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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext'>>…</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif";color:windowtext'> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Anders Sandberg<br><b>…</b><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] sanity and connectedness, was: RE: list test<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>On 2013-07-29 06:38, spike wrote:<o:p></o:p></p></div><blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'><p class=MsoPlainText> Consider for instance this magnificent beauty<span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoPlainText> <span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span> I yearned to know more about these beasts, while I was still there on site to observe. Later I found out it is likely a Cicindela depressula. Kewall!<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p></blockquote><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><br></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'>>…</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Indeed. The dispirited tiger beetle! (the name apparently has to do with the "broken elbow" in the patterning, rather than any mood in the beetle) I know the problem of photographing tiger beetles - they refuse to sit still for a picture</span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'>…<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'>Anders, you made my point perfectly. Having you on ExI means we all get the benefit of your accumulated wisdom, but only after we get home. I want my own portable Anders to carry along always, without having to actually feed you and give you a place to sleep. That could get expensive. Especially if sushi is involved, oy. {8^D<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'>If Google Glass works as well as I am hoping it does, we might be able to create some kind of pooled knowledge base including a wide variety of hipsters, such that it would allow a prole to operate hundreds of different computer operating systems for instance, or learn what to do if someone is sick, or if one’s Detroit is making some new noise, or allowing one to identify and learn about some unfamiliar beast, or if one has the appropriate plumbing to go into the women’s locker room at the local university or… wait, scratch that last one, too many privacy Puritans will jump all over that one. OK where was I? A prole sees a wonderful unfamiliar beast, or a rare car model, or a berry that might be edible, or a mushroom, or one is in the mood for sushi, or one is in an unfamiliar town and wants to know where there is fun to be found, or such as that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'>Regarding Anders’ observation of photographing tiger beetles, it took me ten minutes to get even one decent picture. They dart and skitter about, and fly away at the slightest provocation. I didn’t have the right lens to get a good photo from more than a couple meters, and they generally wouldn’t have it. I didn’t have a net either. Next time I shall be better prepared. I want a Bluetooth-enabled zoomer, such that I can get a reasonable image at four meters, then send the info to a 4G enabled device and send it to my super-interconnected hipster group.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'>It is astonishing that it has been twenty years since Gregory Stock published Metaman, which described increased interconnectedness resulting in the evolution of a human superorganism. Dr. Stock was in town a few months ago at a transhumanist schmooze up at Stanford. We had a most pleasant lunch, as we discussed how well that book as aged, with the basic technologies needed for that superprole coming online now. Sooo kewall is this!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'> <br><br>An automatic species detector would be awesome. But it is tricky to get the species right. I can imagine software recognizing the picture above as "a cincidelid beetle", and likely homing in on a few likely species based on color and location. But to get to Cicindela depressula you need to check the length of the labrum and how the eybrow bristles look - and that requires a facial closeup. Many species are even worse, you need to dissect them to figure out what they are. So the species detector should have a micro-DNA sample device too, in order to use DNA barcodes.<br><br>There are a few projects going in this direction:<br><a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00371-013-0782-8">http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00371-013-0782-8</a><br><a href="http://www.ppgia.pucpr.br/%7Ealekoe/Papers/ISM2011-Koerich.pdf">http://www.ppgia.pucpr.br/~alekoe/Papers/ISM2011-Koerich.pdf</a><br><a href="http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/%7Eml/publications/2006/MayoSGAI_2006.pdf">http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/publications/2006/MayoSGAI_2006.pdf</a><br><a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6481468&sortType%3Dasc_p_Sequence%26filter%3DAND%28p_IS_Number%3A4358066%29">https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6481468&sortType%3Dasc_p_Sequence%26filter%3DAND(p_IS_Number%3A4358066)</a><br><a href="http://leafsnap.com/">http://leafsnap.com/</a><br><br>It seems to me that sensor fusion is the way to go: use pictures, animations, recorded birdsong, whatever to help focus the search. One could use something like <a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/torralba/tinyimages/">http://people.csail.mit.edu/torralba/tinyimages/</a> or <a href="http://googleresearch.blogspot.se/2013/06/fast-accurate-detection-of-100000.html">http://googleresearch.blogspot.se/2013/06/fast-accurate-detection-of-100000.html</a> to do an overall guess at what kind of critter it is, then apply local expert software to narrow things down. In many cases it will just tell you "some kind of cincidelid" or "little brown thing" due to lack of information, but I suspect it will be amazingly good under the right circumstances. <br><br>I think we will get the system eventually. And probably sooner than it looks. <br><br><o:p></o:p></span></p><pre>-- <o:p></o:p></pre><pre>Dr Anders Sandberg<o:p></o:p></pre><pre>Future of Humanity Institute<o:p></o:p></pre><pre>Oxford Martin School<o:p></o:p></pre><pre>Oxford University<o:p></o:p></pre></div></body></html>