From js_exi at gnolls.org Tue May 1 01:46:24 2018 From: js_exi at gnolls.org (J. Stanton) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2018 18:46:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> "I ask myself if I were a moral monster but smarter than Donald Trump (as almost everybody is)" The mental gymnastics here are hilarious. Somehow a dumb person managed to: 1. Turn $1 million into a $multi-billion fortune. (In contrast, nearly 1/3 of lottery jackpot winners go bankrupt, and none are in the Forbes 400.) Next, become a reality TV star. Along the way, marry and have children by three of the most beautiful women in the world. 2. Get elected President despite the entirety of the mainstream media, the entirety of Hollywood, the entirety of academia, the entire Democratic machine and most of the Republican machine, and the entirety of Silicon Valley uniting and using the power of their propaganda and censorship against him - and despite his opponent spending nearly twice as much on the Presidential campaign itself. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics.graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising 3. Maintain an approval rating in excess of Obama's despite record-breaking negative news coverage (70-90% negative.) No source, even Fox, gave Trump net positive coverage - and "news" outlets like CNN, NBC, and CBS are over 90% negative. https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/ 4. Achieve 2.9% GDP growth - and rising - via renegotiating trade agreements disadvantageous to the USA, and via tax reform - despite repeated taunts like "What magic wand do you have? Those jobs aren't coming back" from previous Presidents. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth-annual 5. End the Korean War, for which both South Korea's President and foreign minister publicly credit President Trump. (But feel free to continue spouting conspiracy theories. I'm sure John Clark knows *much* more about what caused North Korea's primary test site to collapse than the entire military intelligence complex and the President whom they serve, and I'm *sure* President Trump believes KJU over, say, General Mattis. That's definitely the most credible explanation for events. /s) I could go on. Anyone who thinks President Trump is stupid isn't nearly as smart as they think they are. They will continue to be surprised as things continue to "just happen" to the benefit of the USA and the world. (Next stop: Iran.) Worse, the inevitable consequence of the "Trump is stupid" argument is that he was elected because of stupid people, and that his continued and rising support is because everyone is getting stupider. Such arguments inevitably lead towards some form of tyranny, usually under the branding of "social justice" or socialism/communism in general - because instead of admitting that reality is failing to conform to one's superior conception of it, clearly the stupid masses need superior wisdom imposed upon them by force. Personally, I think that redirecting NASA to ACTUALLY EXPLORE SPACE and GO TO MARS is far more of interest to this mailing list, which is still theoretically Extropian. "New Space Policy Directive Calls for Human Expansion Across Solar System" https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-space-policy-directive-calls-for-human-expansion-across-solar-system/ From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 1 03:50:08 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2018 20:50:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] what if we get tarkined? was:RE: ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? Message-ID: <007001d3e0ff$80802380$81806a80$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of J. Stanton ... >...Personally, I think that redirecting NASA to ACTUALLY EXPLORE SPACE and GO TO MARS is far more of interest to this mailing list, which is still theoretically Extropian. Most of us here saw Rogue One and the CGI used to do Grand Moff Tarkin. We know that it isn't crazy difficult to make one of those. Pixar offers a free online class, a lot of the software needed to do it is free or nearly so. It wouldn't be difficult to make a video of the kinda grainy quality that gets captured by those tiny wearable cameras, way easier than Tarkin's scenes in Rogue One. So imagine... in 2018, the day before the election... a video is released of one of the candidates saying something that is the most damaging thing imaginable, way worse than commenting about grabbing pussy and such, way worse than that. Write your own script if you wish, but imagine... if the damaging video is against a candidate who was leading 8 points in the polls, released the day before the election, trailing candidate wins by a narrow margin, say quarter of a point. Couple days later, they figure out it was a Tarkin, but... there is no redo on an election. The US Constitution doesn't allow it. Result stands. People are coming out by the millions saying they switched their vote based on the video. It was clearly a stolen election, but... the winning candidate didn't do it, and can't be held accountable. He still wins. Extrapolate forward: lots of people had a vested interest in the guy who was swindled. Foreign leaders watched all this as well, and some of them don't want to negotiate with a leader they see as illegitimately elected by a swindle. The US could wind up in a culture war worse than the one we have been in for the last several years. Out of self-defense, the candidates will perhaps make up Tarkins and demonstrate that Americans can no longer believe what their eyes see and ears hear. We witnessed a guy who has been dead 22 yrs deliver over a minute of dialog in high resolution, so well done that if you didn't already know Tarkin was the CGI, you couldn't tell. Put this post somewhere where you can find it in 2.5 yrs. spike From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 1 04:14:53 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2018 21:14:53 -0700 Subject: [ExI] what if we get tarkined? was:RE: ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: <007001d3e0ff$80802380$81806a80$@rainier66.com> References: <007001d3e0ff$80802380$81806a80$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009001d3e102$f56ea650$e04bf2f0$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of spike at rainier66.com ... >...So imagine... in 2018, the day before the election... a video is released of one of the candidates saying something that is the most damaging thing imaginable, way worse than commenting about grabbing pussy and such, way worse than that. Write your own script if you wish, but imagine... Put this post somewhere where you can find it in 2.5 yrs...spike _______________________________________________ Further thoughts: this whole scenario should not be dismissed lightly, for it almost happened in 2000. It was not really intentional I don't think. It worked this way: most of the states' results were in or were predictable, but Florida was very close. Al Gore was ahead when the polls closed by a big enough margin that the news agencies called the state and the election for Gore. But wait... western Florida is in a different time zone, and that piece of Florida is as red as anywhere in the country outside Kansas. Their polls were still open for an extra hour because of the time zone, and their results caused Bush to catch up and pull slightly ahead in Florida and win the whole election. We remember it, but... the critical point here is that when the news agencies started calling the election for Gore while the polls in western Florida were still open, a lot of voters who had not yet voted or were waiting in line in western Florida went home without voting: no point. What if... Gore had won that? What if that couple hundred extra voters who stayed around and voted in the last hour had not done so? Then we would have a case where faulty news reporting overturned an election. The resulting culture war would have been nearly unimaginable. We are facing that risk again. spike From sparge at gmail.com Tue May 1 12:07:39 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Tue, 01 May 2018 12:07:39 +0000 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 10:25 PM J. Stanton wrote: > > 1. Turn $1 million into a $multi-billion fortune. > He inherited at least $40 million and estimates of his fortune vary widely. I'd put him in the certainly-not-stupid category. 2. Get elected President despite the entirety of the mainstream media, > the entirety of Hollywood, the entirety of academia, the entire > Democratic machine and most of the Republican machine, and the entirety > of Silicon Valley uniting and using the power of their propaganda and > censorship against him - and despite his opponent spending nearly twice > as much on the Presidential campaign itself. > The Russians might have helped a little, but that was quite an accomplishment. A good part of his success was due to the weakness of his opponent. > 5. End the Korean War, for which both South Korea's President and > foreign minister publicly credit President Trump. There was no ongoing war, just a split. And they're still split. Personally, I think that redirecting NASA to ACTUALLY EXPLORE SPACE and > GO TO MARS is far more of interest to this mailing list, which is still > theoretically Extropian. > I think the federal government should get out of the space exploration business. -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 1 23:07:20 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 19:07:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> Message-ID: On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 9:46 PM, J. Stanton wrote: > ?>>? >> "I ask myself if I were a moral monster but smarter than Donald Trump >> (as almost everybody is)" > > > > > * ?> ?The mental gymnastics here are hilarious. Somehow a dumb person > managed to: 1. Turn $1 million into a $multi-billion fortune.* Yes Trump claims he only got a $1 million loan from his father and that was it, but lying for Trump is like breathing. In reality Trump inherited at least 40 million dollars from his daddy in 1974. Since 1974 the S&P 500 has gone up 74 fold, if he had put his inheritance into a simple S&P index fund and reinvested the dividends and then just sat on his hands and did nothing today it would be worth 3.4 billion. When Trump announced his presidency in 2015 almost no independent analyst thinks he was worth anywhere near 3.4 billion, although today I wouldn?t be surprised if he was worth 10 or 20 times that. Being president can be very profitable. > ?> ?i > n contrast, nearly 1/3 of lottery jackpot winners go bankrupt, Trump invested heavily in Trump Castle in Atlantic City; about a year after it opened Trump Castle filed for bankruptcy. And Trump didn't just invest in real estate, Trump invested in Eastern Air Lines, soon after that Eastern Air Lines went bankrupt. Trump invested in the United States Football League, but people would much rather watch the NFL; so when he couldn't beat them in the free market Trump went to the courts and claimed the NFL was a monopoly. Trump won his lawsuit and got triple damages too; the jury awarded him one dollar, so with triple damages his grand total was three dollars. Very soon after that the United States Football League went bankrupt. > ?> ? > and none are in the Forbes 400.) ?Trump wouldn't be on the Forbes 400 either is he had told the truth, but truth is a foreign concept to Trump:? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/ 20/the-forbes-400-and-how-trumps-shameless-self-promotion-helped-make-him- president/?utm_term=.01b12fa941e8 > ?> ? > *Next, become a reality TV star.* Honey Boo Boo ? was also a ? reality TV star ? and I have no doubt would make a better president. ? *?> ?Along the way, marry and have children * ?His 3 oldest children are worthless creeps, I make no comment about his youngest two.? > > *Get elected President despite? [...]* ?Get elected president despite not receiving a majority of the vote of the American people nor even a plurality.? ?> ? > 3. Maintain an approval rating in excess of Obama's ?Bullshit.? > ?> ? > 4. Achieve 2.9% GDP growth Obama achieved 2.9% GDP growth too and he inherited the worse economic disaster since 1929. Jimmy Carter was not reelected because people felt the economy was a disaster, but he actually got 3.3% GDP growth. And by the way, Bill Clinton achieved 3.9%. > ?> ? > *- and rising* ?How the hell do you know what the future will bring?? > ?> ? > - via renegotiating trade agreements disadvantageous to the USA Disadvantageous to Trump personally and his rich buddies, but I prefer the free market, at one time among other things being Extropian meant being in favor of free markets because it is clearly the most logical economic policy to have and Extropians considered logic a virtue, but those days are sadly gone hence this list was overwhelmingly in favor of Trump in 2016, perhaps a bit less now but I?m not sure. ?Believe it or not I even remember when extropians thought a balanced budget was important, but now its only important if a democrat is president. ? ?*> ?**despite repeated taunts like "What magic wand do you have? Those jobs aren't coming back" from previous Presidents.* ?Do you really think coal mining jobs are coming back?? 5. End the Korean War What on earth are you talking about?! Trump hasn't ended anything yet. If somebody as smart as Obama or Bill Clinton were going to talk with the leader of North Korea I would be filled with optimism, but with somebody as brain dead dumb as Trump I am filled with dread. I know Kim Jung-un will outsmart him, I know it will be bad I just don't know how bad. It could be as disaster. I don't see how anybody who watched Trump's incorrect ravings on Fox And Friends a few days ago and still be hopeful about the future. I admit it, I'm scared. > ?> ? > *I'm sure John Clark knows *much* more about what caused North Korea's > primary test site to collapse than the entire military intelligence complex* No I sure the CIA knows far far more details about the collapse than I do. > ?> ? > and the President But I'm also sure I know more about it than the president.Yes all the details about it would be in The President's Daily Briefing Book but unlike every other president its well known that Trump won't read it and prefers to learn about the state of the world from the boob tube, more specifically from Fox And Friends and Sean Hannity's show on the American equivalent of Pravda. *?>? **Anyone who thinks President Trump is stupid* > *? *[...]*?* > Anyone like Trump's Secretary Of State who called him a "fucking moron"? Like Trump's National Security Adviser who think he's a "idiot" and a "moron with the intelligence of a ?kindergartener?? Like Trump's Chief of Staff who also thinks he's a "idiot"? Remember these are Trumps own people that he picked himself that see more of him than anyone and know him best. ?> ? > *the inevitable consequence of the "Trump is stupid" argument is that he > was elected because of stupid people* Yep, that is an entirely logical argument and I agree with you entirely. > * ?> ?Personally, I think that redirecting NASA to ACTUALLY EXPLORE SPACE > and GO TO MARS is far more of interest to this mailing list,? ?which is > still theoretically Extropian.* Trump is the most anti-science president in the history of the country. A year and a half into his presidency and Trump still hasn't nominated anybody to fill the position of National Science Adviser. Trump wanted to reduce the National Institutes of Health by 22% and reduce the The National Science Foundation? by 30%. and a 16% cut in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration they're the people who tell you if you're about to be hit by a hurricane or a tornado. Trump wants to cancel the WFIRTS space telescope and just a few days ago he did cancel the polar lunar rover that was going to look for underwater water and hydrogen on the moon which you're really going to need if you're serious about space exploration. Obama chose Steven Chu to be Energy Secretary, Chu is a former Nobel Prize winner in physics. Trump choose Rick Perry to be Energy Secretary. Perry is the former hillbilly governor of Texas who wants to cut energy R&D by 15% and kill the Advanced Research Agency entirely. Vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people but in the face of all ? scientific evidence to the contrary Trump insists that there are ?many cases? of children who became autistic after receiving vaccinations. Finally as a Trump fan I really want to ask you something, when Trump was campaigning and said Mexico was going to pay for that idiotic wall did you actually believe him? If your IQ was greater than your body temperature in degrees centigrade you couldn?t have, but that immediately raises another question. Why don?t you get mad when somebody lies to you? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interzone at gmail.com Tue May 1 23:27:09 2018 From: interzone at gmail.com (Dylan Distasio) Date: Tue, 01 May 2018 23:27:09 +0000 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> Message-ID: Someone woke up on the wrong side of the thermonuclear war this morning... On Tue, May 1, 2018, 7:09 PM John Clark wrote: > On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 9:46 PM, J. Stanton wrote: > >> > ?>>? >>> "I ask myself if I were a moral monster but smarter than Donald Trump >>> (as almost everybody is)" >> >> >> >> >> * ?> ?The mental gymnastics here are hilarious. Somehow a dumb person >> managed to: 1. Turn $1 million into a $multi-billion fortune.* > > > Yes Trump claims he only got a $1 million loan from his father and that > was it, but lying for Trump is like breathing. In reality Trump inherited > at least 40 million dollars from his daddy in 1974. Since 1974 the S&P 500 > has gone up 74 fold, if he had put his inheritance into a simple S&P index > fund and reinvested the dividends and then just sat on his hands and did > nothing today it would be worth 3.4 billion. When Trump announced his > presidency in 2015 almost no independent analyst thinks he was worth > anywhere near 3.4 billion, although today I wouldn?t be surprised if he was > worth 10 or 20 times that. > Being president can be very profitable. > > >> ?> ?i >> n contrast, nearly 1/3 of lottery jackpot winners go bankrupt, > > > Trump invested heavily in Trump Castle in Atlantic City; about a year > after it opened Trump Castle filed for bankruptcy. And Trump didn't just > invest in real estate, Trump invested in Eastern Air Lines, soon after that > Eastern Air Lines went bankrupt. Trump invested in the United States > Football League, but people would much rather watch the NFL; so when he > couldn't beat them in the free market Trump went to the courts and claimed > the NFL was a monopoly. Trump won his lawsuit and got triple damages too; > the jury awarded him one dollar, so with triple damages his grand total was > three dollars. Very soon after that the United States Football League went > bankrupt. > > >> ?> ? >> and none are in the Forbes 400.) > > > ?Trump wouldn't be on the Forbes 400 either is he had told the truth, but > truth is a foreign concept to Trump:? > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/20/the-forbes-400-and-how-trumps-shameless-self-promotion-helped-make-him-president/?utm_term=.01b12fa941e8 > > > >> ?> ? >> *Next, become a reality TV star.* > > > Honey Boo Boo > ? was also a ? > reality TV star > ? and I have no doubt would make a better president. ? > > *?> ?Along the way, marry and have children * > > > ?His 3 oldest children are worthless creeps, I make no comment about his > youngest two.? > > > >> >> *Get elected President despite? [...]* > > > ?Get elected president despite not receiving a majority of the vote of the > American people nor even a plurality.? > > > ?> ? >> 3. Maintain an approval rating in excess of Obama's > > > ?Bullshit.? > > > >> ?> ? >> 4. Achieve 2.9% GDP growth > > > Obama achieved 2.9% GDP growth too and he inherited the worse economic > disaster since 1929. Jimmy Carter was not reelected because people felt the > economy was a disaster, but he actually got 3.3% GDP growth. And by the > way, Bill Clinton achieved 3.9%. > > >> ?> ? >> *- and rising* > > > ?How the hell do you know what the future will bring?? > > > >> ?> ? >> - via renegotiating trade agreements disadvantageous to the USA > > > Disadvantageous to Trump personally and his rich buddies, but I prefer the > free market, at one time among other things being Extropian meant being in > favor of free markets because it is clearly the most logical economic > policy to have and Extropians considered logic a virtue, but those days are > sadly gone hence this list was overwhelmingly in favor of Trump in 2016, > perhaps a bit less now but I?m not sure. > > ?Believe it or not I even remember when extropians thought a > balanced budget was important, but now its only important if a democrat > is president. ? > > ?*> ?**despite repeated taunts like "What magic wand do you have? Those > jobs aren't coming back" from previous Presidents.* > ?Do you really think coal mining jobs are coming back?? > > > 5. End the Korean War > > > What on earth are you talking about?! Trump hasn't ended anything yet. If > somebody as smart as Obama or Bill Clinton were going to talk with the > leader of North Korea I would be filled with optimism, but with somebody as > brain dead dumb as Trump I am filled with dread. I know Kim Jung-un will > outsmart him, I know it will be bad I just don't know how bad. It could be > as disaster. I don't see how anybody who watched Trump's incorrect ravings > on Fox And Friends a few days ago and still be hopeful about the future. I > admit it, I'm scared. > > >> ?> ? >> *I'm sure John Clark knows *much* more about what caused North Korea's >> primary test site to collapse than the entire military intelligence complex* > > > No I sure the CIA knows far far more details about the collapse than I do. > > >> ?> ? >> and the President > > > But I'm also sure I know more about it than the president.Yes all the > details about it would be in The President's Daily Briefing Book but unlike > every other president its well known that Trump won't read it and prefers > to learn about the state of the world from the boob tube, more specifically > from Fox And Friends and Sean Hannity's show on the American equivalent of > Pravda. > > *?>? **Anyone who thinks President Trump is stupid* >> *? *[...]*?* >> > > Anyone like Trump's Secretary Of State who called him a "fucking moron"? > Like Trump's National Security Adviser who think he's a "idiot" and a > "moron with the intelligence of a ?kindergartener?? Like Trump's Chief of > Staff who also thinks he's a "idiot"? Remember these are Trumps own people > that he picked himself that see more of him than anyone and know him best. > > ?> ? >> *the inevitable consequence of the "Trump is stupid" argument is that he >> was elected because of stupid people* > > > Yep, that is an entirely logical argument and I agree with you entirely. > > >> * ?> ?Personally, I think that redirecting NASA to ACTUALLY EXPLORE SPACE >> and GO TO MARS is far more of interest to this mailing list,? ?which is >> still theoretically Extropian.* > > > Trump is the most anti-science president in the history of the country. A > year and a half into his presidency and Trump still hasn't nominated > anybody to fill the position of National Science Adviser. Trump wanted to > reduce the National Institutes of Health by 22% and reduce the The National > Science Foundation? by 30%. and a 16% cut in the National Oceanic and > Atmospheric Administration they're the people who tell you if you're about > to be hit by a hurricane or a tornado. Trump wants to cancel the WFIRTS > space telescope and just a few days ago he did cancel the polar lunar rover > that was going to look for underwater water and hydrogen on the moon which > you're really going to need if you're serious about space exploration. > Obama chose Steven Chu to be Energy Secretary, Chu is a former Nobel Prize > winner in physics. Trump choose Rick Perry to be Energy Secretary. Perry > is the former hillbilly governor of Texas who wants to cut energy R&D by > 15% and kill the Advanced Research Agency entirely. Vaccines have saved the > lives of hundreds of millions of people but in the face of all > ? > scientific evidence to the contrary Trump insists that there are ?many > cases? of children who became autistic after receiving vaccinations. > > Finally as a Trump fan I really want to ask you something, when Trump was > campaigning and said Mexico was going to pay for that idiotic wall did you > actually believe him? If your IQ was greater than your body temperature in > degrees centigrade you couldn?t have, but that immediately raises another > question. Why don?t you get mad when somebody lies to you? > > 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 spike at rainier66.com Tue May 1 23:52:10 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 16:52:10 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> Message-ID: <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> >? On Behalf Of Dylan Distasio Subject: Re: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? >>? On Tue, May 1, 2018, 7:09 PM John Clark > wrote:? John K Clark >?Someone woke up on the... Dylan What if? the current administration leads in the polls, is hit with a Tarkin video and loses by a sliver? Or what if? the current admin?s opponent leads in the polls, is hit with a Tarkin and loses by a sliver? Imagine both sides are hit and the election is a cliff-hanger, so we don?t really know what would have happened. In any of these scenarios, we could see a culture war to beat the band. If we speculate that all sides are working on Tarkins aimed to damage all sides, what can we do? Shouldn?t we be demonstrating the tech now? If we do, what is the impact of the public (not just USian but everywhere) realizing they can no longer believe what they see and hear? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 2 00:19:44 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 20:19:44 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: My biggest worry has nothing to do with technology. If Trump loses in 2020, even if its by a landslide, I really don't think he will go quietly, I think he will say it was a fake election and somebody will have to literally drag him out of the Oval Office. And I'm not sure that will be possible. A recent poll said half the Republicans would be in favor of postponing the election if Trump said we should, and I'm sure they would be in favor of nullifying the election results too if they don't go their way regardless of what the Constitution says. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 2 00:32:22 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 17:32:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Tuesday, May 1, 2018 5:20 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? My biggest worry ?I'm sure they would be in favor of nullifying the election results too if they don't go their way regardless of what the Constitution says. John K Clark Regardless of what even the majority wants, the constitution is still the law. That?s why the US is not a democracy, it?s a democratic republic. But what if the current admin is behind in the polls, his opponent is Tarkined, there is no indication the campaign had anything to do with it, the current admin wins by a hair? There is no redo mechanism in the constitution, so the result stands. But the majority would consider it illegitimate. Then what? We saw Rogue One. We know it can be done, we know there is enormous motive. So what can we do? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 2 02:25:22 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 22:25:22 -0400 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 8:32 PM, wrote: > Regardless of what even the majority wants, the constitution is still the law. ?But the constitution is not a law of physics, it can be violated. ? ?And is anybody is ever going to make himself king its going to be somebody like Trump.? > ?> ? > > *There is no redo mechanism in the constitution,* ?But if Trump doesn't win in 2020 I can see him insisting we're going to have a redo election anyway under new election laws invented by him that he claims will make it more honest. I don't know if he will get away with it but I think he will try, and it might work, if so it wouldn't be the first time a democratic republic became a dictatorship. And can anyone really doubt Trump would love that? ? > *?> ?We saw Rogue One. We know it can be done, we know there is enormous > motive. So what can we do?* It seems to be harder to fake audio than video, so far nobody had made a movie where a character's dialog comes from a speech synthesizer, so that should give us a few years of breathing space. Perhaps we need to start putting a cryptography time stamp in-camera on all video shot, although I'm not sure how exactly that would work and may not be practical. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 2 04:50:27 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 21:50:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003b01d3e1d1$1ac503d0$504f0b70$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 8:32 PM, > wrote: > Regardless of what even the majority wants, the constitution is still the law. ?>?But the constitution is not a law of physics, it can be violated? Sure, if you win the civil war. I wouldn?t bet on anyone?s odds, since they would be up against those who hold that document as sacred as a law of physics, and we are a well-armed militia. The constitution is what gives a president authority in the first place. ? ?>?And is anybody is ever going to make himself king its going to be somebody like Trump? John, keep in mind the founders specifically designed the constitution to prevent someone from making himself king. They understood that well, having lived in an era where kings really did run the show. They didn?t want one. So? they put in place a system that specifically prevents that. They did a marvelous job. ? ?> ?>?There is no redo mechanism in the constitution, ?>?But if Trump doesn't win in 2020 I can see him insisting we're going to have a redo election anyway? He can insist all he wants, but there is no legal mechanism to make that happen. The court swears in the rival, right on schedule, the marines come in and haul away whoever refuses to leave. The soldiers took an oath to the constitution, not the guy who wants to call himself president. There is a reason why this has never happened, and it isn?t that we didn?t have megalomaniacs in that office before now. They didn?t declare themselves dictator for life, not because they didn?t want to be, but because they couldn?t, after the one time it almost happened, 1932-1945. ?> ?>?We saw Rogue One. We know it can be done, we know there is enormous motive. So what can we do? >?It seems to be harder to fake audio than video, so far nobody had made a movie where a character's dialog comes from a speech synthesizer, so that should give us a few years of breathing space. Perhaps we need to start putting a cryptography time stamp in-camera on all video shot, although I'm not sure how exactly that would work and may not be practical. John K Clark Ja, but in the meantime, a Rogue One Tarkin scene could still convince plenty of voters, enough to flip an election. There is both a means and a motive, plenty of motive. So? it will be done. I don?t even know how we could stop it, particularly if it is done by a foreign national and is not traceable. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 2 05:26:31 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 1 May 2018 22:26:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 7:25 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 8:32 PM, wrote: >> There is no redo mechanism in the constitution, > > But if Trump doesn't win in 2020 We're not worried about this tactic being used to defeat Trump. We're worried about Trump using it to win. "Okay everyone, my opponent just conceded. Here's a video clip. So nobody bother to go vote for anyone but me." If there were questions about his legitimacy just for not winning the popular vote, this kind of tactic could spark a civil war, regardless of who wins the election. (Even if he loses, there will be those who sincerely believe - no matter what - that he was the only one still running, because TV said so.) And worse, if he uses it to sway Congressional races toward whichever politician (R, D, or otherwise) he likes in a given race. From giulio at gmail.com Wed May 2 09:12:06 2018 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 11:12:06 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural Message-ID: Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural Reading my old writings I realize that I have (sort of) changed my mind on some all important concepts. One is the concept of ?supernatural.?... https://turingchurch.net/things-i-have-sort-of-changed-my-mind-on-1-the-supernatural-f029d49385e9 From pharos at gmail.com Wed May 2 09:59:31 2018 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 10:59:31 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 2 May 2018 at 10:12, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural > > Reading my old writings I realize that I have (sort of) changed my > mind on some all important concepts. One is the concept of > ?supernatural.?... > > https://turingchurch.net/things-i-have-sort-of-changed-my-mind-on-1-the-supernatural-f029d49385e9 > _______________________________________________ Odd? Where is the reference to Trump? Please remember that Exi posts must contain either a whine about Trump or a whine about whines about Trump. :) BillK From sparge at gmail.com Wed May 2 12:03:59 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 02 May 2018 12:03:59 +0000 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 8:35 PM wrote: > We saw Rogue One. We know it can be done, we know there is enormous > motive. So what can we do? > We need to actively share videos that demonstrate what can be faked. Like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0&t=3s The downside, of course, is that we'll end up unable to believe what we see and hear. When the piss tape is inevitably released Trump will say it's fake and...well...who's to say? -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed May 2 12:14:53 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 02 May 2018 12:14:53 +0000 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 10:28 PM John Clark wrote: > > It seems to be harder to fake audio than video, so far nobody had made a > movie where a character's dialog comes from a speech synthesizer, so that > should give us a few years of breathing space. Perhaps we need to start > putting a cryptography time stamp in-camera on all video shot, although I'm > not sure how exactly that would work and may not be practical. > We're getting pretty close: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfU_sWHT8mo -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 2 12:42:11 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 05:42:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <002c01d3e212$fe5db880$fb192980$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes Sent: Tuesday, May 1, 2018 10:27 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 7:25 PM, John Clark wrote: > On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 8:32 PM, wrote: >> There is no redo mechanism in the constitution, > > But if Trump doesn't win in 2020 We're not worried about this tactic being used to defeat Trump. We're worried about Trump using it to win. "Okay everyone, my opponent just conceded. Here's a video clip. So nobody bother to go vote for anyone but me." If there were questions about his legitimacy just for not winning the popular vote, this kind of tactic could spark a civil war, regardless of who wins the election. (Even if he loses, there will be those who sincerely believe - no matter what - that he was the only one still running, because TV said so.) And worse, if he uses it to sway Congressional races toward whichever politician (R, D, or otherwise) he likes in a given race. _______________________________________________ Ja, no doubt both sides thought of this after seeing Rogue One, if not before. There is a still more complicated scenario: neither of the mainstream campaigns had anything to do with it. These videos are from outside actors, working for completely unknown motives, such as... they want to see a super well-armed economic competitor nation in a civil war. If Tarkin videos are used and it flips an election, we can fart around having the government investigate itself for years and come up with nothing but more Stormy Daniels (they will always find more Stormys back there) never finding any connection between the video makers and either party. The result stands. The trick will be repeated. ...until we figure out that we really can't believe what we see and hear. Then we have a whole nuther problem. spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 2 12:59:11 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 05:59:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <003701d3e215$5df7ae20$19e70a60$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK > _______________________________________________ >...Please remember that Exi posts must contain either a whine about Trump or a whine about whines about Trump. :) BillK _______________________________________________ Does it count to point out the risk facing the US and every other nation from video illusions? BillK, welcome back, me lad! We haven't been seeing much from you. Hope all is well in Jolly Olde. spike From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 2 13:13:17 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 06:13:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <003c01d3e217$56587800$03096800$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dave Sill Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 5:04 AM To: Extropy chat Subject: Re: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 8:35 PM > wrote: We saw Rogue One. We know it can be done, we know there is enormous motive. So what can we do? >?We need to actively share videos that demonstrate what can be faked. Like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0 &t=3s The downside, of course, is that we'll end up unable to believe what we see and hear. When the piss tape is inevitably released Trump will say it's fake and...well...who's to say? -Dave Oh the potential for gags here, oh my it makes my butt hurt just thinking about it. Now if we can just prevent that whole civil war business? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 2 13:26:03 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 06:26:03 -0700 Subject: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? In-Reply-To: <003c01d3e217$56587800$03096800$@rainier66.com> References: <5AE7C6F0.70907@gnolls.org> <010601d3e1a7$6c5fc4c0$451f4e40$@rainier66.com> <012a01d3e1ad$0a088a40$1e199ec0$@rainier66.com> <003c01d3e217$56587800$03096800$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004d01d3e219$1f2ed8e0$5d8c8aa0$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 6:13 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Cc: spike at rainier66.com Subject: RE: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? From: extropy-chat > On Behalf Of Dave Sill Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 5:04 AM To: Extropy chat > Subject: Re: [ExI] ?What would ?Kim Jong-un? do?? On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 8:35 PM > wrote: We saw Rogue One. We know it can be done, we know there is enormous motive. So what can we do? >?We need to actively share videos that demonstrate what can be faked. Like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0 &t=3s The downside, of course, is that we'll end up unable to believe what we see and hear. When the piss tape is inevitably released Trump will say it's fake and...well...who's to say? -Dave Oh the potential for gags here, oh my it makes my butt hurt just thinking about it. Now if we can just prevent that whole civil war business? spike Hmmm, boy this quickly gets knee deep in ethical considerations. Mama is on her deathbed, medics say there is no hope, she has a few days at best. Her heartbreak is that her wayward son eschewed the religion of his mother, went his own way and wrecked his life, now he?s doing hard time. The other children make a video of him telling his mother he repented of his sins, he is leading a prison ministry, even the guards are giving up their sinful ways, the parole board has set up an interview, etc. It is wrong. But at least their mother dies with a smile on her face. Hmmmm? On the other hand, what if there really is a heaven, she get there, looks down, her son is the meanest bastard in the prison yard, covered in big ugly tattoos, leading a gang, etc. Then she gets so pissed she goes and haunts the kids who were just trying to do good deeds with their fancy ?computers? and ?videos?, lying to a dying old lady, SHAME bitches! etc. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From giulio at gmail.com Wed May 2 14:17:11 2018 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 16:17:11 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural In-Reply-To: <003701d3e215$5df7ae20$19e70a60$@rainier66.com> References: <003701d3e215$5df7ae20$19e70a60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: OOPS Bill and Spike, you are right. Here you go: I ignore every statement that contains a whine and the word "Trump." That includes both whines about Trump and whines about whines about Trump. Now does anyone have comments on my post, which (sorry) doesn't contain whines and Trump? G. On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 2:59 PM, wrote: > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of BillK > >> _______________________________________________ > > > >>...Please remember that Exi posts must contain either a whine about Trump or a whine about whines about Trump. :) > > BillK > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > > Does it count to point out the risk facing the US and every other nation from video illusions? > > BillK, welcome back, me lad! We haven't been seeing much from you. Hope all is well in Jolly Olde. > > spike > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 2 14:42:08 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 07:42:08 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural In-Reply-To: References: <003701d3e215$5df7ae20$19e70a60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <000a01d3e223$c01f5d10$405e1730$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 7:17 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural OOPS Bill and Spike, you are right. Here you go: I ignore every statement that contains a whine and the word "Trump." That includes both whines about Trump and whines about whines about Trump. Now does anyone have comments on my post, which (sorry) doesn't contain whines and Trump? G... Ja. Clearly even though ExI is not about politics, it is hard to escape it. Notice that every one of the recent threads, regardless of original subject line, has somehow drifted onto USA leadership in some form. Oy, how did we get to here? We know of civil wars in various historical contexts and societies, but I don't recall a time when the US government was at war with itself, while most of the population flatly refused to get involved as I am doing now. spike From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 2 17:42:36 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 10:42:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 2:59 AM, BillK wrote: > Please remember that Exi posts must contain either a whine about Trump > or a whine about whines about Trump. :) Is there a limitation on vintage of the whines? :P From atymes at gmail.com Wed May 2 17:59:45 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 10:59:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural > > Reading my old writings I realize that I have (sort of) changed my > mind on some all important concepts. One is the concept of > ?supernatural.?... > > https://turingchurch.net/things-i-have-sort-of-changed-my-mind-on-1-the-supernatural-f029d49385e9 Again I put forth the dodge I use when among those who will not accept atheists: "The God I believe in, made Us to understand His works, whether in Our generation or in Our descendants'. He does not want martyrs, worshipers, or the like. He wishes companions, ones who have mastered enough of what He can do to meaningfully interact with Him, and He is patient. To learn and master the things and ways He gave Us is Our holy purpose. Science and technology are Our divine right. Anyone may choose between knowledge and ignorance, between wisdom and hatred, between perpetually finding more resources (or more efficient ways to use them) and fretting about the limits of wealth already found." From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed May 2 19:09:02 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 14:09:02 -0500 Subject: [ExI] quote of the day Message-ID: >From Steinbeck's Cannery Row: "It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." bill w (to Spike - see, I don't remember this at all) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Wed May 2 19:27:25 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 12:27:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] quote of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008901d3e24b$9a43de40$cecb9ac0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 12:09 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] quote of the day >From Steinbeck's Cannery Row: "It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." bill w (to Spike - see, I don't remember this at all) Eh, Doc was Steinbeck?s real world friend: Ed Ricketts is a real guy. He was the hardest core of hard core leftists, really a communist, which is easy to be if one lived on Cannery Row in those days: it must have sometimes seemed that most of the populace were drunken useless drifters in need of everything, as Danny and his companions were. Doc?s cynicism on the condition of man was understandable. On Cannery Row, there were workers slaving in the cannery with every last ounce of strength, capitalists who owned the place and made most of the money, a motley mixture of writers and poets, the crowd of drunks, and him. Steinbeck uses Doc as a mouthpiece for his own political views, and is brilliant. Even if one disagrees with Doc, you come away liking him, particularly after how he was in Sweet Thursday. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed May 2 20:05:55 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 2 May 2018 15:05:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] quote of the day In-Reply-To: <008901d3e24b$9a43de40$cecb9ac0$@rainier66.com> References: <008901d3e24b$9a43de40$cecb9ac0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Finished CR. I made a go or two at finishing it, but had to wait awhile to do it. If you love this and Sweet Thursday, you are as romantic a person as I am. If the topic was classical music, I'd share what I simply cannot play anymore because I just choke up and can't go on. CR will have to go in that category. I don't think I can read it anymore. Maybe when I Iose my mind and forget it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. bill w On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 2:27 PM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Sent:* Wednesday, May 2, 2018 12:09 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* [ExI] quote of the day > > > > From Steinbeck's Cannery Row: > > > > "It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in > men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, > are the concomitants of failure in our system And those traits we detest, > sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are > the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they > love the produce of the second." > > > > bill w (to Spike - see, I don't remember this at all) > > > > > > > > Eh, Doc was Steinbeck?s real world friend: Ed Ricketts is a real guy. He > was the hardest core of hard core leftists, really a communist, which is > easy to be if one lived on Cannery Row in those days: it must have > sometimes seemed that most of the populace were drunken useless drifters in > need of everything, as Danny and his companions were. > > > > Doc?s cynicism on the condition of man was understandable. On Cannery > Row, there were workers slaving in the cannery with every last ounce of > strength, capitalists who owned the place and made most of the money, a > motley mixture of writers and poets, the crowd of drunks, and him. > Steinbeck uses Doc as a mouthpiece for his own political views, and is > brilliant. Even if one disagrees with Doc, you come away liking him, > particularly after how he was in Sweet Thursday. > > > > 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 giulio at gmail.com Thu May 3 16:08:53 2018 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Thu, 3 May 2018 18:08:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] BBC Radio: The future of faith, with yours truly Message-ID: BBC Radio: The future of faith, with yours truly I have been interviewed by BBC Radio for a FutureProofing episode on the future of faith. The episode is available online for streaming and downloading... https://turingchurch.net/bbc-radio-the-future-of-faith-with-yours-truly-efd6ee197f1f From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 4 05:06:43 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 3 May 2018 22:06:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] blue bug Message-ID: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> Cool! I was out walking this afternoon and saw what looked like an armadillo bug, but it was blue. I have seen millions of those things, but I have never seen a blue one. I took him home, looked it up and learned a lotta cool stuff. I already knew armadillo bugs (some call them pill bugs or woodlice) aren't insects or arachnids, but I learned that they are crustaceans, the most common of the few crustaceans that are terrestrial. Then the next cool thing: blue woodlice are ones that have a virus! No kidding: He didn't act like he was feeling lousy (or what it would mean if a woodlouse felt lousy) but I guess it would be hard to tell. Bugs are so cool. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 20389 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pharos at gmail.com Fri May 4 09:38:42 2018 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Fri, 4 May 2018 10:38:42 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Dyson Spheres Are Missing From our Galaxy Message-ID: The Milky Way, all on its own, has approximately 400 billion stars, each with its own unique history and chances for life to have arisen. Despite how technologically advanced humans have become, SETI searches have all come up empty, perhaps implying that technologically advanced civilizations aren't communicating in ways we would have thought. But an advanced-enough planet might have built a sphere around their Sun ? a Dyson sphere ? to harness 100% of its energy. Incredibly, we now have the technology to detect them. If, that is, they exist. May 3, 2018 Ethan Siegel Quotes: The European Space Agency has just released a huge suite of data from the most powerful satellite ever to map and survey the stars in the Milky Way: Gaia. They've recorded information about a whopping 1.7 billion stars in our galaxy, allowing us to create the most sophisticated 3D map of the stars in our galaxy ever. With 1.7 billion objects surveyed in the latest data release, Gaia could reveal Dyson spheres that are under construction. By correlating with other infrared observatories, it could even potentially find completed Dyson spheres that were radiating enough energy. At the time of this publication, though, the full suite of data we have indicates exactly zero Dyson spheres in the Milky Way. But this doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any; it simply means that if they're out there, we haven't seen them yet. Dyson spheres could exist at greater distances, around smaller, lower-energy stars, or with larger diameters than Gaia is capable of detecting. Infrared observatories like WISE have placed major constraints on them, as well, and next-generation observatories that could potentially detect the waste-heat signature from such an object, like ESA's Euclid or NASA's WFIRST, will have the capability to search for these Dyson spheres out even farther. There may yet be intelligent aliens out there, building vast trans-planetary empires to collect and utilize as much energy as possible, but the evidence for them is nil thus far. Until such extraordinary evidence arrives, there's only one reasonable conclusion: our galaxy, as best as we can tell, appears to be devoid of these wished-for alien megastructures. --------------- So it seems that advanced civilizations don't build Dyson Spheres. Either they die out before reaching that stage or they choose a different path than building giant technology systems. Humans can only speculate about what that different path might be. BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 4 12:50:45 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 4 May 2018 07:50:45 -0500 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Yes, cool! But please get your technical terms correct: This is a rolly-polly and nothing else. bill w On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 12:06 AM, wrote: > > > Cool! I was out walking this afternoon and saw what looked like an > armadillo bug, but it was blue. I have seen millions of those things, but > I have never seen a blue one. I took him home, looked it up and learned a > lotta cool stuff. > > > > I already knew armadillo bugs (some call them pill bugs or woodlice) > aren?t insects or arachnids, but I learned that they are crustaceans, the > most common of the few crustaceans that are terrestrial. > > > > Then the next cool thing: blue woodlice are ones that have a virus! No > kidding: > > > > > > > > He didn?t act like he was feeling lousy (or what it would mean if a > woodlouse felt lousy) but I guess it would be hard to tell. > > > > Bugs are so cool. > > > > 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: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 20389 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 4 13:32:14 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 4 May 2018 06:32:14 -0700 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] blue bug Yes, cool! But please get your technical terms correct: This is a rolly-polly and nothing else. bill w BillW, being from the south, I know exactly what you mean, but I feared our colleagues here would not. Your suggestion successfully avoids the term ?bug? which I would prefer to reserve for insects. The whole incident has me thinking now about all the bugs which are neither insects nor arachnids. A rolly polly is a crustaceans and still an arthropod, but not your classic ?bug? which is way cool in itself. They even look ancient, ja? The seven pairs of legs, how weird is that? Seven pairs? We know there are others: centipedes and such as that. And this: everywhere I have ever been has them, which is why we have so many different names: pill bugs, armadillos, potato bugs, sow bugs, rolly polly, woodlice and so on. A blue rolly polly is one which has caught a iridovirus: http://www.porcellio.scaber.org/woodlice/wliceod.htm Infected woodlice should be called web link bugs, because the color of my web links on email are pretty close to what that sick bastard looked like. Blue Woodlice An iridovirus can infect woodlice and at advanced stages of infection virus accumulates in such large numbers that it forms crystalline structures in the diseased tissues. These crystalline structures give an intense blue or purple color to the woodlice? I didn?t realize my patient was terminal: ?Individuals infected to this extent will usually die within a short time? Oww, damn. RIP, weird blue pill bug. You taught me much. spike On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 12:06 AM, > wrote: Cool! I was out walking this afternoon and saw what looked like an armadillo bug, but it was blue. I have seen millions of those things, but I have never seen a blue one. I took him home, looked it up and learned a lotta cool stuff. I already knew armadillo bugs (some call them pill bugs or woodlice) aren?t insects or arachnids, but I learned that they are crustaceans, the most common of the few crustaceans that are terrestrial. Then the next cool thing: blue woodlice are ones that have a virus! No kidding: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Fri May 4 16:05:34 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Fri, 4 May 2018 12:05:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Dyson Spheres Are Missing From our Galaxy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 5:38 AM, BillK wrote: ?