I'd always assumed until about 20 seconds ago. I just love the internet! John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 07:23:32 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 00:23:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. In-Reply-To: <01f601d3121d$b600e5a0$2202b0e0$@att.net> References: <01f601d3121d$b600e5a0$2202b0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 2:14 PM, spike wrote: > Adrian, don?t worry man, you are one of my highly esteemed colleagues. I > won?t do the I?m unworthy thing on the floor but I will buy the beer next > time. I'd hope so, since I don't drink beer (or most other alcoholic beverages). :P But to come clean on this, this was the point of some fanfiction I wrote back in college - the old "fictional world discovers the real world" trope. That world, for all its problems (can't have adventures if everything is okay and boring), is one that some viewed as utopian - and so they looked up to the creators of their universe, until they got to know said creators. "Never meet your heroes" is an even older version of this (albeit without the particulars of social media, coming from a pre-Internet era). From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Sun Aug 13 05:01:03 2017 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 22:01:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya) Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 6:59 PM, BillK wrote> snip I started to reply, and then picked up from your distortions what the objection is. Eventually, every human trait is going to be understood from the gene level up. When we do, we expect to find out that an awful lot of a person's place in society depends on traits that are rooted in their genes. This is not a politically correct position. However, I hope there are people somewhere who value reality over such memes. Keith From spike66 at att.net Sun Aug 13 14:58:26 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 07:58:26 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. In-Reply-To: References: <01f601d3121d$b600e5a0$2202b0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00ee01d31444$9e943100$dbbc9300$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Subject: Re: [ExI] Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 2:14 PM, spike wrote: >>... Adrian, don?t worry man, you are one of my highly esteemed colleagues. > I won?t do the I?m unworthy thing on the floor but I will buy the beer > next time. >...I'd hope so, since I don't drink beer (or most other alcoholic beverages). Cool, I will save money. Alternative, I buy your beer then drink both of them. >...- and so they looked up to the creators of their universe, until they got to know said creators. >..."Never meet your heroes" is an even older version of this (albeit without the particulars of social media, coming from a pre-Internet era). _______________________________________________ On the occasions where the ExI people met, I was seldom disappointed. I always had a blast at those things. To back up your point, I did meet one guy whose real life persona surprised me: Douglas Hofstadter. About 17 yrs ago, I think it was 1 April 2000, there was a gathering at Stanford where he was one of the featured speakers in a panel discussion on all the stuff that turns us on. Hofstader was the man who really got the ball rolling for me. His book Godel Escher Bach: Eternal Golden Braid was the work that fired my imagination like none other back in 1980. It shaped my future. Hofstadter arranged a panel discussion with Hans Morovec, Ray Kurzweil, Bill Joy, Frank Drake Ralph Merkel, and aaaallll this, all these biggity biggies were going to give talks, give all this to the public free. I convinced by bride there would be people rioting to get in there, even though they didn't really advertise it much. I convinced that kindhearted young lady to go there with sack lunches six hours ahead of time to reserve a spot in a 500 seat auditorium, which was already half filled when we got there. Two hours beforehand, geeks were hanging from the rafters and the fire marshal showed up, made a bunch of them leave, so they set up closed circuit TV in another auditorium, but soon that was filled too. After the event started, so many geeks were trying to pile in, so we started getting worried, for it was getting hot and stuffy in there. People were standing in the back, someone fainted, there wasn't a hell of a lot anyone could do: they couldn't get them to the exits. No escape from the nerdist colony. The talks were marvelous. Back to Hofstadter. In any organized event, things will go wrong. In this one, they had set up a couple of folding tables on the stage so that the panelists could sit behind it and put their microphones. Somehow someone failed to arrange for a white cloth table skirt, so it looked a bit amateurish with those clunky old folding tables up front. Hofstadter was grumpy about that, asking grad students to go over to the cafeteria or somewhere, see if they could improvise something. He seemed very concerned over a minor point of decorum. The early birds in the audience were there, and we all wanted to help, but there was no way our butts were going to leave those seats, for fear we would miss out if the fire marshal came back (he didn't, and that hall was packed to felonious densities.) Hofstadter seemed quite annoyed over that table skirt business. Had I not been in such awe of this guy, I would have called out from my seat: Dr. Hofstadter, nooooobody in this audience will care or even notice that table. They will be hanging on every word you guys utter. Summary: Douglas Hofstadter thought there wouldn't be any singularity in the foreseeable. Bill Joy thought a singularity could occur soon and it would kill us all. Ralph Merkel thought a singularity would happen soon and would save us all. Han Moravec thought a singularity would happen at some not-necessarily soon date but would allow us to merge with robots and become immortal. Frank Drake suggested the Singularity could explain the Fermi paradox. Ray Kurzweil thought that a singularity was inevitable and was working to make it happen. Without reviewing my notes, that is what I remember from the event. That evening, I pulled off one of the most epic April Fools gags of my entire comedic career. The ExI list was eager to have us write up how that went. I wrote that we arrived and found it was all a big April Fools gag, no event, no speakers, several smirking Stanford undergrads. Some of the locals picked up on what I was doing and joined in. Adrian, weren't you in on that? Then I posted, no that was just a meta-April Fools gag, there really was an event, etc. Then we started going back and forth, writing up accounts of what was said, then April Fools-ing, then meta April-Foolsing. The ExI list wasn't quite sure if there ever was an event. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Aug 14 17:15:02 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 13:15:02 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Murakami again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Thanks to William Flynn Wallace for recommending IQ84, I just finished the third book and it kept my interest to the end and I enjoyed it, although I didn't understand some of the symbolism if that's what it was; I didn't quite get what the "Little People" were all about. John K Clark ======================= On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 6:07 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > I have read his first three books, ending with the Wild Sheep Chase, and > none of them are literary fiction in the modern sense. > > In lit fic there must be considerations of conflict, bigotry in some form, > strife, and so on, with a mixed or tragedic ending. He has little to none > of those, so he is going to get no great reviews from that quarter. > > So who cares what the critics think? Read customer reviews on Amazon (not > ALL of them phony, I assume). > > The only downer is the translation, which I assume takes Japanese idioms > and metaphors and puts them into American: 'wasted' for 'drunk', for > example. > > bill w > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Aug 14 17:45:01 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 12:45:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Murakami again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 12:15 PM, John Clark wrote: > Thanks to William Flynn Wallace for recommending IQ84, I just finished the > third book and it kept my interest to the end and I enjoyed it, although I > didn't understand some of the symbolism if that's what it was; I didn't > quite get what the "Little People" were all about. > > John K Clark > ?Kind of you to say. You're welcome. bill w? > > > ======================= > > > On Mon, Jun 5, 2017 at 6:07 PM, William Flynn Wallace > wrote: > >> I have read his first three books, ending with the Wild Sheep Chase, and >> none of them are literary fiction in the modern sense. >> >> In lit fic there must be considerations of conflict, bigotry in some >> form, strife, and so on, with a mixed or tragedic ending. He has little to >> none of those, so he is going to get no great reviews from that quarter. >> >> So who cares what the critics think? Read customer reviews on Amazon >> (not ALL of them phony, I assume). >> >> The only downer is the translation, which I assume takes Japanese idioms >> and metaphors and puts them into American: 'wasted' for 'drunk', for >> example. >> >> 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 csaucier at sovacs.com Mon Aug 14 18:59:04 2017 From: csaucier at sovacs.com (Christian Saucier) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 11:59:04 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games impact on grey matter In-Reply-To: References: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> Message-ID: Thinking is good for the brain! On 8/12/2017 3:23 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/09/542215646/video-games-may-affect-the-brain-differently-depending-on-what-you-play?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits > > Video games help/hurt the brain.? Take your pick, but I say that > shrinking the hypothalamus is not a good result no matter how you look > at it. The difference between a "first-person shooting game" and "3D-platform games" used in this study seem very narrow to me.? I would be interested to know the specific games that were used.? Maybe another way to view this conclusion is simply this: If you use your hippocampus, it will grow grey matter; if you do not use your hippocampus, it will lose grey matter.? This should apply not only to the playing of video games, but to practically any other types of human action. This is the summary of that study from nature.com: "The hippocampus is critical to healthy cognition, yet results in the current study show that action video game players have reduced grey matter within the hippocampus. A subsequent randomised longitudinal training experiment demonstrated that first-person shooting games reduce grey matter within the hippocampus in participants using non-spatial memory strategies. Conversely, participants who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies showed increased grey matter in the hippocampus after training. A control group that trained on 3D-platform games displayed growth in either the hippocampus or the functionally connected entorhinal cortex. A third study replicated the effect of action video game training on grey matter in the hippocampus. These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person employs and the genre of the game." -- http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2017155a.html C. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From csaucier at sovacs.com Mon Aug 14 18:17:36 2017 From: csaucier at sovacs.com (Christian Saucier) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 11:17:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Extro-schmoozes Was: Re: Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. In-Reply-To: <01f601d3121d$b600e5a0$2202b0e0$@att.net> References: <01f601d3121d$b600e5a0$2202b0e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <6fac8da0-b8a6-20da-069b-86f5503b22f0@sovacs.com> I recently relocated from North Carolina to San Francisco for one of my startups (ripe.io - we are building the blockchain of food). I assume many on here are in the Bay area; if there is a private list where Bay Area Extro-Schmoozes are discussed, I'd love to get on it and maybe get to meet some of my extro-idols IRL :) Cheers! C. On 8/10/2017 2:14 PM, spike wrote: > > ? > > ? > > *On Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Why Instagram, Facebook, etc. makes you unhappy. > > ? > > ? > > Your friends are all > living wonderful, fulfilling lives while you?re scrolling in the > elevator. Remember this: your friends are in their own elevators, > thinking the same thing about you. > > ? > > >?Ah yes, this.? My own version: "You never know when you're being > worshipped, even by your idols." ?(Unless someone's being obvious > about it right in front of you, but that almost never happens.) > > ? > > Ha, Adrian you should be one of my idols.? I would fall prostrate > before you and beg forgiveness of my abject failure to solve the > random tetrahedron integrals.? Bystanders would all be like ??whaaat > in the heeeellllll??? > > ? > > My idols don?t enjoy being worshiped as much as I would think.? They > are often seen fleeing whenever they see me coming at the local > Extro-schmoozes and such. > > ? > > Adrian, don?t worry man, you are one of my highly esteemed > colleagues.? I won?t do the I?m unworthy thing on the floor but I will > buy the beer next time. > > ? > > 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 Aug 14 19:26:49 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 20:26:49 +0100 Subject: [ExI] video games impact on grey matter In-Reply-To: References: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 14 August 2017 at 19:59, Christian Saucier wrote: > Thinking is good for the brain! > > The difference between a "first-person shooting game" and "3D-platform > games" used in this study seem very narrow to me. I would be interested to > know the specific games that were used. > > Maybe another way to view this conclusion is simply this: If you use your > hippocampus, it will grow grey matter; if you do not use your hippocampus, > it will lose grey matter. This should apply not only to the playing of > video games, but to practically any other types of human action. > > This is the summary of that study from nature.com: "The hippocampus is > critical to healthy cognition, yet results in the current study show that > action video game players have reduced grey matter within the hippocampus. A > subsequent randomised longitudinal training experiment demonstrated that > first-person shooting games reduce grey matter within the hippocampus in > participants using non-spatial memory strategies. Conversely, participants > who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies showed increased grey > matter in the hippocampus after training. A control group that trained on > 3D-platform games displayed growth in either the hippocampus or the > functionally connected entorhinal cortex. A third study replicated the > effect of action video game training on grey matter in the hippocampus. > These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the > hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person > employs and the genre of the game." -- > http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2017155a.html > They have already found this with studies of London taxi drivers that had to spend 3 or 4 years memorising the London street map and planning routes. (Uber and GPS may end this exercise). This task did increase the size of the hippocampus. Quote: She showed that a driver?s hippocampus is most active when they first plan a route. She found that the hippocampus shrinks back to a normal size once drivers retire. And she found that acquiring The Knowledge comes at a cost ? taxi drivers find it more difficult to integrate new routes into their existing maps, and other aspects of their memory seemed to suffer. ------- That might mean that brain improvements in one area could cause worse performance in other areas. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Aug 14 21:00:04 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 16:00:04 -0500 Subject: [ExI] video games impact on grey matter In-Reply-To: References: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> Message-ID: 9, > ?? > Christian Saucier wrote: > > Thinking is good for the brain! > ?Well, I do believe that, barring delusions, manias, obsessions, etc.. In what circumstances hippocampal activity? is good is probably just not known. Also not know is whether growth or decline goes on on a continuous basis. Did my brain add or subtract anything today? ? If you use your > hippocampus, it will grow grey matter Not playing some games, according to the article. bill k wrote ? That might mean that brain improvements in one area could cause worse performance in other areas. >From my background in learning theory I'd say that it's hard to tell if learning one thing helps or hurts learning another. It's an empirical question. When I switched from tennis to racketball I found some positive and some negative transfer. Taxi drivers: use it or lose it seems to sum that up. Why don't those morons just assign drivers to certain areas, not the whole city? Have they heard of GPS? bill w > > The difference between a "first-person shooting game" and "3D-platform > > games" used in this study seem very narrow to me. I would be interested > to > > know the specific games that were used. > > > > Maybe another way to view this conclusion is simply this: > ?? > If you use your > > hippocampus, it will grow grey matter; if you do not use your > hippocampus, > > it will lose grey matter. This should apply not only to the playing of > > video games, but to practically any other types of human action. > > > > This is the summary of that study from nature.com: "The hippocampus is > > critical to healthy cognition, yet results in the current study show that > > action video game players have reduced grey matter within the > hippocampus. A > > subsequent randomised longitudinal training experiment demonstrated that > > first-person shooting games reduce grey matter within the hippocampus in > > participants using non-spatial memory strategies. Conversely, > participants > > who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies showed increased grey > > matter in the hippocampus after training. A control group that trained on > > 3D-platform games displayed growth in either the hippocampus or the > > functionally connected entorhinal cortex. A third study replicated the > > effect of action video game training on grey matter in the hippocampus. > > These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to > the > > hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person > > employs and the genre of the game." -- > > http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2017155a.html > > > > > They have already found this with studies of London taxi drivers that > had to spend 3 or 4 years memorising the London street map and > planning routes. > (Uber and GPS may end this exercise). > > acquiring-the-knowledge-changes-the-brains-of-london-cab-drivers/> > > This task did increase the size of the hippocampus. > Quote: > She showed that a driver?s hippocampus is most active when they first > plan a route. She found that the hippocampus shrinks back to a normal > size once drivers retire. And she found that acquiring The Knowledge > comes at a cost ? taxi drivers find it more difficult to integrate new > routes into their existing maps, and other aspects of their memory > seemed to suffer. > ------- > > ?? > That might mean that brain improvements in one area could cause worse > performance in other areas. > > > 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 Mon Aug 14 21:31:53 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 14:31:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] extro-schmoozes Message-ID: <012901d31544$bfdf05a0$3f9d10e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Christian Saucier I recently relocated from North Carolina to San Francisco for one of my startups (ripe.io - we are building the blockchain of food). I assume many on here are in the Bay area; if there is a private list where Bay Area Extro-Schmoozes are discussed, I'd love to get on it and maybe get to meet some of my extro-idols IRL :) Cheers! C. Don't do it man! You will soooo be disappointed! There was an ExI-bay list, but it has dwindled and seldom anyone posts there. Welcome to the neighborhood, me lad. I would be up for a local sushi run at some point, but we need to wait until after the eclipse. I have a ton of stuff to get done before then. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Aug 14 21:37:37 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 14:37:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] video games impact on grey matter In-Reply-To: References: <000d01d313a5$97d55af0$c78010d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <013601d31545$8d1533a0$a73f9ae0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK ... >...She showed that a driver?s hippocampus is most active when they first plan a route. ... ------- >...That might mean that brain improvements in one area could cause worse performance in other areas. BillK _______________________________________________ Ja I wondered about that when I first read BillW's comment that shrinking the hippocampus can't be good. The brain is in a fixed-volume, ja? So a shrinking area would cause the surrounding areas to grow? Works the other way around too perhaps. I worry that is what causes math geeks to be generally a bit socially awkward. There are those who argue that tech geeks really aren't socially awkward, that the whole thing is a myth. I would counter that one must go hang out at math geek gatherings. One finds the myth is true. Or it at least has some definite true aspects. Extro-gatherings are even worse in a way. Where you really see it is if an Extro-type has a normal partner who they bring along. Watch the normal one. It is educational. spike From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 14 21:56:01 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 22:56:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions Message-ID: One more thing for Spike to add to his busy schedule! :) Quote: You can now swim with sperm whales and play with polar bears all in San Francisco, thanks to virtual reality. Aquarium on the Bay at PIER 39 in San Francisco just launched three new VR and AR exhibits, allowing visitors up close interaction with whales and polar bears without disturbing the animals. The three exhibitions include an interactive sculptural series of 11 different researchers who have changed our understanding of ocean life, a new virtual reality film theatre, and two AR attractions that will allow visitors to interact with whales, polar bears, and other arctic creatures. --------- BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 00:19:56 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 19:19:56 -0500 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 (Tara Maya) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: keith wrote - When we do, we expect to find out that an awful lot of a person's place in society depends on traits that are rooted in their genes .- ?--- In the future behavioral problems will be treated with genetic manipulation?, perhaps turning off or on genes that were changed by your ancestors' behaviors (changed epigenetically in your parents, etc. and then restored to the original on or off position). Will people accept that as a substitute for putting people in jail for antisocial behaviors? I hope so. Punishment often doesn't last very long but changing genes will. However, there is a very powerful belief in the majority of people that things from failing to take out the garbage to serial killing, deserves punishment whether or not the punishment is associated with improvement in behavior. The typical murderer has killed someone he knows, often a family member. The likelihood of his doing it again, with or without punishment of any kind, is very, very low. But he needs to be punished, according to this belief. Will people accept adding genes to newborns or even fetuses to avoid fatal diseases? I hope so. Now for the big news!!! Since epigenetics involves the changing of the genes by the experiences of the person, how about future research that shows how to do that? That is, by doing certain things or being exposed to certain things, it is found that the genes that are causing the problems are changed in a beneficent way. This way a person can change his genes AND those he/she passes on to the children. Isn't this fantastic? (Well, yes, of course it is, since it is my fantasy, right?) Of course to this we have add behaviors and experiences that are known to have a maladaptive effect on the person's genes, and he/she is warned to avoid those to avoid the problems they will certainly cause. bill w On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 12:01 AM, Keith Henson wrote: > On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 6:59 PM, BillK wrote> > > snip > > I started to reply, and then picked up from your distortions what the > objection is. > > Eventually, every human trait is going to be understood from the gene > level up. When we do, we expect to find out that an awful lot of a > person's place in society depends on traits that are rooted in their > genes. > > This is not a politically correct position. However, I hope there are > people somewhere who value reality over such memes. > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 00:23:44 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 19:23:44 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: billk wrote: Aquarium on the Bay at PIER 39 in San Francisco just launched three new VR and AR exhibits, allowing visitors up close interaction with whales and polar bears without disturbing the animals. ---------- Does this mean that when the tech improves a bit we can just do this at home and not have to go to the zoo? The zoo will only then be used by VR makers to sell to home audiences - and locals (why do we call them 'audiences' when they are watching?). bill w On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 4:56 PM, BillK wrote: > One more thing for Spike to add to his busy schedule! :) > > > > Quote: > > You can now swim with sperm whales and play with polar bears all in > San Francisco, thanks to virtual reality. > > Aquarium on the Bay at PIER 39 in San Francisco just launched three > new VR and AR exhibits, allowing visitors up close interaction with > whales and polar bears without disturbing the animals. > > The three exhibitions include an interactive sculptural series of 11 > different researchers who have changed our understanding of ocean > life, a new virtual reality film theatre, and two AR attractions that > will allow visitors to interact with whales, polar bears, and other > arctic creatures. > > --------- > > > 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 csaucier at sovacs.com Tue Aug 15 00:45:53 2017 From: csaucier at sovacs.com (Christian Saucier) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 17:45:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] extro-schmoozes In-Reply-To: <012901d31544$bfdf05a0$3f9d10e0$@att.net> References: <012901d31544$bfdf05a0$3f9d10e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <956DE693-8DBE-47D2-BE2B-470F7BB71AFC@sovacs.com> Let's see if civilisation survives the passing of the moon in front of the sun and we'll coordinate a sushi place. On August 14, 2017 2:31:53 PM PDT, spike wrote: > > > > >From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On >Behalf >Of Christian Saucier > > > >I recently relocated from North Carolina to San Francisco for one of my >startups (ripe.io - we are building the blockchain of food). > > > >I assume many on here are in the Bay area; if there is a private list >where >Bay Area Extro-Schmoozes are discussed, I'd love to get on it and maybe >get >to meet some of my extro-idols IRL :) > > > >Cheers! > > > >C. > > > > > > > >Don't do it man! You will soooo be disappointed! > > > >There was an ExI-bay list, but it has dwindled and seldom anyone posts >there. > > > >Welcome to the neighborhood, me lad. I would be up for a local sushi >run at >some point, but we need to wait until after the eclipse. I have a ton >of >stuff to get done before then. > > > >spike > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 15 00:55:43 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 17:55:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] extro-schmoozes In-Reply-To: <956DE693-8DBE-47D2-BE2B-470F7BB71AFC@sovacs.com> References: <012901d31544$bfdf05a0$3f9d10e0$@att.net> <956DE693-8DBE-47D2-BE2B-470F7BB71AFC@sovacs.com> Message-ID: <007901d31561$3a33ca40$ae9b5ec0$@att.net> From: Christian Saucier [mailto:csaucier at sovacs.com] Sent: Monday, August 14, 2017 5:46 PM To: ExI chat list ; spike Subject: Re: [ExI] extro-schmoozes >?Let's see if civilisation survives the passing of the moon in front of the sun and we'll coordinate a sushi place. ?. Suuuuushiiiii? Before we bother, we should check to see if there is any left after last time Anders Sandberg was in town. The local sushi bars might have all gone out of business, nothing left to sell, devoured to extinction. I have arrangements for a campsite in Mitchell Oregon for Saturday and Sunday nights. This is the forecast: Good luck to us! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 12446 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 08:35:06 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 09:35:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 15 August 2017 at 01:23, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Does this mean that when the tech improves a bit we can just do this at home > and not have to go to the zoo? The zoo will only then be used by VR makers > to sell to home audiences - and locals (why do we call them 'audiences' when > they are watching?). > Yes, in theory. :) But businesses make most of their money from selling other stuff to physical visitors. Admission price, food, drinks, t-shirts, books, souvenirs, etc. Many places will be in financial difficulty if people stop visiting in person. Of course, people at home would have to pay for the VR episode, like paying to watch a film at home, but that won't make up for the main income reduction. And there will also be many free VR episodes available via the internet. It will be a significant change for the entertainment / sports industry if people watch everything via VR at home. If the home VR experience becomes realistic enough, big stadiums will become unnecessary. This is the really important fact about the VR future. If it becomes good enough, people don't leave home for *anything*! ('Audience' originally meant 'people within hearing range'. The meaning was extended as other communication systems appeared. e.g. books, tv, radio, etc.). BillK From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 15 14:08:35 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 07:08:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... >...This is the really important fact about the VR future. If it becomes good enough, people don't leave home for *anything*! >...BillK _______________________________________________ Ja if we can derive alternate profit models which allow for zoos and such things to stay in business, this is a reasonable forecast. Another possibility: people at the venue using VR as an augmentation. This would be analogous to when those little portable TVs became available in about the 1980s. Guys started taking them to stadium events. The big fun was for the camera guys to sneak up behind them while they were watching the game in the stadium. Then watch what they did once they realized they were watching their own backs on the screen. Regarding staying home: well, it would solve a bunch of problems, such as traffic. BillK over here we have an annual ritual involving the other kind of football, the one with pointy ends, called the Super Bowl, the last big game of the season, analogous to the FIDE championship match in chess, but with football. It has become such a universal ritual to witness the event realtime, it makes it more fun to do what I do during that event: go for a motorcycle ride. It is a lot of fun, going out there on those big wide freeways with almost no one out there. While doing that, I have been passed by crotch-rocket boys going 180 mph and I don't even know what that is in kph, I think 300. The freeway is wide, so I know they won't hit me from behind, or rather it has never happened yet, so I am hoping for the best. But we can imagine some areas such as where I live have already reached peak traffic. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 14:31:17 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 09:31:17 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> References: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> Message-ID: The freeway is wide, so I know they won't hit me from behind, spike The short time I had a motorcycle I discovered that some people just don't look for motorcycles. They'd pull out in front of me like I wasn't even there. They look for cars and when they don't see any..... Is this an ongoing problem for cyclists*?* *bill w* On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 9:08 AM, spike wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On > Behalf > Of BillK > ... > > >...This is the really important fact about the VR future. If it becomes > good enough, people don't leave home for *anything*! > > >...BillK > _______________________________________________ > > > Ja if we can derive alternate profit models which allow for zoos and such > things to stay in business, this is a reasonable forecast. > > Another possibility: people at the venue using VR as an augmentation. This > would be analogous to when those little portable TVs became available in > about the 1980s. Guys started taking them to stadium events. The big fun > was for the camera guys to sneak up behind them while they were watching > the > game in the stadium. Then watch what they did once they realized they were > watching their own backs on the screen. > > Regarding staying home: well, it would solve a bunch of problems, such as > traffic. > > BillK over here we have an annual ritual involving the other kind of > football, the one with pointy ends, called the Super Bowl, the last big > game > of the season, analogous to the FIDE championship match in chess, but with > football. It has become such a universal ritual to witness the event > realtime, it makes it more fun to do what I do during that event: go for a > motorcycle ride. > > It is a lot of fun, going out there on those big wide freeways with almost > no one out there. While doing that, I have been passed by crotch-rocket > boys going 180 mph and I don't even know what that is in kph, I think 300. > The freeway is wide, so I know they won't hit me from behind, or rather it > has never happened yet, so I am hoping for the best. But we can imagine > some areas such as where I live have already reached peak traffic. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 15 14:47:13 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 07:47:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: References: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <004301d315d5$62a600a0$27f201e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2017 7:31 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions The freeway is wide, so I know they won't hit me from behind, spike The short time I had a motorcycle I discovered that some people just don't look for motorcycles. They'd pull out in front of me like I wasn't even there. They look for cars and when they don't see any..... Is this an ongoing problem for cyclists? bill w Always a problem. Bicycles are even worse. A prole has to ride as if he is invisible. Our visual cortex or whatever it is that allows us to do pattern recognition while we are driving is tuned to horizontal objects. A tree never grows in the middle of the road (anywhere outside of Palo Alto CA) and a power pole is never placed there, so our minds somehow disregard vertical objects, but are very tuned to horizontal objects such as a bumper of a Detroit in front of us. This effect was discovered by Dr. Hugh Harrison Hurt in the 1980s. Bikes manufacturers recognized that motorcycles are mostly vertical features, which result in drivers failing to see, even if the frontal area is similar (Lotus drivers present less frontal area than many bikes, but they are more likely to be seen.) The bike manufacturers experimented with adding horizontal features on the backs of some of their models, such as the touring bikes: This is an aft view of a rare breed called the Suzuki Cavalcade, which was built only three years in the 1980s. Only about 9000 of them were ever built. I own four of them. We have a club. In all the years, we have never heard of one being struck from behind. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 9005 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 15 14:54:12 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 07:54:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] dnc hacking story Message-ID: <004b01d315d6$5c176ca0$144645e0$@att.net> Data hipsters among us, who can field this one please: The former NSA director Bill Binney said today that one of the big hacks of the DNC servers consisted of a file 1976 MB and went out in 87 seconds. I am not a signals and data guru, but we have some on this list. That data speed counter-indicates some commie hacking in through a server, but suggests some kind of plug-in device? Such as a thumb drive or something with a cable which would need to physically plug in to something on-site? Sheesh did Putin manage to get his own guys in place with physical access? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 16:26:17 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 17:26:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] dnc hacking story In-Reply-To: <004b01d315d6$5c176ca0$144645e0$@att.net> References: <004b01d315d6$5c176ca0$144645e0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 15 August 2017 at 15:54, spike wrote: > > Data hipsters among us, who can field this one please: > > The former NSA director Bill Binney said today that one of the big hacks of > the DNC servers consisted of a file 1976 MB and went out in 87 seconds. > > I am not a signals and data guru, but we have some on this list. That data > speed counter-indicates some commie hacking in through a server, but > suggests some kind of plug-in device? Such as a thumb drive or something > with a cable which would need to physically plug in to something on-site? > Sheesh did Putin manage to get his own guys in place with physical access? > Yes, that speed means that the file wasn't going out to the internet. Either to a thumb drive as you suggest or to another computer on the same local network. That's why some experts are saying it was an inside job. You have to ask why did the DNC deny the FBI access to their computers? If it really was a question of national importance, why didn't the FBI confiscate the two computers concerned? The 'Russians did it' seems to be a cover story to cover up shenanigans within the DNC. The full analysis is here: BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 16:58:53 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 11:58:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: <004301d315d5$62a600a0$27f201e0$@att.net> References: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> <004301d315d5$62a600a0$27f201e0$@att.net> Message-ID: We have a club. In all the years, we have never heard of one being struck from behind. spike Thanks, interesting info. Four? That's a lot of maintenance. Antique bike tag? Easy solution: go faster than those behind you and slower than those in front of you! bill w On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 9:47 AM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 15, 2017 7:31 AM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR > Attractions > > > > The freeway is wide, so I know they won't hit me from behind, spike > > > > The short time I had a motorcycle I discovered that some people just don't > look for motorcycles. They'd pull out in front of me like I wasn't even > there. They look for cars and when they don't see any..... > > > > Is this an ongoing problem for cyclists*?* > > > > *bill w* > > > > > > > > Always a problem. Bicycles are even worse. A prole has to ride as if he > is invisible. > > > > Our visual cortex or whatever it is that allows us to do pattern > recognition while we are driving is tuned to horizontal objects. A tree > never grows in the middle of the road (anywhere outside of Palo Alto CA) > and a power pole is never placed there, so our minds somehow disregard > vertical objects, but are very tuned to horizontal objects such as a bumper > of a Detroit in front of us. This effect was discovered by Dr. Hugh > Harrison Hurt in the 1980s. > > > > Bikes manufacturers recognized that motorcycles are mostly vertical > features, which result in drivers failing to see, even if the frontal area > is similar (Lotus drivers present less frontal area than many bikes, but > they are more likely to be seen.) The bike manufacturers experimented with > adding horizontal features on the backs of some of their models, such as > the touring bikes: > > > > > > This is an aft view of a rare breed called the Suzuki Cavalcade, which was > built only three years in the 1980s. Only about 9000 of them were ever > built. I own four of them. > > > > We have a club. In all the years, we have never heard of one being struck > from behind. > > > > 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: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 9005 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 15 19:25:55 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 12:25:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] dnc hacking story In-Reply-To: References: <004b01d315d6$5c176ca0$144645e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <019701d315fc$5144c680$f3ce5380$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK ... >...The 'Russians did it' seems to be a cover story to cover up shenanigans within the DNC. The full analysis is here: BillK _______________________________________________ BillK, the most disturbing part of it is the risk that Putin is telling the truth, that sneaky old commie. No, that's the second most disturbing part. The most disturbing part is that the allegations caused relations to severely degrade between the US and Russia. Now we can't even negotiate trade agreements because the US press will accuse POTUS of collusion. Result: sanctions, which is a response normally reserved for acts of military aggression, which resulted in the commies ejecting most of our diplomats, which means... a cover story meant to throw us off the trail regarding the murder of Seth Rich might carry two nuclear-armed nations to the brink of war. Sheesh, what a time. spike From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 19:43:12 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:43:12 -0500 Subject: [ExI] video games take 2 billw again Message-ID: OK, I'll respond to my own with more ideas: You can't help the genes you got from your parents. Except that in the future you can - we hope. Parents can't help the genes the pass on to their children. Except that in the future you can hurt or help them. Interesting moral issue: in the future a person gets warnings about their lifestyle such that if they act in certain ways, they will pass on maladaptive genes to their offspring, but they ignore them. Now can their children blame them for passing on bad genes? I think so, though if the future holds what we think it might, then all the kids have to do is get the gene clinic to reverse the mutations their parents caused. All of this is assuming that everyone has free access to these gene clinics - probably not an assumption that will turn out to be true, though I hope differently. On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 7:19 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > keith wrote - When we do, we expect to find out that an awful lot of a > person's place in society depends on traits that are rooted in their > genes > .- > ?--- > > In the future behavioral problems will be treated with genetic > manipulation?, perhaps turning off or on genes that were changed by your > ancestors' behaviors (changed epigenetically in your parents, etc. and then > restored to the original on or off position). > > Will people accept that as a substitute for putting people in jail for > antisocial behaviors? I hope so. Punishment often doesn't last very long > but changing genes will. However, there is a very powerful belief in the > majority of people that things from failing to take out the garbage to > serial killing, deserves punishment whether or not the punishment is > associated with improvement in behavior. > > The typical murderer has killed someone he knows, often a family member. > The likelihood of his doing it again, with or without punishment of any > kind, is very, very low. But he needs to be punished, according to this > belief. > > Will people accept adding genes to newborns or even fetuses to avoid > fatal diseases? I hope so. > > Now for the big news!!! Since epigenetics involves the changing of the > genes by the experiences of the person, how about future research that > shows how to do that? That is, by doing certain things or being exposed to > certain things, it is found that the genes that are causing the problems > are changed in a beneficent way. This way a person can change his genes > AND those he/she passes on to the children. Isn't this fantastic? (Well, > yes, of course it is, since it is my fantasy, right?) > > Of course to this we have add behaviors and experiences that are known to > have a maladaptive effect on the person's genes, and he/she is warned to > avoid those to avoid the problems they will certainly cause. > > bill w > > > On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 12:01 AM, Keith Henson > wrote: > >> On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 6:59 PM, BillK wrote> >> >> snip >> >> I started to reply, and then picked up from your distortions what the >> objection is. >> >> Eventually, every human trait is going to be understood from the gene >> level up. When we do, we expect to find out that an awful lot of a >> person's place in society depends on traits that are rooted in their >> genes. >> >> This is not a politically correct position. However, I hope there are >> people somewhere who value reality over such memes. >> >> Keith >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat >> > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 15 20:18:52 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 13:18:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: References: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> <004301d315d5$62a600a0$27f201e0$@att.net> Message-ID: <01ff01d31603$b8860460$29920d20$@att.net> >? On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions >>?We have a club. In all the years, we have never heard of one being struck from behind. spike >?Thanks, interesting info. Four? Ja. 1.4 liter V 4. >? That's a lot of maintenance? Ja. A lot of maintenance, the professional shops won?t touch them, so I maintain my bikes myself as well as a couple of riding buddies, or rather I used to. One died, the other gave his Cade to me. Suzuki motor company disowned us and practically denies ever having built the bike because of a design flaw which can cause the rear wheel to lock without warning. Google on Suzuki Cavalcade. You will likely find my name somewhere as the statistics guy. Reason: years ago, I came up with an idea. I would gather all the known serial numbers and log what mechanical failures occurred at what mileage. I discovered a failure cluster, the kind which my own first Cade experienced. Suzuki motor company never owned up to it, never issued a recall. >? Antique bike tag? Ja! I now can get my tags at half price. >?Easy solution: go faster than those behind you and slower than those in front of you! bill w Ja, however if you are stopped at a traffic light and some drunken fool doesn?t see you in time, you can?t go forward and you can?t get out of the way. That observation in Dr. Hurt?s report led to the California state legislature specifically repealing the law forbidding white lining on motorcycles. The notion is that if you are coming up to a stop light, it is safer to go to the white line and even to split lanes to go up front, than it is to get in line. Of course indestructible young men on crotch rockets now split lanes at freeway speeds, but hey, they are young, nothing can ever happen to them. I was their age once. I think. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 21:20:09 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 16:20:09 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: <01ff01d31603$b8860460$29920d20$@att.net> References: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> <004301d315d5$62a600a0$27f201e0$@att.net> <01ff01d31603$b8860460$29920d20$@att.net> Message-ID: but hey, they are young, nothing can ever happen to them. I was their age once. I think. spike Yeah, me too. When I finally got my driver's license, at age 15, I developed a little game I played often: I tried to see how close I could come to parked cars in my right. I swear it must have been a few inches in several cases. Braindead at age 15, and revived much later. No, was not drinking. Hate to think what would have happened had I been. Once when a freshman in college, we went over the bridge where there were no blue laws. Drank about fifteen beers and decided to chug a half pint of rum on the way back to the dorm. Woke up a few hours later having vomited all over myself - was supine. Stood in the shower fully clothed and felt lower than whale shit. Truly a miracle that I did not aspirate it and die right there. Did that stop me? Hah. I quit drinking age 56. High IQ does not equal having other kinds of intelligence. bill w On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 3:18 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR > Attractions > > > > >>?We have a club. In all the years, we have never heard of one being > struck from behind. spike > > > > >?Thanks, interesting info. Four? > > Ja. 1.4 liter V 4. > > >? That's a lot of maintenance? > > Ja. A lot of maintenance, the professional shops won?t touch them, so I > maintain my bikes myself as well as a couple of riding buddies, or rather I > used to. One died, the other gave his Cade to me. Suzuki motor company > disowned us and practically denies ever having built the bike because of a > design flaw which can cause the rear wheel to lock without warning. > > Google on Suzuki Cavalcade. You will likely find my name somewhere as the > statistics guy. Reason: years ago, I came up with an idea. I would gather > all the known serial numbers and log what mechanical failures occurred at > what mileage. I discovered a failure cluster, the kind which my own first > Cade experienced. Suzuki motor company never owned up to it, never issued > a recall. > > >? Antique bike tag? > > Ja! I now can get my tags at half price. > > >?Easy solution: go faster than those behind you and slower than those in > front of you! bill w > > Ja, however if you are stopped at a traffic light and some drunken fool > doesn?t see you in time, you can?t go forward and you can?t get out of the > way. That observation in Dr. Hurt?s report led to the California state > legislature specifically repealing the law forbidding white lining on > motorcycles. The notion is that if you are coming up to a stop light, it > is safer to go to the white line and even to split lanes to go up front, > than it is to get in line. Of course indestructible young men on crotch > rockets now split lanes at freeway speeds, but hey, they are young, nothing > can ever happen to them. I was their age once. I think. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 15 22:32:59 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 15:32:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: References: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> <004301d315d5$62a600a0$27f201e0$@att.net> <01ff01d31603$b8860460$29920d20$@att.net> Message-ID: <028e01d31616$74a75010$5df5f030$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2017 2:20 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions >>? but hey, they are young, nothing can ever happen to them. I was their age once. I think. spike >?Woke up a few hours later having vomited all over myself - was supine. Stood in the shower fully clothed and felt lower than whale shit. Truly a miracle that I did not aspirate it and die right there? Ja, we lucky modern people can have plenty of fun without a drop of alcohol or? whatever units dope comes in. Milligrams? You don?t need any of it. Young people can have so much fun now, the computer stuff, the virtual reality games, all the future they have to look forward to, oh my. No chemicals necessary, plenty of potential for wasting precious youth, plenty. I did a stupid-ass stunt on a motorcycle that could well have cost me my life, but I can?t blame alcohol. It was just plain old natural stupidity rather than chemical induced. Life went on. >?High IQ does not equal having other kinds of intelligence. bill w What we define as high IQ is high ability on IQ tests. Cool good for me, I have always liked doing those things. They are like a puzzle or a game. The debate rages on about what it means, but consider the recent passing of a musician I really liked since forever, Glen Campbell. That guy never had formal training, never read music, just seemed to be born with a talent. He was a natural. So where does that come from, and how do we measure it? Why doesn?t that count as a form of IQ? Consider those who do great on IQ tests, but they seem so messed up in ways that surprise us. You hang out with them for ten minutes and you want to say: Pal, whaaaat in the heeeellll is the matter with you? There are plenty of things we don?t understand about the human mind. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 15 23:31:01 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 18:31:01 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR Attractions In-Reply-To: <028e01d31616$74a75010$5df5f030$@att.net> References: <001501d315cf$fd0b5bf0$f72213d0$@att.net> <004301d315d5$62a600a0$27f201e0$@att.net> <01ff01d31603$b8860460$29920d20$@att.net> <028e01d31616$74a75010$5df5f030$@att.net> Message-ID: There are plenty of things we don?t understand about the human mind. spike All in the future, I hope. But I think, and a few big time brains have agreed with me (!!) that probably environment counts more than genes, though if you don't have the genes no environment will help. Certainly musical ability is a great thing to have and being able to measure it would turn some lives around, but it simply doesn't correlate with IQ- and doesn't need to. It is estimated that an IQ of 80 is sufficient for a person to learn an instrument well enough to play in an orchestra. And how about artistic ability? Same thing. You can call these intelligences and a few people do, but again, IQ is not involved. I would rather not confuse anyone and call these talents or something, but not intelligence. But here is one list: *The 7 Types of Intelligence & Their Characteristics:* - Linguistic Intelligence. ... - Logic Intelligence. ... - Kinaesthetic Intelligence. ... - Spatial Intelligence. ... - Musical Intelligence. ... - Interpersonal Intelligence. ... - Intrapersonal Intelligence. bill w On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 5:32 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Sent:* Tuesday, August 15, 2017 2:20 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Aquarium of the Bay Introduces New AR and VR > Attractions > > > > >>? but hey, they are young, nothing can ever happen to them. I was their > age once. I think. spike > > > > >?Woke up a few hours later having vomited all over myself - was supine. > Stood in the shower fully clothed and felt lower than whale shit. Truly a > miracle that I did not aspirate it and die right there? > > Ja, we lucky modern people can have plenty of fun without a drop of > alcohol or? whatever units dope comes in. Milligrams? You don?t need any > of it. Young people can have so much fun now, the computer stuff, the > virtual reality games, all the future they have to look forward to, oh my. > No chemicals necessary, plenty of potential for wasting precious youth, > plenty. > > I did a stupid-ass stunt on a motorcycle that could well have cost me my > life, but I can?t blame alcohol. It was just plain old natural stupidity > rather than chemical induced. Life went on. > > >?High IQ does not equal having other kinds of intelligence. bill w > > What we define as high IQ is high ability on IQ tests. Cool good for me, > I have always liked doing those things. They are like a puzzle or a game. > > The debate rages on about what it means, but consider the recent passing > of a musician I really liked since forever, Glen Campbell. That guy never > had formal training, never read music, just seemed to be born with a > talent. He was a natural. So where does that come from, and how do we > measure it? Why doesn?t that count as a form of IQ? > > Consider those who do great on IQ tests, but they seem so messed up in > ways that surprise us. You hang out with them for ten minutes and you want > to say: Pal, whaaaat in the heeeellll is the matter with you? > > There are plenty of things we don?t understand about the human mind. > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Wed Aug 16 11:25:32 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 04:25:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? Message-ID: <6e1fdeb952b1a6f46e9aee37c8200cb6.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> My exchanges with John Clark in the last month, caused me to ask an interesting question: What fraction of reality, by 4-D volume, lies inside of our past lightcone? I modelled reality as a 4-D hypersphere or 4-sphere in Planck units given by S4. t^2+x^2+y^2+z^2 <= R^2 where t is time and R is the radius of the 4-sphere. Then I modelled the light-cone as the bottom half of t^2-x^2-y^2-z^2 = 0 which reduces to PLC4. t <= -sqrt(x^2+y^2+z^2) So I was looking for 4-volume of the intersection of PLC4 & S4 divided by the 4-volume of S4. The 4-volume of a 4D cone with an apex angle of (pi/4) is and the radius of its 3D spherical base is Vc = pi*r^4/3 Where the radius of its 3D spherical base is r The 4-volume of a 4-sphere is Vs = pi^2*R^4/2 where R is the full radius of the 4-sphere. R is related to r by R = sqrt(2)*r Substituting in R in Vs and dividing Vc by Vs and simplifying yields the fraction of spacettime contained within the past lightcone as: Fp = 1/(6*pi) or approximately 5.3% What I find so surprising is that this is very close to our latest estimates of the mass fraction of visible matter in the universe as compared to the total mass of visible matter, dark matter, and dark energy. The latest figures are given here: https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/03/first-planck-results-the-universe-is-still-weird-and-interesting/ So our latest measurements have the fraction of visible matter at 4.9% and I have shown that special relativity predicts that you should only be able to see and be causally affected by 5.3% of the universe. Since the density of the universe at the largest scales is pretty uniform, I would expect that the percent 4-volume should approximate percent mass. So that would mean that dark matter and dark energy are spacelike or future timelike particles existing outside our past lightcone and therefore unable to be directly detected although they should still be able to bend spacetime with their mass. Perhaps this "dark mass" is simply baryons moving in FTL inertial frames that are protected from detection by event horizons and cosmic censorship? Thoughts anyone? Stuart LaForge From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Aug 16 16:01:47 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:01:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: <6e1fdeb952b1a6f46e9aee37c8200cb6.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <6e1fdeb952b1a6f46e9aee37c8200cb6.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 7:25 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > *?> ?What fraction of reality, by 4-D volume, lies inside? ?of our past > lightcone?* ? We know the Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago but it seems to me that to answer your question I'd have to know how big our future lightcone is, and I don't know what that is ?, for all I know it's infinite.? > ?>* ?