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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>John Clark<br><b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, April 09, 2014 8:35 AM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] malevolent machines<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 7:14 PM, William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com">foozler83@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt'> </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span> It does what it is programmed to do and cannot do anything else. </span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:#1F497D'>>…</span><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>Then how can a computer behave in ways that the programer did not and could not expect? <span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Most of us here have had the experience of writing a piece of code and having it behave in some way that completely blows our minds. In some cases when writing a simulation for instance, a pattern emerges which results in astonishing new insights. This is what causes me to be such a math geek, and write cellular automata scripts: they do things we didn’t expect, behave in ways we didn’t know we programmed it to do.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span> Any other function is just some sort of mystical belief</span><o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:13.5pt;color:#1F497D'>>…</span><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>The only way you could be right is if 3 pounds of grey goo in a bone vat sitting on your shoulders contains some sort of mystical fuzzball thing that computers don't have and can never have. But I don't believe in mystical fuzzball things. John K Clark<span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I don’t see in principle why a computer made of carbon is fundamentally different from one made of silicon. We could in theory simulate in the silicon computer the workings of the carbon computer. It is a difficult sim, but keep in mind, new and ever more sophisticated sims are coming along all the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>For instance, astronomy fans among us are well aware that there was a nearby supernova in January, but others who don’t follow the field might not know there was a persistent mystery regarding type 1A: they seemed to detonate early, about 1% earlier than theory would suggest. A fairly recent sim discovered that there is far more turbulence near the core than we had previously thought, which causes plumes of hot ash (iron and nickel) at the core to shoot outward into the other layers which are still fusing, which catalyzes early detonation, if you will forgive my open-minded use of the term catalyzes. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>That sim also nicely explained another nagging mystery from way back: why supernova detonations are so asymmetrical. Astronomy fans, didn’t that question keep you awake at night? It did that to me: if a star is made of layers like a huge onion, then the SN explosions should be almost perfectly spherical. Clearly they are not.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Those sims were only made possible by the computing power recently available, and the answers were in place in time to be verified by SN 2014J in M82 in January. That sim should be worth a Nobel prize.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Sims explain to us cool interesting things about stars, so why couldn’t that apply to brains as well? If we can sim a neuron, a synapse and a dendrite, why could we not sim billions of them? Can we really say we know everything that will happen if we do? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div></div></body></html>