> ? > *it seems that advanced civilizations don't build Dyson Spheres.? ?* > *Either they die out before reaching that stage or they choose adifferent > path than building giant technology systems.* Or we may be the only technological civilization in the observable universe that has arisen, after all somebody has to be first. I don't buy the argument that because astronomy can come up with some big numbers, like the number of planets in the galaxy and the number of galaxies in the universe, therefore ET must exist because biology can come up with even larger numbers. For example, the hemoglobin in your blood is made up of 574 amino acids, there are 20 amino acids so there are 20^574 = 6.18*10^746 ways to arrange 20 amino acids; forget planets that is a vastly larger number than the number of atoms in the observable universe. ? ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Fri May 4 19:11:32 2018 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 4 May 2018 12:11:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Humanity+ @ Beijing 2018 - July 14-15 Message-ID: <009001d3e3db$b6f5a050$24e0e0f0$@natasha.cc> Hope to see you in Beijing! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/humanity-beijing-2018-conference-tickets-458144 74326?aff=utm_source%3Deb_email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Dnew_ev ent_email &utm_term=eventname_text Speakers include: * Ben Goertzel, Founder and CEO of SingularityNET * Yi Zeng, Professor at Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences * Luiz Martinez, President XanoGene and Regenera * David Wood, Chair London Futurist, co-author The Death of Death * Weike Deng, Bio-Engineering * Mutin Theirry, FutureArtLab, Paris * David Pearce, Founder The Hedonistic Imperative * Amy Li, Founder, DancerHealing * Trista Harris, Philanthropic Futurist * Natasha Vita-More, Executive Director, Humanity+, Inc., Professor University of Advancing Technology https://humanityplus.org/events/china-conference-2018/ Onward! Natasha Dr. Natasha Vita-More Professor, Graduate and Undergraduate Departments, UAT Executive Director, Humanity+, Inc. Author and Co-Editor: The Transhumanist Reader Lead Science Researcher: Memory Project -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image009.png Type: image/png Size: 29366 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image002.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 5380 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image004.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1134 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image006.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 978 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image008.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 884 bytes Desc: not available URL: From zoielsoy at gmail.com Fri May 4 20:00:54 2018 From: zoielsoy at gmail.com (Angel Z. Lopez) Date: Fri, 04 May 2018 20:00:54 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Humanity+ @ Beijing 2018 - July 14-15 In-Reply-To: <009001d3e3db$b6f5a050$24e0e0f0$@natasha.cc> References: <009001d3e3db$b6f5a050$24e0e0f0$@natasha.cc> Message-ID: Wish I could of went On Fri, May 4, 2018 at 3:33 PM Natasha Vita-More wrote: > Hope to see you in Beijing! > https://www.eventbrite.com/e/humanity-beijing-2018-conference-tickets-45814474326?aff=utm_source%3Deb_email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Dnew_event_email&utm_term=eventname_text > > > > Speakers include: > > > > - Ben Goertzel, Founder and CEO of SingularityNET > - Yi Zeng, Professor at Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of > Sciences, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences > - Luiz Martinez, President XanoGene and Regenera > - David Wood, Chair London Futurist, co-author The Death of Death > - Weike Deng, Bio-Engineering > - Mutin Theirry, FutureArtLab, Paris > - David Pearce, Founder The Hedonistic Imperative > - Amy Li, Founder, DancerHealing > - Trista Harris, Philanthropic Futurist > - Natasha Vita-More, Executive Director, Humanity+, Inc., Professor > University of Advancing Technology > > > > https://humanityplus.org/events/china-conference-2018/ > > > > Onward! > > Natasha > > > > *Dr. Natasha Vita-More * > > Professor, Graduate and Undergraduate Departments, UAT > > > Executive Director, Humanity+ , Inc. > > Author and Co-Editor: *The Transhumanist Reader > * > > Lead Science Researcher: Memory Project > > > [image: Linkedin logo_] > [image: > facebook logo] [image: > twitter logo_1] [image: > Email] > > > _______________________________________________ > 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... 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Name: image009.png Type: image/png Size: 29366 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Fri May 4 22:40:14 2018 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Mechado (CI)) Date: Fri, 4 May 2018 19:40:14 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Dyson Spheres Are Missing From our Galaxy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4a1975a7-9bdd-701f-01e9-6e236a6c040b@gmail.com> Do we have technology to detect Dyson Swarms yet? From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat May 5 15:04:06 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 11:04:06 -0400 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: It sounds like the blue coloration isn't caused by a blue pigment but by a light interference effect produced by a orderly arrangement of microscopic crystal structures on the bugs outer shell made by the virus. Is the blue color iridescent, does its blue hue change when you look at it from different angles? You might also try looking at it with polarized sunglasses. The most intense blue coloration in the natural world comes from an African plant called "Pollia fruit" and it does it by interference not pigment ?:? http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2012/09/04/1210105109.full.pdf ?John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 5 15:46:15 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 08:46:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Saturday, May 5, 2018 8:04 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] blue bug >?It sounds like the blue coloration isn't caused by a blue pigment but by a light interference effect produced by a orderly arrangement of microscopic crystal structures on the bugs outer shell made by the virus. Is the blue color iridescent, does its blue hue change when you look at it from different angles? You might also try looking at it with polarized sunglasses. The most intense blue coloration in the natural world comes from an African plant called "Pollia fruit" and it does it by interference not pigment ?:? http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2012/09/04/1210105109.full.pdf ?John K Clark? Ja, and it has me thinking. Sow bugs (pick your favorite name among half a dozen or more) are everywhere (and we know where to find them (in decaying leafy material (damp dark areas (kinda like the crustacean counterpart of roaches (a land-based crustacean! (how cool is that?)))))) so it stands to reason they should be easy enough to breed in huge numbers. So? the blue bug is caused by a virus. Viruses spread. So we get a bunch of these guys, find a blue one, see if we can put him in with the others, create a bunch of the blue ones, then see if we can isolate the iridovirus with the perished specimens. Then we see if we can get other bugs to catch it. Perhaps a new kind of pesticide? Or we can try to create teams, blacks vs blues, in some kind of races or games? It isn?t clear what those might be, but I hear there are reindeer games, so why not crustacean games? Or no, wait, better idea: what?s your favorite sushi? Lotta people will say nigiri (one of my favorites.) Shrimp are crustacea, and we devour them whole and raw, ja? Well the little one we do (the bigger ones gross out even hard core sorts (perhaps we cut off their heads first (and only do it after drinking several beers (on a fishing trip (with the guys double-dog daring each other to do silly things like that)))) but in any case, shrimp are edible and the small ones have shells that are soft and digestible (don?t bother asking how I know (hey, we guys are helpless when those are issued (a double dog dare is the modern equivalent of back in the old days when guys used to challenge each other to a pistol duel (so no choice ya gotta do it (but double dog dares seldom result in injury or serious fatality (as they did in the old days (Alexander Hamilton ya know.))))) So. What if? we breed a skerjillion of these guys (rolly pollys, not shrimp) and notice that they molt. Their shells don?t really grow enough so they need to periodically shuck em and grow new ones. If you look around where they hang out, you can find what looks like a white armadillo bug, which is what is left over after he got rid of his old shell. The newly emerged bug is a lighter color, kind of a light gray-tan color, and they just look tender and perhaps tasty. So? we get some kind of robot arm which can spot the white guys, reaches into the container, grabs him, drops him in a pot of hot water, we get to create perhaps a filler for shrimp salad with the tender bits. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 5 16:19:45 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 09:19:45 -0700 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com ? >?So. What if? we breed a skerjillion of these guys (rolly pollys, not shrimp) ? spike No wait, better idea. Domestic dogs were bred from wolves. All breeds of dogs are the same species and are cousins (same genus) as modern timber wolves. We can see the size span in dogs which have been bred downsize generally, but all the genes in modern dogs come from the wolf/dog common ancestor. Stands to reason that one could start with a bunch of Chihuahuas and toy poodles and such, eventually breed them upsize to something with some dignity, ja? So we could selectively breed armadillo bugs up to a size which would make them more meaty, ja? Perhaps we would end up with something as big as the old-time trilobites (I suppose one needs to be as old as I am to even remember those things). Perhaps they could be marketed as a crustacean treat so big it takes three bites to devour one. No, wait, better still: we could play a terrific gag. Get your camera ready, post a text? ends up with: ?beep boop boop? brrrrring? 911, what is the nature of your emergency? That crazy bastard next door is breeding? giant? blue? CRUSTACEAN THINGIES! They got loose and are going all over the goddam NEIGHBORHOOD! Ten minutes later, the drug enforcement team is hauling him away in a straight jacket as he shrieks he is not stoned, there really are giant blue bugs and they are getting away, and so forth, such carrying on you never saw, until they taser his ass. We video record the whole thing, post to YouTube, goes viral, a million hits, we sell ad space by the cubic ton, make a buttload of money. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 5 16:31:32 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 11:31:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Wait a minute - I thought that dogs were descended from wolves not that the two had common ancestors. ??? bill w On Sat, May 5, 2018 at 11:19 AM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* spike at rainier66.com > *?* > > > > >?So. What if? we breed a skerjillion of these guys (rolly pollys, not > shrimp) ? spike > > > > > > No wait, better idea. > > > > Domestic dogs were bred from wolves. All breeds of dogs are the same > species and are cousins (same genus) as modern timber wolves. We can see > the size span in dogs which have been bred downsize generally, but all the > genes in modern dogs come from the wolf/dog common ancestor. Stands to > reason that one could start with a bunch of Chihuahuas and toy poodles and > such, eventually breed them upsize to something with some dignity, ja? > > > > So we could selectively breed armadillo bugs up to a size which would make > them more meaty, ja? Perhaps we would end up with something as big as the > old-time trilobites (I suppose one needs to be as old as I am to even > remember those things). Perhaps they could be marketed as a crustacean > treat so big it takes three bites to devour one. > > > > No, wait, better still: we could play a terrific gag. Get your camera > ready, post a text? ends up with: > > > > ?beep boop boop? brrrrring? > > > > 911, what is the nature of your emergency? > > > > That crazy bastard next door is breeding? giant? blue? CRUSTACEAN > THINGIES! They got loose and are going all over the goddam NEIGHBORHOOD! > > > > > > Ten minutes later, the drug enforcement team is hauling him away in a > straight jacket as he shrieks he is not stoned, there really are giant blue > bugs and they are getting away, and so forth, such carrying on you never > saw, until they taser his ass. We video record the whole thing, post to > YouTube, goes viral, a million hits, we sell ad space by the cubic ton, > make a buttload of money. > > > > 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 spike at rainier66.com Sat May 5 16:42:37 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 09:42:37 -0700 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00d301d3e490$13b1a870$3b14f950$@rainier66.com> From: spike at rainier66.com ? >?Ten minutes later, the drug enforcement team is hauling her away in a straight jacket as she shrieks she is not stoned, there really are giant blue bugs and they are going all over, and so forth? spike Safety note: one should carefully select a neighbor who has both an unreasonable fear of perfectly harmless blue crustacean bugs and a reasonable fear of perfectly harmful guns, so you already know she eschews the latter and has already introduced toxic chemicals into her own nest to rid the joint of the benign former. When the medics from the asylum show up, she is the one cowering on top of her car with a baseball bat, but is otherwise unarmed, which reduces risk to the SWAT team. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sat May 5 16:46:39 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 09:46:39 -0700 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00e201d3e490$a452a6e0$ecf7f4a0$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Sent: Saturday, May 5, 2018 9:32 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] blue bug Wait a minute - I thought that dogs were descended from wolves not that the two had common ancestors. ??? bill w Modern timber wolves continued to evolved as we bred dogs. Granted they didn?t evolve much, so the common ancestor probably looks a lot like a modern wolf. Consider the common ancestor of humans and the great apes. Chimps kept evolving as we did, so our common ancestor is somewhere in between, ja? >From our point of view, the common ancestor looks more like the chimps than we do, but might not we suppose that from the chimp?s point of view, the ancestor looks more like a human? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From atymes at gmail.com Sat May 5 16:49:31 2018 From: atymes at gmail.com (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sat, 05 May 2018 16:49:31 +0000 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sat, May 5, 2018, 9:34 AM William Flynn Wallace wrote: > Wait a minute - I thought that dogs were descended from wolves not that > the two had common ancestors. ??? > Current theory is that the specific canids that dogs descended from are extinct, and are also the ancestors of today's wolves. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat May 5 17:23:45 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 13:23:45 -0400 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Speaking of strangely colored eatable bugs, about one lobster in 2 million is blue, one in 30 million is yellow, and one in 100 million is an albino and is dead white. Lobsters and normally brown and the red colorization is the result of cooking, but one in 10 million live lobsters really are red. John K Clark ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 5 17:51:15 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 12:51:15 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics for uploaders discussion: Video (John Clark) In-Reply-To: <5AC891E7.1060509@zaiboc.net> References: <5AC891E7.1060509@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: The idea of a soul as a physical thing is just wrong. The idea of a metaphysical soul is profound. bill w On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 4:39 AM, Ben Zaiboc wrote: > Re Rose wrote: > > "Since the agency of an individual is subjective we have to be very > careful > we're not creating new beings with our uploading technology and still > dying > as individuals - unless your goal is to make an animated library of people > patterned on existing people who died (or maybe didn't even die yet). We > might all agree it would be very, very great to have certain people's > connectomes preserved and reanimated - I'd have dinner with a reanimated > Feynman or Turing in one second flat while jumping with joy for the good > their re-existence would do the whole damn world while I'm at it, but if > the originals would still be dead and gone - well, if that's the case, we > should know that it is." > > > This whole concept of a 'me that is not me' baffles me. Leaving aside > ideas like the 'soul' (which I hope we can all agree is nonsense), what is > it that constitutes an individual? More importantly, what is it that > constitutes an individual that is somehow inherently not reproducible? I > can't think of a single candidate. There are several ideas about what is > necessary for an individual mind to exist, but all of the elements involved > are reproducible. > > I don't think anyone would argue against the idea that a copy of a mind is > not the same as the original, but the mistake lies in thinking that this > means it doesn't recreate the */same mind/*. Just as copying a CD of > Beethoven's 9th Symphony recreates the same music. > > Arguments centring around continuity don't work, and it doesn't require > proof of the quantisation of time to show why. People have had all brain > activity stopped for hours and been successfully revived (accidents > involving falling into icy water and 'dying' before they drowned). Arguing > that they therefore can't be the 'same person' is rather silly, and would > be impossible to prove. > > Ben Zaiboc > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Sat May 5 18:24:46 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 11:24:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: <00e201d3e490$a452a6e0$ecf7f4a0$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> <00e201d3e490$a452a6e0$ecf7f4a0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <005001d3e49e$5b024f00$1106ed00$@rainier66.com> Hey cool. After I had already expended my post limit for the day going on about giant blue crustaceans, a moral dilemma presented itself. I realized I faced a choice between saving America and making a buttload of money. As I pondered that savage dilemma, I realized we could terrorize entire neighborhoods, make a buttload and still save America. I could also conform to Clark?s Law, the recently-imposed requirement that all ExI-post threads eventually pivot to politics (sorta.) Read on please. One might suppose bugs can be bred upsize, but Armadillo bugs are probably limited (as are insects) by their ability to absorb oxygen. Being crustaceans, pill bugs have gills! Now is that cool or what? But? that means they might not be able to be bred up to trilobite size, however? the proletariat don?t really know that. So, here?s my plan. We make one of those phony deep fake videos. First scene: (deep, stern voice) THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT! Second scene: me in a full hazmat suit, blue rolly polly the size of a ping pong ball in my gloved hand, stroking it and making comments such as ??oh you are a beauty, my pet, you will make such great breeding stock, muaaaahahahahahaaaa?? etc. Third scene: overturned bucket with giant blue bugs running away, me commenting ?Uh oh. Waait! Come back!? Fourth scene: former POTUS (whose name I cannot recall at the moment) standing next to current POTUS (whose name I cannot recall at the moment (we could really make this work, if we recall that former guy who had that way of stretching a word (then saying the next several words really fast (and the current guy with his creative vocabulary)))): Former: If yoooooooou?SeeOneOfTheseBugs?I urge you tooooooooo?LeaveItAlone? Current: He is right on! These things are yuuuuge-ass sons a bitches! Yuge! But touching one will give you flesh-eating bacteria! You will die BIGLY! Former: We think we caaaaaaaannnnnn? FindEveryOne. Scene 5: This video is phony as a three dollar bill. There are no yuge blue bugs, former and current didn?t say any of this. But keep in mind that this kind of video can be made easily using LyreBird. So don?t believe anything you see or hear on YouTube, anything you see or hear on mainstream cable news, even if you see yuge blue bugs in your neighborhood. Scene 6: (deep, stern voice) THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. This post might hit all the bases: it could call attention to a really cool critter, warn the public about the danger of DeepFake LyreBird video, make fun of former and current US leadership simultaneously, sell ad-space on YouTube making me a buttload, set the stage for a really epic gag, save American democracy, and even (sorta) conform to Clark?s Law for ExI threads. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 5 18:40:08 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 5 May 2018 13:40:08 -0500 Subject: [ExI] blue bug In-Reply-To: <005001d3e49e$5b024f00$1106ed00$@rainier66.com> References: <000a01d3e365$b24a4450$16deccf0$@rainier66.com> <005e01d3e3ac$511929c0$f34b7d40$@rainier66.com> <008401d3e488$344d4240$9ce7c6c0$@rainier66.com> <009f01d3e48c$e23efed0$a6bcfc70$@rainier66.com> <00e201d3e490$a452a6e0$ecf7f4a0$@rainier66.com> <005001d3e49e$5b024f00$1106ed00$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: The thing about classical music and me: when I am listening there are no fake news or lies, or wars and starvation, or national debt, or just about anything. Just zone out and join the world of the composer. And there is a lot of it on Youtube. bill w On Sat, May 5, 2018 at 1:24 PM, wrote: > > > > > Hey cool. After I had already expended my post limit for the day going on > about giant blue crustaceans, a moral dilemma presented itself. I realized > I faced a choice between saving America and making a buttload of money. As > I pondered that savage dilemma, I realized we could terrorize entire > neighborhoods, make a buttload and still save America. I could also > conform to Clark?s Law, the recently-imposed requirement that all ExI-post > threads eventually pivot to politics (sorta.) > > > > Read on please. > > > > One might suppose bugs can be bred upsize, but Armadillo bugs are probably > limited (as are insects) by their ability to absorb oxygen. Being > crustaceans, pill bugs have gills! Now is that cool or what? But? that > means they might not be able to be bred up to trilobite size, however? the > proletariat don?t really know that. So, here?s my plan. > > > > We make one of those phony deep fake videos. > > > > *First scene*: (deep, stern voice) THIS IS A PUBLIC SERVICE > ANNOUNCEMENT! > > > > *Second scene*: me in a full hazmat suit, blue rolly polly the size of a > ping pong ball in my gloved hand, stroking it and making comments such as > ??oh you are a beauty, my pet, you will make such great breeding stock, > muaaaahahahahahaaaa?? etc. > > > > *Third scene*: overturned bucket with giant blue bugs running away, me > commenting ?Uh oh. Waait! Come back!? > > > > *Fourth scene*: former POTUS (whose name I cannot recall at the moment) > standing next to current POTUS (whose name I cannot recall at the moment > (we could really make this work, if we recall that former guy who had that > way of stretching a word (then saying the next several words really fast > (and the current guy with his creative vocabulary)))): > > > > Former: If yoooooooou?SeeOneOfTheseBugs?I urge you > tooooooooo?LeaveItAlone? > > > > Current: He is right on! These things are yuuuuge-ass sons a bitches! > Yuge! But touching one will give you flesh-eating bacteria! You will die > BIGLY! > > > > Former: We think we caaaaaaaannnnnn? FindEveryOne. > > > > *Scene 5*: This video is phony as a three dollar bill. There are no yuge > blue bugs, former and current didn?t say any of this. But keep in mind > that this kind of video can be made easily using LyreBird. So don?t > believe anything you see or hear on YouTube, anything you see or hear on > mainstream cable news, even if you see yuge blue bugs in your neighborhood. > > > > *Scene 6*: (deep, stern voice) THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE > ANNOUNCEMENT. > > > > > > > > This post might hit all the bases: it could call attention to a really > cool critter, warn the public about the danger of DeepFake LyreBird video, > make fun of former and current US leadership simultaneously, sell ad-space > on YouTube making me a buttload, set the stage for a really epic gag, save > American democracy, and even (sorta) conform to Clark?s Law for ExI threads. > > > > 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 stathisp at gmail.com Sat May 5 20:32:02 2018 From: stathisp at gmail.com (Stathis Papaioannou) Date: Sat, 05 May 2018 20:32:02 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics for uploaders discussion: Video (John Clark) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 3 Apr 2018 at 4:46 am, Re Rose wrote: > "The only way we'll know for sure that any Cryonics procedure works is > when we > successfully revive somebody" > > Actually I'm not sure that will be helpful in all cases. I imagine a > scenario where a backup copy is uploaded to a host. Upon reanimation it > will be completely convinced its consciouness is as the person who was > uploaded. Why shouldn't it be? IMHO, the only individual who will even be > able to know if the copy is in fact "you" will be you - a copy will not be > able to tell. Not even your friends or partners can say if its you. They > may be convinced it is you. Only your subjective, internal experience will > allow you to be sure if it is you, and that agent will not be able to > convince anyone else (including copies) of that. > If only you know you have been replaced with a copy, not the copy or anyone else, how do you know now if you have been replaced by a copy? How do you know if are being replaced by a copy every five minutes for your whole life? > -- Stathis Papaioannou -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 6 13:15:38 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 08:15:38 -0500 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: A strict Freudian analysis of him is anal expulsive > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_expulsiveness. > > Rather perfect fit, don't you think? > > bill w > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 6 18:10:46 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 11:10:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] send to group? >?A strict Freudian analysis of him is anal expulsive >?