* > > > > *I modelled reality as a 4-D hypersphere or 4-sphere? ?in Planck units > given by ? ?S4. t^2+x^2+y^2+z^2 <= R^2* *? ? where t is time and R is the radius of the 4-sphere. * ? The ? ? Pythagoras Theorem ? ? works for 4-D Euclidian space but that's not what Einstein used, he used 4-D ? ? Minkowski ? ? space (sometimes called ? ? Hyperbolic ? ? space) ? ? with a different distance formula ? ? than the one Pythagoras gave: R^2= X^2 +Y^2 +Z^2 - (c^2)T^2 Where ? R is the distance between events in spacetime ? and? X,Y, and Z are the distance in space in those dimensions and (c^2)T^2 is the distance in the time dimension. The c is the speed of light and the c^2 is a conversion factor ? to get the units right;? if you didn't have that you'd be adding apples and oranges, or rather meters and seconds ?,? which would make no sense. ? ? ? It can be proven that ? ? in ? ? flat space mathematically there are only 2 possible definitions of distance such that distance remains ? ? the same for all observers ? ? in any frame of reference, the one in ? ? the ? ? Pythagoras Theorem ? ? and the one above. Both are equally valid mathematically but ? ? Minkowski ? ? works better for physical reasons. Minkowski treats time differently than space and that's why the minus sign is in there, if it were a plus as in regular old 4-D Euclidian space then causality would not be ? ? preserved ? ? and a event could happen before the thing that caused it, and that would be unphysical. And the above formula is only an approximation, when Spacetime becomes highly curved, as it is around massive stars, ? ? 4-D ? ? Tensor Calculus must be used ? ? to find the distance between two events in spacetime. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Aug 16 21:34:16 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 17:34:16 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Virgo Message-ID: The Virgo Gravity Wave detector in Italy came online last week, so with the help of the 2 LIGO detectors we can now triangulate and pinpoint the source of the waves and know where to point our optical and radio telescopes and determine if they can spot anything. If the black holes are not primordial they might see something, but if they are probably not. But colliding Neutron stars should almost certainly make a flash of some sort, we haven't detected gravitational from them yet but that's probably just a matter of time. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Thu Aug 17 02:00:00 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 19:00:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? Message-ID: <3a319b50cb872edcd9bbadf807fae612.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> In response to my question: >>??What fraction of reality, by 4-D volume, lies inside? ?of our past lightcone? John Clark wrote: >We know the Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago but it seems to me >that to answer your question I'd have to know how big our future lightcone >is, and I don't know what that is ?>, for all I know it's infinite.? Actually that's beauty of the method I used. By taking the ratio of the 4-D contents of the lightcone to the contents of the 4-D ball, the distances and times cancel out leaving a constant- no matter how big those distances and times get. Check the limit at infinity. In a way, you can think of 1/(6*pi) as the *maximum* fraction of space-time that can be in your past when your lightcone catches up to the expansion of the universe. You can never see it all, just a maximum of 5.30 percent of it. ? ? >[. . .]with a different distance formula ? ? >than the one Pythagoras gave: >R^2= X^2 +Y^2 +Z^2 - (c^2)T^2 The spacetime interval is irrelevant to the calculation I made because we are dealing with the size of the lightcone. The spacetime interval is zero because the lightcone is a null geodesic. We are only interested in X^2 +Y^2 +Z^2 - (c^2)T^2 = 0. > if you didn't have that you'd be adding apples and oranges, or rather >meters and seconds ?,? >which would make no sense. ? That's why I use Planck units. By setting c=1, it simplifies the math. I am certain that even if you leave c in the equation, it will cancel during the division of the lightcone by the hypersphere. Surely you have heard of the utility of natural units? ? ? >It can be proven that ? ? >in ? ? >flat space mathematically there are only 2 possible definitions of distance >such that distance remains ? ? >the same for all observers ? ? >in any frame of reference, the one in ? ? >the ? ? >Pythagoras Theorem ? ? >and the one above. Yes. And I have divided the 4D volume of Minkowski space by the 4D volume of the same-sized Euclidean space. This works even both are infinite in size and gives an answer that is a constant: 1/(6*pi) >Minkowski ?> ? >works better for physical reasons. Minkowski treats time differently than >space and that's why the minus sign is in there, if it were a plus as in >regular old 4-D Euclidian space then causality would not be ?> >preserved ? Yes. This is precisely why my result makes sense. Minkowski treats time differently than spatial dimensions. There is only 1 time axis and 3 space axes. So the vast majority (89.4%) of all possible spacetime intervals to all possible events will be spacelike. >and a event could happen before the thing that caused it, and that would be >unphysical. And the above formula is only an approximation, when Spacetime >becomes highly curved, as it is around massive stars, ? ? >4-D ? ? >Tensor Calculus must be used ? ? >to find the distance between two events in spacetime. Yes, John, my calculation is only valid in flat spacetime. But the universe seems relatively flat at the largest scales. Because of cosmic expansion, the curvature of spacetime has an inflection point at a distance proportional to the third root of the mass involved. You can think of it as the point where the expansion of spacetime exactly balances the gravitational attraction. In any case, the universe's density kind of smooths out at a scale of several billion lightyears. But spacetime not being perfectly flat at that scale might be why my number is off from the measurements by +0.4 percent. Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 09:47:56 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 10:47:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: <6e1fdeb952b1a6f46e9aee37c8200cb6.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <6e1fdeb952b1a6f46e9aee37c8200cb6.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On 16 August 2017 at 12:25, Stuart LaForge wrote: > My exchanges with John Clark in the last month, caused me to ask an > interesting question: What fraction of reality, by 4-D volume, lies inside > of our past lightcone? I modelled reality as a 4-D hypersphere or 4-sphere > in Planck units given by > > > So our latest measurements have the fraction of visible matter at 4.9% and > I have shown that special relativity predicts that you should only be able > to see and be causally affected by 5.3% of the universe. Since the density > of the universe at the largest scales is pretty uniform, I would expect > that the percent 4-volume should approximate percent mass. > > So that would mean that dark matter and dark energy are spacelike or > future timelike particles existing outside our past lightcone and > therefore unable to be directly detected although they should still be > able to bend spacetime with their mass. > > Perhaps this "dark mass" is simply baryons moving in FTL inertial frames > that are protected from detection by event horizons and cosmic censorship? > Perhaps I am being too simplistic, but wouldn't this imply that dark matter existed beyond our light cone? If dark matter only exists beyond our light cone we could expect to see gravitational effects at the edge of our visible universe affecting galaxies near the edge. Whereas research seems to indicate that dark matter permeates our visible universe and is clustered around our galaxies. We can even map the areas where dark matter must be. BillK From avant at sollegro.com Thu Aug 17 12:17:09 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 05:17:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? Message-ID: <977e372abd9f8c3fa0169ad2345b7892.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> BillK wrote: >Perhaps I am being too simplistic, but wouldn't this imply that dark >matter existed beyond our light cone? Yes, exactly that. >If dark matter only exists >beyond our light cone we could expect to see gravitational effects at >the edge of our visible universe affecting galaxies near the edge. We do. There is the phenomenon of dark flow. https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.4276v1 >Whereas research seems to indicate that dark matter permeates our >visible universe and is clustered around our galaxies. We can even map >the areas where dark matter must be. > Yes, it is also much closer tucked inside and around our galaxies as well but it is still outside our light cone. Remember that you can never see the present moment. Light travels 30 centimeters or about one foot in one nanosecond. Point at something nearby estimate the number of feet to it, that's how many nanoseconds into the past you are looking. Something can therefore be very close and still be outside your light cone for short periods of time. A dark matter woman could be passing within 5 feet of you at faster than light. She wouldn't be very dense because she would have the same 50 kg mass she does in her reality only in this reality it is spread diffusely along a noodle around 75 light years long. She doesn't appear to move but she only lasts for a nanosecond. You would have no way of detecting her. She would have no way of detecting you. In her reality, you are the dark matter and she is just doing her thing. Think of being a Flatlander and having a very long wire drop through your plane horizontally and the wire can pass straight through stuff. You would have no way of seeing it. I still have to hash out a lot of the math but that's the quick of it. As they say, the devil is is in the details. Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 13:02:01 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 14:02:01 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: <977e372abd9f8c3fa0169ad2345b7892.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <977e372abd9f8c3fa0169ad2345b7892.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On 17 August 2017 at 13:17, Stuart LaForge wrote: > BillK wrote: > >>Perhaps I am being too simplistic, but wouldn't this imply that dark >>matter existed beyond our light cone? > > Yes, exactly that. > >>If dark matter only exists >>beyond our light cone we could expect to see gravitational effects at >>the edge of our visible universe affecting galaxies near the edge. > > We do. There is the phenomenon of dark flow. > https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.4276v1 > I thought dark flow was still speculative, with the research still being argued about? The Great Attractor appears to be normal (but large) gravitational attraction. Even if dark flow exists, (with some speculation around that it could another universe touching ours), you still have to think of an explanation for why dark matter beyond our visible universe is concentrated in that one direction and not evenly spread around the edge of our light cone. >>Whereas research seems to indicate that dark matter permeates our >>visible universe and is clustered around our galaxies. We can even map >>the areas where dark matter must be. >> > > Yes, it is also much closer tucked inside and around our galaxies as well > but it is still outside our light cone. Remember that you can never see > the present moment. Light travels 30 centimeters or about one foot in one > nanosecond. Point at something nearby estimate the number of feet to it, > that's how many nanoseconds into the past you are looking. Something can > therefore be very close and still be outside your light cone for short > periods of time. > > A dark matter woman could be passing within 5 feet of you at faster than > light. She wouldn't be very dense because she would have the same 50 kg > mass she does in her reality only in this reality it is spread diffusely > along a noodle around 75 light years long. She doesn't appear to move but > she only lasts for a nanosecond. You would have no way of detecting her. > She would have no way of detecting you. In her reality, you are the dark > matter and she is just doing her thing. > > Think of being a Flatlander and having a very long wire drop through your > plane horizontally and the wire can pass straight through stuff. You would > have no way of seeing it. > > I still have to hash out a lot of the math but that's the quick of it. As > they say, the devil is is in the details. > > Stuart LaForge > Agreed that dark matter detection is a worrying problem for scientists and they hope it may lead to new physics being discovered. But particles from another universe travelling faster than light through our universe may be a step too far! :) BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Aug 17 19:55:48 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 15:55:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: <6e1fdeb952b1a6f46e9aee37c8200cb6.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <6e1fdeb952b1a6f46e9aee37c8200cb6.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: Stuart LaForge wrote: > > that's beauty of the method I used. By taking the ratio of the 4-D > contents of the lightcone to the contents of the 4-D ball, the distances > and times cancel out leaving a constant- no matter how big those distances > and times get. Check the limit at infinity. a few comments: You can't go to infinity in all directions, the past is a specific finite number, 13.8 billion years, the future is unknown and could well be infinite but almost certainly is not equal to the past, it is not 13.8 billion years. If you include the entire "contents of the 4-D ball" you'd be including events outside our past lightcone that can not influence any observation we make, so that can't explain the observations we can make of Dark Matter or Dark energy. If your talking about 4-D Spacetime and not just 4-D space you've got to use volume formulas appropriate for hyperbolic geometry not Euclidian geometry. > In a way, you can think of 1/(6*pi) as the *maximum* fraction > of space-time that can be in your past when your lightcone catches up to > the expansion of the universe. The universe is not only expanding it's accelerating, so there are events that can never influence your observations even if you wait an infinite number of years. In fact there is some very recent evidence that the acceleration and may be accelerating and we're heading for the Big Rip in a few trillion years where even atoms are torn apart, but that part needs more observation before we can say for sure. But at the very least there is no doubt the universe is accelerating. > > You can never see it all, just a maximum of 5.30 percent of it. About 30% of the universe consists of matter which tends to push things together, the remaining 70% being Dark Energy which tends to push things away. Of that 30% how does your idea differentiate between the 25% that is composed of Dark Matter and the 5% that is regular matter? > The spacetime interval is irrelevant to the calculation I made because > we are dealing with the size of the lightcone. A lightcone measures spacetime intervals, so I don't see how that can be irrelevant. > I use Planck units. By setting c=1, it simplifies the math. I am certain > that even if you leave c in the equation, it will cancel during the > division of the lightcone by the hypersphere. Surely you have heard of the > utility of natural units? I have heard of Planck units, they are the smallest intervals in Spacetime you can have before they become dominated by quantum effects, and if it's in Spacetime you've got to use hyperbolic geometry not Euclidian geometry. And don't call me Shirley. John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 18 18:22:34 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 11:22:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial Message-ID: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> In Europe, holocaust denial is a sin, for perfectly understandable reasons. In the USA, we are in the process of tearing down monuments to military leaders in our Civil War of 1861-1865. It starts with the losing side, but the whole notion will likely continue until we take down the others too. Seems pretty certain we will soon have Civil War deniers, those who claim the whole thing never happened. How will we handle that? Perhaps we should start with an easier one, such as the War of 1812. What physical evidence do we have? There are no photos, no remaining witnesses, only accounts written by no one knows who. We have the music: our National Anthem and that really cool overture by Tchaikovsky but several key pieces of evidence are missing or questionable, such as. the motive. Why the heck did the redcoats want a rematch? And think about it: a symphony piece about a supposed conflict between the US and Britain was written by a commie? Doesn't that seem a bit fishy? I have my vague doubts about the whole thing. We need to start a new movement: War of 1812 denial. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 18:58:21 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 11:58:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> Message-ID: <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> On Aug 18, 2017, at 11:22 AM, spike wrote: > > In Europe, holocaust denial is a sin, for perfectly understandable reasons. > > In the USA, we are in the process of tearing down monuments to military leaders in our Civil War of 1861-1865. It starts with the losing side, but the whole notion will likely continue until we take down the others too. Seems pretty certain we will soon have Civil War deniers, those who claim the whole thing never happened. How will we handle that? > > Perhaps we should start with an easier one, such as the War of 1812. What physical evidence do we have? There are no photos, no remaining witnesses, only accounts written by no one knows who. We have the music: our National Anthem and that really cool overture by Tchaikovsky but several key pieces of evidence are missing or questionable, such as? the motive. Why the heck did the redcoats want a rematch? And think about it: a symphony piece about a supposed conflict between the US and Britain was written by a commie? Doesn?t that seem a bit fishy? I have my vague doubts about the whole thing. > > We need to start a new movement: War of 1812 denial. Who is claiming that the Civil War never happened? Isn't tearing down a monument not about denying the history but actually affirming the history? I mean they want the Lee statue removed because it extols him as a good guy worthy of a monument -- not because the would be removers want us to forget that Lee ever existed. Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 19:01:56 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 15:01:56 -0400 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> Message-ID: Hardly, it's about rewriting it, and it's only the beginning if the social justice warriors have their way... On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 2:58 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > > > Isn't tearing down a monument not about denying the history but actually > affirming the history? I mean they want the Lee statue removed because it > extols him as a good guy worthy of a monument -- not because the would be > removers want us to forget that Lee ever existed. > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": > http://mybook.to/SandTrap > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Aug 18 19:12:55 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 12:12:55 -0700 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6F4D4898-6A91-48DF-B242-6CF3A90C517E@gmail.com> On Aug 18, 2017, at 12:01 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: > Hardly, it's about rewriting it, and it's only the beginning if the social justice warriors have their way... Was tearing down Lenin statues in Eastern Europe rewriting history? What about removing Nazi symbols -- for instance, toppling those swastikas from various public buildings -- following WW2? See the end of this article too: http://reason.com/blog/2017/08/17/de-policing-the-neo-nazi-rally-in-charlo Note his view on removal. And Bailey is not by any stretch an "SJW." Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 19:22:19 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 15:22:19 -0400 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: <6F4D4898-6A91-48DF-B242-6CF3A90C517E@gmail.com> References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> <6F4D4898-6A91-48DF-B242-6CF3A90C517E@gmail.com> Message-ID: The civil war took place within the borders of the US, and is woven into the fabric of the nation. It's a false equivalence. I would add that equating a monument to Lee with a Nazi symbol shows a lack of nuance regarding the history of the Civil War, and the Confederates in particular. I doubt Grant would be in favor of tearing down every Confederate monument in sight if he were around to witness this. And trust me, even if you don't buy into any of the above, this won't end with removing Confederate monuments once the alt-left finds its next target. Putting aside the Daesh like monument destruction, I find it a lot more troubling that the internet is in the hands of a few virtue signalling companies with the power to silence anyone they don't care for. I would expect their recent behaviors to end in either a SCOTUS challenge on 1st amendment grounds, or them being broken up under the Sherman antitrust act, but that could be a long time coming. On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 3:12 PM, Dan TheBookMan wrote: > On Aug 18, 2017, at 12:01 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: > > Hardly, it's about rewriting it, and it's only the beginning if the social > justice warriors have their way... > > > Was tearing down Lenin statues in Eastern Europe rewriting history? What > about removing Nazi symbols -- for instance, toppling those swastikas from > various public buildings -- following WW2? > > See the end of this article too: > > http://reason.com/blog/2017/08/17/de-policing-the-neo-nazi-rally-in-charlo > > Note his view on removal. And Bailey is not by any stretch an "SJW." > > Regards, > > Dan > Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": > http://mybook.to/SandTrap > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Aug 18 20:32:31 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 16:32:31 -0400 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 2:22 PM, spike wrote: > ?> ? > In Europe, holocaust denial is a sin, for perfectly understandable reasons. > ? ? > In the USA, we are in the process of tearing down monuments to military > leaders in our Civil War of 1861-1865. It starts with the losing side, but > the whole notion will likely continue until we take down the others too. > Seems pretty certain we will soon have Civil War deniers, those who claim > the whole thing never happened. > Robert E ? ? Lee killed ?many ? hundreds of times as ?many American citizens ? as Osama ?B? in ?L? aden ? ever did, so should we also put up statues of Osama striking heroic poses ? i? n public parks so we don't forget 911? John K Clark > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 21:51:54 2017 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 14:51:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> <6F4D4898-6A91-48DF-B242-6CF3A90C517E@gmail.com> Message-ID: <3E1EA1D6-E3E5-463F-AD5E-06629CD3C85D@gmail.com> On Aug 18, 2017, at 12:22 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: > The civil war took place within the borders of the US, and is woven into the fabric of the nation. It's a false equivalence. I would add that equating a monument to Lee with a Nazi symbol shows a lack of nuance regarding the history of the Civil War, and the Confederates in particular. I doubt Grant would be in favor of tearing down every Confederate monument in sight if he were around to witness this. Many Nazi symbols were removed in Germany itself. I fail to see why national borders matter here too. > And trust me, even if you don't buy into any of the above, this won't end with removing Confederate monuments once the alt-left finds its next target. That's not a strong argument against doing something. Are these monuments symbols of oppression or not? Are they on public lands, thus creating the issue that folks who disapprove of them are forced to fund them? > Putting aside the Daesh like monument destruction, I find it a lot more troubling that the internet is in the hands of a few virtue signalling companies with the power to silence anyone they don't care for. I would expect their recent behaviors to end in either a SCOTUS challenge on 1st amendment grounds, or them being broken up under the Sherman antitrust act, but that could be a long time coming. I can see problems with corporations silencing people, though there's the issue of free association. Should X be compelled to provide services to Y when such services are not an issue of life or death? Also, again, whatever this issue of monument removal is, it seems very unlike Holocaust denial to me. These folks are pretty much taking a fairly conventional view of history and saying that monuments to Confederates and things like the Confederate flag symbolize a slave system. If they wanted to deny the Civil War, then they'd probably not want to talk about Lee, etc., but to say things like this or that battle actually didn't take place, that Virginia never broke with the Union, etc. I'm not saying they have to imitate everything the Holocaust deniers do, but so far nothing they say seems even close to denying the history here. And I don't think most people are going to forget this history because there's not a Lee monument in the square or a Confederate flag flying over the state house. That said, while I think the world has bigger problems -- war deaths, for instance -- I'm personally against all public monuments, especially those with politicians and other warmongers. In the US, it seems pernicious that when we do have a public monument, it almost always seem to focus on war or some president. That the only thing worth commemorating? Regards, Dan Sample my latest Kindle book "Sand Trap": http://mybook.to/SandTrap -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 22:57:53 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 18:57:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> <6F4D4898-6A91-48DF-B242-6CF3A90C517E@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 3:22 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: ?> ? > The civil war took place within the borders of the US, and is woven into > the fabric of the nation. It's a false equivalence. I would add that > equating a monument to Lee with a Nazi symbol shows a lack of nuance > regarding the history of the Civil War, > ?That's true there is a difference: *Robert E Lee was an American traitor ?,? ? Hitler was not. ?*? Robert E Lee ? ? violated the oath he made when he became a officer in the US Army ?, Hitler did not. ?*? Robert E Lee ? killed 50% more American citizens than Hitler and Japan's Tojo ?put together. > ?> ? > I doubt Grant would be in favor of tearing down every Confederate monument > in sight if he were around to witness this. > ?Is there any reason I should care what Grant's opinion on this might have been?? ?> ? > And trust me, even if you don't buy into any of the above, this won't end > with removing Confederate monuments once the alt-left finds its next > target. > ?Wow, that didn't take long! Trump says "alt-left" on Tuesday and on Friday we've got it on the Extropian list. Trump also likes to say "trust me" a lot. Monkey see monkey do. ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Fri Aug 18 23:06:37 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 19:06:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> <6F4D4898-6A91-48DF-B242-6CF3A90C517E@gmail.com> Message-ID: John- As I believe others have expressed on list before, your ad hominem attacks are unhelpful. Nevertheless, they continue on anyone who disagrees with you. The term alt-left has been out there for at least a year and I was well acquainted with it before Trump used it, but I am not surprised to hear that Tuesday was the first that YOU heard of it based on your other postings here: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22alt%20left%22 I suppose you're just hearing of Antifa also... Enjoy your weekend, I know I'll be enjoying mine. I count every day without your hysterically prophesied nuclear winter as a blessing. YMMV. On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 6:57 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 3:22 PM, Dylan Distasio > wrote: > >> >> ?Wow, that didn't take long! Trump says "alt-left" on Tuesday and on > Friday we've got it on the Extropian list. Trump also likes to say "trust > me" a lot. > Monkey see monkey do. > ? > > 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 spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 19 14:58:06 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike66) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 07:58:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial Message-ID: <94178.35550.bm@smtp116.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone -------- Original message --------From: John Clark Date: 8/18/17 3:57 PM (GMT-08:00) To: ExI chat list Subject:? ?> ?The civil war took place within the borders of the US, and is woven into the fabric of the nation.? It's a false equivalence.? I would add that equating a monument to Lee with a Nazi symbol shows a lack of nuance...John K Clark? Sheesh just trying 2 inject a bit of humor for an eclipse chasing trip which threatens 2 turn into a fiasco on the order of the 2016 elections. ?It took us 3 hrs to go the first 8 miles out of bay area. ?Now the skies r smokey and they say a bunch of gas stations out there can't supply demand oy vey evolution have mercy. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 19 15:33:28 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 11:33:28 -0400 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: <94178.35550.bm@smtp116.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <94178.35550.bm@smtp116.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Although I don't disagree with it that quotation is not from me. I hope the sky's clear for your eclipse trip. John K Clark ============= On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 10:58 AM, spike66 wrote: > > > > > Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone > > -------- Original message -------- > From: John Clark > Date: 8/18/17 3:57 PM (GMT-08:00) > To: ExI chat list > Subject: > > ?