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_expulsiveness. >?Rather perfect fit, don't you think? >?bill w I hadn?t heard that about Freud. Reference please? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sun May 6 19:38:47 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 14:38:47 -0500 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> References: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 1:10 PM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] send to group? > > > > > > >?A strict Freudian analysis of him is anal expulsive > > > > >?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_expulsiveness. > > > > >?Rather perfect fit, don't you think? > > > > >?bill w > > I hadn?t heard that about Freud. Reference please? > > > > spike > ?Huh? Surely you jest. ? I just did not want another email to the group containing the word Trump. Sorry for any ambiguity - I intended none. And am surprised to find any. > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 spike at rainier66.com Mon May 7 01:03:15 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 18:03:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: References: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <00c201d3e59f$2eb4d4c0$8c1e7e40$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] send to group? >?A strict Freudian analysis of him is anal expulsive >?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_expulsiveness. >?Rather perfect fit, don't you think? >?bill w I hadn?t heard that about Freud. Reference please? spike ?>?. Sorry for any ambiguity - I intended none? And am surprised to find any. Sure, but now that you mention it, how do we know? that Freud didn?t have the whole anal thing going? Makes ya wonder, ja? We need to investigate this. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Mon May 7 01:35:19 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 18:35:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: <00c201d3e59f$2eb4d4c0$8c1e7e40$@rainier66.com> References: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> <00c201d3e59f$2eb4d4c0$8c1e7e40$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <2D2E4703-CA63-4050-89A1-ED2C45A123F2@gmail.com> On May 6, 2018, at 6:03 PM, wrote: > > From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace > Subject: Re: [ExI] send to group? > >?A strict Freudian analysis of him is anal expulsive > >?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_expulsiveness. > >?Rather perfect fit, don't you think? > >?bill w > I hadn?t heard that about Freud. Reference please? > spike > > ?>?. Sorry for any ambiguity - I intended none? And am surprised to find any. > > > Sure, but now that you mention it, how do we know? that Freud didn?t have the whole anal thing going? Makes ya wonder, ja? We need to investigate this. You might want to probe deeper into this issue, but I feel this discussion went right into the crapper. (Sorry, I never let a chance to pin go to waste.;) Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 7 02:20:06 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 19:20:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: <2D2E4703-CA63-4050-89A1-ED2C45A123F2@gmail.com> References: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> <00c201d3e59f$2eb4d4c0$8c1e7e40$@rainier66.com> <2D2E4703-CA63-4050-89A1-ED2C45A123F2@gmail.com> Message-ID: <00ef01d3e5a9$eade5770$c09b0650$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan Sent: Sunday, May 6, 2018 6:35 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [ExI] send to group? On May 6, 2018, at 6:03 PM, > > wrote: From: extropy-chat > On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] send to group? >?A strict Freudian analysis of him is anal expulsive >?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_expulsiveness. >?Rather perfect fit, don't you think? >?bill w I hadn?t heard that about Freud. Reference please? spike ?>?. Sorry for any ambiguity - I intended none? And am surprised to find any. Sure, but now that you mention it, how do we know? that Freud didn?t have the whole anal thing going? Makes ya wonder, ja? We need to investigate this. You might want to probe deeper into this issue, but I feel this discussion went right into the crapper. (Sorry, I never let a chance to pin go to waste.;) Regards, Dan Well there is that, but? when you speak of something going into the crapper, keep in mind that you are taking an actual man?s name in vain, Thomas Crapper, who is generally credited with inventing the flush toilet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Crapper I don?t consider this, in itself, sufficient evidence to conclude that Freud had an anal thing going on, but one can scarcely dismiss the fact that they were on the same hemisphere at the same time for much of their lives. But come to think of it, the whole anal expulsive theory would explain a lot of what we have seen, ja? Think about it: Freud was always going on about things like anal stage, and oral stage and toilet training and so forth. Well there ya go: a high-end high-quality toilet in the old days was called a Crapper, and Freud wrote about anal stage and such. I wouldn?t be surprised if both of them had the anal expulsive syndrome thing going, and if so, it might have led Crapper to invent the? well, Crapper and Freud to write about it. Just sayin. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 7 02:41:20 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 19:41:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] FW: Spike, would you post this at ExtropyChat? In-Reply-To: <293763692.522290.1525660347464@mail.yahoo.com> References: <293763692.522290.1525660347464.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <293763692.522290.1525660347464@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001d01d3e5ac$e26594c0$a730be40$@rainier66.com> Alan Brooks asked me to post this. I answered offlist, but here it is: From: Alan Brooks Sent: Sunday, May 6, 2018 7:32 PM To: spike at rainier66.com Subject: Spike, would you post this at ExtropyChat? Two Questions for anyone: Would it be feasible to cryopreserve a stillborn fetus? Would it be legal? Here?s what I wrote: Before I even post it, I can answer it: of course it is legal (and that?s why we continue to fight to make sure legislators keep their laws to themselves when it comes to cryonics), and yes it is feasible: if for no other reason, it has a lot of stem cells. Don?t expect to be able to sim that embryo, but one can get cryonics for him or her. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Mon May 7 03:59:17 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 20:59:17 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Dyson Spheres Are Missing From our Galaxy In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <14efe34c123071429b81eb6c1e61b228.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> BillK wrote: > So it seems that advanced civilizations don't build Dyson Spheres. > Either they die out before reaching that stage or they choose a > different path than building giant technology systems. Humans can only > speculate about what that different path might be. Or alternatively, cross-referencing GAIA data with Kepler data, our solar system really is very rare in that our gas giants are not hot jupiters destabilizing rocky planets in the goldilocks zone. Maybe we really did win some kind of crazy cosmic lottery and the galaxy really is ours for the taking . . . if we can get our shit together, that is. Manifest destiny on a grand scale. Upwards and outwards, young people. Set your AI to wake you up from cryo-sleep when you get to the Trappist system and starships ho! Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Mon May 7 04:09:34 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 21:09:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Altered Carbon Message-ID: If you get tired of watching the media whine about Trump or vice-versa, then watch this show! Just finished binge-watching the first season of the show "Altered Carbon". It's got serious H+ cred, a well-written plot, lots of sex and violence, and it's pretty much Trump-free. Ignoring the unnecessary plot device that the miniaturized computers (called "stacks") that people get their minds uploaded to are "alien technology" as opposed to smart watches + 200 more years of Moore's Law, the scenarios and issues explored could have come right off this list from the 1990's. I want to discuss all the cool stuff in the show, but then again I don't want to spoil it for anyone either. So . . . Well shit that's all I can say. Maybe I should start a thread with a spoilers warning. :-) Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Mon May 7 05:55:22 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Sun, 6 May 2018 22:55:22 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural Message-ID: Giulio Prisco wrote: > Reading my old writings I realize that I have (sort of) changed my > mind on some all important concepts. One is the concept of > ?supernatural.?... > > > https://turingchurch.net/things-i-have-sort-of-changed-my-mind-on-1-the-s > upernatural-f029d49385e9 You might be splitting hairs there, Giulio, but its you who claim your mind is changed so who am I to judge? I do kind of think you underestimate your Roman forbears however. Yes, you and your smartphone might have convinced some backwoods Roman plebe that you were some kind of sorcerer but an educated Roman like a philosopher or a senator? Highly doubtful. Educated Romans were no more superstitious than you or I. Case in point, this quote from Seneca the Younger c.a. 50 AD: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful" Moreover, the Romans (before christianity) were the greatest technophiles of their time. Look at all this stuff came up with or appropriated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology When they came across military tech that they didn't understand like Greek fire or Carthaginian war ships, they did not call it magic and run away in fear. They found a way to procure it and reverse engineer it, often improving it in the process, and then used it on the next poor slobs that got in the way of their conquest. They invented concrete so strong that a lot of what they built is still around today. And when Rome fell, the secret of concrete was forgotten and not rediscovered for a THOUSAND years. And for all our technological savvy, we still don't know what the Romans used these things for and I assure you it wasn't paper weights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron So for your hypothetical time-travel scenario, I propose you would have been promptly subdued by legionaries and you and your smartphone taken promptly to Caesar. Caesar would have been intrigued by your smartphone and would have plied you with wine and your choice of slave-girls or catamites for the secret of its operation. If that didn't work, he might have threatened you with torture until you told his smartest engineers how it worked. Because that's how the Romans rolled. Stuart LaForge From giulio at gmail.com Mon May 7 08:09:29 2018 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 10:09:29 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Stuart, this is how the Romans rolled indeed, but doesn't it support my point? My (and Caesar's after he tortures me) tech is supernatural magic to backwoods Roman plebe. Similarly, my (speaking as a member of the backwoods plebe) supernaturally magic religion of today will be tomorrow's tech. On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 7:55 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > Giulio Prisco wrote: > >> Reading my old writings I realize that I have (sort of) changed my >> mind on some all important concepts. One is the concept of >> ?supernatural.?... >> >> >> https://turingchurch.net/things-i-have-sort-of-changed-my-mind-on-1-the-s >> upernatural-f029d49385e9 > > You might be splitting hairs there, Giulio, but its you who claim your > mind is changed so who am I to judge? > > I do kind of think you underestimate your Roman forbears however. > > Yes, you and your smartphone might have convinced some backwoods Roman > plebe that you were some kind of sorcerer but an educated Roman like a > philosopher or a senator? Highly doubtful. > > Educated Romans were no more superstitious than you or I. Case in point, > this quote from Seneca the Younger c.a. 50 AD: > > "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, > and by rulers as useful" > > Moreover, the Romans (before christianity) were the greatest technophiles > of their time. Look at all this stuff came up with or appropriated: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology > > When they came across military tech that they didn't understand like Greek > fire or Carthaginian war ships, they did not call it magic and run away in > fear. They found a way to procure it and reverse engineer it, often > improving it in the process, and then used it on the next poor slobs that > got in the way of their conquest. > > They invented concrete so strong that a lot of what they built is still > around today. And when Rome fell, the secret of concrete was forgotten and > not rediscovered for a THOUSAND years. > > And for all our technological savvy, we still don't know what the Romans > used these things for and I assure you it wasn't paper weights: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron > > So for your hypothetical time-travel scenario, I propose you would have > been promptly subdued by legionaries and you and your smartphone taken > promptly to Caesar. Caesar would have been intrigued by your smartphone > and would have plied you with wine and your choice of slave-girls or > catamites for the secret of its operation. If that didn't work, he might > have threatened you with torture until you told his smartest engineers how > it worked. > > Because that's how the Romans rolled. > > Stuart LaForge > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From giulio at gmail.com Mon May 7 08:28:34 2018 From: giulio at gmail.com (Giulio Prisco) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 10:28:34 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Things I have (sort of) changed my mind on (1): The supernatural In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Having said that, it would be very difficult for me (even under torture) to explain the iPhone to Caesar. He didn't have a concept of electromagnetic waves, material science, semiconductors etc. I could say things like "invisible light," Lucretius's atoms with non-random swerve, etc., that he would have more or less understood conceptually, but at the end of the day he would be better off thinking of supernatural magic and relying on me to make it work. Don't forget that the Romans' pragmatism also means that they couldn't give less of a damn if something works with magic or tech, what's important is that it works. On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 10:09 AM, Giulio Prisco wrote: > Hi Stuart, this is how the Romans rolled indeed, but doesn't it > support my point? My (and Caesar's after he tortures me) tech is > supernatural magic to backwoods Roman plebe. Similarly, my (speaking > as a member of the backwoods plebe) supernaturally magic religion of > today will be tomorrow's tech. > > On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 7:55 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: >> Giulio Prisco wrote: >> >>> Reading my old writings I realize that I have (sort of) changed my >>> mind on some all important concepts. One is the concept of >>> ?supernatural.?... >>> >>> >>> https://turingchurch.net/things-i-have-sort-of-changed-my-mind-on-1-the-s >>> upernatural-f029d49385e9 >> >> You might be splitting hairs there, Giulio, but its you who claim your >> mind is changed so who am I to judge? >> >> I do kind of think you underestimate your Roman forbears however. >> >> Yes, you and your smartphone might have convinced some backwoods Roman >> plebe that you were some kind of sorcerer but an educated Roman like a >> philosopher or a senator? Highly doubtful. >> >> Educated Romans were no more superstitious than you or I. Case in point, >> this quote from Seneca the Younger c.a. 50 AD: >> >> "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, >> and by rulers as useful" >> >> Moreover, the Romans (before christianity) were the greatest technophiles >> of their time. Look at all this stuff came up with or appropriated: >> >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology >> >> When they came across military tech that they didn't understand like Greek >> fire or Carthaginian war ships, they did not call it magic and run away in >> fear. They found a way to procure it and reverse engineer it, often >> improving it in the process, and then used it on the next poor slobs that >> got in the way of their conquest. >> >> They invented concrete so strong that a lot of what they built is still >> around today. And when Rome fell, the secret of concrete was forgotten and >> not rediscovered for a THOUSAND years. >> >> And for all our technological savvy, we still don't know what the Romans >> used these things for and I assure you it wasn't paper weights: >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron >> >> So for your hypothetical time-travel scenario, I propose you would have >> been promptly subdued by legionaries and you and your smartphone taken >> promptly to Caesar. Caesar would have been intrigued by your smartphone >> and would have plied you with wine and your choice of slave-girls or >> catamites for the secret of its operation. If that didn't work, he might >> have threatened you with torture until you told his smartest engineers how >> it worked. >> >> Because that's how the Romans rolled. >> >> Stuart LaForge >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 7 13:29:55 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 08:29:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: <00ef01d3e5a9$eade5770$c09b0650$@rainier66.com> References: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> <00c201d3e59f$2eb4d4c0$8c1e7e40$@rainier66.com> <2D2E4703-CA63-4050-89A1-ED2C45A123F2@gmail.com> <00ef01d3e5a9$eade5770$c09b0650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: Sure, but now that you mention it, how do we know? that Freud didn?t have the whole anal thing going? Makes ya wonder, ja? We need to investigate this. spike Freud's troubles were mainly with his mother and with sex - perhaps linked. He went to W. Fliess and had his nose operated on to fix this neurosis he thought he had. Not much evidence of anal fixations. bill w On Sun, May 6, 2018 at 9:20 PM, wrote: > > > > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *Dan TheBookMan > *Sent:* Sunday, May 6, 2018 6:35 PM > *To:* ExI chat list > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] send to group? > > > > On May 6, 2018, at 6:03 PM, > wrote: > > *From:* extropy-chat *On Behalf > Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] send to group? > > >?A strict Freudian analysis of him is anal expulsive > > >?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_expulsiveness. > > >?Rather perfect fit, don't you think? > > >?bill w > > I hadn?t heard that about Freud. Reference please? > > spike > > > > ?>?. Sorry for any ambiguity - I intended none? And am surprised to > find any. > > > > > > Sure, but now that you mention it, how do we know? that Freud didn?t have > the whole anal thing going? Makes ya wonder, ja? We need to investigate > this. > > > > You might want to probe deeper into this issue, but I feel this discussion > went right into the crapper. (Sorry, I never let a chance to pin go to > waste.;) > > > > Regards, > > > > Dan > > > > > > > > > > Well there is that, but? when you speak of something going into the > crapper, keep in mind that you are taking an actual man?s name in vain, > Thomas Crapper, who is generally credited with inventing the flush toilet: > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Crapper > > > > I don?t consider this, in itself, sufficient evidence to conclude that > Freud had an anal thing going on, but one can scarcely dismiss the fact > that they were on the same hemisphere at the same time for much of their > lives. But come to think of it, the whole anal expulsive theory would > explain a lot of what we have seen, ja? Think about it: Freud was always > going on about things like anal stage, and oral stage and toilet training > and so forth. Well there ya go: a high-end high-quality toilet in the old > days was called a Crapper, and Freud wrote about anal stage and such. I > wouldn?t be surprised if both of them had the anal expulsive syndrome thing > going, and if so, it might have led Crapper to invent the? well, Crapper > and Freud to write about it. > > > > Just sayin. > > > > 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 May 7 13:59:45 2018 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 14:59:45 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution Message-ID: War and Great Britain?s gun industry played a more important role in driving the 18th-century Industrial Revolution than scholars have previously recognized, according to new research. Quotes: In her new book, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Penguin Random House, 2018), however, Priya Satia, a professor of modern British history in the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, argues that industrialism really began with Britain?s need for guns and other war supplies. Satia found evidence that some 18th-century British officials were aware that the domestic production of arms was driving industrialism in Britain. Those officials actively discouraged the development of gun industries in other countries, including those under British rule, such as India. The British government preferred to supply firearms to everyone who needed them, including their enemies. ?We need to stop thinking that Britain invented industrialism because it had an especially laissez-faire government or because it had a unique entrepreneurial genius or culture,? Satia says. ?Let?s acknowledge the fact that Britain was involved in a lot of wars, and in order to pursue those wars the government needed arms. And the British government clearly encouraged innovation within their gun industry.? ----------- Well, fancy that! Chalk up one more for War driving innovation. BillK From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 7 14:01:25 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 07:01:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: References: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> <00c201d3e59f$2eb4d4c0$8c1e7e40$@rainier66.com> <2D2E4703-CA63-4050-89A1-ED2C45A123F2@gmail.com> <00ef01d3e5a9$eade5770$c09b0650$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: <004801d3e60b$e4041d60$ac0c5820$@rainier66.com> >? On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace Subject: Re: [ExI] send to group? Sure, but now that you mention it, how do we know? that Freud didn?t have the whole anal thing going? Makes ya wonder, ja? We need to investigate this. spike Freud's troubles were mainly with his mother and with sex - perhaps linked. He went to W. Fliess and had his nose operated on to fix this neurosis he thought he had. Not much evidence of anal fixations. bill w Well OK right. But I have always been suspicious of that Crapper feller. He would have had to end up a mean bastard just by going around with that name. Can you imagine what that was like, the kids in elementary school would have given him hell: ?Hey Johnny! You?re looking flushed!? and ?Hey Johnny, how about you invent the crapper, so we can go to you.? and that kind of shit. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 7 14:14:55 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 09:14:55 -0500 Subject: [ExI] send to group? In-Reply-To: <004801d3e60b$e4041d60$ac0c5820$@rainier66.com> References: <008601d3e565$8ee8b7b0$acba2710$@rainier66.com> <00c201d3e59f$2eb4d4c0$8c1e7e40$@rainier66.com> <2D2E4703-CA63-4050-89A1-ED2C45A123F2@gmail.com> <00ef01d3e5a9$eade5770$c09b0650$@rainier66.com> <004801d3e60b$e4041d60$ac0c5820$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: T. Crapper did not invent the toilet - furthermore... https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=crap bill w On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 9:01 AM, wrote: > > > > > *>?* *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace > *Subject:* Re: [ExI] send to group? > > > > Sure, but now that you mention it, how do we know? that Freud didn?t have > the whole anal thing going? Makes ya wonder, ja? We need to investigate > this. spike > > > > Freud's troubles were mainly with his mother and with sex - perhaps > linked. He went to W. Fliess and had his nose operated on to fix this > neurosis he thought he had. > > > > Not much evidence of anal fixations. > > > > bill w > > > > > > > > Well OK right. But I have always been suspicious of that Crapper feller. > He would have had to end up a mean bastard just by going around with that > name. Can you imagine what that was like, the kids in elementary school > would have given him hell: ?Hey Johnny! You?re looking flushed!? and ?Hey > Johnny, how about you invent the crapper, so we can go to you.? and that > kind of shit. > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 7 16:29:27 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 12:29:27 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > > ?> ? > " > *We need to stop thinking that Britain invented industrialism because* > > > *it had an especially laissez-faire government or because it had aunique > entrepreneurial genius or culture,? Satia says.?Let?s acknowledge the fact > that Britain was involved in a lot of**wars, and in order to pursue those > wars the government needed arms*. ? The Roman Empire was involved in even more wars than the British were, so why didn't the industrial revolution happen then? ? ? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Mon May 7 16:19:35 2018 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 09:19:35 -0700 Subject: [ExI] SENS Invitation to Reception Party - Message-ID: <002901d3e61f$311c28a0$935479e0$@natasha.cc> On behalf of SENS ! You're invited to our "Donor Appreciation Event", a FREE EVENT to celebrate our work and mission with Aubrey, Mike and the entire SENS Research Foundation team. Come mingle with all of us at SRF and our generous donors. Share a pint and tasty appetizers, network with our community, and get the inside scoop on the latest advancements at SRF and in the Rejuvenation Biotechnology industry. Friends and family welcome. We look forward to seeing you! Space is limited so please register now: https://bit.ly/2vjE1x1 * DATE: MAY 8, 2018 * TIME: 4PM TO 7PM * LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO WAR MEMORIAL & PERFORMING ARTS CENTER HERBST LOUNGE 401 VAN NESS AVENUE SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94102 Dr. Natasha Vita-More Professor, Graduate and Undergraduate Departments, UAT Executive Director, Humanity+, Inc. Author and Co-Editor: The Transhumanist Reader Lead Science Researcher: Memory Project -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image007.png Type: image/png Size: 29366 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image008.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1134 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image009.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 978 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image010.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 884 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike at rainier66.com Mon May 7 16:40:46 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 09:40:46 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <001801d3e622$26884e20$7398ea60$@rainier66.com> From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of John Clark Subject: Re: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution ?> ? "We need to stop thinking that Britain invented industrialism because it had an especially laissez-faire government or because it had a unique entrepreneurial genius or culture,? Satia says. ?Let?s acknowledge the fact that Britain was involved in a lot of wars, and in order to pursue those wars the government needed arms. ? >?The Roman Empire was involved in even more wars than the British were, so why didn't the industrial revolution happen then? John K Clark It did. The ancient Romans developed plenty of war stuff way advanced for its time, chariots, armor, iron works, all kindsa stuff, and it came out of the necessities of war. Had the ancient Romans discovered chemistry, then gun powder, they would have done all the stuff Europe did later, for all the same reasons. This was something we who studied engineering at a pacifist school had to deal with: we were tech geeks, and we had to admit that war really does drive tech. Now we can pretend that markets drive tech (and they do) but markets are economic warfare, in a sense. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon May 7 17:25:11 2018 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Mechado (CI)) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 14:25:11 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8943353e-29e8-db51-fdc1-de5402655a49@gmail.com> On 05/07/2018 01:29 PM, John Clark wrote: > > ?> ? > "/We need to stop thinking that Britain invented industrialism because > //it had an especially laissez-faire government or because it had a > unique entrepreneurial genius or culture,? Satia says. > ?Let?s acknowledge the fact that Britain was involved in a lot of > //wars, and in order to pursue those wars the government needed arms/. > > > ? > The Roman Empire was involved in even more wars than the British were, > so why didn't the industrial revolution happen then? > > ? ? > John K Clark Science and technology usually develop together. While the romans were amazing at architecture, they weren't much on anything else. And they also had slaves. And England also had the religious dissenters who had a pivotal role on the industrial revolution, mostly because they weren't permitted to do much else. And coal. Never forget coal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 7 18:29:17 2018 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 19:29:17 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution In-Reply-To: <8943353e-29e8-db51-fdc1-de5402655a49@gmail.com> References: <8943353e-29e8-db51-fdc1-de5402655a49@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 7 May 2018 at 18:25, Henrique Moraes Mechado (CI) wrote: > > Science and technology usually develop together. While the romans were > amazing at architecture, they weren't much on anything else. And they also > had slaves. > > And England also had the religious dissenters who had a pivotal role on the > industrial revolution, mostly because they weren't permitted to do much > else. > > And coal. Never forget coal > The Romans were great at construction, but they did a lot more than that. Much of their tech was forgotten when the Empire collapsed and had to be re-invented centuries later. (They also used the coalfields in England!). BillK From cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com Mon May 7 20:15:58 2018 From: cetico.iconoclasta at gmail.com (Henrique Moraes Mechado (CI)) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 17:15:58 -0300 Subject: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution In-Reply-To: References: <8943353e-29e8-db51-fdc1-de5402655a49@gmail.com> Message-ID: <45733c36-f560-d30e-7023-12e1c058e579@gmail.com> > The Romans were great at construction, but they did a lot more than that. > > > Much of their tech was forgotten when the Empire collapsed and had to > be re-invented centuries later. > (They also used the coalfields in England!). > > BillK > Yes, I know that. But I agree with the topic. The romans didn't have gunpowder and so didn't have a huge need to make canons. They didn't have much need for coal then (as compared to those who need to cast large iron things) and therefore didn't need to invent a steam engine to pump water out of coal mines. Also they didn't need to iron clad warships against canon fire, since there was no canon fire and so, no need to industrial scale iron/steel production They also had good (ish) roads to transport stuff and so didn't have to build canals and later train tracks. They built bridges with stone and concrete, so they didn't need to to cast huge iron things to build iron bridges. And they also had slaves. They didn't have the need to mechanize things (just apply more slaves and it's ok) They didn't have the need to export anything (like cotton cloth for instance) and therefore didn't need industrial scale mechanized looms (apply more slaves) From johnkclark at gmail.com Mon May 7 21:30:50 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 17:30:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution In-Reply-To: <001801d3e622$26884e20$7398ea60$@rainier66.com> References: <001801d3e622$26884e20$7398ea60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 12:40 PM, wrote: *?> ?we were tech geeks, and we had to admit that war really does drive > tech.* There is certainly a lot of truth in that, but on the other hand the first automated machine (1804) and the first digital machine to make lots and lots of money was the ? Jacquard loom and it had nothing to do with war. And I'll say this for the Romans, they were among the first to make large structures that were actually worth building, like aqueducts and roads and harbors and public baths and stadiums where people could enjoy themselves by watching people kill other people ?.? ?Before the Romans it was all tombs and temples and statues of gods that didn't exist and huge pyramidal structures that were supposed to be resurrection machines but didn't work worth a damn and were robbed almost as soon as they were finished. ?John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ddraig at gmail.com Tue May 8 00:09:25 2018 From: ddraig at gmail.com (ddraig@pobox.com) Date: Tue, 8 May 2018 10:09:25 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Guns caused UK Industrial Revolution In-Reply-To: <001801d3e622$26884e20$7398ea60$@rainier66.com> References: <001801d3e622$26884e20$7398ea60$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On 8 May 2018 at 02:40, wrote: > > > > > >?The Roman Empire was involved in even more wars than the British were, > so why didn't the industrial revolution happen then? John K Clark > > > > It did. The ancient Romans developed plenty of war stuff way advanced for > its time, chariots, armor, iron works, all kindsa stuff, and it came out of > the necessities of war. > > > Advanced technology is not the industrial revolution - the industrial revolution was the harnessing of machine power to production. Towards the end of the Roman Empire they had a factory for making armour which used a production line to manufacture, which is a lot of the way towards the industrial revolution, but as far as I'm aware there's only a single example of this (it used water flowing down a hill for power) and it's very late in the Imperial Period (discounting the Eastern Empire). Dwayne -- ddraig at pobox.com irc.bluesphereweb.com #dna ...r.e.t.u.r.n....t.o....t.h.e....s.o.u.r.c.e... http://fav.me/dqkgpd our aim is wakefulness, our enemy is dreamless sleep -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 8 14:32:38 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 8 May 2018 07:32:38 -0700 Subject: [ExI] new seti effort Message-ID: <007601d3e6d9$6af8fa70$40eaef50$@rainier66.com> Cool! https://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-backs-100-million-effort-to-find-a liens/ This effort focuses on stars in the galactic plane, which is particularly rich in population 1 stars. Pop 1 stars are metal rich. Perhaps this class of stars have a greater chance of intelligence. It even has a social advantage for astronomers working the project. Imagine the scene: Cocktail party, attractive tabloid paparazzi introduces herself, inquires: So, stranger, what do you do? Astronomer: I study rich young stars, searching for any trace of intelligence. She: Oh! A colleague! That sorta thing. Geeks could get dates. Might have to surrender their title. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Tue May 8 14:34:32 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Tue, 8 May 2018 07:34:32 -0700 Subject: [ExI] doh! wrong link, was: RE: new seti effort Message-ID: <008501d3e6d9$aed961d0$0c8c2570$@rainier66.com> Oops wrong link, here's the right one: https://www.cnet.com/news/breakthrough-listen-project-to-hunt-for-alien-spac e-signals-space-ramps-up/?ftag=COS-05-10aaa0b &linkId=51433355 spike From: spike at rainier66.com Sent: Tuesday, May 8, 2018 7:33 AM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: new seti effort Cool! https://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-backs-100-million-effort-to-find-a liens/ This effort focuses on stars in the galactic plane, which is particularly rich in population 1 stars. Pop 1 stars are metal rich. Perhaps this class of stars have a greater chance of intelligence. It even has a social advantage for astronomers working the project. Imagine the scene: Cocktail party, attractive tabloid paparazzi introduces herself, inquires: So, stranger, what do you do? Astronomer: I study rich young stars, searching for any trace of intelligence. She: Oh! A colleague! That sorta thing. Geeks could get dates. Might have to surrender their title. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Wed May 9 05:11:05 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Tue, 8 May 2018 22:11:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computer psychic and his psychic computer win a million bucks from James Randi Message-ID: <5a2830be8bd4effc3fce5b2042ee6553.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> In light of my recent exchange with Giulio about technological magic and the supernatural, it was quite serendipitous that I came across the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_0E1XJP33E I am quite astonished as was the magician James Randi who has spent a lifetime debunking psychics and charlatans. Stranger still is that this happened six years ago and I am only now finding out about it. Physical contact or sensors are used in all three demonstrations. A skin conductance bracelet is used in the first. Seth Raphael touches his laptop in the second. James Randi is wearing a helmet that measures the blood flow in his brain in the third. For the first trick, I can imagine an algorithm that could sum tiny fluctuations in a persons galvanic skin response every time the subject sees his card scroll across the screen until a clear signal is achieved. But the second and third demonstrations, leave me quite stumped. Thoughts anyone? Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Wed May 9 05:34:05 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Tue, 8 May 2018 22:34:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Computer psychic and his psychic computer win a million bucks from James Randi Message-ID: Grrr... Nevermind. It was an April Fools joke and Randi was in on it. I have been had. LOL oh well. Stuart LaForge From spike at rainier66.com Fri May 11 18:10:05 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Fri, 11 May 2018 11:10:05 -0700 Subject: [ExI] boston marathon Message-ID: <009f01d3e953$4aa21550$dfe63ff0$@rainier66.com> Oh this is so cool. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2018/may/11/robot-built-boston- dynamics-can-run-jump-video Remember where they were just a couple yrs ago at the robolympics? This is going so fast, it makes one want to get out there and race them. You know how this will go: they will hit the market, guys will modify them and hop em up, try to get even a slight edge at the track. It will be the 1950s all over again, only more fun this time, and safer. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Fri May 11 19:37:49 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Fri, 11 May 2018 14:37:49 -0500 Subject: [ExI] boston marathon In-Reply-To: <009f01d3e953$4aa21550$dfe63ff0$@rainier66.com> References: <009f01d3e953$4aa21550$dfe63ff0$@rainier66.com> Message-ID: On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 1:10 PM, wrote: > Oh this is so cool. > > > > https://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2018/may/11/ > robot-built-boston-dynamics-can-run-jump-video > > > > Remember where they were just a couple yrs ago at the robolympics? This > is going so fast, it makes one want to get out there and race them. You > know how this will go: they will hit the market, guys will modify them and > hop em up, try to get even a slight edge at the track. It will be the > 1950s all over again, only more fun this time, and safer. > > > > spike > ?Yeah, safer at the olympics, but how about on crowded streets, where they will eventually be, I predict? Will the future include robo guide robots (i.e. not necessarily in the shape of dogs)? I think that has to occur - the robots will be so much smarter, carry the person's info, street maps, etc. In an accident the robot calls the police, 911, carries the person out of danger - thousands of uses, eh? 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 Sat May 12 23:31:32 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 12 May 2018 19:31:32 -0400 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Alcor=E2=80=99s_new_statement_on_ASC?= Message-ID: I also sent this to Alcor's message board: http://www.alcor.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=3 I was disappointed in Alcor?s official statement about ASC on page 8 of the current issue of Cryonics, although it started well when Alcor recognized there is "strong proof" that if ASC is used then: > *"Aldehyde Stabilized Cryopreservation (ASC) brains can be preserved > well enough at cryogenic temperatures for neural connectivity (the > connectome) to be completely visualized "* To me that is a pretty huge development but its even better than that because not only is the connectome information retained when the brain is frozen solid it can be completely visualized even when it has been warmed back up to room temperature. This is especially impressive because, for various technical reasons I can get into later if anybody is interested, I think the warming up process almost certainly causes even more damage than the freezing process. > *?Current brain vitrification methods without fixation leads to > dehydration?* And more important the current method leads to the shrinkage of the brain by 50%. > *"Dehydration has effects on tissue contrast that makes it difficult to > see whether the connectome is preserved or not with a electron microscope. > That does not mean dehydration is especially damaging nor that fixation > with toxic aldehyde does less damage?* That statement makes no sense to me. If we can see the connectome with an Electron Microscope using ASC but we can?t see it with Alcor?s method then obviously ASC has done less damage to it. I agree that doesn?t prove that Alcor's method has produced unrecoverable damage, maybe a technology more advanced than a Electron Microscope can still recover it, but I?d rather not stake my life on a ?maybe" if there is an alternative. In general the very scale used to determine the degree of damaged something has sustained is how hard it is to figure out what something looked like before the damage occurred, and its easier to figure that out with ASC. And yes aldehyde is toxic, but it is not very toxic, it is the active ingredient in wart removing lotion that you can get at the drug store without a prescription; I wouldn?t want to drink it but I wouldn?t want to drink Alcor?s vitrification solution either. > *"The M22 vitrification solution used in current brain vitrification > technology is believed to be relatively gentle to molecules?* Preserving all the molecules in the brain can?t be very important if long term preservation of your personal identity is what you?re after because most of molecules in the brain are small and don?t last long. For example NO ( Nitrous oxide ) is a very small intermediary molecule that is important in cell communication, but in the normal course of life any particular NO molecule probably only exists for a few seconds at best. I am more interested in preserving things that are not so ephemeral, like the connectome and large proteins that should still be recognizable (but I admit no longer functional) even after it has become cross linked with aldehyde. > *"because it preserves cell viability in other contexts? * The term "cell viability? can be misleading because it often involves super fast flash freezing of a microscopic cell by direct contact with a thing as cold as liquid nitrogen, something not possible to do with a macroscopic object like a human brain. And if cell viability was the only consideration Alcor should have stayed with the method it used 10 years ago and not have switched over to vitrification. In this study conventional cryopreservation did a better job at preserving cell viability than vitrification in which only 10% of the cells were viable. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2895516/ Nevertheless I think Alcor made a smart decision a decade ago when they switched to vitrification because it produced better Electron Microscope pictures than the previous method did. It?s now time to make another smart decision. > *?Fixation is also known to increase freezing damage if cryoprotectant > penetration is inadequate?* Well yes, but the same is true for Alcor?s method and for every other method if cryoprotectant penetration is inadequate. > *"ASC is a research dead end on the road to developing reversible brain > preservation in the near future?* I think it's a pipe dream to expect reversible brain preservation to be demonstrated by ANY method before full scale Drexler style Nanotechnology is developed. If somebody manages to bring even a mouse back from liquid nitrogen temperatures in the near future using Alcor's method I?ll eat my words and forget about ASC. I would be delighted if that happened but I?m not holding my breath. By the way, Drexler was ahead of his time in more ways than one, in his book "Engines Of Creation? he talks about something that sounds very much like ASC, and that was 30 years ago. > *?Certainly fixation results are likely to be much harder to reverse so as > to restore biological viability?* I disagree, I am very far from certain about that, in fact I am about as far as its possible to get. To restore biological viability you?re going to need information about what atom goes where, and from everything I?ve seen ASC does a better job preserving that information than Alcor?s current method. Electron Microscopes don?t lie. > *"Robert McIntyre, the lead researcher at 21st Century Medicine , made a > point during his presentation at the Alcor 2015 conference of recommending > adoption of ASC in cryonics at this time.?* I frankly can?t make heads or tails out of Robert McIntyre. He says we should not use ASC until it undergoes the same exhausted testing that the FDA insists any new drug must undergo, and that costs on average about a billion dollars and takes at least a decade to finish; presumably he wants to make sure it won?t make people worse by making them even deader than they otherwise would be. In fact McIntyre?s company ?Nectome? which he cofounded says on the first page of its website that they are recommending against using Alcor?s vitrification method too, "We believe that rushing to apply vitrification today would be extremely irresponsible?. Apparently McIntyre believes Alcor hasn't gone through a sufficient amount of red tape and hasn't had enough "thoughtful discussions from medical ethicists?, so people who have terminal cancer today are supposed to just wait until those ethicists are satisfied. And that should happen sometime in the next decade, or maybe the decade after that. I think that?s just nuts. I won't mind waiting to be revived once I am frozen, one year or a thousand years it will all seem the same to me; but I most certainly will mind if I need to be frozen right now but have to wait because those super-ethical people haven?t finished their thoughtful discussions yet. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ilia.stambler at gmail.com Tue May 15 07:34:24 2018 From: ilia.stambler at gmail.com (Ilia Stambler) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 10:34:24 +0300 Subject: [ExI] =?utf-8?q?Happy_Metchnikoff=E2=80=99s_Day_=E2=80=93_May_15?= =?utf-8?q?_=E2=80=93_in_honor_of_the_founder_of_gerontology!?= Message-ID: Dear friends, Happy Elie Metchnikoff?s Day ? May 15 ? in honor of the founder of gerontology, a pioneering and founding figure in the scientific struggle with degenerative aging processes and for healthy longevity. Let his legacy inspire more research and education activities in the field of aging and longevity. Hopefully, marking this day will become a tradition in longevity research and advocacy community, to build on and continue the historical legacy of great scientists in the field. As a personal way to celebrate, the site http://www.longevityhistory.com now makes freely available for download the e-books ? ?A History of Life-extensionism in the Twentieth Century? and ?Longevity Promotion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives? and some 40 more articles on different aspects of longevity advocacy, science, history and philosophy, including materials on Elie Metchnikoff?s legacy. http://www.longevityhistory.co m/the-legacy-of-elie-metchnikoff/ Happy Metchnikoff?s Day! https://www.facebook.com/LongevityHistory/posts/1031036410368485 Ilia Stambler, PhD Israeli Longevity Alliance / Vetek (Seniority) Association ? the Senior Citizens Movement (Israel) http://www.longevityisrael.org/ Longevity for All http://www.longevityforall.org/ http://www.isoad.org/Data/List/Conference -- Ilia Stambler, PhD Outreach Coordinator. International Society on Aging and Disease - ISOAD http://isoad.org Chair. Israeli Longevity Alliance / CSO. Vetek (Seniority) Association ? The Senior Citizens Movement (Israel) *http://www.longevityisrael.org/ * Coordinator. Longevity for All http://www.longevityforall.org Author. Longevity History. *A History of Life-Extensionism in the Twentieth Century *; *Longevity Promotion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives * http://longevityhistory.com Email: ilia.stambler at gmail.com Tel: 972-3-961-4296 / 0522-283-578 Skype: iliastam Rishon Lezion. Israel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 15 17:20:53 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 13:20:53 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test Message-ID: Wow, with "Google Duplex" It looks like machines are getting close to passing Mr. Turing's test. http://www.kurzweilai.net/two-major-advances-in-autonomous-technologies-that-rival-human-abilities?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1998733fea-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-1998733fea-282205341 John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From msd001 at gmail.com Tue May 15 18:04:50 2018 From: msd001 at gmail.com (Mike Dougherty) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 14:04:50 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 15, 2018, 1:23 PM John Clark wrote: > Wow, with "Google Duplex" It looks like machines are getting close to > passing Mr. Turing's test. > > > http://www.kurzweilai.net/two-major-advances-in-autonomous-technologies-that-rival-human-abilities?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1998733fea-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-1998733fea-282205341 > Or does this suggest that people are more robotic than they like to admit? Brains are expensive to operate, we've learned habits as shortcuts to thinking - this demo illustrates how machines can exploit our expectations/habits to manipulate the world. Sure, the machine navigates the interaction but it's not scheduling appointments with its own volition. Talking about the Turing test in this context strikes me as confusing the secretary for the CEO. I will concede I may not have a deep understanding of the parameters and requirements of the Turing test. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Tue May 15 21:08:13 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 16:08:13 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Isn't the Turing test just whether people can tell it's a person or a computer? It seems to this psychologist that that is a very low bar to get over. People believe what they want to believe and are easily fooled. I'd like to see a more meaningful test. bill w On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 1:04 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: > On Tue, May 15, 2018, 1:23 PM John Clark wrote: > >> Wow, with "Google Duplex" It looks like machines are getting close to >> passing Mr. Turing's test. >> >> http://www.kurzweilai.net/two-major-advances-in-autonomous- >> technologies-that-rival-human-abilities?utm_source= >> KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=1998733fea-UA- >> 946742-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6de721fb33-1998733fea-282205341 >> > > Or does this suggest that people are more robotic than they like to admit? > > Brains are expensive to operate, we've learned habits as shortcuts to > thinking - this demo illustrates how machines can exploit our > expectations/habits to manipulate the world. > > Sure, the machine navigates the interaction but it's not scheduling > appointments with its own volition. > > Talking about the Turing test in this context strikes me as confusing the > secretary for the CEO. > > I will concede I may not have a deep understanding of the parameters and > requirements of the Turing test. > >> >> > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 15 21:37:38 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 17:37:38 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:08 PM, William Flynn Wallace wrote: *?>?Isn't the Turing test just whether people can tell it's a person or a > computer?* > ?Yes. > ?> ? > *It seems to this psychologist that that is a very low bar to get over. > People believe what they want to believe and are easily fooled.* > But in this case the people didn't even know they were in a test, they just assumed they were talking to a human. And the machine did a better job making a reservation to the Chinese restaurant than I could have done; with the thick accent and elliptical phrasing I had great difficulty understanding what the human was trying to say, but obviously to the computer it was clear as a bell. > ?>* ?* > *I'd like to see a more meaningful test.* > ? Like what? All Turing is saying is that we should judge how intelligence a computer is the same way we judge the intelligence of other people, by behavior. And I have to say that in this case the computer demonstrated more intelligence than I have because I would have been constantly saying "I don't understand what you're saying please repeat it". ? John K Clark? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Tue May 15 21:47:15 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 17:47:15 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 2:04 PM, Mike Dougherty wrote: ?> ? > Sure, the machine navigates the interaction but it's not scheduling > appointments with its own volition. > ?That's because the computer has no hair ?so it doesn't need a haircut, but it knows that its human does, ?> ? > Talking about the Turing test in this context strikes me as confusing the > secretary for the CEO. > ?The secretary has intelligence too, maybe more than the CEO. ? ?John K Clark? > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed May 16 00:00:22 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 19:00:22 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 4:37 PM, John Clark wrote: > > On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:08 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > *?>?Isn't the Turing test just whether people can tell it's a person or a >> computer?* >> > > ?Yes. > > >> ?> ? >> *It seems to this psychologist that that is a very low bar to get over. >> People believe what they want to believe and are easily fooled.* >> > > But in this case the people > ?? > didn't even know they were in a test, they just assumed they were talking > to a human. And the machine did a better job making a reservation to the > Chinese restaurant than I could have done; with the thick accent and > elliptical phrasing I had great difficulty understanding what the human was > trying to say, but obviously to the computer it was clear as a bell. > > >> ?>* ?* >> *I'd like to see a more meaningful test.* >> > > ? > Like what? All Turing is saying is that we should judge how intelligence > a computer is the same way we judge the intelligence of other people, by > behavior. And I have to say that in this case the computer demonstrated > more intelligence than I have because I would have been constantly saying > "I don't understand what you're saying please repeat it". > ? > > John K Clark? > > ? ? didn't even know they were in a test Now to me, that means that they will be very unlikely to suspect anything, unless something really dumb occurs. I'd like to see that test done over with people knowing beforehand. I still say that getting into a restaurant and not noticing that a computer is doing it is no judge of people's intelligence. If you want to call that intelligence in a computer, OK by me. Are there any types of reasoning that computers cannot do at all? Seems that would be a better test by far. I know AI can do induction (GOLEM) 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 avant at sollegro.com Wed May 16 02:17:20 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 19:17:20 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Alcor's new statement on ASC Message-ID: <7d27eff233776e9b09091490c0f56064.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: > > I was disappointed in Alcor?s official statement about ASC on page 8 of > the current issue of Cryonics, although it started well when Alcor > recognized there is "strong proof" that if ASC is used then: > >> *"Aldehyde Stabilized Cryopreservation (ASC) brains can be preserved >> well enough at cryogenic temperatures for neural connectivity (the >> connectome) to be completely visualized "* > > To me that is a pretty huge development but its even better than that > because not only is the connectome information retained when the brain is > frozen solid it can be completely visualized even when it has been warmed > back up to room temperature. This is especially impressive because, for > various technical reasons I can get into later if anybody is interested, If you consider your connectome to be the essential you, then your argument does follow in a narrow sense. But keep in mind that your connectome is a malleable ever evolving thing. Every second of every day, you are making new memories and also forgetting old ones. In a continual state of becoming. Maybe by placing so much stock in a frozen snapshot of your connectome you would lose the information of who you were becoming. Kind of like a Heisenberg uncertainty principle of identity. Which memories were just starting to form? Which were on the verge of being forgotten. Life and consciousness are not just nouns, they are also verbs i.e. dynamic processes. > I > think the warming up process almost certainly causes even more damage than > the freezing process. >From a biomedical standpoint, absolutely. Especially if the warming comes too fast. Also from ischemia considerations, it would be better to warm the person from the inside out. But I am sure you had more reductive reason so let's hear it. I am curious. :-) >> *?Current brain vitrification methods without fixation leads to >> dehydration?* > > And more important the current method leads to the shrinkage of the brain > by 50%. All cryobiotic organisms that survive freezing undergo a certain amount of dehydration in the process. The hardiest are also anhydrobiotic. They accomplish this in general by replacing a good deal of their water with sugars. For example tardigrades use trehalose but less hardy wood frogs use simple glucose and keep their water in their extracellular spaces with glucose and urine operating to keep ice crystals small instead of drying out like tardigrades. The best explanation I have heard to date is that all the hydroxyl groups available in sugars serve to maintain hydrogen bonds with all the proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids in cells thus "hydrating" them without water and keeping them stably functional. The relatively concentrated sugar solution then itself vitrifies. Less water => less ice => less damage. >From a reversible cryonics POV, the challenge will be getting the sugar into all the necessary cells during freezing and then out of those cells during rewarming without damage to those cells. Cell dehydration happens with extracellular vitrification alone and the cell membranes and intracellular compartments lose their structure without sugar to prop it up. A wood frog can survive if its cells can retain 60% of its water. Tardigrade cells can survive while retaining on the order of 1% of their water. Both do so using a combination of sugars to scaffold biomolecules and antifreeze proteins to help inhibit ice formation. > That statement makes no sense to me. If we can see the connectome with > an Electron Microscope using ASC but we can?t see it with Alcor?s method > then obviously ASC has done less damage to it. I agree that doesn?t prove > that Alcor's method has produced unrecoverable damage, maybe a technology > more advanced than a Electron Microscope can still recover it, but I?d > rather not stake my life on a ?maybe" if there is an alternative. In > general the very scale used to determine the degree of damaged something > has sustained is how hard it is to figure out what something looked like > before the damage occurred, and its easier to figure that out with ASC. If you are that worried about your connectome, just get a picture or better yet a movie of it while you are still alive. The data will be far easier to stably store than a biologically useless head. http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/gallery/ Hell a tabula rosa clone of you could probably have that digitized engram of you downloaded into its brain in a few hundred years. Your DNA won't survive covalently bonding with every nitrate group in its vicinity. But your DNA can survive boiling water. Think on that before you pickle yourself in glutaraldehyde for posterity. > And yes > aldehyde is toxic, but it is not very toxic, it is the active ingredient > in wart removing lotion that you can get at the drug store without a > prescription; I wouldn?t want to drink it but I wouldn?t want to drink > Alcor?s vitrification solution either. Are you kidding me? Tardigrades can survive outer space but cant survive aldhehyde. Aldehyde is one of the most toxic substance known. It inactivates *viruses* which is why it works on that wart. And it is so low a concentration that you don't notice the hundreds of thousands of skin cells it kills along with it. > Preserving all the molecules in the brain can?t be very important if long > term preservation of your personal identity is what you?re after because > most of molecules in the brain are small and don?t last long. For example > NO ( Nitrous oxide ) is a very small intermediary molecule that is > important in cell communication, but in the normal course of life any > particular NO molecule probably only exists for a few seconds at best. I > am more interested in preserving things that are not so ephemeral, like > the connectome and large proteins that should still be recognizable (but > I > admit no longer functional) even after it has become cross linked with > aldehyde. Again, you are not just poisoning your cells with aldehyde, you completely cross-linking all your biomolecules into one gigantic covalently bonded molecule. You will be will still be able to see the forest, you just won't be able to see where one tree ends and another one begins. > The term "cell viability? can be misleading because it often involves > super fast flash freezing of a microscopic cell by direct contact with a > thing as cold as liquid nitrogen, something not possible to do with a > macroscopic object like a human brain. And if cell viability was the only > consideration Alcor should have stayed with the method it used 10 years > ago and not have switched over to vitrification. In this study > conventional cryopreservation did a better job at preserving cell > viability than vitrification in which only 10% of the cells were viable. > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2895516/ Well comparing the two media used in your cited experiment: "The conventional cryopreservation media was prepared by mixing 80% F-medium with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) and 10% dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (Me2SO; Sigma Chemical, St. Louis, USA)." "Vitrification media was prepared according to the formula developed by Kasai and Mukaida [6] named ESF40. This comprises 40% ethylene glycol (EG) (WAKO Pure Chemical Industries Ltd., Osaka, Japan), 18% Ficoll 70 (SIGMA, St. Louis, USA), and 0.3 M sucrose (Junsei Chemical Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) dissolved in F-medium." That doesn't surprise me at all. DMSO in their first medium helps get the sugars in the F-medium into the cells. DMSO crosses cell membranes very easily. The second contains no DMSO and while Ethlyene glycol, sucrose, and Ficoll by themslves can't get into cells for crap. The idea is not just to vitrify the outside of the cells but their interiors as well. If I remember correctly Alcor's current brew does contain some DMSO. > > Nevertheless I think Alcor made a smart decision a decade ago when they > switched to vitrification because it produced better Electron Microscope > pictures than the previous method did. It?s now time to make another > smart decision. Again, take a picture of your connectome before you die and let Alcor do its thing. Don't turn your brain into a paperweight just to keep it looking pretty. Their tech will get better, I am certain of it. Why would you want your connectome preserved at the moment of your death anyway? So you can live forever with PTSD? > I think it's a pipe dream to expect reversible brain preservation to be > demonstrated by ANY method before full scale Drexler style Nanotechnology > is developed. If somebody manages to bring even a mouse back from liquid > nitrogen temperatures in the near future using Alcor's method I?ll eat my > words and forget about ASC. I would be delighted if that happened but > I?m > not holding my breath. Dozens of examples of proof of principle of vitrification already exist in nature. I can't show you a mouse at liquid nitrogen temps but I can show you a frog at -16 C: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPeehsXAr4 I was pleasantly surprised to discover Natasha Vita-More did it in the lab with nematodes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4620520/ Way to go, Natasha! :-) I can't show you a single example of *anything* surviving getting dipped in aldehyde at *any* temperature. Not even viruses, and they are not even really alive to begin with. So I think Alcor is on the right track. It just needs work and time. > By the way, Drexler was ahead of his time in more ways than one, in his > book "Engines Of Creation? he talks about something that sounds very much > like ASC, and that was 30 years ago. > >> *?Certainly fixation results are likely to be much harder to reverse so >> as to restore biological viability?* > > I disagree, I am very far from certain about that, in fact I am about as > far as its possible to get. To restore biological viability you?re going > to need information about what atom goes where, and from everything I?ve > seen ASC does a better job preserving that information than Alcor?s > current method. Electron Microscopes don?t lie. What goes where is not enough. You need to be able to distinguish between hydrogen bonds and covalent bonds. Scanning electron microscopes don't have the resolution to distinguish hydrogen bonding from covalent bonding. You need an STM for that. I think what you see would be a lot messier with ASC under an STM. Nanosanta will thank you for not cross-linking your molecules into a Gordian knot. I am only telling you this because I like you. But in the end, its your brain at stake so do what you want. >> *"Robert McIntyre, the lead researcher at 21st Century Medicine , made >> a point during his presentation at the Alcor 2015 conference of >> recommending adoption of ASC in cryonics at this time.?* > I frankly can?t make heads or tails out of Robert McIntyre. He says we > should not use ASC until it undergoes the same exhausted testing that the > FDA insists any new drug must undergo, and that costs on average about a > billion dollars and takes at least a decade to finish; presumably he wants > to make sure it won?t make people worse by making them even deader than > they otherwise would be. In fact McIntyre?s company ?Nectome? which he > cofounded says on the first page of its website that they are > recommending against using Alcor?s vitrification method too, "We believe > that rushing to apply vitrification today would be extremely > irresponsible?. Apparently McIntyre believes Alcor hasn't gone through a > sufficient amount of red tape and hasn't had enough "thoughtful > discussions from medical ethicists?, so people who have terminal cancer > today are supposed to just wait until those ethicists are satisfied. And > that should happen sometime in the next decade, or maybe the decade after > that. What? A for-profit company that is competing with a non-profit company suggests they both undergo expensive FDA testing? I wonder why they would do that? > I think that?s just nuts. I won't mind waiting to be revived once I am > frozen, one year or a thousand years it will all seem the same to me; but > I > most certainly will mind if I need to be frozen right now but have to wait > because those super-ethical people haven?t finished their thoughtful > discussions yet. The argument is not really about ethics. Its about rational self-interest on multiple levels for both cryonicists and the companies involved. Stuart LaForge From avant at sollegro.com Wed May 16 04:54:49 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Tue, 15 May 2018 21:54:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Alcor's new statement on ASC Message-ID: On Tue, May 15, 2018 7:17 pm, Stuart LaForge wrote: > I was pleasantly surprised to discover Natasha Vita-More did it in the > lab with nematodes. > > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4620520/ LOL. Let me rephrase this. What I meant to say is that Natasha Vita-More has demonstrated that vitrification preserves memory in C. elegans frozen to liquid N2 temps and then thawed. It's not in Nature or Science but its a start. Congratulations, Natasha! ;-) Stuart LaForge From steinberg.will at gmail.com Wed May 16 14:24:39 2018 From: steinberg.will at gmail.com (Will Steinberg) Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 10:24:39 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Alcor's new statement on ASC In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The connectome is a drop in the bucket, yes. A small drop. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sparge at gmail.com Wed May 16 14:46:34 2018 From: sparge at gmail.com (Dave Sill) Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 10:46:34 -0400 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:40 PM John Clark wrote: > > On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:08 PM, William Flynn Wallace < > foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: > > *?>?Isn't the Turing test just whether people can tell it's a person or a >> computer?* >> > > ?Yes. > Actually, it's supposed to be a person determining which of two entities it's interacting with is a computer. ?> ? >> *It seems to this psychologist that that is a very low bar to get over. >> People believe what they want to believe and are easily fooled.* >> > > But in this case the people didn't even know they were in a test, they > just assumed they were talking to a human. And the machine did a better job > making a reservation to the Chinese restaurant than I could have done; with > the thick accent and elliptical phrasing I had great difficulty > understanding what the human was trying to say, but obviously to the > computer it was clear as a bell. > That's not a Turing Test at all. The tester has to be actively trying to make that determination. ?>* ?* >> *I'd like to see a more meaningful test.* >> > > ? > Like what? All Turing is saying is that we should judge how intelligence > a computer is the same way we judge the intelligence of other people, by > behavior. And I have to say that in this case the computer demonstrated > more intelligence than I have because I would have been constantly saying > "I don't understand what you're saying please repeat it". > ? > Yeah, and superhuman abilities are one thing that I, as a Turing Tester, would use to identify the computer. :-) -Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Wed May 16 14:58:03 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 09:58:03 -0500 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yeah, and superhuman abilities are one thing that I, as a Turing Tester, would use to identify the computer. :-) -Dave I would quote some limericks to it and see what happens. Or double entendres. Or ask it to compute the square root of zero. bill w On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 9:46 AM, Dave Sill wrote: > On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:40 PM John Clark wrote: > >> >> On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:08 PM, William Flynn Wallace < >> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: >> >> *?>?Isn't the Turing test just whether people can tell it's a person or a >>> computer?* >>> >> >> ?Yes. >> > > Actually, it's supposed to be a person determining which of two entities > it's interacting with is a computer. > > ?> ? >>> *It seems to this psychologist that that is a very low bar to get over. >>> People believe what they want to believe and are easily fooled.* >>> >> >> But in this case the people didn't even know they were in a test, they >> just assumed they were talking to a human. And the machine did a better job >> making a reservation to the Chinese restaurant than I could have done; with >> the thick accent and elliptical phrasing I had great difficulty >> understanding what the human was trying to say, but obviously to the >> computer it was clear as a bell. >> > > That's not a Turing Test at all. The tester has to be actively trying to > make that determination. > > ?>* ?* >>> *I'd like to see a more meaningful test.* >>> >> >> ? >> Like what? All Turing is saying is that we should judge how intelligence >> a computer is the same way we judge the intelligence of other people, by >> behavior. And I have to say that in this case the computer demonstrated >> more intelligence than I have because I would have been constantly saying >> "I don't understand what you're saying please repeat it". >> ? >> > > Yeah, and superhuman abilities are one thing that I, as a Turing Tester, > would use to identify the computer. :-) > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From csaucier at sovacs.com Wed May 16 19:30:54 2018 From: csaucier at sovacs.com (Christian Saucier) Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 19:30:54 +0000 Subject: [ExI] The Turing Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0C8C0C57-9BC3-47CF-A130-03FC09AD83E4@sovacs.com> Let's also remember that this is a specialized system: it only handles reservations and appointments. For sure, that will grow to include more complex interactions in the future, but the fact that the system is specialized is important. Humans are specialized too. I don't know much and couldn't hold a serious conversation about microbiology. Humans are also automatons, preferring to repeat habits rather than rethinking about all the social rules at every single moment. As a result, I don't believe any of this should be mistaken for a proper Turing test. That said, based on the samples I've seen, I most likely wouldn't be able to tell if I was organizing a reservation with Duplex. C. On May 16, 2018 2:46:34 PM UTC, Dave Sill wrote: >On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:40 PM John Clark >wrote: > >> >> On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 5:08 PM, William Flynn Wallace < >> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote: >> >> *?>?Isn't the Turing test just whether people can tell it's a person >or a >>> computer?* >>> >> >> ?Yes. >> > >Actually, it's supposed to be a person determining which of two >entities >it's interacting with is a computer. > >?> ? >>> *It seems to this psychologist that that is a very low bar to get >over. >>> People believe what they want to believe and are easily fooled.* >>> >> >> But in this case the people didn't even know they were in a test, >they >> just assumed they were talking to a human. And the machine did a >better job >> making a reservation to the Chinese restaurant than I could have >done; with >> the thick accent and elliptical phrasing I had great difficulty >> understanding what the human was trying to say, but obviously to the >> computer it was clear as a bell. >> > >That's not a Turing Test at all. The tester has to be actively trying >to >make that determination. > >?>* ?* >>> *I'd like to see a more meaningful test.* >>> >> >> ? >> Like what? All Turing is saying is that we should judge how >intelligence >> a computer is the same way we judge the intelligence of other people, >by >> behavior. And I have to say that in this case the computer >demonstrated >> more intelligence than I have because I would have been constantly >saying >> "I don't understand what you're saying please repeat it". >> ? >> > >Yeah, and superhuman abilities are one thing that I, as a Turing >Tester, >would use to identify the computer. :-) > >-Dave -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Thu May 17 17:19:12 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Thu, 17 May 2018 13:19:12 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Alcor's new statement on ASC In-Reply-To: <7d27eff233776e9b09091490c0f56064.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <7d27eff233776e9b09091490c0f56064.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: On Tue, May 15, 2018 at 10:17 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > *> If you consider your connectome to be the essential you, then your > argument does follow in a narrow sense.* Narrow sense? It follows unless you assume particular atoms confer individuality to us even though science tells us atoms have no individuality, and I don?t see hot atoms can confer that property to us when they don?t have it themselves. And if that was the key I also don?t see how we seem to remain the same person even though atoms are constantly shifting in and out of our bodies from birth to death. And I think it is beyond debate that the connectome is essential, there may or may not be other things that are essential too we don?t know. > *> But keep in mind that your connectome is a malleable ever evolving > thing. Every second of every day, you are making new memories and also > forgetting old ones. In a continual state of becoming.* We're trying to decide if ASC or Alcor's method should be used, so how is the above relevant? > *> Maybe by placing so much stock in a frozen snapshot of your connectome > you would lose the information of who you were becoming.* Alcor's method is just as much a frozen snapshot as ASC is, and I don't know if the connectome information would be enough to bring somebody back but ASC would preserve more than that, I can't think of any sort of information that Alcor's method would preserve but ASC wouldn?t, and almost certainly scramble it less too. > *> Kind of like a Heisenberg uncertainty principle of identity.* If the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is relevant then we become a different person a billion times a second. > Which memories were just starting to form? Which were on the verge of being forgotten. Those would be the memories of just before I died when my body was breaking down and I was probably in great pain, and I don't mind forgetting them so much. And anyway the same thing would happen with Alcor?s method so the issue has no relevance in deciding between the two. > *> Life and consciousness are not just nouns, they are also verbs i.e. > dynamic processes.* I am an adjective, I am the way generic atoms behave when they are organized in a johnkclarkian way. > > > I think the warming up process almost certainly causes even more >> damage than the freezing process. > > *> From a biomedical standpoint, absolutely. Especially if the warming > comes too fast. Also from ischemia considerations, it would be better to > warm the person from the inside out.