> ? >> The civil war took place within the borders of the US, and is woven into >> the fabric of the nation. It's a false equivalence. I would add that >> equating a monument to Lee with a Nazi symbol shows a lack of nuance...John >> K Clark? >> >> >> >> > Sheesh just trying 2 inject a bit of humor for an eclipse chasing trip > which threatens 2 turn into a fiasco on the order of the 2016 elections. > It took us 3 hrs to go the first 8 miles out of bay area. Now the skies r > smokey and they say a bunch of gas stations out there can't supply demand > oy vey evolution have mercy. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Aug 19 16:09:35 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 17:09:35 +0100 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: <94178.35550.bm@smtp116.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <94178.35550.bm@smtp116.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 19 August 2017 at 15:58, spike66 wrote: > Sheesh just trying 2 inject a bit of humor for an eclipse chasing trip which > threatens 2 turn into a fiasco on the order of the 2016 elections. It took > us 3 hrs to go the first 8 miles out of bay area. Now the skies r smokey > and they say a bunch of gas stations out there can't supply demand oy vey > evolution have mercy. > Yea, I saw that Oregon was predicting huge traffic jams. Then I saw that there were lots of wildfires that caused some roads to be closed and some campsites were also being closed. Check for road and fire updates. Hope you make it OK! BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 19 16:14:48 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 12:14:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: References: <000601d3184e$f700b210$e5021630$@att.net> <9ACAF3C7-5BB6-4527-97D8-63514F9227BC@gmail.com> <6F4D4898-6A91-48DF-B242-6CF3A90C517E@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 7:06 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: > ?> ? > I count every day without your hysterically prophesied nuclear winter as a > blessing. ?My joy at hearing that anti free market ? ?fascist ? Steve Bannon ? got fired was less than it might have been because on some issues he was more rational and knowledgeable ? ?than his boss. That may be faint praise as the bar is set very low but at least Bannon knew North Korea could send 300,000 artillery ?shells ? and rocket ?s? ? an hour into Seoul?, one of the most highly populated cities in the world. Bannon said: *"Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us" * *?*Meanwhile Donald Trump asked his generals why if we have nuclear weapons we don't use them and told the world what he would do if North Korea made any more threats, not what he would do if they performed a hostile action but what he would do if they just shot off their mouth again: ? ?*"?* *North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,? they will ?be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen?.??* ?A statement eerily reminiscent of what Harry Truman said about Japan after he dropped the Hiroshima bomb but before he dropped the Nagasaki bomb: *"If they [Japan] do not now accept our terms they can expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth".* You may believe that I'm being silly worrying about a little thing like Nuclear War, but I don't think so. And by the way, I don't remember saying anything about nuclear winter. ?> ? > your ad hominem attacks are unhelpful. > ?Sorry if I've been politically incorrect and offended ?your delicate sensibilities, but I humbly suggest if you can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen. ?John K Clark? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Aug 20 02:49:13 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 19:49:13 -0700 Subject: [ExI] eclipse was: RE: civil war denial Message-ID: <021701d3195e$e9421a40$bbc64ec0$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK >...Yea, I saw that Oregon was predicting huge traffic jams. Then I saw that there were lots of wildfires that caused some roads to be closed and some campsites were also being closed. >...Check for road and fire updates. Hope you make it OK! >...BillK _______________________________________________ We had some slowdowns and plenty of problems, but sound solutions. We are camping on the southern edge of totality, hoping to drive on out to Mitchell at the crack of dawn. spike From spike66 at att.net Sun Aug 20 02:55:40 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 19:55:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] whats in a name? Message-ID: <021801d3195f$cfe56060$6fb02120$@att.net> Waiting for the eclipse a thought occurred to me. What if. Max More and Natasha Vita-More decide to reproduce and have a son. Being a manly man and anticipating his son might be as well, Max and Natasha would likely eschew mild boring names such as Wilbur or Throckmorton, choosing to give him a manly man name such as Rex. Then no one would sell that lad car insurance. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sun Aug 20 03:26:53 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 20:26:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] whats in a name? In-Reply-To: <021801d3195f$cfe56060$6fb02120$@att.net> References: <021801d3195f$cfe56060$6fb02120$@att.net> Message-ID: <023b01d31964$2c7893c0$8569bb40$@att.net> And what if. Adrian managed to win the heart of the Borg space-babe Seven Of Nine, and they had a son, and wanted to keep the hipster hyphenated name, but also wanted him to have a kind of Nordic sounding moniker. Would he be Sven Tymes-Nine? spike From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 7:56 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] whats in a name? Waiting for the eclipse a thought occurred to me. What if. Max More and Natasha Vita-More decide to reproduce and have a son. Being a manly man and anticipating his son might be as well, Max and Natasha would likely eschew mild boring names such as Wilbur or Throckmorton, choosing to give him a manly man name such as Rex. Then no one would sell that lad car insurance. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sun Aug 20 14:35:58 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2017 07:35:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? Message-ID: <8ddd1f32ec51a5344ced5f4ac714a136.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> BillK wrote: >Even if dark flow exists, (with some speculation around that it could >another universe touching ours), you still have to think of an >explanation for why dark matter beyond our visible universe is >concentrated in that one direction and not evenly spread around the >edge of our light cone. Bill, I appreciate your humor, but I want to stress that these superluminal atoms and molecules are not from another universe. They are from this very same universe. A universe that experienced a big bang, where temperatures were around 1.4*10^32 Kelvin. By Boltzmann's thermal velocity formula, the most probable velocity of protons at this temperature would be v = sqrt(2K*T/m) where K is Boltzmann's constant and m is the mass of a proton. The answer to this admitttedly rough approximation is that the average proton would be going about 6*10^25 times the speed of light. Then according to Knuth, we went through an inflationary period where spacetime expanded faster than light to grow to the point where the far regions of our universe had lost any causal relationship between them that they might have had. Yet 13.8 billion years have passed. Plenty of time for protons going 10^25 times the speed of light to have caught up with us. The amazing thing is that according to Special Relativity, these protons don't have any clue that they are going so fast compared to us. Instead, from their own inertial frame, they are simply at rest, and it is we who are going at ludicrous speed compared to them. That means they would have had the luxury of forming atoms and molecules, stars and planets, and maybe even life. And they are still going at insane speeds relative to us. So instead of calling these other inertial reference frames "universes" let's instead call them causal cells or Lorenz domains or something similar. They are just more of the same stuff as we, subject to the same laws of physics as we, travelling extremely fast relative to us. Note that my idea does not violate the known laws of physics because the superluminal dark matter never accelerated relative to us. They simply coalesced out of energy from the big bang already going that speed relative to us. >Agreed that dark matter detection is a worrying problem for scientists >and they hope it may lead to new physics being discovered. But >particles from another universe travelling faster than light through >our universe may be a step too far! :) Say what you will, my hypothesis does explain a lot. For one thing, my hypothesis predicts that it is a waste of time looking for dark matter "particles". Instead, dark matter would only be particles in its own rest frame. There it would be protons and atoms and such. In our rest frame, its time axis and space axis would switch places. So it would appear from our perspective as a "space noodle" i.e. an atom's mass distributed in a line many light years long, but very narrow and ephemeral in our reference frame. As long in light years as it's decay lifetime, but lasting only as long as it would take for light to traverse its diameter. For a hydrogen atom that would make it billions of lightyears long, about 100 picometers wide, and lasting around 3.5*10^-19 seconds. Think of these space noodles as the familiar world-lines of these particles literally tilted over their side running more or less parallel to the x-axis and perpindicular to time. Riddle me this: Gravity crushes everything more massive than the asteroid Ceres into spheres: Planets, stars, black holes, etc. Why does dark matter form gigantic filaments with embedded galaxies instead of spheres? Maybe because it isn't made of particles. . . It's made of space-noodles! Stuart LaForge Disclaimer: The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Church of Pastafarianism. ;-) From pharos at gmail.com Sun Aug 20 17:50:32 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2017 18:50:32 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: <8ddd1f32ec51a5344ced5f4ac714a136.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <8ddd1f32ec51a5344ced5f4ac714a136.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On 20 August 2017 at 15:35, Stuart LaForge wrote: > Bill, I appreciate your humor, but I want to stress that these > superluminal atoms and molecules are not from another universe. They are > from this very same universe. A universe that experienced a big bang, > where temperatures were around 1.4*10^32 Kelvin. > > By Boltzmann's thermal velocity formula, the most probable velocity of > protons at this temperature would be v = sqrt(2K*T/m) where K is > Boltzmann's constant and m is the mass of a proton. The answer to this > admitttedly rough approximation is that the average proton would be going > about 6*10^25 times the speed of light. > Well, I suppose anything could be happening at the time of the big bang. :) Our physics may not apply at the moment of creation. I doubt that any protons at all existed at the big bang instant. After inflation ended, matter and antimatter almost annihilated each other leaving only our universe of normal matter. So protons didn't exist until 0.0001 seconds after the big bang when inflation had ended and the universe had cooled down a bit. More thoughts ..... As protons increase in speed they also increase in mass towards infinite mass and this stops them from exceeding the speed of light. Or, an alternative phrasing is that to make protons exceed the speed of light you need a force acting on them that also exceeds the speed of light. I doubt that heating protons up would make them exceed the speed of light. If you assume the almost infinite heat of creation, then you also have to assume that protons could exist under those conditions. > > Riddle me this: Gravity crushes everything more massive than the asteroid > Ceres into spheres: Planets, stars, black holes, etc. Why does dark matter > form gigantic filaments with embedded galaxies instead of spheres? Maybe > because it isn't made of particles. . . It's made of space-noodles! > Dark matter is clustered around galaxies. It is the galaxies that form gigantic filaments. So why are FTL particles static and clustered around galaxies? They should be zipping through our normal universe regardless of what is in our universe. These space-noodles don't hang about! :) BillK From avant at sollegro.com Sun Aug 20 18:21:44 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2017 11:21:44 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? Message-ID: <2ea0eb551044f26956b0e11899b70cec.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: >You can't go to infinity in all directions, the past is a specific finite >number, 13.8 billion years, the future is unknown and could well be >infinite but almost certainly is not equal to the past, it is not 13.8 >billion years. Well I would say at the scale of about 3 billion lightyears, structures stop being apparent and the universe becomes of sufficiently homogenous density for my calculation to be valid. So any radius of the 4-D ball between 3 billion and 13.8 billion light years would suffice. >If you include the entire "contents of the 4-D ball" you'd be including >events outside our past lightcone that can not influence any observation we >make, so that can't explain the observations we can make of Dark Matter or >Dark energy. Blackhole singularities are outside our light cone as well, hidden behind event horizons to protect causality, yet they nonetheless influence the shape of space-time if not outright cause events to happen in their local vicinity even if we can't see the singularity itself. I claim the same privilege for superluminal space-noodles of dark matter. They can gravitationally warp space-time and according to GR, that's just geometry. To say gravity is subject to causality is like saying an elephant's trunk causes its ass. >If your talking about 4-D Spacetime and not just 4-D space you've got to >use volume formulas appropriate for hyperbolic geometry not Euclidian >geometry. The *official* volume element for Minkwoski 4-D spacetime is dV=c*(dt/gamma)*(gamma*dx)*dy*dz which notice the gammas cancel and you are left with dV=c*dt*dx*dy*dz. That happens to be identical to the volume element for Euclidean space if you substitute w=c*t into dV=dx*dy*dz*dw. So this is an important thing to remember: The radius is only an invariant in Euclidean space. The spacetime interval or proper time/distance is an only invariant in Minkowski space-time. But volume is simultaneously an invariant in both spaces. I used it to bridge the gap. I stand by my math. >About 30% of the universe consists of matter which tends to push things >together, the remaining 70% being Dark Energy which tends to push things >away. Of that 30% how does your idea differentiate between the 25% that is >composed of Dark Matter and the 5% that is regular matter? The dark matter is superluminal relative to our rest frame. The velocity of normal matter is v < c. The velocity of dark matter is v > c. That is the biggest difference. My prediction for normal matter content is 1/(6*pi) ~ .0531 , dark matter content is 5/(6*pi)~ .2652, and dark enery content is 1-(1/pi)~ .6817 A better question would be why dark matter would take a 5:1 ratio with normal matter. I have not really come up with a good model for why this would be so but I am working on it. At the moment, I can come up with no better explanation than that the constant I derived by dividing the 4-volume of the past lightcone by the 4-volume of a circumscribed 4-d ball came out to 1/(6*pi) and there happens to be a 6 in the denominator suggesting a total mass proportion of both types of matter to be 1/pi or approximately .3183. >A lightcone measures spacetime intervals, so I don't see how that can be >irrelevant. It is irrelevant because I am using the set of all events and not intervals between individual events. As you mentioned, the hypotenuse of Euclidean space and space-time interval of Minkowski space-time don't mix. Fortunately, like I mentioned above, the 4-volume is also invariant and it is invariant in both geometries. Stuart LaForge From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun Aug 20 22:34:26 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2017 18:34:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: <2ea0eb551044f26956b0e11899b70cec.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <2ea0eb551044f26956b0e11899b70cec.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Aug 20, 2017 Stuart LaForge wrote: > >> ?>? >> You can't go to infinity in all directions, the past is a specific finite >> ? >> ?n? >> umber, 13.8 billion years, the future is unknown and could well be >> ? >> infinite but almost certainly is not equal to the past, it is not 13.8 >> ? >> billion years. > > > ?> ? > Well I would say at the scale of about 3 billion lightyears, structures > stop being apparent and the universe becomes of sufficiently homogenous > density for my calculation to be valid. ?In the past direction 3 billion years ago things were a little closer together than they are now but otherwise stuff looked more or less the same as now, but go back much further and that is not the case. 6 billion yeas ago the universe was decelerating not accelerating as it is now, and 12 billion years ago stars were much bigger and galaxies were much smaller and more irregular than now, and 380,000 years after the Big Bang when the cosmic ?microwave background radiation was emitted that we can still see the universe was a billion timed denser than it is now. That doesn't sound very homogeneous and that's just in the past direction. What will the universe look like in 12 billion years? The past direction is finite, is the future direction finite too? Nobody knows. > >> ?>? >> If you include the entire "contents of the 4-D ball" you'd be including >> ? >> events outside our past lightcone that can not influence any observation >> we >> ? >> make, so that can't explain the observations we can make of Dark Matter or >> ? >> Dark energy. > > > ?> ? > Blackhole singularities are outside our light cone as well, hidden behind > event horizons to protect causality, yet they nonetheless influence the > shape of space-time ?The singularity at the center of a Black Hole is outside the light cone but the event horizon and the intense gravitational field there is not, it can influence things far away but, like everything else, only at the speed of light. Physics can't say what the Singularity is doing but it doesn't need to if you're only interested in things outside the event horizon. ? > ?> ? > I claim the same privilege for superluminal space-noodles of dark matter. > ? [...] > The dark matter is superluminal relative to our rest frame. Whatever Dark Matter is one thing we know for sure is it's not ? superluminal ?, in fact it's very slow; recent studies show it's less than 54 meters per second ? .So I guess you could say 120 mph is the speed of dark: https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.6971 > ?> ? > They can gravitationally warp space-time and according to GR, that's just > geometry. To say gravity is subject to causality is like saying an > elephant's trunk causes its ass. > ?Even gravity can't cause thing to change at arbitrary distances instantaneously, if it could gravitational waves could not exist. If you suddenly pushed the sun sideways the Earth would not change its orbit in the slightest for about 8 minutes because even gravity and the spacetime distortions it causes is limited to the speed of light. ? John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 13:08:45 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 08:08:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] naproxen update Message-ID: I referred some of you to People's PHarmacy where there is an article on nsaids that was more than a bit alarming about the possibilities of heart problems with those drugs. https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2017/05/11/really-bad- news-about-ibuprofen-naproxen-and-other-nsaids/ I have taken naproxen for several years. Waking up in the morning was accompanied by pains in my shoulders and hips. The Dr. put me on 500mg twice a day and I have had no more osteoarthritis pain. But as a result of the nsaid article I quit the naproxen cold turkey, and guess what? The pain did not return! Now osteo does not heal itself, so it must the other drugs. I began researching, with the help of a lawyer in the Ex chat group (whose name won't come to me right now) and as a result I take the following: alpha lipoic acid, boswellia and curcumin, turmeric, ashwaganda, benfotiamine, B6, B12, optimized folate, sour cherry concentrate (mixed with lemonade), magnesium, metformin, KI2, D3, fish oil Something(s) on that list are taking care of my joint inflammation. This is not just for old folks like me. Young people like my grandchildren need this info about pain killers and the alternatives above. Tylenol is not on the list of warnings, but more than two weeks of it risks liver damage, so I won't be taking that. That leaves aspirin. If I had clogged arteries I would be taking it. I don't (CT scan a few years back). I hope this helps someone. Bill W, Dad, Big Daddy, HeyYou!, Doc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 14:09:56 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 15:09:56 +0100 Subject: [ExI] naproxen update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 21 August 2017 at 14:08, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > I referred some of you to People's PHarmacy where there is an article on > nsaids that was more than a bit alarming about the possibilities of heart > problems with those drugs. > > https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2017/05/11/really-bad-news-about-ibuprofen-naproxen-and-other-nsaids/ > > I have taken naproxen for several years. Waking up in the morning was > accompanied by pains in my shoulders and hips. The Dr. put me on 500mg > twice a day and I have had no more osteoarthritis pain. > > But as a result of the nsaid article I quit the naproxen cold turkey, and > guess what? The pain did not return! Now osteo does not heal itself, so it > must the other drugs. > > I began researching, with the help of a lawyer in the Ex chat group (whose > name won't come to me right now) and as a result I take the following: > > alpha lipoic acid, boswellia and curcumin, turmeric, ashwaganda, > benfotiamine, B6, B12, optimized folate, sour cherry concentrate (mixed with > lemonade), magnesium, metformin, KI2, D3, fish oil > > Something(s) on that list are taking care of my joint inflammation. > The UK NHS says that there is no cure for osteoarthritis (as it is due to joint wear and tear) but surprisingly recommends first to lose weight and exercise. But don't overdo it! Do it gradually. :) Quote: If osteoarthritis causes you pain and stiffness, you may think exercise will make your symptoms worse. However, regular exercise that keeps you active, builds up muscle and strengthens the joints usually helps to improve symptoms. Exercise is also good for losing weight, improving your posture and relieving stress, all of which will ease symptoms. -------- Of course, this is the best choice for many medical troubles. :) They then also discuss various painkillers, injections, etc. starting with the weakest to find the weakest dose that works for the patient. But they all have a long list of possible side-effects and people that specific painkillers are not suitable for. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 16:51:57 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 11:51:57 -0500 Subject: [ExI] naproxen update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 9:09 AM, BillK wrote: > On 21 August 2017 at 14:08, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > > I referred some of you to People's PHarmacy where there is an article on > > nsaids that was more than a bit alarming about the possibilities of heart > > problems with those drugs. > > > > https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2017/05/11/really-bad- > news-about-ibuprofen-naproxen-and-other-nsaids/ > > > > I have taken naproxen for several years. Waking up in the morning was > > accompanied by pains in my shoulders and hips. The Dr. put me on 500mg > > twice a day and I have had no more osteoarthritis pain. > > > > But as a result of the nsaid article I quit the naproxen cold turkey, and > > guess what? The pain did not return! Now osteo does not heal itself, > so it > > must the other drugs. > > > > I began researching, with the help of a lawyer in the Ex chat group > (whose > > name won't come to me right now) and as a result I take the following: > > > > alpha lipoic acid, boswellia and curcumin, turmeric, ashwaganda, > > benfotiamine, B6, B12, optimized folate, sour cherry concentrate (mixed > with > > lemonade), magnesium, metformin, KI2, D3, fish oil > > > > Something(s) on that list are taking care of my joint inflammation. > > > > > The UK NHS says that there is no cure for osteoarthritis (as it is due > to joint wear and tear) but surprisingly recommends first to lose > weight and exercise. But don't overdo it! Do it gradually. :) > > Quote: > If osteoarthritis causes you pain and stiffness, you may think > exercise will make your symptoms worse. > However, regular exercise that keeps you active, builds up muscle and > strengthens the joints usually helps to improve symptoms. > Exercise is also good for losing weight, improving your posture and > relieving stress, all of which will ease symptoms. > -------- > > Of course, this is the best choice for many medical troubles. :) > > They then also discuss various painkillers, injections, etc. starting > with the weakest to find the weakest dose that works for the patient. > But they all have a long list of possible side-effects and people that > specific painkillers are not suitable for. > > BillK > ?Yeah, well, why not try some of the otc remedies that I take? Works as well as naproxen for me - not as a pain killer but as a remedy for inflammation, which of course does cause other pains. No physician I have asked has recommended any kind of exercise for osteo. My abilities to do those are very limited anyway. Walk?. The truth is that I have never been sure that all or any of my supplements have done me any good at all. Now I 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 johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 21:58:48 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 17:58:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: <8ddd1f32ec51a5344ced5f4ac714a136.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <8ddd1f32ec51a5344ced5f4ac714a136.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Sun, Aug 20, 2017 at 10:35 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > ?> ? > A universe that experienced a big bang, > ? ? > where temperatures were around 1.4*10^32 Kelvin. > ? ? > By Boltzmann's thermal velocity formula, the most probable velocity of > ? ? > protons at this temperature would be v = sqrt(2K*T/m) where K is > ? ? > Boltzmann's constant and m is the mass of a proton. The answer to this > ? ? > admitttedly rough approximation is that the average proton would be going > ? ? > about 6*10^25 times the speed of light. > Boltzmann's ? ? formula is only an approximation that works pretty well when matter is chilly, less than a few hundred thousand degrees or so, but it breaks down entirely and produces ridiculous numbers when things get much hotter than that for the same reason Newton's theory works pretty well at highway speeds but not at starship speeds. ? ? Boltzmann's ? ? formula doesn't take into account the Special Theory of Relativity much less the General Theory, but that wasn't Boltzmann's ? ? fault, he died several years before Einstein developed either theory. > ?> ? > we went through an inflationary period where > ? ? > spacetime expanded faster than light to grow to the point where the far > ? ? > regions of our universe had lost any causal relationship between them that > ? ? > they might have had. > ? ? > Yet 13.8 billion years have passed. > ? ? > Plenty of time for protons going 10^25 > ? ? > times the speed of light to have caught up with us. ?If protons or anything else ? could move faster than light (?they're called T ?achyons? ?) ? then I could ?use them to send ? send you ? ?message that you'd receive before I sent it, and that would create logical paradoxes. Also the mathematics clearly show that the faster a Tachyon moves the less energy it has, one that was only slightly faster than light would have a lot of energy but one 10^25 faster would have almost no energy. ? Nobody knows what Dark Matter is but we do know that if it is to explain observed galaxy formation and clustering (and that is after all the entire point of the Dark Matter theory) then it must be made of very slow moving particles. > ?> ? > Riddle me this: Gravity crushes everything more massive than the asteroid > ? ? > Ceres into spheres: Planets, stars, black holes, etc. Why does dark matter > ? ? > form gigantic filaments with embedded galaxies instead of spheres? ?Because gravity is not the only tool regular matter has to help it form larger structures, it also has chemistry and that is essential to get the ball rolling; but Dark Matter doesn't seem to have anything equivalent to chemistry. When 2 microscopic particles of regular matter come close to each other the gravitational force between them is utterly insignificant, but microscopic particles can be and often are electrically charged, and even when the overall particle is neutral one side of it is slightly positive and the other slightly negative. The charge may be small but the Electromagnetic force is over a billion billion billion billion times stronger than gravity so it dominates on the small scale. Once the particle has grown to a million tons or so gravity can start to have a small but measurable effect, but as far as we know Dark Matter just has gravity and so has no way to take the first few steps. ? ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 22 02:46:39 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 19:46:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] civil war denial In-Reply-To: <020801d3195e$81dcd570$85968050$@rainier66.com> References: <94178.35550.bm@smtp116.sbc.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <020801d3195e$81dcd570$85968050$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <020701d31af0$e1fd1850$a5f748f0$@att.net> The eclipse was awesome as all hell. Story when I return to civilaization and get some actual bandwidth. spike From: Spike Jones [mailto:spike at rainier66.com] Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 7:46 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [ExI] civil war denial Oops apologies, on the road, limited internet, working on phone most of the time. The clouds are gone but fires all around. The real threat is smoke obscuring the sight. Hoping for the best. spike From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 8:33 AM To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] civil war denial Although I don't disagree with it that quotation is not from me. I hope the sky's clear for your eclipse trip. John K Clark ============= On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 10:58 AM, spike66 > wrote: Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: John Clark > Date: 8/18/17 3:57 PM (GMT-08:00) To: ExI chat list > Subject: ?> ? The civil war took place within the borders of the US, and is woven into the fabric of the nation. It's a false equivalence. I would add that equating a monument to Lee with a Nazi symbol shows a lack of nuance...John K Clark? Sheesh just trying 2 inject a bit of humor for an eclipse chasing trip which threatens 2 turn into a fiasco on the order of the 2016 elections. It took us 3 hrs to go the first 8 miles out of bay area. Now the skies r smokey and they say a bunch of gas stations out there can't supply demand oy vey evolution have mercy. _______________________________________________ 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 Aug 22 04:01:08 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 21:01:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] whats in a name? In-Reply-To: <023b01d31964$2c7893c0$8569bb40$@att.net> References: <021801d3195f$cfe56060$6fb02120$@att.net> <023b01d31964$2c7893c0$8569bb40$@att.net> Message-ID: <02db01d31afb$49a96cb0$dcfc4610$@att.net> WOWsers, none of the wordplay ExI-ers took up that line? I thought I would have a pile of fun silliness to answer to when I got back to civilization. spike From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 8:27 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] whats in a name? And what if. Adrian managed to win the heart of the Borg space-babe Seven Of Nine, and they had a son, and wanted to keep the hipster hyphenated name, but also wanted him to have a kind of Nordic sounding moniker. Would he be Sven Tymes-Nine? spike From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2017 7:56 PM To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: [ExI] whats in a name? Waiting for the eclipse a thought occurred to me. What if. Max More and Natasha Vita-More decide to reproduce and have a son. Being a manly man and anticipating his son might be as well, Max and Natasha would likely eschew mild boring names such as Wilbur or Throckmorton, choosing to give him a manly man name such as Rex. Then no one would sell that lad car insurance. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 22 04:35:12 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2017 21:35:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] traffic apoeclipse Message-ID: <02e701d31b00$0c1ec750$245c55f0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 7:47 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] civil war denial The eclipse was awesome as all hell. Story when I return to civilaization and get some actual bandwidth. spike Just a short one before I get back: We used up all our bad luck right at the start of the trip, then the law of averages caught up with us and things went well. Left early, got on the road from the San Jose area at about 1350, cool out before work traffic, but? others had the same idea, so it took us three full hours to go the first 8 miles. Going up, forest fires everywhere, smoky skies, so discouraging, but right just before we arrived, skies cleared up, no smoke, no clouds, excellent conditions. There was a big hippie gathering just east of us, called Symbiosis I think, a kind of lunar version of Burning Man or something. We were close enough to that we could hear them, but not really individual voices: more like when somebody makes a great play at a football stadium a couple miles away and you can hear everybody together but not individual voices. When totality started we could hear them having their simultaneous orgasm or whatever they were doing over there. (Hey now there?s an idea?) I was filled with a grim determination to beat that crowd out of Mitchell and to beat the crowd that went up Interstate 5 toward I think toward Salem Oregon, up that way. We were near Mitchell Oregon, so if you Google Symbiosis Mitchell Oregon, some of them might have posted stuff by now (we didn?t get any internet or phone out there (like Robinson Caruso, it?s primitive as can be.)) We came tearing back with the goal of beating the Salem crowd to I-5 at Weed CA, which is where 97 meets the interstate. Weed, they called their own town, WEED. Sheesh. Serves em right. For what happened next. In their astounding wisdom, the road department decided they need to do road construction on the interstate, on Monday, eclipse day, when approximately 8 billion yahoos from California needed to come thru there. We were on the leading edge of the human wave, beat the Salem crowd by about half an hour, found out using webcams where the wavefront was located up that way, beat em, cool! Climbed thru the backup caused by funneling down to one lane, as I watched cars backed up behind me for as far as the eye could see across a huge valley. I assumed they would knock off and open the other lane, when I saw that? they couldn?t: they had a big pavement roller out there, just getting started, with hot pavement just going down. There is no way they can open that lane. So? we get down to this campground close to Lake Shasta and I get chatterty-yakking with the feller who runs the place and he says every site is booked, nearly all by eclipse-chasers returning home, and every site is guaranteed by credit card so he can?t sell them even if the people don?t show and the phone is ringing off the hook. He has been turning away business most of the afternoon, can?t help them. I just got back from walking the grounds and notice that a good quarter of the spaces are unoccupied. Conclusion: that traffic jam out there is horrendous and will get worse. Predict it will last all night. The silly asses at the road department couldn?t see that coming? Couldn?t they give the paving crew the day off and try to get the hippies thru there? Sheesh. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilia.stambler at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 13:50:55 2017 From: ilia.stambler at gmail.com (Ilia Stambler) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 16:50:55 +0300 Subject: [ExI] New book - Longevity Promotion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives Message-ID: Dear friends, A new book has been published, entitled: *?Longevity Promotion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives?* by Ilia Stambler, PhD Thanks for your interest, reviews and spreading the word! Paperback https://www.amazon.com/Longevity-Promotion-Multidisciplinary-Ilia- Stambler/dp/1974324265/ Kindle https://www.amazon.com/Longevity-Promotion-Multidisciplinary-Ilia- Stambler-ebook/dp/B074SFZ3MS/ Links on the site http://www.longevityhistory.com/book/getbooks.html *Summary* This book considers the multidisciplinary aspects of longevity promotion, from the advocacy, historical, philosophical and scientific perspectives. The first part on longevity advocacy includes examples of pro-longevity campaigns, outreach materials, frequent debates and policy suggestions and frameworks that may assist in the promotion of research and development for healthy longevity. The second part on longevity history includes analyses of the definition of life-extensionism as a social and intellectual movement, the dialectics of reductionism vs. holism and the significance of the concept of constancy in the history of life extension research, an historical overview of evolutionary theories of aging, and a tribute to one of the founding figures of modern longevity science. The third part on longevity philosophy surveys the aspirations and supportive arguments for increasing healthy longevity in the philosophical and religious traditions of ancient Greece, India, the Middle East, in particular in Islam and Judaism, and the Christian tradition. Finally, the fourth part on longevity science includes brief discussions of some of the scientific issues in life extension research, in particular regarding some potential interventions to ameliorate degenerative aging, some methodological issues with diagnosing and treating degenerative aging as a medical condition, the application of information theory for aging and longevity research, some potential physical means for life extension, and some resources for further consideration. These discussions are in no way exhaustive, but are intended to simulate additional interest, consultation and study of longevity science and its social and cultural implications. It is hoped that this book will contribute to broadening, diversifying and strengthening the academic and public deliberation on the prospects of healthy life extension for the entire population. The setting and careful consideration of a goal may be seen as a first step toward its accomplishment. -- Ilia Stambler, PhD Outreach Coordinator. International Society on Aging and Disease - ISOAD http://isoad.org Chair. Israeli Longevity Alliance / International Longevity Alliance (Israel) - ILA *http://www.longevityisrael.org/ * Coordinator. Longevity for All http://www.longevityforall.org Author. Longevity History. *A History of Life-Extensionism in the Twentieth Century* http://longevityhistory.com Email: ilia.stambler at gmail.com Tel: 972-3-961-4296 / 0522-283-578 Rishon Lezion. Israel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 14:01:42 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 09:01:42 -0500 Subject: [ExI] for Darwin fans Message-ID: https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Armada-Voyages-Battle-Evolution-ebook/dp/B002HPRCN4?_bbid=7527824&tag=bookbubemail17-20 $2 on Kindle bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 14:42:19 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 15:42:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] AI citizens Message-ID: Several thoughts.... When AI reaches human-level intelligence (not necessarily genius-level as there are many humans below average intelligence) the problem arises as to whether they have the right to demand the same civil rights as humans. Do AIs need a robot body? Or is a static computer enough? The problem being that they could copy themselves to millions of computers and create millions of citizens. Would they be allowed to vote in elections? (Obviously any intelligent AI would vote for Trump), ;) Would an AI be allowed to stand for election? Problem - would all the AI citizens automatically vote for the AI? When the AI reaches more-than-human intelligence it might be tempted to abolish elections because the AI could run things far better. But if it does this the AI would need to be prepared for some opposition from humans. A better method for superhuman AI might be to allow humans to continue to play with their elections and just route all the important decisions around them in the background. Could be interesting........ BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 15:06:55 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 11:06:55 -0400 Subject: [ExI] traffic apoeclipse In-Reply-To: <02e701d31b00$0c1ec750$245c55f0$@att.net> References: <02e701d31b00$0c1ec750$245c55f0$@att.net> Message-ID: Hi spike, sounds like you got really lucky, the eclipse only got to about 80% where I was, fun but not the real deal, I envy you. My sister thought she was lucky too because her house is in the path of totality so she didn't have to go anywhere, and for most of the eclipse the sky was clear but in the last crucial minutes clouds came in and covered the sun/moon so she didn't see the most important act in the play. Oh well, as least she got to hear crickets start chirping and owls start hooting and even bats start flying. John K Clark On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:35 AM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *spike > *Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2017 7:47 PM > *To:* 'ExI chat list' > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] civil war denial > > > > The eclipse was awesome as all hell. > > > > Story when I return to civilaization and get some actual bandwidth. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > Just a short one before I get back: > > > > We used up all our bad luck right at the start of the trip, then the law > of averages caught up with us and things went well. Left early, got on the > road from the San Jose area at about 1350, cool out before work traffic, > but? others had the same idea, so it took us three full hours to go the > first 8 miles. > > > > Going up, forest fires everywhere, smoky skies, so discouraging, but right > just before we arrived, skies cleared up, no smoke, no clouds, excellent > conditions. There was a big hippie gathering just east of us, called > Symbiosis I think, a kind of lunar version of Burning Man or something. We > were close enough to that we could hear them, but not really individual > voices: more like when somebody makes a great play at a football stadium a > couple miles away and you can hear everybody together but not individual > voices. When totality started we could hear them having their simultaneous > orgasm or whatever they were doing over there. (Hey now there?s an idea?) > > > > I was filled with a grim determination to beat that crowd out of Mitchell > and to beat the crowd that went up Interstate 5 toward I think toward Salem > Oregon, up that way. We were near Mitchell Oregon, so if you Google > Symbiosis Mitchell Oregon, some of them might have posted stuff by now (we > didn?t get any internet or phone out there (like Robinson Caruso, it?s > primitive as can be.)) > > > > We came tearing back with the goal of beating the Salem crowd to I-5 at > Weed CA, which is where 97 meets the interstate. Weed, they called their > own town, WEED. Sheesh. Serves em right. For what happened next. > > > > In their astounding wisdom, the road department decided they need to do > road construction on the interstate, on Monday, eclipse day, when > approximately 8 billion yahoos from California needed to come thru there. > We were on the leading edge of the human wave, beat the Salem crowd by > about half an hour, found out using webcams where the wavefront was located > up that way, beat em, cool! Climbed thru the backup caused by funneling > down to one lane, as I watched cars backed up behind me for as far as the > eye could see across a huge valley. I assumed they would knock off and > open the other lane, when I saw that? they couldn?t: they had a big > pavement roller out there, just getting started, with hot pavement just > going down. There is no way they can open that lane. > > > > So? we get down to this campground close to Lake Shasta and I get > chatterty-yakking with the feller who runs the place and he says every site > is booked, nearly all by eclipse-chasers returning home, and every site is > guaranteed by credit card so he can?t sell them even if the people don?t > show and the phone is ringing off the hook. He has been turning away > business most of the afternoon, can?t help them. I just got back from > walking the grounds and notice that a good quarter of the spaces are > unoccupied. Conclusion: that traffic jam out there is horrendous and will > get worse. Predict it will last all night. The silly asses at the road > department couldn?t see that coming? Couldn?t they give the paving crew > the day off and try to get the hippies thru there? > > > > Sheesh. > > > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 15:07:15 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 10:07:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] AI citizens In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: *billk wrote: * the problem arises as to whether they have the right to demand the same civil rights as humans. ?----------- First, which ones do we have? The USA has a list; so does the UN. The US one is law; the UN one is hopeful. In the USA a right not to testify against oneself (the 5th amendment) exists for humans. Do we really want that to apply to our computer friends? In fact, I'd say that the less said about rights, the better. Don't want to give them ideas above their station! (I.E - give them an inch...........) Interesting parallel: Terry Pratchett's golems - they were property before Pratchett wrote them into owning themselves, and so had some rights. But doesn't this open the Pandora's box and let loose blackmail? (the golems were more powerful than anything) All AIs should have a circuit overriding any other one that shuts it down by human control. But how to make it unhackable? That is, by the AI itself - or herself. Or... bill w ? On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 9:42 AM, BillK wrote: > Several thoughts.... > > When AI reaches human-level intelligence (not necessarily genius-level > as there are many humans below average intelligence) the problem > arises as to whether they have the right to demand the same civil > rights as humans. > > Do AIs need a robot body? Or is a static computer enough? > The problem being that they could copy themselves to millions of > computers and create millions of citizens. > > Would they be allowed to vote in elections? > (Obviously any intelligent AI would vote for Trump), ;) > > Would an AI be allowed to stand for election? > Problem - would all the AI citizens automatically vote for the AI? > > When the AI reaches more-than-human intelligence it might be tempted > to abolish elections because the AI could run things far better. But > if it does this the AI would need to be prepared for some opposition > from humans. A better method for superhuman AI might be to allow > humans to continue to play with their elections and just route all the > important decisions around them in the background. > > Could be interesting........ > > > 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 foozler83 at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 15:44:53 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 10:44:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] the gray man - author Asimov Message-ID: Starting reading Foundation after about 40 years since first reading. Still good, still interesting. But it's all shades of gray: nothing, or extremely little about nature, love, sex, descriptions of people, rooms, colors. Emotions are nearly totally absent. There is no action in the sense of fighting, war, etc. There is no character development at all. In fact there is nothing much but political ploys. I wonder, what with all the really good writers we have today, if this style would sell at all, much less be hailed as Hall of Fame stuff. Did this man live only in his intellectual head? He did have a lot of that. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 22 16:00:54 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 09:00:54 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI citizens In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <011201d31b5f$d89d58f0$89d80ad0$@att.net> >... On Behalf Of BillK >...Would an AI be allowed to stand for election? >...BillK _______________________________________________ Apparently it has already happened (depending on how one defines the terms "artificial" and "intelligence.") Those definitions are even more strained when applied to those who nominated those two back in spring of 2016, sheesh. spike From atymes at gmail.com Tue Aug 22 20:57:34 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 13:57:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test post & MV extro-schmooze Message-ID: Testing to see if I can post to the list again now. And for some content: Spike, Christian, and I have tentatively set up a sushi dinner at Hanabi Sushi in Mountain View, California near 101 & Rengstorff, next Monday 8/28 at 7 PM. Will anyone else be able to attend? (Still waiting for Christian's confirmation too.) From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 23 01:34:35 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 18:34:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] traffic apoeclipse In-Reply-To: <02e701d31b00$0c1ec750$245c55f0$@att.net> References: <02e701d31b00$0c1ec750$245c55f0$@att.net> Message-ID: <000601d31baf$fb2f8aa0$f18e9fe0$@att.net> Woohoo! We arrived home about an hour ago. Heard from a friend?s sister in law who was about two miles closer to civilization than we were but stayed about 15 minutes past the total. They got into a horrific traffic jam just around Prineville Oregon. Took them nine hours to go 80 miles. We left within about a minute of first light after total, made that same distance in under two hours. Made it to the freeway before the Salem Oregon crowd got there, had smooth sailing all the way to Redding CA where we camped. All day today, no problems at all. spike From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 9:35 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: [ExI] traffic apoeclipse From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 7:47 PM To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: Re: [ExI] civil war denial The eclipse was awesome as all hell. Story when I return to civilaization and get some actual bandwidth. spike Just a short one before I get back: We used up all our bad luck right at the start of the trip, then the law of averages caught up with us and things went well. Left early, got on the road from the San Jose area at about 1350, cool out before work traffic, but? others had the same idea, so it took us three full hours to go the first 8 miles. Going up, forest fires everywhere, smoky skies, so discouraging, but right just before we arrived, skies cleared up, no smoke, no clouds, excellent conditions. There was a big hippie gathering just east of us, called Symbiosis I think, a kind of lunar version of Burning Man or something. We were close enough to that we could hear them, but not really individual voices: more like when somebody makes a great play at a football stadium a couple miles away and you can hear everybody together but not individual voices. When totality started we could hear them having their simultaneous orgasm or whatever they were doing over there. (Hey now there?s an idea?) I was filled with a grim determination to beat that crowd out of Mitchell and to beat the crowd that went up Interstate 5 toward I think toward Salem Oregon, up that way. We were near Mitchell Oregon, so if you Google Symbiosis Mitchell Oregon, some of them might have posted stuff by now (we didn?t get any internet or phone out there (like Robinson Caruso, it?s primitive as can be.)) We came tearing back with the goal of beating the Salem crowd to I-5 at Weed CA, which is where 97 meets the interstate. Weed, they called their own town, WEED. Sheesh. Serves em right. For what happened next. In their astounding wisdom, the road department decided they need to do road construction on the interstate, on Monday, eclipse day, when approximately 8 billion yahoos from California needed to come thru there. We were on the leading edge of the human wave, beat the Salem crowd by about half an hour, found out using webcams where the wavefront was located up that way, beat em, cool! Climbed thru the backup caused by funneling down to one lane, as I watched cars backed up behind me for as far as the eye could see across a huge valley. I assumed they would knock off and open the other lane, when I saw that? they couldn?t: they had a big pavement roller out there, just getting started, with hot pavement just going down. There is no way they can open that lane. So? we get down to this campground close to Lake Shasta and I get chatterty-yakking with the feller who runs the place and he says every site is booked, nearly all by eclipse-chasers returning home, and every site is guaranteed by credit card so he can?t sell them even if the people don?t show and the phone is ringing off the hook. He has been turning away business most of the afternoon, can?t help them. I just got back from walking the grounds and notice that a good quarter of the spaces are unoccupied. Conclusion: that traffic jam out there is horrendous and will get worse. Predict it will last all night. The silly asses at the road department couldn?t see that coming? Couldn?t they give the paving crew the day off and try to get the hippies thru there? Sheesh. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fhb3.evolute at gmail.com Wed Aug 23 02:17:53 2017 From: fhb3.evolute at gmail.com (Forrest Bennett) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 19:17:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test post & MV extro-schmooze In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Count me in. Forrest On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 1:57 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Testing to see if I can post to the list again now. > > And for some content: Spike, Christian, and I have tentatively set up > a sushi dinner at Hanabi Sushi in Mountain View, California near 101 & > Rengstorff, next Monday 8/28 at 7 PM. Will anyone else be able to > attend? (Still waiting for Christian's confirmation too.) > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 23 04:57:05 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 21:57:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test post & MV extro-schmooze In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <004b01d31bcc$456d84c0$d0488e40$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Forrest Bennett Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 7:18 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Test post & MV extro-schmooze Count me in. Forrest Hi Forrest, We had ExI-Bay working a few years ago, but I don?t know what happened to it. That?s where we should be posting this kind of stuff. There were a number of locals around here but I lost track of them in the past five yrs or so. Lee is no longer with us. Eliezer hasn?t posted in a long time. Peter McClusky would likely join us if anyone has his @. There is a Singularity group over at Stanford or around there but I haven?t kept up with them and don?t know if they are still active or what?s the deal there, and Berkeley has an active Transhumanist group but I don?t know who to contact. Is Melanie Swan still in the neighborhood? She knows a lot of people who might want to come. Sheesh I am just a bundle of information here. I can still eat sushi however. spike On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 1:57 PM, Adrian Tymes > wrote: Testing to see if I can post to the list again now. And for some content: Spike, Christian, and I have tentatively set up a sushi dinner at Hanabi Sushi in Mountain View, California near 101 & Rengstorff, next Monday 8/28 at 7 PM. Will anyone else be able to attend? (Still waiting for Christian's confirmation too.) _______________________________________________ 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 Wed Aug 23 05:46:16 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 22:46:16 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test post & MV extro-schmooze In-Reply-To: <004b01d31bcc$456d84c0$d0488e40$@att.net> References: <004b01d31bcc$456d84c0$d0488e40$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 9:57 PM, spike wrote: > We had ExI-Bay working a few years ago, but I don?t know what happened to > it. That?s where we should be posting this kind of stuff. That list is basically dead - and I've seen advertisements for events in Australia & the UK here, from time to time. I figure, just so long as it's relevant to the list's interests and doesn't get spammy, it's okay, right? > I can still eat sushi however. Looking forward to witnessing proof of this. From hkeithhenson at gmail.com Wed Aug 23 02:12:03 2017 From: hkeithhenson at gmail.com (Keith Henson) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 19:12:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI citizens Message-ID: It occurs to me that the current LGBT etc. noise will die out when we start talking about civil rights for AIs that drive cars. Keith From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 23 13:44:40 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 06:44:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test post & MV extro-schmooze In-Reply-To: References: <004b01d31bcc$456d84c0$d0488e40$@att.net> Message-ID: <005e01d31c15$fccf4790$f66dd6b0$@att.net> >... I figure, just so long as it's relevant to the list's interests and doesn't get spammy, it's okay, right? Ja, I don't think the others will complain about it. Perhaps they will be inspired to start some local events. That would be cool, have several separate mini-schmoozes going simultaneously, then use some of that terminology I learned from the hippies last weekend: feel the cosmic convergence as the spirit of... well I can't recall the terminology they use. Perhaps we could make up some of our own. I do things like that. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Aug 23 14:38:42 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 10:38:42 -0400 Subject: [ExI] traffic apoeclipse In-Reply-To: <02e701d31b00$0c1ec750$245c55f0$@att.net> References: <02e701d31b00$0c1ec750$245c55f0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 12:35 AM, spike wrote: ?> ? > In their astounding wisdom, the road department decided they need to do > road construction on the interstate, on Monday, eclipse day, when > approximately 8 billion yahoos from California needed to come thru there. ? That wasn't their fault, they didn't know the eclipse was coming. Thales of Miletus ? ? was able to predict a solar eclipse in 585 BC but it's unreasonable to expect the road department to be able to do the same thing ? in 2017 AD.? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 23 15:43:39 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 08:43:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI citizens In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Aug 23, 2017 2:32 AM, "Keith Henson" wrote: It occurs to me that the current LGBT etc. noise will die out when we start talking about civil rights for AIs that drive cars. Or at least fall back to the level of noise re: rights for women and non-whites (mostly a done deal even if some still try to oppress). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed Aug 23 17:04:02 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 12:04:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] AI citizens In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Adrian wrote: rights for women and non-whites (mostly a done deal even if some still try to oppress). Except for most of the rest of the world. Next up: children's rights bill w On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 10:43 AM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Aug 23, 2017 2:32 AM, "Keith Henson" wrote: > > It occurs to me that the current LGBT etc. noise will die out when we > start talking about civil rights for AIs that drive cars. > > > Or at least fall back to the level of noise re: rights for women and > non-whites (mostly a done deal even if some still try to oppress). > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Wed Aug 23 17:31:41 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 10:31:41 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI citizens In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00a201d31c35$af422b30$0dc68190$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 10:04 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] AI citizens >>?Adrian wrote: rights for women and non-whites (mostly a done deal even if some still try to oppress). >?Except for most of the rest of the world. >?Next up: children's rights >?bill w If we manage that, I hope we make it the right of underage males to refuse circumcision, even if they have not yet learned to talk. It is already illegal as all hell in the USA to ?circumcise? underage girls. Please can someone explain why the hell we don?t make the very reasonable logical extrapolation to underage males? Sheesh, we could even settle for a compromise if we really must: no circumcision of either gender before the age of double digits. Then let?s see how many eager takers we have at age ten, shall we? I have never seen an infant male requesting that procedure. We don?t need special training to know that their infantile wail is a plaintive request for food and fresh diapers, never for an excruciating surgery. spike (Uh oh, now we are going to get Keith started too.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed Aug 23 19:51:59 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 12:51:59 -0700 Subject: [ExI] AI citizens In-Reply-To: <00a201d31c35$af422b30$0dc68190$@att.net> References: <00a201d31c35$af422b30$0dc68190$@att.net> Message-ID: On Aug 23, 2017 10:46 AM, "spike" wrote: It is already illegal as all hell in the USA to ?circumcise? underage girls. Please can someone explain why the hell we don?t make the very reasonable logical extrapolation to underage males? Aren't the two procedures rather different? For males, I understand that it is removal of a skin flap (without which basically the same sexual function - after reaching puberty - as with is entirely possible), whereas for females, I understand that it is basically castration, significantly degrading (post-puberty) sexual function (which I understand to be the point). If I understand correctly, it's like the difference between cutting off a fingernail and cutting off a finger. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Thu Aug 24 00:56:42 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 17:56:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? Message-ID: <75478315ebf465b9e331cdeca19112d7.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> BillK wrote: >Well, I suppose anything could be happening at the time of the big bang. :) >Our physics may not apply at the moment of creation. I doubt that any >protons at all existed at the big bang instant. After inflation ended, >matter and antimatter almost annihilated each other leaving only our >universe of normal matter. So protons didn't exist until 0.0001 >seconds after the big bang when inflation had ended and the universe >had cooled down a bit. Actually protons froze out the quark-gluon plasma paired with antiprotons when the universe was about 8 microseconds old (t = 7.78*10^-6 seconds) when the temperature had cooled to 11 trillion Kelvin (T = 1.09*10^13 Kelvin). When I numerically integrated the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution at the condensation temperature of protons, to find out what fraction of protons would be going less than c and more than c. What I got was 19.87% of protons were going less than the speed of light, and 80.12% going faster than c, with most likely speed being 1.4150c or sqrt(2)c actually. That is a 1/5 fraction so it is disppointingly different from the 1/6 fraction predicted for normal matter from my lightcone/ball 4-volume ratio. The weird thing is that this ratio is the same for all particles whatever their mass. This is because the melting/freezing temperature of a subatomic particle is given by T = mc^2/K and the most likely speed for a particle in a gas of temperature T is v=sqrt(2KT/m) where m is the mass of the particle and K is Boltzmann's constant. One can see that substituting in for T, gives the result that particles of any mass freeze out of the quark soup with most likely velocity v = sqrt(2)*c and a ratio of 4/5 going faster than c with 1/5 going slower than c. >More thoughts ..... >As protons increase in speed they also increase in mass towards >infinite mass and this stops them from exceeding the speed of light. >Or, an alternative phrasing is that to make protons exceed the speed >of light you need a force acting on them that also exceeds the speed >of light. These days, that is certainly the case. I am talking about the first microsecond after the big bang. These particles are condensing out of the quark-gluon plasma as it cools. They are losing energy, not gaining it. According to Higgs mechanism there is a critical temperature below which the Higgs field becomes non-zero and particles acquire mass. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any reliable estimates for that temperature online and it seems controversial. https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0955 >I doubt that heating protons up would make them exceed the speed of >light. If you assume the almost infinite heat of creation, then you >also have to assume that protons could exist under those conditions. Maybe not but the first protons were not heated up, they were cooling down. Protons could exist starting at 10.9 trillion Kelvin and statistical mechanics predicts 4/5 of them would exceed the speed of light at their creation. If protons came into being without mass because the Higgs field was not yet in effect, then they could have any velocity at at all. Then the Higgs field came along and divided the various inertial reference frames of the protons into separate causal cells that could no longer communicate with one another. >Dark matter is clustered around galaxies. It is the galaxies that form >gigantic filaments. So why are FTL particles static and clustered >around galaxies? They should be zipping through our normal universe >regardless of what is in our universe. These space-noodles don't hang >about! :) That should indeed be the case, space-noodles would be transient, manifesting for very short times in our lightcone. But if a superluminal extended body like a star or galaxy were to pass through our causal domain, space noodles would be popping in and out of existence at high frequencies for extended periods of time ranging from minutes to tens of millenia. Thus allowing them to have a gravitational echo which would attract visible matter to where they were but are no longer. Of course, they would cluster around visible matter galaxies because our visible matter galaxies would be the dark matter in their causal domains. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any gravitational lenses that look bilaterally symmetrical which is what you would expect if there were lots of space noodles about. Instead, they all seem to display radial symmetry i.e. circular arcs instead of mostly straight lines. The lack of evidence is dampening my enthusiasm for the idea somewhat. Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Thu Aug 24 02:32:28 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 19:32:28 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? Message-ID: <665ea243269e4d7ee77436cc5f93cad2.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: ?>The singularity at the center of a Black Hole is outside the light cone >but the event horizon and the intense gravitational field there is not, it >can influence things far away but, like everything else, only at the speed >of light. Physics can't say what the Singularity is doing but it doesn't >need to if you're only interested in things outside the event horizon. ? Right. And everything measurable that dark matter does seems to happen outside its event horizon also. You can see the footprints but you can't see the beast that made them. >Whatever Dark Matter is one thing we know for sure is it's not ?> >superluminal ?>, >in fact it's very slow; recent studies show it's less than 54 meters per >second ?> >.So I guess you could say 120 mph is the speed of dark: > >https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.6971 The authors of that paper assumed the model of cold dark matter (CDM), assumed several parameters for decoupling of WIMPs from the standard model, and then put bounds on its velocity based on those assumptions. If CDM is composed of WIMPs as they supposedly believe, then these particles would be about a thousand times the mass of a proton. Any particles that massive would have had to freeze out of the quark-gluon plasma of the big bang fire ball *before* protons when the universe was even younger and hotter. So where did all that thermal kinetic energy go? WIMPs don't interact with light or matter except gravitationally, so it could not have radiated any of the energy away. The paper's figure of 54 meters per second doesn't even begin to make sense. How are WIMPs able to stay in the galactic halo, where orbital speeds are on the order of 150 km/s at such a puny speed? Any WIMPs moving that slow should have been gobbled up by central blackhole of any galaxy long ago. As far as superluminal particles go, they should not really have a defined speed in our reference frame. They should instead be very long space noodles that don't move much relative to us and simply flash into and out of existence very quickly. Besides with all your talk of primordial blackholes, I would have expected you to be more of a MACHO guy any way. ?>Even gravity can't cause thing to change at arbitrary distances >instantaneously, if it could gravitational waves could not exist. If you >suddenly pushed the sun sideways the Earth would not change its orbit in >the slightest for about 8 minutes because even gravity and the spacetime >distortions it causes is limited to the speed of light. ? This is fine. Nothing about my hypothesis requires the gravitational flux of superluminal particles/ space noodles to propagate at any speed other than c. Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Thu Aug 24 04:00:27 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 21:00:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? Message-ID: John Clark wrote: >Boltzmann's ?> ? >formula is only an approximation that works pretty well when matter is >chilly, less than a few hundred thousand degrees or so, but it breaks down >entirely and produces ridiculous numbers when things get much hotter than >that for the same reason Newton's theory works pretty well at highway >speeds but not at starship speeds. ? I too share this concern, which is why I take my calculations using the Botlzmann distribution with a grain of salt. But that being said, we are talking about conditions in the first microsecond of the big bang. I don't think SR or GR is of much use here either. How can the speed of light in a vacuum be meanigful if there is no vacuum yet, only a superheated quark-gluon plasma that light cannot penetrate? We can't seem to come up with a reliable figure for the critical temperature for the Higgs field to manifest and give particles mass. If protons condensed before the Higgs field came online, they would have had a distribution of all kinds of speeds. Once the Higgs manifested, clusters of particles that were superluminal relative to other clusters of particles would have been causally sealed away from each other in mutually superluminal reference frames that you could call Lorenz domains or causal cells seperated from one another by event horizons. From the rest frame of each causal cell, the matter contained in the other causal cells would manifest as gravitation with no discernible cause i.e. dark matter. >If protons or anything else ? >could move faster than light >(?they're called >T ?>achyons? ?>) ? >then I could ?>use them to send ? >send you ? ?>message that you'd receive before I sent it, and that would create logical >paradoxes. Also the mathematics clearly show that the faster a Tachyon >moves the less energy it has, one that was only slightly faster than light >would have a lot of energy but one 10^25 faster would have almost no >energy. ? I don't use the term tachyon for precisely this reason. Space noodles are different from tachyons in a number of ways: They are protected from interacting with observers by event horizons. Their proper times become proper distances in our causal cell. And they probably have real masses instead of imaginary ones although it is a linear mass instead of a point mass. >Nobody knows what Dark Matter is but we do know that if it is to explain >observed galaxy formation and clustering (and that is after all the entire >point of the Dark Matter theory) then it must be made of very slow moving >particles. Well, I agree that nobody knows what dark matter is which is why I am throwing my hat in the ring. As strange a hat at as it might be. Like I have said numerous times, space-noodles would hardly seem to move at all in the short time they manifest in our causal domain. You don't get much slower than standing still. >> Riddle me this: Gravity crushes everything more massive than the >>asteroid? ? >> Ceres into spheres: Planets, stars, black holes, etc. Why does dark >>matter >> form gigantic filaments with embedded galaxies instead of spheres? ?>Because gravity is not the only tool regular matter has to help it form >larger structures, it also has chemistry and that is essential to get the >ball rolling; but Dark Matter doesn't seem to have anything equivalent to >chemistry. When 2 microscopic particles of regular matter come close to >each other the gravitational force between them is utterly insignificant, >but microscopic particles can be and often are electrically charged, and >even when the overall particle is neutral one side of it is slightly >positive and the other slightly negative. The charge may be small but the >Electromagnetic force is over a billion billion billion billion times >stronger than gravity so it dominates on the small scale. Once the particle >has grown to a million tons or so gravity can start to have a small but >measurable effect, but as far as we know Dark Matter just has gravity and >so has no way to take the first few steps. This is actually a pretty good explanation although I still don't see why matter without chemistry would form intersecting filaments instead of clouds. Why isn't dark matter spread uniformly throughout the universe in thermal equilibrium. Why is it clumping? Given large numbers of long lines like space-noodles, intersections would be quite common and almost trivially expected. In any case, the lack of linear gravitational lensing is problematic for my hypothesis. Unless of course unless space-noodles form closed loops for some reason. But I haven't a clue how to model that mathematically nor how likely such a scenario would be. Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 24 09:13:52 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 10:13:52 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Humans on Mars Message-ID: There are plans under discussion to send humans to Mars, with many technical problems to be solved. A round trip will take many years and one suggestion is that settlers on Mars would stay there and never return to Earth. One thought has occurred to me that I don't remember being discussed and it applies to all deep space missions. How do these travellers get paid if they never return to Earth? Money and status are the usual rewards for humans. But these travellers are not returning to Earth. If deep space travel requires volunteers prepared to work for nothing, going on what could be thought of as almost suicide missions, then you are going to get some very unusual (strange?) people applying. BillK From avant at sollegro.com Thu Aug 24 10:21:03 2017 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 03:21:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Humans on Mars Message-ID: <4c5ffbe752b69e3859cbabf4c994244a.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> BillK wrote: >There are plans under discussion to send humans to Mars, with many >technical problems to be solved. A round trip will take many years and >one suggestion is that settlers on Mars would stay there and never >return to Earth. >One thought has occurred to me that I don't remember being discussed >and it applies to all deep space missions. >How do these travellers get paid if they never return to Earth? Well if I were on such a one way mission, I would want to get paid with regular shipments of supplies, terraforming equipment, and title to as much Martian real estate as I could make habitable. >Money and status are the usual rewards for humans. But these >travellers are not returning to Earth. If deep space travel requires >volunteers prepared to work for nothing, going on what could be >thought of as almost suicide missions, then you are going to get some >very unusual (strange?) people applying. Perhaps. But explorers and settlers always have been a strange lot. Would be conquerors or adventurers on the run from the law or excessive debt, or people belonging to strange religions trying to escape persecution. They all had their reasons plus there is such a thing as posthumous glory that ones descendants could benefit from. Stuart LaForge From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 24 10:43:57 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 11:43:57 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: <75478315ebf465b9e331cdeca19112d7.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <75478315ebf465b9e331cdeca19112d7.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On 24 August 2017 at 01:56, Stuart LaForge wrote: > Actually protons froze out the quark-gluon plasma paired with antiprotons > when the universe was about 8 microseconds old (t = 7.78*10^-6 seconds) > when the temperature had cooled to 11 trillion Kelvin (T = 1.09*10^13 > Kelvin). > > When I numerically integrated the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution at the > condensation temperature of protons, to find out what fraction of protons > would be going less than c and more than c. > > What I got was 19.87% of protons were going less than the speed of light, > and 80.12% going faster than c, with most likely speed being 1.4150c or > sqrt(2)c actually. That is a 1/5 fraction so it is disppointingly > different from the 1/6 fraction predicted for normal matter from my > lightcone/ball 4-volume ratio. > > The weird thing is that this ratio is the same for all particles whatever > their mass. This is because the melting/freezing temperature of a > subatomic particle is given by T = mc^2/K and the most likely speed for a > particle in a gas of temperature T is v=sqrt(2KT/m) where m is the mass of > the particle and K is Boltzmann's constant. > > One can see that substituting in for T, gives the result that particles > of any mass freeze out of the quark soup with most likely velocity v = > sqrt(2)*c and a ratio of 4/5 going faster than c with 1/5 going slower > than c. > The Big Bang and Cosmic Inflation is still subject to much discussion and speculation. Wikipedia (the fount of all knowledge) says that current theory is that the universe was cooling during the inflation period and *after* inflation stopped, reheating occurred and then the quark-gluon plasma and other particles were created. At this time the heat was so great that particles were moving at relativistic speeds and matter and anti-matter was being continuously created and destroyed. After all the excitement was over our universe was left with our present matter universe. This version of the creation theory seems to leave little room for faster than light particles. So you need a new creation theory as well to support your FTL protons. :) > These days, that is certainly the case. I am talking about the first > microsecond after the big bang. These particles are condensing out of the > quark-gluon plasma as it cools. They are losing energy, not gaining it. > > According to Higgs mechanism there is a critical temperature below which > the Higgs field becomes non-zero and particles acquire mass. > Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any reliable estimates for that > temperature online and it seems controversial. > > https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0955 > > Maybe not but the first protons were not heated up, they were cooling > down. Protons could exist starting at 10.9 trillion Kelvin and statistical > mechanics predicts 4/5 of them would exceed the speed of light at their > creation. > > If protons came into being without mass because the Higgs field was not > yet in effect, then they could have any velocity at at all. Then the Higgs > field came along and divided the various inertial reference frames of the > protons into separate causal cells that could no longer communicate with > one another. > As you say it is speculative, but it seems reasonable to me that the Higgs field appeared at the same time as matter / anti-matter was being created. Otherwise you are creating massless protons which seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Show me a massless proton!) :) > > That should indeed be the case, space-noodles would be transient, > manifesting for very short times in our lightcone. But if a superluminal > extended body like a star or galaxy were to pass through our causal > domain, space noodles would be popping in and out of existence at high > frequencies for extended periods of time ranging from minutes to tens of > millenia. Thus allowing them to have a gravitational echo which would > attract visible matter to where they were but are no longer. > > Of course, they would cluster around visible matter galaxies because our > visible matter galaxies would be the dark matter in their causal domains. > > Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any gravitational lenses that > look bilaterally symmetrical which is what you would expect if there were > lots of space noodles about. Instead, they all seem to display radial > symmetry i.e. circular arcs instead of mostly straight lines. > > The lack of evidence is dampening my enthusiasm for the idea somewhat. > > Stuart LaForge > From eh at edwardhaigh.com Thu Aug 24 09:19:27 2017 From: eh at edwardhaigh.com (Edward Haigh) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 10:19:27 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Humans on Mars In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I disagree. What use is money when you're on Mars *and never returning to Earth*? The only reason I would want to be paid is if I had dependants on Earth. If NASA offered you a one way trip to Mars, including all the equipment needed to live there and start the first colony of humans, and you had no dependants - would you really care about a bank balance on Earth? On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 10:13 AM, BillK wrote: > There are plans under discussion to send humans to Mars, with many > technical problems to be solved. A round trip will take many years and > one suggestion is that settlers on Mars would stay there and never > return to Earth. > > One thought has occurred to me that I don't remember being discussed > and it applies to all deep space missions. > > How do these travellers get paid if they never return to Earth? > > Money and status are the usual rewards for humans. But these > travellers are not returning to Earth. If deep space travel requires > volunteers prepared to work for nothing, going on what could be > thought of as almost suicide missions, then you are going to get some > very unusual (strange?) people applying. > > > 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 Thu Aug 24 12:20:43 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 05:20:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Humans on Mars In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <002f01d31cd3$68b2ecb0$3a18c610$@att.net> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of BillK Subject: [ExI] Humans on Mars >...There are plans under discussion to send humans to Mars, with many technical problems to be solved. A round trip will take many years and one suggestion is that settlers on Mars would stay there and never return to Earth. >...How do these travellers get paid if they never return to Earth? >...Money and status are the usual rewards for humans. But these travellers are not returning to Earth. If deep space travel requires volunteers prepared to work for nothing, going on what could be thought of as almost suicide missions, then you are going to get some very unusual (strange?) people applying. >...BillK _______________________________________________ Hi BillK, ja to all. Regarding your description "one suggestion" for the notion of one-way to Mars, it is analogous to saying F = ma is one suggestion. I worked those weights numbers a hundred different ways with every assumption I could think of, and every time there was no technologically feasible means of getting to the surface of Mars with enough mass to get back out of that gravity well, including Robert Zubrin's imaginative notions of making fuel on the surface from indigenous materials. Even the recognition that any Mars trip is one-way is a bit of an understatement. It is also a one-person trip. We are still not there: that one person needs to be really small and light. Physical law is in the driver's seat for this kind of thing. To your contention that we will get very unusual strange people applying: sure. Normal people need not apply: they wouldn't suffice for such a mission. However, a one-way to Mars mission enables a lot of people who would be otherwise not a compelling candidate, such as the severely differently-abled for instance. On the moon missions, they needed to do all those psychological evaluations to verify they had guys who would not kill each other. That doesn't apply: we could use psychopaths. There is no one else to kill. We don't need those chiseled-from-stone athletic-looking young fighter jockey heroes: just small and light. We don't really need engineers: any modern Mars-craft would be analogous to modern cars: shade-tree mechanics can't fix them anyway. Repairs would need to be done by radio signal from Earth. We don't really need scientists: the science would be done by instruments. We would need someone willing to surgically disable some of their bio-systems, such as the sense of smell: she doesn't need that anymore and it can only cause discomfort for the rest of her short life. The sense of taste wouldn't be good for much either really from there on out. They don't really need to be young, but if anyone is willing to pay the price, youth has both advantages and disadvantages. My conclusions years ago haven't changed much: strange unusual people would apply, we would get plenty of them, a briefing session with the candidates would be weirder than an ExI-schmooze, aaaaannnd... we really aren't there yet. The whole notion requires robotic preliminary missions to build a human habitat, several of them. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Aug 24 18:32:58 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 14:32:58 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dark mass = FTL baryons? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 12:00 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > ?> ? > I too share this concern, which is why I take my calculations using the > Botlzmann distribution with a grain of salt. ?Boltzmann ? ?is useless in finding the speed of particles in a gas in temperatures more than a hundred thousand degrees or so, you could go a bit higher if the particles are very heavy and a bit less if the particles are very light.? > ?> ? > But that being said, we aretalking about conditions in the first > microsecond of the big bang. I don't > ? ? > think SR or GR is of much use here either. How can the speed of light in a > ? ? > vacuum be meanigful if there is no vacuum yet, only a superheated > ? ? > quark-gluon plasma that light cannot penetrate? > ?Saying the speed of light is the fundamental speed limit in the universe is true but a bit misleading, it would be better to say that 186,000 miles a second is the fundamental speed of causation and light is just one of the things that reaches that limit. The effect gravity has is also limited by that speed so you could just as easily say light moves at the speed of gravity. The strong and weak nuclear forces are also limited by that same fundamental speed limit of causation. And there was plenty of light a ?microsecond? after the Big Bang but you couldn't see anything except a super bright uniform glow because the photons kept being diffused so there was no way to form a ?n? image. > ?> ? > I don't use the term tachyon for precisely this reason. Space noodles are > ? ? > different from > ? ? > tachyons in a number of ways: They are protected from > ? ? > interacting with observers by event horizons. ?If that's true then they can never effect any of our observations, but we observe that galaxies hold together even though there is not enough regular matter in them to produce the required amount of gravity to do so. ? ?> ? > space-noodles would hardly seem to move at all > ? ? > in the short time they manifest in our causal domain. You don't get much > ? ? > slower than standing still. ?I don't understand, the title of this thread is "? Dark mass = FTL baryon ?s"? ? ?".? > ?> ? > This is actually a pretty good explanation although I still don't see why > matter without chemistry would form intersecting filaments instead of > clouds. Why isn't dark matter spread uniformly throughout the universe in > thermal equilibrium. Why is it clumping? > ?There is no simple answer to that, you've got to do huge supercomputer simulations on what would happen if everything started out very hot and space was expanding and there was one type of matter that was effected by gravity and electromagnetism (regular matter) and another type of matter that was 6 times as plentiful that was just effected by gravity (Dark Matter) and see what happens. In the simulations if you make the Dark Matter particles very light then they're still moving pretty fast and they do indeed form a uniform cloud, and in that simulated universe galaxies never form which is obviously inconsistent with observation. However if you assume Dark Matter particles are very heavy, from a few hundred times the mass of the proton all the way up to the mass of a human cell, then they would form filaments and galaxies of regular matter would form in that simulated universe, and that is consistent with observation. > Any particles that massive would have had to freeze out of the > quark-gluon plasma of the big bang fire ball *before* protons when the > universe was even younger and hotter. Physicists have a pretty good understanding of the quark-gluon plasma era of the universe but they don't understand Dark Matter, so it must have come into existence well before that, and we know very little about that era. > So where did all that thermal kinetic energy go? WIMPs don't interact > with light or matter except gravitationally, so it could not have > radiated any of the energy away. Einstein said energy can be converted into matter, M = E/C^2. > The paper's figure of 54 meters per second doesn't even begin to make sense. > How are WIMPs able to stay in the galactic halo, where orbital speeds are > on the order of 150 km/s at such a puny speed? Any WIMPs moving that slow > should have been gobbled up by central black hole of any galaxy long ago. Dark Matter particles very rarely fall into the central black hole because they'd have to be heading directly toward it and all black holes are very small targets. For a particle of matter (dark or regular it makes no difference) in orbit around a black hole (and it will be in orbit unless it is heading directly toward it) to actually spiral into it the angular momentum of the particle must be reduced and by a lot because the Black Hole is so small. When any sort of matter, dark or regular, gets close to a black hole it is moving very fast, but to spiral in it's got to slow down and get rid of most of that angular momentum. Regular particles can do that by interacting with other particles, but Dark Matter particles can't so unless they're precisely aimed at it they never fall in. John K Clark > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Thu Aug 24 18:50:43 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 13:50:43 -0500 Subject: [ExI] trump Message-ID: In an earlier post someone questioned my ideas about the Repubs and Trump. I replied, yes, they are supporting him "for now". So what's in the news today? Repubs publicly questioning his sanity. I think/hope it's only a matter of time. In a way, but only a tiny bit, I kind of feel sorry for the man. He was elected to go to DC and do and say exactly what he is doing and saying and he is wondering why people just don't like him. Kind of sad. But I don't think he can stop and it will be his downfall. It would not surprise me if he is in an early stage of some kind of dementia. Of course it would please me no end if they replaced him and the dysfunctioning stayed the same. Which I think it would because Pence is in bed with the Tea Party, and there's no way that can gather majority votes. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From csaucier at sovacs.com Thu Aug 24 19:00:45 2017 From: csaucier at sovacs.com (Christian Saucier) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 12:00:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test post & MV extro-schmooze In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2d1896d3-6f92-c038-6e9c-c1fe9610fec1@sovacs.com> Christian confirms!?? I look forward to it! :) C. On 8/22/2017 1:57 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Testing to see if I can post to the list again now. > > And for some content: Spike, Christian, and I have tentatively set up > a sushi dinner at Hanabi Sushi in Mountain View, California near 101 & > Rengstorff, next Monday 8/28 at 7 PM. Will anyone else be able to > attend? (Still waiting for Christian's confirmation too.) > _______________________________________________ > 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 Thu Aug 24 19:54:35 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 15:54:35 -0400 Subject: [ExI] trump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 2:50 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > So what's in the news today? Repubs publicly questioning his sanity. > ? It's about time! 70% ? ? of Republicans say they'd still love Trump even if it could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he colluded with the Russians to interfere with the 2016 election, and 52% say they be OK with him canceling ? ? the ? ? election that we're suposed to have ? ? on November 3 2020, ? ? 57% if the Republican congress also says cancel it. But in the next month Trump will face some challenges that could seriously damage his popularity even with his base. If he doesn't sign a budget bill by September 30 the government will shut down, that has happened before and it's never helped the ruling party's popularity. Far more important if he doesn't sign a debt ceiling increase by September 29 the government will go into default, and that has never happened before; if we're very lucky that will just cause a recession and nothing worse, but I wouldn't count on it. By the way, Hurricane Harvey is intensifying rapidly and heading for east Texas. I remember the way George Bush's bungled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina sent his popularity into a tailspin. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 24 20:27:58 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 13:27:58 -0700 Subject: [ExI] celebration: adrian's back! exi-list is talking to google once more! Message-ID: <00de01d31d17$7a71d490$6f557db0$@att.net> Adrian was away, but it wasn't because he was annoyed with us. Well, he mighta been annoyed with us, but that wasn't why he was not posting. It was because the ExI-server was rejecting gmail. Read on please: From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Christian Saucier Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2017 12:01 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] Test post & MV extro-schmooze >.Christian confirms! I look forward to it! :) C. On 8/22/2017 1:57 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: Testing to see if I can post to the list again now. >>.And for some content: Spike, Christian, and I have tentatively set up a sushi dinner at Hanabi Sushi in Mountain View, California near 101 & Rengstorff, next Monday 8/28 at 7 PM. Will anyone else be able to attend? (Still waiting for Christian's confirmation too.) And Spike confirms he can read a calendar: 28 August, Mountain View Hanabi, be there or B^2. I will bring along a big funnel, I'll just sit back, the waitresses can save time by just tossing it in, no bother with ordering off the menu, I'll just eat anything and everything, hope some joker doesn't come along and toss a turd in there. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Thu Aug 24 21:00:48 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 22:00:48 +0100 Subject: [ExI] celebration: adrian's back! exi-list is talking to google once more! In-Reply-To: <00de01d31d17$7a71d490$6f557db0$@att.net> References: <00de01d31d17$7a71d490$6f557db0$@att.net> Message-ID: On 24 August 2017 at 21:27, spike wrote: > > Adrian was away, but it wasn?t because he was annoyed with us. Well, he > mighta been annoyed with us, but that wasn?t why he was not posting. It was > because the ExI-server was rejecting gmail. > Not all gmail. My posts and BillW and others were going through to Exi OK. Maybe Adrian upset gmail? BillK From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 01:50:35 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 18:50:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] celebration: adrian's back! exi-list is talking to google once more! In-Reply-To: <00de01d31d17$7a71d490$6f557db0$@att.net> References: <00de01d31d17$7a71d490$6f557db0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 1:27 PM, spike wrote: > And Spike confirms he can read a calendar: 28 August, Mountain View Hanabi, > be there or B^2. Four confirmed so far. I'll make the reservation under Adrian. > I will bring along a big funnel, I?ll just sit back, the waitresses can save > time by just tossing it in, no bother with ordering off the menu, I?ll just > eat anything and everything, hope some joker doesn?t come along and toss a > turd in there. http://www.sushi-hanabi.com/nigiri-boat I take it you could eat one of their smaller boat specials? We shall see once we're there. From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 01:46:05 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 18:46:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] celebration: adrian's back! exi-list is talking to google once more! In-Reply-To: References: <00de01d31d17$7a71d490$6f557db0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Thu, Aug 24, 2017 at 2:00 PM, BillK wrote: > On 24 August 2017 at 21:27, spike wrote: >> Adrian was away, but it wasn?t because he was annoyed with us. Well, he >> mighta been annoyed with us, but that wasn?t why he was not posting. It was >> because the ExI-server was rejecting gmail. > > Not all gmail. My posts and BillW and others were going through to Exi OK. > Maybe Adrian upset gmail? Nah, it was the server (209.85.214.52) GMail routed my email through. Apparently SORBS is listing just that part of GMail as spam, and thus blocking all email sent through it. The issue has been worked around for our list now. From giulio at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 06:12:34 2017 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 08:12:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Mondo 2000 is coming back! Message-ID: My first contribution to the revived Mondo 2000 has a mini-interview with mathemagician Ralph Abraham. Chaos, Akasha, society... We need a miracle... www.mondo2000.com/2017/08/24/mathemagician-ralph-abraham-we-need-another-miracle/ From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 25 12:55:23 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 05:55:23 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Forward from a long time lurker: From: Alan Brooks [mailto:alaneugenebrooks52 at yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2017 10:32 PM To: spike66 at att.net Subject: trump [Spike, would you post this- please?] OK. s "...if they replaced him and the dysfunctioning stayed the same. Which I think it would because Pence is in bed with the Tea Party, and there's no way that can gather majority votes..." Difference is: Pence is a stable person-- Trump is not. Pence might be able to put together a coalition; whereas Trump in the long run is going be politically refractory. Alan Brooks -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 13:16:53 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 08:16:53 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: Difference is: Pence is a stable person-- Trump is not. Pence might be able to put together a coalition; whereas Trump in the long run is going be politically refractory. Alan Brooks As Trump seems to be doing no damage so far, I'd almost rather he stay there so the Repubs can keep getting bad flak (as opposed to good flak?) and the Demos regain control of Congress. But kicking him out seems to me the only way the Repubs can get anything done, though it may be that the Tea Party is doing more damage to the Repubs than Trump is. bill w On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 7:55 AM, spike wrote: > Forward from a long time lurker: > > > > *From:* Alan Brooks [mailto:alaneugenebrooks52 at yahoo.com] > *Sent:* Thursday, August 24, 2017 10:32 PM > *To:* spike66 at att.net > *Subject:* trump > > > > [Spike, would you post this- please?] > > > > > > OK. s > > > > > > > > > > "...if they replaced him and the > dysfunctioning stayed the same. Which I think it would because Pence is in > bed with the Tea Party, and there's no way that can gather majority > votes..." > > > > Difference is: Pence is a stable person-- Trump is not. Pence might be > able to put together a coalition; whereas Trump in the long run is going be > politically refractory. Alan Brooks > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 13:36:07 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 14:36:07 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: On 25 August 2017 at 14:16, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > As Trump seems to be doing no damage so far, I'd almost rather he stay there > so the Repubs can keep getting bad flak (as opposed to good flak?) and the > Demos regain control of Congress. But kicking him out seems to me the only > way the Repubs can get anything done, though it may be that the Tea Party is > doing more damage to the Repubs than Trump is. > Trump is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. You have to fix the disease. BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 13:58:57 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 09:58:57 -0400 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 9:16 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: ?> ? > Difference is: Pence is a stable person-- Trump is not. > Exactly. From what I can tell Pence is likely to be a very bad president, perhaps even a catastrophic president, but not all catastrophes are equal because there is no bottom to bad. There are hurricane Katrina type catastrophes and there are Chicxulub event type catastrophes. ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 25 14:27:57 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 07:27:57 -0700 Subject: [ExI] hurricane physics Message-ID: <00d301d31dae$5993cd90$0cbb68b0$@att.net> Hurricane Harvey is a physics lesson for the public. They are fretting over it now as it made category 3 last night and is heading for the Texas coast. Plenty of hurricanes hit Florida and generally turn and move north up the coast because of the way they spin, but sometimes they shoot the alley and go into the Gulf of Mexico. When that happens, it is always a big deal, as demonstrated by the horrific storms in the Galveston area in 1900 and 1915. The physics lesson is in how the continental shelf out east of Florida saps the strength of hurricanes. If a direct hit comes in toward Cape Canaveral, the fury of the storm has often dropped by 2 categories from open sea to landfall. But the gulf coasts, Texas, Louisiana, Mexico have far less protection from a long stretch of shallow water out there. So when a storm such as Harvey, which would be a snoozer if it hit the east coast of Florida, is a huge deal in the Gulf. Nature hands us a free physics lesson, or an expensive one, depending on how you build your house. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 25 14:42:33 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 07:42:33 -0700 Subject: [ExI] hurricane physics Message-ID: <00ed01d31db0$63718530$2a548f90$@att.net> From: spike [mailto:spike66 at att.net] Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 7:28 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: hurricane physics >?Hurricane Harvey is a physics lesson for the public?The physics lesson is in how the continental shelf out east of Florida saps the strength of hurricanes. If a direct hit comes in toward Cape Canaveral, the fury of the storm has often dropped by 2 categories from open sea to landfall. But the gulf coasts, Texas, Louisiana, Mexico have far less protection from a long stretch of shallow water out there. So when a storm such as Harvey, which would be a snoozer if it hit the east coast of Florida, is a huge deal in the Gulf?spike Hmmm, I coulda shown insteada described. If you go into Google maps and hit Cape Canaveral, then go into Satellite View, zoom out, this shows what I was yakking on about: When hurricanes come in from the east to the Cape, they are usually tired by the time they hit landfall, and you can see why. We were told it is the hurricane equivalent of running in waist-deep water. The really bad dangerous hurricanes are those which come in below Florida, pass to the south or directly over the commies and head into the blue water of the Gulf, then hit along the Mexican coast or Texas. I think BillW lives down that way somewhere. BillW, is all well with ye, me lad? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 30979 bytes Desc: not available URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 16:13:38 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 11:13:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: billk wrote Trump is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. You have to fix the disease.- ?---------- Which is what,in your opinion? bill w? On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 8:58 AM, John Clark wrote: > On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 9:16 AM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > ?> ? >> Difference is: Pence is a stable person-- Trump is not. >> > > Exactly. From what I can tell Pence is likely to be a very bad president, > perhaps even a catastrophic president, but not all catastrophes are equal > because there is no bottom to bad. There are hurricane Katrina type > catastrophes and there are Chicxulub event type catastrophes. > > ? 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 Aug 25 17:40:47 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 13:40:47 -0400 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 9:36 AM, BillK wrote: > ?> ? > Trump is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. ?Doctors can't cure many disease ?s so they treat the symptoms, ?and that id far from pointless. > ?> ? > You have to fix > ? ? > the disease. > ?Yeah yeah I know I've heard it all before, we've got to totally ?change civilization from top to bottom; but guess what, that's not going to happen in the next 3 1/2 years. But a nuclear war might. James Clapper ? has worked under all presidents from ? John F. Kennedy through Barack Obama ? and for almost 8 years was head of all the 17 intelligence ?agencies of the USA, and he worries about Trump's access to the nuclear codes: *?I really question his ability to be ? his fitness to be ? in this office. In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there?s actually very little to stop him?.? The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there?s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.?* ?And if you're not as scared as James Clapper then you just don't understand the situation.? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/23/james-clapper-questions-trumps-fitness-worries-about-his-access-to-nuclear-codes/?utm_term=.ce5479594030 ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 18:47:37 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 14:47:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: Or maybe we don't trust a guy like Clapper who lied under oath about spying on the citizens he pledged to protect. Maybe the US intelligence community is one of those symptoms... On Aug 25, 2017 1:42 PM, "John Clark" wrote: On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 9:36 AM, BillK wrote: > ?> ? > Trump is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. ?Doctors can't cure many disease ?s so they treat the symptoms, ?and that id far from pointless. > ?> ? > You have to fix > ? ? > the disease. > ?Yeah yeah I know I've heard it all before, we've got to totally ?change civilization from top to bottom; but guess what, that's not going to happen in the next 3 1/2 years. But a nuclear war might. James Clapper ? has worked under all presidents from ? John F. Kennedy through Barack Obama ? and for almost 8 years was head of all the 17 intelligence ?agencies of the USA, and he worries about Trump's access to the nuclear codes: *?I really question his ability to be ? his fitness to be ? in this office. In a fit of pique he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there?s actually very little to stop him?.? The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there?s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.?* ?And if you're not as scared as James Clapper then you just don't understand the situation.? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/ 08/23/james-clapper-questions-trumps-fitness-worries-about- his-access-to-nuclear-codes/?utm_term=.ce5479594030 ? 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 Aug 25 19:11:06 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 15:11:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 2:47 PM, Dylan Distasio wrote: ?> ? > maybe we don't trust a guy like Clapper > ?Do you trust Trump to tell you the truth? Do you consider Trump to be a rational and emotionally stable man who is knowledgeable and makes decisions based on the facts? John K Clark > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 19:17:29 2017 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 20:17:29 +0100 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: On 25 August 2017 at 17:13, William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Which is what, in your opinion? > > Surely it is obvious if you ask why half the country voted for Trump? Half the country is city slickers and financial rip-off merchants who think the other half are Deplorables. The US is tearing itself apart. As John has often mentioned, the increasing financial inequality is going to lead to civil disruption and riots in the cities. One way or another this situation will be corrected. BillK From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 19:30:48 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 15:30:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 3:17 PM, BillK wrote: ?>? > Surely it is obvious if you ask why half the country voted for Trump? > ?Actually 46.1%? ?voted for Trump, 48.2% voted for Clinton, and 5.7% threw their vote into the trash can.? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 19:27:19 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 12:27:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: On Aug 25, 2017 6:19 AM, "William Flynn Wallace" wrote: As Trump seems to be doing no damage so far, Many lives - ones which would aid our cause, passively if not actively - are being ruined or ended, that would not be so if Trump were not in office. That is damage enough. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 19:30:02 2017 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 12:30:02 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: On Aug 25, 2017 6:38 AM, "BillK" wrote: Trump is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. You have to fix the disease. While it might not be a cure itself, if treating the symptom easily and quickly can give the patient time and resources with which to affect a cure, it is hardly a pointless first step - so long as the effort does not stop there. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 25 20:48:06 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 13:48:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] forward from an old friend Message-ID: <009c01d31de3$75d177c0$61746740$@att.net> Alan promises this is his last post on the subject. OK, it's a deal: Alan wrote: [Spike, please post this; it'll be the last on the subject from me- and I only post on avg. once a year anyway] Reason Trump is worrisome is, he is similar to LBJ. Lyndon Johnson was not incompetent and neither is Trump-- yet they are similar in their egomania. Or is the condition called megalomania? You naturally have heard that Teddy Roosevelt wanted to be: "the bride at every wedding, and the corpse at every funeral." Same with LBJ way back in the day-- and Trump to this day. Egomania is a progressive condition, the concern is though Trump might not be a threat at this time, in the years to come he might worsen considerably. Trump is the most unpredictable president in decades, and as he ages he might say and do some extremely foolish things. Better to play it safe by having him resign for health reasons (thoroughly plausible for a man his age) and give Pence a chance. Like that old song: All We Are Saying, Is Give Pence A Chance. Alan Brooks -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 25 20:56:21 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 13:56:21 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: Message-ID: <00b801d31de4$9d0006d0$d7001470$@att.net> Please, I am getting a pile of complaints today. One of our lurkers promised his latest was his last political post. May we follow his example por favor? Thanks! Your friendly omnipotent semiscent moderator, spike From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 12:30 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] FW: trump On Aug 25, 2017 6:38 AM, "BillK" > wrote: >? is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. You have to fix the disease. While it might not be a cure itself, if treating the symptom easily and quickly can give the patient time and resources with which to affect a cure, it is hardly a pointless first step - so long as the effort does not stop there. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri Aug 25 22:19:02 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 17:19:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FW: Message-ID: Please, I am getting a pile of complaints today. One of our lurkers promised his latest was his last political post. May we follow his example por favor? Thanks! Your friendly omnipotent semiscent moderator, spike Or was that 'semisentient'? You want no more political posts ever? I thought mine was a bit of something new. And it was short and deletable from the subject line alone. John does tend to repeat himself, as he likely will admit. Or is this just about Trump? There are lots of posts that I am not interested in at all, and some that are way over my head. OK, no problem. Sometime I can just read the subject line and delete it. How much trouble is that?! Two seconds? How about a bit of tolerance, and more than a bit of libertarianism from our libertarians? I'd like to see a lot more posting by people who rarely post, just to stir this group up. Lots of people seem no longer in this group and I have not been in it very long. If you want more transhumanism/posthumanism, well, post it! Even Anders did less posting than replying to posts. I likely will get into it somehow. Ditto just about everything except physics and math. Don't just sit on the sideline and complain that you are not happy with what you see in the game. bill w On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 3:56 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > Please, I am getting a pile of complaints today. One of our lurkers > promised his latest was his last political post. May we follow his example > por favor? > > > > Thanks! > > > > Your friendly omnipotent semiscent moderator, > > > > spike > > > > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *Adrian Tymes > *Sent:* Friday, August 25, 2017 12:30 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] FW: trump > > > > On Aug 25, 2017 6:38 AM, "BillK" wrote: > > >? is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. You have to fix > the disease. > > > > While it might not be a cure itself, if treating the symptom easily and > quickly can give the patient time and resources with which to affect a > cure, it is hardly a pointless first step - so long as the effort does not > stop there. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Aug 25 22:22:49 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 17:22:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] FW: trump In-Reply-To: References: <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1235725749.2030083.1503639094928@mail.yahoo.com> <009301d31da1$6b07a680$4116f380$@att.net> Message-ID: Half the country is city slickers and financial rip-off merchants who think the other half are Deplorables. billk I am sorry that you have such a lot opinion of half of our country. Most likely you are just guilty of over generalization, based on my previous opinion of you. bill w On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 2:30 PM, Adrian Tymes wrote: > On Aug 25, 2017 6:38 AM, "BillK" wrote: > > Trump is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. You have to fix > the disease. > > > While it might not be a cure itself, if treating the symptom easily and > quickly can give the patient time and resources with which to affect a > cure, it is hardly a pointless first step - so long as the effort does not > stop there. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Fri Aug 25 23:20:29 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 16:20:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00a201d31df8$befb1fe0$3cf15fa0$@att.net> You want no more political posts ever? Nah BillW, it?s OK to make an occasional political post, particularly with an Extropian angle. We know that some things political are highly relevant to ExI, especially now as we stare down the barrel of nuclear war to a greater extent than we have in decades. For instance, we here mostly get our info thru email and internet reading. What if? nuclear war with North Korea does break out? For the sake of argument, assume they launch first, so China doesn?t get involved, but theirs is an EMP. Never mind the response: plenty of us here can visualize what would happen to NK. But what about here? What if? you suddenly have all your info channels go dark? Do we have any kind of contingency? Have you thought about what you would do? Write letters? If the phone comes up first (good chance it will) can we rig some dial-up modems and such? What if the damage is localized enough that we still have most of the country?s electronics are still good but yours isn?t? Ideas? spike From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 3:19 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] FW: Please, I am getting a pile of complaints today. One of our lurkers promised his latest was his last political post. May we follow his example por favor? Thanks! Your friendly omnipotent semiscent moderator, spike Or was that 'semisentient'? You want no more political posts ever? I thought mine was a bit of something new. And it was short and deletable from the subject line alone. John does tend to repeat himself, as he likely will admit. Or is this just about Trump? There are lots of posts that I am not interested in at all, and some that are way over my head. OK, no problem. Sometime I can just read the subject line and delete it. How much trouble is that?! Two seconds? How about a bit of tolerance, and more than a bit of libertarianism from our libertarians? I'd like to see a lot more posting by people who rarely post, just to stir this group up. Lots of people seem no longer in this group and I have not been in it very long. If you want more transhumanism/posthumanism, well, post it! Even Anders did less posting than replying to posts. I likely will get into it somehow. Ditto just about everything except physics and math. Don't just sit on the sideline and complain that you are not happy with what you see in the game. bill w On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 3:56 PM, spike > wrote: Please, I am getting a pile of complaints today. One of our lurkers promised his latest was his last political post. May we follow his example por favor? Thanks! Your friendly omnipotent semiscent moderator, spike From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org ] On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 12:30 PM To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] FW: trump On Aug 25, 2017 6:38 AM, "BillK" > wrote: >? is a symptom. Treating the symptom is pointless. You have to fix the disease. While it might not be a cure itself, if treating the symptom easily and quickly can give the patient time and resources with which to affect a cure, it is hardly a pointless first step - so long as the effort does not stop there. _______________________________________________ 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 Sat Aug 26 14:27:26 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 10:27:26 -0400 Subject: [ExI] New LIGO rumor Message-ID: ?There is a rumor that LIGO has found another gravitational wave event, but what's new is that this time they've matched it up with something that optical telescopes can see. If true that almost certainly was caused by merging Neutron Stars not merging Black Holes. It all started when astronomer J Craig Wheeler tweeted: "*New LIGO source with optical counterpart. Blow your sox off!*" That may also explain a otherwise enigmatic tweet from another astronomer, Andy Howell, that was sent just last week: ?*Tonight is one of those nights where watching the astronomical observations roll in is better than any story any human has ever told*.? If it happened last week the new Virgo detector was online so maybe they used it to triangulate and that's how they could pinpoint where the wave came from and tell the optical astronomers where to look. According to the rumor it happened in a large old elliptical galaxy called NGC 4993 about 130 million light years away, and that ? is? just the sort of place you'd expect to find merging Neutron stars, ? ? 130 million light ?years is much ?closer? ?than? ? the Black Hole mergers ?,? but then it would have to be if LIGO could detect it because Neutron Stars produce weaker ?Gravitational Waves than Neutron Stars, although they are more common. All LIGO will officially say about all this is: ?*A very exciting O2 Observing run is drawing to a close August 25. We look forward to posting a top-level update at that time*.? We should know soon. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 26 15:05:17 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 11:05:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] New LIGO rumor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: More interesting tidbits. NASA?s Chandra X-ray observatory saw a Short Gamma Ray Burst coming from NGC 4993 on August 19, and on August 22 the Hubble Space Telescope ? ? people ? ? suddenly ? ? changed ? ? their ? ? observation ? ? schedule and decided to point their telescope at ? ? NGC 4993, ? ? they ? ? gave as the reason for this change in planes "follow up on a candidate observation of gravitational waves". ? ? The European Southern Observatory?s Very Large Telescope ? ? and the top radio telescope in the world, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Chile ? ? also stopped what they were doing and turned to look at ? ? NGC 4993 on August 19. ?And late yesterday LIGO issued ?another official statement about all this: *?Some promising gravitational-wave candidates have been identified in data from both LIGO and Virgo during our preliminary analysis, and we have shared what we currently know with astronomical observing partners. We are working hard to assure that the candidates are valid gravitational-wave events, and it will require time to establish the level of confidence needed to bring any results to the scientific community and the greater public. We will let you know as soon we have information ready to share.?* *?John K Clark?* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 26 16:10:00 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 09:10:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] New LIGO rumor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00ce01d31e85$c5e7c1e0$51b745a0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: [ExI] New LIGO rumor ?>? enigmatic tweet from another astronomer, Andy Howell, that was sent just last week: ?Tonight is one of those nights where watching the astronomical observations roll in is better than any story any human has ever told.? That guy reminds me of me. Indeed, for astronomy geeks, it is soooooo a great time to be living. If other stuff in our world is going badly, my recommendation is to get into astronomy or physics, or both, focus your attention there and live the most glorious time ever. Or electronics. Or software, or medicine, genetics, mathematics, biology, or robotics, bionics, information technology, oh my. In our times, we are like a group of 10 yr olds who just discovered a huge room full of every kind of cool toy ever made with huge banners: KIDS! Play with eeeeeverything and aaanything you want! All you see are gifts from your good and generous friends, Science and his little buddy Engineering. Let the games begin! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 26 16:14:31 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 09:14:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] New LIGO rumor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00d501d31e86$672252f0$3566f8d0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] New LIGO rumor >?More interesting tidbits: ?Some promising gravitational-wave candidates have been identified in data from both LIGO and Virgo during our preliminary analysis, and we have shared what we currently know with astronomical observing partners. We are working hard to assure that the candidates are valid gravitational-wave events, and it will require time to establish the level of confidence needed to bring any results to the scientific community and the greater public. We will let you know as soon we have information ready to share.? LIGO statement, quoted by John K Clark Anyone living in our times who is unhappy or pessimistic just doesn?t understand what is going on. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat Aug 26 20:12:05 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 16:12:05 -0400 Subject: [ExI] New LIGO rumor In-Reply-To: <00d501d31e86$672252f0$3566f8d0$@att.net> References: <00d501d31e86$672252f0$3566f8d0$@att.net> Message-ID: On Sat, Aug 26, 2017 at 12:14 PM, spike wrote: > ?>? > Anyone living in our times who is unhappy or pessimistic just doesn?t > understand what is going on. > > ?Spike, your optimism is contagious, this is really cool! Some theories challenge Einstein and say Gravity moves slightly slower than light (or Gamma rays), if the Gamma Ray Flash and the LIGO/VIRGO gravity event really are correlated we should be able to measure any potential difference between these 2 speeds with enormous precision. Gamma Ray Bursts last between a fifth of a second and 2 seconds (giving off more energy in the process than our sun will in its entire 10 billion year lifetime) and the gravity pulse that LIGO/VIRGO saw was probably even shorter. If they both started off at the same place and at the same time 134 million years ago and they arrive here at the same time to the limits of our best measurements then there sure can't be much difference between the speed of gravity and the speed of light. John K Clark ? > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Sat Aug 26 20:51:17 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 13:51:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] New LIGO rumor In-Reply-To: References: <00d501d31e86$672252f0$3566f8d0$@att.net> Message-ID: <00a501d31ead$10f455a0$32dd00e0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2017 1:12 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] New LIGO rumor On Sat, Aug 26, 2017 at 12:14 PM, spike > wrote: ?>?>?Anyone living in our times who is unhappy or pessimistic just doesn?t understand what is going on. ?>?Spike, your optimism is contagious? I caught it from myself. With all this cool new stuff coming in, I honestly cannot find a logical line of reasoning that can lead to a gloomy view. We are standing on the threshold of a dream. This is the kind of dream where you wake up and find it is reality. Wake up, humanity! Gobble up the coolness of it all. There is plenty of it to go around, everywhere we look. We are the lucky ones to be alive in the here and now. >? If they both started off at the same place and at the same time 134 million years ago and they arrive here at the same time to the limits of our best measurements then there sure can't be much difference between the speed of gravity and the speed of light. John K Clark ? I saw that! No matter how hard I try, I can?t come up with a reasonable theory which could have gravity waves travel at close to c to within a part per trillion. I couldn?t do it: I strained my imagination until it was sore. Einstein was right, again. Being right is what Einstein did well. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon Aug 28 15:45:23 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:45:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The largest dinosaur Message-ID: A recent discovery may be the largest dinosaur so far found: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-patagotitan-mayorum-biggest-dinosaur.html It weighed ?76 tons, ? as much as the Space Shuttle ?,? was 20 feet high at the shoulders and was 122 feet long and lived about 100 million years ago. Other very large dinosaurs have been found before but this fossil is incredibly complete, in fact they were able to make what's been called ?the most complete anatomic reconstruction of any large terrestrial herbivore in the planet?s history" . I don't know why ?I find all this so fascinating but when I was a kid I was a sucker for Godzilla ? movies. Take a look at this picture to get a sense of the scale of this beast: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Patagotitan-Scale-Diagram-Steveoc86.svg/1800px-Patagotitan-Scale-Diagram-Steveoc86.svg.png ? And they say this thing was ?just ? a juvenile not yet fully grown! I want to go to Jurassic Park, I'll take my chances with the T Rex getting loose. ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Aug 28 18:08:12 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:08:12 -0700 Subject: [ExI] turing letters Message-ID: <000601d32028$9dd9e580$d98db080$@att.net> A collection of Alan Turing letters has been discovered: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/4f6c3f0c-9a70-33c5-bd03-df331 fb06146 I can't find where the letters themselves are in the public domain. I hope they find their way onto the internet. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun Aug 27 18:20:58 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2017 13:20:58 -0500 Subject: [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers Message-ID: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/opinion/sunday/good-robot-teacher-secrets.html Around 1963 I was in a college choir putting on a concert. Because of a wild hair (practically my middle name) I decided to emote, to sing with all the facial expression I could. Afterwards people told me that they had watched me the entire concert and judging by their emotions, it was a very positive experience. Emoting sells. I wonder if online educational places will take heed to the implications of this article and research. Notice esp. the lack of difference in liking of the two robot teachers. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Aug 28 19:39:52 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 12:39:52 -0700 Subject: [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <006f01d32035$6b93a4f0$42baeed0$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/opinion/sunday/good-robot-teacher-secrets.html bill w Hi BillW, great article, thanks, I agree with much of it. I disagree with the premise, in the first line: >?Why is educational technology such a disappointment? It isn?t. Or isn?t now: good educational tech was a long time coming. But now, the online sources are available and it is excellent indeed. We have had teachers who are emotionally engaging, and those who gave lectures up front like graven image, so most of us will agree with the article. But the free tech education available today is a mind-blower. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Mon Aug 28 20:30:53 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 13:30:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers In-Reply-To: <006f01d32035$6b93a4f0$42baeed0$@att.net> References: <006f01d32035$6b93a4f0$42baeed0$@att.net> Message-ID: <002301d3203c$8c2b7060$a4825120$@att.net> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of spike Sent: Monday, August 28, 2017 12:40 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: Re: [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/opinion/sunday/good-robot-teacher-secrets.html bill w >?Hi BillW, great article, thanks, I agree with much of it. I disagree with the premise, in the first line: >>?Why is educational technology such a disappointment? >?It isn?t. Or isn?t now: good educational tech was a long time coming. But now, the online sources are available and it is excellent indeed?spike Further thoughts please: There is an old joke, short version: guy gets shipwrecked on a desert island with only a dog and a sow, after a few days, the sow starts looking tasty, but every time he tries to mount her, the dog intervenes, bites him in the ass, etc. This goes on for months, guy really is desperate, tries everything, can never get the dog to let him have his way with the sow, then one day he sees a boat go down, wades out and rescues a comely maiden who is so grateful for saving her life she vows she will do anything for him, aaanything he wants. So he has her turn away and hold the dog for a few minutes. OK then, apply the lesson to modern education, shall we? For so long we have had the factory model for education, which requires gathering a group of around 30 similarly-aged children and having one adult talking to them. Much of the earlier online curriculum was nothing more than video of good teachers lecturing. Later it was cartoon characters, lecturing. So we can try to create a robot teacher to continue that model of one person up front lecturing to a classroom, but it is too much like using the maiden as a means of restraining the dog. We have new models of education which do not involve anyone talking. Or if so, few images of people talking are necessary: we can do plenty of history lectures using maps and animations, we can do plenty of math and programming education with animations and graphs, we can do chemistry and physics with moving diagrams, as is done with Khan Academy and some of the other online resources. We don?t need robots, nothing 3D, nothing non-virtual. We now have the animated CGI options that do not require talking humans. We need not continue the old models with the new tools, any more than we need to have the comely maiden hold the dog. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon Aug 28 21:14:14 2017 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 16:14:14 -0500 Subject: [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers In-Reply-To: <002301d3203c$8c2b7060$a4825120$@att.net> References: <006f01d32035$6b93a4f0$42baeed0$@att.net> <002301d3203c$8c2b7060$a4825120$@att.net> Message-ID: We now have the animated CGI options that do not require talking humans. spike How about the social cues the article was discussing? When our college got the big computer we faculty could finally use (imagine a day when only the administration could use the one we had) they offered classes in everything: word processing, spreadsheets, etc. We had a workbook that the teacher followed. After a few minutes I never heard anything he said. I was on the computer and sailing through the workbook about twice as fast as the class was going. That's fine if the book is really good enough. It was. I don't sit and listen any more. No TED talks for me. Too impatient. I want a book that I can go through at my speed,and sometimes the teacher's voice just goes into my two hearing aids poorly and so I have to back up - frustrating. Will you send me a cgi thing so I can see what you are talking about? I will assume that in Khan and elsewhere one can stop, speed up, slow down, go to the loo, etc. This kind of learning, as implied above in my computer class, requires the words/text to be very clear and at the proper level. Otherwise people will need to ask questions and that slows everyone down. I guess you have to pay extra to send in questions? I can't see anything but having a teacher to ask is going to work in advanced classes in psych. Don't have an opinion about other subjects. My Ss seemed to need more examples and I supplied them. Reactions? bill w On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 3:30 PM, spike wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On > Behalf Of *spike > *Sent:* Monday, August 28, 2017 12:40 PM > *To:* 'ExI chat list' > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers > > > > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > ] *On Behalf Of *William Flynn > Wallace > *Subject:* [ExI] attn: spike esp. - robot teachers > > > > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/opinion/sunday/good- > robot-teacher-secrets.html > > > > bill w > > > > > > > > >?Hi BillW, great article, thanks, I agree with much of it. I disagree > with the premise, in the first line: > > > > >>?Why is educational technology such a disappointment? > > > > >?It isn?t. Or isn?t now: good educational tech was a long time coming. > But now, the online sources are available and it is excellent indeed?spike > > > > > > Further thoughts please: > > > > There is an old joke, short version: guy gets shipwrecked on a desert > island with only a dog and a sow, after a few days, the sow starts looking > tasty, but every time he tries to mount her, the dog intervenes, bites him > in the ass, etc. This goes on for months, guy really is desperate, tries > everything, can never get the dog to let him have his way with the sow, > then one day he sees a boat go down, wades out and rescues a comely maiden > who is so grateful for saving her life she vows she will do anything for > him, aaanything he wants. So he has her turn away and hold the dog for a > few minutes. > > > > OK then, apply the lesson to modern education, shall we? > > > > For so long we have had the factory model for education, which requires > gathering a group of around 30 similarly-aged children and having one adult > talking to them. Much of the earlier online curriculum was nothing more > than video of good teachers lecturing. Later it was cartoon characters, > lecturing. So we can try to create a robot teacher to continue that model > of one person up front lecturing to a classroom, but it is too much like > using the maiden as a means of restraining the dog. > > > > We have new models of education which do not involve anyone talking. Or > if so, few images of people talking are necessary: we can do plenty of > history lectures using maps and animations, we can do plenty of math and > programming education with animations and graphs, we can do chemistry and > physics with moving diagrams, as is done with Khan Academy and some of the > other online resources. We don?t need robots, nothing 3D, nothing > non-virtual. We now have the animated CGI options that do not require > talking humans. We need not continue the old models with the new tools, > any more than we need to have the comely maiden hold the dog. > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at att.net Tue Aug 29 00:29:06 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 17:29:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] forward from mb Message-ID: <003901d3205d$d38ce530$7aa6af90$@att.net> MB's moderator flag was set because of excess bounces (not MB's fault, just servers not getting along with each other.) I can't get on the ExI site because it is closed for maintenance, so I will post it. Thanks MB! MB wrote: For the math geeks: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/24/mathematical-secrets-of-anci ent-tablet-unlocked-after-nearly-a-century-of-study How cool! :) Regards, MB -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed Aug 30 23:03:49 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2017 19:03:49 -0400 Subject: [ExI] More on topological quantum computing Message-ID: In the August 23 2017 issue of the journal Nature researchers report they have managed to braid non-Abelian anyons (also called Majorana sudo-particles) in a hashtag # arrangement of wires. These braids can encode a Qbit of quantum information and they can be manipulated. These braids are very robust, far less likely to suffer quantum decoherence from the environment than anything else known. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7668/full/nature23468.html Maybe there is some showstopper that hasn't shown up yet but in my opinion this technology has more potential to suddenly change civilization than just about anything else, except maybe H-bomb technology, because unlike other methods once you've made even a very small quantum computer that works on this principle it should be pretty straightforward to scale it up, way up. This short video explains what they did and why braids of particles that follow non-Abelian rules are the ideal thing to use for making a quantum computer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aakSpSXLSYY John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Wed Aug 30 23:58:48 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2017 19:58:48 -0400 Subject: [ExI] More on topological quantum computing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: John- Do you know if these folks are associated with Microsoft's efforts in this space? On Aug 30, 2017 7:05 PM, "John Clark" wrote: > In the August 23 2017 issue of the journal Nature researchers report they > have managed to braid non-Abelian anyons (also called Majorana > sudo-particles) in a hashtag # arrangement of wires. These braids can > encode a Qbit of quantum information and they can be manipulated. These > braids are very robust, far less likely to suffer quantum decoherence from > the environment than anything else known. > > http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v548/n7668/full/nature23468.html > > Maybe there is some showstopper that hasn't shown up yet but in my opinion > this technology has more potential to suddenly change civilization than > just about anything else, except maybe H-bomb technology, because unlike > other methods once you've made even a very small quantum computer that > works on this principle it should be pretty straightforward to scale it up, > way up. This short video explains what they did and why braids of > particles that follow non-Abelian rules are the ideal thing to use for > making a quantum computer. > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aakSpSXLSYY > > 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 spike66 at att.net Thu Aug 31 00:23:53 2017 From: spike66 at att.net (spike) Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2017 17:23:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] theme parties must go retro, waaaaay retro Message-ID: <004201d321ef$6de1c7d0$49a55770$@att.net> A thought occurred to me as I heard of a U of Michigan frat having to cancel its party with the theme ?Make Ancient Egypt Great Again.? Students were encouraged to come in costumes, such as Cleopatra, mummies, King Tut, do that sideways walk thing, etc. The campus (actual) Egyptians were offended at the cultural appropriation. Party canceled, hapless fraternity bros remained painfully sober. (How shall they cope?) This notion that cultures can never be appropriated can only spread. This leads to an easily-foreseeable future trend such that frat parties will be compelled to cut the Greek cultural appropriation (can you imagine?) as well as all the others including a frat party classic: the Irish theme, featuring? well, I forgot what Irish frat parties do. Further thought: there is a culture (of sorts) for which no one will object should it be ridiculed and parodied: cave man. I hereby take up the cause of being distressed and offended should frats or anyone else choose to have fun parodying Neanderthal culture. Who here will stand with me, defending the downtrodden prehistoric humans? Hear that Universities? No cave-person parties, none! spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu Aug 31 01:15:38 2017 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2017 21:15:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] More on topological quantum computing In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 Dylan Distasio wrote: ?> ? > John- > > ?D? > o you know if these folks are associated with Microsoft's efforts in this > space? > ? As far as I know they are not, although I know Microsoft is also working on ? topological quantum computing ?, it's in the air. This work was a collaboration between researchers at Delft University ? in the Netherlands ? and ? University of California ? at? Santa Barbara ?.? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Thu Aug 31 03:45:51 2017 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Machado) Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:45:51 -0300 Subject: [ExI] theme parties must go retro, waaaaay retro In-Reply-To: <004201d321ef$6de1c7d0$49a55770$@att.net> References: <004201d321ef$6de1c7d0$49a55770$@att.net> Message-ID: Funny thing (or not funny at all) is that there's not a single trace of ancient egyptian culture that survived on modern egypt. And also everything we know about them comes from the greeks and from archaeology. But what do reality means for SJWs? They have an agenda and they push it. On 30/08/2017 21:23, spike wrote: > > A thought occurred to me as I heard of a U of Michigan frat having to > cancel its party with the theme ?Make Ancient Egypt Great Again.? > Students were encouraged to come in costumes, such as Cleopatra, > mummies, King Tut, do that sideways walk thing, etc. > > The campus (actual) Egyptians were offended at the cultural > appropriation. Party canceled, hapless fraternity bros remained > painfully sober. (How shall they cope?) > > This notion that cultures can never be appropriated can only spread. > This leads to an easily-foreseeable future trend such that frat > parties will be compelled to cut the Greek cultural appropriation (can > you imagine?) as well as all the others including a frat party > classic: the Irish theme, featuring? well, I forgot what Irish frat > parties do. > > Further thought: there is a culture (of sorts) for which no one will > object should it be ridiculed and parodied: cave man. I hereby take > up the cause of being distressed and offended should frats or anyone > else choose to have fun parodying Neanderthal culture. Who here will > stand with me, defending the downtrodden prehistoric humans? > > Hear that Universities? No cave-person parties, none! > > 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 interzone at gmail.com Thu Aug 31 03:51:09 2017 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2017 23:51:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] theme parties must go retro, waaaaay retro In-Reply-To: <004201d321ef$6de1c7d0$49a55770$@att.net> References: <004201d321ef$6de1c7d0$49a55770$@att.net> Message-ID: Pretty soon, you may not have to worry about frats appropriating anything at all... https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/13/harvard-faculty-committee-recommends-greek-other-clubs-be-eliminated On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 8:23 PM, spike wrote: > > > A thought occurred to me as I heard of a U of Michigan frat having to > cancel its party with the theme ?Make Ancient Egypt Great Again.? Students > were encouraged to come in costumes, such as Cleopatra, mummies, King Tut, > do that sideways walk thing, etc. > > > > The campus (actual) Egyptians were offended at the cultural > appropriation. Party canceled, hapless fraternity bros remained painfully > sober. (How shall they cope?) > > > > This notion that cultures can never be appropriated can only spread. This > leads to an easily-foreseeable future trend such that frat parties will be > compelled to cut the Greek cultural appropriation (can you imagine?) as > well as all the others including a frat party classic: the Irish theme, > featuring? well, I forgot what Irish frat parties do. > > > > Further thought: there is a culture (of sorts) for which no one will > object should it be ridiculed and parodied: cave man. I hereby take up the > cause of being distressed and offended should frats or anyone else choose > to have fun parodying Neanderthal culture. Who here will stand with me, > defending the downtrodden prehistoric humans? > > > > Hear that Universities? No cave-person parties, none! > > > > 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 mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon Aug 28 22:47:23 2017 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 18:47:23 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Plimpton 322 tablet In-Reply-To: References: <006f01d32035$6b93a4f0$42baeed0$@att.net> <002301d3203c$8c2b7060$a4825120$@att.net> Message-ID: <3a1fbc9ccd4cadcabe651563e7580525.squirrel@www.main.nc.us> For the math geeks: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/24/mathematical-secrets-of-ancient-tablet-unlocked-after-nearly-a-century-of-study How cool! :) Regards, MB