* It would be even better not to warm the brain at all, instead have nano-machines note the position of all the atoms in the outer layer of the frozen brain by feel, that is to say by using the same basic principle that Scanning Tunneling Microscopes use, then they would remove that layer and do the same thing with the next layer and then the next until the position of every atom in the brain is known, Ralph Merkle figures this would take about 100 days; the original brain would be gone by then but that would be OK because if you've seen one atom you've seen them all. Its not the particular atoms in your brain that makes you be you its the particular information. Of course to be in a usable form that can be used to make another brain (or more likely an upload) that raw data is going to need a lot of processing. In the current issue of Cryonics Ralph Merkle divides up the brain into 10^27 little boxes, each box would then only contain a very few molecules and most of them would be water molecules whose reaction with aldehyde is simple and well known and and whose exact position is less critical than for proteins. If we figure each tiny little box would need a billion floating point operations to sharpen up the raw data, which a think is a generous estimate, then the entire brain would require 10^27 billion floating point operations. If we have Drexler style nanotechnology (and if we don't nobody is coming back) one watt for one second could power about 10^12 billion floating point operations, there are 3.6*10^3 seconds in a hour and 10^3 watts in a kilowatt, so one kilowatt-hour of energy could make 3.6*10^18 floating point operations, thus to do the entire brain you'd need 280,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy. Right now in the USA a kilowatt-hour costs about 12 cents so the energy cost would be about 34 million dollars, much too high for most people, but if we have nanotechnology it is certainly reasonable to expect energy costs to be very dramatically lower than what they are now. > *> But I am sure you had more reductive reason so let's hear it. I am > curious. :-)* During freezing if a piece breaks off it won't be able to diffuse very far away so you can figure out where it came from but with rewarming that piece could end up anywhere and any damage produced will continue to evolve and get worse unless you immediately step in with very sophisticated technology to stop it. But with freezing the damage automatically stops when things become solid, there are no time constraints and we can leave the problem of repairing the damage that has occurred to future technology. Or at least we can provided the brain information has not been so scrambled that even Nanotechnology can't unscramble it, and that could happen if turbulence sets in. So the key question is " will the micro-currents in my brain be in a turbulent state when it is frozen or will the flow be laminar ?". If it's turbulent then very small changes in initial conditions will result in large changes in outcome and I'm dead meat, even nanotechnology couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again; but if the flow is laminar figuring out what things were like before they were frozen would be pretty straightforward. Fluid flow stops being smoothly Laminar and starts to become chaotically turbulent when a system has a Reynolds number between 2300 and 4000, although you might get some non chaotic vortices if it is bigger than 30. When chaotic turbulence starts a very small change in initial conditions will result in a huge difference in outcome and that is exactly what we want to avoid because we want to be able to figure out what the brain was like before it was frozen. We can find the approximate Reynolds number by using the formula LDV/N. L is the characteristic size we're interested in, we're interested in cells so L is about 10^-6 meter. D is the density of water, 10^3 kilograms/cubic meter. V is the velocity of the flow, during freezing it's probably less than 10^-3 meters per second but let's be conservative, I'll give you 3 orders of magnitude and call V 1 meter per second. N is the viscosity of water and at room temperature N is 0.001 newton-second/meter^2, it would be less than that when things get cold and even less when water is mixed with glycerol as it is in cryonics but let's be conservative again and ignore those factors. If you plug these numbers into the formula you get a Reynolds number of about 1. 1 is a lot less than 2300 so it looks like any mixing caused by freezing would probably be laminar not turbulent, so you can still deduce the position where things are were from the position of where things are now, you can figure our how the parts of the puzzle are supposed to fit together. > >> And more important the current method leads to the shrinkage of the >> brain by 50%. > > > *All cryobiotic organisms that survive freezing undergo a certain amount > of dehydration in the process.* That works fine for microorganisms like tardigrades but as far as I know no adult mammal has ever survived being frozen solid, much less brought back from liquid nitrogen temperatures, there is always some liquid water remaining. > > *If you are that worried about your connectome, just get a picture or > better yet a movie of it while you are still alive. The data will be > fareasier to stably store than a biologically useless head.* > http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/gallery/ I know of no non-destructive method that could produce the connectome information of my brain right now, unfortunately MRI, PET scans and X rays don't provide nearly enough detailed information. However a human brain has been chemically fixed and sliced into 5000 thin sheets and detailed microscopic images taken of every square nanometer of all 5000 sheets, and that might do the trick, but for obvious reasons I'm not quite ready for that. > > Your DNA won't survive covalently bonding with every nitrate group in > its vicinity. But your DNA can survive boiling water. Think on that before > you pickle yourself in glutaraldehyde for posterity. Why on earth should I think about that? Talk about redundancy, my entire genome is repeated in every cell of my body, my hairbrush alone is enough to guarantee it will survive intact, but that is not nearly good enough because there is a lot more to me than just my genome. > *> Aldehyde is one of the most toxic substance known.* Then why can I buy it over the counter at my local drugstore? > * > Tardigrades can survive outer space but cant survive aldhehyde.* I know, and the same is true for the closely related chemical formaldehyde , but neither would make for a very good weapon of war. > *> It inactivates *viruses* which is why it works on that wart.* I know but that?s not a bug it's a feature, inactivating the entire biochemical metabolism is exactly what makes aldehyde so good, we want to shut it down and keep things in place, its the entire point of Cryonics. > *> you are not just poisoning your cells with aldehyde,* Yes aldehyde is a poison in that it renders cells non-viable, but I don't care about that, I only care about saving the essential must have part of them, the information. > *> you completely cross-linking all your biomolecules into one gigantic > covalently bonded molecule.* Right. > *> You will be will still be able to see the forest, you just won't be > able to see where one tree ends and another one begins.* How do you figure that? We know what the chemical properties that a molecule of aldehyde has and we know what proteins are found in brain cells and we know what shape they have and we have Nanotechnology which means we have one hell of a lot of processing power. And there is a hell of a lot of redundancy in the brain and that will help too. > *> Again, take a picture of your connectome before you die and let Alcor > do its thing.* I'd love to get a picture of the connectome of my brain but please tell me how to cut my brain into 5000 slices far thinner than tissue paper without killing me. If Alcor has the ability to do that right now then they've been holding out on me. > *> Why would you want your connectome preserved at the moment of your > death anyway? So you can live forever with PTSD?* First of all there is no reason to think ASC would preserve connectome information and nothing else, and second of all why is ASC a snapshot but Alcor's method is not? > *> Dozens of examples of proof of principle of vitrification already exist > in nature. I can't show you a mouse at liquid nitrogen temps but I can show > you a frog at -16 C:* I admit the frog is impressive but 3F (-16C) isn?t very cold, that?s why its metabolic process never stops entirely and 1/3 of it remains unfrozen, and it can only remain in that semi-frozen state for a few months. And ?16C is not nearly cold enough for long term storage. Alcor uses liquid nitrogen at ?196C and that is cold enough to keep things unchanged for centuries, in fact ?140C would probably be cold enough and it is above the glass transition temperature so the rate of cracking would be less, but I don?t consider cracking to be a very serious problem, it should be pretty simple to figure out what things looked like before the crack happened. And storing things at ?140C would be more expensive than storing them at ?196C, and it would be far more complicated than simply dumping in liquid nitrogen and that would increase the likelihood of catastrophic failure. The less maintenance required the better. > > *I was pleasantly surprised to discover Natasha Vita-More did it in the > lab with nematodes.* > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4620520/ In a way Natasha?s work is more impressive than the frog even though the worm is so small it can barely be seen by the naked eye because she got down to ?80C and because she showed that memory is retained. But ?80C is STILL not cold enough for long term storage, the chemical reaction rate is just too high, the worms were only frozen for 2 weeks. > *> I can't show you a single example of *anything* surviving getting > dipped in aldehyde at *any* temperature.* Because aldehyde destroys cell viability, but it doesn't destroy information and therefore it doesn't produce information theoretical death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death > >> to restore biological viability you are going to need information about >> what atom goes where, and from everything I have seen ASC does a better job >> preserving that information than Alcor?s current method. Electron >> Microscopes don't lie. > > > *> What goes where is not enough. You need to be able to distinguish > between hydrogen bonds and covalent bonds.* Nobody knows that you're just guessing. But it doesn't matter because I don't insist that Electron Microscope pictures provide enough information to deduce the connectome or that the connectome information is enough to bring a individual back; but I do insist those Electron Microscope pictures are excellent evidence that ASC distorts information less than Alcor's current method, and not just information about the connectome. *> Scanning electron microscopes don't have the resolution to distinguish > hydrogen bonding from covalent bonding. You need an STM for that.* I always assumed the trillions of nano-machines that examine the layers of the brain would gain that information by useing STM technology for two reasons: 1) They could take better pictures. 2) Its far easier to design a STM microscope a few nanometers across than electron microscope the same size because I don't know how such a tiny machine could produce the very high speed electrons needed. > *> I think what you see would be a lot messier with ASC under an STM.* You think that with Alcor's method things would look neater than ASC at that high resolution even though we know they look much messier than ASC at a lower resolution?? > *> Nanosanta will thank you for not cross-linking your molecules into a > Gordian knot.* But I don't want to untie the Gordian knot, I just want to take a picture of it. John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avant at sollegro.com Sat May 19 04:06:40 2018 From: avant at sollegro.com (Stuart LaForge) Date: Fri, 18 May 2018 21:06:40 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Alcor's new statement on ASC Message-ID: <5961a486da82250a6343d4a7a3ca79ab.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> John Clark wrote: > >> *> If you consider your connectome to be the essential you, then your >> argument does follow in a narrow sense.* > > Narrow sense? It follows unless you assume particular atoms confer > individuality to us even though science tells us atoms have no > individuality, and I don?t see hot atoms can confer that property to us > when they don?t have it themselves. And if that was the key I also don?t > see how we seem to remain the same person even though atoms are > constantly shifting in and out of our bodies from birth to death. > And I think it is beyond debate that the connectome is essential, there > may or may not be other things that are essential too we don?t know. No it follows unless you realize that *you* don't have any clear cut boundaries. Where does John Clark end and the rest of the universe begin? I don't think people realize how much of their identities are wrapped up in things external to their meat. Things such as their jobs, their social networks, their hobbies and interests, their roles and reputations, and to a greater or lesser extent, their personal property. All these things contribute to identity, yet none of them is the essence of identity. So let's for convenience sake, say you assume the boundary to yourself is your skin. So you put your meat under a microscope and lo and behold you find out you are not an individual at all but a clonal colony of differentiated specialized cells each living and dying its own little life in an ongoing process as part of a network. This process uses molecules from the environment to generate enough surplus energy that on some bizarre platonic level of abstraction separate from the cells themselves wherein dwells information and mathematics, your meat has the luxury of imagining that it is John Clark. But what is John Clark but an abstract label for a set of time-dependent biochemical feedback loops operating between memory, stimulus, instinct, and response engaged in by a network of trillions of cells? John Clark is a label applied to a time-dependent process, you eliminate time, and you are not John Clark at all but at best a 3-D cross-section of him. >> *> But keep in mind that your connectome is a malleable ever evolving >> thing. Every second of every day, you are making new memories and also >> forgetting old ones. In a continual state of becoming.* > > We're trying to decide if ASC or Alcor's method should be used, so how is > the above relevant? Because ASC stops time completely for you a while Alcor just slows it way down. Look in my professional opinion liquid nitrogen might not be ideal storage conditions for what cryonicists are trying to achieve. For example, cryptobiotic organisms are thought to maintain some very slow metabolism even in a dried out dormant state. Yet this allows sea monkeys, rotifers, nematodes, and tardigrades (all are multicellular organisms albeit small) to have a shelf life of centuries in their dormant state. Furthermore medicine is making huge strides with suspended animation on mammals which happens at a much higher temperature range than liquid nitrogen. But even at liquid N2 temperatures with vitrification, some chemical reactions are still taking place albeit very slowly, some thermal motion is still happening. You are still in a Schrodinger's cat-like state of not being either completely alive or completely dead. I could culture cells from from your frozen body and they would grow just fine in a petri dish. Your kidneys would make a welcome gift to many a wait-listed transplant recipient. The point is, the majority of what *you* are, i.e. your meat is still alive even after years in a NO2 dewer. What might not make it are neuronal connections, specific synapses but so what? As long as the neurons are still alive, they can regrow those connections or ones that you could not subjectively distinguish between from the inside as it were. You could even read you own autobiography if you chose to write one to remind yourself of who you were. I mean seriously. Someone in my meat who thinks he is me and claims to be me, probably is me by my reckoning. Even if I don't remember how that girl broke my heart in the third grade or I have to learn how to ride a bike all over again. > Alcor's method is just as much a frozen snapshot as ASC is, and I don't > know if the connectome information would be enough to bring somebody back > but ASC would preserve more than that, I can't think of any sort of > information that Alcor's method would preserve but ASC wouldn?t, and > almost certainly scramble it less too. No because in addition to killing all your cells, gluteraldehyde will add a shit load of noise to your molecular information. What does the position of certain carbon atoms matter if in the process of fixing those atoms in place you introduce a random number of *MORE* carbon atoms that covalently bond to every molecule that has an available nitrogen atom? Remember carbon atoms are indistinguishable from one another. Is is theoretically possible to parse your information. Yes it is, with a dictionary of known proteins and their allelic variants and a DNA library from your hairbrush but it is not a matter of whether it is theoretically possible, it is a matter of whether it is economically feasible. Not even a jupiter-brain with nanotech would want to spend the CPU cycles to sort out that insane mess. And to "peel away layers" of your brain to take pictures of the interior would cost far more energy than simple data processing. You would have break an insane number of specific covalent bonds while leaving the others intact so as to retain the original information. With AST you are not just poisoning your meat, you are adding random noise to your signal as it were. Noise that you need an STM to see. >> *> Kind of like a Heisenberg uncertainty principle of identity.* > > If the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is relevant then we become a > different person a billion times a second. I cannot confidently state that we do not become different people every nanosecond. Every nanosecond many photons enter my eye that were not there a nanosecond ago. Does what I see not change me? > So the key question is " will the micro-currents in my brain be in a > turbulent state when it is frozen or will the flow be laminar ?". If it's > turbulent then very small changes in initial conditions will result in > large changes in outcome and I'm dead meat, even nanotechnology couldn't > put Humpty Dumpty back together again; but if the flow is laminar > figuring out what things were like before they were frozen would be pretty > straightforward. Don't worry about turbulence, John. Cytoplasm, the stuff your neurons are made of is about 10 thousand times more viscous than water at 37 C. It would be more like glass at liquid N2 temps. The last thing you need to worry about are "micro-currents" in your brain. > Fluid flow stops being smoothly Laminar and starts to become chaotically > turbulent when a system has a Reynolds number between 2300 and 4000, > although you might get some non chaotic vortices if it is bigger than 30. > When chaotic turbulence starts a very small change in initial conditions > will result in a huge difference in outcome and that is exactly what we > want to avoid because we want to be able to figure out what the brain was > like before it was frozen. I don't understand . . . why this lengthy tangent on "brain turbulence"? If your identity can survive you vigorously nodding your head up and down, it can survive any g-forces it is liable to encounter in a dewar. >> *All cryobiotic organisms that survive freezing undergo a certain >> amount of dehydration in the process.* > > That works fine for microorganisms like tardigrades but as far as I know > no adult mammal has ever survived being frozen solid, much less brought > back from liquid nitrogen temperatures, there is always some liquid water > remaining. Mammals, tardigrades, Natasha's little worms -- We are all made of the exact same stuff. Moreover, we have very similar operating systems. What differs is the algorithms our genetic machinery is running. There is in principle no reason other than simple scale differences that we cannot give ourselves many of those same abilities through a combination of technology and genetic engineering. > >>> *If you are that worried about your connectome, just get a picture or >>> >> better yet a movie of it while you are still alive. The data will be >> fareasier to stably store than a biologically useless head.* >> http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/gallery/ >> > > I know of no non-destructive method that could produce the connectome > information of my brain right now, unfortunately MRI, PET scans and X rays > don't provide nearly enough detailed information. However a human brain > has been chemically fixed and sliced into 5000 thin sheets and detailed > microscopic images taken of every square nanometer of all 5000 sheets, and > that might do the trick, but for obvious reasons I'm not quite ready for > that. How does throwing a bunch carbon atoms into your connectome to covalently bond with it and screw up your information, right precisely at the scale you are trying to preserve the information at help you achieve this goal? Because that is what ASC does. Maybe an analogy will help. Let's say you have two copies of oh say Moby Dick: one is old and water damaged. Some 10 percent of the words are smears and one out of every 100 pages is missing. The other copy is pristine except that a random letter of the alphabet has been inserted where ever there was a space or a punctuation mark in the original. Which one is more like the orignal Moby Dick? Which one would you rather have to parse if you were trying to transcribe the original Moby Dick? A good cryonicist should try to make their resurrection cheap and easy, not expensive and hard. And a good cryonics company should aim for repeat business. >>> Your DNA won't survive covalently bonding with every nitrate group in >>> >> its vicinity. But your DNA can survive boiling water. Think on that >> before you pickle yourself in glutaraldehyde for posterity. > > Why on earth should I think about that? Talk about redundancy, my entire > genome is repeated in every cell of my body, my hairbrush alone is enough > to guarantee it will survive intact, but that is not nearly good enough > because there is a lot more to me than just my genome. Yes, and aldehyde throws a crap ton of extra carbon atoms and covalent bonds into your information, requiring energy simply to parse. So keep your hairbrush out of the aldehyde. > > I know but that?s not a bug it's a feature, inactivating the entire > biochemical metabolism is exactly what makes aldehyde so good, we want to > shut it down and keep things in place, its the entire point of Cryonics. You are not just inactivating it, you are sabotaging it so that it can't ever run again. Even from a purely informational theoretical POV you are adding random bytes to your data in order to preserve character length. If the meaning of "meaning" has meaning to you, then why would you want to do that? > >> *> You will be will still be able to see the forest, you just won't be >> able to see where one tree ends and another one begins.* > > How do you figure that? We know what the chemical properties that a > molecule of aldehyde has and we know what proteins are found in brain > cells and we know what shape they have and we have Nanotechnology which > means we have one hell of a lot of processing power. And there is a hell > of a lot of redundancy in the brain and that will help too. Yes we know the chemical properties of aldehyde. What we do not know is exactly where aldehyde will do it's damage. That is entirely random depending on concentration and overall rate. Because of this we won't know for certain which four carbon atoms are from gluteraldehyde or any of the numerous long chains of carbon that belong there and make up pretty much all of you that is not water. If you want molecular scale information preserved, you can't have covalent bonds forming willy-nilly like that. When you do so you change the structure of the molecule into a whole new molecule. Since as you yourself noted atoms are interchangeable, what would change most drastically is your electron configuration. The shapes of molecular orbitals would get all screwed up. You would be polluting your information with spam at the quantum level. In my opinion, regenerative medicine will probably arrive well before truly robust Drexlerian nanotechnology. Largely because our first nano-machines will likely be reversed engineered enzymes with many of the same limitations that natural enzymes have today. But to regenerate, you must leave behind some undamaged meat. The more, the better. In that regard, Alcor is cleary superior. Meat has salvage value, even with regard to nanotechnology. Although you are right, the redundancy does help. Still a lot more extra operations to do. Longer before technology arrives. Why make your delta t longer than it need be? Do you enjoy culture shock? >> *> Why would you want your connectome preserved at the moment of your >> death anyway? So you can live forever with PTSD?* > > First of all there is no reason to think ASC would preserve connectome > information and nothing else, and second of all why is ASC a snapshot but > Alcor's method is not? Look, I am not affiliated with Alcor and so I can't speak for them. What I do know is that Alcor slows down molecules in chemical reactions allowing them to be sped back up when the time is right. ASC stops everything in its tracks with a bunch chemical reactions that corrupt the cells operating system and changes electron orbitals in the way that damages quantum information. > In a way Natasha?s work is more impressive than the frog even though the > worm is so small it can barely be seen by the naked eye because she got > down to ?80C and because she showed that memory is retained. But ?80C is > STILL not cold enough for long term storage, the chemical reaction rate > is just too high, the worms were only frozen for 2 weeks. I agree. I wonder why she didn't try it longer or at colder temps. > Because aldehyde destroys cell viability, but it doesn't destroy > information and therefore it doesn't produce information theoretical > death: > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death It doesn't destroy information but it dilutes it with extraneous information. Adding random noise to a bit stream is a computational wasteful method of preserving that information even if you have multiple redundant copies to compare. Better to accept a lost bit here or there than to dilute the signal with spam. >> *> What goes where is not enough. You need to be able to distinguish >> between hydrogen bonds and covalent bonds.* > Nobody knows that you're just guessing. But it doesn't matter because I > don't insist that Electron Microscope pictures provide enough information > to deduce the connectome or that the connectome information is enough to > bring a individual back; but I do insist those Electron Microscope > pictures are excellent evidence that ASC distorts information less than > Alcor's > current method, and not just information about the connectome. I am not "guessing" at all. Hydrogen bonds are extremely important for biological structure and therefore function. Things like electron configurations and protein shape matter when it comes to being functional. Forget physics and think engineering for a minute. It is almost always easier to repair a broken machine than it is to build one from scratch. Furthermore, how do you simulate a working machine from a non-functional one without in some sense repairing it? I say you are upping your chances of resurection by making your ressurection easier, even if you do lose some of your memory in the process. Stuart LaForge From rlitzkow at gmail.com Mon May 7 06:20:56 2018 From: rlitzkow at gmail.com (Richard Litzkow) Date: Mon, 7 May 2018 16:20:56 +1000 Subject: [ExI] Altered Carbon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The show was very well executed and captured the spirit of the first book by Richard Morgan - even if it took a few more liberties for the sake of visual storytelling. I would recommend to anyone who enjoyed the TV adaptation that they also read the book and support the author who writes a lot of transhumanist fiction. - Richard Litzkow On Mon, May 7, 2018 at 2:09 PM, Stuart LaForge wrote: > If you get tired of watching the media whine about Trump or vice-versa, > then watch this show! > > Just finished binge-watching the first season of the show "Altered > Carbon". It's got serious H+ cred, a well-written plot, lots of sex and > violence, and it's pretty much Trump-free. > > Ignoring the unnecessary plot device that the miniaturized computers > (called "stacks") that people get their minds uploaded to are "alien > technology" as opposed to smart watches + 200 more years of Moore's Law, > the scenarios and issues explored could have come right off this list from > the 1990's. > > I want to discuss all the cool stuff in the show, but then again I don't > want to spoil it for anyone either. So . . . Well shit that's all I can > say. Maybe I should start a thread with a spoilers warning. :-) > > Stuart LaForge > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -- "For what purpose humanity is there should not even concern us: why you are there, that you should ask yourself: and if you have no ready answer, then set yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them! I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible..." Nietzsche -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ben at zaiboc.net Mon May 7 21:47:26 2018 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Mon, 07 May 2018 22:47:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics for uploaders discussion: Video In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5AF0C96E.2020407@zaiboc.net> Re Rose wrote: >Thing 1 (Ben): We all do seem to agree. If a perfect copy is made, the copy is a conscious mind and it IS the SAME mind. >... >The essential concept I am trying to get across is that a copy of you, in another agent of any kind, will *not be you* Either you are contradicting yourself here, or you think that 'you' and 'your mind' are not synonymous. I do think that the language tends to mislead us. We say "Your mind" rather than "the mind that is you", which kind of implies that there is a separate 'you' that also has a mind. Is this your view? My view is that 'you' and 'your mind' are the same thing. Continuity is a bit of a red herring, because a mind that remembers previous states, /is/ continuous with those previous states, regardless of any temporal gaps. Ben Zaiboc From ben at zaiboc.net Sun May 13 14:38:36 2018 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 13 May 2018 15:38:36 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Alcor's new statement on ASC In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5AF84DEC.7090301@zaiboc.net> John Clark wrote: > *?Certainly fixation results are likely to be much harder to reverse so as to restore biological viability?* "I disagree, I am very far from certain about that, in fact I am about as far as it's possible to get. To restore biological viability you're going to need information about what atom goes where, and from everything I've seen, ASC does a better job preserving that information than Alcor's current method. Electron Microscopes don't lie." Good point. I can see the possibility of using ASC-preserved information to build a new, identical brain from biological material. So at least in theory, ASC would be suitable for those who want to be revived in a biological form. Of course this would still be a type of 'uploading', but not to a non-biological system (what would you call this, 'sideloading'?), so presumably the same people who object to uploading on flaky philosophical grounds such as 'continuity' etc., would also object to this, but it might appeal to some people ('Carbon Chauvinists'?). Actually, it would be interesting to see if the idea actually does appeal to anyone. It might flush some objectors out, by revealing that their stated objections are not actually the real reason they object. Maybe. I have to say, though, that it doesn't appeal to me. What would be the point? The tech. required would be more advanced than that needed for non-biological uploading (I presume), and the end result obviously vastly inferior. Ben Zaiboc From ben at zaiboc.net Sat May 19 09:31:19 2018 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sat, 19 May 2018 10:31:19 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Alcor's new statement on ASC In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5AFFEEE7.9080205@zaiboc.net> Will Steinberg wrote: "The connectome is a drop in the bucket, yes. A small drop" That's a rather surprising statement. You think the connectome is relatively unimportant? Do you think it's not essential? What is the rest of the bucket, in your opinion? Ben Zaiboc From ben at zaiboc.net Sun May 20 15:03:54 2018 From: ben at zaiboc.net (Ben Zaiboc) Date: Sun, 20 May 2018 16:03:54 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5B018E5A.4080502@zaiboc.net> Test Post, please ignore Ben Zaiboc From spike at rainier66.com Sun May 20 15:12:27 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Sun, 20 May 2018 08:12:27 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Test In-Reply-To: <5B018E5A.4080502@zaiboc.net> References: <5B018E5A.4080502@zaiboc.net> Message-ID: <00be01d3f04c$f75ec400$e61c4c00$@rainier66.com> -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2018 8:04 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [ExI] Test Test Post, please ignore Ben Zaiboc _______________________________________________ Ambiguous. If we ignore the part that says "...please ignore" then we must nore. spike From johnkclark at gmail.com Sun May 20 15:18:37 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sun, 20 May 2018 11:18:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Alcor's new statement on ASC In-Reply-To: <5961a486da82250a6343d4a7a3ca79ab.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> References: <5961a486da82250a6343d4a7a3ca79ab.squirrel@secure199.inmotionhosting.com> Message-ID: ?On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 12:06 AM, Stuart LaForge wrote: * > *you* don't have any clear cut boundaries.* I agree, that's why the destruction of my body won't mean my oblivion if the information on how the atoms in my brain are arranged is not destroyed. > *> let's for convenience sake, say you assume the boundary to yourself is > your skin.* Today it?s true, the only group of atoms in the entire observable universe that behaves in a johnkclarkian way is contained by that layer of skin. However that fact is not a law of nature it just a happenstance due to the limitations of current technology (not of science) and it need not always be true. > *> But what is John Clark but an abstract label for a set of > time-dependent biochemical feedback loops operating between > memory, stimulus, instinct, and response engaged in by a network of > trillions of cells? John Clark is a label applied to a > time-dependent process, you eliminate time, and you are not John Clark at > all but at best a 3-D cross-section of him.* I don?t disagree with any of that but.... how does any of it have relevance in determining if ASC or Alcor is better? > *> even at liquid N2 temperatures with vitrification, some > chemical reactions are still taking place albeit very slowly, some thermal > motion is still happening.* Brains stored with ASC are also stored at those very same liquid nitrogen temperatures with the same amount of tiny thermal motion and the same trivial rate of chemical reaction. The rate of chemical reactions slows down as things get colder and can be calculated with the Arrhenius equation, and it is not even close to being linear, its exponential. If we use one second's worth of chemical reactions at body temperature (37C) as the baseline then: At 0C, the freezing point of water, it would take 5.2 seconds to equal one second of decay at body temperature. At ?65C, the coldest most commercial freezers can get, it would take 4.9 minutes to equal one second of decay at body temperature. At ?79.5C, the temperature of dry ice, it would take 17.2 minutes to equal one second of decay at body temperature. At -120C, around the glass transition point, it would take 1.5 days to equal one second of decay at body temperature. At -128C, the lowest the best Freon refrigerators can get, it would take 5.2 days to equal one second of decay at body temperature. At -195.8C, liquid nitrogen and the temperature that both Alcor and ASC use, it would take 24.6 million years to equal one second of decay at body temperature. So liquid nitrogen slows chemical reactions down by a factor of 7.8*10^14 over body temperature. > *> Look in my professional opinion liquid nitrogen might not be ideal > storage conditions for what cryonicists are trying to achieve.* We want long term storage so we can safely wait for technology to advance enough that it can help us, and liquid nitrogen slows down the rate of decay by a factor of *780 thousand billion*. Granted that?s overkill so you could go a little bit warmer but not much because the relationship between temperature and the chemical reaction rate is not linear. > > > We're trying to decide if ASC or Alcor's method should be used, so >> how is the above relevant? > > > >* Because ASC stops time completely for you a while Alcor just slows it > way down.* I don't think that's true but if it were then on the face of it you seem to be saying ASC does a better job. But I don't see the point in arguing if something slows things down by a factor of 780 thousand billion or by an even larger number. > *> For example, cryptobiotic organisms are thought to maintain some very > slow metabolism? ?even in a dried out dormant state.* No organism larger than about a millimeter can survive complete dehydration, and no mammal has been in a hibernating state longer than a few months. > *> medicine is making huge strides with suspended animation on mammals > which happens at a much higher temperature range than liquid nitrogen.* If the temperature is much higher then the time they could safely be in suspended animation would be much MUCH *MUCH* shorter because the Arrhenius chemical reaction rate equation is NOT linear. Even at dry ice temperatures it would probably only be safe for a human for a few days, but with liquid nitrogen a million years would be no problem at least as far as the chemical reaction decay rate is concerned, although when you get into super long time intervals other factors, like damage caused by background radiation, start to come into play. And of course the longer it is the higher the likelihood something will go catastrophically wrong and you'll accidentally warm up. > *> What might not make it are neuronal connections, specific synapses but > so what? * That's an odd question. There are only 2 types of information I need to survive, my genome and my memory of life experience. I mean, if you've saved both the hardware and the software then you've saved everything . Saving my genome is easy, but saving memories not so much. The pattern of neuronal connections in a brain may or may not be the total answer the the question of how life experiences are encoded, but at the very least it is certainly *part* of the answer, and I maintain it is beyond dispute that ASC distorts that precious connectome information less than Alcor's way does. > *> You could even read you own autobiography if you chose to write one to > remind yourself of who you were.* If I read your autobiography would I become you? Well I would if it rearranged the atoms in my brain so they were organized the same way atoms are organized in your brain. But to do that it would have to be one hell of a well written autobiography! > *> in addition to killing all your cells, gluteraldehyde will add a shit > load of noise to your molecular information.* I'm sure that's true, but the electron microscope pictures provide excellent evidence that it would add LESS noise than Alcor's method. There is a hell of a lot of redundancy in biology and redundancy always helps code-breakers so future technology might be able to clean up the noise produced by both methods, or maybe both produce too much noise for even nanotechnology to be able to fix I don't know, but I do know less noise is better than more noise. > >> If the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is relevant then we become a >> different person a billion times a second. > > > *> I cannot confidently state that we do not become different people every > nanosecond.* > Then whatever "becoming a different person" means it is of no interest to me, I've been becoming a "different person" a billion times a second since I was born and it never bothered me, so if it happens one extra time due to Cryonics its not a big deal. *> Every nanosecond many photons enter my eye that were not there a > nanosecond ago. Does what I see not change me?* Of course it changes you, if it didn't there would be no point in having eyes. But I don't understand what any of this has to do with deciding of ASC or Alcor is the better technology. > *> I don't understand . . . why this lengthy tangent on "brain > turbulence"?* Because it gets at the fundamental key issue that determines if you survive or not. Its inevitable that any Cryonics procedure is going to push things around and produce unwanted changes, but the life or death question is what is the nature of those changes? If the changes were turbulent (aka chaotic) then even very tiny changes in initial conditions will lead to huge changes in outcome, so if you just see the outcome its hopeless to try to work backwards and figure out what the initial conditions were. But if the fluid flow was linear and not chaotic (laminar) then a small change in initial conditions will only produce a small change in outcome. That's why from its present orbit we can work backwards and figure out pretty well where Halley's comet was anytime during the last several thousand years, but in 240BC it got very close to Jupiter and any small error in our calculated position at that point is enormously magnified beyond that so we don't know what the orbit of Halley's comet was before 240BC. > *> Mammals, tardigrades, Natasha's little worms -- We are all made of the > exact same stuff.* Yes, but tardigrades and Natasha's little worms can be flash frozen but mammals can not be, not even the smallest shrew. > *> A good cryonicist should try to make their resurrection cheap and easy, > not expensive and hard* Right. So how on earth could a good cryonicist look at the textbook clear electron microscopic images of brain slices made with ASC, compare them wit the confusing messy images made with Alcor's method, and then decide it is cheaper and easier to go Alcor's way?? > *> And a good cryonics company should aim for repeat business.* Repeat business? I only plan to get frozen once. > *> You are not just inactivating it, you are sabotaging it so that it > can't ever run again.* I know and I don't care. If the microchip in my computer goes bad as long as there is enough of it remaining that I can recognize what it is then it's far easier to replace it with a newly built microchip than to try to repair the bad one. In fact it would probably be easier to replace the entire computer if I could save the information on the old hard drive. > *> Even from a purely informational theoretical POV you are adding random > bytes to your data in order to preserve character length. If the meaning of > "meaning" has meaning to you, then why would you want to do that?* Because experimental evidence clearly shows ASC adds fewer random bits than any other known method of long term storage of brain information; if you find a method that produces even fewer random bits than ASC I'll switch my allegiance over to it but it ain't Alcor's method. > *> Yes we know the chemical properties of aldehyde. What we do not know > is exactly where aldehyde will do it's damage.* But we do know exactly where the damage Alcor's method is, it shows up clear as day in electron microscope pictures. In fact you don't even need a microscope, you can detect the damage with a yardstick, the brain shrinks by 50%. You're ignoring the gross morphological distortions and very obvious damage that Alcor's method produces while hypothesizing about damage ASC makes that nobody has seen and may not even exist. And all the purely philosophical arguments you?ve used against ASC are weak and could just as easily be used against Alcor?s method and even Cryonics in general. > *> If you want molecular scale information preserved, you can't have > covalent bonds forming willy-nilly like that. When you do so you change > the structure of the molecule into a whole new molecule. Since as you > yourself noted atoms are interchangeable* So if I see 2 carbon atoms A and B it makes absolutely no difference which atom was originally part of molecule X and which atom was originally part of molecule Y. If you?ve seen one carbon atom you?ve seen then all. > *> The shapes of molecular orbitals would get all screwed up.* And Alcor doesn't screw up molecular orbitals ? We?re not trying to decide which Cryonics procedure is perfect, we?re trying to decide which Cryonics procedure is better. > *> In my opinion, regenerative medicine will probably arrive well > before truly robust Drexlerian nanotechnology.* Without Drexlerian nanotechnology I can't conceive how on earth anyone preserved with Alcor or ASC or anything else is coming back, we would not have the manual dexterity to feel around with a trillion Scanning Tunneling Microscopes to determine what the precise frozen state of the brain is, and we wouldn't have the enormous computational capacity needed to work backwards and figure out what the initial state of the person was before being frozen. If I ever came to the conclusion that Drexlerian nanotechnology is impossible I?d abandon Cryonics entirely. ? It's the only hope for? immortality that we have. *> Largely because our first nano-machines will likely be reversed > engineered enzymes with many of the? ?same limitations that natural enzymes > have today.* I think our intelligently designed nano-machines will work much better than the natural enzymes Evolution came up with, and it won't take a billion years either. Evolution had to work with restrictions that human engineers don?t have, that?s why we don?t have 100 ton supersonic birds or nuclear powered elephants or even a macroscopic part that can rotate by 360 degrees. > *> Look, I am not affiliated with Alcor * You should be, everybody should get signed up, even with Alcor's current method they're the best bet in town, I just think they could be better. > *> ASC stops everything in its tracks with a bunch chemical reactions* And by cooling things down just as Alcor does. > *> that corrupt the cell s operating system and changes electron orbitals > in the way that damages quantum information.* Not only is there no evidence the human brain uses any sort of quantum information processing it is very hard to see how it possibly could, the architecture is all wrong. > >> In a way Natasha?s work is more impressive than the frog even though >> the worm is so small it can barely be seen by the naked eye because she >> got down to ?80C and because she showed that memory is retained. But ?80C >> is STILL not cold enough for long term storage, the chemical reaction rate >> ? ? >> is just too high, the worms were only frozen for 2 weeks. > > > *> I agree. I wonder why she didn't try it longer or at colder temps.* Because it wouldn't have worked much longer at that temperature; 2 weeks at -80C as many unwanted chemical reactions would occur as ?in ? about a second and a half at body temperature, to go longer you must go colder. > > Nobody knows that you're just guessing. But it doesn't matter because >> I don't insist that Electron Microscope pictures provide enough >> information to deduce the connectome or that the connectome information is >> enough to bring a individual back; but I do insist those Electron Microscope >> ? ? >> pictures are excellent evidence that ASC distorts information less >> than Alcor's current method, and not just information about the connectome. > > > >* I am not "guessing" at all. Hydrogen bonds are extremely important for > biological structure* Electron microscopic pictures are unambiguous on that point; ASC does better, mush much better, than Alcor at preserving biological structure. You?re right, Hydrogen bonds are important in determining how the linear chain of amino acids in a protein folds up, and the shape of a protein determines its function. And its also true glutaraldehyde would interfere with those hydrogen bonds and denature some proteins and cause them to have shapes never found in a living organism, but the linear sequence of amino acids would be the same regardless of the shape of the protein so you could figure out what protein it is. And after all there are only 2 million proteins in a living human body so its got to be one of them, and 2 million is not a large number for a computer. > *> and therefore function.* Yes a denatured protein has lost it?s function so it can no longer do what it was once able to do, but it can still tell me what it looked like when the protein was young and in its prime. I don't care if things are still functional or not, I only care about working backwards and figuring out what the initial conditions were. > *> Forget physics and think engineering for a minute. It is almost always > easier to repair a broken machine than it is to build one from scratch.* Then why isn't there a chain of fixit shops where people bring in their broken microprocessor chips to be repaired? Why do people EVER buy new cars? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pharos at gmail.com Mon May 21 18:29:26 2018 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 19:29:26 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Privacy Message-ID: The new EU GDPR privacy legislation is shortly coming into force and UK folk are being flooded with emails from every company they have ever contacted as companies attempt to explain how they are misusing customers' data. I liked the following from 'The Daily Mash' -- Quote: Dear User / Barely Sentient Marketing Target, Some time ago you allowed us access to every aspect of your life. Don?t deny it. You know you tick any box going and never read the accompanying text about companies? plans to ruthlessly exploit you because it?s boring. And now, in light of a new data privacy law coming in across the EU, we are legally required to tell you that we?ve got your data, we?ve sold your data, and we will be continuing to do whatever the f**k we like with it. We know everything about you. How your marriage is doing. Which of the kids is your favourite. That little phase of ?exploring your sexuality? in 2003. And it?s all for sale to the highest bidder. If your friends want to know which of them you truly like, we?ll tell them. If businesses want to know exactly when on a Friday night you hit your lowest, drunkest, most-vulnerable-to-shoe-advertising point, we?ll tell them as well. Please don?t imagine we find you interesting. It?s just that the tedious grind of your mundanity ? seriously, you?re reading the Wikipedia entry for Donnie Darko again? That?s the sixth time in ten years ? makes us money. If someone wants to sell you something, whether it?s jeans, gym membership or Brexit, they come to us. Then we tell them how to do it because you are no more complex than a cow. So we?re keeping your data. We?re collecting more data. That slack-jawed expression you?ve got, reading this? We?ve recorded it via your webcam just in case anyone, anywhere, one day finds it useful. Now delete this email and stop thinking about it forever. Done? Thanks. All the best, The Daily Mash --------------- BillK From foozler83 at gmail.com Mon May 21 21:59:16 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Mon, 21 May 2018 16:59:16 -0500 Subject: [ExI] statement both true and false Message-ID: A hen is a rooster. OK, so it's a Monday. bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Wed May 23 00:39:20 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 20:39:20 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics research Message-ID: Good news, Alcor just got a $5,000,000 donation from Brad Armstrong (member # ? ? A-3000) to fund cryonics research. ? John K Clark (member # A-2784) ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From danust2012 at gmail.com Wed May 23 00:56:56 2018 From: danust2012 at gmail.com (Dan TheBookMan) Date: Tue, 22 May 2018 17:56:56 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Cryonics research In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <111BEB9D-4E20-4A56-8E26-53C9A677507D@gmail.com> On May 22, 2018, at 5:39 PM, John Clark wrote: > > Good news, Alcor just got a $5,000,000 donation from Brad Armstrong (member #? ?A-3000) to fund cryonics research.? > > John K Clark (member # A-2784) ? Wow! That?s great news! Regards, Dan Sample my Kindle books at: http://author.to/DanUst -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike at rainier66.com Thu May 24 20:03:36 2018 From: spike at rainier66.com (spike at rainier66.com) Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 13:03:36 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Spike, would you post this at ExtropyChat, please? In-Reply-To: <1117207203.5077261.1527190033477@mail.yahoo.com> References: <1117207203.5077261.1527190033477.ref@mail.yahoo.com> <1117207203.5077261.1527190033477@mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <01a601d3f39a$4f290d80$ed7b2880$@rainier66.com> OK here ya go: From: Alan Brooks Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2018 12:27 PM To: spike at rainier66.com Subject: Spike, would you post this at ExtropyChat, please? >?This must be the harbinger of Armageddon :) Security troops on US nuclear missile base took LSD -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From foozler83 at gmail.com Sat May 26 13:58:32 2018 From: foozler83 at gmail.com (William Flynn Wallace) Date: Sat, 26 May 2018 08:58:32 -0500 Subject: [ExI] could be more help Message-ID: It's about Hawking and the tech team that worked on his voice computer over the years. Finding software and hardware over 30 years old, and so on Really neat article, I thought. http://theweek.com/articles/769768/saving-stephen-hawkings-voice bill w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnkclark at gmail.com Sat May 26 15:18:17 2018 From: johnkclark at gmail.com (John Clark) Date: Sat, 26 May 2018 11:18:17 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Nanotechnology Message-ID: This is a very good short video about Nanotechnology ?. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp7kt49f2LM? John K Clark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: