From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 1 00:12:05 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 16:12:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: We are wildly speculating while some people have seriously looked at the problems. E.g. Al-Jammaz et al, "Elements for a sustainable lunar colony in the south polar region": http://www.spaceagepub.com/pdfs/Khaled.pdf Google turns up 700+ pages on "lunar colonization". Not a trivial amount to review and that presumably doesn't include much of the academic literature from the '70s and '80s. R. From sentience at pobox.com Sat Nov 1 00:37:29 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 19:37:29 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> References: <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <3FA30049.9040407@pobox.com> natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: > Transhumanism is not a religious or mystical term. Nor is it a political > term. It is a term used to express the ideas about evolution in regards > to the biology and psychology of humans. As such, transhumanism has become > a movement based on the advancement of the human?s lifespan and > intellectual and creative abilities. Eh? Transhumanism expresses a *goal* about the *future* development of humanity, *post* natural selection. What does transhumanism have to say about "ideas about evolution in regards to the biology and psychology of humans"? Such ideas are the domains of the extensively developed fields of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology! They are no longer up for grabs. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 1 00:56:23 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 16:56:23 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031031173225.0191ab68@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <000001c3a012$f89c1560$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > >From: Damien Broderick > > > > >>>[BTW, that's NOT his name, as the other citations show. > It's properly shortened to Teilhard, not to de Chardin or Chardin.] Damien this all reminds me of when you and I went around Palo Alto searching used book stores for works by L. Sprague de Camp. In some they listed him under S, in some under d, in some under C. In one store, the silly proles had it listed under L. It would take away ambiguity if all names were alphabetized by the last letter of the last name. No wait, that wouldn't work either. The French have a bad habit of keeping on spelling after they have finished talking, leading to such absurd spellings as Sioux, when it shoulda been spelt Soo. {8^D spike From thespike at earthlink.net Sat Nov 1 01:14:04 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 19:14:04 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <39020-220031053122541126@M2W042.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <001f01c3a015$73cbcf80$8a994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 4:54 PM > I just received a gift of Pierre Cardin luggage. Think it will take me to > the Omega Point? No, no, that's for holding your Pierre de Cardigans, while you drink Chardonnay on the pier with your peers. Damien P. Broderick From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 1 01:27:49 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:27:49 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <001f01c3a015$73cbcf80$8a994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000601c3a017$5c9386d0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > I just received a gift of Pierre Cardin luggage. Think it > will take me to the Omega Point? > > No, no, that's for holding your Pierre de Cardigans, while you drink > Chardonnay on the pier with your peers. > > Damien P. Broderick But only if your are at least 21 or the local drinking establishment isn't cardin. spike From pietroferri at hotmail.com Sat Nov 1 01:32:03 2003 From: pietroferri at hotmail.com (pietro ferri) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 01:32:03 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike"- Ray Kurzweil Message-ID: >don't you debate about the "Law" direclty with him? I am sure that it would >be of great interest to every extropian! >I'm not at all sure that would be the case. Do you mean that a public debate between two such acclaimed authors like Ray and Damien would not be interesting? Well, I don't see how it could not be interesting... it would be very interesting indeed. > Now, the human genome project was much less so say 10-12 years ago. >The general consensus circa 1990 was that the HGP could *never* be >accomplished. The science for DNA sequencing was well established but >there had to be breakthroughs in the technology. Actually, this is a good example of a correct prediction of Ray. He himself on several occasions reminds his readers of how "simple" it was for him to predict the HGP outcome. :-) _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Nov 1 03:59:06 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 19:59:06 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <3FA30049.9040407@pobox.com> References: <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> At 07:37 PM 10/31/03 -0500, you wrote: >natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: > >>Transhumanism is not a religious or mystical term. Nor is it a political >>term. It is a term used to express the ideas about evolution in regards >>to the biology and psychology of humans. As such, transhumanism has >>become a movement based on the advancement of the human's lifespan and >>intellectual and creative abilities. > >Eh? Transhumanism expresses a *goal* about the *future* development of >humanity, *post* natural selection. What does transhumanism have to say >about "ideas about evolution in regards to the biology and psychology of >humans"? Such ideas are the domains of the extensively developed fields >of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology! They are no longer >up for grabs. Not so! Evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists are only part of the package. For someone who is not determined to engage completely in one particular academic discipline, why rely on those who do!? No ideas are exclusively the property of any one particular domain. Ideas are always up for grabs! Such is the idea of evolution - constantly change constructs. Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From samantha at objectent.com Sat Nov 1 02:04:14 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 19:04:14 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] ping Message-ID: <200310311804.14744.samantha@objectent.com> From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 1 05:39:24 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 16:39:24 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <57050-2200310531204948353@M2W081.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <05d601c3a03a$821b9960$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Natasha wrote: > Most transhumanists are spirited toward life and learning, > but leave the soul on the bottom of our shoes. Indeed a > sense of compassion and understand[ing] is often veiled > by a strong desire to push forward out of humanity's womb, > but it is deeply rooted in transhumanism nonetheless. It this > enough in itself, or do we need to leave an open place for > religious views, or are they really a throw back to ingrained > defaults? > > I don't think we need it. I think we need more love and > understanding, story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun > and companionship, not .. religious mysticism? I don't need religious mysticism to tell me life is worth living, friends are worth having, sensations can be pleasant, emotions are enriching. And I know that some others don't but I'm always please to find one more. Still, I don't think we need be concerned about leaving an open place for religious views any more than we need be concerned about leaving safe places for bacteria to breed in. Religion, theism are natural phenomenon with causative bases. A-religion, a-theism, rationalism, (also natural phenomenon) came later (sometimes) and as a much smaller subset. Multi-cellular life succeeded from unicellular life but uni-cellular life is not extinct nor is it a spent force clinging onto life only at the forbearance of multi-cellular life. At least not so far as I can tell. Functionally, adaptively, memetically, science is the new paradigm, the shorter less proven method or experiment, religion is old (ie. "proven"). Historically (and pre-historically) people have been studying each other and playing politics (by extrapolating and projecting their own needs and desires onto others and using the insight) far longer then they have been engaging in science. Indeed science to some folk of earlier eras was The Great "S" Word rich in promise of dreams to be fulfilled with ever continuing and greater enlightenment. How many scientists died I wonder thinking well not me, not quite, I could not beard the d word dragon, but maybe my children or their children.... Christianity is around 2000 years old, Judaism maybe 6000, and most of the worlds other big religions are even younger than that. Cults that succeed for a time in the meme wars become religions. *Functionally* religions will be around for as long as people *believe* in things, because nature is not the only thing that abhors a vacuum (rational mortal power brokers do too) and *believing* in things has the political effect of leaving one at least *potentially* in thrall to some more rational and more calculating sentient. If one has a tendency to believing one is likely to wake up at some time and discover that ones particular types of beliefs are serving someone else, even someone else in particular ;-) When one announces one "believes", one is announcing (whether one realised it or not) both ones limits and that one is potentially available for manipulation. I am sorry that the "proof" on that one *really* does not fit in the margin but as I am not trying to be a wiseass but to be genuinely provocative and perhaps instructive to some young extropes of less than 120 summers I will expand a bit on this even in this already long post. I think there is a species of naivet? that holds that the social 'sciences' are somehow less important or less influential in ones life than the natural sciences. This is an easy error for a bright young mind born in the age of science to make but it is an error nonetheless. And it can also be a fatal one. The social sciences are in an important sense also natural sciences in so far as what they teach can be apprehended by a mind that is willing to reason. The key practical difference between the study of people as opposed to the study of insentient things is that people as object-subjects do not so readily stand still for re-examination. Evolution has tended to filter out those who are too readily understood *because* they are readily understood and then they are anticipated and consumed by predators who are all too happy to take the resources in the condensed refined form that they are provided. Because people don't stand still for each other to study, the detailed study of other people is necessarily a solitary one. One cannot prove ones insights into people-in-general in the same way as one can tell another scientists how to set up and reproduce ones work in their own lab. But simply because the lessons of studying other people are not easily communicated does not mean that they are not able to be well learnt by some that make the necessary solitary effort. The study of other people is a rational thing for one to do but it is not a moral (nor is it an immoral thing) in itself. Let me now hook back to religion. Most independent confident minds in the course of their development will consider and study both the world of things (insentients) and the world of sentients (other people and to some extent animates or animals) because both matter profoundly. Homo-sapiens are born needy and yearning and they are born dying. They need warmth and nourishment and stimulation. Most of us understand that and we understand that others understand it too but few seem emotionally able to draw things out to there logical conclusion. Perhaps the blackness and solitude of the existential abyss we look into when we consider our own mortality (and other things -there are multiple chasms) scares most folk too much and they have to clamber back to the security and false comfort of group delusion (which ironically is still a cluster of individual delusions that just *seems* like group delusion). Some people get that religion is used by the selfishly (I don't selfish to have a negative connotation) rational to enthral the selfishly less-rational and some don't. And from the ranks of those that get that comes the new cultists and the next generation of religious leaders (though not necessarily only these people - self professed atheists make for poor cultists and indeed may sideline themselves). The battle for political power is a battle to enthral "believers" or compliant confederates kept in confidence of later payment and to add their force be it physical (or their vote or their wealth and influence) to ones own. Atheism is something that a political leader cannot overtly carry, yet ironically god (if he/she/it existed) would not need to merely *believe* in him/her/itself - it would *know* him/her/itself profoundly). God would be an a-theist, as indeed are I suspect most of the worlds true wielders of power, though the toggle switch may flicker from time to time even amongst the very powerful, indeed it may be better (more adaptive) if it does flicker. Now for real spice add in the element of death and the modern possibility of a "reprieve". Historically death has placed a reliable upper limit on how long a lieutenant thrall had to wait to get to succeed their master. Succession planning was important to keep capable lieutenant thralls from launching revolutions. They could bide their time if they were younger than the master they served because they had a chance to replace (usually) him when he died. But if he did not die the lieutenant thrall could not hope to succeed and they would instead be stuck forever in thraldom (until death). It is not hard to imagine (and indeed we frequently do give voice to such imaginings in fiction and fable and nursery rhymes given even to our children perhaps out of some desire to empower them whilst not crushing their 'spirits' for the world of politics that awaits) what a deathless overlord means to a lieutenant thrall. It means permanent endless thraldom. If one wants to get a taste of what the overthrow of death might do to large structures and societies (and why it scares the s**t out of some folks for what it might do to the "fabric of society" one need consider little further than the breaking of the nexus and the changing of the bargain (often implicit) between capable and patient lieutenant thrall and mortal (and so passing on sometime) kings of the hill. Plans and theories are fine but to think that implementing them is just 'one more thing', just another mere intellectual detail or something to be wished away is, well - Forest Gumpish. The implementation step involves actualising *in practice* a conception of reality that is going to remove in many cases someone else's hoped for reality. The thing about the future is that we all have *aspirations* and dreams about it that so long as we are content to keep purely as dreams will pose no problems for others, but if we wish to put them into reality we will find the instantiation destroys or makes impossible the simultaneous instantiation of someone else's incompatible dream. And often the deepest most conventional aspirations of some very capable lieutenant thralls is not the replacement of thraldom (that would scare and overstretch them greatly) but rather their ascendance to king of the hill. Ever notice how religious peoples conceptions of heaven (to give one example) are distinctly lacking in shared detail? Its because a detailed promise even a false one is impossible to sell to multiple parties with multiple and inconsistent aspirations. The illusion works better if it is kept fuzzy. Evolution (or selection) prunes away that which doesn't work in religious illusions too. It keeps what works though - it keeps belief and recycles it from one generation of suckers (babies, innocents) to the next. To go from great idea to actualised reality is alas, not just 'one more small thing'. Each of us has our own perception of the future, of how soon we would wish to get there and what price we are willing to pay. In the end perhaps the hardest thing to achieve is a sustained genuine "we", as theory and idea move into practice and as some folks are determined to take along favourite childish notions with them. Notions like "love" and "spirituality" for instance have preceded this and countless other generation of homosapiens into the world. Words are like coins as well as like labels and they can and have been historically used to purchase thralls. 'We' may not be able move forward whilst carrying some words like 'spirituality' without first unpacking them to see if they containing anything valid at all. If they do then 'we' may do well to repackage just the valid bits into new words or we may find that by using the old debased currency we are in fact only enthralling ourselves yet again and our rate of progress will accordingly stay more pedestrian, incremental and ... evolutionary - which suits those who collect thralls just fine as they may collect or employ us. One can of course *dream* but people have been dreaming for a long long time and the intellectual baggage that we carry effects the speed at which we can travel forward and the extent to which we can stay 'we'. Beliefs are ultimately the perogative and the affliction of the inidividual (reasoning can be conveyed through language and is social, beliefs are presentable only as the static place holders on thought that they are and they are not ultimately social but anti-social) though they may be psychologically sustaining to the individual for a time. Religion ultimately needs little more to work with than belief so the forms of religion may morph but religion as a phenomenon is here for a good while yet. As long I predict as the proclivity to proclaim "I believe". Their will always be some amongst the more rational that will happily accept the power conceded them by the less rational true believers, but what the weilders of power are concerned about is mainly other selfish rationals (sometime pretending to be believers) by with (hard to hide) thrall armies of their own. Sorry, I widely digressed. Truth or dare ? Truth and daring together - naturally, as one only lives once, but the unanswered question is how well and how long? And history has not done with us yet. Nor we with it - I reckon. Brett (Pan-critical non-believer). From sentience at pobox.com Sat Nov 1 07:15:17 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 02:15:17 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> References: <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3FA35D85.5000809@pobox.com> Natasha Vita-More wrote: > At 07:37 PM 10/31/03 -0500, Eliezer wrote: > >> natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: >> >>> Transhumanism is not a religious or mystical term. Nor is it a >>> political term. It is a term used to express the ideas about >>> evolution in regards to the biology and psychology of humans. As >>> such, transhumanism has become a movement based on the advancement of >>> the human?s lifespan and intellectual and creative abilities. >> >> Eh? Transhumanism expresses a *goal* about the *future* development >> of humanity, *post* natural selection. What does transhumanism have >> to say about "ideas about evolution in regards to the biology and >> psychology of humans"? Such ideas are the domains of the extensively >> developed fields of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology! >> They are no longer up for grabs. > > Not so! Evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists are only > part of the package. True, there's also information theory, population genetics, quantitative genetics, sociobiology, cultural anthropology, etc. etc., but that doesn't change my point. > For someone who is not determined to engage completely in one particular > academic discipline, why rely on those who do!? No ideas are > exclusively the property of any one particular domain. Ideas are always > up for grabs! Such is the idea of evolution - constantly change constructs. I stand by my point that if we're talking about anything currently real, as opposed to making statements about what we want for the future, then there is nothing up for grabs. Actually there is never anything up for grabs in science; if the evidence is sparse enough that one can make stuff up without fear of contradiction, it means that one will simply get things wrong. But in this case there is no fear of that; the evidence is strong enough to constrain theories. If anyone tries to make up ideas about evolution in regards to the biology or psychology of humans, they will instantly find themselves shot down by experts in the field. Transhumanism doesn't need, and can't have, and shouldn't have, its own model of evolution, any more than there should be a transhumanist model of physics. There may be a transhumanist moral or ethical stance on evolution, the normativity or non-normativity thereof, but not a "transhumanist" model of what happened and why. Why go there? -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 1 08:01:42 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 19:01:42 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <3FA35D85.5000809@pobox.com> Message-ID: <063101c3a04e$6351bbe0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eliezer wrote: > If anyone tries to make up ideas about evolution in regards to the > biology or psychology of humans, they will instantly find themselves > shot down by experts in the field. Interesting thesis. Let's see if its true ;-) "Instantly" looks like rather a tall order to me when people can make up bs just as well when they are eridite as when they are not, but then my eyes still glaze on matters baysian as has been shown, so I'll welcome any lesson on what I don't know whilst making do with what I do in the meantime : ) Sorry for the interjection. Regards, Brett From gpmap at runbox.com Sat Nov 1 09:29:36 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:29:36 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <57050-2200310531204948353@M2W081.mail2web.com><018301c39ff6$8761a340$a1994a43@texas.net> <009e01c39a7f$d4adf440$12ecfea9@kevin> Message-ID: <001201c3a05a$fb3dfbb0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> If the choice is between these two books, read Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines". Then if you want to read something to put things in perspective, read also Teilhard. Yes the science in Teilhard is all wrong according to the modern evolutionary paradigm. Yes he was involved in a scientific hoax. But at the same time he made a honest attempt to reduce the gap between science and mysticism, and he is one of the few writers able to inspire some of that sense of awe and wonder that, I believe, we also need to cultivate. I agree with Natasha that there are more important things [more love and understanding, story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun and companionship] but I would not dismiss religious mysticism either yet. It has been a very powerful force in the evloution of humanking, for the good and for the bad but always powerful. Perhaps what we need is rethinking Teilhard in view of modern science. Note that if the things we use to say in this forum come true, we will soon witness an evolutionary breakthrough caused not by random mutation and selection, but by conscious and purposeful intervention of thinking beings (ourselves). G. > I am close to finishing "The Spike" and I am searching for my next book to > purchase. I have a long way to go before I feel I am up to speed with many > of the conversations on this list. Should I read "The Age of Spiritual > Machines" or "THE PHENOMENON OF MAN " next? Or should I read something else > entirely? From test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu Sat Nov 1 12:10:37 2003 From: test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 06:10:37 -0600 (CST) Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey Message-ID: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/arts/01AGE.html From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 1 12:26:12 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 23:26:12 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <57050-2200310531204948353@M2W081.mail2web.com> <018301c39ff6$8761a340$a1994a43@texas.net> <009e01c39a7f$d4adf440$12ecfea9@kevin> <001201c3a05a$fb3dfbb0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Message-ID: <06b501c3a073$56380160$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 writes: > Teilhard ... was involved in a scientific hoax. But at the same > time he made a[n] honest attempt to reduce the gap between > science and mysticism, Gui1i0, like you, I like honesty, but how can you tell Teilhard made an honest attempt? Is the reduction of the gap necessarily a worthy goal? Must all gaps be closed? > and he is one of the few writers able to inspire some of that > sense of awe and wonder that, I believe, we also need to > cultivate. Are you in danger of losing your sense of awe already? Does the whole universe the whole sphere of science and the interplay of persons have no surprise and wonder for you now? (Please feel free to treat these questions as rhetorical or not). Hundreds of generations of homo-sapiens made do with lives that were short and imbued with meaning within the context of being short. Heroism was possible. Things had context. For everything there was a time and a season under heaven. Want to change that? Quite a few don't - how do you figure their motives are they just nitwits or could they have some insight into what makes a good life too? > I agree with Natasha that there are more important things > [more love and understanding, story-telling, poetry, imagination, > laughter, fun and companionship] but I would not dismiss > religious mysticism either yet. Religious mysticism like any other form of mysticism is not exactly the problem in my view, the problem is the disproportionate amount of power that flows to a few in democracies when the many don't or can't think. But the power is not an enabling power it is a handicapping one. The problem is that the many still vote and they vote for bread and circuses and promises that cannot be kept. Power is not so easy to dismiss as mere mysticism but it is because mysticism works so well that power concentrates in the hands of handicappers, many of whom do not realise that they are themselves handicapped. > It has been a very powerful force in the evloution of humanking, > for the good and for the bad but always powerful. Perhaps what > we need is rethinking Teilhard in view of modern science. Why? The good that men do is often interned with the bones whereas the evil lives long after. Why not let it be with Teilhard? Do you want to retain every skerick of ever person that is good and noble and let not a single part fall. So do I sometimes. But so what? > Note that if the things we use to say in this forum come > true, we will soon witness an evolutionary breakthrough > caused not by random mutation and selection, but by conscious > and purposeful intervention of thinking beings (ourselves). We say many things in this forum, sometimes good things, insightful things and sometimes less so. But if the less insightful things go unchallenged then maybe they stick too and maybe they should stick. Do you really think that evolution happens "out there" Gui1iO with you (or me) watching as observers or do you think rather that it evolution is a construct, that the mind and matter split is guff and that what we think is as real as what we do? I think the notion of evolution bringing inevitable progress (by the lights of any subjective individual is) likely to be wrong. Evolution as a process is indifferent to individuals even as it is moved along by the actions of individuals. We are more than our genes, this we know, but we are still determined in part by our genes and we cannot do without them. There is no proof in principle anywhere (that I can see) that personhood persists with the passage of the substrate on which it is based. That is an article of pure faith of belief. Everything can be explained away as evolutionary and as inevitable *after* it happens, but try predicting what evolution will do for you next week and you'll see how useful evolution is as a construct for fashioning a particular future. Now some of the above may be unadultered crap, but if it is not exposed as unadultered crap then it is going into the ears of anyone and possibly the brains of anyone that reads it. Do extropes let people poo in their pool? ;-) Or are long posts ignored - hint take a look at the read count its indicative, but not conclusive as not all read that way but some do and bayes says if I am not mistaken that every piece of factual information can enrich the theory. Regards, Brett From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 1 14:17:06 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 15:17:06 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: References: <001101c39f67$61268c70$9865fea9@bjsmain2> Message-ID: <20031101141706.GL27418@leitl.org> On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 06:58:31PM +0000, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > What's tricky about welding titanium other than that you can't do > it in an Earth-style atmosphere? (Titanium burns with both oxygen > and nitrogen.) Probably the cheapest structural material on Luna is fused regolith (which can be done very early with solar ovens made large mylar mirrors on a lightweight truss structure or inflatable/in situ polymerizable scaffold). One can glassify regolith surface, and lift resulting plates from loose powder (or leave them, sputtering them with silicon in situ), or spun fiber/rockwool from it. Making metals (Al, Ca, Fe, Ti) and Si is best via electrolysis (there's a neat process for Ti/Cr/Zr which works in CaCl2 melt), or hydrogen reduction and subsequent sintering. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Nov 1 18:10:16 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 10:10:16 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <3FA35D85.5000809@pobox.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101095216.03298de0@pop.earthlink.net> At 02:15 AM 11/1/03 -0500, Eli wrote: >Natasha Vita-More wrote: >>> >>>>Transhumanism is not a religious or mystical term. Nor is it a >>>>political term. It is a term used to express the ideas about evolution >>>>in regards to the biology and psychology of humans. As such, >>>>transhumanism has become a movement based on the advancement of the >>>>human's lifespan and intellectual and creative abilities. >>> >>>Eh? Transhumanism expresses a *goal* about the *future* development of >>>humanity, *post* natural selection. What does transhumanism have to say >>>about "ideas about evolution in regards to the biology and psychology of >>>humans"? Such ideas are the domains of the extensively developed fields >>>of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology! >>>They are no longer up for grabs. >>Not so! Evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists are only >>part of the package. > >True, there's also information theory, population genetics, quantitative >genetics, sociobiology, cultural anthropology, etc. etc., but that doesn't >change my point. > >>For someone who is not determined to engage completely in one particular >>academic discipline, why rely on those who do!? No ideas are exclusively >>the property of any one particular domain. Ideas are always up for >>grabs! Such is the idea of evolution - constantly change constructs. > >I stand by my point that if we're talking about anything currently real, >as opposed to making statements about what we want for the future, then >there is nothing up for grabs. Actually there is never anything up for >grabs in science; if the evidence is sparse enough that one can make stuff >up without fear of contradiction, it means that one will simply get things >wrong. But in this case there is no fear of that; the evidence is strong >enough to constrain theories. If anyone tries to make up ideas about >evolution in regards to the biology or psychology of humans, they will >instantly find themselves shot down by experts in the field. Why suggest that anyone who is fully versed in their field, such as Aubrey de Gray, or evolutionary biologist Michael Rose, make up a point for fiction sake? Further, are you suggesting that transhumanists's ideas about evolution are, or should be, based in "human" transitional views that center around a limited lifespan and that pushing the lifespan father in years is an assault on humanity's acceptance and even worship of death? >Transhumanism doesn't need, and can't have, and shouldn't have, its own >model of evolution, any more than there should be a transhumanist model of >physics. I think your argument is misplaced. Transhumanism is based on ideas about evolution that have been published and promoted for many years and continue to be published and promoted as the science and technology of new ideas surmount. These ideas are transhumanist because they, in their directive intent, are based on questioning traditional acceptance of a limited lifespan and recycling of the human spirit into a mystical landscape. If you are suggesting that any transhumanist be foolish enough to fictionize the facts developed and being investigated, than this is overly broad. It is in opposition to the basics of transhumanism to "make up" ideas to justify a cause. I hardly think any transhumanist would get away with it for more than a few moment to a few weeks. Our society is very hard lined in attempting to make sure that information is as plausible as possible, if not sorely accurate. Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Sat Nov 1 16:23:52 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:23:52 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey References: Message-ID: <002d01c3a094$8e915900$be994a43@texas.net> > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/arts/01AGE.html Almost typically tedious journalism on the topic, perhaps not as jocose and `those wacky boffins'-ish as some, although quick with this sort of empty implication of absurdity or impiety: `Many in the audience seemed unafraid of amending the presumed laws of nature'. The closing paragraphs do seem to me to come close to implying a sort of scam: < Although Mr. de Grey got his listeners talking and thinking, there was no indication that their interest meant they had signed on to the program. Mr. Diffie [`Whitfield Diffie, chief of security for Sun Microsystems, a pioneer in encryption, and a freewheeling thinker'], for one, was unconvinced by the notion of death as something that arrived by accident in evolution. It was, after all, universal. "My nose for when I don't understand something tells me there's something here I don't understand," he said. " I don't think they understand it either." The audience was not lacking in millionaires, but there was no great surge of donations to the Methusaleh Mouse Prize after Mr. de Grey's talk. According to his online record of donations, $1,849 was received during or after Pop!Tech, which ran from Oct. 16 to 18. Mr. de Grey has no illusions about the challenge he faces. He wants to establish an institute to direct research, he said, adding that he probably needs $500 million to achieve the goal of using mouse research to kick-start a global research explosion on human aging. That includes the prize fund. Just before a dinner the night after his talk, one of the participants in the conference approached him and asked, "Can we talk about funding?" "Yeah," Mr. de Grey said, "how much money do you have?" > By "Mr." de Grey, the NYT means, of course, Dr. de Grey. The journalist comments with surprising candor: `...the underlying science and technology are real, Mr. de Grey argued.... `Yet without true expertise in some very sophisticated biology, it was hard to know how far away from the mainstream he was.' Well, yes. What a shame the NYT didn't commission a report from someone with expertise in some very sophisticated biology. Damien Broderick From natasha at natasha.cc Sat Nov 1 18:36:36 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 10:36:36 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: <002d01c3a094$8e915900$be994a43@texas.net> References: Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101103344.0328c6b0@pop.earthlink.net> At 10:23 AM 11/1/03 -0600, Damien wrote: >Well, yes. What a shame the NYT didn't commission a report from someone with >expertise in some very sophisticated biology. What amused me is that the article was in the "Arts" section. While, incidentally, makes me wonder if Eli might have a point :-) The arts are known for fictionalizing circumstances for effect or emotion. (I can just see Eli pulling out his hair right now! (pssst ... Eli - I'm just kidding.) Natasha >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 1 17:10:27 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 09:10:27 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101103344.0328c6b0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <000201c3a09b$0bd3c9b0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > >Well, yes. What a shame the NYT didn't commission a report > from someone with expertise in some very sophisticated biology. > > What amused me is that the article was in the "Arts" section... In today's San Jose Merc, there was a single sentence about a group of scientists at Wake Forest University that had developed a strain of mice that could survive a direct injection of cancer cells. The sentence was in a section called "News of the Weird" which ordinarily features only the most bizarre crime stories, unexplainable stupidity, unsuccessful suicide attempts, government corruption, etc. Evidently much of even modern enlightened society considers life extension as bizarre, undesireable, immoral, etc. We have a big job ahead of us. {8-| spike From kekich at transvio.com Sat Nov 1 17:36:38 2003 From: kekich at transvio.com (David A. Kekich) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 09:36:38 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: <000201c3a09b$0bd3c9b0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: Spike wrote: > > In today's San Jose Merc, there was a single sentence > about a group of scientists at Wake Forest University > that had developed a strain of mice that could survive > a direct injection of cancer cells. The sentence was > in a section called "News of the Weird" which > ordinarily features only the most bizarre crime > stories, unexplainable stupidity, unsuccessful > suicide attempts, government corruption, etc. > > Evidently much of even modern enlightened society > considers life extension as bizarre, undesireable, > immoral, etc. We have a big job ahead of us. > Fortunately, we don't need society's support, backing nor understanding... not even modern enlightened society's. Having Aubrey (and others)speak in front of visionaries like Steve Case, John Scully and Robert Metcalfe opens up the possibilities of getting one or more people with financial clout and intellectual leverage to bring funding (and even legitimacy) to our efforts. A little seed funding alone will do it. Once we have a proof of concept, it will be a natural progression to human applications. Stay on tour Aubrey. Dave ***************************** David A. Kekich TransVio Technology Ventures, LLC Tele. 310-265-8644/Fax 310-544-9684 http://www.TransVio.com ***************************** From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 1 18:11:54 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:11:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031101181154.91579.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> --- JAY DUGGER wrote: > On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:28:06 -0800 (PST) > Mike Lorrey wrote: > > > > > >Firstly, regolith is dirt/sand in consistency, not rock. > >You apply it > >with something like a snowblower, and you get it off with > >the same plus > >a broom. (Lunar Sanitation Engineers Guild Local 001 > >Trainee Manual, > >Care of Antique Lunar Modules for Idiots). > > > > I don't know much lunar geology. Won't regolith > composition vary greatly over the surface? I can see this > holding true some places. There it might be a little > sweeping to place and remove the stuff. Regolith is the detritus of meteorite impacts over billions of years. It is fairly pulverized stuff. > > >Secondly, leaks occur in space modules due to > >micrometeorite impacts, > >primarily, along with radiation induced metal fatigue, > >both of which > >regolith will mitigate. > > > > Welds don't fail, I suppose? Metal never fatigues due to > mechanical stress, from launch or temperature variation? > Such failure might not happen very often, but help lies > far away. Not really. A potable wire fed Mig welder is about the size of a small beer cooler. Popped welds are a sign of structural weakness compared to actual stresses of the application. Properly designed and built, there should be no popped welds from one launch and a few days in transit to the moon. Where you get fatigue is from objects in orbit/trajectory and exposed to radiation and heat/cold for a long while, i.e. a couple years or more. Most space junk comes from upper stages abandoned in orbit and they do not become hazards for years until their rotation (i.e. alternating between heat and cold) and radiation exposure cause failures. If properly protected from radiation and thermal variation by regolith, bonds between module components should become more secure with time. Metals in a vacuum, especially when unoxidised, tend to sinter together over time, i.e. weld themselves. > > >Thirdly, since the pressure is on the inside and vacuum > >is on the > >outside, the proper place to fix any leak is on the > >inside. > > > > I'd feel much safer with a patch on _both_ sides of a hole > and sealant between the two layers, but I have no > experience with repairing pressure chambers and so admit > ignorance. A patch on the outside doesn't do anything. When you get a hole in your cars tire, do you put a patch on the outside? No, you first put a plug in the hole for a short term fix. For a long term fix you seal it with a patch on the inside. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 1 18:23:30 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:23:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE02E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <20031101182330.46291.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- Emlyn O'regan wrote: > That's an excellent idea, Mike; long overdue. Beautiful polished wood > cases for desktops should have a nice niche amongst the beige-hating > tasteful (count me in :-) > > Have you thought about a wooden keyboard? Finicky, but I would think > it was doable. Also, maybe a wooden mouse; with both of these you > should be able to replace the plastic casing & keys I would think. Ideally, I'm imagining something with a bit of victorian or neuvo design, like an old style antique typewriter, brass hardware trim, etc. though that might be a bit of an effort. A wooden mouse with a brass trackball would be cool though. I've even been thinking of desks with built in computer workstation systems, slots in the top to insert CD/DVD/Floppy media, mount PDA devices, etc. and a flat panel display that slides up. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 1 18:24:38 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:24:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers In-Reply-To: <019801c39f5f$3c63f880$b0994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <20031101182438.10085.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> --- Damien Broderick wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Emlyn O'regan" > Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 7:46 PM > > >Also, maybe a wooden mouse > > Or a little wooden horsie. Computers Of Troy and all that. > > But what about a *real* mouse? Actually, one idea I had was for a coffee mug / mouse with trackball beside the handle. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Sat Nov 1 18:26:35 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 18:26:35 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare Message-ID: <3FA3FADB.4040705@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> On Sat Nov 01, 2003 09:14 am Natasha Vita-More wrote: >> Eli: Transhumanism doesn't need, and can't have, and shouldn't have, >> its own model of evolution, any more than there should be a >> transhumanist model of physics. > I think your argument is misplaced. Transhumanism is based on ideas > about evolution that have been published and promoted for many years > and continue to be published and promoted as the science and > technology of new ideas surmount. These ideas are transhumanist > because they, in their directive intent, are based on questioning > traditional acceptance of a limited lifespan and recycling of the > human spirit into a mystical landscape. > Heh! I think if I found myself arguing with a Bayesian logician like Eli I would go and have a lie down till I felt better. :) But you are not really arguing with him. All Eli is saying is that a transhumanist car mechanic would fix your SUV exactly the same as a redneck Ford mechanic would. Similarly transhumanist information theory is no different to IBM information theory. A transhumanist might be thinking about how to use these existing fields of science in future developments, but that doesn't change existing academic disciplines. BillK From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 1 18:28:06 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:28:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers In-Reply-To: <000101c39f6b$9d789bb0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031101182806.33144.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Yeah, I liked those designs, though they were plywood and hardly aesthetic. --- Spike wrote: > Hey the first Apples were in a wooden box, of sorts. > In some ways they were better than the plastic cases > that came after. spike > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > > Mike Lorrey > > Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 1:49 PM > > To: ExI chat list > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] antique computers > > > > > > I am working on several designs for hardwood computer cases, to > make > > the PC box more aesthetically acceptable for executive desktops, as > > well as for those seeking an organic look vs the cheap appliance > look. > > > > Anyone for a woody? > > > > --- Spike wrote: > > > > > > Altho no one will argue that a model T Ford works > > > as well as a modern car by any measure imaginable, > > > it is considered cool to own and drive one. Same > > > with many items: antiques are chic. How about > > > computers? Are there any antique computer users > > > groups or clubs? Rallies? Competitions? > > > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > > ===== > > Mike Lorrey > > "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." > > - Gen. John > Stark > > Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com > > Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ > > Pro-tech freedom discussion: > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom > > > > __________________________________ > > Do you Yahoo!? > > Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears > > http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ From gregburch at gregburch.net Sat Nov 1 18:58:05 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 12:58:05 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers In-Reply-To: <20031101182330.46291.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Building stylish cases for computer hardware was an idea I had 15 years ago or more. I have expected someone to do something like this for a loooong time. Figuring out why it hasn't happened yet would be an important part of a good business plan. Note: I think there are at least three distinct markets. One is for relatively mass-produced products that might be co-marketed with a Dell, HP or some such PC builder. The second is higher-end and likely sold separately, but intended to be manufactured and sold in relatively large numbers (hundreds per unit instead of thousands for the first idea). The last market is for true one-of-a-kind art pieces. One significant problem is that people have gotten used to the idea that the computer hardware on and near their desk has a relatively short life, so they might take some selling to make an investment in IT as physical art. -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Mike Lorrey Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 12:24 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] antique computers --- Emlyn O'regan wrote: > That's an excellent idea, Mike; long overdue. Beautiful polished wood > cases for desktops should have a nice niche amongst the beige-hating > tasteful (count me in :-) > > Have you thought about a wooden keyboard? Finicky, but I would think > it was doable. Also, maybe a wooden mouse; with both of these you > should be able to replace the plastic casing & keys I would think. Ideally, I'm imagining something with a bit of victorian or neuvo design, like an old style antique typewriter, brass hardware trim, etc. though that might be a bit of an effort. A wooden mouse with a brass trackball would be cool though. I've even been thinking of desks with built in computer workstation systems, slots in the top to insert CD/DVD/Floppy media, mount PDA devices, etc. and a flat panel display that slides up. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From samantha at objectent.com Sat Nov 1 19:43:32 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 12:43:32 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] ping Message-ID: <200311011143.32420.samantha@objectent.com> This failed last night. Trying again. From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 1 19:44:11 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 20:44:11 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: <009001c39f11$d4304720$a4994a43@texas.net> References: <009001c39f11$d4304720$a4994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <20031101194411.GF27418@leitl.org> On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 12:15:36PM -0600, Damien Broderick wrote: > *Obviously* computer bang for buck, etc, has been increasing pretty much as > Ray charts so usefully in the essay cited. This is the very basis of the Actually, that's not at all obvious, if we're looking at computer performance, not integration density (which Moore is all about). Integration density is real, but it's a potential performance, until it results in real-world traction. This is this not exactly obscure STREAM benchmark thingy: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/ which shows this neat little semi-log plot: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/stream_logo.gif Even then: CPU speed is not integration density, and STREAM memory bandwidth is still a synthetic benchmark. A lot of AI code candidates will perform at <<10% of peak. This is the really really really bad news to notorious optimists. So, yes, a lot of how people view Kurzweil results in bogus claims. > technological singularity discerned by Dr Vinge and discussed in my book and > Ray's. The question is whether this contingent fact of local technological > history can be projected backwards across space and time to yield a general > `Law of Accelerating Returns'. To cite that paper: -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From samantha at objectent.com Sat Nov 1 20:20:19 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 13:20:19 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101095216.03298de0@pop.earthlink.net> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <5.2.0.9.0.20031101095216.03298de0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com> On Saturday 01 November 2003 10:10, Damien Broderick wrote: > `Guardian of established religion' my foot. Gould, and more impressively > still Sir Peter Medawar, showed why Teilhard's teleological and God-dragged > model of evolution is just plain incompatible with random mutation and > natural selection. It's a form of divine Lamarckism. It *could* have been > true, in some other universe; it might even be true to some extent in a > Tiplerian Omega Point universe. But it doesn't jibe with what science has > learned to date about how evolution works. > This debunking by Gould and company rings a bit hollow when we increasingly become able to direct our own evolution. Arguments from "random mutation and natural selection" about the possible future of humanity are increasingly irrelevant. Lamarckism is the doctrine that learned skills and information are inherited by future generations. Funny, that is precisely what today's world looks like and will look like right down to the level of genetics very quickly now. So why do we fall back on outmoded assumptions and dismissive arguments? What is missing from our science and that it is not science's job to provide is a vision of where we want to go. Teilhard and others had vision but not enough science and technology. But he and others saw the possibilities even if they couched them in mystical/poetic terms. From reason at exratio.com Sat Nov 1 20:28:10 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 12:28:10 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: Message-ID: They netted around 7k so far as a result of Pop!Tech. Now, rather than hoping and talking about this, how about you folks make contributions yourselves? One of the important things at this stage is the number of donations - being able to show a long, long list of modest donations makes larger donations much more likely. So how about you folks all jump in for $10 or $100? It's a small amount and won't take you more than three minutes to go to http://www.methuselahmouse.org/donate.htm and do it online. This small amount of money will have an enormous, snowballing effect on your future health and welfare: each dollar could potentially save 685 lives according to Dave Gobel's math. I really can't think of any other cause right now that is doing as much for healthy life extension as this one. (Please note that I'm not asking you to do anything that I haven't already done: please see the donor list at http://www.methuselahmouse.org/donors.php - I'm in as "The Longevity Meme", my advocacy and news organization). On a similar note, why doesn't ExI also contribute a token amount? Alternately, one of you folks could easily contribute on behalf of the ExI if the management is up for that (and of course, I think they should be contributing as well, especially given their views on healthy life extension: lead by example). So how about putting a little of your money where your hopes are? Hope gets you nothing: action does. Reason http://www.exratio.com > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of David A. > Kekich > Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 9:37 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey > > > Spike wrote: > > > > > In today's San Jose Merc, there was a single sentence > > about a group of scientists at Wake Forest University > > that had developed a strain of mice that could survive > > a direct injection of cancer cells. The sentence was > > in a section called "News of the Weird" which > > ordinarily features only the most bizarre crime > > stories, unexplainable stupidity, unsuccessful > > suicide attempts, government corruption, etc. > > > > Evidently much of even modern enlightened society > > considers life extension as bizarre, undesireable, > > immoral, etc. We have a big job ahead of us. > > > > Fortunately, we don't need society's support, backing nor understanding... > not even modern enlightened society's. Having Aubrey (and others)speak in > front of visionaries like Steve Case, John Scully and Robert > Metcalfe opens > up the possibilities of getting one or more people with financial > clout and > intellectual leverage to bring funding (and even legitimacy) to > our efforts. > A little seed funding alone will do it. Once we have a proof of > concept, it > will be a natural progression to human applications. > > Stay on tour Aubrey. > > Dave > > ***************************** > David A. Kekich > TransVio Technology Ventures, LLC > Tele. 310-265-8644/Fax 310-544-9684 > http://www.TransVio.com > ***************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From thespike at earthlink.net Sat Nov 1 20:31:05 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 14:31:05 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net><5.2.0.9.0.20031101095216.03298de0@pop.earthlink.net> <200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Samantha Atkins" Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 2:20 PM > This debunking by Gould and company rings a bit hollow when we increasingly > become able to direct our own evolution. Arguments from "random mutation > and natural selection" about the possible future of humanity are increasingly > irrelevant. They were not talking about the future but about evolutionary history, as was Teilhard in his bogus theories of `radial and tangential energies' etc. >Lamarckism is the doctrine that learned skills and information > are inherited by future generations. Not at all. Lamarckism is the doctrine that learned skills and information are inherited *genetically and immediately* by the next generation. >Funny, that is precisely what today's > world looks like No it isn't. >and will look like right down to the level of genetics very > quickly now. That's true . >So why do we fall back on outmoded assumptions and > dismissive arguments? Indeed. Outmoded assumptions like Teilhard's. Damien Broderick From samantha at objectent.com Sat Nov 1 20:56:32 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 13:56:32 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com> <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <200311011256.32495.samantha@objectent.com> On 10/31 , cmcmortgage wrote: "I read a book titled "The Omega Point" so long ago I don;t even remember the author. It often left me wondering if religions weren't created by our post-human descendents who were capable of manipulating the past. Granted, time would have to be linear which I don't believe to be the case. Still, the idea that religion was created to keep us from reaching singularity faster than we are capable of handling socially is a bit alluring. Maybe it could make for some decent fiction." An alternate view is that some parts of religion were an attempt largely gone awry to influence us toward changes within our consciousness leading to a less violent singularity and us even arriving there at all. It is not too far-fetched for me to consider that the future SI and posthuman society runs countless sim experiments toward understanding how the entire transition could have been a lot less painful or get to more interesting conclusions more gracefully. It would not surprise me if we are in such a sim. Sometimes I think religions are remnants of a much more advanced past or a brush with a much more advanced reality that have degenerated into superstition and dogma to a large degree. But I don't find religion/spirituality utterly bankrupt as many do. BTW, I would recommend "The Age of Spiritual Machines" and Moravec's "Robot - Mere Machines to Transcendent Mind". - samantha From davidson at cs.ualberta.ca Sat Nov 1 21:00:34 2003 From: davidson at cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron Davidson) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 14:00:34 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6FC27030-0CAE-11D8-91D2-000393A485EC@cs.ualberta.ca> > On a similar note, why doesn't ExI also contribute a token amount? > Alternately, one of you folks could easily contribute on behalf of the > ExI > if the management is up for that (and of course, I think they should be > contributing as well, especially given their views on healthy life > extension: lead by example). > > So how about putting a little of your money where your hopes are? Hope > gets > you nothing: action does. Well put Reason! As extropians, we all believe a future without death is possible, but we aren't going to get the future we want by sitting about on our laurels, and discussing it to death on mailing lists. Being pro-active is the key to obtaining our goals. What we need now, more than actual money, are *names*. It only takes about 5 minutes to make a donation (http://methuselahmouse.org/donate.htm), and even if it's only for a few bucks, you get your name on the list of donors (http://methuselahmouse.org/donors.php). I am truly saddened by the short list of names we have now. I am sad not to see the names of ExI members on this list. Even if the amount donated is small, it still sends a strong message that you support the idea. There is no better way to dispel the public's skepticism and general disapproval of life extension, than to lend your own name and credibility to the cause. Over the years, I've seen a common pattern on this list. A whole lot of talk, and not a lot of action, save for a small minority. Here is a chance for everyone to contribute something that will go a long way. I would love for you all to prove me wrong. Let's see some names! -- Aaron Davidson http://spaz.ca/ From samantha at objectent.com Sat Nov 1 21:07:07 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 14:07:07 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com> <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <200311011307.07920.samantha@objectent.com> Natasha wrote: "Most transhumanists are spirited toward life and learning, but leave the soul on the bottom of our shoes. Indeed a sense of compassion and understand is often veiled by a strong desire to push forward out of humanity's womb, but it is deeply rooted in transhumanism nonetheless. It this enough in itself, or do we need to leave an open place for religious views, or are they really a throw back to ingrained defaults? I don't think we need it. I think we need more love and understanding, story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun and companionship, not not religious mysticism? " I think we do need some things often seen in the best of relgion and mysticism. We need a unified, uplifting and compelling vision and a deep ethics/morality in the way we deal with one another and acheive that vision. To date I have not seen anything along these lines as unitive or compelling as the best religion/mysticism has to offer. It would surprise me if religious/mystical memes were entirely absent from such a unitive Vision. I don't think the memes will be sufficiently viable without such. - samantha From david at lucifer.com Sat Nov 1 22:04:32 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 17:04:32 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net><200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com><00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> <200311011256.32495.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <027d01c3a0c4$218b5740$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> From: "Samantha Atkins" > Sometimes I think religions are remnants of a much more advanced past or a > brush with a much more advanced reality that have degenerated into > superstition and dogma to a large degree. But I don't find > religion/spirituality utterly bankrupt as many do. An excellent book on religion from an evolutionary psychology perspective is Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained". Boyer does a great job of showing where more simplistic theories of the origins of religions fall short, and explains how religions and supernatural beliefs evolved with human inference systems. David From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 1 22:07:30 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 09:07:30 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] ping References: <200311011143.32420.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <07e001c3a0c4$8b66a520$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Pings, probably, should not go unponged. Brett From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 2 00:55:58 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 16:55:58 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: <6FC27030-0CAE-11D8-91D2-000393A485EC@cs.ualberta.ca> References: Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101165359.032a22a0@pop.earthlink.net> At 02:00 PM 11/1/03 -0700, Aaron wrote: >As extropians, we all believe a future without death is possible, but we >aren't going to get the future we want by sitting about on our laurels, >and discussing it to death on mailing lists. Being pro-active is the key >to obtaining our goals. I tried to make a donation and the "donate" button went to a bad url which said a problem had occurred. I was not able to make the donation. (Psst... Samantha - technological problem happen on many different Servers, not just ExI's server.) Natasha From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 2 01:08:15 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 17:08:15 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <200311011307.07920.samantha@objectent.com> References: <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com> <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101165742.032a3dc0@pop.earthlink.net> At 02:07 PM 11/1/03 -0700, Samantha wrote: >Natasha wrote: >"Most transhumanists are spirited toward life and learning, but leave the >soul on the bottom of our shoes. Indeed a sense of compassion and >understand is often veiled by a strong desire to push forward out of >humanity's womb, but it is deeply rooted in transhumanism nonetheless. It >this enough in itself, or do we need to leave an open place for religious >views, or are they really a throw back to ingrained defaults? > >I don't think we need it. I think we need more love and understanding, >story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun and companionship, not >not religious mysticism? >I think we do need some things often seen in the best of relgion and >mysticism. We need a unified, uplifting and compelling vision and a deep >ethics/morality in the way we deal with one another and acheive that vision. >To date I have not seen anything along these lines as unitive or compelling >as the best religion/mysticism has to offer. It would surprise me if >religious/mystical memes were entirely absent from such a unitive Vision. I >don't think the memes will be sufficiently viable without such. It might help to go back and read my original post on this thread, Samantha. The issue was Teilhard's mixture of science and theology and my covering his work in my writings about the history of transhumanism and why I think I made a mistake. It am not discounting Teilhard's visionary ideas, or the Omega Point, but the fact that when all is put to rest - Teilhard was not on the an appropriate track toward transhumanism. I'm a very "spiritual" person. It is the center of my core. As an artist and poetic, my own spirituality has given me a vision to live with the Navajo Indians, travel through the Amazon Jungle, study Yoga intensively for 3.5 years, climb inside a volcano, live in the mountains for 10 years, etc. BUT it is not based on religion or any one church or doctrine. It is the spirit of life and adventure inside my mind that propels me forward, and was the catalyst for my art. All this is my spirit - nurtured and nursed by the side of me that is the provider and pragmatist. The poet in me lives each and every day, regardless of what job I have and regardless of what ways I have to function in the "real" world in order to survive. I don't need mysticism and a false illusion. I need poetry and the wonder of the universe around me and Carl Sagon's book, _Science as a Candle in the Dark - The Demon Haunted World_. Natasha >- samantha > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From sentience at pobox.com Sat Nov 1 23:10:26 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 18:10:26 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101095216.03298de0@pop.earthlink.net> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <5.2.0.9.0.20031101095216.03298de0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3FA43D62.3090007@pobox.com> Natasha Vita-More wrote: > > Why suggest that anyone who is fully versed in their field, such as > Aubrey de Gray, or evolutionary biologist Michael Rose, make up a point > for fiction sake? Further, are you suggesting that transhumanists's > ideas about evolution are, or should be, based in "human" transitional > views that center around a limited lifespan and that pushing the > lifespan father in years is an assault on humanity's acceptance and even > worship of death? This is wholly unrelated to the theory of evolution. It is not an idea about evolution at all. It is a declaration of a goal, which will be achieved through means other than natural selection. >> Transhumanism doesn't need, and can't have, and shouldn't have, its >> own model of evolution, any more than there should be a transhumanist >> model of physics. > > I think your argument is misplaced. Transhumanism is based on ideas > about evolution that have been published and promoted for many years and > continue to be published and promoted as the science and technology of > new ideas surmount. These ideas are transhumanist because they, in > their directive intent, are based on questioning traditional acceptance > of a limited lifespan and recycling of the human spirit into a mystical > landscape. Mm... certainly natural selection, insofar as it replaces theological assertions about the operation of the universe, denies that human limited lifespan had what we would regard as a "good reason" behind it, either in terms of intelligent design or in exploded theories of group selectionism. But this is not a transhumanist idea. It is not the result of supervenience of transhumanist ideology on the development of a scientific paradigm. It is a flat fact about the historical cause of the biological human lifespan, which any rational observer will accept regardless of whether they, personally, wish humans long lives, instant deaths, or precisely threescore and ten. There is nothing wrong with a transhumanist outlook being *based on* the standard model of evolution. Of course it should be based on evolutionary theory; evolutionary theory is the correct account of how we got here; what else would we use? I object to the idea of a transhumanist model of evolution or even the idea that transhumanists, qua transhumanists, should have their own ideas about evolution at all, unless they wish to operate in a dual capacity as ordinary evolutionary theorists (which is what I try to do regarding the evolutionary psychology of human general intelligence and so on). > If you are suggesting that any transhumanist be foolish > enough to fictionize the facts developed and being investigated, than > this is overly broad. It is in opposition to the basics of > transhumanism to "make up" ideas to justify a cause. I hardly think any > transhumanist would get away with it for more than a few moment to a few > weeks. Right! Whether it was a minor or major point, some helpful pedant on the Extropians list would object to it. > Our society is very hard lined in attempting to make sure that > information is as plausible as possible, if not solely accurate. There is no such thing as "plausibility" where information is concerned - either the probability one assigns is justified on observation, or it is not. One who says, "Aha, here's a gap in science, now I can make up something plausible and no one will be able to contradict me" will, of course, end up being wrong, because plausibility combined with prior desire for a particular answer is not a good way to seek out truths. They also end up being shot down because they didn't know what science could or couldn't say - a nonspecialist doesn't know where the gaps are and will invariably stumble over an issue science has already settled. Ideology, transhumanist or otherwise, is not involved in which probabilities are *warranted*, even if through carelessness it should mess up the calculation in practice. There are transhumanist technologies, there is transhumanist art, but there is no such thing as transhumanist science. Solely accurate sounds good to me. We cannot, will not, should not, have no need to creep into the dark forest of the plausible, and I fear we'll get into real trouble if we try. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From reason at exratio.com Sat Nov 1 23:19:16 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 15:19:16 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101165359.032a22a0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: Try again (http://www.methuselahmouse.org/donate.htm): I just checked that and it worked. They use WorldPay (www.worldpay.com) for donations so it's possible that your machine hiccuped on recognising the different server, who knows. But it's there and working so far as I can see. (The only other thing I can think of is that your browser might not like the form javascript [I'm using IE6 on Windows] so e-mail me offlist if it happens again). Reason http://www.exratio.com > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Natasha > Vita-More > Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 4:56 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey > > > At 02:00 PM 11/1/03 -0700, Aaron wrote: > > >As extropians, we all believe a future without death is possible, but we > >aren't going to get the future we want by sitting about on our laurels, > >and discussing it to death on mailing lists. Being pro-active is the key > >to obtaining our goals. > > I tried to make a donation and the "donate" button went to a bad > url which > said a problem had occurred. I was not able to make the donation. > > (Psst... Samantha - technological problem happen on many > different Servers, > not just ExI's server.) > > Natasha > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 2 01:36:19 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 17:36:19 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <3FA43D62.3090007@pobox.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101095216.03298de0@pop.earthlink.net> <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <5.2.0.9.0.20031101095216.03298de0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101172620.032a4af0@pop.earthlink.net> At 06:10 PM 11/1/03 -0500, Eliwrote: >Natasha Vita-More wrote: >>Why suggest that anyone who is fully versed in their field, such as >>Aubrey de Gray, or evolutionary biologist Michael Rose, make up a point >>for fiction sake? Further, are you suggesting that transhumanists's ideas >>about evolution are, or should be, based in "human" transitional views >>that center around a limited lifespan and that pushing the lifespan >>father in years is an assault on humanity's acceptance and even worship >>of death? > >This is wholly unrelated to the theory of evolution. It is not an idea >about evolution at all. It is a declaration of a goal, which will be >achieved through means other than natural selection. You we step back a moment and take a look at the definition of "transhuman" as "an evolutionary transition from human to posthuman." If Dawkins claimed genes were selfish and had their own set of "goals" about survival than I suppose, in your view, the genes (and Dawkins) are sadly mistaken. >>>Transhumanism doesn't need, and can't have, and shouldn't have, its own >>>model of evolution, any more than there should be a transhumanist model >>>of physics. >>I think your argument is misplaced. Transhumanism is based on ideas >>about evolution that have been published and promoted for many years and >>continue to be published and promoted as the science and technology of >>new ideas surmount. These ideas are transhumanist because they, in their >>directive intent, are based on questioning traditional acceptance of a >>limited lifespan and recycling of the human spirit into a mystical landscape. > >Mm... certainly natural selection, insofar as it replaces theological >assertions about the operation of the universe, denies that human limited >lifespan had what we would regard as a "good reason" behind it, either in >terms of intelligent design or in exploded theories of group selectionism. > But this is not a transhumanist idea. It is not the result of > supervenience of transhumanist ideology on the development of a > scientific paradigm. It is a flat fact about the historical cause of the > biological human lifespan, which any rational observer will accept > regardless of whether they, personally, wish humans long lives, instant > deaths, or precisely threescore and ten. You might be too careful to mix science and philosophy. Your very interpretation of evolution is base on your set of reference points - whether philosophically, psychologically, or emotionally induced. >There is nothing wrong with a transhumanist outlook being *based on* the >standard model of evolution. Of course it should be based on evolutionary >theory; evolutionary theory is the correct account of how we got here; >what else would we use? I object to the idea of a transhumanist model of >evolution or even the idea that transhumanists, qua transhumanists, should >have their own ideas about evolution at all, unless they wish to operate >in a dual capacity as ordinary evolutionary theorists (which is what I try >to do regarding the evolutionary psychology of human general intelligence >and so on). Some evolutionary theorists are transhumanists. It is much of their writings that set the "goals" of transhumanity. Could thinking along the lines of an Omega Point reinvented type of Singularity which infers an evolutionary digression or ingression from evolutionary biology? >>If you are suggesting that any transhumanist be foolish enough to >>fictionize the facts developed and being investigated, than >>this is overly broad. It is in opposition to the basics of transhumanism >>to "make up" ideas to justify a cause. I hardly think any transhumanist >>would get away with it for more than a few moment to a few weeks. > >Right! Whether it was a minor or major point, some helpful pedant on the >Extropians list would object to it. > >>Our society is very hard lined in attempting to make sure that >>information is as plausible as possible, if not solely accurate. > >There is no such thing as "plausibility" where information is concerned - >either the probability one assigns is justified on observation, or it is >not. One who says, "Aha, here's a gap in science, now I can make up >something plausible and no one will be able to contradict me" will, of >course, end up being wrong, because plausibility combined with prior >desire for a particular answer is not a good way to seek out truths. They >also end up being shot down because they didn't know what science could or >couldn't say - a nonspecialist doesn't know where the gaps are and will >invariably stumble over an issue science has already settled. Ideology, >transhumanist or otherwise, is not involved in which probabilities are >*warranted*, even if through carelessness it should mess up the >calculation in practice. There are transhumanist technologies, there is >transhumanist art, but there is no such thing as transhumanist science. There are certainly aspects of strains of science that, in particular, relate heavily to transhumanism. It is "plausible" that some transhumanists might concur that this science is transhumanistic. >Solely accurate sounds good to me. We cannot, will not, should not, have >no need to creep into the dark forest of the plausible, and I fear we'll >get into real trouble if we try. Solely accurate is good to my ears as well. Plausibility allows for questioning. We must question. Natasha From sentience at pobox.com Sun Nov 2 00:48:39 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 19:48:39 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <200311011256.32495.samantha@objectent.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com> <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> <200311011256.32495.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <3FA45467.1040808@pobox.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: > > An alternate view is that some parts of religion were an attempt largely gone > awry to influence us toward changes within our consciousness leading to a > less violent singularity and us even arriving there at all. It is not too > far-fetched for me to consider that the future SI and posthuman society runs > countless sim experiments toward understanding how the entire transition > could have been a lot less painful or get to more interesting conclusions > more gracefully. It would not surprise me if we are in such a sim. > > Sometimes I think religions are remnants of a much more advanced past or a > brush with a much more advanced reality that have degenerated into > superstition and dogma to a large degree. But I don't find > religion/spirituality utterly bankrupt as many do. Samantha, you have too damned little faith in humanity if you think that the tiny fragments of light to be found in religion *must* have their origin *somewhere*, *anywhere* outside the ordinary evolved human spirit. Why must Buddha be the mouthpiece of a future civilization to be respected? Why can't he be an ordinary human, absolutely no different from you, in the midst of squalor and ignorance, who decided *on his own and without any help* to be nice to people? Isn't this truth more tragic and heroic and beautiful and, above all, true, than any bad science fiction that might be written about it? Why must the explanation sound mystical to be accepted? -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From CurtAdams at aol.com Sun Nov 2 01:55:05 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 20:55:05 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare Message-ID: <109.28b9acab.2cd5bdf9@aol.com> In a message dated 11/1/03 14:06:56, david at lucifer.com writes: >An excellent book on religion from an evolutionary psychology perspective >is Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained". Boyer does a great job of showing >where more simplistic theories of the origins of religions fall short, and >explains how religions and supernatural beliefs evolved with human inference >systems. I really liked Boyer's book and the idea that many characteristics of religion arise from how human minds are geared up for survival. But I was very unconvinced that religion is *entirely* an accident of how we're geared up. First, people usually get profoundly attached to their religions in a way I don't expect from such accidents. Second, religious belief is very strongly influenced by genes, more so than any other human behavior I'm aware of. Third, many of us are quite irreligious even though we have the systems Boyer was talking about in perfectly functional form. I think religion per se serves some kind of function - I'd guess a social one - which is very important to successful human reproduction in a premodern context. I'm inclined to the idea that it serves as a mechanism for irrational (in a strict personal cost-benefit sense) group identification. As with many interactions, sometimes it can be beneficial to commit oneself to a course with no way to get out later even if it becomes beneficial at that time. From aperick at centurytel.net Sun Nov 2 03:15:21 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (rick) Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 19:15:21 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth In-Reply-To: <200311020155.hA21tYM21406@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a0ef$8ecf6410$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: >Second, religious belief is very strongly influenced by genes, more so >than any other human behavior I'm aware of. Really, where did you come up with that? I am aware of stupid genes, is that all that you are referring to? You make it sound like more than that. Please continue. From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 2 05:43:21 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 21:43:21 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <3FA45467.1040808@pobox.com> References: <200311011256.32495.samantha@objectent.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com> <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> <200311011256.32495.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101214220.02f42510@pop.earthlink.net> At 07:48 PM 11/1/03 -0500, Eli wrote: Why must Buddha be the mouthpiece of a future civilization to be respected? Why can't he be an ordinary human, absolutely no different from you, in the midst of squalor and ignorance, who decided *on his own and without any help* to be nice to people? Isn't this truth more tragic and heroic and beautiful and, above all, true, than any bad science fiction that might be written about it? Why must the explanation sound mystical to be accepted? Excellent. Beautiful. Yes. Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sentience at pobox.com Sun Nov 2 07:16:06 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 02:16:06 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <109.28b9acab.2cd5bdf9@aol.com> References: <109.28b9acab.2cd5bdf9@aol.com> Message-ID: <3FA4AF36.7050703@pobox.com> CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > > I really liked Boyer's book and the idea that many characteristics of religion > arise from how human minds are geared up for survival. But I was very > unconvinced that religion is *entirely* an accident of how we're geared up. > First, people usually get profoundly attached to their religions in a way > I don't expect from such accidents. Second, religious belief is very strongly > influenced by genes, more so than any other human behavior I'm aware of. > Third, many of us are quite irreligious even though we have the systems > Boyer was talking about in perfectly functional form. > > I think religion per > se serves some kind of function - I'd guess a social one - which is very > important to successful human reproduction in a premodern context. I'm > inclined to the idea that it serves as a mechanism for irrational (in a strict > personal cost-benefit sense) group identification. As with many interactions, > sometimes it can be beneficial to commit oneself to a course with no way to > get out later even if it becomes beneficial at that time. Nonreligious people tended to get burned at the stake until very recently. Figure that sometime way back in human history religion started as an epiphenomenon, and shortly thereafter it became extremely nonadaptive to start asking nosy questions. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From CurtAdams at aol.com Sun Nov 2 07:56:45 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 02:56:45 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth Message-ID: <140.1ba42958.2cd612bd@aol.com> In a message dated 11/1/03 19:20:32, aperick at centurytel.net writes: > >CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > >>Second, religious belief is very strongly influenced by genes, more so >>than any other human behavior I'm aware of. > >Really, where did you come up with that? I am aware of stupid genes, is >that all that you are referring to? You make it sound like more than >that. Please continue. It's not "stupid genes". I'll try to find the reference when I'm back at the University Monday. Basically somebody did the classic twin study, measuring degree of religious belief. I think it was 3 levels; something like devout, churchgoing, and unchurched. Identical twins raised separately had about an 80% concordance while fraternal twins had only about 50%. Specific religious beliefs were not particularly correlated. The large differences between identical and fraternal twins indicates that genetics makes a big difference in the degree of religious belief. From CurtAdams at aol.com Sun Nov 2 08:04:25 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 03:04:25 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare Message-ID: <196.21f17df2.2cd61489@aol.com> In a message dated 11/1/03 23:20:10, sentience at pobox.com writes: >Nonreligious people tended to get burned at the stake until very recently. Yes, but so did heretics. Actually heretics tended to get it worse. Christians had it way worse in pagan Rome than areligious philosophers. > Figure that sometime way back in human history religion started as an >epiphenomenon, and shortly thereafter it became extremely nonadaptive to >start asking nosy questions. Except they *did* ask nosy questions - only the questions involved (mostly) proposing alternate religions rather than questioning religion itself. There's a funny quote from, I think, the Durants' History of Western Civilization from a traveler to Byzantine Constantinople complaining that you couldn't buy bread or get a haircut without having to suffer through long discourses on one side or the other of various subtle theological disputes which, at the time, were inciting pogroms and civil war. From samantha at objectent.com Sun Nov 2 08:14:46 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 01:14:46 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <3FA45467.1040808@pobox.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <200311011256.32495.samantha@objectent.com> <3FA45467.1040808@pobox.com> Message-ID: <200311020014.46482.samantha@objectent.com> On Saturday 01 November 2003 16:48, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Samantha Atkins wrote: > > An alternate view is that some parts of religion were an attempt largely > > gone awry to influence us toward changes within our consciousness leading > > to a less violent singularity and us even arriving there at all. It is > > not too far-fetched for me to consider that the future SI and posthuman > > society runs countless sim experiments toward understanding how the > > entire transition could have been a lot less painful or get to more > > interesting conclusions more gracefully. It would not surprise me if > > we are in such a sim. > > > > Sometimes I think religions are remnants of a much more advanced past or > > a brush with a much more advanced reality that have degenerated into > > superstition and dogma to a large degree. But I don't find > > religion/spirituality utterly bankrupt as many do. > > Samantha, you have too damned little faith in humanity if you think that > the tiny fragments of light to be found in religion *must* have their > origin *somewhere*, *anywhere* outside the ordinary evolved human spirit. > Why must Buddha be the mouthpiece of a future civilization to be > respected? Why can't he be an ordinary human, absolutely no different > from you, in the midst of squalor and ignorance, who decided *on his own > and without any help* to be nice to people? Isn't this truth more tragic > and heroic and beautiful and, above all, true, than any bad science > fiction that might be written about it? Why must the explanation sound > mystical to be accepted? This is a strange response to what I wrote. I certainly meant no disrespect nor do I have an lack of faith in humanity at all. Rather I was speaking to those who act as if religion/sprituality is worthless (true lack of faith in humanity imho) or has nothing further to say now that we have science. The best of religion and spirituality is far beyond "being nice to people". Bad science fiction? I don't think so. I think we are now in a position to make all of those deepest yearnings real. But ask yourself what sorts of myths would occur in the remnants of humanity left behind by an outward bound Singularity. You might get an interesting and provocative reexamination of a few religious memes. I do not grant that one view of how religion/spirituality came to be is privileged. The truth and hypotheses about the truth are much richer and more fun. Why will visions for the future need a mystical wrapper to get accepted? Perhaps because the mystical stuff is inextricably part of the majority of human beings? - samantha From samantha at objectent.com Sun Nov 2 08:20:24 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 01:20:24 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <109.28b9acab.2cd5bdf9@aol.com> References: <109.28b9acab.2cd5bdf9@aol.com> Message-ID: <200311020020.24256.samantha@objectent.com> On Saturday 01 November 2003 17:55, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 11/1/03 14:06:56, david at lucifer.com writes: > >An excellent book on religion from an evolutionary psychology perspective > >is Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained". Boyer does a great job of showing > >where more simplistic theories of the origins of religions fall short, and > >explains how religions and supernatural beliefs evolved with human > > inference systems. > > I really liked Boyer's book and the idea that many characteristics of > religion arise from how human minds are geared up for survival. But I was > very unconvinced that religion is *entirely* an accident of how we're > geared up. First, people usually get profoundly attached to their religions > in a way I don't expect from such accidents. Second, religious belief is > very strongly influenced by genes, more so than any other human behavior > I'm aware of. Third, many of us are quite irreligious even though we have > the systems Boyer was talking about in perfectly functional form. > > I think religion per > se serves some kind of function - I'd guess a social one - which is very > important to successful human reproduction in a premodern context. I'm > inclined to the idea that it serves as a mechanism for irrational (in a > strict personal cost-benefit sense) group identification. As with many > interactions, sometimes it can be beneficial to commit oneself to a course > with no way to get out later even if it becomes beneficial at that time. > Religion serves as a way of making sense of what cannot yet be made sense of. It serves as a means of idealizing how things should/could be beyond the ability to make them so, yet. It serves as a lens for focusing highly charged desires and refining visions of what the ultimate best is. Of course it also serves as a lens for sactifying and focusing a lot that is not so positive at all. But all of this is cold and removed from the fire of what a living spirituality is. - s From jacques at dtext.com Sun Nov 2 11:59:56 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 12:59:56 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <3FA45467.1040808@pobox.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031195605.0327e7a0@pop.earthlink.net> <200311011220.19460.samantha@objectent.com> <00dc01c3a0b7$16390200$be994a43@texas.net> <200311011256.32495.samantha@objectent.com> <3FA45467.1040808@pobox.com> Message-ID: <3FA4F1BC.6060809@dtext.com> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Samantha, you have too damned little faith in humanity if you think that > the tiny fragments of light to be found in religion *must* have their > origin *somewhere*, *anywhere* outside the ordinary evolved human > spirit. Why must Buddha be the mouthpiece of a future civilization to > be respected? Why can't he be an ordinary human, absolutely no > different from you, in the midst of squalor and ignorance, who decided > *on his own and without any help* to be nice to people? I would agree with Eliezer that the origin of religion doesn't need to be seeked outside of the human mind (though I would stay open to Samantha's or other suggestions), and I would agree with Samantha that there is much more to it than "being nice to people". In fact when I think of religion, this is not at all what I think of. When contemplating transhumanist possibilities, one cannot help to wonder how religions could somehow anticipate such things. Take the transmigration of souls. Given our understanding of the mind-body, this is a totally hopeless theory. When the body dies, there is nothing that escapes the body and goes into another body: the whole body-mind gets lost. So our best scientific knowledge makes transmigration of soul something utterly absurd, based on a gross misconception of what a mind is. But, at the same time, the same scientific knowledge seems to be on the verge of giving us an actual transmigration of minds, the mind going from one body to another body. So we go back to the original religious vision and we wonder: did they stumble on this by pure accident or what? How could they form such ideas, which may now happen to be true? And the answer is not that they were informed by civilisations of the future, but that the human mind is really that strange animal thing for which an animal body is too tight a dress. A human being can imagine much more that what he is; and his situation, and the limits of this situation, appear to him as bizarre. It is an "unexpected" consequence of brain evolution through social interaction and language. The human mind sees things from above, from outside; it can still assist the human being to make fire, hunt animals and find mates, like the minds of his ancestors, but it has a power of imagination and distanciation that is so much larger that it is not really adapted to the body anymore (or the other way around if you prefer). Behold, this is our story: we accidentally became too imaginative for what we were, and, after developing knowledge for centuries, we are now finally going to bring the being to the level of the imagination. Jacques From david at lucifer.com Sun Nov 2 19:02:34 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 14:02:34 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <109.28b9acab.2cd5bdf9@aol.com> Message-ID: <06ac01c3a173$e008cd10$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> From: > I really liked Boyer's book and the idea that many characteristics of religion > arise from how human minds are geared up for survival. But I was very > unconvinced that religion is *entirely* an accident of how we're geared up. I don't think that was Boyer's point. He is saying that the evolved systems in the human mind provide a very fertile breeding ground for supernatural memes, so rather than religion being entirely an accident it is pretty much inevitable given human nature. In other words, it would be truly remarkable if humans didn't have religions for the same reasons it would be highly unlikely if humans didn't have any sort of music. The fact that some of us are non-religious or non-musical doesn't change the fact. Nor would it be a less credible theory if it turned out that individual dispositions toward religion or music was linked to genes. The fact that some people become very attached to their religion (or music) doesn't seem relevant either. David From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sun Nov 2 21:19:59 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 22:19:59 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101165359.032a22a0@pop.earthlink.net> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031101165359.032a22a0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, Natasha Vita-More wrote: >At 02:00 PM 11/1/03 -0700, Aaron wrote: > >>As extropians, we all believe a future without death is possible, but we >>aren't going to get the future we want by sitting about on our laurels, >>and discussing it to death on mailing lists. Being pro-active is the key >>to obtaining our goals. > >I tried to make a donation and the "donate" button went to a bad url which >said a problem had occurred. I was not able to make the donation. It did work for me. Ciao, Alfio From aperick at centurytel.net Sun Nov 2 22:06:06 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (rick) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 14:06:06 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Diehard de Chardon - Truth In-Reply-To: <200311021900.hA2J06M17370@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a18d$84d29600$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: It's not "stupid genes". I'll try to find the reference when I'm back at the University Monday. Basically somebody did the classic twin study, measuring degree of religious belief. I think it was 3 levels; something like devout, churchgoing, and uncharted. Identical twins raised separately had about an 80% concordance while fraternal twins had only about 50%. Specific religious beliefs were not particularly correlated. The large differences between identical and fraternal twins indicates that genetics makes a big difference in the degree of religious belief. Rick (aperick at centurytel.net) responds: I would need to see the raw data. I suspect that the samples size may be fairly small and that there are several uncontrolled or overlooked factors which could be at play. Twins in general, and identical ones in particular, may tend to be adopted into similar sorts of families. Until I see the raw data I cannot discount the possibility that stupid genes may yet be at work -- somewhere. In any case, surely there must be goggles of tendencies determined by genes. Are we really all that certain that the tendency towards religious faith is coded in genes to a higher degree than most other tendencies are? I have observed persons from very religious families revert to atheism -- apparently due to enlightenment. There seem to be many different types of atheism, that is to say different sets of goings that lead to godless views. I've got mine, and mine can beat the pants off yours:) From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 3 02:21:24 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 20:21:24 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Nigeria is in Australia References: <000001c3a18d$84d29600$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: <006501c3a1b1$33538220$259d4a43@texas.net> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/31/1067233357921.html Australian head of Nigerian scam defrauded people of $5m Sydney October 31, 2003 An Australian pensioner managed to defraud $5 million from unsuspecting victims, including a Saudi Arabian sheikh, in a global internet scam, a NSW court was told today. ... Legal Aid defence solicitor Catherine Colquhoun said her client was a family man currently surviving on a disability pension. "His wife and family are in Sydney, he attends church every Sunday and cares for his sick and elderly parents," Ms Colquhoun said during a bail application. She said Marinellis had also been diagnosed with schizophrenia. From nanogirl at halcyon.com Mon Nov 3 03:07:48 2003 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 19:07:48 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Nanogirl News~ Message-ID: <007a01c3a1b7$a993f900$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> The Nanogirl News November 2, 2003 Intel Funds Nanotechnology Project For Early Disease Detection. Intel Funds Nanotechnology Project For Early Disease Detection. Intel Corporation and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center today announced a collaborative research effort to apply Intel's expertise in nanotechnology to develop improved methods of studying, diagnosing and preventing cancer. The announcement was made at the BioSilico Seminar, held at Stanford University. (SpaceDaily 10/24/03) http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacemedicine-03zb.html A nanotechnology report attached to a Bush administration supplemental budget request touts the technology as the next big thing in areas like data storage, sensors and manufacturing. The Bush administration requested $849 million for nanotechnology research in its fiscal 2004 budget request. The total includes about 14 government agencies participating in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). (EETimes 10/17/03) http://www.eet.com/at/n/news/OEG20031017S0053 Tiny Robots to Stronger Steel, Caterpillar Scientist Touts Nano. It's a small world, after all. That's not just a song or theme park ride but the wave of future technology. Nanotechnology is work done at the molecular level that creates new structures and functions. And it's now attracting millions of dollars in government funding around the world, said Larry Seitzman, a materials scientist with Caterpillar Inc. Seitzman addressed 100 people Friday afternoon at the Downtown Peoria Public Library branch in the latest in a series of monthly science presentations put on by Peoria NEXT, the central Illinois consortium that includes local hospitals, universities, businesses and the agriculture lab. (SmallTimes 10/31/03) http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=6863 First large scale release of nanotechnology product into the environment provokes concern. An international action group has expressed its concern following the largest environmental release to date of a product created using nanotechnology. A solution intended to prevent erosion has been sprayed on 1,400 acres of Taos Pueblo Native Indian land in the US after a fire destroyed 5,000 acres in an area which is considered sacred by the First Nations community. The fire left the mountainside exposed to erosion and threatened the community's water source. Aerosolised and dropped from helicopters, the product causes silicate particles to self-assemble in the presence of water, forming a crystal matrix. This acts as a mulch, preventing erosion while allowing seeds that have been added to the mix to establish themselves in the soil. The ETC (erosion, technology and concentration) group are concerned that a novel nanotechnology product has been released into the environment without any investigation into potential consequences. (Cordis 10/31/03) Researchers Create 'Supersized' Molecule Of DNA. Scientists at Stanford University have created an expanded molecule of DNA with a double helix wider than any found in nature. Besides being more heat resistant than natural DNA, the new version glows in the dark - a property that could prove useful in detecting genetic defects in humans. A description of the molecule, dubbed ''xDNA,'' is published in the Oct. 31 issue of the journal Science. ''We've designed a genetic system that's completely new and unlike any living system on Earth, '' said Eric T. Kool, a professor of chemistry at Stanford and co-author of the Science study. ''Unlike natural DNA, our expanded molecule is fluorescent and is considerably more stable when subjected to higher temperatures.'' (ScienceDaily 10/31/03) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031031064709.htm The Travels of An Exciton. Researchers have tracked their first exciton. A team reports in the 24 October PRL that they imaged the wave-like motion of the particle, which is essential to the operation of lasers in CD players and grocery scanners. They detected the light of a single trapped exciton and distinguished it from that of a double-particle called a biexciton. The technique may be used in the future to view the wave nature of other nanoscale particles. (Physical Review Focus 10/24/03) http://focus.aps.org/story/v12/st15 Foresight at Pop!Tech 2003. Foresight President Christine Peterson's talk at Pop!Tech 2003, a conference held Oct. 16-19 in Camden, Maine, on "The Impact of Technology on People", presented Foresight's view on the "Sea Change" to be brought by technological transformation over the coming decades. She was quoted on the importance of investment in developing molecular nanotechnology (recently termed "zettatechnology") for the sake of curing diseases, safe-guarding security, protecting the environment, and easily traveling in space. (Nanodot 10/30/03) http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/31/0930244&mode=nocomment&threshold= Nanomotors realize visionary's dream. One of the ambitions of nanotechnology, building motors on a molecular scale, has been realized by scientists in America. Researchers at Berkeley at the University of California created the world's smallest electrical device earlier this year - one hundred million of which could fit on the end of a pin...The motors - the work of Berkeley researchers Alex Zettl and Adam Fennimore - were built using a atom-fine point of a nano-probe, inserting the circuits into place on a silicon chip. The motor sits in the middle of a silicon chip four millimetres square. The motor itself is much, much smaller - the shaft is a half a tenth of a thousandth of a millimetre thick. (BBCNews 10/30/03) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3224329.stm Science plans 'non-stick' submarine. US nanotechnologists are developing what they think could be the ultimate non-stick surface. It is covered with nano-scale needles that enable a liquid, for example, to slip straight off it. One application could be non-stick submarines which would glide through the water with much less resistance and require less force and fuel to propel them...-other applications discussed:-Water hating...Expensive raincoat...Gecko inspiration...Rescue robots. (BBC 10/10/03) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3178136.stm Nanomedicine Vital to Finding a Cancer Cure. The new science of nanomedicine is advancing faster than even experts had expected and many predict the technology will play a vital role in achieving the federal government's stated goal of eliminating suffering and death from cancer by 2015. "Basically, without nanotechnology, it would be impossible to address this issue," Mihail C. Roco, senior advisor for nanotechnology at the National Science Foundation, told United Press International. Roco also serves as chair of the National Science and Technology Council's subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology. (The SmallTimes 10/10/03) http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=6777 Microscopic cracks spoil the transparency of glass, nano-researchers find. The cloudy look on cleaned glass is scattered light, not streaks of dirt. A fundamental discovery about the behavior of cooling glass could have a significant impact on the glass- and plastic-making industries, say researchers at Lehigh University. Himanshu Jain, Diamond chair and professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh, says the breakthrough was made possible by a combination of nanoscopic science and an old-fashioned kitchen recipe. (Eurekalert 10/10/03) http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-10/lu-mcs101003.php Doctor Tests Gold in Fighting Cancer. An Arkansas doctor is trying to find a safe and efficient way to target cancerous cells using flecks of gold that are only nanometers wide. It could set a new standard for breast cancer therapy. Dr. Vladimir Zharov, a biomedical engineer and director of laser research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, won a $106,500 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, to study the treatment concept. The concept is still unproven, but preliminary tests have shown the gold "nanoparticles" could interact with laser radiation to destroy only the targeted cells, without collateral damage to healthy cells, Zharov said. (Newsday 10/13/03) Enough Already By Ronald Bailey at Reason Online. A leading environmentalist makes a foolish case against technological innovation. Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, by Bill McKibben, New York: Times Books, 288 pages, $25. Environmentalist Bill McKibben has had enough, and he thinks you've had enough too. That's why he wants to stop the development of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics in their tracks. McKibben fears that, if unchecked, these technologies will transform human life ruinously. "These are the most anti-choice technologies anyone's ever thought of," he insists (the emphasis is his). "In widespread use, they will first rob parents of their liberty, and then strip freedom from every generation that follows. In the end, they will destroy forever the possibility of meaningful choice." That claim is not only complete nonsense, it is exactly backward. According to McKibben, science and technology have long been destroying human meaning. "Meaning has been in decline for a very long time, almost since the start of civilization," he asserts. In his neo-Romantic view, humanity once lived in an enchanted world in which every rock, tree, cloud, or bird was imbued with spirit and intention. Our ancestors' theory of the natural world was that objects and creatures behaved much as they themselves did. (Reason online 10/03) http://www.reason.com/0310/cr.rb.enough.shtml Foresight Institute Awards Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology. The Foresight Institute, a nonprofit nanotech think tank, awarded its 2003 Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology Saturday to University of California, Berkeley researchers Steven Louie and Marvin Cohen, and University of California, Los Angeles researcher Carlo Montemagno. (SmallTimes 10/13/03) http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?section_id=45&document_id=678 0 Process Prints Nanoparticles. One of the challenges of nanotechnology is finding ways to position the minuscule building blocks that make up microscopic electronics and machines. Researchers from the University of Minnesota have coaxed tiny particles of gold, silver and carbon to assemble into patterns on silicon wafers over areas as large as a square centimeter by using electrical charge patterns to attract and position the nanoparticles. (Technology Review 10/14/03) http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/rnb_101403.asp Nanotech breakthrough shows how brain cells chatter. French scientists using an innovative microscopic scanning technique say they have discovered that nerve cells almost buzz with molecular agitation when they communicate with each other. The work sheds light on how cells operate at the synapse -- the minute gap between neurons, as nerve cells are called.Neurons communicate by sending chemical signals across the synapse, which then latch on to specific targets, known as receptors, on the membrane of the adjoining cell. (HindustanTimes 10/17/03) http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_421345,00040006.htm UD develops nanotechnology professorship. The University of Dayton is looking for someone with big ideas about little things. The school, in conjunction with local development and military officials, wants to find a nationally recognized expert in nanotechnology for a newly created professorship. Nanotechnology is the science of constructing new materials with dimensions about the size of five to 10 atoms. The technology could lead to tiny, fast transistors and the strongest, lightest materials ever made. UD, the Dayton Development Coalition and the U.S. Air Force today unveiled their plans to endow the school's Wright Brothers Institute Endowed Chair in Nanomaterials. (Dayton Business Journal 10/17/03) http://dayton.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2003/10/13/daily51.html TSU plans online nanotech magazine. San Marcos-based Texas State University plans to issue an online magazine early next year targeting scientists and other professionals in the nanotechnology field. (Austin Business Journal 10/17/03) http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2003/10/13/daily35.html Some scientists see cryonics' potential. Most scientists scoff at the idea of freezing the dead and reviving them years after their hearts stop beating. They see it as a sign that some people will grasp at anything that offers the smallest shot at immortality. But several prominent experts say surviving cryonics is not only possible, it's probable. The debate, they insist, is in the details. (The Arizona Republic 10/20/03) http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1020alcor-science.htm l -Also see this Dr. Jerry Lemler of Alcor article: Doubters don't faze Alcor's president. http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1020alcor-lemler19.html Toxic Molecules Threat from Nanotechnology, Expert Claims. Expert Professor Ken Donaldson said tiny particles in diesel soot, boot polish, tires and photocopier toner were already implicated in lung damage. Nanotechnology threatens to generate new hazards in the form of toxic molecules that can enter the lungs, it was claimed today. (Scotsman 10/20/03) http://www.news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2074380 -Also see: SmallTimes: http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?section_id=39&document_id=680 8 Tiny springs. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new class of nanometre-scale structures that spontaneously form helical shapes from long ribbon-like single crystals of zinc oxide (ZnO). Just 10 to 60 nanometres wide and 5-20 nanometres thick - but up to several millimetres long - the new structures, dubbed nanosprings, have piezoelectric and electrostatic polarisation properties that could make them useful in small-scale sensing and micro-system applications. (e4Engineering 10/21/03) http://www.e4engineering.com/item.asp?id=50276&type=news Motorola Labs Developing Ways to Grow Carbon Nanotubes for Faster, Smaller Transistors. Scientists at Motorola Labs are researching ways to improve control in the growth of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) that can make transistors smaller and faster and chemical/biological detectors ultra-sensitive. (Yahoo 10/21/03) http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031021/cgtu004_1.html Nanophase Technologies Announces New Web Site Launch. Magnetic barcodes could provide counterfeit-proof tagging. Barcodes peppered with magnetic particles millionths of a millimetre across could mark out fake goods and documents. Russell Cowburn of the University of Durham, UK, presented the new anti-counterfeit technology at a conference on nanotechnology in crime prevention and detection in London this week. (nature 10/30/03) http://www.nature.com/nsu/031027/031027-7.html I hope you all had a spooky but safe Hallow's Eve! Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Tech-Aid Advisor http://www.tech-aid.info/t/all-about.html nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." From nanogirl at halcyon.com Mon Nov 3 03:18:06 2003 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 19:18:06 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] P.S. The Nanogirl News~ References: <007a01c3a1b7$a993f900$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> Message-ID: <00a301c3a1b9$1c7a1390$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> For those who requested no word wrap in the Nanogirl News, I tried it in this edition and it appears that the end result is broken up. I will not be using this configuration in the future due to this problem. My apologies, Gina` ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gina Miller" To: Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 7:07 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] The Nanogirl News~ > The Nanogirl News > November 2, 2003 > > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 3 04:05:53 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 15:05:53 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Nigeria is in Australia References: <000001c3a18d$84d29600$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> <006501c3a1b1$33538220$259d4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <00c101c3a1bf$c6677400$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Damien Broderick wote: > http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/31/1067233357921.html > > Australian head of Nigerian scam defrauded people of $5m > > Sydney > October 31, 2003 A "Dr NICK Marinellis". That's kinda funny. Almost makes one proud to be an Aussie (not). I was almost expecting a surname like Murphy befitting perhaps an older convict pedigree. Interesting that the guy is suspected of having schizophrenia. A mental illness can be a way of escaping binding contracts. Not a very good way though ;-) Regards, Brett From aperick at centurytel.net Mon Nov 3 05:36:07 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (rick) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 21:36:07 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Diehard de Chardon - Truth (rick) In-Reply-To: <200311030322.hA33MIM25626@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a1cc$635fd110$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Errata: It seems that my spell checker replaced grokings with goings. It should have been: There seem to be many different types of atheism, that is to say different sets of grokings that lead to godless views. I've got mine, and mine can beat the pants off yours:) From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 3 06:03:39 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 00:03:39 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Nanogirl News~ References: <007a01c3a1b7$a993f900$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> Message-ID: <00ed01c3a1d0$3bfe58e0$259d4a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gina Miller" Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 9:07 PM > Some scientists see cryonics' potential. Most scientists scoff at the idea of freezing the dead and reviving them years after their hearts stop beating. They see it as a sign that some people will grasp at anything that offers the smallest shot at immortality. But several prominent experts say surviving cryonics is not only possible, it's probable. The debate, they insist, is in the details. (The Arizona Republic 10/20/03)http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1020alcor-sc ience.html I emailed the Arizona Republic writer, kerry.fehr-snyder at arizonarepublic.com : ===================== In the Arizona Republic, you cite Mark O. Martin, `a geneticist at Occidental College in Los Angeles', as asking skeptically: "Couldn't nanotechnology bring back mummies then?" and add: `Most scientists would agree the answer is no, even though Egyptian mummification is one of the oldest quests for immortality.' In fact, *all* scientists with any sort of clue would agree that the answer is no--not because of the limitations of predictable nanotechnology, but because Egyptian mummies had their brains removed, pulled out bit by bit through their nostrils. Those puppies are *never* going to hunt, and it's no reflection upon either cryonics or nanotechnology. By the way, despite a fair degree of familiarity with this field, I have *never* heard of cryonicists, not even that sub-group affiliated with Alcor, call themselves `Alcorians'. I think someone might have been pulling your leg about that. ============== A Helpful Pedant [maybe I'm wrong about the Alcorians?] From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 3 06:09:34 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 17:09:34 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Diehard de Chardon - Truth (rick) References: <000001c3a1cc$635fd110$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: <00f801c3a1d1$0dfc9640$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Rick writes: > There seem to be many different types of atheism, that is to > say different sets of grokings that lead to godless views. I've > got mine, and mine can beat the pants off yours:) That's fascinating Rick. Why don't you just go ahead and outline yours then for the Exi list. ? ;-) Brett From reason at exratio.com Mon Nov 3 06:52:25 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 22:52:25 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The Methuselah Mouse now comes with animated banners to brighten up your websites and weblogs; it'll be greatly appreciated by Dave and Aubrey if you can find a place for these online. Put them on your own sites, or badger a webmaster you know into using them. Spreading the word helps to grow the prize. Pick up your banners at the link below: http://www.methuselahmouse.org/banners.html Reason http://www.exratio.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Reason [mailto:reason at exratio.com] > Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 12:28 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey > > > They netted around 7k so far as a result of Pop!Tech. Now, rather > than hoping and talking about this, how about you folks make > contributions yourselves? One of the important things at this > stage is the number of donations - being able to show a long, > long list of modest donations makes larger donations much more likely. > > So how about you folks all jump in for $10 or $100? It's a small > amount and won't take you more than three minutes to go to > http://www.methuselahmouse.org/donate.htm and do it online. This > small amount of money will have an enormous, snowballing effect > on your future health and welfare: each dollar could potentially > save 685 lives according to Dave Gobel's math. I really can't > think of any other cause right now that is doing as much for > healthy life extension as this one. (Please note that I'm not > asking you to do anything that I haven't already done: please see > the donor list at http://www.methuselahmouse.org/donors.php - I'm > in as "The Longevity Meme", my advocacy and news organization). > > On a similar note, why doesn't ExI also contribute a token > amount? Alternately, one of you folks could easily contribute on > behalf of the ExI if the management is up for that (and of > course, I think they should be contributing as well, especially > given their views on healthy life extension: lead by example). > > So how about putting a little of your money where your hopes are? > Hope gets you nothing: action does. > > Reason > http://www.exratio.com > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of David A. > > Kekich > > Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 9:37 AM > > To: ExI chat list > > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey > > > > > > Spike wrote: > > > > > > > > In today's San Jose Merc, there was a single sentence > > > about a group of scientists at Wake Forest University > > > that had developed a strain of mice that could survive > > > a direct injection of cancer cells. The sentence was > > > in a section called "News of the Weird" which > > > ordinarily features only the most bizarre crime > > > stories, unexplainable stupidity, unsuccessful > > > suicide attempts, government corruption, etc. > > > > > > Evidently much of even modern enlightened society > > > considers life extension as bizarre, undesireable, > > > immoral, etc. We have a big job ahead of us. > > > > > > > Fortunately, we don't need society's support, backing nor > understanding... > > not even modern enlightened society's. Having Aubrey (and > others)speak in > > front of visionaries like Steve Case, John Scully and Robert > > Metcalfe opens > > up the possibilities of getting one or more people with financial > > clout and > > intellectual leverage to bring funding (and even legitimacy) to > > our efforts. > > A little seed funding alone will do it. Once we have a proof of > > concept, it > > will be a natural progression to human applications. > > > > Stay on tour Aubrey. > > > > Dave > > > > ***************************** > > David A. Kekich > > TransVio Technology Ventures, LLC > > Tele. 310-265-8644/Fax 310-544-9684 > > http://www.TransVio.com > > ***************************** > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Mon Nov 3 06:51:44 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 22:51:44 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Diehard de Chardon - Truth (rick) In-Reply-To: <000001c3a1cc$635fd110$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: <000001c3a1d6$f1f40400$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > There seem to be many different types of atheism, that is to say > different sets of grokings that lead to godless views... When one suddenly understands everything, it is sometimes called an epiphany. If an atheist wanted to express the epiphany sentiment while avoiding the religiospeak, perhaps we could program our spell checkers to recognize the terms grokiphany and grokasm. Example of use: I studied all evening to no avail, but when I inverted the state matrix and integrated with respect to t, it all became clear in a sudden and satisfying grokasm. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Mon Nov 3 07:04:16 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 23:04:16 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] why so low? In-Reply-To: <007a01c3a1b7$a993f900$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> Message-ID: <000601c3a1d8$b21d7a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Dog whistles and cat-B-gone screechers emit sounds that are above the human hearing range. I have some deer alerts on my bike that also emit a sound higher than can be heard by humans. They supposedly work on mooses, (meese?), elk and their ilk too. Can someone please explain why the human hearing range is so low? Is it the lowest of all the beasts? Hey, grokiphany: we know if we breathe helium, our voice pitch goes way up. If we take a hoot of xenon (density ~3x air) would not we get an octave and a third lower? If we talked like Lurch, would the dog and the cat be able to hear us? spike From reason at exratio.com Mon Nov 3 07:07:43 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 23:07:43 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] NY Times article about Aubrey de Grey In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Alfio Puglisi > On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > > >At 02:00 PM 11/1/03 -0700, Aaron wrote: > > > >>As extropians, we all believe a future without death is possible, but we > >>aren't going to get the future we want by sitting about on our laurels, > >>and discussing it to death on mailing lists. Being pro-active is the key > >>to obtaining our goals. > > > >I tried to make a donation and the "donate" button went to a bad > url which > >said a problem had occurred. I was not able to make the donation. > > It did work for me. You've been immortalized :) - http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=69&t=2155&st=0&#entry16182 Natasha, did you manage to get it to work for you? I'm very interested in seeing ExI (and your name, and Max's for that matter) added to the list of donors. Token amounts are fine, but your names are important endorsements in the early donor circles. Reason http://www.exratio.com From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Mon Nov 3 07:04:54 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 17:34:54 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Diehard de Chardon - Truth (ric k) Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE03E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > -----Original Message----- > From: Spike [mailto:spike66 at comcast.net] > Sent: Monday, 3 November 2003 4:22 PM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Diehard de Chardon - Truth > (rick) > > > There seem to be many different types of atheism, that is to say > > different sets of grokings that lead to godless views... > > When one suddenly understands everything, it is sometimes > called an epiphany. When one suddenly understands everything, it should usually be called serious delusion ;-) > If an atheist wanted to express the > epiphany sentiment while avoiding the religiospeak, perhaps > we could program our spell checkers to recognize the terms > grokiphany and grokasm. Example of use: I studied all > evening to no avail, but when I inverted the state matrix > and integrated with respect to t, it all became clear in > a sudden and satisfying grokasm. > > spike grokasm (n): A explosive understanding of the fundamentals of some subject. The subsequent requirement to mop up discarded pre-existing mental frameworks usually involves kleenex. Emlyn From spike66 at comcast.net Mon Nov 3 07:30:53 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 23:30:53 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Diehard de Chardon - Truth (rick) In-Reply-To: <000001c3a1d6$f1f40400$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000801c3a1dc$6a1a9570$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > -----Original Message----- > > When one suddenly understands everything... grokasm. > Example of use: I studied all > evening to no avail, but when I inverted the state matrix > and integrated with respect to t, it all became clear in > a sudden and satisfying grokasm. > spike Then it occurred to me that there are very few words that rhyme with orgasm: spasm, sarcasm, grokasm. Others? It is almost as if they didn't want to compete with it. Understandably. So, those of you who know another language besides English, in that language is there a dearth of words that rhyme with that language's word for orgasm? This shortage in English sure makes it difficult to write poetry. spike From humania at t-online.de Mon Nov 3 08:23:08 2003 From: humania at t-online.de (Hubert Mania) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:23:08 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Orgasm-rhymes References: <000801c3a1dc$6a1a9570$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <002401c3a1e3$b7cd5080$5b91fea9@relius> > So, those > of you who know another language besides English, in > that language is there a dearth of words that rhyme > with that language's word for orgasm? This shortage in > English sure makes it difficult to write poetry. > > spike The following column is an extract from a digital dictionary in reverse order (declining dictionary?) that lists the words of the German language "from behind", a wonderful tool for creating limericks. Please note, that this is just a fraction of the whole amount of words that rhyme with "Orgasmus". Even with this small list you can poetically spread the news of orgasm being available in the animal body in all fields of human activities. I would also like to draw your attention to the words with the end syllable "kokkus" towards the end of the column. They seem to bring a whiff of adventure into the whole affair. If anyone is interested in the whole list, please send me an email. Hubert _________________________________________ Lebensrhythmus Herzrhythmus Mimus Animus Primus Generalissimus Serenissimus Intimus Lackmus Hydrophthalmus Kalmus Kartoffelmus Apfelmus Zwetschenmus Pflaumenmus Quittenmus Unmu? Majordomus Kormus Orgasmus Orgiasmus Chiasmus Chiliasmus Enthusiasmus Anankasmus Sarkasmus Ikonoklasmus Metaplasmus Pleonasmus Spasmus Kardiospasmus Gastrospasmus Proktospasmus Marasmus Ismus Dadaismus Judaismus Antijudaismus Bahaismus Manich?ismus Archaismus Lamaismus Pharis?ismus Snobismus Kubismus Tribadismus Sadismus Wedismus Chassidismus Methodismus Hermaphrodismus Avantgardismus Talmudismus Nudismus Deismus Theismus Atheismus Pantheismus Panentheismus Kosmotheismus Henotheismus Monotheismus Polytheismus Epikureismus Cou?ismus Szientifismus Pazifismus Sufismus Dirigismus Staatsdirigismus Pharyngismus Logismus Analogismus Paralogismus Syllogismus Katasyllogismus Panlogismus Neologismus Phraseologismus Psychologismus Synergismus Tachismus Katechismus Revanchismus Masochismus Sadomasochismus Anarchismus Monarchismus Kryptorchismus Faschismus Antifaschismus Neofaschismus Austrofaschismus Fetischismus Panpsychismus Buddhismus Dermographismus Sophismus Hylemorphismus Dimorphismus Trimorphismus Homomorphismus Anthropomorphismus Isomorphismus Polymorphismus Erethismus Schiismus Lamarckismus Trotzkismus Kannibalismus Tribalismus Verbalismus Vandalismus Wandalismus Feudalismus Hochfeudalismus Fr?hfeudalismus Idealismus Realismus Neorealismus Fotorealismus Surrealismus Legalismus Kolonialismus Neokolonialismus Imperialismus Sozialimperialismus Materialismus Industrialismus Kurialismus Merkurialismus Konszientialismus Existentialismus Kolloquialismus Existenzialismus Provinzialismus Sozialismus Nationalsozialismus Konsumsozialismus Kathedersozialismus Staatssozialismus Radikalismus Linksradikalismus Rechtsradikalismus Syndikalismus Klerikalismus Antiklerikalismus Vertikalismus Vokalismus Kemalismus Formalismus Ph?nomenalismus Finalismus Nominalismus Regionalismus Okkasionalismus Konfessionalismus Interkonfessionalismus Professionalismus Nationalismus Internationalismus Rationalismus Irrationalismus Traditionalismus Konditionalismus Fiktionalismus Funktionalismus Oesophagus ?sophagus Magus Asparagus Vagus Negus Pemphigus Cunnilingus Fungus Argus Bacchus Moschus Abelmoschus tsch?s Tsch?s Typhus Paratyphus Flecktyphus Rhus Zyathus Strophanthus Clianthus Helianthus Akanthus Epikanthus Nerthus Mythus Radius Kr?mmungsradius Visionsradius Aktionsradius Bacchius Filius Nauplius Dochmius Genius Nonius Asklepius Plagiarius Konsiliarius Primarius Ordinarius Extraordinarius Sekretarius Stradivarius Sirius Celsius Spekulatius Mauritius Pontius Nuntius Internuntius Lumpazius Delizius Sozius Jus Abakus Spondiakus Zodiakus Syrakus Ischiadikus Medikus Syndikus Pfiffikus Magnifikus Sympathikus Parasympathikus Jonikus Kanonikus Panegyrikus Musikus Physikus Phlegmatikus Schwachmatikus Kretikus Luftikus Politikus Kritikus Levitikus Praktikus Portikus Ekklesiastikus Kokkus Diplokokkus Staphylokokkus Pneumokokkus Echinokokkus Gonokokkus Streptokokkus Ulkus Dokus Jodokus Diplodokus Fokus Autofokus Jokus Lokus Hokuspokus Krokus Tokus Arkus Zirkus Flohzirkus Schizirkus Skizirkus Medienzirkus Wanderzirkus Gro?zirkus Politzirkus Orkus Skus Sk?s Damaskus Hibiskus Diskus Fiskus Meniskus Asteriskus Kuskus Gutenachtku? D?dalus Hydrozephalus Malus Angelus Hilus Trochilus Nautilus Klus Zyklus Sexualzyklus Konjunkturzyklus Vortragszyklus Gedichtzyklus Phallus Thallus Kallus Bazillus Kommabazillus Tuberkelbazillus Lucullus Lukullus ?olus Diabolus Embolus Obolus Dolus plus Plus Surplus Regulus Homunkulus Mulus Famulus Stimulus Romulus Kumulus Zirrokumulus Stratokumulus Tumulus Titulus Mutulus Volvulus Daktylus Mus From maxm at mail.tele.dk Mon Nov 3 08:44:23 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 09:44:23 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] why so low? In-Reply-To: <000601c3a1d8$b21d7a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000601c3a1d8$b21d7a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <3FA61567.30001@mail.tele.dk> Spike wrote: > Dog whistles and cat-B-gone screechers emit sounds > that are above the human hearing range. I have some > deer alerts on my bike that also emit a sound higher > than can be heard by humans. They supposedly work > on mooses, (meese?), elk and their ilk too. > Can someone please explain why the human hearing > range is so low? Is it the lowest of all the beasts? It most likely has something to do with the size of our heads. The distance between our ears is decisive in how we can percieve direction. This is due to the wavelength of the lower frequencies. Big headed elephants percieve directions of sounds at much lower frequencies than us. The sounds they produce are also have many low frequency components. I am not really aware that it work that way for higher frequencies. But most likely it does. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark From amara at amara.com Mon Nov 3 08:29:48 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 10:29:48 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare Message-ID: (apologies if you see this a second time. forgot the .lists) Natasha: >Was Teilhard de Chardin's bottom line a fervid attempt to realize >a reunion of research and religion? I think that de Chardin has written some useful interesting words though. Like all things, you have to filter, and select what is good for you. Amara From my article: Eternal City Grapsody #4 - Scales of Man: Adapting Technology to Transhumans April 23, 2003 http://www.transhumanism.com/articles_more.php?id=P380_0_4_0_C "Teilhard de Chardin reminds us (3) of the creative value of synthesis in evolution. He notes that technological fields have demonstrated that there is definitely more in the molecule than in the atom, more in the cell than in the molecule, more in society than in the individual, and more in mathematical construction than in calculations and theorems. At each further degree of combination, something which is irreducible to isolated elements emerges in a new structure." (3) Teilhard de Chardin, Phenomenon of Man, Harper & Row, revised English translation by Benjamin Wall (1975), p. 268. -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Sipping coffee on a sunbaked terrace can be surprisingly productive." ---Michael Metcalf [on the origin of NUMERICAL RECIPES IN FORTRAN 90] From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 3 11:50:32 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 12:50:32 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] P.S. The Nanogirl News~ In-Reply-To: <00a301c3a1b9$1c7a1390$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> References: <007a01c3a1b7$a993f900$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> <00a301c3a1b9$1c7a1390$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> Message-ID: <20031103115032.GS10586@leitl.org> On Sun, Nov 02, 2003 at 07:18:06PM -0800, Gina Miller wrote: > For those who requested no word wrap in the Nanogirl News, I tried it in > this edition and it appears that the end result is broken up. I will not be X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2720.3000 <-- is broken up, indeed. > using this configuration in the future due to this problem. My apologies, Gina: it's a good idea to include URIs in angled brackets such as: Many otherwise broken mailers still tend to respect that. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 3 13:51:31 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 07:51:31 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? Message-ID: An article I read that analyzes future trends in employment has me a bit nervous: http://education.guardian.co.uk/further/story/0,5500,1074083,00.html Being a mortgage broker for the last few years, I have enjoyed watching my job become simpler. The technology improvements so far have made it possible for me to work from home. A careful analysis of this trend however has forced me to accept a frightening possibility. My job may not exist 10 years from now! Currently, many specialized web applications exist that allow me to put in a customer's application and get an underwriting decision in minutes. All that is left is selecting the right loan, gathering the required documentation, and submitting it to an underwriter who then decides if that documentation is acceptable to meet the neccessary guidelines for that particular loan program. At this point, they prepare loan documents and send them to the closing agent for closing. It only stands to reason that when solid verification software and text reading software come online that are capable of handling these duties, the job of brokering, and even underwriting will be left to computers. This can be handled without any AI. It will only take some very complicated software. Software that could probably be built right now if someone wanted to invest millions in development costs. In time, it will come. This is a business that I know well, and it is all I am formally trained in with the exception of a 4 year old A+ certification that isn't worth a dime any more. I have decided that I need to find a new career and go back to school. The only problem is, what should I do? To put it bluntly, I have always achieved below my ability level. I was the high-school kid who could have had it made with scholarships, consistently testing in the top 1% of the nation, only to have spent much of my time chasing girls instead of focusing on homework. Rather than go to college, I got my girlfriend pregnant at 17 and got married. That turned into a mess which ended in divorce by the age of 19. Since then, I have chased my tail trying to make enough to support myself and pay child support. Much of the time until I became a mortgage broker 3 years ago was spent working two jobs. Now I am 32. Going to earn my degree is something that I always wanted to do, but didn;t have the resources. Now I have those resources and the time to do it, but I am scared stiff. I don't understand how it all works and what jobs are available. My major weaknesses are the higher maths and chemistry although I am sure that I could fix that easily enough. But I am concerned with my ability to learn the material as well as someone younger. I have a broad education compared to many people with degrees, but it is mostly comprised of self-directed reading on a variety of subjects and has many holes. A couple of things I find fascinating are evolutionary biology and anthropology. But these are interesting from the safe confines of my home. I don;t know if I have it in me to even peg an insect to a board or handle the corpses of dead animals. Also, I don;t know what kind of jobs that would offer except for teaching positions at a local college. Nanotechnology seems very interesting, but the background needed eludes me. Same with biotech. World is intersting to me as is the history of religions. But details tend to elude me as I am better working with broad patterns and ideas and making connections that others miss while examining the details. So I am stumped. I need to find something with a future. Something that will be around right up to those last moments precluding a singularity. I am looking to all of you for suggestions. Thank you Kevin Freels -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maxm at mail.tele.dk Mon Nov 3 14:12:53 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 15:12:53 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FA66265.40505@mail.tele.dk> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > I am looking to all of you for suggestions. Just do it! Starting at university will feel odd the first day with all the young folks there, then you will be used to it. (Talking from experience.) You can easily catch up if you have the time. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark From Karen at smigrodzki.org Mon Nov 3 14:27:16 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:27:16 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? References: <3FA66265.40505@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <002201c3a216$94ffd400$6501a8c0@DogHouse> I agree with Max M. Start at college, you don't need to know what degree you are going for to begin with. You should be able to scope out different departments, talk with students and professors and see where you fit. First step, just start school. k > kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > > I am looking to all of you for suggestions. > > > Just do it! > > Starting at university will feel odd the first day with all the young > folks there, then you will be used to it. (Talking from experience.) > > You can easily catch up if you have the time. > > regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From natashavita at earthlink.net Mon Nov 3 15:46:08 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 10:46:08 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Donation: Aubrey de Gray Message-ID: <244640-22003111315468463@M2W084.mail2web.com> Friends, I have been trying for two days to make donations. Last night ExI tried to make a donation. Please email me and help us get out donation to be supportive of Aubrey. What I would like to do is just call it in rather than using the website. Thank you, Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From alex at ramonsky.com Mon Nov 3 16:10:17 2003 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 16:10:17 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Donation: Aubrey de Gray References: <244640-22003111315468463@M2W084.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <3FA67DE9.7080409@ramonsky.com> Have informed Aubrey; panic ye not : ) AR natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: >Friends, > >I have been trying for two days to make donations. Last night ExI tried to >make a donation. > >Please email me and help us get out donation to be supportive of Aubrey. > >What I would like to do is just call it in rather than using the website. > >Thank you, > >Natasha > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- >mail2web - Check your email from the web at >http://mail2web.com/ . > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Mon Nov 3 17:54:59 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 18:54:59 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: >An article I read that analyzes future trends in employment has me a bit nervous: >http://education.guardian.co.uk/further/story/0,5500,1074083,00.html > >Being a mortgage broker for the last few years, I have enjoyed watching my job become simpler. The technology improvements so far have made it possible for me to work from home. >A careful analysis of this trend however has forced me to accept a frightening possibility. My job may not exist 10 years from now! >Currently, many specialized web applications exist that allow me to put in a customer's application and get an underwriting decision in minutes. All that is left is selecting the right loan, gathering the required documentation, and submitting it to an underwriter who then decides if that documentation is acceptable to meet the neccessary guidelines for that particular loan program. At this point, they prepare loan documents and send them to the closing agent for closing. >It only stands to reason that when solid verification software and text reading software come online that are capable of handling these duties, the job of brokering, and even underwriting will be left to computers. This can be handled without any AI. It will only take some very complicated software. Software that could probably be built right now if someone wanted to invest millions in development costs. In time, it will come. >This is a business that I know well, and it is all I am formally trained in with the exception of a 4 year old A+ certification that isn't worth a dime any more. >I have decided that I need to find a new career and go back to school. Or, you can find a new career as one of the experts in this job. Whoever will make the software will need programmers, funding, and someone who know what the better strategies are. The programs will need to be tested, mantained, upgraded, new ideas must be incorporated in a sensible way. The project director must be well versed in the field. Someone who has already worked in it before. Ciao, Afio From etheric at comcast.net Mon Nov 3 17:58:47 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:58:47 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] why so low? References: <000601c3a1d8$b21d7a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <006101c3a234$21c3b920$0200a8c0@etheric> http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF8/804.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 11:04 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] why so low? > > Dog whistles and cat-B-gone screechers emit sounds > that are above the human hearing range. I have some > deer alerts on my bike that also emit a sound higher > than can be heard by humans. They supposedly work > on mooses, (meese?), elk and their ilk too. > Can someone please explain why the human hearing > range is so low? Is it the lowest of all the beasts? > > Hey, grokiphany: we know if we breathe helium, our > voice pitch goes way up. If we take a hoot of > xenon (density ~3x air) would not we get an octave > and a third lower? If we talked like Lurch, would > the dog and the cat be able to hear us? > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From aperick at centurytel.net Mon Nov 3 18:35:28 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (rick) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 10:35:28 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Brett asked for it In-Reply-To: <200311030823.hA38NZM14685@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a239$4265a8a0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Brett wrote: That's fascinating Rick. Why don't you just go ahead and outline yours then for the Exi list. ? ;-) http://home.centurytel.net/rickw/aonl.htm "an enticing tale of the possibilities of transhumanism" it also outlines much of what I call scientific atheism. From reason at exratio.com Mon Nov 3 20:15:10 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 12:15:10 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Donation: Aubrey de Gray In-Reply-To: <3FA67DE9.7080409@ramonsky.com> Message-ID: I sent an e-mail to Aubrey and Dave, cc'd Natasha; they'll help her get it done. Reason http://www.exratio.com > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Alex > Ramonsky > Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 8:10 AM > To: natashavita at earthlink.net; ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Donation: Aubrey de Gray > > > Have informed Aubrey; panic ye not : ) > AR > > natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: > > >Friends, > > > >I have been trying for two days to make donations. Last night > ExI tried to > >make a donation. > > > >Please email me and help us get out donation to be supportive of Aubrey. > > > >What I would like to do is just call it in rather than using the website. > > > >Thank you, > > > >Natasha > > > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- > >mail2web - Check your email from the web at > >http://mail2web.com/ . > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >extropy-chat mailing list > >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From nanogirl at halcyon.com Mon Nov 3 20:31:01 2003 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 12:31:01 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] P.S. The Nanogirl News~ References: <007a01c3a1b7$a993f900$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL><00a301c3a1b9$1c7a1390$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> <20031103115032.GS10586@leitl.org> Message-ID: <017701c3a249$65771080$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> Yes, I did have brackets on the urls, and I see that not all of them they worked. Gina` Gina: it's a good idea to include URIs in angled brackets such as: Many otherwise broken mailers still tend to respect that. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl From reason at exratio.com Mon Nov 3 20:55:08 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 12:55:08 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] P.S. The Nanogirl News~ In-Reply-To: <017701c3a249$65771080$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> Message-ID: Hmm. I leave mine unbracketed, but always put them on a line by themselves with no wrap. That seems to work. Reason http://www.exratio.com > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Gina Miller > Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 12:31 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] P.S. The Nanogirl News~ > > > Yes, I did have brackets on the urls, and I see that not all of them they > worked. Gina` > > > Gina: it's a good idea to include URIs in angled brackets such as: > > > Many otherwise broken mailers still tend to respect that. > > > -- Eugen* Leitl leitl > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From natashavita at earthlink.net Mon Nov 3 21:18:25 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 16:18:25 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] CryoFeast 2003 Message-ID: <46640-220031113211825483@M2W034.mail2web.com> Friends, Would anyone living in Texas like to join me in preparing the CryoFeast 2003, Texas location, for Alcor? It will be located at our home in Austin. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 3 23:06:55 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 10:06:55 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Brett asked for it References: <000001c3a239$4265a8a0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: <00d801c3a25f$2e794c40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Rick wrote: [There seem to be many different types of atheism, that is to say different sets of g[r]o[k]ings that lead to godless views. I've got mine, and mine can beat the pants off yours:) ] > Brett wrote: That's fascinating Rick. Why don't you just go > ahead and outline yours then for the Exi list. ? ;-) > > http://home.centurytel.net/rickw/aonl.htm > > "an enticing tale of the possibilities of transhumanism" it also > outlines much of what I call scientific atheism. Ah "the pitch" then the reposition to the product you actually have ;-). Not what you offered, nor what I asked for. "An unabashed didactic tale; with a message fit only for those whose unique (sic) abilities to grasp new ideas allow them to conceptually soar". This doesn't parse. If the 'abilities' are unique *you* are stuck in a world with no audience. If the abilities are not unique you've erred real early on in saying they are. Perhaps you and I have different concepts of *unique*. Yours doesn't appeal to me. This argument is not a beat-the-pants-off-other-arguments case for atheism. * I* don't think it even beats this one for instance: ---- God would not need to settle for mere *belief*. God would know. God would be an a-theist. I do not need to *believe* in myself I know. ---- Regards, Brett PS: Your 26 page paper may still be entertaining. Perhaps I'll read it later. From neptune at superlink.net Tue Nov 4 01:16:21 2003 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 20:16:21 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] CryoFeast 2003 References: <46640-220031113211825483@M2W034.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <009f01c3a271$42bd1d00$d3cd5cd1@neptune> On Monday, November 03, 2003 4:18 PM natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: > Would anyone living in Texas like to > join me in preparing the CryoFeast > 2003, Texas location, for Alcor? It > will be located at our home in Austin. Sorry, it's a bit of a trek for me.:) I'm wonder if there's one in the Northeastern US this year. (No time to google, etc.) I went to a couple in Boston a few years ago, but haven't heard of any in the last three years... Cheers! Dan http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html From wingcat at pacbell.net Tue Nov 4 01:52:13 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 17:52:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031104015213.93316.qmail@web80402.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > It only stands to reason that when solid > verification software and text reading software come > online that are capable of handling these duties, > the job of brokering, and even underwriting will be > left to computers. This can be handled without any > AI. It will only take some very complicated > software. Software that could probably be built > right now if someone wanted to invest millions in > development costs. Such is the cycle of much that is AI at one point: First it is impossible. Then it is AI. Then it is in the lab. Then it is deployable, but expensive. Then it is usable and cheap. Then it is free and ubiquitous. When the ability to translate from rough natural language descriptions to running code becomes free and ubiquitous, we will have passed our current Singularity - but perhaps be able to envision a new one from there. > I have decided that I need to find a new career and > go back to school. The only problem is, what should > I do? > A couple of things I find > fascinating are evolutionary biology and > anthropology. > Nanotechnology seems very interesting, but the > background needed eludes me. Same with biotech. Evolutionary biotech, perhaps? That is, focus on how (and if) we can use various naturally fast and/or artificially accelerated evolutionary processes for, say, rapid drug discovery, or an in-vivo analog to computer science's genetic algorithms. Just an idea, if you're looking for something to latch on to. As others have said, just getting back into college itself is something to pursue - but having at least a general major can help make your plans more concrete. Maybe pick a few ideas, get a college course catalog, and see what all you'd have to take to pursue each of the ideas, so you can start to gel on a path that looks attractive - but definitely keep yourself open to new possibilities and inspirations after you've started, in case what you start out to do turns out to be less desirable than some other path you haven't heard of yet. (E.g.: if you're going for a Bachelor's in evo. biotech, the Bio department - Biology, or Biological Engineering if they have it - will probably tell you what background you need, in the form of which classes you should take first.) From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Tue Nov 4 02:06:29 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 12:36:29 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE047@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > -----Original Message----- > From: Alfio Puglisi [mailto:puglisi at arcetri.astro.it] > Sent: Tuesday, 4 November 2003 3:25 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] A job for me? > > > On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > >An article I read that analyzes future trends in employment > has me a bit nervous: > >http://education.guardian.co.uk/further/story/0,5500,1074083,00.html > > > >Being a mortgage broker for the last few years, I have > enjoyed watching my job become simpler. The technology > improvements so far have made it possible for me to work from home. > >A careful analysis of this trend however has forced me to > accept a frightening possibility. My job may not exist 10 > years from now! > >Currently, many specialized web applications exist that > allow me to put in a customer's application and get an > underwriting decision in minutes. All that is left is > selecting the right loan, gathering the required > documentation, and submitting it to an underwriter who then > decides if that documentation is acceptable to meet the > neccessary guidelines for that particular loan program. At > this point, they prepare loan documents and send them to the > closing agent for closing. > >It only stands to reason that when solid verification > software and text reading software come online that are > capable of handling these duties, the job of brokering, and > even underwriting will be left to computers. This can be > handled without any AI. It will only take some very > complicated software. Software that could probably be built > right now if someone wanted to invest millions in development > costs. In time, it will come. > >This is a business that I know well, and it is all I am > formally trained in with the exception of a 4 year old A+ > certification that isn't worth a dime any more. > >I have decided that I need to find a new career and go back > to school. > > Or, you can find a new career as one of the experts in this > job. Whoever > will make the software will need programmers, funding, and someone who > know what the better strategies are. The programs will need > to be tested, > mantained, upgraded, new ideas must be incorporated in a > sensible way. The > project director must be well versed in the field. Someone > who has already > worked in it before. > > Ciao, > Afio I agree with Afio. It sounds as though you *like* being a mortgage broker, and have no particular plans in other directions. So start up a venture to computerise it yourself, or get involved with someone else who can do it. Between a domain expert such as yourself, and some competent programmer that you can con into helping you gratis (well, for a slice of the pie of course), you could build a server based automated mortgage broking solution a little bit at a time. Just automate the most obviously useful thing first, then the next most obvious thing, and so on. Eventually you might be able to automate the whole job, but in the meantime you'll be able to stay way out in front of your competitors by being able to work more quickly, with higher quality, less errors, and better information, also probably tracking your money from lending institutions better. A decent web based app should also give you the ability to charge other brokers for its use, thereby getting out of direct mortgage broking, and into service provision for other brokers. Eventually, you will eat all of their lunches, but in the meantime they provide you with the path from single operator to automated empire! Emlyn From samantha at objectent.com Tue Nov 4 02:49:46 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 19:49:46 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200311031849.46136.samantha@objectent.com> My story was not too dissimilar until I was 25 or so and decided too finally get around to going to college. After 8 years of no schoolwork I was a bit worried. But it was actually a piece of cake. If anything I had more knowledge of what I wanted and was less distracted than any competing 18 yr olds. I started with 2nd and 3rd year math and computer classes and easily made the dean's list even in the 1st semester. But you are 7 years older you say? Well the best student in one of my hardest computer courses was a 65 yr old former housewife! Pick something you really care about and believe you can make a real difference in or that would make a difference (beyond just the bucks) in your life and how you see yourself. Anything less and you probably won't do your best or fully engage. Look for something you love. Best of Luck! - samantha From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 4 03:15:56 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 19:15:56 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] rhymes with chasm In-Reply-To: <000801c3a1dc$6a1a9570$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000001c3a281$f6e59db0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Then it occurred to me that there are very few > words that rhyme with orgasm: ...This shortage in > English sure makes it difficult to write poetry... spike And music too! Such an unfortunate shortage relating to nearly everyone's favorite thing. Consider if we were to attempt a modern remake of the Rogers & Hammerstein classic "The Sound of Music". Every moviemaker knows a G rating kills profits, plus the original definitely needs to be sexed up a bit. In the modern version, consider the scene with the thunderstorm and the Von Trapp children are cowering in Sister Maria's room. The key to a successful remake is to cleverly mix the gaggy sweetness of the original with the modern touch: intriguing suggestiveness. Maria instructs that children that when the dog bites, when the bee stings, she thinks of her favorite things. Suggested new version: Raindrops on roses and biting sarcasm, Fluffy warm kittens, a multi-orgasm, Whips, snowflakes, chains, doves And leather cock rings These are a few of my favorite things. etc. Think of how different that movie would have been, had Maria been singing THAT when the Captain burst into the room. It would surely get the desired R rating, and become a box office smash. Granted, the children would have been puzzled. (On the other hand, Leisl seemed a sporty type, and she must have been suspicious by that time of her boy Rolf's orientation, the way he resisted her advances at the gazebo and all the furtive meetings between him and the old butler Hans.) Had Sister Maria sung it the new way, the next scene woulda been the Captain scouring the seedy section of Salzburg to find a 24 hour fetish shop. Word would spread quickly and Von Trapp's Navy buddies would soon be hanging around the old convent looking for some action. This would greatly improve the movie. spike From karen at smigrodzki.org Tue Nov 4 03:38:12 2003 From: karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 22:38:12 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist Law Center Message-ID: <005801c3a285$12f3e630$6501a8c0@DogHouse> In case anyone is interested, this is a relatively new site: The Atheist Law Center is your advocate, defending the civil rights of atheists and dedicated to the absolute seperation of religion and governments http://www.atheistlaw.org/index.html Karen Rand Smigrodzki All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self- evident. -Arthur Schopenhauer From mlorrey at yahoo.com Tue Nov 4 04:07:57 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 20:07:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] rhymes with chasm In-Reply-To: <000001c3a281$f6e59db0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031104040757.87578.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> spasm phantasm ectoplasm phytoplasm ( and all other substances ending in -plasm) schizm any -ism will do as well Then you can go into the whole Snoop Dog dictionary: "skasm yo basm, da bizm ain't profitizm like in de old dizm." --- Spike wrote: > > Then it occurred to me that there are very few > > words that rhyme with orgasm: ...This shortage in > > English sure makes it difficult to write poetry... spike > > And music too! Such an unfortunate shortage relating > to nearly everyone's favorite thing. Consider if we > were to attempt a modern remake of the Rogers & Hammerstein > classic "The Sound of Music". Every moviemaker knows > a G rating kills profits, plus the original definitely > needs to be sexed up a bit. > > In the modern version, consider the scene with the > thunderstorm and the Von Trapp children are > cowering in Sister Maria's room. The key to > a successful remake is to cleverly mix the > gaggy sweetness of the original with the > modern touch: intriguing suggestiveness. > > Maria instructs that children that when the > dog bites, when the bee stings, she thinks > of her favorite things. Suggested new version: > > Raindrops on roses and biting sarcasm, > Fluffy warm kittens, a multi-orgasm, > Whips, snowflakes, chains, doves > And leather cock rings > These are a few of my favorite things. > > etc. > > Think of how different that movie would have been, > had Maria been singing THAT when the Captain > burst into the room. It would surely get the > desired R rating, and become a box office smash. > > Granted, the children would have been puzzled. > (On the other hand, Leisl seemed a sporty type, > and she must have been suspicious by that time > of her boy Rolf's orientation, the way he resisted > her advances at the gazebo and all the furtive > meetings between him and the old butler Hans.) > > Had Sister Maria sung it the new way, the next scene > woulda been the Captain scouring the seedy section > of Salzburg to find a 24 hour fetish shop. > Word would spread quickly and Von Trapp's Navy > buddies would soon be hanging around the old > convent looking for some action. This would > greatly improve the movie. > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From aperick at centurytel.net Tue Nov 4 07:50:32 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (rick) Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 23:50:32 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Brett asked for it In-Reply-To: <200311040314.hA43ECM05525@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a2a8$54c13720$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Good point, I'll think up an additional adjective to modify "unique" so as not to give some confrontational types the idea that I am speaking of a perfectly unique sort. No -- Yes, I can see now that that WAS in fact stupid of me. I shall simply replace unique with rare. I suppose I should also state firstly that I am not perfect. I'll add that too. That I can fuck up. Have done it a lot. My bad for assuming that readers would just know that. And I thought that the form of my last sentence, and the :) at the end would convey that I was joking and intending to keep things light. Did I err there too? Must you hate me before I have truly earned it? From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 4 09:57:14 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 20:57:14 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Brett asked for it References: <000001c3a2a8$54c13720$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: <019501c3a2ba$064667c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Rick wrote: > Good point, I'll think up an additional adjective to modify > "unique" so as not to give some confrontational types the idea > that I am speaking of a perfectly unique sort. No -- Yes, I can > see now that that WAS in fact stupid of me. I shall simply > replace unique with rare. I suppose I should also state firstly that > I am not perfect. I'll add that too. That I can fuck up. Have done > it a lot. My bad for assuming that readers would just know that. > And I thought that the form of my last sentence, and the :) at the > end would convey that I was joking and intending to keep things > light. Did I err there too? Must you hate me before I have truly > earned it? Oh gee. Sorry I was too harsh. I *did* actually go on and read what you wrote. I though it was pretty good - as adult fiction mind - NOT as an intellectual case for atheism ;-). I enjoyed it. Ironically nothing else really poked me in the eye the same way because I adjusted to the notion it wasn't what I'd expected and I didn't need to take it as seriously. There are some flaws in my opinion - one in particular struck me as internally inconsistent. The lack of regard for children (generally) given John's own 'emergence' from pretty pedestrian parents. I'm not perfect either (obviously), we're all works in progress. It's good to have errors pointed out I think and the Exi list is a great place for getting and giving that sort of service. It need not always be that fierce though you are right about that. Your main character seems reminiscent of John Galt by another writer named Rand and the story contains some of what I saw as flaws in Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead, particularly the handling and status of children. (The eugenics case is not that strong in my view). But this line about love "The highest love is love of self. The next highest is love of someone who is nearly identical to one's self -- an offspring, if in the past one has been silly or reckless...." - This didn't work for me. Regards, Brett From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 4 11:28:12 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 12:28:12 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Brett asked for it In-Reply-To: <000001c3a239$4265a8a0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> References: <000001c3a239$4265a8a0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: <3FA78D4C.2020802@dtext.com> Hi, I haven't (yet) had a closer look at your text, but I was intrigued by Mtebe ("personal knowledge base companion" software). Whatever happened to it? Why don't you (more simply) release it as an Emacs add-on, for people familiar with Emacs? Or was it not worth the trouble? Jacques rick wrote: > Brett wrote: That's fascinating Rick. Why don't you just go ahead and > outline yours then for the Exi list. ? ;-) > > http://home.centurytel.net/rickw/aonl.htm From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 4 12:24:05 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 13:24:05 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? In-Reply-To: <20031104015213.93316.qmail@web80402.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031104015213.93316.qmail@web80402.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20031104122405.GP15418@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 05:52:13PM -0800, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Such is the cycle of much that is AI at one point: We don't have AI. AI doesn't mean artificial stupidity. Intelligence doesn't mean being an idiot savant. Isolated skills do not cumulate, nor do they magically integrate into a seamless whole -- so far. If we're lucky, we'll see some of it happening in a couple decades. > First it is impossible. It is. > Then it is AI. No, it's still impossible. We haven't made any fundamental advances for two human generations. People still enter text into editors when they want to solve a problem. > Then it is in the lab. > Then it is deployable, but expensive. > Then it is usable and cheap. > Then it is free and ubiquitous. > > When the ability to translate from rough natural > language descriptions to running code becomes free We're still several years away from suffiently accurate speech recognition, a comparatively trivial task. If coupled with a dumb dialog system it's good enough for a natural language UI, but it won't suddenly start improving itself one day it has processing resources to spare. I'd put self-improvement ability at fully interactive Augmented Reality to obtain behaviour constraints from (it would be essentially fully interactive evolutionary programming on steroids and fast-forward). We don't have the hardware base to render anything but the flick part of that. > and ubiquitous, we will have passed our current > Singularity - but perhaps be able to envision a new > one from there. You don't see an event horizont when traversing a singularity. It's all in the eye of the external observer. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 4 12:48:12 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 23:48:12 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist Law Center References: <005801c3a285$12f3e630$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: <01de01c3a2d1$e88c9de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Karen Rand Smigrodzki wrote: > In case anyone is interested, this is a relatively new site: > The Atheist Law Center is your advocate, defending the civil > rights of atheists and dedicated to the absolute seperation of > religion and governments > > http://www.atheistlaw.org/index.html Good idea. I wonder if it might help a bit to have one in Australia. I don't think we are as quite as religious as the US. No Scopes Monkey trials or Bible belts etc here. I'd be *slightly* biased towards expecting more reasoning and less believing from atheists but in the end atheism is a pretty small platform and I'm not sure there is sufficient need in a country like Australia. Parliaments do 'kick off' with prayers though and that is kind of annoying - like opening up your email application and getting a dose of Spam first thing every time. I wonder if having prayers actually *encourages* people to start pronouncing their 'beliefs' as if beliefs qua beliefs should count for anything in social exchanges instead of saying that such is what they *think* (which implies at least *some* thought and intellectual processing and some openness to fairly countenance exploratory discussion and counterpoint). If cats could talk I guess we'd hear a lot of heart-felt *beliefs* about birds, mice and dogs. There would be of course nothing *invalid* about the underlying sentiments so expressed but little interesting about countless re-iterations of the same 'catty' summations either. Talking cats might even refine the expression right down to short pithy imperious sound-shots of approval or snorts of disapproval. Eg. Should we kill all the dogs right away Felix and let God sort them out? "I bee-lieve so!". Are mice or birds worthy of any respect or any rights Buffy? - "I bee-lieve NOT! " Cats probably wouldn't bother to go on and try and affix long windy sentences to their statements of belief. They'd just expect that because they are bona fide *cat* beliefs that in itself should be enough for everyone that matters. i.e. Everyone that's a cat. - Brett 8-1 From rhanson at gmu.edu Tue Nov 4 15:03:04 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 10:03:04 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031104094736.01f753e8@mail.gmu.edu> [Hi folks. I've been off the list for a while, but thought I'd rejoin in order to mention the following interesting development. RH] The human race has made tremendous progress in the last century, and honestly there's a lot we don't know about how this has been possible. In particular IQ scores, lifespans, and many other things have been improving at rates we do not really know how to explain via the usual suspects. I've just been made aware of the following paper, that suggests many of these improvements have been driven by travel and urbanization induced wider mixing of human mates, which reduces the expression of recessive alleles. It is at least a plausible theory, and it has the clear implication that these improvements will run out as the population approaches "panmixia". Progress might then continue, but at a slower rate than it otherwise would. (Even so, of course, other kinds of progress may make growth rates then higher than now.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.dienekes.com/blog/archives/000354.html The secular rise in IQ: Giving heterosis a closer look by Michael A. Mingroni, forthcoming in Intelligence Although most discussions today start from the assumption that the secular rise in IQ must be environmental in origin, three reasons warrant giving the genetic phenomenon heterosis a closer look as a potential cause. First, it easily accounts for both the high heritability and low shared environmental effects seen in IQ, findings that are difficult to reconcile with environmental hypotheses. Second, numerous other highly heritable traits, both physical as well as psychological, have also undergone large secular changes in parallel with IQ, which is consistent with the occurrence of broad-based genetic change like heterosis. And third, a heterosis hypothesis for the trend can be tested in several straightforward ways. The paper also provides a hypothetical example, based on data from a real population, of how heterosis can result from demographic changes like those that have taken place throughout the developed world in recent history and shows that under certain conditions, even a small demographic change could cause large genetically based phenotypic changes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From bradbury at aeiveos.com Tue Nov 4 15:05:07 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 07:05:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious Message-ID: Interesting. In Sweden, the primary ISP (Telia) will now start blocking internet access for systems that have been corrupted by trojans that are sending SPAM. Thus one of the most liberal countries in the world is effectively adopting a policy that you don't get to pee in the public fountain. Telia blocks computers that send spam http://presstjanst.telia.se/press/Article.jsp?category=81&selected=2&article=3700 Worth asking oneself -- Do you have a computer running Microsoft software that connects naked to the net? (i.e. via dial-up, cable, satellite, etc. without going through a firewall). If so have you installed *all* of the various security patches Microsoft has distributed for your O.S.? If not, and you are not running very robust virus/worm detection software then you are part of the problem -- and are behaving in an unextropic fashion because you have no idea whether or not your system may be compromised. I had it happen to me (my laptop was once hijacked by some hackers in Eastern Europe in an attempt to win some distributed computing contest). It can happen to you as well. R. From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 4 15:55:29 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 16:55:29 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20031104155529.GW15418@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 07:05:07AM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > Interesting. In Sweden, the primary ISP (Telia) will now > start blocking internet access for systems that have been > corrupted by trojans that are sending SPAM. The usual half-baked knee-jerk vigilante approach. How do they know the machines are compromised, and sending spam? There's no way to know for sure they're compromised without hacking into the machine. Why should ISPs be allowed that? People go to jail for this for a decade, so why shouldn't they? So they're looking at indirect clues, such as control traffic. How can they tell legit from known blackhat, especially if encrypted? Pattern analysis? I just don't see ISP throwing such expertise at petty spam problems -- small ISPs just can't afford the security budgets. (Besides, do you want your ISP to scrutinize *your* traffic at this level of detail? I sure as hell don't, and I'm no blackhat). So that much is bogus, what about the spam claim? They're either bugging their mailserver with a DIY Carnivore -- assuming spammers use their ISP's mail server (thus reading your mail -- you sure you want that?, comparing for similiar mail getting sent out to some number of recipients -- what's the threshold for this? how do you tell this from legit traffic, just as this mailing list?), or looking at traffic analysis (uh-oh, snoop alert) or looking at spam target complaints, which can be an misunderstanding (there are always false positives in RBLs due to idiocy or malice) or a deliberate forgery, trying to shut a service down -- it's a daily occurence with realtime blackhole listings. In short, it's a wrongheaded "solution", fraught with friendly fire. The only way to kill off spam sustainably is 1) end users use MTAs, sending out SMTP traffic (ISP's mail servers don't get hit, users pay for the traffic generated) 2) algorithmic (Bayesian and otherwise) and realtime user-submitted spam classifiers (using pattern matching algorithms derived from bioinformatics) 3) TMDA challenge (expirable token, reply required for automated whitelisting) 4) associating cost (nanograin digicash, computation) with sending mail, a la hashcash (reducing the rate of mail sent out, could be a problem for legit mail traffic -- use a p2p mail infrastructure for that letting customer nodes amplify strongly authenticated message) 5) redesign SMTP (IM2000), so spammers bear the brunt of costs. It will take several of above measures to slowly phase out spam (just a parasite exploiting the weakness of the original system -- you have to harden the system to get rid of it for good). > Thus one of the most liberal countries in the world is > effectively adopting a policy that you don't get to pee > in the public fountain. > > Telia blocks computers that send spam > http://presstjanst.telia.se/press/Article.jsp?category=81&selected=2&article=3700 > > Worth asking oneself -- Do you have a computer running Microsoft software > that connects naked to the net? (i.e. via dial-up, cable, satellite, > etc. without going through a firewall). If so have you installed *all* of > the various security patches Microsoft has distributed for your O.S.? If > not, and you are not running very robust virus/worm detection software > then you are part of the problem -- and are behaving in an unextropic > fashion because you have no idea whether or not your system may be > compromised. The right solution for this is legal liability, and bearing full costs. If people had FastEthernet at home, a compromised server generates several k$ worth of traffic over the weekend. That would put some serious chlorine in the shallow end of the gene pool. > I had it happen to me (my laptop was once hijacked by some hackers > in Eastern Europe in an attempt to win some distributed computing > contest). It can happen to you as well. > > R. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 4 16:01:43 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 08:01:43 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] immigration into sweden In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000001c3a2ec$f1120f20$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Interesting. In Sweden,... > Thus one of the most liberal countries in the world... Last Saturday at a dinner party, a Swedish friend commented that Sweden was having a huge immigration of middle easterners. I asked if there is a movement afoot to do street signs in both Swedish and Arabic, like we have both English and Spanish in many Taxifornian cities. He seemed rather annoyed with that innocent question. Anders, what did I say? Whats up with that? spike From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 4 16:01:53 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 08:01:53 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000101c3a2ec$f7412890$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Robert J. Bradbury > Subject: [extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious > > I had it happen to me (my laptop was once hijacked by some hackers > in Eastern Europe in an attempt to win some distributed computing > contest). It can happen to you as well... Interesting. I have been speculating for some time that a clever hacker could steal one's idle CPU cycles and do it in such a way that it would be nearly undetectable, even on a laptop, if they weren't too greedy. Yesterday we had someone on primenet report that GIMPS was using only 50% of the idle CPU time, and that a process identifying itself as System Idle Process was using 50%. Surely some hacker has already done it. Now all she need to do is send that to some big company, and she could steal thousands of computers' idle CPU cycles, enough to quickly find the 10million digit prime and win the $100k. spike From amara at amara.com Tue Nov 4 14:54:37 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 16:54:37 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eno in 1st Long-term Thinking seminar of the Long Now Foundation Message-ID: (I saw a reference to this on the Boing-boing site. I would go to this if I could be in Bay area at this time. -- Amara) The next speaker, November 14, will be Brian Eno. "On Nov. 14 Brian Eno launches in San Francisco Long Now's series of Seminars About Long-term Thinking, free to the public. At 7pm at Fort Mason every second Friday, the series will include futurist Peter Schwartz, Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, biologist Daniel Janzen, Laurie Anderson, Danny Hillis, George Dyson, and Paul Hawken." ====================== The Long Now Foundation http://www.longnow.org/ The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996** to develop Clock and "Library" projects as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. It has been nearly 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age and the beginnings of civilization. Progress lately is often measured on a "faster/cheaper" scale. The Long Now Foundation seeks to promote "slower/better" thinking and to foster creativity in the framework of the next 10,000 years. ====================== http://www.longnow.org/10klibrary/Seminars.htm The scheduled speakers so far are as follows: 2nd Fridays in 02003 Nov. 14 - Brian Eno "The Long Now" Dec. 12 - Peter Schwartz "The Art of the Really Long View" 2nd Fridays in 02004 Jan. 9 - George Dyson "There's Plenty of Room at the Top: Long-term Thinking About Large-scale Computing" Feb. 13 - James Dewar "Long-term Policy Analysis" (Dewar is head of RAND's new Pardee Center on very long-term policy---35 to 200 years) Mar. 12 - Rusty Schweickart "The Asteroid Threat Over the Next 100,000 Years" Apr. 9 - Daniel Janzen "It's ALL Gardening" (Janzen is the famed preservation biologist based in Costa Rica) May 14 - David Rumsey "Mapping Time" (see his dazzling http://www.davidrumsey.com) ====================== http://www.longnow.org/about/about.htm The Long Now Foundation GUIDELINES: (for a long-lived, long-valuable institution) 1. Serve the long view (and the long viewer). 2. Foster responsibility. 3. Reward patience. 4. Mind mythic depth. 5. Ally with competition. 6. Take no sides. 7. Leverage longevity. -- *********************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario, INAF - ARTOV, Via del Fosso del Cavaliere, 100, I-00133 Roma, ITALIA tel: +39-06-4993-4384 |fax: +39-06-4993-4383 Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it | http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/dustgroup/~graps ************************************************************************ "If you want to make computers that really work, create a design team composed of healthy, active women with lots else to do in their lives and give them carte blanche." --Brian Eno From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 4 16:14:30 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 17:14:30 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious In-Reply-To: <000101c3a2ec$f7412890$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000101c3a2ec$f7412890$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031104161429.GY15418@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 08:01:53AM -0800, Spike wrote: > Interesting. I have been speculating for some time > that a clever hacker could steal one's idle CPU cycles > and do it in such a way that it would be nearly > undetectable, even on a laptop, if they weren't too You will see it on load monitor (a good rootkit would catch that), and on network traffic (if it's generating a lot of traffic, can be also addressed by a root kit -- will require multiple penetration to address that on embedded firewall level -- ASIC switches and attached LEDs are utterly immune to penetration, unless you smuggle magic dark LED signatures into the factory). Also, most current OSses (with the possible exception of OS X and 2.6 Linux kernel) will become visibly more sluggish. It will take user and use patter detection to make it really stealthy. It could be done, but it's way beyond the skill level of even a good cracker group. > greedy. Yesterday we had someone on primenet report > that GIMPS was using only 50% of the idle CPU time, > and that a process identifying itself as System > Idle Process was using 50%. Surely some hacker > has already done it. Now all she need to do is > send that to some big company, and she could steal Try the Internet. > thousands of computers' idle CPU cycles, enough to How do several million machines sound like? > quickly find the 10million digit prime and win the > $100k. People who can do that probably make more than $100k/month. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From natashavita at earthlink.net Tue Nov 4 16:29:57 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 11:29:57 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eno in 1st Long-term Thinking seminar of the LongNow Foundation Message-ID: <54360-220031124162957294@M2W079.mail2web.com> ----------------- From: Amara Graps >(I saw a reference to this on the Boing-boing site. >I would go to this if I could be in Bay area at this time. >-- Amara) I'd be there to meet you. I'm sorry I go miss this. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From natashavita at earthlink.net Tue Nov 4 16:29:58 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 11:29:58 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eno in 1st Long-term Thinking seminar of the LongNow Foundation Message-ID: <410-220031124162958964@M2W087.mail2web.com> ----------------- From: Amara Graps >(I saw a reference to this on the Boing-boing site. >I would go to this if I could be in Bay area at this time. >-- Amara) I'd be there to meet you. I'm sorry I go miss this. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From jonkc at att.net Tue Nov 4 17:09:59 2003 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 12:09:59 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? References: <3FA66265.40505@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <004101c3a2f6$b1cccf30$c7165e0c@hal2001> Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org Wrote: >We're still several years away from suffiently >accurate speech recognition, a comparatively trivial task. I don't think speech recognition is trivial, in fact I don't think computers will get really good at it until they develop some understanding of what is said. Even a human would have difficulty distinguishing "I scream" from "ice cream" if they didn't understand the context the remark was said in. The same is true about machine translation, when they get good at that the era of AI will have arrived. By the way Eugen, I wish you wouldn't send attachments to the list, they're inconvenient and that's the way people get viruses. John K Clark jonkc at att.net From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 4 17:41:15 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 18:41:15 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? In-Reply-To: <004101c3a2f6$b1cccf30$c7165e0c@hal2001> References: <3FA66265.40505@mail.tele.dk> <004101c3a2f6$b1cccf30$c7165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <20031104174115.GF15418@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 12:09:59PM -0500, John K Clark wrote: > > I don't think speech recognition is trivial, in fact I don't think computers > will get really good at it until they develop some understanding of what is > said. Even a human would have difficulty distinguishing "I scream" from "ice Yes, but phoneme streams -> word streams -> meaning ambiguities can be simply resolved by natural language processing system forming hypothesis and asking the user in natural language which one she really means. In fact, this simple technology is currently making a lot of telephonist clerks jobless (it eliminates >90% of a typical service call). I agree it takes a real AI to resolve such ambiguities without resorting to lots of grilling the user. > cream" if they didn't understand the context the remark was said in. The > same is true about machine translation, when they get good at that the era An interactive machine translator using above work-arounds could also avoid having to pass a Turing test to work. > of AI will have arrived. By the way Eugen, I wish you wouldn't send > attachments to the list, they're inconvenient and that's the way people get > viruses. Actually, these are digital signatures in RFC 2015 and 3156 standard. They're there to verify that this message is indeed from me, and not a spoof by somebody else or a virus/worm. You seem to be using MS Outlook, a MUA notorious of ignoring Internet standards. See for lots more. Here's a list of mailers with RFC 2015/3156 support: http://www.spinnaker.de/mutt/rfc2015.html I'm not sure whether this plugin for Outlook http://www3.gdata.de/gpg/download.html will fix your mail client, but it's worth a try. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From bradbury at aeiveos.com Tue Nov 4 18:29:59 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:29:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious In-Reply-To: <000101c3a2ec$f7412890$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > > > > Robert J. Bradbury > > Subject: [extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious > > > > I had it happen to me (my laptop was once hijacked by some hackers > > in Eastern Europe in an attempt to win some distributed computing > > contest). It can happen to you as well... > > > Interesting. I have been speculating for some time > that a clever hacker could steal one's idle CPU cycles > and do it in such a way that it would be nearly > undetectable, even on a laptop, if they weren't too > greedy. My laptop has a feature that when you consume lots of CPU the fan turns on to get rid of the extra heat -- so its kind of obvious when my laptop goes from being normally fan-off (in power saving mode) to fan-on (in heavy CPU-use mode). Since I normally don't use my laptop (its a very old machine) for DC activities it was fairly obvious that *something* strange was going on. The hackers violated the "too greedy" rule (fortunately for my education). After the event -- which was several years ago -- I moved all of my windows machines behind a firewall. I don't trust the security of Microsoft systems as far as I can throw the floppies (or CDs) they are installed from. R. From natashavita at earthlink.net Tue Nov 4 21:00:26 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 16:00:26 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <119420-22003112421026669@M2W046.mail2web.com> Throughout history there have been riddles that have intrigued and surprised. Riddles such as Fermat's last theorem*; how Solomon bult himself a royal place and solved the riddles sent to him by Hiram; the location of the legendary 'Sogdian Rock' climbed by Alexander's mountaineers somewhere out on the border of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, south-east of Samarkand; who was Kind Arthur; Schrodinger's Riddle, how life evolved from non-life; or who were the people in Mesoamerica who prepared the soil for the Mayan culture. What are some riddles that some bear light, or a shadow, on our extropic transhumanity? All comments welcome. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From aperick at centurytel.net Tue Nov 4 21:20:57 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 13:20:57 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Brett asked for it, atheism, MTEBE, and the other AI In-Reply-To: <200311041555.hA4FtiM02163@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <6403147.1067980959961.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Great, I for one am having fun now. My "intellectual case for atheism" - well, my position is one of having been convinced by the evidence that everything makes sense without gods -- and an existent god makes no sense. One should only believe according to evidence. And by evidence I mean verifiable evidence as would be accepted by those most schooled and respected in the ways of science. Additionally, when I look at the various religions, from the outside, they all look very stupid indeed - filled with silliness. Their 'explanations' being just what one would expect from a fake source of truth. In my novella Brett sees the following as being "internally inconsistent." The lack of regard for children (generally) given John's own 'emergence' from pretty pedestrian parents. :Rick: I cannot yet see it as an inconsistency, but I'll try, if helped. Brett also questions "the handling and status of children." In Ayn Rand's two fat fat novels. :Rick: I was once the biggest Rand freak ever, but I cannot now recall her treatment of kids. As a radical transhuman, the child thing can go the way of the feces thing. Wow that's wicked harsh - I sound like a sick puppy. I am just so sick of flossing and tending to other health issues; I seem to be losing the view of life -- as its being sacred and all. I wonder just how alone I am in this, age may be a factor here - and one's general health. (I'm 44) Certainly no healthy young person would fail to consider all life as sacred? The down sides of life being, personally, far off. Brett also writes: (The eugenics case is not that strong in my view). :Rick: I had almost deleted the whole eugenics topic. To me it just seemed like a reasonable personal practice. I did not want to think of eugenics as a function of any governing body. I realize that very few people will think of it as I do. If I should ever "publish" the novella I would pull the whole topic. Currently, my purpose for the existence of the novella is more for personal growth and maybe some cruising, as mentioned in the after-word. :Brett: But this line about love "The highest love is love of self. The next highest is love of someone who is nearly identical to one's self -- an offspring, if in the past one has been silly or reckless...." - This didn't work for me. :Rick: I can see how this will rub most parents in an uncomfortable way. But as you can see below; in context the quote is from John - its intent is to show how firmly he is committed to radical transhuman goals. I am trying to show that, for John, it would have to be silly or reckless for HIM to father children. That he already sees breeding as "old school." I know that that does not logically follow. There is no reason that he should not still father a child just because he is a radical transhumanist. But to John, there is no reason that he should. BUT I THINK THAT PERHAPS I WILL PULL PART OF THIS LINE. It has always felt a bit ... icky. The only reason it appeared in the first place is because much of John's young life is taken from my own. At the age of twenty, I fathered a child with my barely eighteen-year-old gal-pal. Possibly viewable as silly and reckless. John's parents bought into most all the absurd ideas common in Christianity; God loves us all equally, requires us to do the same, and endless similar drivel. When, obviously, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. It was obvious to John, and he would tell you. "The highest love is love of self. The next highest is love of someone who is nearly identical to one's self--an offspring, if in the past one has been silly or reckless, or perhaps a close comrade." :As for MTEBE: Jacques. I abandoned the further development of the Emacs version to rewrite it as a normal Windows application. I got a start on it, learned how to spawn a thread and capture keystrokes while other applications had focus. But the world of windows programming just overwhelmed me. That sort of ap was way too unusual/advanced for a beginner like me. I also quit using MTEBE, not sure all of why, a new Palm device was one reason, oh and there is one ugly little bug in the Emacs version that still eludes me. It does not much affect the functionality. It has to do with some lisp and such, as best I can now recall. I will dig it up and ask for your help with it - may take me a week or two. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.515 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 9/1/2003 From aperick at centurytel.net Tue Nov 4 22:51:51 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 14:51:51 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist Law Center In-Reply-To: <200311041555.hA4FtiM02163@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <11758376.1067986414364.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> What I could use more would be a web list of Atheist Physicians. Doctors stupid enough to believe in god - I believe I am worth better than that. Does anyone here know of an atheist doctor in the Seattle or Tacoma area? --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.515 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 9/1/2003 From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Tue Nov 4 23:37:21 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 10:07:21 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist Law Center Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE04E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> That's a great idea actually, for pushing the profile of Atheism a bit. There might actually be some demand for a register of various professionals who are self declared atheists. After all, as you say, do you really want a doctor who believes in God? Or one who knows that there's no backstop? Maybe lawyers too? Or is it fairly clear already that none of them believe in anything anyway? ;-) Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: aperick at centurytel.net [mailto:aperick at centurytel.net] > Sent: Wednesday, 5 November 2003 8:22 AM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist Law Center > > > What I could use more would be a web list of Atheist > Physicians. Doctors > stupid enough to believe in god - I believe I am worth better > than that. > Does anyone here know of an atheist doctor in the Seattle or > Tacoma area? > > --- > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). > Version: 6.0.515 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 9/1/2003 > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 4 23:59:29 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 10:59:29 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist Law Center References: <11758376.1067986414364.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Message-ID: <008d01c3a32f$af987320$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Rick writes: > What I could use more would be a web list of Atheist Physicians. > Doctors stupid enough to believe in god - I believe I am worth > better than that. Good grief. Why should your belief that you are worth better than that have any more influence on supply and demand curves than a doctor's belief in god? > Does anyone here know of an atheist doctor in the Seattle or > Tacoma area? I can't help with what you asked for but I'd be a little concerned for the health of someone that thought the doctors belief in god or not was a poignant question to ask when that same person clearly endorses believing as a meme in some circumstances. Does the doctor have to be smarter than you philosophically as well as a better doctor as well? Alas, poor Rick, I knew him Horratio, he was a fellow of infinite jest ;-) Regards, Brett From bradbury at aeiveos.com Wed Nov 5 00:06:55 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 16:06:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated Message-ID: Terminology: ILE: Indefinite Lifespan Extension -- preferable to "IMMORTALITY" because IMMORTALITY can take too many hits based on the physics of the universe. (Protons decaying, expansion accelerating, black holes consuming everything else, yada yada yada...). Ok, now one of the serious questions that people should be concerned with with respect to ILE is precisely *how* do I get my cake. For those of us on the upside end of 40, or perhaps 30, cryonics enters into the equation. *But* as some of us know cryonics becomes pretty *iffy* if the legal authorities stick their fingers into the works. (Cases in point range from the current situation regarding the Martinot's in France to the case of Dora Kent in the past.) Today's Science News has a case of good-news/bad-news. "Radically New Anti-rejection Drug Shown To Offer Safe Control Of Immune System In Stanford Study" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031104063449.htm The net result of this (and other efforts) to make organ transplants safer, more effective, cheaper, etc. will be to strengthen the arguments of those who desire that organ donation be made mandatory. Now, mandatory organ donation would be extropic if (a) one did not ever under any conditions wish to be reanimated; or (b) whether people were comfortable with head/brain-only preservation and the reconstruction of a body if one so desired. However without one of those two criteria being satisfied it would seem that mandatory organ donation would be a fundamental violation of personal rights. It would appear that we are on a road where at least some states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable or not. Discussion? R. From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Nov 5 00:40:30 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 18:40:30 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: Message-ID: <019301c3a335$6bed16c0$ec994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 6:06 PM > It would appear that we are on a road where at least some > states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve > the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable > or not. maybe, but > For those of us on the upside end of > 40, I suspect we're safe--who'd want *our* raddled old organs? :) Damien Broderick From CurtAdams at aol.com Wed Nov 5 00:42:12 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 19:42:12 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down Message-ID: <27.4a870820.2cd9a164@aol.com> In a message dated 11/4/03 7:18:49, rhanson at gmu.edu cites: >http://www.dienekes.com/blog/archives/000354.html > >The secular rise in IQ: Giving heterosis a closer look >by Michael A. Mingroni, forthcoming in Intelligence > >Although most discussions today start from the assumption that the secular >rise in IQ must be environmental in origin, three reasons warrant giving the >genetic phenomenon heterosis a closer look as a potential cause. First,it >easily accounts for both the high heritability and low shared environmental >effects seen in IQ, findings that are difficult to reconcile with >environmental hypotheses. Um, no, that's not right. Heterosis affects are generally *not* highly heritable. For example, take a individual with an AA genotype (inbred, poor phenotype) and cross with a BB genotype (same). All offspring are AB (outbred, good phenotype). By contrast, if a healthy AB mates with a healthy AB, half the offspring are AA and BB, ie, inbred-like, and poor, genotypes. So *better* parents have *worse* offspring - the opposite expected from high heritability. >Second, numerous other highly heritable traits, >both physical as well as psychological, have also undergone large secular >changes in parallel with IQ, which is consistent with the occurrence of >broad-based genetic change like heterosis. But, also with environmental change. Feed people more, they mature earlier and grow taller. That's definitely an environmental change, even though height is a highly genetically heritable trait. >And third, a heterosis hypothesis >for the trend can be tested in several straightforward ways. The paper also >provides a hypothetical example, based on data from a real population, >of how heterosis can result from demographic changes like those that have >taken place throughout the developed world in recent history and shows that under >certain conditions, even a small demographic change could cause large >genetically based phenotypic changes. The last, and most serious strike, is that heterosis effects could have no ongoing effect in countries of recent settlement, such as the US and Canada. You need generations of strong isolation of small villages to get much inbreeding and the US and Canada were founded by individual or small family migrants from the getgo. There was never any inbreeding to dispose of. From etheric at comcast.net Wed Nov 5 01:02:43 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 17:02:43 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: Message-ID: <0b0001c3a338$8718c770$0200a8c0@etheric> Who has property rights over your "dead" body? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" To: "Extropy Chat" Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 4:06 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > > Terminology: > ILE: Indefinite Lifespan Extension -- preferable to > "IMMORTALITY" because IMMORTALITY can take too many > hits based on the physics of the universe. (Protons > decaying, expansion accelerating, black holes consuming > everything else, yada yada yada...). > > Ok, now one of the serious questions that people should > be concerned with with respect to ILE is precisely *how* > do I get my cake. For those of us on the upside end of > 40, or perhaps 30, cryonics enters into the equation. > > *But* as some of us know cryonics becomes pretty *iffy* > if the legal authorities stick their fingers into the works. > (Cases in point range from the current situation regarding > the Martinot's in France to the case of Dora Kent in the past.) > > Today's Science News has a case of good-news/bad-news. > > "Radically New Anti-rejection Drug Shown To Offer Safe Control Of > Immune System In Stanford Study" > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031104063449.htm > > The net result of this (and other efforts) to make organ > transplants safer, more effective, cheaper, etc. will be > to strengthen the arguments of those who desire that organ > donation be made mandatory. > > Now, mandatory organ donation would be extropic if (a) > one did not ever under any conditions wish to be > reanimated; or (b) whether people were comfortable with > head/brain-only preservation and the reconstruction of a > body if one so desired. However without one of those two > criteria being satisfied it would seem that mandatory > organ donation would be a fundamental violation of > personal rights. > > It would appear that we are on a road where at least some > states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve > the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable > or not. > > Discussion? > > R. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From rhanson at gmu.edu Wed Nov 5 02:15:14 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 21:15:14 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down In-Reply-To: <27.4a870820.2cd9a164@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031104211136.01e5fee8@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/4/2003, Curt Adams wrote: > >http://www.dienekes.com/blog/archives/000354.html > >The secular rise in IQ: Giving heterosis a closer look > >by Michael A. Mingroni, forthcoming in Intelligence > > > >Although most discussions today start from the assumption that the secular > >rise in IQ must be environmental in origin, three reasons warrant giving the > >genetic phenomenon heterosis a closer look as a potential cause. First,it > >easily accounts for both the high heritability and low shared environmental > >effects seen in IQ, findings that are difficult to reconcile with > >environmental hypotheses. > >Um, no, that's not right. Heterosis affects are generally *not* highly >heritable. For example, take a individual with an AA genotype (inbred, >poor phenotype) and cross with a BB genotype (same). All offspring are >AB (outbred, good phenotype). By contrast, if a healthy AB mates with >a healthy AB, half the offspring are AA and BB, ie, inbred-like, and poor, >genotypes. So *better* parents have *worse* offspring - the opposite >expected from high heritability. Maybe you should read the paper first? The topic is average changes, not the change in each possible case. > >Second, numerous other highly heritable traits, > >both physical as well as psychological, have also undergone large secular > >changes in parallel with IQ, which is consistent with the occurrence of > >broad-based genetic change like heterosis. > >But, also with environmental change. Feed people more, they mature >earlier and grow taller. That's definitely an environmental change, >even though height is a highly genetically heritable trait. We don't actually know how much nutrition can account for height changes. >The last, and most serious strike, is that heterosis effects could have no >ongoing effect in countries of recent settlement, such as the US and Canada. >You need generations of strong isolation of small villages to get much >inbreeding >and the US and Canada were founded by individual or small family migrants from >the getgo. There was never any inbreeding to dispose of. You might be right, but I don't think we have the data to support your claim with any confidence. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From sentience at pobox.com Wed Nov 5 03:03:38 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:03:38 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FA8688A.1000202@pobox.com> Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > > The net result of this (and other efforts) to make organ > transplants safer, more effective, cheaper, etc. will be > to strengthen the arguments of those who desire that organ > donation be made mandatory. In the US they'd run into severe problems with First Amendment religious separation, since Judaic law has problems with organ donation. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From mlorrey at yahoo.com Wed Nov 5 03:02:30 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 19:02:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031104211136.01e5fee8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <20031105030230.71102.qmail@web12904.mail.yahoo.com> --- Robin Hanson wrote: > >You need generations of strong isolation of small villages to get > >much inbreeding and the US and Canada were founded by individual > > or small family migrants from > >the getgo. There was never any inbreeding to dispose of. > > You might be right, but I don't think we have the data to support > your claim with any confidence. Especially since the claim is wrong. Historically, rural America, which was most of America prior to the 20th century, was heavily homogenous and inbred. Social instruments prevented ethnic, religious, and caste cross breeding. Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, and Protestants all looked down on marrying outside one's religion. Same thing with ethnic groups, some times to very violent degrees of enforcement (lynching for whites and blacks marrying). Well educated parents looked down on marrying uneducated, wealthy looked down on marrying beneath ones own kind. There was little upward mobility by marriage in pre-20th century America, all socio-economic mobility occured via industriousness, but still did not remove social pressures against crossing ethnic and religious barriers. Even with the westward migration, ethnic groups tended to cluster unto themselves. Germanics, Norwegian, Swedes, Dutch, Scotch, Irish, Hispanics, Italians, etc all tended to cluster, and when the clustered, they inbred. Nor could those with the short end of the stick escape this in most cases. Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of US history, most of the US for most of its history represents a story of local communities enforcing patron-client relationships, where one's future relied on what one's last name was. Without cheap transportation, most individuals never moved more than 20 miles from their place of birth. Once the automobile became widely available, individuals from anywhere could move anywhere else, start new lives, meet new people, and create new identities. Where you came from became much less important than what you did and where you were going. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From mlorrey at yahoo.com Wed Nov 5 03:07:41 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 19:07:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031105030741.36892.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > > It would appear that we are on a road where at least some > states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve > the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable > or not. > > Discussion? 14th Amendment, end of story. You own your body. When you die, it is part of your estate. Any state that would confiscate your body parts is fascist and should be moved out of ASAP. I would not be surprised if people's republics like Taxifornia and Washington adopted such policies. I don't mind, it will keep pushing more people to move to the Free State. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From Karen at smigrodzki.org Wed Nov 5 03:43:25 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 22:43:25 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: Message-ID: <004701c3a34e$f8349cc0$6501a8c0@DogHouse> > The net result of this (and other efforts) to make organ > transplants safer, more effective, cheaper, etc. will be > to strengthen the arguments of those who desire that organ > donation be made mandatory. > > Now, mandatory organ donation would be extropic if (a) > one did not ever under any conditions wish to be > reanimated; or (b) whether people were comfortable with > head/brain-only preservation and the reconstruction of a > body if one so desired. However without one of those two > criteria being satisfied it would seem that mandatory > organ donation would be a fundamental violation of > personal rights. > > It would appear that we are on a road where at least some > states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve > the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable > or not. I don't know where you live, but some states do something very similar. Some states have "opt-out" provisions which mandates that you opt-out beforehand or else your organs will be snatched. This doesn't sound so bad, as long as people know they have to register to opt-out; what happens in application of the law is that organ snatchers can take your organs anyway if they don't see your opt-out card. There is a widespread lack of respect for the deceased's wishes throughout the world. In many places, the deceased's relatives can successfully change oppose the expressed desires of the decedent as to disposition of organs/body. There are some systems around the world in which organ donation is mandatory. Brazil is one such country. I do agree with your view that it seems a violation of fundamental rights. Additionally, it is my view that prohibition of contracts for the sale of organs (either non-vitals which can be taken from living donors or vitals for taking after death of seller) is also a violation of fundamental rights. It violates the rights of those who want to earn the money by selling; and also the rights of those who are essentially condemned to a life of painful treatments or to death from organ failure because governments don't want would-be gifters of organs to "miss the pleasure of the gratification of having made this decision purely out of altruism" (Quoting Dr. Pereira, President, National Kidney Foundation on 8/8/2003 on 20/20 in response to John Stossel's question of why selling organs should be illegal.) Karen > > Discussion? > From Karen at smigrodzki.org Wed Nov 5 03:50:03 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 22:50:03 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <20031105030741.36892.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <005b01c3a34f$fd33cc40$6501a8c0@DogHouse> ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" > --- "Robert J. Bradbury" > > > > It would appear that we are on a road where at least some > > states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve > > the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable > > or not. > > > > Discussion? > > 14th Amendment, end of story. You own your body. When you die, it is > part of your estate. Any state that would confiscate your body parts is > fascist and should be moved out of ASAP. I would not be surprised if > people's republics like Taxifornia and Washington adopted such > policies. I don't mind, it will keep pushing more people to move to the > Free State. > > ===== > Mike Lorrey You are, I assume, stating what you think the law SHOULD be and not what it IS. It is clear that the body and it's parts are NOT property under the law. When you die, your body does NOT become property of the estate. Your guess of Taxifornia being one which would take your organs is on target. They have the opt-out law that I was mentioning in my previous response to this topic. I am not sure about Washington. I can find out, if you need it. karen From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 5 03:41:24 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 14:41:24 +1100 Subject: [Extropy-chat] Stem cells, starts of life, politics and religion Message-ID: <006701c3a34e$afc7f680$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Next steps in the great dance between science and religion - where science discovers and then religion adapts (but only through the agency of some of its better minds). This can be seen happening in this little article. I recently met Archbishop Peter Carnley at the opening of the National Stem Cell Centre inaugural conference. We chatted amiably until I said I was a catholic who became an atheist - and he retorted I should have become an Anglican :-) Peter Carnley (head of the Anglican Church in Australia) talks in an article in today's edition of The Age about the origins of the religious notion of 'conception' in 1869 and how that notion of conception and the notion of when the human individual life begins must change now in the modern world to avoid logical inconsistency, and further, how this can enable stem cell research (i.e. "therapeutic cloning") to be seen as ethical - God bless Peter Carnley, gentleman and scholar ;-) http://theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/04/1067708217596.html Regards, Brett From Karen at smigrodzki.org Wed Nov 5 04:03:39 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 23:03:39 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <3FA8688A.1000202@pobox.com> Message-ID: <006501c3a351$e43a72a0$6501a8c0@DogHouse> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > > > > The net result of this (and other efforts) to make organ > > transplants safer, more effective, cheaper, etc. will be > > to strengthen the arguments of those who desire that organ > > donation be made mandatory. > > In the US they'd run into severe problems with First Amendment religious > separation, since Judaic law has problems with organ donation. > > -- > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence That would be the problem; however, they are getting around that now by not making it really mandatory since you can opt-out. Even this method though, if they piss enough people off by taking organs of opted-outs-for-religious-reasons then this opt-out law could be challenged on First Amendment bases. karen From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 5 03:58:04 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 19:58:04 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <20031105030741.36892.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a351$04ad4a90$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Mike Lorrey >...I would not be surprised if > people's republics like Taxifornia and Washington adopted such > policies... Taxifornia isn't even the people's republic anymore. Its the animal's republic, and even the plant's republic in many cases. spike From Karen at smigrodzki.org Wed Nov 5 04:23:08 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 23:23:08 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <20031105030741.36892.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> <005b01c3a34f$fd33cc40$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: <008a01c3a354$8426edf0$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Can anyone in CA confirm that it is an opt-out (aka "presumed consent") state? I can't find my reference for it, and I want to correct if I am falsely accusing. thanks, karen ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karen Rand Smigrodzki" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 10:50 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > ----- >surprised if > > people's republics like Taxifornia and Washington adopted such > > policies. I don't mind, it will keep pushing more people to move to the > > Free State. > > > > ===== > > Mike Lorrey > > You are, I assume, stating what you think the law SHOULD be and not > what it IS. It is clear that the body and it's parts are NOT property under > the law. When you die, your body does NOT become property of the estate. > Your guess of Taxifornia being one which would take your organs is on > target. They have the opt-out law that I was mentioning in my previous > response to this topic. I am not sure about Washington. I can find out, if > you need it. > > karen > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From karen at smigrodzki.org Wed Nov 5 04:06:43 2003 From: karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 23:06:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare Message-ID: <007a01c3a352$392afc30$6501a8c0@DogHouse> For those interested: Space Weather News for Nov. 5, 2003 http://spaceweather.com Giant sunspot 486 unleashed another intense solar flare on Nov. 4th (1950 UT), and this one could be historic. The blast saturated X-ray sensors onboard GOES satellites. The last time this happened, in April 2001, the flare that saturated the sensors was classified as an X20--the biggest ever recorded at the time. Yesterday's flare appears to have been even stronger. --karen From reason at exratio.com Wed Nov 5 06:31:42 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 22:31:42 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <004701c3a34e$f8349cc0$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Karen Rand Smigrodzki > --- "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > > The net result of this (and other efforts) to make organ > > transplants safer, more effective, cheaper, etc. will be > > to strengthen the arguments of those who desire that organ > > donation be made mandatory. > > > > Now, mandatory organ donation would be extropic if (a) > > one did not ever under any conditions wish to be > > reanimated; or (b) whether people were comfortable with > > head/brain-only preservation and the reconstruction of a > > body if one so desired. However without one of those two > > criteria being satisfied it would seem that mandatory > > organ donation would be a fundamental violation of > > personal rights. > > > > It would appear that we are on a road where at least some > > states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve > > the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable > > or not. Two points: 1) The current organ transplant situation (i.e. shortages, lack of research on making things safer, cheaper, etc) exists because the government outlaws trade in organs; i.e. sets the value of an organ to zero. With no financial incentive to give up organs (either before or after death), people don't. With less financial incentive to improve the technology associated with the current system, people don't. If you want to improve the system, get rid of existing dumb legislation; don't layer more dumb legislation on top...a cry into the void, but there you have the truth of it. Actions follow market incentives; no incentive, no action. 2) We've been heading down the road to the state owning your body for quite the while. How can the legislature put in place any law that regulates what you can do to yourself, with yourself, by yourself (e.g. drugs, body modification, suicide, organ donation, etc, etc, etc) without the presumption of ownership of your body? Reason http://www.exratio.com/ From CurtAdams at aol.com Wed Nov 5 06:34:36 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 01:34:36 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down Message-ID: In a message dated 11/4/2003 6:16:21 PM Pacific Standard Time, rhanson at gmu.edu writes: >Maybe you should read the paper first? The topic is average changes, not >the change in each possible case. I did. They were citing the (well demonstrated) heritability of intelligence (ie. the correlation between relatives, so more or less what I was talking about) as evidence for heterosis as a major effect in IQ increase. My point is that fact is evidence *against* heterosis. High heterosis shows up as large effects neither heritable nor enviromental and will be noise on almost any study I've seen. The main effect of heterosis is an otherwise inexplicable similarity between siblings in that they will resemble each other but *not* their parents. >>But, also with environmental change. Feed people more, they mature >>earlier and grow taller. That's definitely an environmental change, >>even though height is a highly genetically heritable trait. >We don't actually know how much nutrition can account for height changes. Not exactly. but there are large differences between sibs raised in different countries. It's certainly a major influence. >>You need generations of strong isolation of small villages to get much >>inbreeding >>and the US and Canada were founded by individual or small family migrants from >>the getgo. There was never any inbreeding to dispose of. >You might be right, but I don't think we have the data to support your claim >with any confidence. You could get it by looking at the ancestral villages of samples of people in North American colonial villages. I'd think somebody's done something like that although I'd not know of it. I have a friend studying American Revolutionary history/sociology and I'll ask her if she knows anything on this. From reason at exratio.com Wed Nov 5 06:40:47 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 22:40:47 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Robert J. Bradbury > Terminology: > ILE: Indefinite Lifespan Extension -- preferable to > "IMMORTALITY" because IMMORTALITY can take too many > hits based on the physics of the universe. (Protons > decaying, expansion accelerating, black holes consuming > everything else, yada yada yada...). > > Ok, now one of the serious questions that people should > be concerned with with respect to ILE is precisely *how* > do I get my cake. For those of us on the upside end of > 40, or perhaps 30, cryonics enters into the equation. > > *But* as some of us know cryonics becomes pretty *iffy* > if the legal authorities stick their fingers into the works. > (Cases in point range from the current situation regarding > the Martinot's in France to the case of Dora Kent in the past.) I think I would go so far as to say that the entirety of the "cake or not" question revolves around government interference. My take is that we're probably 30 years away from the start of aging as a chronic but controlled condition, *IF* there are clear skies and freedom for fundraising, activism, education and research. There are no show-stopping hurdles beyond a lot of work and a lot of money - exactly the same thing that could have been said about cancer 30 years ago. This time could easily double if politicians and anti-progress forces really dig in and fight seriously to halt medical progress towards ILE...which they show all the signs of doing. Already, scientific progress in regenerative medicine is far behind where it could have been. Reason http://www.exratio.com From CurtAdams at aol.com Wed Nov 5 06:45:11 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 01:45:11 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down Message-ID: <115.2ae8ba41.2cd9f677@aol.com> In a message dated 11/4/2003 7:07:58 PM Pacific Standard Time, mlorrey at yahoo.com writes: >Especially since the claim is wrong. Historically, rural America, which >was most of America prior to the 20th century, was heavily homogenous >and inbred. Social instruments prevented ethnic, religious, and caste >cross breeding You need a *lot* of inbreeding for the effects the authors are talking about. For an inbred village, you'd need centuries. And somehow, in spite of all these impediments, the average american "black" is 1/3 European genetically (with a LOT of variance on that). Seems we did a pretty good job of x-breeding. It takes very little x-breeding to obliterate genetic differences. Over time, literally one lone event per generation for the entire population pretty much does the trick. From CurtAdams at aol.com Wed Nov 5 06:50:12 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 01:50:12 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated Message-ID: <11b.2a35e647.2cd9f7a4@aol.com> In a message dated 11/4/2003 8:13:08 PM Pacific Standard Time, Karen at smigrodzki.org writes: >Can anyone in CA confirm that it is an opt-out (aka "presumed consent") >state? I can't find my reference for it, and I want to correct if I am >falsely accusing. No formal reference, sorry, but last I paid attention to this (years ago) it was "opt-in" by placing a "donor" sticker on one's driver's license. My 6 month old license still has a spot for the sticker. From cphoenix at best.com Wed Nov 5 07:04:08 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 02:04:08 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> Rick wrote: > One should only believe according to evidence. And by evidence I mean > verifiable evidence as would be accepted by those most schooled and > respected in the ways of science. Is science really a good arbiter of evidence? Until recently, I thought it was. It appears to be ideal: a distributed-intelligence process, backed up by experiment every step of the way. But I've run across a few things that have made me question whether it actually works very well in practice. A major source of discomfort is an excellent book, _Discovering_ by Robert Scott Root-Bernstein. I think this book is to the American scientific establishment what Atlas Shrugged is to socialism, except that _Discovering_ also contains practical advice. Scientific theories, even the most elegant ones, are simply approximations that are good enough until something better comes along. It's easy to think that this implies continuous improvement and means we must be getting really close to the truth now--and perhaps in a few areas we are. But a look at the variety of atomic theories (one of many things explored in the book) shows that scientists spent decades working with theories that wouldn't satisfy a high school chemistry student today--not noticing how inadequate they were, because the theories spent decades being quite adequate for what the scientists were doing with them. But this isn't the worst of it. Scientific answers are decided by consensus. In theory this means that every answer is carefully checked--yeah, and in theory, communism is a fair system. One of the strongest lessons of the book is that scientists usually see what they look for. Especially in the centers of scientific endeavor. Scientists who are good at finding what they expect to find produce fewer controversial results. And predictable results are easier to write grants for. And long careers in one field are a good way to stop innovating. So, the way to maximize funding (and minimize exploration) is to reach a consensus as soon as possible--doesn't matter if it's right, as long as it's good enough to run predictable experiments--and stick to it as long as possible. (Actually, I don't think this last is directly stated in the book, but it's pretty obvious.) I've seen this at work in the way the "most respected" scientists (and the bureaucrats they're symbiotic with) have closed ranks against molecular nanotechnology. No one comes up with a serious argument against it--they just do a bit of handwaving and pretend that they've debunked it. The scary thing is that this works. The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered something I'd been trying for a year to forget. One evening last summer, my wife suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, in a place she'd never had pain before, bad enough that we canceled our plans to go for a walk so I could rub her back (and this had never happened before either). When I started the massage, she said, "How come the more you touch me there, the more I want to cry?" A few minutes later, the pain went away. And a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had been killed in a motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower ribs had been run over. Obviously this is not scientific evidence, it's not a repeatable phenomenon, and it leads to no useful theory. I don't ask anyone else to accept it or act on it; that's not the point. The point is: Is it more "scientific" for me to ignore it, or to accept that it happened and I can't explain it and it might be significant? Any scientist worth their salt would tell me that, since there's no such thing as ESP, there must be some mundane explanation. I told myself that for a year. But I'm becoming convinced that this is the wrong answer. It's the answer that makes scientists see only what they expect to see, every time. Science cannot progress if it can't deal with the unexpected, and science without progress is dead. But modern science, it seems, has only two categories: Things that can be studied with the scientific method, and things that cannot be addressed. There is no category anymore for observations that cannot be categorized, but only catalogued. If there is such a thing as a mundane theory that makes ESP possible, science will find it only by chance. It's heresy even to look. Not long before I read _Discovering_, I participated in a discussion on another list in which a philosopher/chemist made statements like "Science is not about truth." My defense of science was energetic and often verged on scornful. But now I'm wondering whether I owe that guy an apology. Where is the truth in "Since your observation is impossible, it must be meaningless"? How is truth advanced by funding mostly research based on well-established theory? Why is it that the phrase "peer reviewed grant proposal" is not universally horrifying to scientists? Now, to get back to the quote that started this screed: "...evidence as would be accepted by those most schooled and respected in the ways of science." Would this be Richard Smalley, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry? And who recently wrote that an ordinary chemical reaction involves five to fifteen atoms? I guess he's never heard of flame chemistry, or the formation of ozone in the upper atmosphere? Well, maybe he wasn't thinking too hard. He wrote this--and Scientific American printed it--in an attempt to discredit molecular nanotechnology. We must hope that individual scientists are less reliable than science as a whole--otherwise the entire institution is bankrupt! But your criterion requires asking the opinion of individuals, applying methods designed for groups, to insufficient data, outside their field. I really think you'd do better to ask a lawyer; they're trained to deal with unfamiliar information and find weaknesses in strange arguments. Personally, I'd most rather have Richard Feynman evaluate my evidence; but I think he would've been too humble to give the kind of official scientific opinion you're looking for. A Google search for "Feynman religion" found some reviews of _The Meaning of It All_. Amazon quotes him thus: "In case you are beginning to believe that some of the things I said before are true because I am a scientist and according to the brochure that you get I won some awards and so forth, instead of your looking at the ideas themselves and judging them directly...I will get rid of that tonight. I dedicate this lecture to showing what ridiculous conclusions and rare statements such a man as myself can make." And according to a review on ePinions, "His recurrent theme is freedom of thought: the freedom to doubt, to investigate, and to believe. For example, when noting the two legacies of western civilization - the "scientific spirit of adventure" and "Christian ethics" - Feynman concludes that these two legacies are "logically, thoroughly, consistent." We must be free to doubt and question to find new answers, and we must be free to believe and base our actions in a morality larger than ourselves." http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738201669/102-2708461-0320925?v=glance http://www.epinions.com/book-review-60F8-58F600-3905B39B-prod5 Note: I'm not saying that science should study religion, or should subordinate itself to religion--I'm not talking about religion or anything mystical at all. What I am saying is that even in areas where science could make a contribution, it is usually unwilling to stretch itself far enough to follow up the interesting clues. And the scientific establishment is responsible for an unforgivable waste of potential talent, because people who could have been creative investigators are instead turned into grant-grubbing conformists. (Some scientists escape, but many do not; and those who remain creative often have to resort to lying or stealing to pursue their interesting research.) I'd almost go so far as to say that modern science can't claim credit for its successes, because they happened as much despite the institution as because of it. I'll end with a quote from Isaac Newton. "I don?t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered all before me." How many scientists today would be willing to admit that their work is not even wading into the "ocean of truth"? Are they greater scientists than Newton, or are they completely missing the point? Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From sentience at pobox.com Wed Nov 5 07:11:27 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 02:11:27 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day Message-ID: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Ones and zeroes. We can see them completely and clearly; the entire realm is absolutely under our control; it is a world that we built and that runs entirely on our rules. Destroying the intruder is as easy as making the decision. And yet we still can't get rid of spam. Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 5 07:59:13 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 18:59:13 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Message-ID: <014001c3a372$b4492e80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > Ones and zeroes. We can see them completely and clearly; > the entire realm is absolutely under our control; it is a world > that we built and that runs entirely on our rules. Destroying > the intruder is as easy as making the decision. > > And yet we still can't get rid of spam. > > Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. I don't mean to be a smart arse Eliezer, I mean I *really* don't mean to be, but I seem to be having a little trouble winding in the hyper-philosopher at present and it is in that context that I wonder if your starting assertion is correct. I think maybe your angst(?) about grey goo, rolled back to concern about spam may further roll back to an essential misunderstanding in your first proposition. We can see 1s and 0's completely and clearly (but not in context) taken one digit at a time but we *never* encounter there meaning without some other contextual information accompanying them to tell us what the 1's and 0's mean. A one can be a 'label' like the number on ones address eg. 1 First Street, or the digit or numeral or symbol 1 (or 0) can mean other things. Further the 1's and 0's when put together in streams don't simply convey extra potential arithmetic meaning, the new combinations to the interpreter of the message (as opposed to the writer) who may not be sure of the intended context (faces geometric) increases in potential meaning. Context is vital to readers of symbols even in binary bitstreams. If the reader can't discern some sort of additional meta context from the writer that is not contained in just the bitstreams then the reader is doomed to flounder around in infinite possible interpretations. Or so it seems to me. In practice of course in human interactions we don't encounter bitstreams without context we always have some context and no particular human ever lived in a world of bitstreams before they lived in a social world. The bitstreams are therefore fundamental in a way, but secondary in another way. What was fundamental to the first counters or imbue-ers of meaning to bitstreams was some extra context between conveyers of a message. Context cannot be contained in a disembodied message. Perhaps that is as clear as mud. But I'm not stuck with grey goo or spam problems I'm stuck with people who really don't seem to know what they are talking about. (No specific slur or insult intended at all - I'm speaking matter of factly as that's just how things are seeming to me at present.) Regards, Brett From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Nov 5 08:13:46 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 02:13:46 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> <014001c3a372$b4492e80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <012f01c3a374$bfb8d0c0$ec994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 1:59 AM [communication is contextually framed and understood] > Perhaps that is as clear as mud. Nope, standard semiotic theory. (My THEORY AND ITS DISCONTENTS goes into this in some detail, FWIW.) Damien Broderick From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 5 10:45:46 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 21:45:46 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> Message-ID: <018601c3a389$f887c400$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Chris Phoenix writes: > Rick wrote: > > One should only believe according to evidence. And by > > evidence I mean verifiable evidence as would be accepted > > by those most schooled and respected in the ways of > > science. > Is science really a good arbiter of evidence? Until recently, > I thought it was ... I don't think any external process can arbitrate evidence for one. One must weight and arbitrate 'evidence' personally. Else one has not weighted or arbitrated at all. There is a difference between reckoning and believing. There is no nonsense or self serving rationalisation in reckoning. It's being honest with oneself. I really have no idea what is going on in peoples heads who say that they believe. I think sometimes they are reckoning but with huge delays in the re-evaluation of the data and re- examination of the premises. The old mariners used dead- reckoning, constantly checking stars, winds, speed of the boat through the water etc, they didn't have certain GPS-like knowledge of their proximity to things like landmasses but they could approximate and continuously re-approximate in an ongoing relationship with the evidence. One could not do a group dead-reckoning as I understand because the chattering and nattering would screw up the good reckoners attention on the scarce data sources. One might be able to show others how to reckon or explain later but to do it well optimally and to describe it or teach it at the same time would be impossible. Compared with reckoning like the good mariners used to do, I don't think most people who say they believe are mapping 'reckoning' and 'believing' to the same process. Reckoning is qualitatively better, but it is necessarily a solitary exercise as it goes on continually in real time. I think you may be anthropomorphising science which is ultimately not a unitary judge but a shared and cross-subjective way of seeing. Science never directs itself - subjective individuals or practitioners of the scientific method direct their attention to places and describe to each other the method they employed and the other can then see if they get the same result. Their is a sort of cross-subjective feedback happening but not true objectivity it seems to me. What purpose would subjective beings have with true objectivity anyway - it seems to me that such is a detachment not even to be wished. No. Objectivity as talked about even by scientists is not true objectivity it is rather a collective specie of shared subjectivity. Subjective individuals have no use for objective seeing only for shared subjective seeing and for personal seeing and not in that order. [snip] > Scientific theories, even the most elegant ones, are simply > approximations that are good enough until something better > comes along. It's easy to think that this implies continuous > improvement and means we must be getting really close to > the truth now--and perhaps in a few areas we are. Perhaps because we are endeavouring to accommodate reality as perceived by other subjunctive-s we direct our investigations to the areas where the other subjective-s we want to commune with require. We don't have to, but for the most part most of us choose to. But all subjective-s want to accommodate so as to overcome some exogenous realities (illness, discomfort etc) that although still subjectively experienced are universally felt and we combine our resources with those of others to . > Scientific answers are decided by consensus. [anthropomorphising science as something that has answers - it doesn't scientist's do and they share a method] > In theory this means that every answer is carefully checked No. > --yeah, and in theory, communism is a fair system. > One of the strongest lessons of the book is that scientists > usually see what they look for. Of course, unless they are looking for something new. > Especially in the centers of scientific endeavor. Scientists > who are good at finding what they expect to find produce > fewer controversial results. And predictable results are > easier to write grants for. And long careers in one field are > a good way to stop innovating. So, the way to maximize > funding (and minimize exploration) is to reach a consensus > as soon as possible--doesn't matter if it's right, as long as it's > good enough to run predictable experiments--and stick to it > as long as possible. (Actually, I don't think this last is directly > stated in the book, but it's pretty obvious.) > > I've seen this at work in the way the "most respected" > scientists (and the bureaucrats they're symbiotic with) > have closed ranks against molecular nanotechnology. No > one comes up with a serious argument against it--they just > do a bit of handwaving and pretend that they've debunked > it. . > The scary thing is that this works. No it doesn't. It just appears to for a time. You are forgetting the dead-reckoners who sometimes don't give a shit for what other people think or more precisely they factor what they think other people think (they practice politics and pyschology the fiends :-) ! ) and upset the whole applecart by reckoning also on the slow moving dim-wits and believers as well. It adds an entirely new dimension to the game because science then seems like merely a planar axis on a 3d space, with the whole interplay between people filling out the 3rd dimension - Metaphorically speaking of course. > The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered > something I'd been trying for a year to forget. One evening > last summer, my wife suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, > in a place she'd never had pain before, bad enough that we > cancelled our plans to go for a walk so I could rub her back > (and this had never happened before either). :-) > When I started the massage, she said, "How come the more > you touch me there, the more I want to cry?" A few minutes > later, the pain went away. And a few hours after that, we > learned that her brother had been killed in a motorcycle > accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower > ribs had been run over. > > Obviously this is not scientific evidence, it's not a repeatable > phenomenon, and it leads to no useful theory. I don't ask > anyone else to accept it or act on it; that's not the point. Obviously. But its not scientific evidence for more reasons than the obvious one. > The point is: Is it more "scientific" for me to ignore it, or to > accept that it happened and I can't explain it and it might be > significant? Any scientist worth their salt would tell me that, > since there's no such thing as ESP, there must be some > mundane explanation. I started a skeptic society at uni. I know what you mean about any scientist worth their salt having no truck with ESP, but that is like saying that scientist don't think UFOs exist. The acronym through wide usage loses some of the subtley of the separate words and takes on a meaning of its own. Eg. A lot of folk with use UFO as another word for flying saucer etc. But to say a short sighted duck shooter a lots of birds are clearly unidentified flying objects :-). And a saucer can be thrown does that mean it is not flying. A jet engine sort of catapults an aeroplane along with a series of explosions as I understand each explosion could be a throw. I think much of the fog lifts if you unpack ESP into extra sensory perception. Then you think well what are the existing senses that would be added to. The 5. But then one realises (or can ) that those 5 are just arbitrary classifications of sensory input. Why include pressure and heat sensing under just one term of touch for instance. When the sensors are arbitrarily clustered into 5 categories then what is an Extra sense? I hardly care except that some geezer will expect me to know the conventional 5 to talk to him or her. > I told myself that for a year. But I'm becoming convinced that > this is the wrong answer. It's the answer that makes scientists > see only what they expect to see, every time. Science cannot > progress if it can't deal with the unexpected, and science > without progress is dead. No your still anthropomorphising science. Science does not have any sense of progress. Progress is a subjective judgement or a collective of subjective judgements summed. Who is included in the polling of subjective-s summed will of course effect the net rating of progress too. To Tasmanian aborigines of the 1800's there has been little progress since then as they were wiped out. > But modern science, it seems, has only two categories: Things > that can be studied with the scientific method, and things that > cannot be addressed. It is not science that divides things into two classes it is individuals and groups of individuals in agreement with each other. > There is no category anymore for observations that cannot be > categorized, but only catalogued. If there is such a thing as a > mundane theory that makes ESP possible, science will find it > only by chance. Science qua science ain't even looking (it can't) :-) > It's heresy even to look. > > Not long before I read _Discovering_, I participated in a > discussion on another list in which a philosopher/chemist > made statements like "Science is not about truth." Either that was what was said or it was not. "Like" is not helpful here. > My defence of science was energetic and often verged on > scornful. I think science did not care and that you were defending instead your own world view ;-) > But now I'm wondering whether I owe that guy an apology. > Where is the truth in "Since your observation is impossible, it > must be meaningless"? Hang on a unicorn is impossible in some senses but the word unicorn is not meaningless. > How is truth advanced by funding mostly research based > on well-established theory? Why is it that the phrase "peer > reviewed grant proposal" is not universally horrifying to > scientists? Partly, I suspect because some scientists practice the scientific method amongst a variety of other practices for their own subjective good (and don't anthropomorphise it) - the rascals ;-) > Now, to get back to the quote that started this screed: > "...evidence as would be accepted by those most schooled > and respected in the ways of science." Would this be > Richard Smalley, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry? Ah, see you have to judge that for yourself now. You have to dead-reckon not just on the world as seen by Smalley but on the world with subjective Smalley in it as subjective participate. > And who recently wrote that an ordinary chemical > reaction involves five to fifteen atoms? I guess he's never > heard of flame chemistry, or the formation of ozone in the > upper atmosphere? Well, maybe he wasn't thinking too > hard. He wrote this--and Scientific American printed it-- > in an attempt to discredit molecular nanotechnology. . > We must hope that individual scientists are less reliable > than science as a whole--otherwise the entire institution is > bankrupt! What's hope got to do with it? Do some reckoning ;-) > But your criterion requires asking the opinion of individuals, > applying methods designed for groups, to insufficient data, > outside their field. I really think you'd do better to ask > a lawyer; they're trained to deal with unfamiliar information > and find weaknesses in strange arguments. . > Personally, I'd most rather have Richard Feynman evaluate > my evidence; Then it would be his evidence. And there would be no god but Feynman and you may be lucky to be his prophet ;-). > but I think he would've been too humble to give the kind of > official scientific opinion you're looking for. A Google search > for "Feynman religion" found some reviews of _The Meaning > of It All_. Amazon quotes him thus: > "In case you are beginning to believe that some of the things > I said before are true because I am a scientist and according > to the brochure that you get I won some awards and so forth, > instead of your looking at the ideas themselves and judging > them directly...I will get rid of that tonight. I dedicate this > lecture to showing what ridiculous conclusions and rare > statements such a man as myself can make." > > And according to a review on ePinions, > "His recurrent theme is freedom of thought: the freedom to > doubt, to investigate, and to believe. For example, when > noting the two legacies of western civilization - the "scientific > spirit of adventure" and "Christian ethics" - Feynman > concludes that these two legacies are "logically, thoroughly, > consistent." We must be free to doubt and question to find > new answers, and we must be free to believe and base our > actions in a morality larger than ourselves." [snip] My summary - Chris I think you are anthropomorhising science all over the place here. I was going to cut all the above down to that comment - but heck some folks just might appreciate a little redundancy (my apologies to the others). Regards, Brett From samantha at objectent.com Wed Nov 5 10:42:18 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 03:42:18 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Message-ID: <200311050242.18744.samantha@objectent.com> On Tuesday 04 November 2003 23:11, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Ones and zeroes. We can see them completely and clearly; the entire realm > is absolutely under our control; it is a world that we built and that runs > entirely on our rules. Uh, the world includes *us* and many of us are not good little digital citizens at all. *We* use these digital tools and thus *we* are what needs some control, not the simple world of 1's and 0's (not that it is very so simple either). And no, the world of programs itself does not run entirely on our rules or at least we have very imperfect understanding of the implications and interactions of the rules we thought to impose with one another and the world they are embedded within. > Destroying the intruder is as easy as making the > decision. > Hardly. First you must determine what is and is not an intruder. This is non-trivial. Then you must determine what is the appropriate amount of destruction or other action to acheive the desired result with a minimum of side-effects. OOPS, I left out that you must formulate with some clarity what the goal state is. > And yet we still can't get rid of spam. > > Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. Actually, handling spam is not an implausible warm-up exercise. - samantha From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 5 11:12:27 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 12:12:27 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: <200311050242.18744.samantha@objectent.com> References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> <200311050242.18744.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <20031105111227.GQ15418@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 03:42:18AM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > > And yet we still can't get rid of spam. Eliezer is mentioning another major human factor: the response is sluggish and unfocused. Effective tools exist, but are not deployed. There's no problem awareness, and where there is the responses are reflexive and mindless. There's every reason to suspect response to a military molecular self-replicator would be similiarly confused and ineffective, even though a countermeasure is available (I don't think there's a countermeasure which can protect ecology effectively -- there's a lot of activity at the physical layer which will destroy biology by side effect). > > > > Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. > > Actually, handling spam is not an implausible warm-up exercise. The problem domain is different. It's more like a wormvirus running rampant in physical space. Except that the sysadmins are unavailable, no one can pull the plug on physical layer nor fragment the network, there's physical locality, the countermeasure shares the physical layer, needs to adaptively autoamplify (or rapidly transported from a local prestocked cache) while protecting the biosphere. In other words, it's a lot like wormvirus control, except it's entirely different. No one who goes on two legs can currently provide an analysis worth the dead tree it's printed on. It doesn't look good, though. The best protection is that there's typically a slow advance in capabilities of both the agent and the countermeasure, and that ability and malice rarely occur in the same group. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sentience at pobox.com Wed Nov 5 11:17:08 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 06:17:08 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> Message-ID: <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> Chris Phoenix wrote: > > The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered something I'd > been trying for a year to forget. One evening last summer, my wife > suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, in a place she'd never had pain > before, bad enough that we canceled our plans to go for a walk so I > could rub her back (and this had never happened before either). When I > started the massage, she said, "How come the more you touch me there, > the more I want to cry?" A few minutes later, the pain went away. And > a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had been killed in a > motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower > ribs had been run over. > > Obviously this is not scientific evidence, it's not a repeatable > phenomenon, and it leads to no useful theory. I don't ask anyone else > to accept it or act on it; that's not the point. The point is: Is it > more "scientific" for me to ignore it, or to accept that it happened and > I can't explain it and it might be significant? Any scientist worth > their salt would tell me that, since there's no such thing as ESP, there > must be some mundane explanation. I told myself that for a year. But > I'm becoming convinced that this is the wrong answer. It's the answer > that makes scientists see only what they expect to see, every time. > Science cannot progress if it can't deal with the unexpected, and > science without progress is dead. But modern science, it seems, has > only two categories: Things that can be studied with the scientific > method, and things that cannot be addressed. There is no category > anymore for observations that cannot be categorized, but only > catalogued. If there is such a thing as a mundane theory that makes ESP > possible, science will find it only by chance. It's heresy even to > look. I don't ask anyone not to catalog these kinds of incidents, or not to investigate them, or not to try and repeat them under experimental controls. Nonetheless, I am willing to assert flatly that nothing paranormal happened. What is the ordinary-world explanation? Well, for all I know, you are posting this story as a test to see if anyone tries to explain it away, give it a pseudo-rational explanation when in fact you just made it up and there *is* no explanation for why that sort of thing would happen under the laws of physics, because it didn't. I do not need to try and give your story an ordinary-world explanation; even if I can't think of any ordinary-world explanation at all, I am nonetheless confident enough in my understanding of the universe to not feel discomfited. This world is my home, and I know it now, and I know the world doesn't work that way. There are a few things left that I don't know yet, but the remaining uncertainty does not have enough slack in it to permit ESP. This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so it is a simulation of a world without ESP. Supposing that I try to think of an "ordinary" explanation for your story, what springs to mind? Several things. I don't know if the name "Elizabeth Loftus" rings any bells; but human memory is far, far more pliable than people like to think. It is possible for a researcher, by asking leading questions, to create a memory completely out of fabric - for example, of being lost in the mall as a child - and later the person will not remember that it is a false memory. Did your wife really have a pain in her lower ribs, or her back? Did you learn about her brother's death a few hours later, or a day? "How come the more you touch me there, the more I want to cry?" sounds to me like not at all the sort of thing that is said spontaneously, but very easily the sort of thing that might be "recalled" afterward. It's a scary thing, but no, you would *not* know if the memory was wildly distorted - that is the message of the literature on memory pliability. In effect, it seems that each time a memory is recalled, it is written back to long-term memory anew. Then there is the selection bias, applied to you personally: You have an entire life to select from to try and recall strange events. There is the selection bias from my perspective; one person on a mailing list has one strange moment in their lives, but that's what repeated. Is the horrifying malleability of human memory, combined with selection biases, enough to explain the incident as you have reported it? Possibly, though it still strikes me as a bit of a stretch. Regardless, people who have studied the cognitive science of human error tend to be much more wary of people's memories - not their honesty, mind you, but their honestly reported memories - than non-CSers. I expect that plenty of people on Earth have memories of events for which there is no rational explanation, because they never happened. People are also very poor at guessing how improbable events really are - again, just as a general statement. Your story, if taken at face value, strikes me as improbable too - but the fact that it strikes me as improbable might simply not be significant. Or it might be. But my intuitive evaluation of the improbability is not to be trusted, even as to rough order of magnitude. What permanently zaps the paranormal explanation is not studying physics, or studying the history of science, or reading the accounts of debunked psychics - it's studying the cognitive science of human error. The literature on this has to be seen to be believed. The human mind is so wildly fragile, so wildly wrong on so many simple problems, that our physics is simply more reliable than any anecdote that can be cited against it. *Any* anecdote. Yes, even anecdotes that really, really seem like they can't be explained away. The human mind is genuinely that weak; physics is genuinely that strong. It doesn't matter whether the explanation I gave is correct. There's no ESP in the universe, no paranormal phenomena, no gods, no demons. It's just us within the laws of physics. That's the upshot, whatever the explanation is - whether you made up the anecdote as a test, or whether human memory is horrifyingly (and replicably) pliable, or whether some other ordinary event happened. If you haven't reached that point of confidence, then by no means should you attempt to convince yourself of it artificially. It took me a long time to reach the point where I was ready to say that, and it is not at all what I was thinking when I started out. But you know... it really is normal. It's all normal. And if you look at it long enough, there's enough evidence to see that it's normal. I hope that helps. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From amara at amara.com Wed Nov 5 10:38:21 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 12:38:21 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare Message-ID: yes, indeed.. region sunspot 486 is remarkable See more from that region http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_10_28/ *Hear* more from that region: (click on the audio link in the middle of the page) http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/t2003_301_11.html >Space Weather News for Nov. 5, 2003 >http://spaceweather.com >Giant sunspot 486 unleashed another intense solar flare on Nov. 4th (1950 >UT), and this one could be historic. The blast saturated X-ray sensors >onboard GOES satellites. This CME is off of Sun's limb, though (Earth won't be as strongly affected). http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_11_04/ Watch the skies in a few days. The aurora's might be extra pretty... (last week's auroras reached as far south as Florida) http://science.nasa.gov/spaceweather/aurora/gallery_01oct03_page8.html -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what's cool." --Calvin From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 5 12:33:25 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 23:33:25 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> Message-ID: <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so > it is a simulation of a world without ESP. I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could NOT easily be a sim. I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. I prefer to work with friends and the resources that I have, rather than fret over the resources I don't have. I am not malicious and I will deal with maliciousness if I must with resolution and ferocity of my own. I can see no advantage or change in my habits that I would make if I thought the world was a sim. I would probably have more allies and friends if less people entertained the sim hypothesis so much but so be it. I think that if no-one can come up with a reliable test, (group test - science or solitary test - pure reason) to see if the world is a sim then it would be better to step around what looks like an iteration of the same old mindfuk, to put away childish things and to concentrate minds and energies on the tasks at hand. Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 5 12:41:11 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 23:41:11 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <119420-22003112421026669@M2W046.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <01d001c3a39a$1806dd60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Natasha writes: > Throughout history there have been riddles that have intrigued > and surprised. Riddles such as Fermat's last theorem*; how > Solomon bult himself a royal place and solved the riddles sent > to him by Hiram; the location of the legendary 'Sogdian Rock' > climbed by Alexander's mountaineers somewhere out on the > border of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, south-east of Samarkand; > who was Kind Arthur; Schrodinger's Riddle, how life evolved > from non-life; or who were the people in Mesoamerica who > prepared the soil for the Mayan culture. > > What are some riddles that some bear light, or a shadow, on our extropic > transhumanity? Here's one - what *political* purpose was served by postulating the notion (and/or propagating the meme) of god as a trinity? i.e. Three persons - one god. Why three in particular (pace Pythagoras ;-) ? Regards, Brett From gregburch at gregburch.net Wed Nov 5 13:11:04 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 07:11:04 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: What Neil Armstrong Really Said In-Reply-To: <01d001c3a39a$1806dd60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: http://www.blogjam.com/neil_armstrong/ Don't visit this page at the office if you've got co-workers with sensitive ears. My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html From sentience at pobox.com Wed Nov 5 13:17:09 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 08:17:09 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> Message-ID: <3FA8F855.4000307@pobox.com> Chris Phoenix wrote: > > The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered something I'd > been trying for a year to forget. One evening last summer, my wife > suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, in a place she'd never had pain > before, bad enough that we canceled our plans to go for a walk so I > could rub her back (and this had never happened before either). When I > started the massage, she said, "How come the more you touch me there, > the more I want to cry?" A few minutes later, the pain went away. And > a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had been killed in a > motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower > ribs had been run over. Chris, I would like to share a similar story to yours. Not very long ago - just a couple of weeks, in fact - I got an instant message on my computer from a friend, asking me to call. Just that, and nothing more. For some reason, when I saw the message, I was filled with a terrible sinking conviction that something really awful had gone wrong. I reminded myself that the probability that something had gone terribly wrong, conditioned on the text of the instant message, was just exactly the same as it would have been in the absence of any emotional reaction. Drawing on the strength of my knowledge of the genuine non-eerieness of the universe, I flipped open my cellphone and called. Nothing was wrong. That was *two weeks ago*. Opportunities to generate eerie stories are much more frequent than one might think. But the failures are not reported. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From maxm at mail.tele.dk Wed Nov 5 13:34:07 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 14:34:07 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> Message-ID: <3FA8FC4F.70203@mail.tele.dk> Chris Phoenix wrote: > The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered something I'd > been trying for a year to forget. One evening last summer, my wife > suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, in a place she'd never had pain > before, bad enough that we canceled our plans to go for a walk so I > could rub her back (and this had never happened before either). When I > started the massage, she said, "How come the more you touch me there, > the more I want to cry?" A few minutes later, the pain went away. And > a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had been killed in a > motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower > ribs had been run over. "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" - "after the fact, therefore because of the fact" It is very ordinary to think like that. When things happens simultaniously that they are in some way related. That is the way our brain naturally reacts, because it has historically given us a greater chance of survival. After all you will not be given many chances to create a statistical analysis, showing if a predator really is dangerous or not. But it is like a lottery winner saying "I have never played Lotto before, but a hunch made me do it. And I won. That must be proof of the supernatural." When enough random events take place, impossible combinations will happen. And lotto winners do win. We are about 6 billion people on the planet. Living about 100 years. So I guess that about 60 million people die worldvide every year. Deaths are a traumatic experience that we remember well. We also naturally think back to "what was I doing when my loved one died?" And with the minds affinity to link events together, we will try and link everything we can with a death. That is why there are many stories of preminiscence. They are just not real. Rather they are examples of random events happening at roughly the same time, and then being "connected" by our brains. regards Max M From scerir at libero.it Wed Nov 5 14:57:43 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:57:43 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <119420-22003112421026669@M2W046.mail2web.com> <01d001c3a39a$1806dd60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000601c3a3ad$2b3be0c0$91b31b97@administxl09yj> Brett Paatsch > Here's one - what *political* purpose was served by postulating > the notion (and/or propagating the meme) of god as a trinity? i.e. Three > persons - one god. Why three in particular (pace Pythagoras ;-) ? "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost [...]" - Matthew 28:19 There is a trend. The number of Gods, within a single religion, becomes (|Sp,true>|Je,false>+|Sp,false>|Je,true>)+ +|Fa,false>(|Sp,true>|Je,true>) which, circulating Father, Spirit, and Jesus in that expression, shows up a very interesting property. From jef at jefallbright.net Wed Nov 5 15:49:39 2003 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 07:49:39 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> <014001c3a372$b4492e80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <00d901c3a3b4$7e5c8820$6401a8c0@int.veeco.com> Brett - I think Eliezer's post was intended more as poetry, rather than the more comprehensive style for which he is well known. It should be appreciated for the idea or feeling that it conveys. Fewer words, crafted to replicate the intended message in the mind of the audience, can be a truer form of communication than a scientific dissertation. Or not. - Jef Brett Paatsch wrote: > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > >> Ones and zeroes. We can see them completely and clearly; >> the entire realm is absolutely under our control; it is a world >> that we built and that runs entirely on our rules. Destroying >> the intruder is as easy as making the decision. >> >> And yet we still can't get rid of spam. >> >> Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. > > I don't mean to be a smart arse Eliezer, I mean I *really* don't > mean to be, but I seem to be having a little trouble winding in > the hyper-philosopher at present and it is in that context that > I wonder if your starting assertion is correct. I think maybe your > angst(?) about grey goo, rolled back to concern about spam may > further roll back to an essential misunderstanding in your first > proposition. > > We can see 1s and 0's completely and clearly (but not in context) > taken one digit at a time but we *never* encounter there meaning > without some other contextual information accompanying them to > tell us what the 1's and 0's mean. A one can be a 'label' like the > number on ones address eg. 1 First Street, or the digit or numeral > or symbol 1 (or 0) can mean other things. > > Further the 1's and 0's when put together in streams don't simply > convey extra potential arithmetic meaning, the new combinations > to the interpreter of the message (as opposed to the writer) who > may not be sure of the intended context (faces geometric) > increases in potential meaning. > > Context is vital to readers of symbols even in binary bitstreams. > If the reader can't discern some sort of additional meta context > from the writer that is not contained in just the bitstreams then > the reader is doomed to flounder around in infinite possible > interpretations. Or so it seems to me. In practice of course > in human interactions we don't encounter bitstreams without > context we always have some context and no particular human > ever lived in a world of bitstreams before they lived in a social > world. The bitstreams are therefore fundamental in a way, but > secondary in another way. What was fundamental to the first > counters or imbue-ers of meaning to bitstreams was some extra > context between conveyers of a message. Context cannot > be contained in a disembodied message. > > Perhaps that is as clear as mud. But I'm not stuck with grey goo > or spam problems I'm stuck with people who really don't seem > to know what they are talking about. (No specific slur or insult > intended at all - I'm speaking matter of factly as that's just how > things are seeming to me at present.) > > Regards, > Brett > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 5 16:26:19 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 08:26:19 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <01d001c3a39a$1806dd60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000001c3a3b9$8b667210$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Brett Paatsch > > Here's one - what *political* purpose was served by postulating > the notion (and/or propagating the meme) of god as a > trinity? i.e. Three > persons - one god. Why three in particular (pace Pythagoras ;-) ? > > Regards, > Brett The early christian church had already split into two major branches by the second century, one preaching that jesus was god, the other that he was a man. They were already killing each other over it, and there weren't even very many christians at the time, so the trinity notion was an attempt to reunify the group, kinda like the World Wrassling Federation and the World Wildlife Foundation reunification match. The major split was avoided for more than a thousand years that way. The glossed verses 1 John 5:7 and 8 were invented as support. Politically a unified church was stronger. Why three? Well, why not? spike From jacques at dtext.com Wed Nov 5 16:34:38 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 17:34:38 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: <00d901c3a3b4$7e5c8820$6401a8c0@int.veeco.com> References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> <014001c3a372$b4492e80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <00d901c3a3b4$7e5c8820$6401a8c0@int.veeco.com> Message-ID: <3FA9269E.1000803@dtext.com> Jef Allbright wrote: > > I think Eliezer's post was intended more as poetry, rather than the more > comprehensive style for which he is well known. I think Eliezer's style often has a genuine literary quality, that is not at all exclusive of or predominant on its rational quality and knowledge value. By the way: >>Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: >> >>>And yet we still can't get rid of spam. Mozilla mail 1.5 (trained) + SpamAssassin (even without non-local tests) solves it for me. Of course it's only an individual solution, and I still download the crap, so I don't disagree with your statement, but just in case someone is unaware of this possibility... Jacques From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 5 16:37:21 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 08:37:21 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <3FA8FC4F.70203@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <000a01c3a3bb$15cbde80$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > Chris Phoenix wrote: > ... > > a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had > > been killed in a > > motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower > > ribs had been run over. Remarkable! Only a few months ago, I was out riding a motorcycle, and when I got home I learned my wife had gotten a pain in her ribs. It happened right while I was out on the bike! In the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, some subset of my probability distribution wavefunction gets squashed every time I go out riding, so in some alternate universe, she got the rib pain *right at the same time I was nailed.* spike From jacques at dtext.com Wed Nov 5 16:38:10 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 17:38:10 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Rick's Text In-Reply-To: <000001c3a239$4265a8a0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> References: <000001c3a239$4265a8a0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: <3FA92772.4090606@dtext.com> rick wrote: > > http://home.centurytel.net/rickw/aonl.htm > > "an enticing tale of the possibilities of transhumanism" it also > outlines much of what I call scientific atheism. I've read it. Though... and... and of course... it was still a nice little read. I liked the confrontational aspect of it, and the child's agressivity in chapter 2. I thought it was quite funny. Of course, the whole atheism thing would have meant more to me when I was 14. Since that time, it stopped being a hot topic to me. I guess it means more to you in the US, where belief is still the norm. Here's a bit of personal experience, very much contrary to the one of your main character. My parents were believers (father protestant, mother catholic), but eager to make me independent from them and always respectful for and interested in my own beliefs and ideas (of course, I am still a bit angry at them that they would pour such nonsense in my head when I was a child). With time and discussions, they became atheist, too (so I redeemed them :-). Jacques From jef at jefallbright.net Wed Nov 5 17:01:44 2003 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 09:01:44 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> Message-ID: <014201c3a3be$817cf670$6401a8c0@int.veeco.com> I think it's interesting and worth pointing out that superstition, post-modernism, decontructionalism, and other forms of anti-science fit *perfectly* into the scientific worldview. All parts fit perfectly into the whole. Even if the whole keeps getting bigger. Even if in the Godellian sense we can never grasp it in its entirety. It's fun to arrange and re-arrange the pieces of the puzzle as we try to map it onto the greater reality that we experience in bits and chunks. - Jef Chris Phoenix wrote: > Rick wrote: >> One should only believe according to evidence. And by evidence I mean >> verifiable evidence as would be accepted by those most schooled and >> respected in the ways of science. > > Is science really a good arbiter of evidence? Until recently, I > thought it was. It appears to be ideal: a distributed-intelligence > process, backed up by experiment every step of the way. But I've run > across a few things that have made me question whether it actually > works very well in practice. > > A major source of discomfort is an excellent book, _Discovering_ by > Robert Scott Root-Bernstein. I think this book is to the American > scientific establishment what Atlas Shrugged is to socialism, except > that _Discovering_ also contains practical advice. > > Scientific theories, even the most elegant ones, are simply > approximations that are good enough until something better comes > along. It's easy to think that this implies continuous improvement > and means we must be getting really close to the truth now--and > perhaps in a few areas we are. But a look at the variety of atomic > theories (one of many things explored in the book) shows that > scientists spent decades working with theories that wouldn't satisfy > a high school chemistry student today--not noticing how inadequate > they were, because the theories spent decades being quite adequate > for what the scientists were doing with them. But this isn't the > worst of it. > > Scientific answers are decided by consensus. In theory this means > that every answer is carefully checked--yeah, and in theory, > communism is a fair system. One of the strongest lessons of the book > is that scientists usually see what they look for. Especially in the > centers of scientific endeavor. Scientists who are good at finding > what they expect to find produce fewer controversial results. And > predictable results are easier to write grants for. And long careers > in one field are a good way to stop innovating. So, the way to > maximize funding (and minimize exploration) is to reach a consensus > as soon as possible--doesn't matter if it's right, as long as it's > good enough to run predictable experiments--and stick to it as long > as possible. (Actually, I don't think this last is directly stated in > the book, but it's pretty obvious.) > > I've seen this at work in the way the "most respected" scientists (and > the bureaucrats they're symbiotic with) have closed ranks against > molecular nanotechnology. No one comes up with a serious argument > against it--they just do a bit of handwaving and pretend that they've > debunked it. The scary thing is that this works. > > The final straw came a few nights ago, when I remembered something I'd > been trying for a year to forget. One evening last summer, my wife > suddenly got a pain in her lower ribs, in a place she'd never had pain > before, bad enough that we canceled our plans to go for a walk so I > could rub her back (and this had never happened before either). When > I started the massage, she said, "How come the more you touch me > there, the more I want to cry?" A few minutes later, the pain went > away. And a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had > been killed in a motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that > time, and his lower ribs had been run over. > > Obviously this is not scientific evidence, it's not a repeatable > phenomenon, and it leads to no useful theory. I don't ask anyone else > to accept it or act on it; that's not the point. The point is: Is it > more "scientific" for me to ignore it, or to accept that it happened > and I can't explain it and it might be significant? Any scientist > worth their salt would tell me that, since there's no such thing as > ESP, there must be some mundane explanation. I told myself that for > a year. But I'm becoming convinced that this is the wrong answer. > It's the answer that makes scientists see only what they expect to > see, every time. Science cannot progress if it can't deal with the > unexpected, and science without progress is dead. But modern > science, it seems, has only two categories: Things that can be > studied with the scientific method, and things that cannot be > addressed. There is no category anymore for observations that cannot > be categorized, but only catalogued. If there is such a thing as a > mundane theory that makes ESP possible, science will find it only by > chance. It's heresy even to look. > > Not long before I read _Discovering_, I participated in a discussion > on another list in which a philosopher/chemist made statements like > "Science is not about truth." My defense of science was energetic and > often verged on scornful. But now I'm wondering whether I owe that > guy an apology. Where is the truth in "Since your observation is > impossible, it must be meaningless"? How is truth advanced by funding > mostly research based on well-established theory? Why is it that the > phrase "peer reviewed grant proposal" is not universally horrifying to > scientists? > > Now, to get back to the quote that started this screed: "...evidence > as would be accepted by those most schooled and respected in the ways > of science." Would this be Richard Smalley, who won the Nobel Prize > for chemistry? And who recently wrote that an ordinary chemical > reaction involves five to fifteen atoms? I guess he's never heard of > flame chemistry, or the formation of ozone in the upper atmosphere? > Well, maybe he wasn't thinking too hard. He wrote this--and > Scientific American printed it--in an attempt to discredit molecular > nanotechnology. > > We must hope that individual scientists are less reliable than science > as a whole--otherwise the entire institution is bankrupt! But your > criterion requires asking the opinion of individuals, applying methods > designed for groups, to insufficient data, outside their field. I > really think you'd do better to ask a lawyer; they're trained to deal > with unfamiliar information and find weaknesses in strange arguments. > > Personally, I'd most rather have Richard Feynman evaluate my evidence; > but I think he would've been too humble to give the kind of official > scientific opinion you're looking for. A Google search for "Feynman > religion" found some reviews of _The Meaning of It All_. Amazon > quotes him thus: > "In case you are beginning to believe that some of the things I said > before are true because I am a scientist and according to the brochure > that you get I won some awards and so forth, instead of your looking > at the ideas themselves and judging them directly...I will get rid of > that tonight. I dedicate this lecture to showing what ridiculous > conclusions and rare statements such a man as myself can make." > > And according to a review on ePinions, > "His recurrent theme is freedom of thought: the freedom to doubt, to > investigate, and to believe. For example, when noting the two > legacies of western civilization - the "scientific spirit of > adventure" and "Christian ethics" - Feynman concludes that these two > legacies are "logically, thoroughly, consistent." We must be free to > doubt and question to find new answers, and we must be free to believe > and base our actions in a morality larger than ourselves." > > http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738201669/102-2708461-0320925?v=glance > http://www.epinions.com/book-review-60F8-58F600-3905B39B-prod5 > > Note: I'm not saying that science should study religion, or should > subordinate itself to religion--I'm not talking about religion or > anything mystical at all. What I am saying is that even in areas > where science could make a contribution, it is usually unwilling to > stretch itself far enough to follow up the interesting clues. And the > scientific establishment is responsible for an unforgivable waste of > potential talent, because people who could have been creative > investigators are instead turned into grant-grubbing conformists. > (Some scientists escape, but many do not; and those who remain > creative often have to resort to lying or stealing to pursue their > interesting research.) I'd almost go so far as to say that modern > science can't claim credit for its successes, because they happened > as much despite the institution as because of it. > > I'll end with a quote from Isaac Newton. "I don't know what I may > seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a > boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then > finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst > the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered all before me." How many > scientists today would be willing to admit that their work is not > even wading into the "ocean of truth"? Are they greater scientists > than Newton, or are they completely missing the point? > > Chris From Karen at smigrodzki.org Wed Nov 5 17:43:49 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 12:43:49 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <11b.2a35e647.2cd9f7a4@aol.com> Message-ID: <002f01c3a3c4$6281ff30$6501a8c0@DogHouse> ok. thanks. i will have to find my source and check it. k ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 1:50 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > In a message dated 11/4/2003 8:13:08 PM Pacific Standard Time, > Karen at smigrodzki.org writes: > > >Can anyone in CA confirm that it is an opt-out (aka "presumed consent") > >state? I can't find my reference for it, and I want to correct if I am > >falsely accusing. > > No formal reference, sorry, but last I paid attention to this (years ago) it > was "opt-in" by placing a "donor" sticker on one's driver's license. My > 6 month old license still has a spot for the sticker. > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Nov 5 17:39:33 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 12:39:33 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] DEBATE: AAAS - Sprott vs. de Grey Message-ID: <63340-22003113517393351@M2W087.mail2web.com> Forwarded from Steve Coles: "The one-hour debate went off as scheduled with the small technicality that you couldn't just 'tune in' at the appointed hour without first doing a download of the latest Windows Media Player ver. 9.0 which took about 20 minutes, if you didn't already have a current copy installed on your system, all of which ate into the remaining viewing time. But do not fear, if you missed all or any part of it, there will be a written transcript available in due course. So check back at this same website www.sagecrossroads.net in a few weeks time. By the way, there are several other transcripts that could also be of interest to you, including one with Michael West on 'Therapeutic Cloning and the Future of Anti-Aging Medicine' from last April 22nd." Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From max at maxmore.com Wed Nov 5 17:21:01 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 11:21:01 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031105111702.04bac4f0@mail.earthlink.net> Chris -- given your comments, you'll find the following two papers very interesting. Here are my reviews of them. If you go to the URLs, you'll find links to other relevant material. I, too, am concerned about the integrity of the scientific process as it currently exists. Doing something about it is just about my top priority for ExI, if we had the resources. Max Management Science: What Does it Have to do with Management or Science? Marketing Bulletin by J. Scott Armstrong http://www.manyworlds.com/index.asp?from=CO&coid=CO10270312354673 Some people believe that personal experience is the gold standard of knowledge. Dismissing theory in favor of intuition and experience can be a fatal mistake because human cognition and perception are rife with errors, biases, distortions, and limitations. At the same time, management theory often fails to qualify as "management science", typically systematizing wobbly assumptions into a superficially compelling form. Scott Armstrong investigates what real management science can tell us about the usefulness of formal planning, portfolio matrices for decision making, mission statements, the pursuit of market share, preparing sales forecasts, survey design, and predicting the outcome of a conflict situation. Scientific management research uses objective, replicable procedures to compare various approaches, method, or theories. Only by adhering to standards of scientific rigor can management theory produce results worth paying attention to. Armstrong shows that this research can and has produced useful results but also that most management literature is useless. More worrying is that the proportion of useful work is declining. The useful results that are published are typically unseen, rejected, or ignored. Armstrong does an excellent job of explaining the reasons for this situation as well as suggesting ways to improve the communication of important findings in management science. After analyzing the shortcomings of the research methodology, publication, and dissemination processes, Armstrong looks at the possibilities. He recommends taking all research findings and putting them on the Internet, subjecting them to continuing peer review and avoiding the distorting dynamics of the journal process. In addition, he suggests creating management science "impact sites" to focus on objectives that are relevant, explicit, measurable, and challenging. Impact sites could be used to compare universities and their departments in terms of the usefulness of their research. Armstrong provides specific and helpful recommendations to university deans, reviewers, authors, and practitioners. The contribution of the Internet could be powerfully augmented by using expert systems and software. Expert systems can incorporate new procedures and software new findings, making the default choice to stay current while preventing knowledge leakage. Far-sighted companies might even contribute to the process of improving management science by supporting nonprofits who work on these projects. Armstrong has also should that nonprofits produce more useful results but lack motivation to publish. By contrast, universities have resources but are removed from real problems and businesses are near the problem but usually lack the resources for doing the research. Reaping Benefits from Management Research: Lessons from the Forecasting Principles Project by Ruth A. Pagell; J. Scott Armstrong The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania http://www.manyworlds.com/index.asp?from=CO&coid=CO10270312354673 _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Wed Nov 5 18:10:55 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 18:10:55 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day Message-ID: <3FA93D2F.9050102@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 17:34:38 +0100 Jacques ecrit: > Mozilla mail 1.5 (trained) + SpamAssassin (even without non-local > tests) solves it for me. Of course it's only an individual solution, > and I still download the crap, so I don't disagree with your > statement, but just in case someone is unaware of this possibility. > Mozilla Mail 1.5 + MailWasher solves it for me. MailWasher stops the spam at the POP server so I don't ever download the crap. (You can't train the Mozilla Bayesian spam catcher though, if you never download the spam in the first place). It also allows you to try to bounce the spam straight back to them, but this often fails due to forged return addresses. Free from for one mail account. The Pro version ($29.95) handles multiple mail accounts. BillK From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Nov 5 18:13:54 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 13:13:54 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Bounty on Virus Authors Message-ID: <39020-220031135181354450@M2W086.mail2web.com> Bounty Hunting is back in vogue: "The world's largest software company announced Wednesday in Washington that it is creating an anti-virus reward program, backed by $5 million of its cash, to help law enforcement agencies catch the authors of computer worms." Microsoft opponents are asking how in tar'nation is Microsoft going to pull off a secuity officer role. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From scerir at libero.it Wed Nov 5 18:24:07 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:24:07 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <119420-22003112421026669@M2W046.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <005d01c3a3ca$066cf0f0$67c11b97@administxl09yj> > What are some riddles that some bear light, > or a shadow, on our extropic transhumanity? > Natasha Erwin Schroedinger, in "Nature and the Greeks" Cambridge University Press, 1954, p.93, writes: 'The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.' I do not know whether the above is a 'riddle', a page of naive philosophy, a moment of discomfort. Nevertheless it seems, to me, a good question. Maybe it is also a question about subjects and objects. From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Wed Nov 5 18:19:30 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:19:30 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant In-Reply-To: <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Brett Paatsch wrote: >I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could >NOT easily be a sim. > >I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of >repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same >wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that >is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. It's exactly the other way around. The biggest concern, when one lives inside a sim, is the possibility that it will be shut down. Just turned off and erased, as any computer program. Ciao, Alfio From gpmap at runbox.com Wed Nov 5 18:22:52 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:22:52 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Message-ID: <000e01c3a3c9$d3d9dbd0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Getting rid of spam may well be as difficult as developing active shields against gray goo. Spam is a moving target: as soon as we devise a good filter for today's spam, they will devise a way around. As soon as we develop a super AI that recognizes spam, they will develop a better AI to produce subliminal advertising bases on those nuances of human psycology that have not be incorporated in the AI design. The bad guys are as smart as the good guys, this is not likely to change too soon. I think we will still have bad guys after the singularity. G. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 8:11 AM Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day > Ones and zeroes. We can see them completely and clearly; the entire realm > is absolutely under our control; it is a world that we built and that runs > entirely on our rules. Destroying the intruder is as easy as making the > decision. > > And yet we still can't get rid of spam. > > Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. > > -- > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Wed Nov 5 18:35:44 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (Randy S) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 18:35:44 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: <3FA93D2F.9050102@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: Quote from: maxm at mail.tele.dk on November 03, 2003, 07:12:53 >>>>>>>>>>> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > I am looking to all of you for suggestions. Just do it! Starting at university will feel odd the first day with all the young folks there, then you will be used to it. (Talking from experience.) You can easily catch up if you have the time. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Don't do it, Kevin! Become a paid plumber's apprentice for 4 years, and then 4 years from now you can start your own business and charge $200/hr for your time. Then is an oversupply of college degreed workers and an undersupply of plumbers. Also there is the cost. Max M here comes from from Denmark, a country that is run for the benefit of its citizens. Tell us, Max, how much they pay students to go to school in denmark? Here in the USA, we are organized for the benefit of the investor. Therefore, it will cost Kevin 10K minimum just for the tuition. ALso, there are costs of living for 4 years--probably about 20K minimum. -- -------------- -Randy From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Wed Nov 5 18:37:30 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (Randy S) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 18:37:30 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] immigration into Sweden In-Reply-To: <63340-22003113517393351@M2W087.mail2web.com> Message-ID: Spike wrote: "Last Saturday at a dinner party, a Swedish friend commented that Sweden was having a huge immigration of middle easterners. I asked if there is a movement afoot to do street signs in both Swedish and Arabic, like we have both English and Spanish in many Taxifornian cities. He seemed rather annoyed with that innocent question. Anders, what did I say? Whats up with that? " Sweden and other western european welfare states started to take in lots of African and muslim immigrants over the last decade. Then they discovered what many researchers are starting to discover--people trust each other more and cooperate better if they look the same and less if they look different. Plus it did not help that the vest majority of the immigrants were on welfare-unemployment. This phenomenon caused a rollback of the welfare state. For example, Swedish unemployment went from 90% of salary to 75% of salary soon after the surge in immigration. From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Wed Nov 5 18:39:39 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (Randy S) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 18:39:39 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] a job for me? In-Reply-To: <000e01c3a3c9$d3d9dbd0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Message-ID: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. Quote from: maxm at mail.tele.dk on November 03, 2003, 07:12:53 kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > I am looking to all of you for suggestions. Just do it! Starting at university will feel odd the first day with all the young folks there, then you will be used to it. (Talking from experience.) You can easily catch up if you have the time. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark >>>>>>>>>>. Don't do it, Kevin! Become a paid plumber's apprentice for 4 years, and then 4 years from now you can start your own business and charge $200/hr for your time. Then is an oversupply of college degreed workers and an undersupply of plumbers. Also there is the cost. Max M here comes from from Denmark, a country that is run for the benefit of its citizens. Tell us, Max, how much they pay students to go to school in denmark? Here in the USA, we are organized for the benefit of the investor. Therefore, it will cost Kevin 10K minimum just for the tuition. ALso, there are costs of living for 4 years--probably about 20K minimum. From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Wed Nov 5 18:45:27 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (Randy S) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 18:45:27 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] a job for me? In-Reply-To: <000e01c3a3c9$d3d9dbd0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Message-ID: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. Quote from: maxm at mail.tele.dk on November 03, 2003, 07:12:53 kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > I am looking to all of you for suggestions. Just do it! Starting at university will feel odd the first day with all the young folks there, then you will be used to it. (Talking from experience.) You can easily catch up if you have the time. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark >>>>>>>>>>. Don't do it, Kevin! Become a paid plumber's apprentice for 4 years, and then 4 years from now you can start your own business and charge $200/hr for your time. Then is an oversupply of college degreed workers and an undersupply of plumbers. Also there is the cost. Max M here comes from from Denmark, a country that is run for the benefit of its citizens. Tell us, Max, how much they pay students to go to school in denmark? Here in the USA, we are organized for the benefit of the investor. Therefore, it will cost Kevin 10K minimum just for the tuition. ALso, there are costs of living for 4 years--probably about 20K minimum. From aperick at centurytel.net Wed Nov 5 19:15:18 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 11:15:18 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <200311051041.hA5AfCM07214@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <15512239.1068059733451.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> It has been said: to be great is to be misunderstood. I am going to have to try to remember not to purchase any snug fitting hats. Chris, I think that most scientists are wise in 'failing' to look into most 'strange' questions. One should have an open mind, but maybe not so open so as to let your brains fall out. As for your wife's rib pain. You may have simply witnessed a meaningless coincidence. Such synchronized events happen all the time, just as we would expect given the huge number of events in play. Correlation is no proof of causation. I do not find the fact that a small portion of the population (you and your wife, and thousands of others) encounter at some point in their lifetimes some correlation that seems to them to be "scary" - as the least bit unusual. If we all eat alphabet soup every day of our lives we can expect a few folks to be insulted by the ghost in the minestrone. When an exceedingly rare event occurs (like two similar things, nearly synchronized) it is not a wakeup call for a scientific investigation. Investigation is only warranted when there is an abundance of repetition - patterns may mean something, but virtually never is there a special significance to an isolated static pop. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.515 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 9/1/2003 From samantha at objectent.com Wed Nov 5 19:20:12 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 12:20:12 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> Message-ID: <200311051120.12466.samantha@objectent.com> On Wednesday 05 November 2003 03:17, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Chris Phoenix wrote: > > I don't ask anyone not to catalog these kinds of incidents, or not to > investigate them, or not to try and repeat them under experimental > controls. Nonetheless, I am willing to assert flatly that nothing > paranormal happened. > > What is the ordinary-world explanation? Well, for all I know, you are > posting this story as a test to see if anyone tries to explain it away, > give it a pseudo-rational explanation when in fact you just made it up and > there *is* no explanation for why that sort of thing would happen under > the laws of physics, because it didn't. I do not need to try and give > your story an ordinary-world explanation; even if I can't think of any > ordinary-world explanation at all, I am nonetheless confident enough in my > understanding of the universe to not feel discomfited. That is a huge cop-out. It doesn't fit your worldview so the first choice is to believe it never happened, heh? Convenient but not very relevant. > This world is my > home, and I know it now, and I know the world doesn't work that way. You *know* no such thing. You believe it doesn't work that way. > There are a few things left that I don't know yet, but the remaining > uncertainty does not have enough slack in it to permit ESP. This world > could easily be a computer simulation, but if so it is a simulation of a > world without ESP. I see no way you could have complete enough knowledge or sufficiently vetted theory of knowledge to make such a statement meaningfully. > > Supposing that I try to think of an "ordinary" explanation for your story, > what springs to mind? Several things. I don't know if the name > "Elizabeth Loftus" rings any bells; but human memory is far, far more > pliable than people like to think. It is possible for a researcher, by > asking leading questions, to create a memory completely out of fabric - > for example, of being lost in the mall as a child - and later the person > will not remember that it is a false memory. Did your wife really have a > pain in her lower ribs, or her back? Did you learn about her brother's > death a few hours later, or a day? "How come the more you touch me there, > the more I want to cry?" sounds to me like not at all the sort of thing > that is said spontaneously, but very easily the sort of thing that might > be "recalled" afterward. The story has to be assumed accurate for the questions raised to be even seriously addressed. What you have done looks like more disowning of inconvenient data. We all know most of the things you are bringing up here and yet this nagging residue that doesn't fit remains. > What permanently zaps the paranormal explanation is not studying physics, > or studying the history of science, or reading the accounts of debunked > psychics - it's studying the cognitive science of human error. The > literature on this has to be seen to be believed. The human mind is so > wildly fragile, so wildly wrong on so many simple problems, that our > physics is simply more reliable than any anecdote that can be cited > against it. *Any* anecdote. Yes, even anecdotes that really, really seem > like they can't be explained away. The human mind is genuinely that weak; > physics is genuinely that strong. > What if there is some non-paranormal explanation for such ESPish events that doesn't start by denying they actually happened? > It doesn't matter whether the explanation I gave is correct. There's no > ESP in the universe, no paranormal phenomena, no gods, no demons. It's > just us within the laws of physics. That's the upshot, whatever the > explanation is - whether you made up the anecdote as a test, or whether > human memory is horrifyingly (and replicably) pliable, or whether some > other ordinary event happened. You are frothing at the mouth in support of your pre-existing belief structures. The book is far from closed on what is and is not possible in reality. Our physics today is not known to be utterly comprehensive of all phenomenon possible in reality. It is simply what we have found to date with reasonable rigor. > > If you haven't reached that point of confidence, then by no means should > you attempt to convince yourself of it artificially. It took me a long > time to reach the point where I was ready to say that, and it is not at > all what I was thinking when I started out. But you know... it really is > normal. It's all normal. And if you look at it long enough, there's > enough evidence to see that it's normal. I hope that helps. No, it does not help. It looks like one more closed mind in the world to me. - samantha From jef at jefallbright.net Wed Nov 5 19:33:08 2003 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 11:33:08 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> <000e01c3a3c9$d3d9dbd0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Message-ID: <002f01c3a3d3$a8257580$3402650a@int.veeco.com> Spam falls into that category of interesting problems where the short-term interests of a few *appear* to outweigh the long-term interests of the many. Prisoners Dilemma, War (in general), failure to exercise one's vote (because it won't make a difference), are examples of situations where one can make what appear to be fully informed fully rational decisions that result in long-term harm to all, including the individual opportunist. In my opinion, these problems will persist until our society has evolved beyond short-term, tribal thinking. I see signs that we may get there. [Google: Superrationality.] - Jef Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > Getting rid of spam may well be as difficult as developing active > shields against gray goo. Spam is a moving target: as soon as we > devise a good filter for today's spam, they will devise a way around. > As soon as we develop a super AI that recognizes spam, they will > develop a better AI to produce subliminal advertising bases on those > nuances of human psycology that have not be incorporated in the AI > design. The bad guys are as smart as the good guys, this is not > likely to change too soon. I think we will still have bad guys after > the singularity. G. > From etheric at comcast.net Wed Nov 5 19:51:46 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 11:51:46 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com><3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <200311051120.12466.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <003001c3a3d6$40ac2c20$0200a8c0@etheric> This is rather personal, I hope you dont mind the world reads this, I thought to myself. --- Sometime back in the early 90's I felt compelled to clear out a bunch of old psychological baggage concerning my past. One of the People I hadn't come to terms with was my step father, He was a very abusive person, very violent cruel and sick, and had a profoundly damaging effect on my life, I hadn't seen nor heard from him in about 15 years, and he was never a subject of conversation, as he was institutionalized for a genetic brain disorder and was schizophrenic paranoid, and I presumed he was probably dead from the disorder. One day I felt inexplicably compelled to begin an exercise where I began to write down all the things I hated about the guy, and then forgive them item by item. After a few minutes of this I had a eerie feeling, and promptly walked outside to the street curb, and simply stood there rather absently expecting something, but I didn't know what, after a while I got into my car ,and sat in the car at the curb waiting for "something". My mother had noticed this strange behavior and continued to ask me what the hell I was doing just sitting in the car doing nothing, I had no Idea, I couldn't explain. A few minutes pass, and to my utter astonishment, the step Father is walking down the street towards the house, appearently he had escaped from the institution, and had taken several busses across town to get there, he was quite delirious and could barely speak because of Huntington chorea and anti psychotics, and what he spoke about was indeciphrable anyway. I Invited him to sit down outside, I sat with him and to be brief I told him I forgave him but he had to go back to the "hospital", and sat in a strange silent communication for a while. My mother was in a total panic, as she was rather traumatized by this guy in the past, and refused to come out of the house, she was in full astonishment that he was there, and could not believe he was there at all, actually accused me of lying etc. So I called the police and explained the situation, they came and picked him up, we never heard from him again learned later that he died a short while latter. I "knew", I anticipated that he would return, after 10 + years to gone. I suppose I could produce police records, hospital records, etc. take a polygraph and pass, but cant be bothered ast some people "here" are as narrow minded as some Religious Fundamentalists (Satan did it) , in that if it doesn't fit their world view, It cannot be true. (it was a hallucination, he's a liar, its a hoax etc.) From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 5 20:14:23 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 07:14:23 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <006001c3a3d9$67e50980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Alfio Puglisi writes: > >I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could > >NOT easily be a sim. > > > >I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of > >repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same > >wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that > >is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. > > It's exactly the other way around. The biggest concern, when > one lives inside a sim, is the possibility that it will be shut down. > Just turned off and erased, as any computer program. I disagree. If one was in a sim that would imply a creator/designer that at least had an interest in creating/designing the sim. There would be some possibility that an observer of the sim they set up would be watching it. Then there would be the question are they in a sim, and so on. Phooey to the notion that its turtles all the way down. I am with Sagan on that one. Let's just save the step. The hard atheistic position is that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that reality in total as one experiences it is designed in any way. Ergo the relationship of one to a sim is of some *hope* for outside assistance. - Perhaps some folks sim is between their ears and they need assistance from outside *that* space !? I know, and if I forget but read this list from time to time then no lesser person that Robert Bradbury will remind me with a broadband message - hey guys one bit of inbound space junk could ruin our whole day! (My paraphrasing). To one in a sim there is the possibility that the 'space junk' (or) the desire to turn off the sim may be avoided by some in the sim continuing to be entertaining. To one not in a sim there is not even that hope. So I figure flip the hypothetical simulator the bird (that enough to give any sorry meta-geezer some entertainment) and then ignore the sim scenario as the likely extrapolation of a generation over- impressed by the computing models and architectures. There is not all that much new in the computing paradigms. There is some useful stuff thought though so heck God bless Babbage, and Turin and Shannon even Gates. God can bless 'em I am just grateful for the work that they save me as I am assuming I am not in a sim. But as I hope I have just demonstrated I am reckoning not believing even on the matter of the sim. This 'conversation' would not have been worth my having had I not wanted to communicate and empower potential allies. Regards, Brett From aperick at centurytel.net Wed Nov 5 20:14:43 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 12:14:43 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant In-Reply-To: <200311051336.hA5DamM21329@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <10606496.1068063399332.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so > it is a simulation of a world without ESP. then Brett proceeds to climb all over him. When I read Eliezer's post, and the above sentence, never did I get the impression that he was truly considering -- with any favor whatever -- the sim view. I got the impression that he was making the point that the sim view - though highly unlikely in the extreme - had more of a chance of being correct than anything like ESP. Perhaps in such a place as this, one's finger belongs on the trigger guard, not the trigger. Or, am I ignorant of previous posts by Eliezer which, having chaffed poor Brett in the past, render Brett understandable sensitive to the touch? From jacques at dtext.com Wed Nov 5 19:28:25 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 20:28:25 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Cheerful thought of the day In-Reply-To: <000e01c3a3c9$d3d9dbd0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> <000e01c3a3c9$d3d9dbd0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Message-ID: <3FA94F59.3030701@dtext.com> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > The bad guys are as smart as the good guys, I think the good guys are smarter. A fortiori when you think of them collectively, as they can coordinate for the better, while the bad guys can't trust each other and coordinate. Bad guys strive on abusing trust which is a parasitic and inherently weak strategy. Plus, deep down they know they are loosers, so when things turn bad, they let go and even seek auto-destruction (you just have to help them out a bit). Caveat: You should not tag normal guys as bad guys absent-mindedly, or else you can get unexpected results. For example, the Swiss may have been called "bad guys" by the Habsbourg in the 14th century, but they still kicked the Habsbourg out of their valleys. As Google says: << 1315 : The Waldst?tten soldiers decimate the austrian troups during the Morgarten parade. First victory of "this horde of rude and impious farmers" over a proper army, it is the beginning of the military power of the Confederates. >> Jacques From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 5 21:00:30 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 08:00:30 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Science, religon and philosophy as apprended by Russell Message-ID: <008301c3a3df$d8f3d9c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> I think this quote from the Introduction in Bertrand Russell's HISTRORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY may provide some additional handles and context for some current discussions. ---- " 'Philosophy' is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower, I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain. Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All *definite* knowledge - so I should content - belongs to science; all *dogma* as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack form both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. (1) Is the world divided into mind and matter, and if so, what is mind and what is matter? (2) Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? (3) Has the universe any unity or purpose? (4) Is it evolving toward some goal? (5) Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order? (6) Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? (7) Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? (8) Is he perhaps both at once? (9) Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? (10) If there is a way of living that is noble, in what does it consist, and how shall we achieve it? (11) Must the good be eternal in order to deserve to be valued, or is it worth seeking even if the universe is inexorably moving towards death? (12) Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such merely the ultimate refinement of folly? To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory....[t]he studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy. ------ Brett (Shucks I put in the numbered brackets myself ;-) but seriously I reckon I could answer a good few of those questions pretty well by now, but would my answers find resonance with others answers - that would be interesting.) Key point ?- Philosophy, as the term is used above, not science, is the 'main game' even for scientists. From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 5 21:10:38 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:10:38 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down References: <20031105030230.71102.qmail@web12904.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > Especially since the claim is wrong. Historically, rural America, which > was most of America prior to the 20th century, was heavily homogenous > and inbred. Social instruments prevented ethnic, religious, and caste > cross breeding. Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, and Protestants all looked > down on marrying outside one's religion. Same thing with ethnic groups, > some times to very violent degrees of enforcement (lynching for whites > and blacks marrying). Well educated parents looked down on marrying > uneducated, wealthy looked down on marrying beneath ones own kind. > There was little upward mobility by marriage in pre-20th century > America, all socio-economic mobility occured via industriousness, but > still did not remove social pressures against crossing ethnic and > religious barriers. > > Even with the westward migration, ethnic groups tended to cluster unto > themselves. Germanics, Norwegian, Swedes, Dutch, Scotch, Irish, > Hispanics, Italians, etc all tended to cluster, and when the clustered, > they inbred. OK. I know I am sticking my neck out to be chopped off, but I have to totally disagree here. History has shown that at each and every opportunity, human beings will have have sex with anything that moves. In "Mapping Human History: Discovering Our Past Through Our Genes" Steve Olson takes an in depth look at both the male Y haplotypes and mitochondrial DNA. Both show the extensinve outbreeding of various ethnic and religious people's of the world. Yes, inbreeding and isolation created much of the races we see today, but since the dawn of language and trade, this has been reversing itself. When you look at people such as the Jewish community, you see that although their religion doesn;t allow for breeding outside their group, it has happened frequently enough that their DNA is almost indistinguishable from others in the larger middle-eastern region. As you leave the region, the spread of the genes "feathers" into the next region. People from regions a long distance away may share little with each other, but as you get geographically closer, the genetics become more similar regardless of the religious or ethnic affiliation. Although whites and blacks were "lynched" for being together, it happend frequently enough that most whites have a little black in them and vice-versa. In fact, many whites share more DNA similarities with blacks than with other whites. Unless a population were totally isolated for a long period of time, you wouldn;t have this. One man walking past an isolated community and raping a woman from that community in the forest can completely disrupt this isolation. Heck, all you have to do is look at the number of people willing to have sex with farm animals and you will know just how promiscuous humans beings are. Although mating with people outside their religion and/or ethnic groups has always been looked down upon, and the tendency to "cluster" cannot be denied, a look at the DNA shows that outbreeding happens much more frequently than it is admitted to. Kevin Freels From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 5 21:15:45 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:15:45 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <019301c3a335$6bed16c0$ec994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: This is a good argument for the Free State movement in New Hampshire. Maybe we can get a state that will recognize cryonic preservation as not only a valid means of interment, but also will provide for protection of assets while being suspended. Maybe the state will even allow for assisted suicide via cryopreservation. This way, you could begin the procedure with the least possible damage to the brain. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Damien Broderick" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 6:40 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Robert J. Bradbury" > Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 6:06 PM > > > It would appear that we are on a road where at least some > > states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve > > the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable > > or not. > > maybe, but > > > For those of us on the upside end of > > 40, > > I suspect we're safe--who'd want *our* raddled old organs? :) > > Damien Broderick > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 5 21:13:17 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 08:13:17 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant References: <10606496.1068063399332.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Message-ID: <009701c3a3e1$a23bc120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > > > This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so > > it is a simulation of a world without ESP. > > then Brett proceeds to climb all over him. Wasn't my intent I am not sure whether yours is a common view. > > When I read Eliezer's post, and the above sentence, never > did I get the mpression that he was truly considering -- with > any favor whatever -- the sim view. I got the impression > that he was making the point that the sim view - though > highly unlikely in the extreme - had more of a chance of being > correct than anything like ESP. > > Perhaps in such a place as this, one's finger belongs on the > trigger guard, not the trigger. In a place like this there is zero possibility of really getting shot. Such is definately NOT the case everywhere. There is great opportunity to learn and to teach and to empower and be empowered. My working conception is more of an academy with Eliezer (and many others) as simultaneously good teacher and good student. > > Or, am I ignorant of previous posts by Eliezer which, having > chaffed poor Brett in the past, render Brett understandable > sensitive to the touch? I am ignorant of all the things that you are ignorant of :-) But thanks for the insights - and perhaps I am going a little over the top and hogging the bandwidth. Regards, Brett From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 5 21:18:54 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:18:54 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare References: <007a01c3a352$392afc30$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: Gee, with all the sudden flaring, I have to wonder if there is something going on thatthey are not telling us. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karen Rand Smigrodzki" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 10:06 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare > For those interested: > > > Space Weather News for Nov. 5, 2003 > http://spaceweather.com > > Giant sunspot 486 unleashed another intense solar flare on Nov. 4th (1950 > UT), and this one could be historic. The blast saturated X-ray sensors > onboard GOES satellites. The last time this happened, in April 2001, the > flare that saturated the sensors was classified as an X20--the biggest > ever recorded at the time. Yesterday's flare appears to have been even > stronger. > > > --karen > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 5 21:26:14 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:26:14 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: Message-ID: Can we get together and buy an island to do all this research on? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Reason" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 12:40 AM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Robert J. > Bradbury > > > Terminology: > > ILE: Indefinite Lifespan Extension -- preferable to > > "IMMORTALITY" because IMMORTALITY can take too many > > hits based on the physics of the universe. (Protons > > decaying, expansion accelerating, black holes consuming > > everything else, yada yada yada...). > > > > Ok, now one of the serious questions that people should > > be concerned with with respect to ILE is precisely *how* > > do I get my cake. For those of us on the upside end of > > 40, or perhaps 30, cryonics enters into the equation. > > > > *But* as some of us know cryonics becomes pretty *iffy* > > if the legal authorities stick their fingers into the works. > > (Cases in point range from the current situation regarding > > the Martinot's in France to the case of Dora Kent in the past.) > > I think I would go so far as to say that the entirety of the "cake or not" > question revolves around government interference. My take is that we're > probably 30 years away from the start of aging as a chronic but controlled > condition, *IF* there are clear skies and freedom for fundraising, activism, > education and research. There are no show-stopping hurdles beyond a lot of > work and a lot of money - exactly the same thing that could have been said > about cancer 30 years ago. > > This time could easily double if politicians and anti-progress forces really > dig in and fight seriously to halt medical progress towards ILE...which they > show all the signs of doing. Already, scientific progress in regenerative > medicine is far behind where it could have been. > > Reason > http://www.exratio.com > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Nov 5 21:18:53 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:18:53 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare References: <007a01c3a352$392afc30$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: <028501c3a3e2$6ee76260$c2994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 3:18 PM > Gee, with all the sudden flaring, I have to wonder if there is something > going on thatthey are not telling us. Yep. Greens from the future are preparing to turn down the solar thermostat to save energy. Read all about it: http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook9079.htm :) Damien Broderick From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 5 21:32:01 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:32:01 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> <200311050242.18744.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: How often do you choose to attack the spam sender rather than delete the message? My guess is that most people simply choose to ignore and delete it rather than make the deicion to attack. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Samantha Atkins" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 4:42 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day > On Tuesday 04 November 2003 23:11, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > Ones and zeroes. We can see them completely and clearly; the entire realm > > is absolutely under our control; it is a world that we built and that runs > > entirely on our rules. > > Uh, the world includes *us* and many of us are not good little digital > citizens at all. *We* use these digital tools and thus *we* are what needs > some control, not the simple world of 1's and 0's (not that it is very so > simple either). > > And no, the world of programs itself does not run entirely on our rules or at > least we have very imperfect understanding of the implications and > interactions of the rules we thought to impose with one another and the world > they are embedded within. > > > Destroying the intruder is as easy as making the > > decision. > > > > Hardly. First you must determine what is and is not an intruder. This is > non-trivial. Then you must determine what is the appropriate amount of > destruction or other action to acheive the desired result with a minimum of > side-effects. OOPS, I left out that you must formulate with some clarity > what the goal state is. > > > And yet we still can't get rid of spam. > > > > Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. > > Actually, handling spam is not an implausible warm-up exercise. > > - samantha > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From wingcat at pacbell.net Wed Nov 5 21:24:21 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 13:24:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031105212421.80701.qmail@web80402.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > Gee, with all the sudden flaring, I have to wonder > if there is something > going on thatthey are not telling us. Oh, it's just a flame war, solar-style. ^_- From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 5 21:34:23 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:34:23 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com><3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: If we are a sim,. there are probably many others. These others have different variables introduced and their purpose is to find out what these variables produce in the end. I hope we're the sim that survives singularity! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 6:33 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > > > This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so > > it is a simulation of a world without ESP. > > I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could > NOT easily be a sim. > > I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of > repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same > wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that > is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. I prefer to > work with friends and the resources that I have, rather than > fret over the resources I don't have. I am not malicious and > I will deal with maliciousness if I must with resolution and > ferocity of my own. > > I can see no advantage or change in my habits that I would > make if I thought the world was a sim. I would probably have > more allies and friends if less people entertained the sim > hypothesis so much but so be it. > > I think that if no-one can come up with a reliable test, (group > test - science or solitary test - pure reason) to see if the world > is a sim then it would be better to step around what looks like > an iteration of the same old mindfuk, to put away childish > things and to concentrate minds and energies on the tasks > at hand. > > Regards, > Brett > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bradbury at aeiveos.com Wed Nov 5 21:26:44 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 13:26:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] SECURITY: Wild wild west Message-ID: Well Microsoft just sweetened the pot a little by offering rewards of $250K for people who created viruses to attack Windows. See: Microsoft Offers Reward to Stop Viruses http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Microsoft-Viruses.html?hp R. From wingcat at pacbell.net Wed Nov 5 21:28:50 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 13:28:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031105212850.56048.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > Can we get together and buy an island to do all this > research on? Say we could do this. How then do we convince the researchers - and the companies that employ them - to move to said island, without bankrupting what minimal resources we'd have available on the island or invoking military action from certain foreign powers? From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 5 21:35:08 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 22:35:08 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> <200311050242.18744.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <20031105213507.GV25659@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 03:32:01PM -0600, kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > How often do you choose to attack the spam sender rather than delete the It is not trivial to parse the headers reliably, and to trace back to the point of origin. Way back, when Windows had consistency of swiss cheese, I used to winnuke systems who sent me spam. Then, I realized in most cases it was just some random dialup user who'd inherited the spammer's IP address who got BSODed. This still applies today, and it's not obvious it's okay to nuke machines taken over by spammers, or running open relays (some vigilantes may disagree). What would be good is to have the spammer's HTML page be aggressively crawled by robots, but it would be trivial to do a DDoS against a legitimate site by sending a spam in their name. The problem is not simple, so any single simple solution will not be sufficient. Several adaptive solutions would do, if deployed widely. > message? My guess is that most people simply choose to ignore and delete it > rather than make the deicion to attack. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 5 21:45:35 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:45:35 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <20031105212850.56048.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Money, money, and more money. And maybe starting a rumor that the brilliant minds on the island were willing and capable of destroying anyone who attacked them. There is a long history of people fleeing persecution and tyranny to relocate and it seems it has gone pretty well. OK. Maybe not. It was just a thought. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Adrian Tymes" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 3:28 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > Can we get together and buy an island to do all this > > research on? > > Say we could do this. How then do we convince the > researchers - and the companies that employ them - to > move to said island, without bankrupting what minimal > resources we'd have available on the island or > invoking > military action from certain foreign powers? > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From mlorrey at yahoo.com Wed Nov 5 21:48:50 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 13:48:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <005b01c3a34f$fd33cc40$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: <20031105214850.65755.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> --- Karen Rand Smigrodzki wrote: > ----- > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > --- "Robert J. Bradbury" > > > > > It would appear that we are on a road where at least some > > > states may confiscate parts of your remains to preserve > > > the lives of others whether you feel this is reasonable > > > or not. > > > > > > Discussion? > > > > 14th Amendment, end of story. You own your body. When you die, it > > is part of your estate. Any state that would confiscate your body > > parts is fascist and should be moved out of ASAP. I would not be > > surprised if > > people's republics like Taxifornia and Washington adopted such > > policies. I don't mind, it will keep pushing more people to move to > > the Free State. > > You are, I assume, stating what you think the law SHOULD be > and not > what it IS. It is clear that the body and it's parts are NOT property > under > the law. When you die, your body does NOT become property of the > estate. Don't know what state or country you live in. Last time I checked, the 14th Amendment was clearly interpreted by SCOTUS as saying that you own yourself: no slavery, peony, or indenturement allowed. It is a well settled matter of probate law that the deceased's wishes about disposal of their body are paramount, and if the deceased does not explicitly say so, their next of kin, NOT the state, has the right to dispose of the body. Why? Because under common law, the individuals power to enter into contracts is unlimited. A will is paramount as the final contract you execute. While fascist states like California may be changing this, their changes are not necessarily constitutional. They can claim, if they wish, that a dead body without a will specifying disposal is tantamount to abandoned property. They may even claim that surrender of organs is the price of receiving government benefits of any kind (medicaid, medicare, social security, welfare, bankruptcy. The problem is that the confiscatory attitudes of such fascist states hit head-on the legal traditions of the constitution and common law. > Your guess of Taxifornia being one which would take your > organs is on target. They have the opt-out law that I was > mentioning in my previous > response to this topic. I am not sure about Washington. I can find > out, if you need it. Nope, I'm in NH, where my body is my own. Y'all are quite welcome to join us here in the Free State and build real cryonics protections into law. We have the ear of the governor, who is a tech-nerd himself. See Friendster FreeStateProjct FreeStateProjct for my journal of this past weekend's LPNH Convention. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From mlorrey at yahoo.com Wed Nov 5 21:49:45 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 13:49:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <000001c3a351$04ad4a90$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031105214945.94725.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> --- Spike wrote: > > > Mike Lorrey > > >...I would not be surprised if > > people's republics like Taxifornia and Washington adopted such > > policies... > > Taxifornia isn't even the people's republic anymore. > Its the animal's republic, and even the plant's republic > in many cases. Ah, evolved from the people's republic to the Pea Pole's Republic ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From mlorrey at yahoo.com Wed Nov 5 22:26:50 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 14:26:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <20031105212850.56048.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20031105222650.14736.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- Adrian Tymes wrote: > --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > Can we get together and buy an island to do all this > > research on? > > Say we could do this. How then do we convince the > researchers - and the companies that employ them - to > move to said island, without bankrupting what minimal > resources we'd have available on the island or > invoking > military action from certain foreign powers? Simple: make it a research resort, with centerfold lab assistants, beachside laboratories (surf while your experiment incubates), and NO management allowed.... they would pay to stay in such a place... ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From jcorb at iol.ie Wed Nov 5 22:57:08 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 22:57:08 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 3 >Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 08:26:19 -0800 > >From: "Spike" >Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles >To: "'ExI chat list'" >Message-ID: <000001c3a3b9$8b667210$6501a8c0 at SHELLY> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >The early christian church had already split into two >major branches by the second century, one preaching that >jesus was god, the other that he was a man. They were already >killing each other over it, and there weren't even very >many christians at the time, so the trinity notion was >an attempt to reunify the group, kinda like the World >Wrassling Federation and the World Wildlife Foundation >reunification match. The major split was avoided for >more than a thousand years that way. The glossed verses >1 John 5:7 and 8 were invented as support. Politically >a unified church was stronger. >Why three? Well, why not? spike Because Bridge hadn't been invented yet. James... >------------------------------ From jcorb at iol.ie Wed Nov 5 23:04:02 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 23:04:02 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225759.00aaeec0@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 5 >Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 08:37:21 -0800 > >From: "Spike" >Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence >To: "'ExI chat list'" >Message-ID: <000a01c3a3bb$15cbde80$6501a8c0 at SHELLY> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > > > > Chris Phoenix wrote: > > >... > > > a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had > > > been killed in a > > > motorcycle accident within a few minutes of that time, and his lower > > > ribs had been run over. >Remarkable! Only a few months ago, I was out riding >a motorcycle, and when I got home I learned my wife >had gotten a pain in her ribs. It happened right >while I was out on the bike! In the many worlds >interpretation of quantum mechanics, some subset of >my probability distribution wavefunction gets >squashed every time I go out riding, so in some >alternate universe, she got the rib pain >*right at the same time I was nailed.* spike A few weeks ago I suffered a shredded drive belt that caused a rear-wheel lock up at 60mph. She has a splitting headache this week. Does that count? :) Another point that perhaps you single guys might not pick up on :) - stomach/thoracic pain can often be a precursor to the beginning of the menstrual cycle. Such pains aren't that unusual for the ladies. Poor darlings... James... From jcorb at iol.ie Wed Nov 5 23:28:07 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 23:28:07 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105231843.00aa9470@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 1 >Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:10:38 -0600 > >From: >Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down >To: "ExI chat list" >Message-ID: >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > Especially since the claim is wrong. Historically, rural America, which > > was most of America prior to the 20th century, was heavily homogenous > > and inbred. Social instruments prevented ethnic, religious, and caste > > cross breeding. Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, and Protestants all looked > > down on marrying outside one's religion. Same thing with ethnic groups, > > some times to very violent degrees of enforcement (lynching for whites > > and blacks marrying). Well educated parents looked down on marrying > > uneducated, wealthy looked down on marrying beneath ones own kind. > > There was little upward mobility by marriage in pre-20th century > > America, all socio-economic mobility occured via industriousness, but > > still did not remove social pressures against crossing ethnic and > > religious barriers. > > > > Even with the westward migration, ethnic groups tended to cluster unto > > themselves. Germanics, Norwegian, Swedes, Dutch, Scotch, Irish, > > Hispanics, Italians, etc all tended to cluster, and when the clustered, > > they inbred. >OK. I know I am sticking my neck out to be chopped off, but I have to >totally disagree here. History has shown that at each and every opportunity, >human beings will have have sex with anything that moves. This is (unintentionally I'm sure) the funniest statement I've heard today. So essentially, when I comes to randy humans, anything that's not nailed to the floor probably soon will be. >In "Mapping Human History: Discovering Our Past Through Our Genes" Steve >Olson takes an in depth look at both the male Y haplotypes and mitochondrial >DNA. Both show the extensinve outbreeding of various ethnic and religious >people's of the world. Yes, inbreeding and isolation created much of the >races we see today, but since the dawn of language and trade, this has been >reversing itself. When you look at people such as the Jewish community, you >see that although their religion doesn;t allow for breeding outside their >group, it has happened frequently enough that their DNA is almost >indistinguishable from others in the larger middle-eastern region. As you >leave the region, the spread of the genes "feathers" into the next region. >People from regions a long distance away may share little with each other, >but as you get geographically closer, the genetics become more similar >regardless of the religious or ethnic affiliation. At the end of the day, sex was a fairly covert affair, whether premitted or forbidden. There'll always be the one's (many) that got away. > >Although whites and blacks were "lynched" for being together, it happend >frequently enough that most whites have a little black in them and >vice-versa. In fact, many whites share more DNA similarities with blacks >than with other whites. True, either through secret affairs (pace Jefferson) or through force (Master on Slave). More typically the latter, I'm sure. >Unless a population were totally isolated for a long period of time, you >wouldn;t have this. One man walking past an isolated community and raping a >woman from that community in the forest can completely disrupt this >isolation. >Heck, all you have to do is look at the number of people willing to have sex >with farm animals and you will know just how promiscuous humans beings are. >Although mating with people outside their religion and/or ethnic groups has >always been looked down upon, and the tendency to "cluster" cannot be >denied, a look at the DNA shows that outbreeding happens much more >frequently than it is admitted to. My understanding is that we're an inbred species to begin with. IIRC, chimps are more genetically diverse than we are. James... >Kevin Freels > >------------------------------ From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Nov 5 23:21:48 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 17:21:48 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence References: <000a01c3a3bb$15cbde80$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <033101c3a3f3$99f73000$c2994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 10:37 AM > Remarkable! Only a few months ago, I was out riding > a motorcycle, and when I got home I learned my wife > had gotten a pain in her ribs. It happened right > while I was out on the bike! In the many worlds > interpretation of quantum mechanics, some subset of > my probability distribution wavefunction gets > squashed every time I go out riding, so in some > alternate universe, she got the rib pain > *right at the same time I was nailed.* This drollery and more like it serves to show effectively why unanticipated one-off anecdotal cases of apparently weird coincidence count for very little. Oddly enough, this was one strong motive for the parapsychologist in the 1930s, and later, to create artificial (although starkly inhospitable and perhaps counterproductive) environments where they sought to solicit eerie deviations from chance on a repeatable basis. The discipline using this insight is known as parapsychology. < pause for outburst of guffaws, especially from those who have read very little of the lab-based literature > Yes, there are always some universes in the MWI where a `psychic coincidence' is emulated one time by chance, but far fewer where this happens to the same people with frequency such that the null hypothesis is most sensibly abandoned. The usual example I roll out at this point is the vast data base compiled at Princeton University (at the PEAR lab); interestingly, a couple of large attempted replications of those experiments have recently failed to attain significance. So the battle-tested evidence for psi is apparently shrinking. On the other hand, a fine-grained analysis of anomalous results in long sequences of random events, conducted by my friend Fotini Pallikari (a colleague of Physics Nobelist Brian Josephson), suggests that there *is* something intriguing going on under the surface of apparently stochastic sequences, at least when physically unmediated human intention supervenes. Her paper is in the PSI WARS issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, abstracts and a critical paper in full at http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs_10_6-7.html Damien Broderick From bradbury at aeiveos.com Wed Nov 5 23:54:46 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 15:54:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Back in business Message-ID: Given the variety of conversations over the last several days I would like to explicitly acknowledge that the ExI List is back in business. My tip of the hat to David McFadzean for pulling this off. I don't know much about how difficult it is to establish communities or what it takes to break them but based on my simple observations we seem to have survived a period when what was established over many years might have been broken. For that I am thankful. As Max says: Onward! R. P.S. At the next ExI conference anyone who does not attempt to pull Dave over to their dinner table and buy him dinner (or at least a beer) does not really understand the concept of promoting extropy. From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 6 00:07:41 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 16:07:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <20031105214850.65755.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > Don't know what state or country you live in. Last time I checked, the > 14th Amendment was clearly interpreted by SCOTUS as saying that you own > yourself: no slavery, peony, or indenturement allowed. It is a well > settled matter of probate law that the deceased's wishes about disposal > of their body are paramount, and if the deceased does not explicitly > say so, their next of kin, NOT the state, has the right to dispose of > the body. [snip]. Mike, these are important points -- points which should be well documented in public forums, easily available. That means some combination of something like a google search as well as a law database search. The trick would be to get such information near the top of the list in both forums. It doesn't do us a lot of good if only a very limited number of people are aware of the knowledge base. One has to, by "self-interest" generated reasons force the knowledge into the public awareness. I tend to support the free-state concept. But at the same time I am realistic enough to recognize that the masses can easily crush a free-state or a free-island until such time that technology might make that extremely difficult. If that is an accurate foreview then you are attempting to solve a political problem before you have the technological means to accomplish your goals. That seems foolish. R. From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 6 00:17:21 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 10:47:21 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Back in business Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE05A@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> I'll second that. Good work! Emlyn > Given the variety of conversations over the last several days > I would like to explicitly acknowledge that the ExI List is > back in business. My tip of the hat to David McFadzean for > pulling this off. I don't know much about how difficult it > is to establish communities or what it takes to break them > but based on my simple observations we seem to have survived > a period when what was established over many years might have > been broken. For that I am thankful. > > As Max says: Onward! > > R. > > P.S. At the next ExI conference anyone who does not attempt to > pull Dave over to their dinner table and buy him dinner > (or at least a beer) does not really understand the concept > of promoting extropy. > From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 6 00:26:00 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 16:26:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: <000e01c3a3c9$d3d9dbd0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Message-ID: This is *important* bacause it contains key insights from very bright people -- (G & E. and indirectly Eugen). > Getting rid of spam may well be as difficult as developing active shields > against gray goo. Spam is a moving target: as soon as we devise a good > filter for today's spam, they will devise a way around. As soon as we > develop a super AI that recognizes spam, they will develop a better AI to > produce subliminal advertising bases on those nuances of human psycology > that have not be incorporated in the AI design. > The bad guys are as smart as the good guys, this is not likely to change too > soon. I think we will still have bad guys after the singularity. The "bad" guys are as smart as the "good" guys. The question becomes are there more "good" guys than "bad" guys? One would suppose in an organized, civilized society we (good) outnumber them (bad). When that condition ceases to hold you -- and I mean each and every extropian should become very very worried. Most of you are not watching the current power play in Russia -- and how many of you have reflected on how that might impact Alcor? If you do not see the possible connections you are betting with your life. R. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 6 00:32:47 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 11:32:47 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Rick's Text References: <000001c3a239$4265a8a0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> <3FA92772.4090606@dtext.com> Message-ID: <013c01c3a3fd$83e85280$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jacques wrote: > rick wrote: > > > > > http://home.centurytel.net/rickw/aonl.htm > > > > "an enticing tale of the possibilities of transhumanism" it also > > outlines much of what I call scientific atheism. > > I've read it. Though... and... and of course... it was still a nice > little read. One of the parts I particularly liked was the old joke "would I, would I". Not original maybe Rick - but it was funnier in the extra context that you gave it. It reminded me of two others jokes for some reason. One about three tasks given to - a slightly deaf or dimwitted but stout-hearted Samson (or Hercules maybe). Another about the Big Bad Wolf who got no peace. Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 6 00:35:09 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 11:35:09 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Back in business References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE05A@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <014c01c3a3fd$d59e98a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> > I'll second that. Good work! > > Emlyn Yes (aye), thanks David! Brett From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 6 00:49:26 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 16:49:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: In a very uncommon circumstance -- I am going to take Eliezer on in this discussion (mostly at the conclusion of the discussion). > And yet we still can't get rid of spam. Yep. Put it down to a legacy effect of non-upgraded software. More important may be the issue that if SPAM can hide itself sufficiently it may be able to escape detection forever. Argues that every system needs white-lists as to whom it is reasonable to communicate with. (I don't claim it is a good solution -- just one of the possible.) > Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. You are joining problems that have very different outcomes. SPAM is annoying and problematic but it generally doesn't kill people. Grey Goo could kill people and therefore evokes a significantly greater response. You need to present an argument that (a) people would not see grey goo coming -- something that the papers re: ecophagy by R-Freitas would seem to contraindicate; and (b) we do not have the capability to eliminate grey goo (something that to my knowledge base has never been presented). You have thrown down the gauntlet. Back it up. R. From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 6 00:54:51 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 16:54:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <20031105222650.14736.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20031106005451.99535.qmail@web80410.mail.yahoo.com> --- Mike Lorrey wrote: > --- Adrian Tymes wrote: > > --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > > Can we get together and buy an island to do all > this > > > research on? > > > > Say we could do this. How then do we convince the > > researchers - and the companies that employ them - > to > > move to said island, without bankrupting what > minimal > > resources we'd have available on the island or > > invoking > > military action from certain foreign powers? > > Simple: make it a research resort, with centerfold > lab assistants, > beachside laboratories (surf while your experiment > incubates), and NO > management allowed.... they would pay to stay in > such a place... Something along those lines is certainly tempting. But would management pay them? And if not, who would? Plus, would we need regular psych tests every so often to make sure the researchers keep their "research is better than everything else" mindsets, so we can trust them to keep researching even with all these distractions? (I know, the suggestion may have been in jest. But I think it's a problem potentially worth solving - and that suggestion, humorous or not, is pretty close to the best answer I've been able to come up with so far.) From sentience at pobox.com Thu Nov 6 00:57:57 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 19:57:57 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant In-Reply-To: <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <3FA99C95.8010401@pobox.com> Brett Paatsch wrote: > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > >>This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so >>it is a simulation of a world without ESP. > > I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could > NOT easily be a sim. I used to have a very strong intuition that the world was not a sim. Eventually it went away, and in retrospect I think it was based on nothing but wishful thinking. As Lee Corbin pointed out with respect to the Tegmark bubble duplication, there is no *particular* you, only the *set* of yous. It seems to me likely, on my current model, that at least some of you are living in a computer simulation. The question is whether almost all of you are simulated, or almost all of you are real. > I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of > repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same > wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that > is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. I prefer to > work with friends and the resources that I have, rather than > fret over the resources I don't have. I am not malicious and > I will deal with maliciousness if I must with resolution and > ferocity of my own. That some people may be inclined to abuse the simulation hypothesis in predictable ways, does not bear on the simulation hypothesis's *actual truth or falsity*. > I can see no advantage or change in my habits that I would > make if I thought the world was a sim. I would probably have > more allies and friends if less people entertained the sim > hypothesis so much but so be it. Okay, so most actions are the same on the simulation hypothesis. Again this does not bear on the simulation hypothesis's actual truth or falsity. > I think that if no-one can come up with a reliable test, (group > test - science or solitary test - pure reason) to see if the world > is a sim then it would be better to step around what looks like > an iteration of the same old mindfuk, to put away childish > things and to concentrate minds and energies on the tasks > at hand. If you can't come up with any experimental observation that differs on the world being a sim, then you don't need to know how much of your measure lies in sims, because it won't make any difference to subjective probabilities. The problem is in dealing with questions like "Would my measure sharply decrease after a Singularity, and if so, what would that look like?", where the triggering event lies in the future, is important, and there is no obvious way to test different hypotheses in advance. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 6 01:11:22 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 17:11:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031106011122.40897.qmail@web80403.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > Money, money, and more money. And maybe starting a > rumor that the brilliant > minds on the island were willing and capable of > destroying anyone who > attacked them. Thought of that. Problem: some scared major power - maybe the US, maybe someone else - dresses some educated goons up and briefs them so they can convince the scientists they're on the same team for a short while, then once on the island, they whip out their machine guns and proceed to depopulate. Maybe they pin it on "terrorists", maybe they take credit if their remaining reactionaries are in enough of a froth about it. I can think of a few solutions to that, but they impose costly security measures and distrust enough to ruin the value of doing this. Exception: some place *really* tough for them to get to, like a lunar colony if you own the only reliable cheap launch services while they have to go through NASA. It might help to have no guns up there, as well as surveillance open to everyone in the colony so everyone can see if some people try to start kidnapping or killing some other people anyway. Regular self-defense classes/review sessions might help too, and deal with some problems stemming from lack of exercise in low G. > There is a long history of people fleeing > persecution and tyranny to > relocate and it seems it has gone pretty well. True. > OK. Maybe not. It was just a thought. This list is for discussing thoughts. It's not like anyone's going to be implementing this tomorrow anyway. From sentience at pobox.com Thu Nov 6 01:19:57 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 20:19:57 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <200311051120.12466.samantha@objectent.com> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <200311051120.12466.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <3FA9A1BD.90207@pobox.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: > On Wednesday 05 November 2003 03:17, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: >> >> What is the ordinary-world explanation? Well, for all I know, you >> are posting this story as a test to see if anyone tries to explain it >> away, give it a pseudo-rational explanation when in fact you just >> made it up and there *is* no explanation for why that sort of thing >> would happen under the laws of physics, because it didn't. I do not >> need to try and give your story an ordinary-world explanation; even >> if I can't think of any ordinary-world explanation at all, I am >> nonetheless confident enough in my understanding of the universe to >> not feel discomfited. > > That is a huge cop-out. It doesn't fit your worldview so the first > choice is to believe it never happened, heh? Convenient but not very > relevant. Yes, that's right. It doesn't fit my worldview, and therefore I assert that it never happened. On the hypothesis that the universe is genuinely non-eerie but people are not reliable reporters, it will sometimes be necessary to do that. The important thing is to do it flat out, honestly, and without excuses. It doesn't fit my preconceived notions and therefore, without apology, I reject it. Anyone is welcome to catalog reports like these; doing so is not an assault on Reason, for Reason can take the heat. It is suppressed fear that the universe really *is* eerie that leads to people trying to "suppress memories", "not think about it", deny grant funding to people trying to investigate it, and other harmful strategies. I will not live in fear of Chris Phoenix's report. I accept that he made the report, and deny that it happened as reported. >> This world is my home, and I know it now, and I know the world >> doesn't work that way. > > You *know* no such thing. You believe it doesn't work that way. "You are not me," replied Chuangtse. "How can you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?" >> There are a few things left that I don't know yet, but the remaining >> uncertainty does not have enough slack in it to permit ESP. This >> world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so it is a >> simulation of a world without ESP. > > I see no way you could have complete enough knowledge or sufficiently > vetted theory of knowledge to make such a statement meaningfully. On the hypothesis that the universe really is non-eerie, there is no reason why an inhabitant of that universe should not eventually become confident of the fact. Of course, as I noted, it takes some work. >> Supposing that I try to think of an "ordinary" explanation for your >> story, what springs to mind? Several things. I don't know if the >> name "Elizabeth Loftus" rings any bells; but human memory is far, far >> more pliable than people like to think. It is possible for a >> researcher, by asking leading questions, to create a memory >> completely out of fabric - for example, of being lost in the mall as >> a child - and later the person will not remember that it is a false >> memory. Did your wife really have a pain in her lower ribs, or her >> back? Did you learn about her brother's death a few hours later, or >> a day? "How come the more you touch me there, the more I want to >> cry?" sounds to me like not at all the sort of thing that is said >> spontaneously, but very easily the sort of thing that might be >> "recalled" afterward. > > The story has to be assumed accurate for the questions raised to be > even seriously addressed. What you have done looks like more disowning > of inconvenient data. We all know most of the things you are bringing > up here and yet this nagging residue that doesn't fit remains. Right. I am disowning inconvenient data. The important thing is not to make the action look any more respectable than it is, or try to make the incovenient data look less improbable by coming up with pseudo-rational explanations for it. Scientists are nervous around disowned inconvenient data, even though it is, sometimes necessary. That is as it should be, and the reason why, when disowning inconvenient data is necessary, it should be done plainly and without apology. >> What permanently zaps the paranormal explanation is not studying >> physics, or studying the history of science, or reading the accounts >> of debunked psychics - it's studying the cognitive science of human >> error. The literature on this has to be seen to be believed. The >> human mind is so wildly fragile, so wildly wrong on so many simple >> problems, that our physics is simply more reliable than any anecdote >> that can be cited against it. *Any* anecdote. Yes, even anecdotes >> that really, really seem like they can't be explained away. The >> human mind is genuinely that weak; physics is genuinely that strong. > > What if there is some non-paranormal explanation for such ESPish events > that doesn't start by denying they actually happened? I have no need of that hypothesis. I have seen, lots of times, non-paranormal explanations attempted when the actual explanation was the event as reported simply didn't happen. I've even done it myself. Isn't that embarassing? After a while I learned not to try and stretch my explanations. On occasions I have missed an opportunity to appear downright prescient, because I heard a report of something that didn't sound quite right, and tried to explain it, rather than asking "Are you sure that's really what happened?" >> It doesn't matter whether the explanation I gave is correct. There's >> no ESP in the universe, no paranormal phenomena, no gods, no demons. >> It's just us within the laws of physics. That's the upshot, whatever >> the explanation is - whether you made up the anecdote as a test, or >> whether human memory is horrifyingly (and replicably) pliable, or >> whether some other ordinary event happened. > > You are frothing at the mouth in support of your pre-existing belief > structures. The book is far from closed on what is and is not > possible in reality. Our physics today is not known to be utterly > comprehensive of all phenomenon possible in reality. It is simply > what we have found to date with reasonable rigor. I now realize that ordinary physics is comprehensive of mental phenomena, which is something that I did not know previously, and which one would not expect physicists to know. >> If you haven't reached that point of confidence, then by no means >> should you attempt to convince yourself of it artificially. It took >> me a long time to reach the point where I was ready to say that, and >> it is not at all what I was thinking when I started out. But you >> know... it really is normal. It's all normal. And if you look at it >> long enough, there's enough evidence to see that it's normal. I hope >> that helps. > > No, it does not help. It looks like one more closed mind in the world > to me. Okay. Just so long as everything is done plainly and in the open. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 6 01:31:46 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 17:31:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <11b.2a35e647.2cd9f7a4@aol.com> Message-ID: <20031106013146.11764.qmail@web80410.mail.yahoo.com> --- CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 11/4/2003 8:13:08 PM Pacific > Standard Time, > Karen at smigrodzki.org writes: > > >Can anyone in CA confirm that it is an opt-out (aka > "presumed consent") > >state? I can't find my reference for it, and I want > to correct if I am > >falsely accusing. > > No formal reference, sorry, but last I paid > attention to this (years ago) it > was "opt-in" by placing a "donor" sticker on one's > driver's license. My > 6 month old license still has a spot for the > sticker. I recall reading text along those lines when getting my CA driver's license. "Opt-in", by default dead people in CA keep their organs (modulo the method of death, and preservation of the body afterwards). From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 6 00:44:51 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 11:44:51 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: Message-ID: <015201c3a3ff$300dbae0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > Most of you are not watching the current power play in Russia > -- and how many of you have reflected on how that might impact > Alcor? If you do not see the possible connections you are betting > with your life. Robert, what do you see as the problem? Brett From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 6 02:03:10 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 18:03:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] A job for me? In-Reply-To: <20031104122405.GP15418@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20031106020310.13821.qmail@web80404.mail.yahoo.com> --- Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 05:52:13PM -0800, Adrian > Tymes wrote: > > > > Such is the cycle of much that is AI at one point: > > We don't have AI. AI doesn't mean artificial > stupidity. My point was that "AI" and "stupidity" are relative terms. What we have now is what would once have been termed AI, even if we now state (with reason) it is not. > Isolated skills do not > cumulate, nor do they magically integrate into a > seamless whole -- so far. There have been many other examples where individual parts combine to something more than the sum of the parts. Synergies between different components, so the overall whole is capable of tasks the components, alone, are not. There are indications that intelligence as a whole might be the same - but we have not even identified all the components as of yet. > > First it is impossible. > > It is. > > > Then it is AI. > > No, it's still impossible. But fiction writers can at least write about hypothetical solutions at this point, calling them "AI", and their readers suspend disbelief instead of claiming it can't possibly happen. > People still enter text into > editors when they want to > solve a problem. For certain problems, it is possible to solve without touching a keyboard. Granted, much of the solution has to be presolved by people typing text into editors, but this can be done far in advance for a generic class of problem, then the particulars input through other means. > > When the ability to translate from rough natural > > language descriptions to running code becomes free > > We're still several years away from suffiently > accurate speech recognition, a > comparatively trivial task. Did I say this was going to happen tomorrow? ;P > We don't have the > hardware base to render anything but the flick part > of that. Yep. We're a *long* ways away from the ultimate end goal. Not disagreeing with you there in the least. > > and ubiquitous, we will have passed our current > > Singularity - but perhaps be able to envision a > new > > one from there. > > You don't see an event horizont when traversing a > singularity. It's all in > the eye of the external observer. We're in violent agreement here. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 6 02:33:40 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 13:33:40 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FA99C95.8010401@pobox.com> Message-ID: <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Brett Paatsch wrote: > > > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > > > >>This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so > >>it is a simulation of a world without ESP. > > > > I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could > > NOT easily be a sim. > > I used to have a very strong intuition that the world was not a > sim. Eventually it went away, and in retrospect I think it was > based on nothing but wishful thinking. Even in retropect I wonder why such a notion would just go away? Could it be that the notion was not important to you? > > As Lee Corbin pointed out with respect to the Tegmark > bubble duplication, there is no *particular* you, only the > *set* of yous. It seems to me likely, on my current model, > that at least some of you are living in a computer simulation. [Sorry some ambiguity in that -hard to process] You necessarily see the world from your own standpoint Eliezer and from that standpoint the words "me" and "you" tag different referents than the same words do in other persons standpoints. I am not sure if you mean "you" as a self-reference also (like in "one") or you as other-reference only. > The question is whether almost all of you are > simulated, or almost all of you are real. I know I'm real. Do you know you are real? > > I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of > > repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same > > wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that > > is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. I prefer to > > work with friends and the resources that I have, rather than > > fret over the resources I don't have. I am not malicious and > > I will deal with maliciousness if I must with resolution and > > ferocity of my own. > > That some people may be inclined to abuse the simulation > hypothesis in predictable ways, does not bear on the simulation > hypothesis's *actual truth or falsity*. True. But really who cares? > > > I can see no advantage or change in my habits that I would > > make if I thought the world was a sim. I would probably have > > more allies and friends if less people entertained the sim > > hypothesis so much but so be it. > > Okay, so most actions are the same on the simulation hypothesis. > Again this does not bear on the simulation hypothesis's actual truth > or falsity. Agreed. > > > I think that if no-one can come up with a reliable test, (group > > test - science or solitary test - pure reason) to see if the world > > is a sim then it would be better to step around what looks like > > an iteration of the same old mindfuk, to put away childish > > things and to concentrate minds and energies on the tasks > > at hand. > > If you can't come up with any experimental observation that > differs on the world being a sim, then you don't need to know > how much of your measure lies in sims, because it won't make > any difference to subjective probabilities. Agreed. > The problem is in dealing with questions like "Would my measure > sharply decrease after a Singularity, and if so, what would that > look like?", [sorry perhaps I am missing something but I don't find that to be an important question. Perhaps it is because I don't think of the Singularity in pro-noun terms. I really don't know. Perhaps I could see your point a bit better if you could unpack 'baby' a bit more. Can you describe the Singularity as you see it with more words than the one (Singularity) but no pronouns? I think that would help. > where the triggering event lies in the future, is > important, and there is no obvious way to test different > hypotheses in advance. You may have a point but I can't parse to it for the reasons given above. Regards, Brett From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 6 03:19:16 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:19:16 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000001c3a414$c29e47c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > kevinfreels at hotmail.com > Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 1:19 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare > > > Gee, with all the sudden flaring, I have to wonder if there > is something going on thatthey are not telling us... They will tell us, as soon as they figure out how raging capitalism is causing it. spike {8-] From mlorrey at yahoo.com Thu Nov 6 03:18:08 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:18:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031106031808.72213.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > > On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > > > Don't know what state or country you live in. Last time I checked, > the > > 14th Amendment was clearly interpreted by SCOTUS as saying that you > own > > yourself: no slavery, peony, or indenturement allowed. It is a well > > settled matter of probate law that the deceased's wishes about > disposal > > of their body are paramount, and if the deceased does not > explicitly > > say so, their next of kin, NOT the state, has the right to dispose > of > > the body. [snip]. > > Mike, these are important points -- points which should be well > documented in public forums, easily available. That means > some combination of something like a google search as well > as a law database search. The trick would be to get such > information near the top of the list in both forums. So I suppose we need to make the public as aware of Hale v Henkel (201 US 43 (1905)) as they are of Roe v Wade and Miranda, specifically: "The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his own private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to investigation, so far as it may tend to incriminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, since he receives nothing there-from, beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the State... He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights." This citation should be in the legal ammo box of any cryonicist. > > It doesn't do us a lot of good if only a very limited number > of people are aware of the knowledge base. One has to, > by "self-interest" generated reasons force the knowledge > into the public awareness. > > I tend to support the free-state concept. But at the same time > I am realistic enough to recognize that the masses can easily > crush a free-state or a free-island until such time that > technology might make that extremely difficult. If that is > an accurate foreview then you are attempting to solve a > political problem before you have the technological means > to accomplish your goals. Well, I'm not sure what technological means you are speaking of. As it is, technological development requires a nurturing political environment to achieve anything lasting. Places like California seem to me to be on the verge of becoming banana republics, what with natural disasters, political instability, excessive public spending and debt, fasco-socialist tendencies and significant infrastructure reliability problems. Don't know if it's a result of stalling out short of the singularity or what, but a polity trending more toward real political liberty for the individual, free of mobocracy, seems to fit the bill for a better place to be if you are going to be protecting your ass-ets in a post-mortem scenario. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 6 03:27:38 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:27:38 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225759.00aaeec0@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: <000101c3a415$eded5b90$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > > Chris Phoenix wrote: > > > > > > >... a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had > > > > been killed in a motorcycle accident... In all our goings on, I neglected to say that I am deeply and sincerely sorry to hear about your brother-in-law's tragic passing. spike From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 6 03:37:18 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:37:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: <000001c3a414$c29e47c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > They will tell us, as soon as they figure out how > raging capitalism is causing it. spike Someday spike we are going to figure out how to take your perspective and figure out how to squeeze it down into a really small box that eventually explodes into an alternate universe. And I'll find it very interesting to visit there -- though I doubt I would adopt it as a long term residence. R. From mlorrey at yahoo.com Thu Nov 6 03:46:07 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:46:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: <000001c3a414$c29e47c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031106034607.48284.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> --- Spike wrote: > > kevinfreels at hotmail.com > > Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 1:19 PM > > To: ExI chat list > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare > > > > > > Gee, with all the sudden flaring, I have to wonder if there > > is something going on thatthey are not telling us... > > > They will tell us, as soon as they figure out how > raging capitalism is causing it. a) It is caused by National Geographic Sunspot Viewing Cruises. So many tourists are now looking at the sun with leaded binoculars that the lenses are reflecting energy back at the sun, making it hotter.... b) Bush isn't telling us that the flares are actually gushers of solar energy bursting from Halliburton test wells on the sun's surface... c) The solar flares are caused by the Galileo probes nuclear batteries impacting on Jupiter and polluting the Jovian environment. My favorite: since it is the holy muslim month of Ramadan, the flares are a sign of how angry allah is with the muslim people for continuing to sinfully commit suicide bombings on innocent civilians... ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 6 04:07:05 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 20:07:05 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000001c3a41b$7115eb40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > > > They will tell us, as soon as they figure out how > > raging capitalism is causing it. spike > > Someday spike we are going to figure out how to take > your perspective and figure out how to squeeze it > down into a really small box that eventually explodes > into an alternate universe. And I'll find it very > interesting to visit there -- though I doubt I would > adopt it as a long term residence. > > R. Cool, I like alternate universes. {8-] On the contrary, however, you will like it there, as a long term residence. If I have my way, we will all live long and have fun. spike From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Thu Nov 6 05:20:03 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 00:20:03 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] VR-BAR: Harv's back! In-Reply-To: <000801c3a1dc$6a1a9570$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <006f01c3a425$a9c8f310$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Spike wrote, > Then it occurred to me that there are very few > words that rhyme with orgasm: spasm, sarcasm, > grokasm. Others? Harv's slumped form lifted up off the table as he counted on his fingers, "Chasm, cytoplasm, ectoplasm, endoplasm, grokasm, orgasm, phantasm, plasm, protoplasm, sarcasm, spasm, ...um..." He wiggled his fingers trying to coax more knowledge out of the air. "Er, ...as 'em, has 'em, jazz 'em, pizzazz 'em, raz 'em, razzamatazz 'em..." The blond and brunette just stared at him wide-eyed. Even the slime-mold had stopped undulating. "What? Too far?" Harv looked at them questioningly. "You didn't like 'grokasm'?" The blond's jaw hung open. Throat muscles moved, but there was no sound. A piece of sushi slipped from an interrupted pair of chopsticks. Silence echoed between songs. Somewhere on a distant dance-floor a cyberdog howled. The brunette recovered first. "We thought you were dead." Harv tilted his head even further than usual. "We've been letting the slime-mold extract your decaying bodily fluids," the blond finally was able to speak. Harv snapped his head up straight as he scowled at the slime-mold, who by this time had quietly oozed half-way to the opposite side of the table. "We would have shared your queued-up drinks with you," the brunette stammered defensively, "if, um, you know, we had known you were alive." "What time is it?" Harvey looked at the nanotattoo of a watch on his wrist. "It's been four months since you were last conscious in here," the blond declared, "You were drinking that drink and logged off mad." Harv picked up the empty bottle of Rip van Winkle's Zombie-Maker and scrolled the label display to reveal the ingredients. "It's either a very hard Long Island Iced Tea or a very soft cryopreservative... with artificial flavorings." The robotender picked up the empty bottle as soon as it was set down, and then was gone. His voice floated behind him very faintly and very fast, "Drinking this beverage confirms legal consent to all label disclaimers. Suing prohibited by bar policy. Please drink responsibly." "I remember fighting in here," Harv said, setting down the bottle and looking around. "But it seems quiet now." He turned his hovering chair all the way around before facing the table again. "Wow. They fixed all the damage and remodeled the place." "That's it? You're back now?" The brunette poured more sake into three little cups and pushed one of them toward Harv. The blond resumed sushi consumption. The music continued. "If I have time." Harvey tossed back the first sake in one gulp. "I've been busy in the real world. I got my more certifications for my security work. My partner got more hardware wired into his heart. And his mother is entering the final stages of total memory failure." The brunette sympathetically poured more sake for Harv. The slime-mold flowed back to its usual position. The blonde paused the chopsticks, looking expectantly at Harv. "But otherwise..." He took sip of sake and paused thoughtfully. "Yeah. I'm back." -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From sentience at pobox.com Thu Nov 6 05:33:24 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 00:33:24 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant In-Reply-To: <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FA99C95.8010401@pobox.com> <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <3FA9DD24.8040909@pobox.com> Brett Paatsch wrote: > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > >>Brett Paatsch wrote: >> >>>Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: >>> >>>>This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so >>>>it is a simulation of a world without ESP. >>> >>>I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could >>>NOT easily be a sim. >> >>I used to have a very strong intuition that the world was not a >>sim. Eventually it went away, and in retrospect I think it was >>based on nothing but wishful thinking. > > Even in retropect I wonder why such a notion would just go > away? Could it be that the notion was not important to you? No, (a) I realized it was wishful thinking, (b) I lost some of the premises with which I had been rationalizing the wishful thinking, (c) I understood how to handle the possibilities I was thinking about, rather than flinching away from them. >>As Lee Corbin pointed out with respect to the Tegmark >>bubble duplication, there is no *particular* you, only the >>*set* of yous. It seems to me likely, on my current model, >>that at least some of you are living in a computer simulation. > > [Sorry some ambiguity in that -hard to process] > > You necessarily see the world from your own standpoint Eliezer > and from that standpoint the words "me" and "you" tag different > referents than the same words do in other persons standpoints. > I am not sure if you mean "you" as a self-reference also (like in > "one") or you as other-reference only. Eh? I mean that if there's another Eliezer 10^10^29 meters away from me, then there's no way to say that I'm over here and he's over there; "Eliezer" is the measure of Eliezers wherever they are. At least that's my current guess. >> The question is whether almost all of you are >>simulated, or almost all of you are real. > > I know I'm real. Do you know you are real? Gah, sorry. Talk about the relative measure in simulated versus permanently nontamperable processes, then. >>>I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of >>>repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same >>>wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that >>>is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. I prefer to >>>work with friends and the resources that I have, rather than >>>fret over the resources I don't have. I am not malicious and >>>I will deal with maliciousness if I must with resolution and >>>ferocity of my own. >> >>That some people may be inclined to abuse the simulation >>hypothesis in predictable ways, does not bear on the simulation >>hypothesis's *actual truth or falsity*. > > True. But really who cares? If there's anything I need to do about the simulation possibility, in my professional capacity, then I care. >>>I can see no advantage or change in my habits that I would >>>make if I thought the world was a sim. I would probably have >>>more allies and friends if less people entertained the sim >>>hypothesis so much but so be it. >> >>Okay, so most actions are the same on the simulation hypothesis. >>Again this does not bear on the simulation hypothesis's actual truth >>or falsity. > > Agreed. > >>>I think that if no-one can come up with a reliable test, (group >>>test - science or solitary test - pure reason) to see if the world >>>is a sim then it would be better to step around what looks like >>>an iteration of the same old mindfuk, to put away childish >>>things and to concentrate minds and energies on the tasks >>>at hand. >> >>If you can't come up with any experimental observation that >>differs on the world being a sim, then you don't need to know >>how much of your measure lies in sims, because it won't make >>any difference to subjective probabilities. > > Agreed. > >>The problem is in dealing with questions like "Would my measure >>sharply decrease after a Singularity, and if so, what would that >>look like?", > > [sorry perhaps I am missing something but I don't find that to be > an important question. Perhaps it is because I don't think of the > Singularity in pro-noun terms. I really don't know. Perhaps I could > see your point a bit better if you could unpack 'baby' a bit more. > > Can you describe the Singularity as you see it with more words > than the one (Singularity) but no pronouns? I think that would help. If I build a superintelligence does our world suddenly require enormously more computing power to simulate to useful accuracy, thus greatly reducing the measure of any branches of probability that lie in a simulation? Does our world become enormously less interesting to simulating SIs, with the same result? And if so, what does it feel like? Is it subjectively the same as dying? Or does it have no effect at all? While I still don't know how to answer questions like those above, I see plausible strategies for handling most of the plausible answers. The quantities involved can be managed intelligently. >>where the triggering event lies in the future, is >>important, and there is no obvious way to test different >>hypotheses in advance. > > You may have a point but I can't parse to it for the reasons given > above. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 6 04:53:16 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 15:53:16 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare References: Message-ID: <023701c3a421$e4666e20$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Robert J. Bradbury writes: > On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > > > They will tell us, as soon as they figure out how > > raging capitalism is causing it. spike > > Someday spike we are going to figure out how to take > your perspective and figure out how to squeeze it > down into a really small box that eventually explodes > into an alternate universe. And I'll find it very > interesting to visit there -- though I doubt I would > adopt it as a long term residence. I think its best if 'we' let gentle Spike give us his perspective as and when he sees fit (i.e. voluntarily) rather than try and take it from him. Could be that trying to take a persons perspective would destroy it. They would lose it and no-one else would get it either. No Goose AND no eggs. Not that such foolishness as trying to take another's perspective has not been tried many times. - Brett [Ps: Keep laying them Spike your doing fine ;-) ] From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 6 06:13:30 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 17:13:30 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] VR-BAR: Harv's back! References: <006f01c3a425$a9c8f310$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <028201c3a42d$19bce800$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Harvey wrote: > Harv's slumped form lifted up off the table as he counted > on his fingers, "Chasm, cytoplasm, ectoplasm, endoplasm, > grokasm, orgasm, phantasm, plasm, protoplasm, sarcasm, > spasm, ...um..." He wiggled his fingers trying to coax more > knowledge out of the air. "Er, ...as 'em, has 'em, jazz 'em, > pizzazz 'em, raz 'em, razzamatazz 'em..." The blond and > brunette just stared at him wide-eyed. Even the slime-mold > had stopped undulating. > > "What? Too far?" Harv looked at them questioningly. "You > didn't like 'grokasm'?" > > The blond's jaw hung open. Throat muscles moved, but > there was no sound. A piece of sushi slipped from an > interrupted pair of chopsticks. Silence echoed between > songs. Somewhere on a distant dance-floor a cyberdog > howled. > > The brunette recovered first. "We thought you were dead." > > Harv tilted his head even further than usual. > > "We've been letting the slime-mold extract your decaying > bodily fluids," the blond finally was able to speak. > > Harv snapped his head up straight as he scowled at the > slime-mold, who by this time had quietly oozed half-way to > the opposite side of the table. > > "We would have shared your queued-up drinks with you," > the brunette stammered defensively, "if, um, you know, we > had known you were alive." > > "What time is it?" Harvey looked at the nanotattoo of a > watch on his wrist. > > "It's been four months since you were last conscious in here," > the blond declared, "You were drinking that drink and > logged off mad." > > Harv picked up the empty bottle of Rip van Winkle's Zombie- > Maker and scrolled the label display to reveal the ingredients. > "It's either a very hard Long Island Iced Tea or a very soft > cryopreservative... with artificial flavorings." The robotender > picked up the empty bottle as soon as it was set down, and > then was gone. His voice floated behind him very faintly and > very fast, "Drinking this beverage confirms legal consent to > all label disclaimers. Suing prohibited by bar policy. Please > drink responsibly." > > "I remember fighting in here," Harv said, setting down the bottle > and looking around. "But it seems quiet now." He turned his > hovering chair all the way around before facing the table again. > "Wow. They fixed all the damage and remodeled the place." > > "That's it? You're back now?" The brunette poured more > sake into three little cups and pushed one of them toward Harv. > The blond resumed sushi consumption. The music continued. > > "If I have time." Harvey tossed back the first sake in one gulp. > "I've been busy in the real world. I got my more certifications > for my security work. My partner got more hardware wired > into his heart. And his mother is entering the final stages of > total memory failure." > > The brunette sympathetically poured more sake for Harv. > The slime-mold flowed back to its usual position. The blonde > paused the chopsticks, looking expectantly at Harv. > > "But otherwise..." He took sip of sake and paused thoughtfully. > "Yeah. I'm back." > > -- > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec > Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, > SANS Certified GIAC > Welcome back Harvey!!! What a very fine return and a welcome addition you make to the revamped bar/salon. It matters little if one goes away mad and comes back additionally certified if that one is Harvey Newstrom. We are a better bigger we now for your return :-) Cheers, Brett From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 6 06:55:45 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 22:55:45 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] VR-BAR: Harv's back! In-Reply-To: <006f01c3a425$a9c8f310$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <000401c3a433$00bb2d20$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Subject: [extropy-chat] VR-BAR: Harv's back! > > > Spike wrote, > > Then it occurred to me that there are very few > > words that rhyme with orgasm: spasm, sarcasm, > > grokasm. Others? > > Harv's slumped form lifted up off the table as he counted on > his fingers... Harvey! Welcome back dude! Weve been wondering what ever happened to you. Hope all is well. {8-] As you can see, nothing has changed much. {8^D spike From maxm at mail.tele.dk Thu Nov 6 07:06:12 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 08:06:12 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <003001c3a3d6$40ac2c20$0200a8c0@etheric> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com><3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <200311051120.12466.samantha@objectent.com> <003001c3a3d6$40ac2c20$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <3FA9F2E4.6090409@mail.tele.dk> R.Coyote wrote: > I "knew", I anticipated that he would return, after 10 + years to gone. > > I suppose I could produce police records, hospital records, etc. take a > polygraph and pass, but cant be bothered ast some people "here" are as > narrow minded as some Religious Fundamentalists (Satan did it) , in that if > it doesn't fit their world view, It cannot be true. (it was a > hallucination, he's a liar, its a hoax etc.) You think of somebody you know, and have thought about frequently. One of the times he shows up at your house. Now is that random coincidence or is it a sign of supernatural powers? Using Occams razor I would guess the first. And that doesn't take a closed mind, only reason. I sometimes have Deja-Vu and it feels eerie and real, but I don't believe that I really have experienced the events before. It's just my mind playing tricks. I am also shure that the most of us have experienced anxiety/panic attacks. Those would seem like a pretty strong precursor to something bad happening. But it never does. But if somebody has one, and then heard that a family member had died, he would certainly couple the two things together. He would be certain that he had a bad "vision". It's called cognitive Ressonance. The problem is that we don't report the negatives. So they don't show up. If we did science the same way, we would be able to prove allmost anything, as only experiments that showed positives would be published. That is exactly one of the problems of the meta analysis' that are done in the supernatural fields. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark From aperick at centurytel.net Thu Nov 6 07:09:40 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (rick) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 23:09:40 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant, and the Matrix In-Reply-To: <200311060520.hA65KhM05690@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a434$f4f83df0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> In another online novel (this one not by me) a singularity occurs that, at one point, changes everyone (everybody) from real fleshies into only sims -- in an instant -- with out their knowledge. This could happen to you Brett -- at any time. Past, present, or future. It has already occurred in a novel -- this you cannot deny! :-) :) ;-) :-) I was not terribly fond of the ending, but it is a much better work than mine -- more fun parts, better high tech talk etcetera. And twice as long. http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html Second topic: why I hated the first Matrix movie. I was horrified when they stated that one main reason for the existence and continuance of the matrix Borg-like prison setup was that the machines needed the electric energy produced by the bodies -- that they were like human batteries. The machines were feeding off the energy output from the bodies. Talk about zero understanding of chemistry and physics! No further explanation was given. They could have tried to justify this most inefficient power generation scheme. But they didn't. Millions of movie goers were taught that human bodies are energy producing machines, moreover, that human bodies are the most effective power plants that a super intelligent entity could enlist. I felt like puking. Any fifth grade Japanese student should know better, even the dumbest ones. It's just like so opposite from the truth man. Oh the horror! The horror! From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 6 07:19:56 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 23:19:56 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: <00d901c3a3b4$7e5c8820$6401a8c0@int.veeco.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a436$61b00260$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Ones and zeroes. We can see them completely and clearly; the > entire realm is absolutely under our control; it is a world that we built > and that runs entirely on our rules. Destroying the intruder is as easy as > making the decision. > > And yet we still can't get rid of spam. > > Active shields against grey goo? Yeah, right. Eliezer S. Yudkowsky > Jef Allbright: > I think Eliezer's post was intended more as poetry, rather > than the more comprehensive style for which he is well known... Oh no, I very much disagree, Jef. Had Eliezer's post been intended as poetry, he might have written thus: Zeros and ones, (Please pardon the puns) I see them clearly and completely, I control this realm With just me at the helm And it all comes out very neatly. Its a world built by me, >From messiness free, Runs entirely by my clear-cut rules, There's nothing here rude, Reality dare not intrude, We're never forced to tolerate fools. We know just what to do About the threat of grey goo, About that threat we don't give a damn, When I finish this rhyme Ill spend all my time Just deleting the Nigerian spam. {8^D spike From maxm at mail.tele.dk Thu Nov 6 07:30:38 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 08:30:38 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] a job for me? In-Reply-To: References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Message-ID: <3FA9F89E.6080901@mail.tele.dk> Randy S wrote: > Also there is the cost. Max M here comes from from Denmark, a country that > is run for the benefit of its citizens. Tell us, Max, how much they pay > students to go to school in denmark? Well it doesn't exactly work like that. I am self-employed and make too much money to be payed the SU (Sttudy Allovance). But other students can receive about $500 a moth to live for. Not much, but enough for a young person with no family. I don't have to pay for tuition however, and that certainly helps. Even though I pay dearly in taxes... regards Max M From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 6 07:36:34 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 23:36:34 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] prayer and healing again In-Reply-To: <006f01c3a425$a9c8f310$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <000001c3a438$b4301640$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Duke Scientists Test God's Healing Power Duke University Medical Center cardiologists put God to the test to find out if prayer helps to heal the sick. The controversial results: There is no scientific evidence that prayer heals, reports The Telegraph of London. The three-year study, which involved 750 heart patients in nine hospitals, as well as 12 prayer groups of different faiths located around the world, was conducted after earlier, but less extensive, research from the University of Wales in the late '90s suggested prayer has a measurable beneficial effect on healing... I can explain this just from this just from what little info is in this paragraph. The verse says "...The fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much..." The study used 12 prayer groups *of different faiths*. They were different from each other, so clearly they couldn't all be right, but they could all be wrong, which means they were not believing correctly, which means they were not in the truth which means their fervent prayers would not availeth much. Simple explanation for the negative result: they didn't include members of the *true* believers. spike From samantha at objectent.com Thu Nov 6 08:50:43 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 01:50:43 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: References: <007a01c3a352$392afc30$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: <200311060050.43112.samantha@objectent.com> It is quite surprising. The 2nd flare last week was considered statistically anomalous by current models. To get a third and more powerful flare than either within a week must certainly be very unusual. It is not an area of any real personal expertise but what I am reading at least looks as if it will cause a fair amount of rework of some of our solar behavior models. We are quite fortunate that this one was not headed squarely our way. I hope this wild level of activity calms down before we catch a good size one. - samantha On Wednesday 05 November 2003 13:18, kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > Gee, with all the sudden flaring, I have to wonder if there is something > going on thatthey are not telling us. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Karen Rand Smigrodzki" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 10:06 PM > Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare > > > For those interested: > > > > > > Space Weather News for Nov. 5, 2003 > > http://spaceweather.com > > > > Giant sunspot 486 unleashed another intense solar flare on Nov. 4th (1950 > > UT), and this one could be historic. The blast saturated X-ray sensors > > onboard GOES satellites. The last time this happened, in April 2001, the > > flare that saturated the sensors was classified as an X20--the biggest > > ever recorded at the time. Yesterday's flare appears to have been even > > stronger. > > > > > > --karen > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 6 09:31:20 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 10:31:20 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: <200311060050.43112.samantha@objectent.com> References: <007a01c3a352$392afc30$6501a8c0@DogHouse> <200311060050.43112.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <20031106093120.GF27591@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 01:50:43AM -0700, Samantha Atkins wrote: > We are quite fortunate that this one was not headed squarely our way. I hope > this wild level of activity calms down before we catch a good size one. Lossage of quite a few comm sats would be temporarily painful, but would also invigorate launch industry, and result in a leaner and meaner sat on the average. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From amara at amara.com Thu Nov 6 08:58:38 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 10:58:38 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare Message-ID: Dear Samantha, > It is not an area of any real personal expertise but what I am > reading at least looks as if it will cause a fair amount of rework > of some of our solar behavior models. The corona is the least understood part of the Sun, so I don't think that any reworking of 'solar behavior models' for the coronal region is necessary (because it is not understood well now), compared to the the physics of the solar interior (which is understood very well). It was only recently (last 5 years, say) that solar physicists began to understand the coronal heating problem, but I doubt that CMEs (coronal mass ejections) are completely understood yet. A quick search on Google, tells me that the theorists are still working hard: Theor(ies) of Coronal Mass Ejections http://www.aps.org/BAPSDPP98/abs/S550006.html http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/04769/EAE03-J-04769.pdf http://www.eps.org/aps/meet/APR00/baps/abs/S820009.html (and more) I think that this is cool: Current Solar Maps http://www.raben.com/maps/ -- *********************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario, INAF - ARTOV, Via del Fosso del Cavaliere, 100, I-00133 Roma, ITALIA tel: +39-06-4993-4384 |fax: +39-06-4993-4383 Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it | http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/dustgroup/~graps ************************************************************************ I'M SIGNIFICANT!...screamed the dust speck. -- Calvin From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 6 10:54:12 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 02:54:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: <20031106093120.GF27591@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote: > ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org > 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE Alright Eugen -- what the deuce is the above? The "ICBM:" is particularly leading. Are the rest of the numbers the GPS coordinates if I want to target a nuke towards your general area? Seems counter-extropian to me to distribute numbers without explaining what they should be used for. R. From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 6 11:09:52 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:09:52 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare In-Reply-To: References: <20031106093120.GF27591@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20031106110952.GK27591@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 02:54:12AM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > > On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 Allright! If you send a GPS guided missile to here, it should land on my balcony, or something. It's a static address, it doesn't refresh according to my current position (yet). > > http://www.leitl.org That one is to improve Google ranking, as some mailing list software turns this into a real hyperlinked, to be crawled by web spiders. > > 8B29F6BE: This one is a GPG key ID. If you stick it into http://pgp.mit.edu/ (or your mailer automatically gets key it doesn't have in your keyring yet), you'll get my public key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x8B29F6BE Public Key Server -- Get ``0x8B29F6BE '' -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: PGP Key Server 0.9.6 mQGiBD55j/cRBACM+5KHeUDdu8FnCTVemc/QfCfSiD4qJfigkXbJdQLUggQZwqJP u7tYHa/ByW5KXLXnVG4REKK6DkOoJ3ni+JFIA2gMrQD8XUEqTufEX3I1JHhdlztN hSK7bFXF/GJ4zzw455rb7kztBK7aYy05SkhOU/6S30XLAQbIxiSLZWfBBwCgwNNR 3L+VTlgETLnKFOm2gY+2fv8D/04WsykP3Zd45d7Ems1S2X5/1n7ajDMDdltgsZf8 028INooX6nhJcitpXgYUwfH8EDLUSwNAYZgfAMlwrkU05BbX7JIEqroETGsq6m8m VmAiqqMJcy8tjgxVN9KcZ7uqdPBuW1pWvDzIs4HFLrexAW3Oqft0t9AFUUMsgo2s gP7lA/0SiTg5IoLiK70T/73fpA0626TV1wlvfbZOB1drE1TDXj6PRaHOBB4uvksD Qiovx0u4dlAbWDVW6DSW3gR/t3nNjNkLvbXm1uJulqBfuTKgR2g3Jy62YrTFUZls T7AR2M19J5riDxqHKd8ed1KSbxaCmvkMbI3ZM0XkQEUNJvB5zbQ5RXVnZW4gTGVp dGwgKG1ha2VzIG90aGVyIGtleXMgb2Jzb2xldGUpIDxldWdlbkBsZWl0bC5vcmc+ iQIcBBABAgAGBQI+kIz9AAoJEARVjUj9NCi0KgkP/0VzuaR9XQNEnGmyhlKL3hCN +x/ADzsz+ysV+YtqUfO9dVKxVd86hxRmQbhsN2byGsLDBww+8wtuR0+P5gdqPWoN zD6q2EtSL+CPs1HbIGpiObXBFFZBzv0jF7K+2c593JCvfrpS19EdtVlZKgt+3eMQ BeOrXUPBLBD1lduNSGHwV85PAtzf05A51Iwd7AUo2pMy3PaKa4+XB2vCd5h7QW3c GGfEcgvmDcDRtRo4LN/1NlSvJkP9Wgn6hIgXdm+fEBoRQQTJDEaP4IkUdUlbbp3y 6sahtTGj1cFlVnx1Y/J0r2kcBbOJEyIk5L9wu/tGDGw0AelAqfrJyiF+brmmt5aj HG7E2SVwPIONhPO8kskydqIs2b5xIwDC6Monb8srm8uaSR85C/kq1yK6WfIpBpN4 MztwQlpn9tDRY1YRDAfOUzQAfBD6/15QAZzTS/Tfy5CoSsQeusgB0zUZsgn+RaD7 xMioydqhr9490HveTMu5I4969JUrHueKFvkRogpZPegE0RuwJC46Xsv6FRwtgfVX SW6BCm3qaHIylxQfkAl9nNemZqxm3kSiNMwCAIquCBJ8rhCfMrw5ZHUl4HF83yhe qJgm0S/SPwEpfKtIGeOfPq8bXyStilg7KuzFagp+W9ydPF0lY1ayviMmPokPT/lI 7QgSs2G7YpkuUYAHGCYEiQIcBBABAgAGBQI+kI3fAAoJECT438JsfE9dW8cP/Rrc VyoJS5vD/DFwjIMlJnBtp94QQjMYQh4coOghJXmS8RCPCjSVMe+k9f7sIxepvkoK kftEOUf6L5GzVlUabwm7wrcEC+jwdhBigIDDzxP1jjhuay4R5VeMCFFxqBY9gUXW pDAOKdFUkTKZuSyQUABTeS4NoSaD7y397ldHPuNhCoYiIuGv/vosVx3wxE2MQOCj F7EsVrhxe7K7W3xrfni41Bhjoz5EGTS8n2CsrWA9rH2LMSDPHf0Qyomano4q6c8M fb2lS+o4cx0rcrQ/BENaMIO2D9Oxfhdn0QeSa2CxqW23KPba32qF+H5ow77JDFle M2MqqLFYH8PC76VnODDeRM5ah4eAR2sK2M8FpoMZWl7YfBxXyqlsDCHAkuoBaVXZ diPorV0S/b5n6654VDRJf/drH8CWokAkydT5h1b+kDpRTqQ+m48f2liMnlweKIu5 BO3VjBaTc0Otks3R4acB0EsaMiMPawpxi1OmS3sPTGWfacmQBj4GvR4ZeMkfRIx8 2aYNA6RjJm8/XtRGCVmBEH+Wt8u4ovYp/8YrEcCRAbnnQA4kyMPJnLNqt99Vd8hk ETg2z4IShyBZo0xMY0tkkUbZM5jPe6CAZO9haBiWgNbeAniDwvDyQMIzHwvYimNH UScU79X6Fa5p2h3zRrJu7PSvo8hUWKoysp4hzZJ1iF8EExECAB8FAj55j/cFCRLM AwAECwcDAgMVAgMDFgIBAh4BAheAAAoJEHWwJEOLKfa+cYEAnRY9HPXli7w/o31b 4M9oKhOAYhOZAKCM/6lWYDqIlTjoCrW3tXtI55ZQbbkCDQQ+eZCzEAgA0+MGcfzr hnUb5V7dim0dpqjivsPlJoVwz869v4HSLnQyYiolfSxehDiVrIcHZ9+t90ygV7Nh VQMT2WXCboYxHd/g9DylyH3pQjhmvtfBMGI7Vm7mkclXGQIDGcAJxshp5D2nSFVF bDcAkxSYKhonFpTonabfP9IuBebznETD6aDA4pyNOIYHxxpQnLk8Jt+qZB0i/agK oG7WWd0lYGYR+gv1B51eJ2H0MhFsQEIjY3RjvR4CjzM9ZdIuMyP+KBR+9M8O+uk+ Rzd0vfSdh/Cq4wvqkSPvHFzEzgLHNtHd+dCo/O6LMshMBqztXQTSTTu9xBQLAM9f SJwETCsKxj7HewADBQgAkiRtJG5iCwfqyYw8O4ltCPxc+wllIsTOb2nhHRph/syx 6AEATmu2Vg/GCkKpFkydYELNo3FE2C/COkUKrEcy9oQf8pyso+i6qxKKSuhGAZJe LAsMX9LcsRxMkBon3/PGdS0wJX1ryAh44nqyArImJJzeHBfOPD6ieJGvidpt0Yk4 u3VNqcrgH3KRGlfY5/HG/s2hU/gRlDuPW78I4msPrEWCT3AVoeDjjaWIW/GzQHDc kKpLIvj1bDU+NIe9R+Fa4kzg20QQI2mJCx/ErXP8f1yuRqpnK+lchXE56sygcucO YFNMOj2g41TXtdPxS53X+YfoPIDcn4DCwss5K+QaPYhMBBgRAgAMBQI+eZCzBQkS zAMAAAoJEHWwJEOLKfa+pPYAnRrg3iFBWhsXw0UE0OETPG9O1TkYAJ9c388/ZH2E MUsQbV958Q+LeE2/2Q== =33c3 -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- > 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE This is above key's fingerprint. It's very unweildy to verify above key is mine over another channel (phone, mail, card, ESP), so you just use the fingerprint (a kryptographic hash of the key). > Alright Eugen -- what the deuce is the above? The "ICBM:" is > particularly leading. Are the rest of the numbers the GPS If you look into HTML source of http://leitl.org, you'll see This is for the geourl spider. This way you can query who's in your vicinity: http://geourl.org/near/?p=http://leitl.org A poor man's location aware search engine. > coordinates if I want to target a nuke towards your general > area? Seems counter-extropian to me to distribute numbers > without explaining what they should be used for. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 6 11:12:37 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 03:12:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > Most of > you are not watching the current power play in Russia -- and how > many of you have reflected on how that might impact Alcor? > If you do not see the possible connections you are betting > with your life. Comments suggest I was a bit obtuse with the above comment. The point would be that the basic question in Russia is whether or not "law" rules. If law does not rule then it is possible for a situation to develop where people toss frozen bodies/heads into the street. I am stretching to extrapolate the lack of "rule-of-law" in Russia to the U.S. *but* I am not stretching things too far (witness current anti-abortion trends). R. From mitchtemporarily at hotmail.com Thu Nov 6 11:25:45 2003 From: mitchtemporarily at hotmail.com (Mitchell Porter) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 11:25:45 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence Message-ID: Eliezer said >It doesn't matter whether the explanation I gave is correct. There's no >ESP in the universe, no paranormal phenomena, no gods, no demons. It's >just us within the laws of physics. There is no rational necessity for such dogmatism, especially when (i) today's standard-issue laws of physics already contain a mechanism for nonlocal correlation, and (ii) anomalous coincidences are a very common experience. Considerations of human irrationality cut both ways here. I recommend the following essay by C.D. Broad: http://www.ditext.com/broad/rprp.html ... because it spells out just what "paranormal" really means: a violation of certain "basic limiting principles which, apart from the findings of psychical research, are commonly accepted either as self-evident or as established by overwhelming and uniformly favourable empirical evidence". Broad's principles fall under these headings: 1. General principles of causation 2. Limitations on the action of mind on matter 3. Dependence of mind on brain 4. Limitations on ways of acquiring knowledge None of Broad's principles are logical necessities. They are all hypotheses. Furthermore, we know how to build physical models which violate the principles in the first category (quantum nonlocality, closed timelike curves), which means that we can describe, in the abstract, material cognitive systems which violate principles from the second and the fourth categories. Even if a Bayesian reasoner only considered mathematical models already devised by human beings, it would have to assign a nonzero probability to the reality of paranormal phenomena (and not just in the form of a world-as-simulation hypothesis). _________________________________________________________________ Hot chart ringtones and polyphonics. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilemania/default.asp From sentience at pobox.com Thu Nov 6 11:30:34 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 06:30:34 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] prayer and healing again In-Reply-To: <000001c3a438$b4301640$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3a438$b4301640$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <3FAA30DA.9000505@pobox.com> Spike wrote: > Duke Scientists Test God's Healing Power > > Duke University Medical Center cardiologists put God to the test to find > out if prayer helps to heal the sick. The controversial results: There > is no scientific evidence that prayer heals, reports The Telegraph of > London. The three-year study, which involved 750 heart patients in nine > hospitals, as well as 12 prayer groups of different faiths located > around the world, was conducted after earlier, but less extensive, > research from the University of Wales in the late '90s suggested prayer > has a measurable beneficial effect on healing... > > > I can explain this just from this just from what > little info is in this paragraph. The verse says > "...The fervent prayer of the righteous man > availeth much..." The study used 12 prayer groups > *of different faiths*. They were different from > each other, so clearly they couldn't all be right, > but they could all be wrong, which means they were > not believing correctly, which means they were not > in the truth which means their fervent prayers would > not availeth much. Simple explanation for the > negative result: they didn't include members of > the *true* believers. Of course! All we need to do is repeat the study using atheists. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From sentience at pobox.com Thu Nov 6 12:29:32 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 07:29:32 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FAA3EAC.1070706@pobox.com> Mitchell Porter wrote: > > Eliezer said > >> It doesn't matter whether the explanation I gave is correct. There's >> no ESP in the universe, no paranormal phenomena, no gods, no demons. >> It's just us within the laws of physics. > > There is no rational necessity for such dogmatism, especially when (i) > today's standard-issue laws of physics already contain a mechanism for > nonlocal correlation, (Disagree; Everett.) > and (ii) anomalous coincidences are a very common experience. *Coincidences* are a very common experience. The Bright Hypothesis is that there has not been one single *anomalous* coincidence in the entire history of the universe to date. > Considerations of human irrationality cut both ways here. > > I recommend the following essay by C.D. Broad: > http://www.ditext.com/broad/rprp.html Note, incidentally, the credence in Rhine's data, which was later debunked, and other data which repeated experimentation failed to replicate. Yet another success for the Bright Hypothesis. It takes great daring to stand by your principles in the teeth of early data, but to do so and succeed is a tremendously impressive accomplishment for a theory. The Bright Hypothesis has triumphed over anecdotes, public wisdom, overeager researchers, wishful thinking, and outright experimental fraud. It is one damn strong hypothesis. > None of Broad's principles are logical necessities. They are all > hypotheses. Furthermore, we know how to build physical models which > violate the principles in the first category (quantum nonlocality, > closed timelike curves), which means that we can describe, in the > abstract, material cognitive systems which violate principles from the > second and the fourth categories. Even if a Bayesian reasoner only > considered mathematical models already devised by human beings, it > would have to assign a nonzero probability to the reality of paranormal > phenomena (and not just in the form of a world-as-simulation > hypothesis). Yes, that we live in a magic-free universe is a hypothesis. It happens to be an overwhelmingly supported hypothesis, and I am willing to put my weight down on it, and to wield it as my understanding. The weight of the alternatives is not zero. It is small enough that, confronted with supposed anomalous coincidences, I am willing to deny the data, as history suggests will turn out to be the correct course of action. I deny the data openly rather than covertly, so that I can keep track of what it is I have denied. For example, I earlier denied the data on an experiment purportedly showing 50% recovery rates for prayed-for patients versus 25% recovery rates for un-prayed-for patients: as I commented at the time, a nice non-marginal result, blatant effect size, and clear and straightforward claim, far healthier for debate than all the marginal claims of conventional psychic science. Of course, as the Bright Hypothesis predicts, the study failed to replicate; and so that is one more denial off the stack and one more triumph of the Bright Hypothesis. History shows that the Bright Hypothesis is stronger than anecdotes and early experiments. Needless to say, not even the Bright Hypothesis would be stronger than an experiment with a non-marginal effect size and non-marginal statistical significance that replicated several times in the teeth of surveillance by professional magicians. Needless to say, I predict, wielding the Bright Hypothesis as my understanding, that no such experiment will ever occur. I can take my weight back off the Bright Hypothesis, given a damn good reason to do so; no such reason has been forthcoming, and on the Bright Hypothesis none ever will. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 6 12:43:05 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 13:43:05 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> Message-ID: <20031106124305.GV27591@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 04:49:26PM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > You are joining problems that have very different > outcomes. SPAM is annoying and problematic but it > generally doesn't kill people. Grey Goo could > kill people and therefore evokes a significantly > greater response. There's zero awareness in the general public right now of what nanotechnology is, and what a successful military self-replicator could do. If you ask random people (notice that your friends and acquaintances are not that) you'll agree that's an accurate description. When will there be a widespread awareness? Probably, after the first large incident. Well, we'd better survive that first incident. What is the impact of a first large incident in terms of policy? Extreme degree of surveillance, down to the microscale. > You need to present an argument that (a) people > would not see grey goo coming -- something that > the papers re: ecophagy by R-Freitas would seem Who has read that paper? Apart from people on this list, I mean. > to contraindicate; and (b) we do not have the > capability to eliminate grey goo (something that > to my knowledge base has never been presented). b) is backwards. You have to prove that we have the capability for that. I used to present lots of arguments why you can't contain military self-rep without dire side effects to biology. No one has ever refuted them, so I'm assuming we can't contain it, as long as there's an ecosystem around. For dry nanosystems grey goo is about as annoying as mites are to biology. Not an issue most of the time, nasty in some cases, terminally so in negligible number of cases. As long as we're stuck with biology, this doesn't help us a lot, of course. But, a successful design is nontrivial, and we don't have that many rampant evil geniuses around. > You have thrown down the gauntlet. Back it up. Eliezer doesn't have the burden of proof here, methinks. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From gregburch at gregburch.net Thu Nov 6 13:15:40 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 07:15:40 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: <20031106124305.GV27591@leitl.org> Message-ID: I'm with Eugene on this -- I think Eliezer's actually made a brilliant comment in his analogy of spam to other, more serious problems that will face us in an increasingly networked and meme-driven world. 'gene's right -- the metaphorical fit is good. Spam may end up having been a blessing, because it gives us a chance to deal with a "toy problem" before we have to deal with desk-top vial engineering and nanotech in the hands of nutcase terrorists. -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 6:43 AM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 04:49:26PM -0800, Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > You are joining problems that have very different > outcomes. SPAM is annoying and problematic but it > generally doesn't kill people. Grey Goo could > kill people and therefore evokes a significantly > greater response. There's zero awareness in the general public right now of what nanotechnology is, and what a successful military self-replicator could do. If you ask random people (notice that your friends and acquaintances are not that) you'll agree that's an accurate description. When will there be a widespread awareness? Probably, after the first large incident. Well, we'd better survive that first incident. What is the impact of a first large incident in terms of policy? Extreme degree of surveillance, down to the microscale. > You need to present an argument that (a) people > would not see grey goo coming -- something that > the papers re: ecophagy by R-Freitas would seem Who has read that paper? Apart from people on this list, I mean. > to contraindicate; and (b) we do not have the > capability to eliminate grey goo (something that > to my knowledge base has never been presented). b) is backwards. You have to prove that we have the capability for that. I used to present lots of arguments why you can't contain military self-rep without dire side effects to biology. No one has ever refuted them, so I'm assuming we can't contain it, as long as there's an ecosystem around. For dry nanosystems grey goo is about as annoying as mites are to biology. Not an issue most of the time, nasty in some cases, terminally so in negligible number of cases. As long as we're stuck with biology, this doesn't help us a lot, of course. But, a successful design is nontrivial, and we don't have that many rampant evil geniuses around. > You have thrown down the gauntlet. Back it up. Eliezer doesn't have the burden of proof here, methinks. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Nov 6 15:44:10 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 07:44:10 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] VR-BAR: Harv's back! In-Reply-To: <006f01c3a425$a9c8f310$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> References: <000801c3a1dc$6a1a9570$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031106072237.0310a9f0@pop.earthlink.net> ...The fine lines of chiaroscuro tempered the darkness for several moments more, and as the fourth cup of sake wet his throat, a glimpse of a smile curved his upper lip. "Yes, I'm back," she heard him say, this time with a calm. They watched him for a while - some of the familiar faces, a few still soiled by human emotion, and many others oblivious to that trend. "Do you want to dance?" the old friends asked, and yes, he did. Welcome back Harvey! Natasha At 12:20 AM 11/6/03 -0500, you wrote: >Spike wrote, > > Then it occurred to me that there are very few > > words that rhyme with orgasm: spasm, sarcasm, > > grokasm. Others? > >Harv's slumped form lifted up off the table as he counted on his fingers, >"Chasm, cytoplasm, ectoplasm, endoplasm, grokasm, orgasm, phantasm, plasm, >protoplasm, sarcasm, spasm, ...um..." He wiggled his fingers trying to coax >more knowledge out of the air. "Er, ...as 'em, has 'em, jazz 'em, pizzazz >'em, raz 'em, razzamatazz 'em..." The blond and brunette just stared at him >wide-eyed. Even the slime-mold had stopped undulating. > >"What? Too far?" Harv looked at them questioningly. "You didn't like >'grokasm'?" > >The blond's jaw hung open. Throat muscles moved, but there was no sound. A >piece of sushi slipped from an interrupted pair of chopsticks. Silence >echoed between songs. Somewhere on a distant dance-floor a cyberdog howled. > >The brunette recovered first. "We thought you were dead." > >Harv tilted his head even further than usual. > >"We've been letting the slime-mold extract your decaying bodily fluids," the >blond finally was able to speak. > >Harv snapped his head up straight as he scowled at the slime-mold, who by >this time had quietly oozed half-way to the opposite side of the table. > >"We would have shared your queued-up drinks with you," the brunette >stammered defensively, "if, um, you know, we had known you were alive." > >"What time is it?" Harvey looked at the nanotattoo of a watch on his wrist. > >"It's been four months since you were last conscious in here," the blond >declared, "You were drinking that drink and logged off mad." > >Harv picked up the empty bottle of Rip van Winkle's Zombie-Maker and >scrolled the label display to reveal the ingredients. "It's either a very >hard Long Island Iced Tea or a very soft cryopreservative... with artificial >flavorings." The robotender picked up the empty bottle as soon as it was >set down, and then was gone. His voice floated behind him very faintly and >very fast, "Drinking this beverage confirms legal consent to all label >disclaimers. Suing prohibited by bar policy. Please drink responsibly." > >"I remember fighting in here," Harv said, setting down the bottle and >looking around. "But it seems quiet now." He turned his hovering chair all >the way around before facing the table again. "Wow. They fixed all the >damage and remodeled the place." > >"That's it? You're back now?" The brunette poured more sake into three >little cups and pushed one of them toward Harv. The blond resumed sushi >consumption. The music continued. > >"If I have time." Harvey tossed back the first sake in one gulp. "I've >been busy in the real world. I got my more certifications for my security >work. My partner got more hardware wired into his heart. And his mother is >entering the final stages of total memory failure." > >The brunette sympathetically poured more sake for Harv. The slime-mold >flowed back to its usual position. The blonde paused the chopsticks, >looking expectantly at Harv. > >"But otherwise..." He took sip of sake and paused thoughtfully. "Yeah. >I'm back." > >-- >Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC >Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, >NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From LaurenceofBerk at aol.com Thu Nov 6 08:54:04 2003 From: LaurenceofBerk at aol.com (LaurenceofBerk at aol.com) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 03:54:04 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley Message-ID: Extropians, who are, as far as I can tell from the web, libertarians or even Ayn Randians, are no help in ridding the cyberworld of spam. Spam is generated by corporations and can be restricted only through goverment action. The problem of spam is only one small example of the fantasy world inhabited by libertarians. They, and their Rebublican fellow travellers, and the Extropian ideologists, tell us, and themselves, that they would like to liberate the human spirit by reducing monolithic oppression. Excellent plan. The delusion, however, comes from supposing that oppressive power comes from government. At certain times and places yes. But not in 21st century America. Here our spammers, our spies, our hoarders of patents and information, our monolithic media, our traffic jams, our pollution - I could go on indefinitely - come from the corporate world, which also finances our politics. So hooray for life extension, intelligence enhancement, super learning and space travel, but please, extropians, lose the libertarianism. It's just a convenient smokescreen for the real powers that be. PS Is this how I reply? When I click on "reply" it produces an addresses too long for my mac to send. From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 6 16:30:42 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 08:30:42 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <002601c3a483$52978a80$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > LaurenceofBerk at aol.com > Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley > > > Extropians, who are, as far as I can tell from the web, > libertarians or even Ayn Randians, are no help in ridding the cyberworld of > spam. Spam is generated by corporations and can be restricted only through > goverment action... Most of my spam has been coming from individual huge corporations in Nigeria, asking me to help them loot the country. This government action you call for, will that be in the form of dropping nukes on Nigeria? Lawrence of Berkeley, you need to call on Obi wan Kanobi. He's your only hope. spike From natashavita at earthlink.net Thu Nov 6 16:46:01 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 11:46:01 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley Message-ID: <244640-22003114616461559@M2W075.mail2web.com> LaurenceofBerk at aol.com > Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley > > > Extropians, who are, as far as I can tell from the web, > libertarians or even Ayn Randians, are no help in ridding the cyberworld of > spam. Spam is generated by corporations and can be restricted only through > goverment action... If you are a troll and misplanting information on the list, please reconsider your aim. First of all, Extropes are not "Randians" and secondly, be careful about political positioning of people on this list and elsewhere. Natasha Vita-More President, Extropy Institute -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 6 17:03:45 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 09:03:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Greg Burch wrote: Heck. I've won the lottery -- I get to debate Eli, Eugen, and Greg within a single topic. Somedays the universe (sim that it is) is really generous. > I'm with Eugene on this -- I think Eliezer's actually made a brilliant > comment in his analogy of spam to other, more serious problems that will > face us in an increasingly networked and meme-driven world. No -- SPAM doesn't kill people, at least not in a direct fashion that one might attribute to grey goo (which I assume was Eli's point). [This is my assumption -- but if Eli had the impression that grey goo was as dangerous as SPAM then he would not place the need on having a friendly AI bail us out of the potential mess. So I tend to think that SPAM and grey goo are two distinctly different categories.] Worth noting -- the primary point that I was trying to make was that grey goo is no longer the threat that it once was. So Eli or Eugen cannot cite it as the metaphorical boogy monster that it once was. They have to cite some concrete reasons precisely *why* grey goo will not be detected and eliminated. (Yes they can cite human stupidity for not preparing sufficiently -- but we can go back and forth on that argument for a long time. We can just as easily apply it to Near-Earth-Objects which are natural rather than designed.) > 'gene's right -- the metaphorical fit is good. Spam may end up > having been a blessing, because it gives us a chance to deal > with a "toy problem" before we have to deal with desk-top vial > engineering and nanotech in the hands of nutcase terrorists. I don't know -- though I like Microsoft offering a bounty on the heads of the hackers. But as I told the Foresight SA's this year there is a very low threshold to me to come back next year and infect them all with SARS. You are already past the point of "desk-top vial engineering" -- you just don't realize it. It is going to be quite interesting when we get into the issue of precisely where the funds raised in various mosques go (in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, etc.). The significant barriers to bioterrorist attacks are education and equipment resources. Both of those can easily be solved by money. And I would guess that our ability to track the money flows isn't anywhere near what it needs to be. Robert From jonkc at att.net Thu Nov 6 17:21:36 2003 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:21:36 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] prayer and healing again References: <000001c3a438$b4301640$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <3FAA30DA.9000505@pobox.com> Message-ID: <003f01c3a48a$74d27ea0$61165e0c@hal2001> James Watson in his recent book "DNA" talked about a much larger scale test of the effectiveness of prayer. He points out that for hundreds of years millions of people have been publicly praying that the King or Queen of England have a long life, but actuarial studies have shown that monarchs on average have slightly shorter lives than other members of the aristocracy. John K Clark jonkc at att.net From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Thu Nov 6 17:32:05 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (Randy S) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 17:32:05 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] a job for me? In-Reply-To: <3FA9F89E.6080901@mail.tele.dk> References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> , Message-ID: Max M said: > Randy S wrote: > > > Also there is the cost. Max M here comes from from Denmark, a country that > > is run for the benefit of its citizens. Tell us, Max, how much they pay > > students to go to school in denmark? > > > Well it doesn't exactly work like that. I am self-employed and make too > much money to be payed the SU (Sttudy Allovance). But other students can > receive about $500 a moth to live for. Not much, but enough for a young > person with no family. > > I don't have to pay for tuition however, and that certainly helps. ] So if Kevin is in Denmark, he can quit his job (thus no income) and get $500/month to go to school, and he pays no tuition? Right? Plus, if he gets sick, he can go to the hospital and get it taken care without paying, correct? But if he quits his job here in the USA, he is out tuition (approx. 20K average for a state school in the USA), plus his living expenses (say $500/month for 48 months == $24K). And of course he has to pay for medical insurance on top of that, or else just one day in the hospital will break him. Total of $40K or so for America, and approximately $0 in Denmark. Aint America a great country!? -- -------------- -Randy From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 6 18:13:15 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:13:15 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant, and the Matrix References: <000001c3a434$f4f83df0$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: Hollywood is horrible about getting anything right. Most people fear guns because they think that any punk holding a gun sideways can kill any target with 1 shot from 25 yards. Mission to Mars had a guy freeze-dry instantly and crumble when he took off his helmet in space (not to mention that this guy didn;t even have to die) That's one of my hobbies, picking apart movies...OK maybe not a hobby, but I enjoy doing it. Phil Plaits badastronomy.com is a terrific site for this type of thing. > Second topic: why I hated the first Matrix movie. I was horrified when > they stated that one main reason for the existence and continuance of > the matrix Borg-like prison setup was that the machines needed the > electric energy produced by the bodies -- that they were like human > batteries. The machines were feeding off the energy output from the > bodies. Talk about zero understanding of chemistry and physics! No > further explanation was given. They could have tried to justify this > most inefficient power generation scheme. But they didn't. Millions of > movie goers were taught that human bodies are energy producing machines, > moreover, that human bodies are the most effective power plants that a > super intelligent entity could enlist. I felt like puking. Any fifth > grade Japanese student should know better, even the dumbest ones. It's > just like so opposite from the truth man. Oh the horror! The horror! > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From amara at amara.com Thu Nov 6 17:21:53 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 19:21:53 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar System Message-ID: There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 has reached the Heliopause. If this isn't a reason for a massive party/celebration of the humans on this planet, I don't know what is.... http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2003/031105.htm The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Office of Communications and Public Affairs Laurel, Maryland Media Contacts: Michael Buckley (Johns Hopkins APL) (240) 228-7536 or (443)778-7536 michael.buckley at jhuapl.edu, or Nancy Neal (NASA) (301) 286-0039 nancy.g.neal at nasa.gov November 5, 2003 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE VOYAGER 1 APPROACHES SOLAR SYSTEM'S OUTER LIMITS NASA Spacecraft Offers First Direct Look at Dynamic Region Before Interstellar Space More than 25 years after leaving home, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft reached a key checkpoint on its historic journey toward interstellar space. Analyzing six months of data from Voyager's Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument, a team led by Dr. Stamatios Krimigis of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Md., determined that the spacecraft, while nearly 8 billion miles from Earth, passed through and later returned behind the turbulent zone known as the solar termination shock. At the termination shock, streams of electrically charged gas blown from the Sun -- called the solar wind -- slow down rapidly after colliding with gas and magnetic pressure from between the stars. The shock is also considered the last stop before the invisible boundary of the heliosphere, the bubble-like region of space under our Sun's energetic influence. "Voyager 1 is giving us our first taste of interstellar space," says Krimigis, principal investigator for the Low-Energy Charged Particle (LECP) instrument, which was designed and built at APL. "This is our first direct look at the incredibly dynamic activity in the solar system's outer limits." Voyager 1 is the farthest manmade object in space, and from about Aug. 1, 2002, to Feb. 5, 2003, scientists noticed unusual readings from several instruments on the spacecraft indicating it had entered part of the solar system unlike any encountered before. Science team members' views vary on what the data means; one instrument team maintains that Voyager approached, but didn't cross, the termination shock. (Each team presents its views in the Nov. 6 issue of the journal Nature.) Krimigis says his team, however, found compelling evidence of a shock crossing in data from the LECP. The instrument, mounted on a motorized, rotating platform that allows it to scan the sky in all directions, determines the composition, charge and direction of certain energized particles as they zip through space. First, the team noticed a hundred-fold increase in the intensity of these charged particles, and that they were streaming by the spacecraft mostly along the magnetic field perpendicular to Voyager's path. "This was remarkable," Krimigis says, "because for 25 years, particles from the Sun were flowing straight out. We knew something strange must have happened to the solar wind that helps push these particles out." At a termination shock, the solar wind would brake abruptly from supersonic to subsonic speed. The instrument on Voyager 1 that could measure solar wind speed no longer operates; however, the LECP detector can measure it indirectly from the speed and direction of the ions riding with the solar wind. "The solar wind had slowed from 700,000 miles per hour to less than 100,000 miles per hour," says Dr. Edmond Roelof, an LECP science team co-investigator at APL who developed analysis tools for just this type of data. "Flying a moving device on Voyager -- in this case an electric motor -- was considered a risk," says Dr. Robert Decker, an LECP science team co-investigator and the instrument project manager at the Applied Physics Laboratory. "But that rotating capability was key to collecting this data, and helping us figure out that the solar wind had virtually stopped." The team also found a third crucial clue: by measuring the composition of particles in the area, the instrument detected signatures of interstellar materials -- the atoms and other particles from explosions of dying stars. "That tells us materials originally from outside the solar system are becoming accelerated near the spacecraft -- again, something you expect to happen at the termination shock," says Dr. Matthew Hill, a science team member from the University of Maryland, College Park. Estimating the shock's exact location has been hard since no one knows the precise conditions of interstellar space, though scientists do believe the constantly changing speed and pressure of the solar wind causes the shock's boundary to expand and contract. In this case, LECP readings indicate Voyager 1 crossed the shock at about 85 times the Earth-Sun distance, before the shock moved past the spacecraft at 87 times this distance. Such movement also makes it difficult to predict when the spacecraft will again encounter that boundary. Until then, LECP team is correlating its results with those from other instrument teams, hoping to get a clearer picture of the interplay between the solar wind and interstellar medium, and matching that information to long-held models of the outer solar system. Already, there are some differences. "We saw the right mix of interstellar materials where we thought we would, but overall, things didn't behave the way we expected from models," Krimigis says. "It was strange, but just another indication that nature behaves the way it wants, not according to what our theories predict." Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977, and flew past Jupiter and Saturn before heading northward out of the planets' orbital plane. Voyager 2, which launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, is also moving out but in a southward direction and hasn't traveled as far. An APL-built Low-Energy Charged Particle detector flies on each; the Laboratory later developed similar instruments for the Galileo spacecraft, which recently ended its mission at Jupiter, and the Cassini spacecraft, which will begin orbiting Saturn in July 2004. LECP team members presenting their results in the Nature article are Krimigis, Decker and Roelof of APL; Dr. George Gloecker, Dr. Douglas Hamilton and Hill of the University of Maryland, College Park; Dr. Thomas Armstrong of the University of Kansas, Lawrence; and Dr. Louis Lanzerotti, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J. and New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark. For more information on the articles, visit www.nature.com/nature. On the Web: NASA news release and images: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/1105voyager.html Animation of the Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument: http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2003/031105.htm Bell Laboratories news release and contacts: http://www.bell-labs.com New Jersey Institute of Technology news release and contacts: http://www.njit.edu/publicinfo/newsroom/index.php The Voyager Mission: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument and science mission: http://hurlbut.jhuapl.edu/VOYAGER/ ### The Applied Physics Laboratory, a division of The Johns Hopkins University, meets critical national challenges through the innovative application of science and technology. For more information, visit www.jhuapl.edu. -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 6 18:45:30 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:45:30 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com><3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com><01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><3FA99C95.8010401@pobox.com> <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: With an experiment where we were in a sim, the results of the experiment would be flawed if we knoew we were in the sim. Therefore, they would make it either impossible to prove, or, delete the idea from our memory. So I guess, if we proved we were in a sim, that proof would show that we weren;t in a sim...............? Hmmm. It's a weird day here. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 8:33 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > > Brett Paatsch wrote: > > > > > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > > > > > >>This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so > > >>it is a simulation of a world without ESP. > > > > > > I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could > > > NOT easily be a sim. > > > > I used to have a very strong intuition that the world was not a > > sim. Eventually it went away, and in retrospect I think it was > > based on nothing but wishful thinking. > > Even in retropect I wonder why such a notion would just go > away? Could it be that the notion was not important to you? > > > > > As Lee Corbin pointed out with respect to the Tegmark > > bubble duplication, there is no *particular* you, only the > > *set* of yous. It seems to me likely, on my current model, > > that at least some of you are living in a computer simulation. > > [Sorry some ambiguity in that -hard to process] > > You necessarily see the world from your own standpoint Eliezer > and from that standpoint the words "me" and "you" tag different > referents than the same words do in other persons standpoints. > I am not sure if you mean "you" as a self-reference also (like in > "one") or you as other-reference only. > > > The question is whether almost all of you are > > simulated, or almost all of you are real. > > I know I'm real. Do you know you are real? > > > > I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of > > > repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same > > > wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that > > > is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. I prefer to > > > work with friends and the resources that I have, rather than > > > fret over the resources I don't have. I am not malicious and > > > I will deal with maliciousness if I must with resolution and > > > ferocity of my own. > > > > That some people may be inclined to abuse the simulation > > hypothesis in predictable ways, does not bear on the simulation > > hypothesis's *actual truth or falsity*. > > True. But really who cares? > > > > > > I can see no advantage or change in my habits that I would > > > make if I thought the world was a sim. I would probably have > > > more allies and friends if less people entertained the sim > > > hypothesis so much but so be it. > > > > Okay, so most actions are the same on the simulation hypothesis. > > Again this does not bear on the simulation hypothesis's actual truth > > or falsity. > > Agreed. > > > > > > I think that if no-one can come up with a reliable test, (group > > > test - science or solitary test - pure reason) to see if the world > > > is a sim then it would be better to step around what looks like > > > an iteration of the same old mindfuk, to put away childish > > > things and to concentrate minds and energies on the tasks > > > at hand. > > > > If you can't come up with any experimental observation that > > differs on the world being a sim, then you don't need to know > > how much of your measure lies in sims, because it won't make > > any difference to subjective probabilities. > > Agreed. > > > The problem is in dealing with questions like "Would my measure > > sharply decrease after a Singularity, and if so, what would that > > look like?", > > [sorry perhaps I am missing something but I don't find that to be > an important question. Perhaps it is because I don't think of the > Singularity in pro-noun terms. I really don't know. Perhaps I could > see your point a bit better if you could unpack 'baby' a bit more. > > Can you describe the Singularity as you see it with more words > than the one (Singularity) but no pronouns? I think that would help. > > > where the triggering event lies in the future, is > > important, and there is no obvious way to test different > > hypotheses in advance. > > You may have a point but I can't parse to it for the reasons given > above. > > Regards, > Brett > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net Thu Nov 6 18:48:59 2003 From: cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net (cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:48:59 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare References: <20031106034607.48284.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <006201c3a496$a533f040$12ecfea9@kevin> > My favorite: since it is the holy muslim month of Ramadan, the flares > are a sign of how angry allah is with the muslim people for continuing > to sinfully commit suicide bombings on innocent civilians... > Since the majority of technology affected by solar flares is created and used by the wes, maybe it is Allah being angry at our presence in the middle east. From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 6 19:04:44 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 13:04:44 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] a job for me? References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com>, Message-ID: I want to thank everyone for their comments on this topic. I have decided to go ahead and enroll for the next semester and get going. One thing I am curious about is student loans. It is my understanding that as long as I am enrolled full time, I don;t have to start paying back the loans. Since I work from home and I can make a decent income working about 20 hours per week, maybe I could stay enrolled full-time until the singularity hits at which point the economy would be so screwed up that I wouldn;t have to worry about paying them back. At worst, I could copy myself and have 1 of me work to pay off t he loans....hmmmm Opinions? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Randy S" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 11:32 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] a job for me? > Max M said: > > > Randy S wrote: > > > > > Also there is the cost. Max M here comes from from Denmark, a country > that > > > is run for the benefit of its citizens. Tell us, Max, how much they pay > > > students to go to school in denmark? > > > > > > Well it doesn't exactly work like that. I am self-employed and make too > > much money to be payed the SU (Sttudy Allovance). But other students can > > receive about $500 a moth to live for. Not much, but enough for a young > > person with no family. > > > > I don't have to pay for tuition however, and that certainly helps. ] > > > So if Kevin is in Denmark, he can quit his job (thus no income) and get > $500/month to go to school, and he pays no tuition? Right? Plus, if he gets > sick, he can go to the hospital and get it taken care without paying, > correct? > > But if he quits his job here in the USA, he is out tuition (approx. 20K > average for a state school in the USA), plus his living expenses (say > $500/month for 48 months == $24K). > > And of course he has to pay for medical insurance on top of that, or else > just one day in the hospital will break him. > > Total of $40K or so for America, and approximately $0 in Denmark. > > Aint America a great country!? > > > > > -- > > -------------- > > -Randy > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From samantha at objectent.com Thu Nov 6 19:07:16 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:07:16 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence In-Reply-To: <3FA9A1BD.90207@pobox.com> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <200311051120.12466.samantha@objectent.com> <3FA9A1BD.90207@pobox.com> Message-ID: <200311061107.16036.samantha@objectent.com> On Wednesday 05 November 2003 17:19, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Samantha Atkins wrote: > > > > That is a huge cop-out. It doesn't fit your worldview so the first > > choice is to believe it never happened, heh? Convenient but not very > > relevant. > > Yes, that's right. It doesn't fit my worldview, and therefore I assert > that it never happened. On the hypothesis that the universe is genuinely > non-eerie but people are not reliable reporters, it will sometimes be > necessary to do that. The important thing is to do it flat out, honestly, > and without excuses. It doesn't fit my preconceived notions and > therefore, without apology, I reject it. Anyone is welcome to catalog > reports like these; doing so is not an assault on Reason, for Reason can > take the heat. It is suppressed fear that the universe really *is* eerie > that leads to people trying to "suppress memories", "not think about it", > deny grant funding to people trying to investigate it, and other harmful > strategies. I will not live in fear of Chris Phoenix's report. I accept > that he made the report, and deny that it happened as reported. > So, what would it take to get through what looks like defensive assertions against anything that disagrees with your worldview? Why is the avoidance of anything that might strike you as being under the very loose term "eerie" such an apparently large value? The Universe *is* "eerie" in many respects or at least more singularly odd than we might be able to hold in our noggins. Why should some form of ESP existing be even a very large threat? It would be yet another unexpected phenomenon to account for as I see it. All of that said I have no general trouble with reporting/observation errors being the first and most likely explanation. I know first hand just how marvelously creative and integrative of things that should not be integrated the human mind is. But it doesn't seem justified to assert those *are* the explanation without examination. > >> This world is my home, and I know it now, and I know the world > >> doesn't work that way. > > > > You *know* no such thing. You believe it doesn't work that way. > > "You are not me," replied Chuangtse. "How can you know that I do not know > that the fish are enjoying themselves?" > I do not have to be you to assert that a bald assertion that the world doesn't work in such a way as to allow X would require near omniscience or at least a far more totally vetted model of reality than any of us to date, to my knowledge, have or are likely to have. The world doesn't work in such a way as to support a blanket assertion that the world doesn't work in such a way as to allow ESP. :0 > >> There are a few things left that I don't know yet, but the remaining > >> uncertainty does not have enough slack in it to permit ESP. This > >> world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so it is a > >> simulation of a world without ESP. > > > > I see no way you could have complete enough knowledge or sufficiently > > vetted theory of knowledge to make such a statement meaningfully. > > On the hypothesis that the universe really is non-eerie, there is no > reason why an inhabitant of that universe should not eventually become > confident of the fact. Of course, as I noted, it takes some work. > Please clarify what you mean by "eerie". From where I sit there are lots of very "eerie" things in some parts of our current scientific models. > > > > The story has to be assumed accurate for the questions raised to be > > even seriously addressed. What you have done looks like more disowning > > of inconvenient data. We all know most of the things you are bringing > > up here and yet this nagging residue that doesn't fit remains. > > Right. I am disowning inconvenient data. The important thing is not to > make the action look any more respectable than it is, or try to make the > incovenient data look less improbable by coming up with pseudo-rational > explanations for it. Scientists are nervous around disowned inconvenient > data, even though it is, sometimes necessary. That is as it should be, > and the reason why, when disowning inconvenient data is necessary, it > should be done plainly and without apology. > I am really not getting what the virtue of this is. If it is really *data* it cannot be disowned without intellectual dishonesty. So I hope this is a quibble about whether such an anecdote is sufficient to qualify as data. - samantha From samantha at objectent.com Thu Nov 6 19:13:33 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:13:33 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant In-Reply-To: <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA99C95.8010401@pobox.com> <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <200311061113.33599.samantha@objectent.com> On Wednesday 05 November 2003 18:33, Brett Paatsch wrote: > > The question is whether almost all of you are > > simulated, or almost all of you are real. > > I know I'm real. Do you know you are real? > The wording itself is suspect. Reality is relative to and includes context. Within the sim you are and experience yourself precisely as being just as real as if you are outside a sim. Why is the original running of universe as we know it more privileged than a fully virtual running of an equally complex universe with just as many (perhaps more) degrees of freedom? Or, if you like, why is meat space forever priviliged over any and all virtual spaces no matter how much more accomodating to everything we hold most dear that any such space could be? - samantha From samantha at objectent.com Thu Nov 6 19:21:11 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:21:11 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] prayer and healing again In-Reply-To: <000001c3a438$b4301640$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3a438$b4301640$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <200311061121.11448.samantha@objectent.com> On Wednesday 05 November 2003 23:36, Spike wrote: > I can explain this just from this just from what > little info is in this paragraph. The verse says > "...The fervent prayer of the righteous man > availeth much..." The study used 12 prayer groups > *of different faiths*. They were different from > each other, so clearly they couldn't all be right, > but they could all be wrong, which means they were > not believing correctly, which means they were not > in the truth which means their fervent prayers would > not availeth much. Simple explanation for the > negative result: they didn't include members of > the *true* believers. > Hey man, it says "righteous" not right in their isms. For all I know all of them were perfectly righteous cats well attuned to soul. - s From jcorb at iol.ie Thu Nov 6 19:30:56 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 19:30:56 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031106192607.0314e470@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 7 >Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 19:27:38 -0800 > >From: "Spike" >Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence >To: "'ExI chat list'" >Message-ID: <000101c3a415$eded5b90$6501a8c0 at SHELLY> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > > > Chris Phoenix wrote: > > > > > > > > >... a few hours after that, we learned that her brother had > > > > > been killed in a motorcycle accident... >In all our goings on, I neglected to say that I >am deeply and sincerely sorry to hear about your >brother-in-law's tragic passing. spike > Being a motorcyclist myself, my thoughts to you and your wife, Chris. I hope time has in some small way been healing for you both. Regards, James... >------------------------------ From hibbert at mydruthers.com Thu Nov 6 19:30:36 2003 From: hibbert at mydruthers.com (Chris Hibbert) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 11:30:36 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: <20031106110952.GK27591@leitl.org> References: <20031106093120.GF27591@leitl.org> <20031106110952.GK27591@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FAAA15C.4090607@mydruthers.com> >>> On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote: >>>> > ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 > > Allright! If you send a GPS guided missile to here, it should > land on my balcony, or something. It's a static address, it > doesn't refresh according to my current position (yet). Eugene, you should talk to MapQuest and see what it takes to get aerial photos on-line. For your address, the best I can do is a map, while mine (and other densely populated places in the US) comes with an aerial view. (If you click on successively higher zoom buttons, you get an ICBM's eye view.) Eugene: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&zoom=5&latitude=48.07078&longitude=11.61144 Chris: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&zoom=5&latitude=37.36243&longitude=-122.0695 In any case, it ought to be good enough for someone to get driving directions if they wanted to visit. Chris (I've been geocaching (www.geocaching.com), and I've gotten familiar with this tool.) -- C. J. Cherryh, "Invader", on why we visit very old buildings: "A sense of age, of profound truths. Respect for something hands made, that's stood through storms and wars and time. It persuades us that things we do may last and matter." Chris Hibbert hibbert at mydruthers.com http://discuss.foresight.org/~hibbert From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 6 19:42:11 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 11:42:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] a job for me? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031106194211.84066.qmail@web80402.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > One thing I am curious about is student loans. It is > my understanding that > as long as I am enrolled full time, I don;t have to > start paying back the > loans. > Since I work from home and I can make a decent > income working about 20 hours > per week, maybe I could stay enrolled full-time > until the singularity hits > at which point the economy would be so screwed up > that I wouldn;t have to > worry about paying them back. Don't loans usually have a time limit on how long you can remain enrolled? 5 years? Probably under 10. Certainly, others have tried that trick - but planning on staying enrolled 'til they died instead of waiting for the Singularity. Same results, short and long term, as far as they're concerned. > At worst, I could copy myself and have 1 of me work > to pay off t he > loans....hmmmm > Opinions? Copying yourself isn't much different in that aspect from devoting part (timewise) of one of you to working and another part of the same one to studying, as per your current plan. It does give you a larger pool to divvy up, though, allowing more study and more work. It also presents the problem of re-integration afterwards. From natashavita at earthlink.net Thu Nov 6 21:34:51 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 16:34:51 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] UN Delays Decision on Human Cloning Message-ID: <187160-220031146213451472@M2W040.mail2web.com> Here's some good news - "November 6, 2003; UNITED NATIONS, New York City (AP and CNN) -- The United Nations voted narrowly Thursday to delay for two years any consideration of a treaty to ban human cloning, an issue that has left the world body bitterly divided. Facing rival resolutions on a total ban or a partial ban, the General Assembly's legal committee voted 80-79 to accept a motion introduced by Iran on behalf of the 57 Islamic nations to postpone U.N. action on the issue. Fifteen countries abstained." **Now if we could have the gates open for theraputic clonging, I'd be really happy. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 6 22:35:35 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 09:05:35 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] a job for me? Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE05E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> The classic way of avoiding paying back student loans in Australia (where they are called HECS and the HECS supplement), is to move to a different country as soon as you graduate. This means you can never come back, of course, unless you are willing to begin paying the loans when you come back, but some people don't mind that. When you owe the government $20K+, the big wide world out there suddenly looks very attractive. :-) Emlyn (Some people have mentioned here and there that loading new graduates up with giant debt might be contributing to the brain drain. What a bunch of whiners!) > -----Original Message----- > From: Adrian Tymes [mailto:wingcat at pacbell.net] > Sent: Friday, 7 November 2003 5:12 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] a job for me? > > > --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > One thing I am curious about is student loans. It is > > my understanding that > > as long as I am enrolled full time, I don;t have to > > start paying back the > > loans. > > Since I work from home and I can make a decent > > income working about 20 hours > > per week, maybe I could stay enrolled full-time > > until the singularity hits > > at which point the economy would be so screwed up > > that I wouldn;t have to > > worry about paying them back. > > Don't loans usually have a time limit on how long you > can remain enrolled? 5 years? Probably under 10. > Certainly, others have tried that trick - but planning > on staying enrolled 'til they died instead of waiting > for the Singularity. Same results, short and long > term, as far as they're concerned. > > > At worst, I could copy myself and have 1 of me work > > to pay off t he > > loans....hmmmm > > Opinions? > > Copying yourself isn't much different in that aspect > from devoting part (timewise) of one of you to working > and another part of the same one to studying, as per > your current plan. It does give you a larger pool to > divvy up, though, allowing more study and more work. > It also presents the problem of re-integration > afterwards. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From jcorb at iol.ie Thu Nov 6 22:53:39 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 22:53:39 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031106225222.00aca3d0@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 4 >Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 12:48:59 -0600 > >From: >Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Historic Solar Flare >To: "ExI chat list" >Message-ID: <006201c3a496$a533f040$12ecfea9 at kevin> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > My favorite: since it is the holy muslim month of Ramadan, the flares > > are a sign of how angry allah is with the muslim people for continuing > > to sinfully commit suicide bombings on innocent civilians... > > >Since the majority of technology affected by solar flares is created and >used by the wes, maybe it is Allah being angry at our presence in the middle >east. Or perhaps Allah simply has gas.... James... *pissed cos he missed seeing the Aurora last week* From reason at exratio.com Thu Nov 6 23:03:10 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 15:03:10 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] UN Delays Decision on Human Cloning In-Reply-To: <187160-220031146213451472@M2W040.mail2web.com> Message-ID: Looks like we all dodged a bullet here. Any of the pending resolutions would have been very obnoxious; the longer that theraputic cloning research continues, the harder it will be to ban - as more tangible results will be to hand. One can be optimistic and hope that this is a turning point of sorts. In reality, if the current US administration is still in power in 2005, we'll most likely be doing this all again. If it's a bunch of democrats instead, we'll probably still be doing it all again... I do recommend contacting your elected representatives to express your feelings on the matter, while this thing is in the news: http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_global_theraputic_cloning_ban.c fm http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_the_theraputic_cloning_ban.cfm http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_the_european_stem_cell_ban.cfm Reason http://www.exratio.com > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of > natashavita at earthlink.net > Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 1:35 PM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [extropy-chat] UN Delays Decision on Human Cloning > > > Here's some good news - > > "November 6, 2003; UNITED NATIONS, New York City (AP and CNN) -- > The United > Nations voted narrowly Thursday to delay for two years any > consideration of > a treaty to ban human cloning, an issue that has left the world body > bitterly divided. Facing rival resolutions on a total ban or a partial > ban, the General Assembly's legal committee voted 80-79 to accept a motion > introduced by Iran on behalf of the 57 Islamic nations to postpone U.N. > action on the issue. Fifteen countries abstained." > > **Now if we could have the gates open for theraputic clonging, I'd be > really happy. > > Natasha > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > mail2web - Check your email from the web at > http://mail2web.com/ . > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From rafal at smigrodzki.org Thu Nov 6 23:33:31 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 18:33:31 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist Law Center References: <11758376.1067986414364.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Message-ID: <010301c3a4be$63ce45b0$6401a8c0@dimension> No, but I know one in Murrysville, PA. If you need to see a neurologist who won't hallucinate a soul into your brain, come to me. Rafal, MD ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 5:51 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist Law Center > What I could use more would be a web list of Atheist Physicians. Doctors > stupid enough to believe in god - I believe I am worth better than that. > Does anyone here know of an atheist doctor in the Seattle or Tacoma area? > > --- > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). > Version: 6.0.515 / Virus Database: 313 - Release Date: 9/1/2003 > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From mitchtemporarily at hotmail.com Thu Nov 6 23:44:05 2003 From: mitchtemporarily at hotmail.com (Mitchell Porter) Date: Thu, 06 Nov 2003 23:44:05 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence Message-ID: Eliezer: >>There is no rational necessity for such dogmatism, especially when (i) >>today's standard-issue laws of physics already contain a mechanism for >>nonlocal correlation, > >(Disagree; Everett.) The key consideration is that Bell's inequality (and many similar constraints that exist under classical local causality) can be violated, because of entanglement. In terms of Julian Barbour's timeless picture, this means that spacelike conditional probabilities can be super-correlated. So if you are an idealized Barbourian model builder trying to guess the Hamiltonian and the quantum state of the universe (and your own position within it), and you come across super-correlation data, you do have the option of interpreting it as data about physics, rather than as data about the reliability of an information source. I'll try to be more specific. Suppose you have a remarkable correlation between two complex material systems reported. Most of the skeptical options boil down to a search for faulty classical information channels. But we do also have the option of looking for quantum information at work, either in isolation (e.g. Bell correlations) or in conjunction with classical processes (e.g. quantum teleportation). So one can ask: what sort of joint quantum state could have produced the reported correlation, and how likely is it that the two systems really were in such a state to begin with? Our understanding of the dynamics of entanglement - its ups and downs, its movement with respect to the world of localized observables - is still very primitive. Most physicists *presume* that it plays no visible role in the everyday macroscopic world, because they have a heuristic which says "Many degrees of freedom + finite temperatures => decoherence." But if you look at what's coming out of quantum information theory, you'll find all sorts of tricky possibilities: decoherence-free subspaces, entanglement echoes, noise-induced entanglement, entanglement production in quantum phase transitions... We have to face it: even if we already know the Hamiltonian of our energy scale (the Standard Model), we are still hugely ignorant when it comes to understanding what it predicts, especially in the domain of many-body quantum effects. We have yet to fully acquire the relevant concepts, let alone apply them to the data. _________________________________________________________________ Hot chart ringtones and polyphonics. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilemania/default.asp From maxm at mail.tele.dk Thu Nov 6 23:48:37 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 00:48:37 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] a job for me? In-Reply-To: References: <3FA8A29F.5010404@pobox.com> , Message-ID: <3FAADDD5.7050701@mail.tele.dk> Randy S wrote: > So if Kevin is in Denmark, he can quit his job (thus no income) and get > $500/month to go to school, and he pays no tuition? Right? Plus, if he gets > sick, he can go to the hospital and get it taken care without paying, > correct? Yes. > But if he quits his job here in the USA, he is out tuition (approx. 20K > average for a state school in the USA), plus his living expenses (say > $500/month for 48 months == $24K). > > And of course he has to pay for medical insurance on top of that, or else > just one day in the hospital will break him. > > Total of $40K or so for America, and approximately $0 in Denmark. > > Aint America a great country!? I'm afraid that is too simplistic. Cause we end up paying in the end. Make no mistake about that. Taxes are a bitch here. Between 40%-67% depending on income. 25% VAT on all products and services, and 300% on cars and gasoline. So you gains some freedom and you loose some freedom. Generally I would say that the danish system is a bit less efficient, but a bit safer. regards Max M From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 6 23:44:42 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 10:44:42 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com> <01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FA99C95.8010401@pobox.com> <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <048001c3a4bf$f3713fa0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> [Hmm I have to conserve my posts like precious shots or I may exceed 8 again :-) ] Kevin wrote: > With an experiment where we were[are] in a sim, the results > of the experiment would be flawed if we kn[o]ew we were in > the sim. Interesting notion. > Therefore, they would make it either impossible to prove, or, > delete the idea from our memory. Why, and more importantly how, would/could "they"? (Hint: Cogito ergo sum). No one gets between one and one's mind without one's consent. > So I guess, if we proved we were in a sim, that proof would > show that we weren;t in a sim...............? > Hmmm. It's a weird day here. The weirdness may linger longer for you (about as long as you think that this sort of thing can be apprehended as proof-for-you by "we". If one does one's own *reckoning* then one may get even more help from one's friends. Brett > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Brett Paatsch" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 8:33 PM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant > > > > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > > > > Brett Paatsch wrote: > > > > > > > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes: > > > > > > > >>This world could easily be a computer simulation, but if so > > > >>it is a simulation of a world without ESP. > > > > > > > > I reckon (without believing) that it is NOT a sim and could > > > > NOT easily be a sim. > > > > > > I used to have a very strong intuition that the world was not a > > > sim. Eventually it went away, and in retrospect I think it was > > > based on nothing but wishful thinking. > > > > Even in retropect I wonder why such a notion would just go > > away? Could it be that the notion was not important to you? > > > > > > > > As Lee Corbin pointed out with respect to the Tegmark > > > bubble duplication, there is no *particular* you, only the > > > *set* of yous. It seems to me likely, on my current model, > > > that at least some of you are living in a computer simulation. > > > > [Sorry some ambiguity in that -hard to process] > > > > You necessarily see the world from your own standpoint Eliezer > > and from that standpoint the words "me" and "you" tag different > > referents than the same words do in other persons standpoints. > > I am not sure if you mean "you" as a self-reference also (like in > > "one") or you as other-reference only. > > > > > The question is whether almost all of you are > > > simulated, or almost all of you are real. > > > > I know I'm real. Do you know you are real? > > > > > > I think that to entertain the notion that it is is to run the risk of > > > > repeating (now dead) Pascal's wager and betting the same > > > > wrong way. Of betting that there is a super-natural being that > > > > is going to come to the rescue like Santa Claus. I prefer to > > > > work with friends and the resources that I have, rather than > > > > fret over the resources I don't have. I am not malicious and > > > > I will deal with maliciousness if I must with resolution and > > > > ferocity of my own. > > > > > > That some people may be inclined to abuse the simulation > > > hypothesis in predictable ways, does not bear on the simulation > > > hypothesis's *actual truth or falsity*. > > > > True. But really who cares? > > > > > > > > > I can see no advantage or change in my habits that I would > > > > make if I thought the world was a sim. I would probably have > > > > more allies and friends if less people entertained the sim > > > > hypothesis so much but so be it. > > > > > > Okay, so most actions are the same on the simulation hypothesis. > > > Again this does not bear on the simulation hypothesis's actual truth > > > or falsity. > > > > Agreed. > > > > > > > > > I think that if no-one can come up with a reliable test, (group > > > > test - science or solitary test - pure reason) to see if the world > > > > is a sim then it would be better to step around what looks like > > > > an iteration of the same old mindfuk, to put away childish > > > > things and to concentrate minds and energies on the tasks > > > > at hand. > > > > > > If you can't come up with any experimental observation that > > > differs on the world being a sim, then you don't need to know > > > how much of your measure lies in sims, because it won't make > > > any difference to subjective probabilities. > > > > Agreed. > > > > > The problem is in dealing with questions like "Would my measure > > > sharply decrease after a Singularity, and if so, what would that > > > look like?", > > > > [sorry perhaps I am missing something but I don't find that to be > > an important question. Perhaps it is because I don't think of the > > Singularity in pro-noun terms. I really don't know. Perhaps I could > > see your point a bit better if you could unpack 'baby' a bit more. > > > > Can you describe the Singularity as you see it with more words > > than the one (Singularity) but no pronouns? I think that would help. > > > > > where the triggering event lies in the future, is > > > important, and there is no obvious way to test different > > > hypotheses in advance. > > > > You may have a point but I can't parse to it for the reasons given > > above. > > > > Regards, > > Brett > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 7 00:09:55 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 16:09:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: <3FAAA15C.4090607@mydruthers.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Chris Hibbert wrote: > >>> On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >>>> > ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 [snip] > Eugene: > http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&zoom=5&latitude=48.07078&longitude=11.61144 > Chris: > http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&zoom=5&latitude=37.36243&longitude=-122.0695 > > In any case, it ought to be good enough for someone to get driving > directions if they wanted to visit. [more snips] I hereby state in a loud voice -- *ONLY on the EXI list*! There are very few other places on the planet where you will get the contribution to the pool of knowledge that you can get here. It just blows me away at times. Robert P.S. and it would really be interesting if once the X-prize(s) were awarded and pseudo-space travel became reasonable and someone figured out when Eugen's birthday was if Extropes collectively determined to rain down cake on Eugen's location on such a date. I almost cannot imagine Eugen holding up a glass of champagne recognizing the cake streaking across the sky being forced to raise the cry of "incoming". From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 7 00:17:11 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 11:17:11 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA99C95.8010401@pobox.com> <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <200311061113.33599.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <049f01c3a4c4$7d16d720$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Samantha wrote: > On Wednesday 05 November 2003 18:33, Brett Paatsch wrote: [Eliezer] > > > The question is whether almost all of you are > > > simulated, or almost all of you are real. > > > > I know I'm real. Do you know you are real? > > > > The wording itself is suspect. Reality is relative to and includes > context. Within the sim you are and experience yourself precisely > as being just as real as if you are outside a sim. Why is the original > running of universe as we know it more privileged than a fully virtual > running of an equally complex universe with just as many (perhaps > more) degrees of freedom? Or, if you like, why is meat space forever > priviliged over any and all virtual spaces no matter how much more > accomodating to everything we hold most dear that any such space > could be? I think its a good maxim to hold words (as potentially mislabelled 'cans' of concepts) suspect most of the time but I am not entirely sure whether you are referring to my wording or to Eliezer's or both. I'd recommending holding both suspect out of an abundance of caution, not of getting hurt or because I think either Eliezer or I would attempt to deceive you in any deep way but just because of the potential for misunderstanding. You ferocious and redoubtable Samantha are very good at understanding words (but other youngsters like me are potentially reading too so I write in part for them). I have never been outside of the world in which I live (although the world in which I live is I suspect a bit larger than some folks worlds and my world is growing and deepening all the time). Your statement that "you are and experience yourself precisely as being just as real as if you are outside a sim" then, simply does not work for me. You are 'inviting' me to consider something about me that you cannot know and I do. That is that I have never been outside my world. I suspect you have not been outside yours either but are creating it with typical Samantha gusto and fervour and ferocity every single day. If you encounter local deities why I bet you will march right up to them and demand that they give an account of themselves to you or they can just bloody well bugger off. God bless you for that Samantha and don't hold back on the deities but take it a little easy on the flora and the fauna and the young as they do not always get it and so there needs to be some rules so that they have space to learn and grow in safely. Brett [pan-critical non-believer] From rafal at smigrodzki.org Fri Nov 7 00:27:16 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 19:27:16 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific standards of evidence References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com><3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com><200311051120.12466.samantha@objectent.com> <3FA9A1BD.90207@pobox.com> Message-ID: <02ae01c3a4c5$e63dfac0$6401a8c0@dimension> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > > I now realize that ordinary physics is comprehensive of mental phenomena, > which is something that I did not know previously, and which one would not > expect physicists to know. ### Tell us more. Rafal From samantha at objectent.com Fri Nov 7 00:41:22 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 17:41:22 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] The world as a Sim ? Irrelevant In-Reply-To: <049f01c3a4c4$7d16d720$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com> <200311061113.33599.samantha@objectent.com> <049f01c3a4c4$7d16d720$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <200311061641.22167.samantha@objectent.com> I think you rather missed the point I was attempting to make. I'll probably get around to taking another stab at it over the weekend. Hyper busy until then. -s On Thursday 06 November 2003 16:17, Brett Paatsch wrote: > Samantha wrote: > > On Wednesday 05 November 2003 18:33, Brett Paatsch wrote: > > [Eliezer] > > > > > The question is whether almost all of you are > > > > simulated, or almost all of you are real. > > > > > > I know I'm real. Do you know you are real? > > > > The wording itself is suspect. Reality is relative to and includes > > context. Within the sim you are and experience yourself precisely > > as being just as real as if you are outside a sim. Why is the original > > running of universe as we know it more privileged than a fully virtual > > running of an equally complex universe with just as many (perhaps > > more) degrees of freedom? Or, if you like, why is meat space forever > > priviliged over any and all virtual spaces no matter how much more > > accomodating to everything we hold most dear that any such space > > could be? > > I think its a good maxim to hold words (as potentially mislabelled 'cans' > of concepts) suspect most of the time but I am not entirely sure whether > you are referring to my wording or to Eliezer's or both. I'd recommending > holding both suspect out of an abundance of caution, not of getting hurt > or because I think either Eliezer or I would attempt to deceive you in any > deep way but just because of the potential for misunderstanding. You > ferocious and redoubtable Samantha are very good at understanding > words (but other youngsters like me are potentially reading too so I > write in part for them). > > I have never been outside of the world in which I live (although the > world in which I live is I suspect a bit larger than some folks worlds and > my world is growing and deepening all the time). Your statement that > "you are and experience yourself precisely as being just as real as if > you are outside a sim" then, simply does not work for me. You are > 'inviting' me to consider something about me that you cannot know > and I do. That is that I have never been outside my world. I suspect > you have not been outside yours either but are creating it with typical > Samantha gusto and fervour and ferocity every single day. If you > encounter local deities why I bet you will march right up to them and > demand that they give an account of themselves to you or they can > just bloody well bugger off. God bless you for that Samantha and don't > hold back on the deities but take it a little easy on the flora and the > fauna and the young as they do not always get it and so there needs > to be some rules so that they have space to learn and grow in safely. > > Brett > [pan-critical non-believer] > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 7 01:05:42 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 20:05:42 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <002601c3a483$52978a80$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <015f01c3a4cb$478c4fc0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Spike wrote, > Most of my spam has been coming from individual > huge corporations in Nigeria, asking me to help > them loot the country. This government action > you call for, will that be in the form of dropping > nukes on Nigeria? Surely you must know that none of these really come from the government of Nigeria. They are all frauds. In fact, I believe almost all spam are frauds. They fake their addresses so you can't trace them to their real source. They fake headers and subjects to make you look at them even though they are off-topic. They fake remove-me links to collect more e-mails to spam. They insert nonsense words to deliberate get past your filters. They sell lists of names to other spammers of supposedly interested people who are not really interested. In short, they know you don't want it and they are trying to force you to take it anyway. This should be an illegal form of harassment or abuse. If spam had accurate subject lines so we could filter out what we didn't want, there would be no problem. Likewise, if declining really worked and prevented future spams from that source or about that product, there would be no problem. Spammers are criminals who deliberately try to circumvent other people's wishes. "No" means no! Whether you believe government should enforce laws or some other solution should be used, spammers should be considered illegal and shutdown as stalkers who are knowingly harassing unwilling victims. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 7 01:05:53 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 20:05:53 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Cheerful thought of the day In-Reply-To: <3FA94F59.3030701@dtext.com> Message-ID: <016001c3a4cb$4e310e60$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> JDP wrote, > Plus, deep down they know they are loosers, so > when things turn bad, they let go and even seek auto-destruction (you > just have to help them out a bit). This is a faulty assumption. Human psychology prevents people from knowing they are losers deep down. Deep down everybody is positive that they are right and superior. Even criminals, murderers and rapists justify their actions in their own mind. They think that they are superior and can beat the system. They believe that the timid law-abiding citizens are cowards and losers. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Nov 7 01:11:35 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 19:11:35 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] there was a young laddy of Niger References: <015f01c3a4cb$478c4fc0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <030401c3a4cc$18a29e20$6c9c4a43@texas.net> > Spike wrote, > > Most of my spam has been coming from individual > > huge corporations in Nigeria > Surely you must know that none of these really come from the government of > Nigeria. They are all frauds. I posted here the other day a Sydney court report that an Australian (allegedly schizophrenic) scammer has been charged as the source of this `Nigerian' operation. Damien Brodrick From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Fri Nov 7 01:15:55 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 11:45:55 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] there was a young laddy of Niger Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE063@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> He will only be one source. For example, I'm still getting at least one Nigerian e-mail per day. btw, I'm collecting them. If you get any really unusual or creative examples, please feel free to forward them to me! Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Damien Broderick [mailto:thespike at earthlink.net] > Sent: Friday, 7 November 2003 10:42 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [extropy-chat] there was a young laddy of Niger > > > > > > Spike wrote, > > > Most of my spam has been coming from individual > > > huge corporations in Nigeria > > > Surely you must know that none of these really come from > the government of > > Nigeria. They are all frauds. > > I posted here the other day a Sydney court report that an Australian > (allegedly schizophrenic) scammer has been charged as the > source of this > `Nigerian' operation. > > Damien Brodrick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From ABlainey at aol.com Fri Nov 7 02:32:29 2003 From: ABlainey at aol.com (ABlainey at aol.com) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 21:32:29 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] VR-BAR: Harv's back! Message-ID: <14.1bdbf02d.2cdc5e3d@aol.com> Welcome back Harvey, That is some serious list of credentials you have amassed. Congrats on the latest. Alex In a message dated 06/11/2003 06:27:48 GMT Daylight Time, mail at harveynewstrom.com writes: > Harv's slumped form lifted up off the table as he counted on his fingers, > "Chasm, cytoplasm, ectoplasm, endoplasm, grokasm, orgasm, phantasm, plasm, > protoplasm, sarcasm, spasm, ...um..." He wiggled his fingers trying to coax > more knowledge out of the air. "Er, ...as 'em, has 'em, jazz 'em, pizzazz > 'em, raz 'em, razzamatazz 'em..." The blond and brunette just stared at him > wide-eyed. Even the slime-mold had stopped undulating. > > "What? Too far?" Harv looked at them questioningly. "You didn't like > 'grokasm'?" > > The blond's jaw hung open. Throat muscles moved, but there was no sound. A > piece of sushi slipped from an interrupted pair of chopsticks. Silence > echoed between songs. Somewhere on a distant dance-floor a cyberdog howled. > > The brunette recovered first. "We thought you were dead." > > Harv tilted his head even further than usual. > > "We've been letting the slime-mold extract your decaying bodily fluids," the > blond finally was able to speak. > > Harv snapped his head up straight as he scowled at the slime-mold, who by > this time had quietly oozed half-way to the opposite side of the table. > > "We would have shared your queued-up drinks with you," the brunette > stammered defensively, "if, um, you know, we had known you were alive." > > "What time is it?" Harvey looked at the nanotattoo of a watch on his wrist. > > "It's been four months since you were last conscious in here," the blond > declared, "You were drinking that drink and logged off mad." > > Harv picked up the empty bottle of Rip van Winkle's Zombie-Maker and > scrolled the label display to reveal the ingredients. "It's either a very > hard Long Island Iced Tea or a very soft cryopreservative... with artificial > flavorings." The robotender picked up the empty bottle as soon as it was > set down, and then was gone. His voice floated behind him very faintly and > very fast, "Drinking this beverage confirms legal consent to all label > disclaimers. Suing prohibited by bar policy. Please drink responsibly." > > "I remember fighting in here," Harv said, setting down the bottle and > looking around. "But it seems quiet now." He turned his hovering chair all > the way around before facing the table again. "Wow. They fixed all the > damage and remodeled the place." > > "That's it? You're back now?" The brunette poured more sake into three > little cups and pushed one of them toward Harv. The blond resumed sushi > consumption. The music continued. > > "If I have time." Harvey tossed back the first sake in one gulp. "I've > been busy in the real world. I got my more certifications for my security > work. My partner got more hardware wired into his heart. And his mother is > entering the final stages of total memory failure." > > The brunette sympathetically poured more sake for Harv. The slime-mold > flowed back to its usual position. The blonde paused the chopsticks, > looking expectantly at Harv. > > "But otherwise..." He took sip of sake and paused thoughtfully. "Yeah. > I'm back." > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 7 02:44:03 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 13:44:03 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. -Mapping words to referents References: <015f01c3a4cb$478c4fc0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <04e301c3a4d9$01b985e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Harvey wrote: > In fact, I believe almost all spam are frauds. .... > This (my post) is off your topic Harvey hence the relabelled subject. I have some half-baked (perhaps) notion that using the word "belief" endorses it as a meme and that that is not helpful to reasoning. Its been hard for me to pin this down as folks seems to misunderstand and insist they should be able to use any word they like ( I agree that they are *free* to - I just don't get why they *choose* to as I think it diminishes the communicative value of what they are saying especially when they are talking to people who may be *believers* of lots of wacky things and may use and therefore misinterpret others use of the same word themselves). In your use of the words "I believe" in the sentence above would your *meaning* still have been preserved/captured etc by one or more of the following statements? "I reckon all spam are frauds" "I think all spam are frauds". "I infer that all spam are frauds" "I conclude that all spam are frauds" Perhaps some other word instead of belief? Surely one of these would have NOT have served: "I guess all spam are frauds" "I posit all spam are frauds" "I have faith that all spam are frauds" "I accept that all spam are frauds" Your feedback on this point with help me develop my mapping model of others-words to others-referents. (I know that others can see me doing this mapping exercise by posting on list - I want that to happen too - but as only you know what you meant by belief when you used it in a sentence only your feedback can give me your intended referent.) Thanks Brett [In experimental communication engineering mode ;-) PS: I do think this may be surprisingly important but even if I am wrong why not humor me.] From ABlainey at aol.com Fri Nov 7 03:06:24 2003 From: ABlainey at aol.com (ABlainey at aol.com) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 22:06:24 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony Message-ID: <5a.2428850c.2cdc6630@aol.com> In a message dated 07/11/2003 01:17:39 GMT Daylight Time, bradbury at aeiveos.com writes: > P.S. and it would really be interesting if once the X-prize(s) were > awarded and pseudo-space travel became reasonable and someone > figured out when Eugen's birthday was if Extropes collectively > determined to rain down cake on Eugen's location on such a > date. I almost cannot imagine Eugen holding up a glass of > champagne recognizing the cake streaking across the sky > being forced to raise the cry of "incoming". > What would be the terminal velocity of a cake dropped from a low earth orbit? How would it differ depending on the material, say Sponge or Fruitcake? Personally I think there are far too many variables to consider when calculating the decent of a dumb cake. I therefore forward the notion that any orbital cake deployment be of the Eugene Seeking Self guiding variety. Perhaps a large chocolate eclair would be ideal due to the superior aerodynamics. If deployed in a raw cakemix configuration, it should be nicely cooked by the time of impact. Alex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 7 03:55:40 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 19:55:40 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] prayer and healing again In-Reply-To: <200311061121.11448.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a4e3$02a84720$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > On Wednesday 05 November 2003 23:36, Spike wrote: > > > Simple explanation for the > > negative result: they didn't include members of > > the *true* believers. > > > > Hey man, it says "righteous" not right in their isms. For > all I know all of > them were perfectly righteous cats well attuned to soul. > > - s Samantha, it was my weak attempt at humor. I am a former member of a cult that refuses to acknowledge the righteousness of anyone outside the enlightened minority (with the curious exception of Albert Schweitzer). The more extreme members of that sect would argue that having the right ism matters. I find the whole topic of prayer for healing as one that simply invites parody, because any test of the notion would necessarily lead to unending paradox. spike From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Fri Nov 7 04:01:29 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 14:31:29 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE066@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Self cooking would be interesting. You need to put the chocolate coating on somehow, though. How about a pre-cooked eclair (maybe a little doey, it will get *hot*), with a really thick chocolate coating (3 or four meters?) which acts as an ablative re-entry shield. By the time it gets to Eugen's balcony, the shell should be down to sub-centimeter. I agree that fruitcake it dangerous; do the raisins burn up, or are they dense enough to become incredibly energetic kinetic weapons? Emlyn --- P.S. and it would really be interesting if once the X-prize(s) were awarded and pseudo-space travel became reasonable and someone figured out when Eugen's birthday was if Extropes collectively determined to rain down cake on Eugen's location on such a date. I almost cannot imagine Eugen holding up a glass of champagne recognizing the cake streaking across the sky being forced to raise the cry of "incoming". What would be the terminal velocity of a cake dropped from a low earth orbit? How would it differ depending on the material, say Sponge or Fruitcake? Personally I think there are far too many variables to consider when calculating the decent of a dumb cake. I therefore forward the notion that any orbital cake deployment be of the Eugene Seeking Self guiding variety. Perhaps a large chocolate eclair would be ideal due to the superior aerodynamics. If deployed in a raw cakemix configuration, it should be nicely cooked by the time of impact. Alex From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 7 04:09:58 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 20:09:58 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <015f01c3a4cb$478c4fc0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <000001c3a4e5$024ea380$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Harvey Newstrom > Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 5:06 PM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence > of Berkeley > > > Spike wrote, > > Most of my spam has been coming from individual > > huge corporations in Nigeria, asking me to help > > them loot the country... > > Surely you must know that none of these really come from the > government of Nigeria. They are all frauds... Ja I was aware of that, but there is an interesting impact of all that Nigerian spam: people are having constantly reinforced the notion that one can *never* invest *any* capital in any African nation. There are too many people eager to steal any pile of money in sight. But other than that, Nigeria isn't much like the U.S. {8^D The spammers are doing unimaginable damage to any possible future development in Africa and pretty much every other currently underdeveloped nation. As far as I know, there are no huge corporations in Nigeria. Now there may never be any. As for government action to stop spam, the government is perfectly helpless to stop spam. The fed must work within the framework of the constitution, and it will quickly get tangled up in free speech issues if it does much. Lawrence from Berkeley made a curious contention, being as how he is in Taxifornia and must have noticed the debacle this state has just been thru. The government cannot help us. This state's government cannot get any more money, yet it's expenses are going up. Consequently, the Taxifornia state government cannot even maintain the services that it has been providing for so many years, never mind take up any new tasks, such as inforcing spam restrictions. Note carefully my claim: the state *may raise taxes* but it *cannot* take in any more money. We must look elsewhere for solutions to spam. spike From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 7 04:26:58 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 23:26:58 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] VR-BAR: Harv's back! In-Reply-To: <14.1bdbf02d.2cdc5e3d@aol.com> Message-ID: <017801c3a4e7$658547e0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> ABlainey at aol.com wrote, > Welcome back Harvey, That is some serious list of credentials you > have amassed. Congrats on the latest. Thanks. I am seriously interested in security. I am analyzing security as an engineering problem with requirements, standards, principles, methodology, and verification. Most security consultants don't have the scientific or engineering background to do more than be consumers of other people's security products. I also am trying to cover all the different kinds of security. Creating security, auditing security, managing security, assessing security, consulting about security, and operating security are different skills. What is interesting to me is that security is not an end in itself. It is a tool that can be used for any endeavor, just like logic, the scientific method, etc. Security measures a bunch of different attributes, how well they are implemented, the risk of failure, and improvement methods for success. There are standard requirements for security, and a bunch of different security attributes that can be analyzed and addressed separately. I think these security methods can be applied to transhumanist endeavors, such as developing AI, controlling nanotechnology, mitigating dangerous technologies, evaluating knowledge accuracy, etc. I plan to further investigate these ideas in the future. Getting credentials in different types of security is just the first step. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 7 04:27:08 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 23:27:08 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. -Mapping words to referents In-Reply-To: <04e301c3a4d9$01b985e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <017901c3a4e7$6ae614d0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Brett Paatsch wrote, > Harvey wrote: > > In fact, I believe almost all spam are frauds. .... \ > This (my post) is off your topic Harvey hence the relabelled > subject. > > I have some half-baked (perhaps) notion that using the > word "belief" endorses it as a meme and that that is not > helpful to reasoning. Interesting idea. I used the word to indicate my understanding of the problem, but with a concession that I have not exhaustively investigated and proven this to myself. > In your use of the words "I believe" in the sentence above > would your *meaning* still have been preserved/captured etc > by one or more of the following statements? > > "I reckon all spam are frauds" Too colloquial and slangy to me. I don't think this could be used in a business report or an academic paper. It sounds red-neck and uneducated sounding. > "I think all spam are frauds". This sounds weaker to me. I intended my belief to imply that I had reason to believe. This is a higher standard than most people use for their beliefs, so it is probably misleading. To me, "I think" sounds like a student guessing at an answer. > "I infer that all spam are frauds" This sounds too weak to me. Infer sounds like I don't have direct evidence by think it is implied in some way. > "I conclude that all spam are frauds" This sounds too *strong* to me. A conclusion sounds like the result of a logical proof or an investigation in my mind. I would not express my belief as a conclusion without doing more methodical work to validate my belief. > Perhaps some other word instead of belief? I think I really meant "I posit..." even though you list this below as not serving. I believe it is true, and I posit this as a theory. I have not actually run statistics to prove my theory, but I would expect it to come out that way. Scientifically speaking, this is a belief in my mind. It is not a religious belief as most people would take it. > Surely one of these would have NOT have served: > > "I guess all spam are frauds" > "I posit all spam are frauds" > "I have faith that all spam are frauds" > "I accept that all spam are frauds" > Your feedback on this point with help me develop my mapping > model of others-words to others-referents. (I know that others > can see me doing this mapping exercise by posting on list - I want > that to happen too - but as only you know what you meant by > belief when you used it in a sentence only your feedback can > give me your intended referent.) Good. Can you tell me more why you dislike the word "belief"? Do you see it as a faith-based conclusion? In my usage, any "belief" is a stored statement of fact. The word "belief" is more specific to say that this is what is in my mind that is true, but not necessarily what is actually out in the real world as true. In my usage, it does not imply anything about the methodology used to accept this belief. I use scientific methods and logic, but I can see how many people use religion or faith to accept beliefs. Attaching these methodologies to beliefs would lessen their acceptance by scientists or others rejecting these faith-based methodologies. > Thanks Welcomes. > [In experimental communication engineering mode ;-) That what we're here for. > PS: I do think this may be surprisingly important but even if I > am wrong why not humor me.] Yeah, why not. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 7 06:26:03 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 17:26:03 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. - POSIT the great References: <017901c3a4e7$6ae614d0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <054d01c3a4f8$04dc58a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Harvey wrote: > Brett Paatsch wrote, > > Harvey wrote: > > > In fact, I believe almost all spam are frauds. .... > \ > > This (my post) is off your topic Harvey hence the relabelled > > subject. > > > > I have some half-baked (perhaps) notion that using the > > word "belief" endorses it as a meme and that that is not > > helpful to reasoning. > > Interesting idea. I used the word to indicate my understanding of the > problem, but with a concession that I have not exhaustively investigated and > proven this to myself. I see. > I think I really meant "I posit..." even though you list this below > as not serving. Ok. And yes, of course you are right. Posit. I should have had it in the list of likely matches. Posit. Excellent word! I almost feel some positing coming onto me now :-) >...I posit this as a theory. >.. > ... Scientifically speaking, this is a belief in my mind. Yuk. > It is not a religious belief as most people would take it. Imagine that! And who would want to be taken for having a religious belief when one was actually POSITING. Not me for sure! > Can you tell me more why you dislike the word "belief"? > Do you see it as a faith-based conclusion? In my usage, any > "belief" is a stored statement of fact. Sure. I see it as a veritable cancerous meme, the single worst one-word cancerous meme I have *ever* encountered, because it actually sounds strong and has a sneaky AIDS-like positive prejorative that makes it very hard even for very bright people to shake. And yet it can have the effect of making those even very bright folks arguments sound no better than dumb arguments or not argument at all when it is put up in opposition to them. To the listener of a debate in parliament for instance who may sometimes be only partly paying attention the word belief gets credit (because it sounds strong) when it should get scorn because it tags *ABSOLUTELY NOTHING* reliable or good. If you were arguing for your life against a witch doctor in a trial I would not want your most eloquent reasoned arguments and POSITINGs being befuddled by your using the word belief and the sleepy jurors hearing your accusers using another belief based diatribe and then figuring what the heck I missed some of the content of what was said but one 'belief' is pretty much as good as another I may as well go with my gut, or toss a coin. And Harvey who "believed" he should get freed stands the same 50/50 chance in front of the dopy audience or jury or judge as the sneaky sometime malicious or mischievious rotter who announces he "believes" as a true *believer* believes that Harvey should burn. Harvey's eloquence in his defence is reduced by Harvey reinforcing the believing (not reasoning meme). The meme may kill Harvey in a really close contest when POSITING with all the simple dignity and courage and eloquence the word carries might have saved him. Words matter because juries and democracies can be full of empowered fools, who do not unpack the words for their content. The next time the deciding body wakes up from its slumbers and hears beliefs on both side of an important question it can go right on and be indiscriminant between shit and chocolate again. I spend a fair amount of time watching politicians do their thing. I hear the word belief a lot. I really, really do not like it. I see folks getting believed to death even in the twenty first century. This does not mean that I do not like any people who use the word belief. I look at them a bit like they are carriers of a deadly meme though. And I try and point it out but the slippery little meme critter keeps getting under the guard. I posit, hopefully, that posit might be used a bit more frequently from now on. But I wish I could be more confident. It is dashed hard to kill a cancerous word meme when it is refined right down to a single positively prejorative word. But maybe, just maybe one can label the rotten cancerous word meme. Actually I sort of hope that one day all my friends will be so thoroughly innoculated against using the cancerous meme word that I will be able to tell fools from non-fools simply by their use of that one word. Then maybe I'll pick another word ;-) Regards, Brett [Having attempted just one of a million smites on a filthy rotten word meme - and wondering if next time he may be able to 'save' or help good Harvey with a booster shot of - do you perchance mean 'posit'? Phew.. Now Samantha will be along Positing *belief in positing* in a moment and I will quietly explode ] From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 7 06:42:06 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 17:42:06 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Quick too the other thread ! Message-ID: <057f01c3a4fa$42d2db00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> An evil meme had hold of Harvey in the Posit thread and I think I've got it by the tail but I am not sure if I dare let go of it now ;-) Regard, Brett From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Nov 7 06:47:24 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 22:47:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] prayer and healing again In-Reply-To: <003f01c3a48a$74d27ea0$61165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <20031107064724.48695.qmail@web60206.mail.yahoo.com> Yes... but since the prayers were "public" the question remains whether their prayers were sincere or they were just doing it for show. (e.g. so as not to be called a traitor or what have you.) This is a problem with all the double blind prayer studies as well, after all how can you invest any true spiritual energy into a prayer for someone's health if you don't even know who it is you are praying for. I think it would be a more accurate study to examine casualty records for wars and such since the military keeps accurate data on the religious denominations of soldiers for funeral purposes and such. Unfortunately prayers by professed atheists under fire might confound such studies, but that too proves a point. ;) John K Clark wrote: James Watson in his recent book "DNA" talked about a much larger scale test of the effectiveness of prayer. He points out that for hundreds of years millions of people have been publicly praying that the King or Queen of England have a long life, but actuarial studies have shown that monarchs on average have slightly shorter lives than other members of the aristocracy. John K Clark jonkc at att.net _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aperick at centurytel.net Fri Nov 7 07:02:44 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (rick) Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 23:02:44 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. -Mapping words to In-Reply-To: <200311070427.hA74RXM12100@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a4fd$25e48400$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Score this post as one vote in support of Brett's position on the "b" word. > Referents >I have some half-baked (perhaps) notion that using the word "belief" endorses it as a meme and that that is not helpful to reasoning. /> >"I reckon ... I infer ... I conclude [know, understand, can see, ...] /> Now there's an old friend -- an old pet peeve of mine: the word "belief" having the power to cause me nausea; just as much as that other word "faith." I think I had been studying -- bathing in -- all of Ayn Rand's non-fiction books. I tried to swear off the "b" word and even tried to show others the error of their ways. But people are just so damn stupid, nobody sees any reason to change their old patterns of speech -- they claim that it is nearly always clear, to the speaker and to the listener, from context etcetera what the meaning of the "b" word is. I doubt I'll try really getting on the "b" bandwagon again, but on this list hence forth I side with the "B" man. (B)rett. Yup, I reckon so. And there's another word that could stand being avoided: percentage. What a clumsy fuck way of saying hundreds. Just scrambles the brains of folk whose IQ is any less than 93. Or so I'm told. And another one: Rights. When what we really mean to say is: special privileges asserted by some authority that promises to use force if necessary to secure said rights, wups, I mean privileges. When people use the term 'rights' it gets em thinkn bout God givn em out see. And then they get real hot right off see. Some start a thinkn bout IN-ALEINABLE rights, and that's pure fantasy. When used in this context 'rights' puts on such a righteous robe that people get in a fightn mood damn quick out of frustration that the other dumb bastard cant see the holy garment attached to their disrespected privilege. Rights talk is always fightn words. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 7 07:09:32 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 18:09:32 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] POSIT thread Message-ID: <05c501c3a4fe$18260860$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> [Please note: Reposted on some reflection to put post into own thread - I will NOT repost 'spam-like' like this often - Brett] Harvey wrote: > Brett Paatsch wrote, > > Harvey wrote: > > > In fact, I believe almost all spam are frauds. .... > \ > > This (my post) is off your topic Harvey hence the relabelled > > subject. > > > > I have some half-baked (perhaps) notion that using the > > word "belief" endorses it as a meme and that that is not > > helpful to reasoning. > > Interesting idea. I used the word to indicate my understanding of the > problem, but with a concession that I have not exhaustively investigated and > proven this to myself. I see. > I think I really meant "I posit..." even though you list this below > as not serving. Ok. And yes, of course you are right. Posit. I should have had it in the list of likely matches. Posit. Excellent word! I almost feel some positing coming onto me now :-) >...I posit this as a theory. >.. > ... Scientifically speaking, this is a belief in my mind. Yuk. > It is not a religious belief as most people would take it. Imagine that! And who would want to be taken for having a religious belief when one was actually POSITING. Not me for sure! > Can you tell me more why you dislike the word "belief"? > Do you see it as a faith-based conclusion? In my usage, any > "belief" is a stored statement of fact. Sure. I see it as a veritable cancerous meme, the single worst one-word cancerous meme I have *ever* encountered, because it actually sounds strong and has a sneaky AIDS-like positive prejorative that makes it very hard even for very bright people to shake. And yet it can have the effect of making those even very bright folks arguments sound no better than dumb arguments or not argument at all when it is put up in opposition to them. To the listener of a debate in parliament for instance who may sometimes be only partly paying attention the word belief gets credit (because it sounds strong) when it should get scorn because it tags *ABSOLUTELY NOTHING* reliable or good. If you were arguing for your life against a witch doctor in a trial I would not want your most eloquent reasoned arguments and POSITINGs being befuddled by your using the word belief and the sleepy jurors hearing your accusers using another belief based diatribe and then figuring what the heck I missed some of the content of what was said but one 'belief' is pretty much as good as another I may as well go with my gut, or toss a coin. And Harvey who "believed" he should get freed stands the same 50/50 chance in front of the dopy audience or jury or judge as the sneaky sometime malicious or mischievious rotter who announces he "believes" as a true *believer* believes that Harvey should burn. Harvey's eloquence in his defence is reduced by Harvey reinforcing the believing (not reasoning meme). The meme may kill Harvey in a really close contest when POSITING with all the simple dignity and courage and eloquence the word carries might have saved him. Words matter because juries and democracies can be full of empowered fools, who do not unpack the words for their content. The next time the deciding body wakes up from its slumbers and hears beliefs on both side of an important question it can go right on and be indiscriminant between shit and chocolate again. I spend a fair amount of time watching politicians do their thing. I hear the word belief a lot. I really, really do not like it. I see folks getting believed to death even in the twenty first century. This does not mean that I do not like any people who use the word belief. I look at them a bit like they are carriers of a deadly meme though. And I try and point it out but the slippery little meme critter keeps getting under the guard. I posit, hopefully, that posit might be used a bit more frequently from now on. But I wish I could be more confident. It is dashed hard to kill a cancerous word meme when it is refined right down to a single positively prejorative word. But maybe, just maybe one can label the rotten cancerous word meme. Actually I sort of hope that one day all my friends will be so thoroughly innoculated against using the cancerous meme word that I will be able to tell fools from non-fools simply by their use of that one word. Then maybe I'll pick another word ;-) Regards, Brett [Having attempted just one of a million smites on a filthy rotten word meme - and wondering if next time he may be able to 'save' or help good Harvey with a booster shot of - do you perchance mean 'posit'? Phew.. Now Samantha will be along Positing *belief in positing* in a moment and I will quietly explode ] From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 7 07:20:56 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 18:20:56 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. -Mapping words to References: <000001c3a4fd$25e48400$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> Message-ID: <05d101c3a4ff$afc5d6e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Rick writes: > > Referents > > >I have some half-baked (perhaps) notion that using the > word "belief" endorses it as a meme and that that is not > helpful to reasoning. > /> > > >"I reckon ... I infer ... I conclude [know, understand, can see, ...] > /> > > Now there's an old friend -- an old pet peeve of mine: the word > "belief" having the power to cause me nausea; just as much as that > other word "faith." I think I had been studying -- bathing in -- all > of Ayn Rand's non-fiction books. I tried to swear off the "b" word > and even tried to show others the error of their ways. > But people are just so damn stupid, > nobody sees any reason to change their old patterns of speech -- they > claim that it is nearly always clear, to the speaker and to the > listener, from context etcetera what the meaning of the "b" word is. I > doubt I'll try really getting on the "b" bandwagon again, but on this > list hence forth I side with the "B" man. (B)rett. Yup, I reckon so. > > And there's another word that could stand being avoided: percentage. > What a clumsy fuck way of saying hundreds. Just scrambles the > brains of folk whose IQ is any less than 93. Or so I'm told. Rick I don't agree with the use of profanity just for the sound of it. I would be very happy to take a bit out of one really bad meme. Profanity for profanitys sake just distorts the message I think. I may regret using any at all even in context if it catches on. Brett From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Nov 7 08:32:37 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 00:32:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <119420-22003112421026669@M2W046.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <20031107083237.90698.qmail@web60202.mail.yahoo.com> Natasha wrote: "What are some riddles that some bear light, or a shadow, on our extropic transhumanity?" Here are some of riddles and unsolved mysteries from science that are very curious indeed: 1. How do homing pigeons and other migratory birds unerringly find their way home? Do they have some special sensory organs to detect the earth's magnetic field? If so why haven't we found it and characterized it yet? If we do find out the mechanism, can we transhumans augment ourselves to have it to, thereby eliminating the need to "litter" earth's orbit with GPS satellites? 2. What is the so called "Hotspot" detected in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy experiments? Could future transhumans use it to navigate deep space the way early navigators used Polaris the North Star to navigate the world? 3. Why is all life on earth asymmetric at a molecular level. The amino acids that make up proteins on earth all have a "left-handed" (levorotary) chirality and the sugars that make up carbohydrates are "right-handed" (dextrorotary). This is quite literally an extropic riddle because in any standard synthesis reaction occuring in nature (enzymatic reactions don't count because enzymes themselves are composed of these asymmetrically "left-handed" amino acids and you get the chicken or the egg problem) the resulting molecules are a racemic mixture i.e. composed of equal amounts of "left-handed" and "right-handed" molecules. The entropy that the biosphere as a thermodynamic system would have had to shed to the universe to be entirely composed of these asymmetric molecules is astronomically huge. This also ties into Erwin Shroedinger's riddle as follows. There have been attempts to duplicate the so-called "primordial soup" like the famed Miller and Urey experiments in 1956, where they recreated the early atmosphere of earth in a laboratory flask and shot electric sparks through it for a week producing amino acids that clung to the inside of the glassware. They succeeded in producing amino acids but they were in, you guessed it, a racemic mixture. 4. How can sperm whales hold their breath for half an hour at a time, descend into the abyss, and have fights to the death with giant squid and then surface without getting the bends or nitrogen narcosis? We can't do that even with all our fancy diving gear unless we mix helium with our air supply and spend hours depressurizing... or can we? 5. How can some really bright people claim to understand the universe so completely that there is nothing eerie, anomolous, or mysterious about it yet still manage to misplace their car keys. ;) The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Fri Nov 7 10:16:01 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 11:16:01 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] UN Delays Decision on Human Cloning In-Reply-To: <187160-220031146213451472@M2W040.mail2web.com> References: <187160-220031146213451472@M2W040.mail2web.com> Message-ID: Isn't it ironic that we have to thank Iran for this? Who where the 79 countries that voted against? Ciao, Alfio On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: >Here's some good news - > >"November 6, 2003; UNITED NATIONS, New York City (AP and CNN) -- The United >Nations voted narrowly Thursday to delay for two years any consideration of >a treaty to ban human cloning, an issue that has left the world body >bitterly divided. Facing rival resolutions on a total ban or a partial >ban, the General Assembly's legal committee voted 80-79 to accept a motion >introduced by Iran on behalf of the 57 Islamic nations to postpone U.N. >action on the issue. Fifteen countries abstained." > >**Now if we could have the gates open for theraputic clonging, I'd be >really happy. > >Natasha > > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- >mail2web - Check your email from the web at >http://mail2web.com/ . > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From sentience at pobox.com Fri Nov 7 12:29:14 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 07:29:14 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] UN Delays Decision on Human Cloning In-Reply-To: <187160-220031146213451472@M2W040.mail2web.com> References: <187160-220031146213451472@M2W040.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <3FAB901A.1010209@pobox.com> natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: > Here's some good news - > > "November 6, 2003; UNITED NATIONS, New York City (AP and CNN) -- The United > Nations voted narrowly Thursday to delay for two years any consideration of > a treaty to ban human cloning, an issue that has left the world body > bitterly divided. Facing rival resolutions on a total ban or a partial > ban, the General Assembly's legal committee voted 80-79 to accept a motion > introduced by Iran on behalf of the 57 Islamic nations to postpone U.N. > action on the issue. Fifteen countries abstained." > > **Now if we could have the gates open for theraputic clonging, I'd be > really happy. "Clonging" can mean either knee-licking or the soft sound of a doorbell chime. Which did you have in mind? -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From scerir at libero.it Fri Nov 7 13:25:54 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 14:25:54 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031107083237.90698.qmail@web60202.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000c01c3a532$af47ec20$b9b51b97@administxl09yj> "The Avantguardian" > How can some really bright people claim to understand the universe so > completely that there is nothing eerie, anomolous, or mysterious > about it [...] Well, I do not think so. In example Glashow says: "I don't have the hubris to imagine a theory of everything. I think that we scientists are seeking an understanding of the natural world. We come in various types -- chemists and physicists and biologists and such -- and we all have the same goal. We are making progress. The theories we have today of life and chemistry and physics are much better than they were ten years ago. And ten years from now they will be better still.I don't know what it means to understand the process of nature perfectly. I don't know what a theory of everything could be. Is it a series of formulas? How could that be?" more at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/view-glashow.html From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 7 13:35:43 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 05:35:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <20031107083237.90698.qmail@web60202.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, The Avantguardian wrote: > Here are some of riddles and unsolved mysteries from science that are very curious indeed: A very interesting list -- I'll comment on a few. > 1. How do homing pigeons and other migratory birds unerringly find their > way home? Do they have some special sensory organs to detect the earth's > magnetic field? If so why haven't we found it and characterized it yet? [snip] I believe that the magnetic homing properties of birds and perhaps butterflies have been reasonably characterized. So this is not the mystery it once was. (Google on some combination of magnetic bird migration). > 2. What is the so called "Hotspot" detected in the Cosmic Microwave > Background (CMB) anisotropy experiments? Could future transhumans use it > to navigate deep space the way early navigators used Polaris the North > Star to navigate the world? This I am unaware of -- and would like to know more about. If there is a "Hotspot" it could be a sign of a high computational density location which would be of considerable significance with respect to our thinking about the evolution of the universe as well as our own species. > 3. Why is all life on earth asymmetric at a molecular level. The amino > acids that make up proteins on earth all have a "left-handed" > (levorotary) chirality and the sugars that make up carbohydrates are > "right-handed" (dextrorotary). [snip] I believe this problem also has a "reasonable" proposed solution. I cannot recall it in detail but it has something to do with the interaction between light and dust in young stellar nebula. Perhaps Amara might know the specifics -- otherwise I'd have to go digging for it. > 4. How can sperm whales hold their breath for half an hour at a time, > descend into the abyss, and have fights to the death with giant squid > and then surface without getting the bends or nitrogen narcosis? We > can't do that even with all our fancy diving gear unless we mix helium > with our air supply and spend hours depressurizing... or can we? Now that is a very interesting question -- my best bet would be that they have evolved to be tolerant nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream. To the best of my knowledge there isn't a clear reason that nitrogen bubbles should be harmful (i.e. they aren't toxic in any way). > 5. How can some really bright people claim to understand the universe so > completely that there is nothing eerie, anomolous, or mysterious about > it yet still manage to misplace their car keys. ;) When in doubt the smart people blame it on the Blue People. R. From amara at amara.com Fri Nov 7 12:39:00 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 14:39:00 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar System Message-ID: I said: > >There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 has reached >the Heliopause. > >If this isn't a reason for a massive party/celebration >of the humans on this planet, I don't know what is.... > > > >http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2003/031105.htm > The following is a link to some background information regarding the heliosphere, in case you want to know more. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/293/5527/55?ck=nck Science Volume 293, Number 5527, Issue of 6 Jul 2001, pp. 55-56. News from the Edge of Interstellar Space Edward C. Stone Auroral activity and magnetic storms that occasionally disrupt electric power grids are caused by the supersonic solar wind [HN1] that sweeps past Earth as it blows radially away from the Sun. This wind creates the heliosphere [HN2], a bubble of magnetized plasma that surrounds the Sun and includes the orbits of all known planets. Two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2 [HN3], are approaching the edge of the heliosphere [HN4]--the heliopause--where the radially decreasing pressure of the expanding solar wind balances the inward pressure of the local interstellar medium [HN5]. En route, the spacecraft are sending back important information about the far reaches of the solar system. The size of the heliosphere varies as the solar wind pressure changes with the 11-year solar cycle [HN6], with maximum size at the time of minimum solar activity (1). Currently, the heliosphere is shrinking because solar activity is near its maximum. Furthermore, it is distorted into a cometlike shape by the motion of the interstellar medium relative to the Sun. A long tail extends in the downwind direction. The two Voyager spacecraft are headed in the opposite, upwind direction, where the heliopause is closest to the Sun (see the first figure). (see the article for the rest) -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The real malady is fear of life, not of death." -- Naguib Mahfouz From rafal at smigrodzki.org Fri Nov 7 13:56:38 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 08:56:38 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: Message-ID: <060101c3a536$f7731fc0$6401a8c0@dimension> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" > > > 3. Why is all life on earth asymmetric at a molecular level. The amino > > acids that make up proteins on earth all have a "left-handed" > > (levorotary) chirality and the sugars that make up carbohydrates are > > "right-handed" (dextrorotary). [snip] > > I believe this problem also has a "reasonable" proposed solution. > I cannot recall it in detail but it has something to do with the > interaction between light and dust in young stellar nebula. Perhaps > Amara might know the specifics -- otherwise I'd have to go digging > for it. ### Probably no need to invoke the stellar dust, since the asymmetry is a direct consequence of the mechanics of biological macromolecule synthesis. An enzyme, ribosome or nucleic acid polymerase can recognize only a limited number of molecular species (just like a lock can recognize only a limited number of keys, all of the same general symmetry), and the moiety that forms the most rigid part in a polymer, the backbone, can only assume a limited number of conformations. Using a standard conformation for the backbone of all monomers saves on the number of enzymes needed to make all the components, and the standard conformation for aminoacids just happened to be the L-conformation. Of course, if there were any imbalances in the concentration of one enantiomer in the primordial soup, that enantiomer would be much more likely to become the standard, but, one way or another, a standard had to choose itself. Rafal From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 7 14:02:56 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 06:02:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE066@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote: > How about a pre-cooked eclair (maybe a little doey, it will get *hot*), with > a really thick chocolate coating (3 or four meters?) which acts as an > ablative re-entry shield. By the time it gets to Eugen's balcony, the shell > should be down to sub-centimeter. This requires a very fine interpretation. After all we have a long historical precedent for "let them eat cake". I'm not sure that we can morph this into "let them eat eclairs" and have quite the same impact. However, since the cake is targeted at Eugen's balcony for his birthday and since he may be discourteous enough not to be out on said balcony when the incoming cakes are arriving it makes sense for them to have onboard nanocomputers that allow retargeting. Its always good to have Plan B. That could include Eliezer's house or Greg's house (don't know if they have balconies) or Spike's front lawn which contains the strange math symbols. Perhaps Alex wrote: > What would be the terminal velocity of a cake dropped from a low earth > orbit? Don't know -- this is a question for spike. > How would it differ depending on the material, say Sponge or Fruitcake? I would strongly suspect sponge and fruitcake would have similar properties. > [snip] I therefore forward the notion that > any orbital cake deployment be of the Eugene Seeking Self guiding variety. A reasonable suggestion -- dealt with by the cake with onboard nanocomputers. > Perhaps a large chocolate eclair would be ideal due to the superior > aerodynamics. If deployed in a raw cakemix configuration, it should be > nicely cooked by the time of impact. Screw the aerodynamics. What we are interested in is the display and delivery of cake to Eugen on his birthday. If that cannot be made to work out then we have one or more "Plan B's". I'm particularly fond of that which might potentially "toast" Spike's front lawn. R. From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Nov 7 16:05:04 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 08:05:04 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] UN Delays Decision on Human Cloning In-Reply-To: <3FAB901A.1010209@pobox.com> References: <187160-220031146213451472@M2W040.mail2web.com> <187160-220031146213451472@M2W040.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031107080108.030fe170@pop.earthlink.net> At 07:29 AM 11/7/03 -0500, Eli wrote: >natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: >>**Now if we could have the gates open for theraputic clonging, I'd be >>really happy. > >"Clonging" can mean either knee-licking or the soft sound of a doorbell >chime. Which did you have in mind? I thought we could lick our knees while sounding chimes. Natasha From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 7 14:44:17 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 15:44:17 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <060101c3a536$f7731fc0$6401a8c0@dimension> References: <060101c3a536$f7731fc0$6401a8c0@dimension> Message-ID: <20031107144416.GC3534@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 08:56:38AM -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > Of course, if there were any imbalances in the concentration of one > enantiomer in the primordial soup, that enantiomer would be much more likely > to become the standard, but, one way or another, a standard had to choose > itself. The enantiomer excess-driven probabilities play no role given that prebiotic organics is nonchiral, in comparison to a randomly emerged stereoselective autocatalyst, that rapidly depletes one half of the ursoup racemate. Ditto autocatalytic set. It's the frozen aftermath of a spontaneous symmetry breaking event, driven by quantum noise at molecular scale. Could have been exactly the other way round, no need to invoke assymetries of spacetime or polarized pulsar radiation destabilizing a part of the molecular cloud accreted into presolar nebula. These are negligible nudges, if we assume emergence of the autocatalyst is a rare event. We can get data on this if we see unrelated self-replicating chemistries over the solar system. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sjvans at ameritech.net Fri Nov 7 16:41:58 2003 From: sjvans at ameritech.net (Stephen J. Van Sickle) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 10:41:58 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1068223317.1061.47.camel@Renfield> On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 07:35, Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > > 4. How can sperm whales hold their breath for half an hour at a time, > > descend into the abyss, and have fights to the death with giant squid > > and then surface without getting the bends or nitrogen narcosis? We > > can't do that even with all our fancy diving gear unless we mix helium > > with our air supply and spend hours depressurizing... or can we? > > Now that is a very interesting question -- my best bet would be that > they have evolved to be tolerant nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream. > To the best of my knowledge there isn't a clear reason that nitrogen > bubbles should be harmful (i.e. they aren't toxic in any way). No, the answer is very well established. Nitrogen narcosis and the bends are the result of breathing compressed air. Whales and other sea mammals don't breath compressed air; they don't breath at all under water. Even humans can perform feats if holding their breath that would result in a scuba diver getting the bends, in the competitive event known as free diving: http://www.divingfree.com/ More in depth (sorry) explanation here: http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may97/864759869.Zo.r.html It is also firmly established that whales and other sea mammals simply have a more efficient oxygen metabolism, easily explaining 1/2 hour underwater. Even humans have vestiges of this, in what is known as the "diving reflex": http://www.bartleby.com/61/50/D0305000.html http://animals.about.com/library/dyk/bldyk-diving.htm http://www.deeperblue.net/article.php/225 steve vs From jonkc at att.net Fri Nov 7 17:12:30 2003 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 12:12:30 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> 1) There must be a physical mechanism to compute how proteins fold up since the same protein always turns into the same shape and does it in just a few seconds, but our most powerful supercomputers would take centuries to figure out even the simplest one. What is that computational mechanism? 2) Are Quantum Computers possible and practical? 3) What is Dark Matter? 4) What is Dark Energy? 5) How does turbulence work? 6) How does friction work? 7) What does the wave Quantum Mechanics associates with every particle really mean? 8) What survival value did our ancestors find walking on 2 legs gave them? 9) Why is there something rather than nothing? John K Clark jonkc at att.net From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 7 17:59:42 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 11:59:42 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SPAM (was Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley) References: <015f01c3a4cb$478c4fc0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: I have come to the conclusion that there are two types of spam. What is spam to one person might not be spam to another. Maybe one of the largest difficulties in controlling spam is getting everyone to agree on a clear definition. I don't think all unsolicited email advertisements should be banned. The important part is getting the subject lines correct. If these were correct, I could easily filter out what I didn;t want. I don;t quite understand everything about how the headers work, but it seems to me that there is a layer missing in the protocols for email. Maybe an added layer that would seperate all email into a few categories such as PERSONAL, BUSINESS, AND ADVERTISEMENT would be a good idea. In the advertisement protocol, there would be a lower content level that had required keywords such as PORN, PENIS ENLARGEMENT, MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING, etc. A national, or worldwide spam-police division could be created that you could forward emails with false headers to. This entity would track down people who falsify headers and violate the new protocols. It would be paid for by a small registration fee required paid by legal spammers to have access to the new protocols. Violaters could then be burned alive at the stake. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harvey Newstrom" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2003 7:05 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley > Spike wrote, > > Most of my spam has been coming from individual > > huge corporations in Nigeria, asking me to help > > them loot the country. This government action > > you call for, will that be in the form of dropping > > nukes on Nigeria? > > Surely you must know that none of these really come from the government of > Nigeria. They are all frauds. In fact, I believe almost all spam are > frauds. They fake their addresses so you can't trace them to their real > source. They fake headers and subjects to make you look at them even though > they are off-topic. They fake remove-me links to collect more e-mails to > spam. They insert nonsense words to deliberate get past your filters. They > sell lists of names to other spammers of supposedly interested people who > are not really interested. In short, they know you don't want it and they > are trying to force you to take it anyway. This should be an illegal form > of harassment or abuse. > > If spam had accurate subject lines so we could filter out what we didn't > want, there would be no problem. Likewise, if declining really worked and > prevented future spams from that source or about that product, there would > be no problem. Spammers are criminals who deliberately try to circumvent > other people's wishes. "No" means no! > > Whether you believe government should enforce laws or some other solution > should be used, spammers should be considered illegal and shutdown as > stalkers who are knowingly harassing unwilling victims. > > -- > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 7 19:51:55 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 11:51:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] IDEA FUTURES: just won't die... Message-ID: Looks like the MIT Technology Review mag. has picked up on Robin's idea and decided to morph it a bit. I have not read the underlying details so don't critique me on any misimpressions. I am just the messenger. Games: Technology Review Launches Futures Market http://games.slashdot.org/games/03/11/07/035241.shtml?tid=127&tid=186&tid=96&tid=98&tid=99 http://trif.technologyreview.com/bk/guide.html R. From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 7 19:59:05 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 20:59:05 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <20031107195905.GQ3534@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 12:12:30PM -0500, John K Clark wrote: > 1) There must be a physical mechanism to compute how proteins fold up since > the same protein always turns into the same shape and does it in just a few > seconds, but our most powerful supercomputers would take centuries to figure > out even the simplest one. What is that computational mechanism? There's no new physics involved. It's a question of how to write code for a big machine -- depending in whether it's clever or dumb code that machine might or might not yet exist. Of course, no currently used forcefield is even approximately up to the task. > 9) Why is there something rather than nothing? If there are an infinite or seminfinite numbers of somethings, several kinds of nothings included, and only one of them did contain you, you still would be asking this question. If seen that way, that question becomes a lot less magical. Of course, one still has no idea about that something which makes above framework possible. That question might well be unknowable. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Fri Nov 7 20:40:19 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 20:40:19 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] A Flight Data Recorder for Your Car Message-ID: <3FAC0333.3030605@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> See: and Quote: Imagine you're in your car driving to the grocery store. You're accelerating away from a stop sign when suddenly -- BANG! -- you're hit from behind by a speeding car that never even slowed down. Badly shaken, you stumble out. The police arrive on the scene just minutes after the crash. Plus, they already seem know that you stopped, and the other guy -- who's being arrested -- didn't. And moments later, your cell phone starts ringing. It's your insurance agent, who also has accident details and is calling to reassure you that it looks like a quick decision. How do the police and your insurer know what happened? Because a "black box" in each of the cars told them so, the instant it happened. This system is closer to reality than you may think. It's being built today in Ireland and is expected to spread across Europe over the next few years before taking root in the U.S. Insurance companies like the idea because computer-generated data about the crash will help prevent fraudulent claims and cut insurance costs. Emergency responders will be aided, too, thanks to faster, more detailed information about the exact location and scope of an accident. By mandating that drivers use the boxes, Ireland seems to have snuffed out privacy concerns that have slowed the voluntary adaptation of the technology elsewhere. Hidden away at the end of the article, analyst Rob Bamforth of Bloor Research is quoted: "If black boxes become widespread through new government requirements, it could make an impact on public safety, similar to the effect of speed cameras," he predicted. "If people know there is a black box accurately recording information for insurance purposes, it could have an effect on how people drive," he said. "Over time, there could be broader indirect benefits." Say that again??!! That man is a master of the cool understatement! How would you drive if you had a cop sitting beside you and your insurance rep in the backseat? BillK From Karen at smigrodzki.org Fri Nov 7 21:16:21 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 16:16:21 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] IDEA FUTURES: just won't die... References: Message-ID: <009101c3a574$64c1fcd0$6501a8c0@DogHouse> In the MIT Tech Review article, they cite to www.artificialmarkets.com for those seeking more info on the "scientific validation of the predictive power of artificial markets". -Karen ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" To: "Extropy Chat" Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 2:51 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] IDEA FUTURES: just won't die... > > Looks like the MIT Technology Review mag. has picked > up on Robin's idea and decided to morph it a bit. > > I have not read the underlying details so don't critique > me on any misimpressions. I am just the messenger. > > Games: Technology Review Launches Futures Market > http://games.slashdot.org/games/03/11/07/035241.shtml?tid=127&tid=186&tid=96 &tid=98&tid=99 > http://trif.technologyreview.com/bk/guide.html > > R. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From scerir at libero.it Fri Nov 7 21:18:15 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 22:18:15 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <001b01c3a574$ae01f8a0$76b41b97@administxl09yj> Another riddle: the universe. I fwd the latest on Hawking (unfortunately also on Derrida). [Hey, J.R., where are you? Its your concept of universe!] s. > NOVEMBER 7 - 13, 2003 > > Quark Soup > > > Brain Worlds > Hawking, Derrida and living with the other > by Margaret Wertheim > > STEPHEN Hawking's voice driftsthrough the air, eerily familiar. These > are the synthesized vocal cords that attempted to explain to Homer > Simpson the nature of space and time, that joshed on the Star Trek > holodeck with Newton and Einstein. Along with the latter's shock of > hair, Hawking's computerized tones have come to symbolize the ideal of > Genius writ large. Yet the source of these sounds seems impossibly > small and fragile in the flesh. Bunched in his wheelchair at the front > of the room, Hawking is a man in miniature, his doll-like body in > hapless contrast to the gargantuan brain it supports. > > At the world's first "string cosmology" conference, held recently at > UC Santa Barbara, Hawking was expounding on his latest ideas about the > creation of the universe. It's a subject he famously catapulted to the > center stage of physics with his proof that space and time must have > begun with a singularity, a cosmic-scale version of a black hole. That > work was the subject of his Ph.D. thesis, and it built upon Einstein's > theory of relativity to demonstrate that any viable universe had to > have been born from a single, infinitely intense point - a kind of > cosmological seed. Hawking had come to Santa Barbara to revise > himself, presenting to an audience of fellow physicists a new model of > cosmic genesis which, as he explained, describes "a universe that > expands, contracts, bounces and expands again." > > Up close Hawking looks like an imp, an escapee from Lord of the Rings. > His delicate features are preternaturally enhanced by four decades of > living with Lou Gehrig's disease. Since I first interviewed him 18 > years ago, he has visibly shrunk, but at this point it is a medical > miracle he is alive at all. It's his eyes that demand your attention, > as if the life force withdrawn from his body has concentrated in his > orbs. They don't just twinkle, they radiate light. Though he can > barely move anymore and must now be attended by a small army of > nurses, when he nods assent to a question, one senses the power of a > still-extraordinary mind at work. This combination of gymnastic > intelligence and immobile body creates a profound sense of otherness - > Hawking is as close to an alien among us as Mr. Spock, and every bit > as enigmatic. > > While he still believes in an original beginning, Hawking suggests > that since this cosmic birth our universe might have had many lives. > Think of a balloon that's inflated, deflated, then inflated again. > According to his new model, our particular space and time will > eventually end, but the universal whole will continue, carrying into > its next life a residue of its past repetitions. > > The impetus for Hawking's revision is the revolution that has > electrified the world of theoretical physics: string theory. Using the > mathematical putty of this theory, physicists are playing gods, > bringing forth from the pluripotent sea of their equations an > explosion of universes. At UCSB, string theorists served up visions > that contained not just one universe but multiple, expanding and > infinitely extending arrays of universes. There were "pocket > universes," "toy universes" and "baby universes" budding like spores > off parent universes - a dizzying plethora of possibility in which > almost any world that might be imagined was deemed to be happening > "somewhere." > > To its proponents string theory holds out the hope that this may be > the longed-for "theory of everything." To others, it seems a theory of > nothing. It is not even science, they argue. For as its greatest > exponents acknowledge, there is not a shred of evidence to support any > of its conclusions so far. Speaking on Nova the other night, Nobel > Prize-winning particle physicist Sheldon Glashow expressed his > feelings in scathing terms. "Let me put it bluntly," he said, "there > are physicists and there are string theorists." For Glashow, physics > is about experiment, and without experimental verification string > theory has no validity. Not since the Middle Ages has speculation so > exceeded the reach of observation. "Is this a theory of physics," > Glashow asked, "or philosophy?" > > > > > > WHATEVER string theory's epistemological status, it's hot. Glashow was > part of a Nova string theory special, PBS's most expensive science > project ever, a $3.5 million, three-part epic titled The Elegant > Universe. The series is based on the 1999 best-selling book of the > same name by Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, and PBS > honchos are clearly hoping it will be the next Cosmos, with Greene the > next Carl Sagan. "If string theory is right," Greene enthused giddily > at the start of the show, "we may be living in a universe where > reality meets science fiction." > > Certainly the producers seemed determined to distract us with all the > techniques of sci-fi cinema - there were more things flying at the > screen than in a Star Wars battle. Like Luke Skywalker, Greene seemed > to be continually dodging projectiles. He took the task in stride, for > he had evidently been schooled in The Crocodile Hunter style of > presentation. I half expected him to wrestle one especially annoying > graphic to the ground. Things whirled and whizzed and flashed; lights > pulsed, objects popped in and out of existence. > > Not that science shouldn't be spectacular. It's just that in the blitz > of special effects it was often hard to keep track of the ideas. It > was a relief whenever they cut to one of the physicists talking about > his work. Especially good was Nobel laureate Stephen Weinberg, whose > insights into why physicists care about this stuff helped to remind us > that science - even string theory - remains a deeply human pursuit, > driven by psychological needs and desires that all too often resist > rational reduction. > > > > STRING theorists are excited, Weinberg noted, because their equations > suggest a path by which physics might be unified. For most of the past > century, physics has portrayed a disturbingly schizophrenic vision. On > the large scale, it describes the universe using Einstein's theory of > general relativity, but on the subatomic scale it reverts to the > wildly "other" perspective of quantum mechanics. General relativity > tells us how space and time behave on the celestial, or cosmological, > scale and ultimately gives us a picture of the universe as a whole. It > has made predictions tested to more than 40 decimal places of > accuracy, yet at the subatomic level it breaks down. Here, quantum > laws prevail and everything is ruled by laws of chance. > > At the cosmological level, things flow; in the subatomic realm they > jitter. Physicists like to use musical analogies, and we might say > that if general relativity describes a Strauss waltz, quantum theory > gives us a speed-metal riff. Practically speaking this duality has > little effect, but aesthetically it's profoundly unsatisfying. > Physicists cannot bear the bifurcation within their world picture; > they yearn for unity. At the Santa Barbara conference, David Berman, a > young English physicist from Hawking's department at Cambridge > University, took the musical theme further. In music, he told me, "You > can have two voices that sound discordant, then a third comes in and > resolves them into a harmonic whole." Physicists are searching for > this resolving voice, and in string theory they believe they might > have found their answer. > > Certainly, the universe has no trouble reconciling itself. The > schizophrenia is not in nature but in our mathematical models. It is > not the world that is fractured, but our understanding of it. > > > > ON THE DAY following Hawking's talk, UCSB hosted another intellectual > superstar, Jacques Derrida, at 73 the bad pensioner of French > philosophy. Derrida had been invited to speak at a conference on > religion, and his theme was living together, a subject he addressed > through the prism of his experience as a Jewish child growing up in > prewar Algeria. I had gone along to his sold-out lecture for entirely > separate reasons beyond my interest in string theory, but it turned > out there were uncanny resonances between the two events. The > organizing motif of Derrida's talk, the idea to which he returned > again and again (his singularity, as it were), was the notion of the > ensemble, or collection. Here, of course, he meant ensembles of people > - ethnic groups, religious communities, nation-states, local > neighborhoods, families and so on. But Derrida also wanted to alert us > to the French use of the word, its adverb sense, ensemble, as in > "vivre ensemble - living together." > > For Derrida the two senses of this one word were necessarily entwined. > Unity, he said, is an illusion. Ensembles are never homogeneous; > differences between members and parts of the whole will always exist. > Not just small differences, but radical dissimilarity. "Otherness," > Derrida insisted, is the norm, and we must learn to live with it. Even > within ourselves there is fragmentation. In Derrida's terms we are all > multiple beings, ensembles within. Accordingly, the demand for oneness > is a pathology we must renounce, for only by accepting the radical > "otherness" of others can we live in harmony with them. As he put it, > "Living together contests the closure of the ensemble." > > From a Derridian perspective, physicists' demand for a harmonic whole > takes on the cast of an unhealthy obsession. Insistence upon closure > is the very ideal he rejects. > > > > STRING THEORY closes the chasm between relativity and quantum > mechanics by smoothing out the jitters of the subatomic realm, > replacing point particles with microscopic loops, or "strings." > According to the mathematical basis of this theory, everything in our > universe is made up of tiny vibrating loops of some fundamental > stringy stuff. Don't even ask what this might be - there is no answer. > Just accept the notion that at its most basic level the world is made > of minute rubber bands. > > But in order to get this theoretical unity, you have to be willing to > take on board a radical extension of the universe beyond all bounds of > human experience. According to string theory, these microscopic loops > require their own dimensions of space. In most currently popular > versions, strings vibrate in six dimensions, though in some versions > it is seven. All of these are additional dimensions tacked on to the > three dimensions of space and the one of time we normally encounter. > It is this aspect of string theory that its detractors so dislike. > Where are these dimensions?, they demand. What are they? How come we > don't see them? > > This last question, at least, has an answer. We don't see the extra > dimensions because they are too tiny to observe with any current > technology. On Nova, Brian Greene gave us an analogy: If an atom was > as big as our solar system, a string would be the size of a large > shrub. To detect something that small, you'd need a particle > accelerator the size of a galaxy. > > Strings aren't the only things the theory predicts. The other > revelation has been a class of objects called "branes," short for > membranes. Over dinner at the Santa Barbara conference, Joseph > Polchinski, from UCSB's hosting Kavli Institute for Theoretical > Physics, offered some illumination. Where strings exist at the > subatomic level, branes are the structures the theory generates on the > cosmological scale. Strings are tiny, branes are huge. If strings are > like spaghetti, branes would be vast sheets of lasagna. Our universe, > according to the theory, is a brane, a cosmic-scale incarnation of the > same fundamental stringy substance. "You can ask what branes are made > of," Polchinski said, "but they're not made of anything. They're just > the stuff the theory describes." > > While strings suggest a subatomic space that has yet to be detected, > branes conform to some of our usual spatial conceptions. The brane of > our universe is said to have the accepted dimensions of space and > time. Yet it is seen as just one potential part of a much larger > five-dimensional realm known as "the bulk." Within the bulk, > Polchinski told me, there may well be other branes. Here "the > universe" becomes not just our brane but the total set of branes > within the bulk-space. > > String theory does not stop there. In Hawking's version, an individual > brane can be continually reborn. Other versions allow the possibility > of branes that spawn from prior branes or infinitely foaming seas of > branes, like a vast cosmological head of beer. In Santa Barbara, > Leonard Susskind, one of the pioneers of string theory, presented an > alarmingly fecund vision in which there were hundreds of "dimensions" > of potential universes, with new ones coming into being all the time. > Spaces upon spaces upon spaces, a multiplication of possibilities that > defy the very notion of limit. > > Although some physicists have objected to the almost organic > proliferation that string theory allows, Derrida, I think, would be > pleased by this explosion of ideas, which supports in the totality of > its weirdness the fundamental theme of his talk. > > > > With his impeccable tailoring and leonine presence, the most > controversial philosopher of our time would command attention even if > he wasn't supported by the buttress of fame. Derrida told us that the > "commandment" to live together imposes upon us demands "beyond law and > nature." Law, he said, is never sufficient to dictate our actions, > which operate in a wider realm of possibility than the statutes of any > legal system. Derrida urged us to embrace this "excess," to live and > love in a broader field of potential. And that is what I like so much > about the new string cosmologies. Despite physicists' desire for > oneness, in the end their equations also have multiplied the > possibilities, giving us a vast domain of potential in which the > "natural laws" here on Earth are just one set among many. It is as if > nature itself resists efforts to press it into a single mode, joining > Derrida on the path of radical multiplicity. Whether we can prove the > existence of these alternate worlds seems of little consequence. > > In string theory we have discovered a language which may well be more > lyrical than empirical, but which, in that very quality, enables us to > contemplate a wild excess of other options. Derrida and Hawking - the > physicist and the philosopher - would, I believe, have embraced one > another. > From scerir at libero.it Fri Nov 7 22:56:17 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 23:56:17 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <000e01c3a582$5b3f9150$5db21b97@administxl09yj> John K Clark: > 7) What does the wave Quantum Mechanics associates > with every particle really mean? That's simple: a big mess :-) "I like to emphasize that light comes in this form - particles. It is very important to know that light behaves like particles, especially for those of you who have gone to school, where you were probably told something about light behaving like waves. I'm telling you the way it *does* behave - like particles." - R.P.Feynman, "QED", p.15 "Particles do not exist, only waves and wave packages. We speak not of 'particles and waves' but of 'detectors and waves'" - P.J. van Heerden, Amer. Journ, of Physics, 43, (1973), p.1015. "Each photon then interferes only with itself. Interference between two different photons can never occur." - P.A.M. Dirac, Principles of Quantum Mechanics, Clarendon, Oxford, 1930, p.15. [Unfortunately the last sentence is dead wrong, and the first is imprudent] "The question of whether the waves are something "real" or a function to describe and predict phenomena in a convenient way is a matter of taste. I personally like to regard a probability wave, even in 3N-dimensional space, as a real thing, certainly as more than a tool for mathematical calculations ... Quite generally, how could we rely on probability predictions if by this notion we do not refer to something real and objective?" - Max Born, Dover publ., 1964, "Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance", p. 107 [Brilliant!] So, the above is enough to say that the experimental *smooth* transition between the wave-like and the particle-like behaviour forbids an interpretation which acknowledges the status of only one of the two properties of the "entity". Either both or none. And none is difficult. (The "entity" is governed by the Greenberger & Yasin inequality, or other similar inequalities.) In general the "entity" can be seen as a carrier of information, of a *finite* quantity of information. In an interferometer we produce a change in the "entity" (say photon) state vector, which has degrees of freedom (i.e. spatial, and spin). Thus we produce a subtle change in that (finite) quantity of information the "entity" was carrying before. Any 'which-way' marking (in an interferometer, i.e. by means of polarizers) contains two degrees of freedom and produces a correlated state like |s1,p1>+|s2,p2>, where s1,s2 are informations (or 'images') about the leg of the interferometer, and p1,p2 are informations about the polarization state. Thus if you change the informations you may also expect some change in the behaviour of the "entity". Zeilinger wrote about it at http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0201026 and this seems to be a possible good description, if not solution. But, of course, now the riddle becomes: the superposition principle! From jcorb at iol.ie Fri Nov 7 23:06:53 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 23:06:53 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031107225210.0325c410@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 15 >Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 16:09:55 -0800 (PST) > >From: "Robert J. Bradbury" >Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony >To: ExI chat list >Message-ID: > >Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > >On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Chris Hibbert wrote: > > >>> On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > >>>> > ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 >[snip] > > Eugene: > > > http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&zoom=5&latitude=48.07078&longitude=11.61144 > > > Chris: > > > http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&zoom=5&latitude=37.36243&longitude=-122.0695 > > > > > In any case, it ought to be good enough for someone to get driving > > directions if they wanted to visit. >[more snips] >I hereby state in a loud voice -- *ONLY on the EXI list*! >There are very few other places on the planet where you >will get the contribution to the pool of knowledge that you >can get here. It just blows me away at times. >Robert >P.S. and it would really be interesting if once the X-prize(s) were >awarded and pseudo-space travel became reasonable and someone >figured out when Eugen's birthday was if Extropes collectively >determined to rain down cake on Eugen's location on such a >date. I almost cannot imagine Eugen holding up a glass of >champagne recognizing the cake streaking across the sky >being forced to raise the cry of "incoming". Interesting site. I've managed to locate my street and pencil in my house location on a saved copy of the map. Not sure if there's a way to show/attach it here, so you'll have to ask me for it :) In the meantime, here's the overall view of my hometown. http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?size=big&mapdata=8JWqc9HMpiYwb9zZYDFMrn3Q%2fSmwBrxHnJpYUafchV1f6hNN8WPY7sIyXiKgRNWcP14yHJv2aHAKoiNb6r4fm4L6YkdwfJOBqvKzd0xsXtN56jyZFFtXZzfepaqhQdZniAw4mCW7GK%2f75uirpkO55%2fIeVaNw7s5LCRvIdribdAebOl%2fEtuL%2f0dTFTkfBElN3hY9uZkxuU3d0FDSsHF0pYGVt7fk1APtHTZgjsDDk6%2f%2bxgyuZRfDvNDuMglxc%2bb%2bJqiDyYhbT3WzS8POptkyKVppYydKFLOAB8aijtfjoIZlTq%2fqEgQn%2fBQ%3d%3d I'm located somewhere roughly in the location of the "N82" label. Actually, if you click on N82 and Zoom in, you'll pretty much find yourself on my street. No peeking, now. I'm not decent. James.... From jcorb at iol.ie Fri Nov 7 23:25:30 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 23:25:30 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] UN Delays Decision on Human Cloning Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031107231338.0325b870@pop.iol.ie> >------------------------------ >Message: 10 >Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 07:29:14 -0500 > >From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" >Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] UN Delays Decision on Human Cloning >To: ExI chat list >Message-ID: <3FAB901A.1010209 at pobox.com> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed >natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: > > Here's some good news - > > > > "November 6, 2003; UNITED NATIONS, New York City (AP and CNN) -- The > United > > Nations voted narrowly Thursday to delay for two years any > consideration of > > a treaty to ban human cloning, an issue that has left the world body > > bitterly divided. Facing rival resolutions on a total ban or a partial > > ban, the General Assembly's legal committee voted 80-79 to accept a motion > > introduced by Iran on behalf of the 57 Islamic nations to postpone U.N. > > action on the issue. Fifteen countries abstained." > > > > **Now if we could have the gates open for theraputic clonging, I'd be > > really happy. >"Clonging" can mean either knee-licking or the soft sound of a doorbell >chime. Which did you have in mind? Damn those knee-licking commie bastards.... I don't see this as necessarily "jump for joy" news. Sounds like it was more politics that scuppered it than any logical consensus. Basically, this means that there's two years to convince some of the more amenable countries that single-genome reproduction is not Frankenscience. This will take a cute clone baby being born and paraded all over the media, cooing and smiling to journalists. Cloning needs a Louise Brown. They had better get a move on. For therapeutic stuff, they've really got to produce something tangible in the next 24 months. Even with a Democrat in the White House next year (no foregone conclusion by any means), the most we'll get out of this is maybe protection for the research side of things. It's likely reprocloning will be banned. The proposed EU Constitution would ban it outright, in fact. Strange place for banning something. I thought a Constitution was about protecting rights.... Oh well. James... >-- >Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ >Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From Karen at smigrodzki.org Fri Nov 7 23:45:18 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 18:45:18 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <20031106031808.72213.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <011201c3a589$33522570$6501a8c0@DogHouse> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" > > --- "Robert J. Bradbury" <> > > > On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > > > > > Don't know what state or country you live in. Last time I checked, > > the > > > 14th Amendment was clearly interpreted by SCOTUS as saying that you > > own > > > yourself: no slavery, peony, or indenturement allowed. It is a well > > > settled matter of probate law that the deceased's wishes about > > disposal > > > of their body are paramount, and if the deceased does not > > explicitly > > > say so, their next of kin, NOT the state, has the right to dispose > > of > > > the body. [snip]. > > > > Mike, these are important points -- points which should be well > > documented in public forums, easily available. That means > > some combination of something like a google search as well > > as a law database search. The trick would be to get such > > information near the top of the list in both forums. > > So I suppose we need to make the public as aware of Hale v Henkel (201 > US 43 (1905)) as they are of Roe v Wade and Miranda, specifically: "The > individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is > entitled to carry on his own private business in his own way. His power > to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or his neighbors > to divulge his business, or to open his doors to investigation, so far > as it may tend to incriminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, > since he receives nothing there-from, beyond the protection of his life > and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land > long antecedent to the organization of the State... He owes nothing to > the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights." > > This citation should be in the legal ammo box of any cryonicist. > > > No, it shouldn't, Mike. Anyone citing this case for almost any reason would be laughed out of court. Especially so if they cite the case for the proposition you suggest. (First of all, a minor note, the case year is 1906, not 1905). Secondly, the case has *nothing* to do with bodies or corpses or their disposition or their classification in the law or whether they become property of an estate or not. Your quotation from the case has nothing to do with those ideas either; also, it is dicta -- not relevant to the holding of the case. Also, important parts of the case were overruled some years later. That overruling is not important to the discussion though since the case has *nothing* to do with the ideas of the body as property or ownership in a body or rights to provide for the disposition of one's corpse after death. The case arose in a grand jury investigation of anti-trust violations under the Sherman Act. The case presented the questions of whether a grand jury had authority to subpoena a witness (an officer of the corporation under investigation) and mandate he present documentation of the corporation when no charges had been filed and when by such actions the witness, as agent of the corporation, may give self-incriminating (the "self" being the corporation) information . The Court held that the grand jury does not need to file a formal charge before examining witnesses. The Court also held that the protection against self-incrimination means "self" incrimination, and does not apply to incrimination of third parties (ie, officer for the corporation). Further, the 1903 "proviso" to the 1890 Anti-Trust Act gave immunity to the witness (officer of the corporation here) which was sufficient to protect the witness against self-incrimination. Further, and finally, the Court held that the corporation could claim a 4th Amendment privilege against unreasonable search and seizure of documents, but the witness (officer of the corporation) could not claim the same in relation to production for the grand jury of documents of the corporation for investigations into violations of the Anti-Trust Act of 1890. --Karen From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Nov 7 23:41:10 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 17:41:10 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's baloney References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031107225210.0325c410@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: <023101c3a588$a10b1820$ca994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "J Corbally" Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 5:06 PM > I'm located somewhere roughly in the location of the "N82" > label. Actually, if you click on N82 and Zoom in, you'll pretty much find > yourself on my street. However, the simulation isn't fine-grained enough to locate my own home address in Coburg, Victoria, Australia (which appears to have blurred out in my absence--so Emlyn and Brett must just be some sort of place-holders). Damien Broderick [of the San Antonio Brodericks] From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Nov 7 23:46:04 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 17:46:04 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031107225210.0325c410@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: <023401c3a589$51cb81e0$ca994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "J Corbally" [coordinates] Good god, you're actually *mentioned by name* just to the right of M9. Now *that's* accuracy. Damien Broderick [I see that Dr. Kildare lives nearby. How's the old chap doing these days?] From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 7 23:53:53 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 18:53:53 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SPAM (was Depressing Thought. from Laurence ofBerkeley) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <00f301c3a58a$66752910$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote, > The important part is getting the subject lines > correct. If these were correct, I could easily filter out > what I didn;t want. Unfortunately, spammers are notorious for lying. They fake subject lines that imply this is an answer a previous e-mail or a job offer or some other offer that the person might want, and then when they open it, it is not. This is a Trojan horse in the sense that they deliberately pretend to be one thing to get past defenses. I don't expect spammers to comply with standard subject lines or classifications any more other Trojan horse writers do. > A national, or > worldwide spam-police division could be created that you > could forward emails with false headers to. This entity would > track down people who falsify headers and violate the new > protocols. It would be paid for by a small registration fee > required paid by legal spammers to have access to the new > protocols. Violaters could then be burned alive at the stake. This is another excellent idea that probably won't work. People already track down spammers and shut them down. The spammers just pop up under a new company name at a different ISP. In fact, it is so common that many spammers use each ISP only once and assume they will be shut down immediately. This has also lead spammers to start breaking into ISPs or using people's open mail relay servers. Meaning, spammers literally hack into other servers or use other people's servers without permission to send their spam once, and then disappear so that tracing it back won't do any good. After one spam attack, they are gone. The main problem is spammers lie. Most of these ideas have been tried somewhere, and they always fail. Where they have to mark their subject lines or classify their e-mail to get through, they just fake the wrong classification to get through. Where we trace them down to shut off their ISP, they just start jumping between ISPs after one use. Where we require valid return addresses, they just fake somebody's else's address. Where they are required to have opt-out links, they just link it to some unrelated company's opt-out link so it looks like they have one. Where we limit the number of copies that can be sent out, they just send a series of slightly different individual mails. Where we limit the total amount of mail a single address can send out, they fake different return addresses on each e-mail. Where we filter out keywords, they misspell or put symbols in the middle of the keywords. Where we look for duplicate messages, they add nonsense words so messages appear different. Where we look for grammatically correct sentences, they have nonsense sentence generators that appear to be valid ramblings. No matter what scheme we invent, a hacker-type mind can think of ways around it. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From aperick at centurytel.net Sat Nov 8 00:59:24 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 16:59:24 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] the F word, struggling with, embarrassment? Message-ID: <1502224.1068254229292.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> I had to compose the following rambling verbiage before concluding that while poking a sleeping bear is a sign of great and praise-worthy courage when there is a real need to evict the bear from his chamber - in the absence of that need the same poke just makes you an asshole. I am left to suffer the pain of one who has seen, through new lenses, no cuteness where a *belief* had previously placed it. Just one more bit of evidence that 'beliefs' are the root of all evil. > Many persons in the general public would conclude that since I do not own a necktie that I am a lowly creature. We are proud of our Atheism. Care not one tiddle if Christians object to us pointing and laughing at their sacred bible and their silly God. We totally disregard their feelings as we permit women to kill their unborn babies. Yet many of us dare not reevaluate their code regarding sexuality. And of those who do, most will not admit to violating popular xtian mores about sex. We conceal our consumption of pornography. Yet we flaunt our consumption of books on evolution and any other form of blaspheme. Should we fear their response to Ricks use of the F word more than what they may do after witnessing us take the side of the baby killers in family planning clinics? Many persons in the general public feel sorry for souls too stupid to see the power and glory of the one true God. Many others see instead prideful allies of Satan - massively hated by God. But do any of us fear that these believers will think even less of us, find us even less credible, because we have the gall to utter the vulgar profanity king: that enemy of Christ: the F word? Oh I would understand my being publicly chastised if I averaged more than one or two such ... pause ... what is this, adrenaline? Did my choice of word spring from a deep and painful anger? It had felt so playful at the time. Just an innocent rebellion. What makes an A__hole? /> From aperick at centurytel.net Sat Nov 8 00:59:32 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 16:59:32 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <200311071900.hA7J0AM29655@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <16164701.1068254234680.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> John K Clark jonkc at att.net wrote: > 9) Why is there something rather than nothing? This one is painfully obvious. If there were nothing there would be nothing to ask your question. There is something because there had to be in order for you to have asked about it. And you did ask. From Karen at smigrodzki.org Sat Nov 8 01:56:19 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 20:56:19 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Religion in the news References: <000001c3a4fd$25e48400$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz> <05d101c3a4ff$afc5d6e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <008a01c3a59b$8109c180$6501a8c0@DogHouse> This is so funny, I had to share it. The latest issue of Church & State (publication of American's United for Separation of Church & State) reports that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon reports that former US Presidents Jefferson and Madison (among others) have endorsed him in what he calls "spirit world" conferences. The conference was chaired by Eisenhower. From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 8 02:12:35 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 18:12:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] A Flight Data Recorder for Your Car In-Reply-To: <3FAC0333.3030605@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <20031108021235.74950.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- BillK wrote: > > Say that again??!! > That man is a master of the cool understatement! > How would you drive if you had a cop sitting beside you and your > insurance rep in the backseat? THis is nothing new. The fight was lost when people didn't notice that they no longer owned their cars when vehicle registration and licensing was instituted. The states pulled a real scam there: conning car dealers into not mentioning the MSO (Manufacturers Statement of Origin, the 'real' title to the car) to the buyers. When the buyer drives away without it, or otherwise ignorantly surrenders it to a financier (the bank that financed the loan for the car) who sends it to the state, the state treats the MSO as abandoned property and thus 'siezes' the car in legal fashion. Your "Certificate of Title" is only a piece of paper issued by the state that says "Yes, we have title to this vehicle". The real MSO was shredded shortly after they scanned it to microfilm, so you can never again get your hands on it and reposess 'your' car. Thus, the registration charges you pay are nothing but the rent you pay to the state for use of THEIR car, which is why registration fees are generally variable with the value of the car. You can escape this trap, though. Simply pay cash for a brand new car, and do not pay a cent until the dealer agrees to give you the MSO. An increasing number of people are doing this, and are then able to drive their cars without registration, without a license plate (since it is used for personal reasons, it is a 'personal conveyance' and NOT a 'motor vehicle', which is a term that only applies to commercial 'for hire' opertion of a vehicle.) LP Presidential Candidate and constitutional scholar Michael Badnarik has done this for years, successfully fought police citations in the courts. I am not surprised that the state wants a black box in their cars to keep an eye on your irresponsible behavior, to make sure you behave like a proper serf. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From etheric at comcast.net Sat Nov 8 02:20:49 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 18:20:49 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Religion in the news References: <000001c3a4fd$25e48400$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz><05d101c3a4ff$afc5d6e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <008a01c3a59b$8109c180$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: <003301c3a59e$eda20520$0200a8c0@etheric> I attended those conferences, and I have first hand knowledge that Jefferson does NOT endorse him! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karen Rand Smigrodzki" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 5:56 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Religion in the news > This is so funny, I had to share it. The latest issue of Church & State > (publication of American's United for Separation of Church & State) reports > that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon reports that former US Presidents Jefferson and > Madison (among others) have endorsed him in what he calls "spirit world" > conferences. The conference was chaired by Eisenhower. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From Karen at smigrodzki.org Sat Nov 8 02:59:00 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 21:59:00 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Religion in the news References: <000001c3a4fd$25e48400$0200a8c0@soy0450mhz><05d101c3a4ff$afc5d6e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><008a01c3a59b$8109c180$6501a8c0@DogHouse> <003301c3a59e$eda20520$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <00b801c3a5a4$42676dc0$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Drat. So much for my paper on the real intent of the Constitutional drafters as corrected by The Spirit World Conference. ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" > I attended those conferences, and I have first hand knowledge that Jefferson > does NOT endorse him! > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Karen Rand Smigrodzki" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 5:56 PM > Subject: [extropy-chat] Religion in the news > > > > This is so funny, I had to share it. The latest issue of Church & State > > (publication of American's United for Separation of Church & State) > reports > > that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon reports that former US Presidents Jefferson > and > > Madison (among others) have endorsed him in what he calls "spirit world" > > conferences. The conference was chaired by Eisenhower. > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 8 03:12:23 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 19:12:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <011201c3a589$33522570$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: <20031108031223.32492.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> --- Karen Rand Smigrodzki wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > So I suppose we need to make the public as aware of Hale v Henkel > > (201 US 43 (1905)) as they are of Roe v Wade and Miranda, > > specifically: "The individual may stand upon his constitutional > > rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his own private > > business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He > > owes no duty to the State or his neighbors to divulge his business, > > or to open his doors to investigation, so far as it may tend to > > incriminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, since he > > receives nothing there-from, beyond the protection of his life > > and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the > > land long antecedent to the organization of the State... He owes > > nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their > > rights." > > > > This citation should be in the legal ammo box of any cryonicist. > > > > > > No, it shouldn't, Mike. Anyone citing this case for almost > any reason would be laughed out of court. Especially so if they cite > the case for the proposition you suggest. (First of all, a minor > note, the case year is 1906, not 1905). Secondly, the case has > *nothing* to do with bodies or corpses or their disposition or > their classification in the law or whether they become property of > an estate or not. Your quotation from the case has nothing to do > with those ideas either; also, it is dicta -- not relevant to > the holding of the case. Also, important parts of the case were > overruled some years later. That overruling is not important to the > discussion though since the case has *nothing* to do with the ideas > of the body as property or ownership in a body or rights to provide > for the disposition of one's corpse after death. > The case arose in a grand jury investigation of anti-trust > violations under the Sherman Act. The case presented the questions of > whether a grand jury had authority to subpoena a witness (an officer > of the corporation under investigation) and mandate he present > documentation of the corporation when no charges had been filed and > when by such actions the witness, as agent of the corporation, may > give self-incriminating (the "self" being the corporation) > information . > The Court held that the grand jury does not need to file a > formal charge before examining witnesses. This is part of the problem for cryonics, though, isn't it? I die, I get frozen and leave my assets to a trust to finance my freezing and support my eventual revival and future life, leaving my hypothetical spouse(s) and kid(s) in the lurch. Said spouses and kids use grand jury subpoenas to force my cryonics organization to produce the body for autopsy whereupon it becomes thawed and worth nothing but fertilizer. With my ass now worthless, the trust I set up to protect my assets devolves to my survivors, and they win. Furthermore, grand juries can subpoena all of the notes and other documents produced by cryonics organization officers and employees, as was the case with a recent case in which claims of drug induced murder were made against a cryonics team. In a non-fascist environment, all of this evidence would be treated as sacredly as doctor-patient privilege, but caselaw that you mention, that partly overrules Hale v Henkel had a hand in empowering the grand jury system of today through the socio-fascist incrementalism of the 20th century. It is not impossible to seek to reclaim these lost rights. US v Lopez helped the people reclaim much of their rights which were usurped by Roosevelt to Reagan era interpretations of what 'interstate commerce' regulatory powers actually empower congress to regulate. Nor is dicta commentary worthless. While this is a common assumption among professional lawyers, there is no SCOTUS case that specifically says that dicta is irrelevant to caselaw. I recall that professional lawyers, until a couple years ago, claimed the same thing about rulings on writs of certioari (sp?), but a case came up where the SCOTUS ruled otherwise. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From Karen at smigrodzki.org Sat Nov 8 03:29:48 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 22:29:48 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <20031108031223.32492.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <010101c3a5a8$90270170$6501a8c0@DogHouse> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 10:12 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > > --- Karen Rand Smigrodzki wrote: > > this evidence would be treated as sacredly as doctor-patient privilege, > but caselaw that you mention, that partly overrules Hale v Henkel had a > hand in empowering the grand jury system of today through the > socio-fascist incrementalism of the 20th century. I think you misunderstood what case I was reciting; I wasn't clear enough. The case I was reciting WAS Hale v Henkel, NOT the one that overruled it in part. karen From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 8 03:52:13 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 19:52:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated In-Reply-To: <011201c3a589$33522570$6501a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: <20031108035213.69802.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> --- Karen Rand Smigrodzki wrote: > Further, and finally, the Court held > that the corporation could claim a 4th Amendment privilege against > unreasonable search and seizure of documents, but the witness > (officer of the corporation) could not claim the same in relation > to production for the > grand jury of documents of the corporation for investigations into > violations of the Anti-Trust Act of 1890. Isn't this just an end-run, though? Doesn't it completely eviscerate the 4th Amendment (and I REALLY don't get applying the 4th to a corporation and not an individual, esp given conspiracy law, where the right hand does not need to know what the left hand is doing to be culpable)? ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 8 05:50:00 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 21:50:00 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000001c3a5bc$25fedc00$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Robert J. Bradbury > > ... or Spike's front lawn which contains the > strange math symbols. Strange math symbols? Golden ratio elipses are not strange. Of course the *back* yard contains a wall shaped like an integral sign, and a region intentionally formed into a three dimensional golden ellipsoid, but the front yard is all golden ratio ellipses. > Perhaps Alex wrote: > > > What would be the terminal velocity of a cake dropped from > a low earth orbit? > > Don't know -- this is a question for spike. I suppose it would break up during reentry. > > I'm particularly > fond of that which might potentially "toast" Spike's front lawn. > > R. Whaddya got against grass? I just got that yard looking good, now you wanna toast it? I object! {8^D spike From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 8 06:05:56 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 22:05:56 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <20031107083237.90698.qmail@web60202.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a5be$601d2d40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Here are some of riddles and unsolved mysteries from science that are very curious indeed: 1. How do homing pigeons and other migratory birds unerringly find their way home? Do they have some special sensory organs to detect the earth's magnetic field? If so why haven't we found it and characterized it yet? If we do find out the mechanism, can we transhumans augment ourselves to have it to, thereby eliminating the need to "litter" earth's orbit with GPS satellites? GPS sats are waaaay up there. No problem with litter there. Good chance there never will be. Migratory birds' homing systems have end-game guidance, so that their internal homing organs are not accurate enough to do cool things like guide self-driving cars. 4. How can sperm whales hold their breath for half an hour at a time, descend into the abyss, and have fights to the death with giant squid and then surface without getting the bends or nitrogen narcosis? We can't do that even with all our fancy diving gear unless we mix helium with our air supply and spend hours depressurizing... or can we? Whale's joints are different from ours. Mixing helium with the air supply is a perfectly appropriate technology, and it obviates depressuring. We have the technology, what's the problem? 5. How can some really bright people claim to understand the universe so completely that there is nothing eerie, anomolous, or mysterious about it yet still manage to misplace their car keys. ;) They neglected to affix radio frequency identification tags to their key rings. Or they had insufficient technology in that they did not purchase a car with keyless entry and keyless start. Why are we still building cars that need keys? spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 8 06:15:19 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 22:15:19 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000501c3a5bf$afb754b0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > > 4. How can sperm whales hold their breath for half an hour > at a time, > > descend into the abyss, and have fights to the death with > giant squid > > and then surface without getting the bends or nitrogen narcosis? We > > can't do that even with all our fancy diving gear unless we > mix helium > > with our air supply and spend hours depressurizing... or can we? > > Now that is a very interesting question -- my best bet would be that > they have evolved to be tolerant nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream. > To the best of my knowledge there isn't a clear reason that nitrogen > bubbles should be harmful (i.e. they aren't toxic in any way). No wait, please disregard my previous post. The reason whales don't get the bends is that they are not actually breathing while they are under water, the way human scuba divers do. They don't get nitrogen narcosis for the same reason: they aren't carrying much nitrogen to the depths. The reason they can hold their breath half an hour is related to the square-cube law. Compare your breathing rate to that of a mouse, then scale linearly up to the size of a whale. spike From etheric at comcast.net Sat Nov 8 06:21:32 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 22:21:32 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony References: <000001c3a5bc$25fedc00$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000801c3a5c0$8e35f2f0$0200a8c0@etheric> A cake of... what? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 9:50 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony > > Robert J. Bradbury > > > > ... or Spike's front lawn which contains the > > strange math symbols. > > Strange math symbols? Golden ratio elipses are not > strange. > > Of course the *back* yard contains a wall shaped like > an integral sign, and a region intentionally formed > into a three dimensional golden ellipsoid, but the > front yard is all golden ratio ellipses. > > > Perhaps Alex wrote: > > > > > What would be the terminal velocity of a cake dropped from > > a low earth orbit? > > > > Don't know -- this is a question for spike. > > I suppose it would break up during reentry. > > > > > I'm particularly > > fond of that which might potentially "toast" Spike's front lawn. > > > > R. > > Whaddya got against grass? I just got that yard looking > good, now you wanna toast it? I object! {8^D spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 8 06:27:45 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 22:27:45 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] A Flight Data Recorder for Your Car In-Reply-To: <3FAC0333.3030605@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <000001c3a5c1$6c309420$6501a8c0@SHELLY> >..."If people know there is a black box > accurately > recording information for insurance purposes, it could have > an effect on > how people drive," he said. "Over time, there could be > broader indirect > benefits." > > Say that again??!! > That man is a master of the cool understatement! > How would you drive if you had a cop sitting beside you and your > insurance rep in the backseat? BillK This is great, BillK. If everyone had these boxes, there would be no need for speed limits. Of course, insurance companies would be free to charge you whatever they thought your risk of accident justified. But then you would be free to go to another company. Companies could specialize in fast good drivers, just as currently there are companies that specialize in insuring motorcyclists with bikes capable of going 190 mph. Information is good. spike From alex at ramonsky.com Sat Nov 8 07:18:55 2003 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 07:18:55 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar System References: Message-ID: <3FAC98DF.5040606@ramonsky.com> Amara Graps wrote: > I said: > >> >> There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 has reached >> the Heliopause. >> >> If this isn't a reason for a massive party/celebration >> of the humans on this planet, I don't know what is.... >> I was halfway there, dammit, is this party happening at the edge of the universe or what? I can't afford this sort of fuel every day you know. ...I bet you _everybody_ brings potato salad. AR From hal at finney.org Sat Nov 8 07:25:53 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 23:25:53 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <200311080725.hA87Pr214237@finney.org> I was interested to hear the discussion of why whales don't get the bends. However the explanation doesn't seem complete. I believe that ordinary air, if compressed within the lungs, will dissolve to a greater degree in the blood, so the bends are possible even if you don't breathe compressed air. According to http://rbcm1.rbcm.gov.bc.ca/programs/whales/t-activity-5.html, whales have additional adaptations to prevent gases from being dissolved in their blood during dives, mechanisms to reduce the interface between air and blood. According to http://www.msnbc.com/news/977733.asp, a study reported in Nature last month suggested that some recent whale strandings after exposure to military sonars may have been caused by the animals getting the bends. The author is quoted, "This new evidence from our study of marine mammal diseases in the U.K. challenges the widely held notion that cetaceans (marine mammals) cannot suffer from decompression sickness." Hal From alito at organicrobot.com Sat Nov 8 07:38:12 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 17:38:12 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's baloney In-Reply-To: <023101c3a588$a10b1820$ca994a43@texas.net> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031107225210.0325c410@pop.iol.ie> <023101c3a588$a10b1820$ca994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <1068277091.6304.1375.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Sat, 2003-11-08 at 09:41, Damien Broderick wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "J Corbally" > Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 5:06 PM > > > I'm located somewhere roughly in the location of the "N82" > > label. Actually, if you click on N82 and Zoom in, you'll pretty much find > > yourself on my street. > > However, the simulation isn't fine-grained enough to locate my own home > address in Coburg, Victoria, Australia (which appears to have blurred out in > my absence--so Emlyn and Brett must just be some sort of place-holders). > Terraserver used to have pretty good pictures of my house in Brisbane, but it now wants me to subscribe to see them (you do get a fully cooked and boneless turkey when you subscribe, but i just wanted to check out my new place since i moved) alejandro From jcorb at iol.ie Sat Nov 8 10:29:09 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 10:29:09 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031108102301.0325fea0@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 11 >Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 17:46:04 -0600 > >From: "Damien Broderick" >Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony >To: "ExI chat list" >Message-ID: <023401c3a589$51cb81e0$ca994a43 at texas.net> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > >----- Original Message ----- > >From: "J Corbally" >[coordinates] >Good god, you're actually *mentioned by name* just to the right of M9. Now >*that's* accuracy. >Damien Broderick >[I see that Dr. Kildare lives nearby. How's the old chap doing these days?] > > >------------------------------ Heh, heh, I run this dump, dontcha know :) Seriously though, there are a few areas around here called Corbally, that one having been built nearly 10 years ago, before my current residence was made. There's also an area on the Dublin mountains (to the South of the map, in fact I'm on the foothills). I've no idea what connection they have to me (if any). If you find Sundale Park to the North of that place then you've found my street. Can I get a cake now too? :) James... From jcorb at iol.ie Sat Nov 8 10:36:36 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 10:36:36 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] A Flight Data Recorder for Your Car Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031108103400.03262070@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 3 >Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 20:40:19 +0000 > >From: BillK >Subject: [extropy-chat] A Flight Data Recorder for Your Car >To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >Message-ID: <3FAC0333.3030605 at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed >See: and > >Quote: >Imagine you're in your car driving to the grocery store. You're >accelerating away from a stop sign when suddenly -- BANG! -- you're hit >from behind by a speeding car that never even slowed down. Badly shaken, >you stumble out. The police arrive on the scene just minutes after the >crash. Plus, they already seem know that you stopped, and the other guy >-- who's being arrested -- didn't. > >This system is closer to reality than you may think. It's being built >today in Ireland and is expected to spread across Europe over the next >few years before taking root in the U.S. Insurance companies like the >idea because computer-generated data about the crash will help prevent >fraudulent claims and cut insurance costs. Emergency responders will be >aided, too, thanks to faster, more detailed information about the exact >location and scope of an accident. >By mandating that drivers use the boxes, Ireland seems to have snuffed >out privacy concerns that have slowed the voluntary adaptation of the >technology elsewhere. Not sure if I'll still be here if and when this becomes commonplace, but I'll keep the list up-to-date with anything I find out about it. Given the high cost of insurance here, people might just go for it. Wonder where they'll fit it on a motorcycle though. James.... From samantha at objectent.com Sat Nov 8 10:28:44 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 03:28:44 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <20031107195905.GQ3534@leitl.org> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> <20031107195905.GQ3534@leitl.org> Message-ID: <200311080228.44940.samantha@objectent.com> > > 9) Why is there something rather than nothing? Because you are here to ask. From rafal at smigrodzki.org Sat Nov 8 13:49:05 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 08:49:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <200311080725.hA87Pr214237@finney.org> Message-ID: <072a01c3a5ff$1413c7b0$6401a8c0@dimension> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hal Finney" To: Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 2:25 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > I was interested to hear the discussion of why whales don't get the bends. > However the explanation doesn't seem complete. I believe that ordinary > air, if compressed within the lungs, will dissolve to a greater degree > in the blood, so the bends are possible even if you don't breathe > compressed air. ### But the amount of air within the lungs of a whale must be minuscule compared to the amount of air contained in a diver's bottle, at least if divided by the volume of tissue in which the gas can dissolve in. The whale carries most of his oxygen internally in the form of myoglobin, and doesn't carry around a lot of gaseous nitrogen. --------------------------------------------------- > > According to > http://rbcm1.rbcm.gov.bc.ca/programs/whales/t-activity-5.html, whales > have additional adaptations to prevent gases from being dissolved in > their blood during dives, mechanisms to reduce the interface between > air and blood. > > According to http://www.msnbc.com/news/977733.asp, a study reported > in Nature last month suggested that some recent whale strandings after > exposure to military sonars may have been caused by the animals getting > the bends. The author is quoted, "This new evidence from our study of > marine mammal diseases in the U.K. challenges the widely held notion that > cetaceans (marine mammals) cannot suffer from decompression sickness." > ### But is it certainly the bends? I seem to recall reading about cavitation as the postulated mechanism here. Rafal From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Sat Nov 8 14:00:33 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 06:00:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <060101c3a536$f7731fc0$6401a8c0@dimension> Message-ID: <20031108140033.90851.qmail@web60201.mail.yahoo.com> > > 3. Why is all life on earth asymmetric at a molecular level. The amino > > acids that make up proteins on earth all have a "left-handed" > > (levorotary) chirality and the sugars that make up carbohydrates are > > "right-handed" (dextrorotary). [snip] > Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:### Probably no need to invoke the stellar dust, since the asymmetry is a direct consequence of the mechanics of biological macromolecule synthesis. An enzyme, ribosome or nucleic acid polymerase can recognize only a limited number of molecular species (just like a lock can recognize only a limited number of keys, all of the same general symmetry), and the moiety that forms the most rigid part in a polymer, the backbone, can only assume a limited number of conformations. *Correct- but you are putting the cart before the horse, unless you are proposing that either enzymes or ribozymes came somehow into being whole-cloth without some form of stochastic polymerization event from their monomer constituents. Are you suggesting a Special Creation event? I would not be terribly mortified if this is what you were suggesting since if I walked into a room and saw thousands of coins all showing heads, despite knowing that there is a finite none-zero probability that they fell that way by pure chance, I would find the hypothesis that "someone" arranged them that way to be the more probable hypothesis. Eleizer, what say you, oh disciple of Bayes? * Using a standard conformation for the backbone of all monomers saves on the number of enzymes needed to make all the components, and the standard conformation for aminoacids just happened to be the L-conformation. *Yes, and a standardized hardware configuration, operating system, and programming language would save much money, time, and effort by IT professionals the world over. But game theory predicts there will be two or more standards, e.g. Macs vs. PCs or Unix vs. Windows vs Applesoft, that in a competitive enviroment will reach a Nash equilibrium with one another which incedently is the observed case. Note I would not be so surprised if even a huge majority of life forms used one "chiral standard or the other" but the fact that it is entirely a single standard strikes me as highly improbable and wondrous.* Of course, if there were any imbalances in the concentration of one enantiomer in the primordial soup, that enantiomer would be much more likely to become the standard... *ok, now both thermodynamically and game theory wise, it is easy to see how a completely imbalanced asymmetric system might over time evolve into either a chemical or a Nash equilibrium. For example it is easy to imagine a perfectly ordered system of all reactants or all products becoming a chemical equilibrium of both, even if products vastly outweigh the reactants, but you would still have some reactant present at any given temperature. Likewise lets say in game theory you have a system composed entirely of doves, then hawks having such a huge advantage in such a population would quite naturally evolve. Likewise doves will arise in a pure population of hawks (since the hawks will kill one another while the doves wont). Yet going the other way is much less credible. It is easier to believe that Pepsi arose simply to compete with Coke's former monopoly and stole market share from it, than to believe that if Coke and Pepsi started out with equal market share that someday one would buy the other out and gain a monopoly.* one way or another, a standard had to choose itself. * Are you suggesting that in a former Spirit World Conference chaired by the RNA Fairy the amino acid spirits got together and passed an unanimous resolution calling for them to all become left-handed from that day forward? Was the Esteemed Reverend Sun Yung Moon privy to those proceedings or is that just hear-say?* The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sentience at pobox.com Sat Nov 8 14:02:28 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 09:02:28 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <200311080228.44940.samantha@objectent.com> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> <20031107195905.GQ3534@leitl.org> <200311080228.44940.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <3FACF774.4080902@pobox.com> Samantha Atkins wrote: >>>9) Why is there something rather than nothing? > > Because you are here to ask. If I ask "Why are my pants on fire?" it probably means that my pants are on fire, since, after all, if my pants were not on fire I would not be asking the question. But this does not answer the question of *why* my pants are on fire. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From rafal at smigrodzki.org Sat Nov 8 15:22:19 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 10:22:19 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031108140033.90851.qmail@web60201.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <075801c3a60c$19e062e0$6401a8c0@dimension> ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Avantguardian" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 9:00 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > > > > > 3. Why is all life on earth asymmetric at a molecular level. The amino > > > acids that make up proteins on earth all have a "left-handed" > > > (levorotary) chirality and the sugars that make up carbohydrates are > > > "right-handed" (dextrorotary). [snip] > > > Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:### Probably no need to invoke the stellar dust, since the asymmetry is a > direct consequence of the mechanics of biological macromolecule synthesis. > An enzyme, ribosome or nucleic acid polymerase can recognize only a limited > number of molecular species (just like a lock can recognize only a limited > number of keys, all of the same general symmetry), and the moiety that forms > the most rigid part in a polymer, the backbone, can only assume a limited > number of conformations. > > *Correct- but you are putting the cart before the horse, unless you are proposing that either enzymes or ribozymes came somehow into being whole-cloth without some form of stochastic polymerization event from their monomer constituents. Are you suggesting a Special Creation event? I would not be terribly mortified if this is what you were suggesting since if I walked into a room and saw thousands of coins all showing heads, despite knowing that there is a finite none-zero probability that they fell that way by pure chance, I would find the hypothesis that "someone" arranged them that way to be the more probable hypothesis. Eleizer, what say you, oh disciple of Bayes? * ### Of course ribozymes came into being whole-cloth by stochastic polymerization (maybe with some help from montmorillonites), and once there was a single self-replicating ribozyme (or even a pre-RNA molecule), all the molecules derived from it had to have the same chirality. The room with thousands of coins is an old creationist shtick, but irrelevant here. Think about a room with thousands of high-energy entities (like standing dominoes or abiotically produced nucleotide triphospates). You need one event, a domino being flipped to the right or to the left or polymerization of a single ribozyme, and you end up with thousands of dominoes stacked in the same orientation, or with billions of macromolecules of same chirality. --------------------------------------- > > Using a standard conformation for the backbone of > all monomers saves on the number of enzymes needed to make all the > components, and the standard conformation for aminoacids just happened to be > the L-conformation. > > *Yes, and a standardized hardware configuration, operating system, and programming language would save much money, time, and effort by IT professionals the world over. But game theory predicts there will be two or more standards, e.g. Macs vs. PCs or Unix vs. Windows vs Applesoft, that in a competitive enviroment will reach a Nash equilibrium with one another which incedently is the observed case. Note I would not be so surprised if even a huge majority of life forms used one "chiral standard or the other" but the fact that it is entirely a single standard strikes me as highly improbable and wondrous.* ### No, not wondrous, but inevitable. If you have only one vendor and the companies that split from it, because there was only one vendor in the beginning, you will inevitably have identical standards for the basic system. --------------------------------------- > > Of course, if there were any imbalances in the concentration of one > enantiomer in the primordial soup, that enantiomer would be much more likely > to become the standard... > > *ok, now both thermodynamically and game theory wise, it is easy to see how a completely imbalanced asymmetric system might over time evolve into either a chemical or a Nash equilibrium. For example it is easy to imagine a perfectly ordered system of all reactants or all products becoming a chemical equilibrium of both, even if products vastly outweigh the reactants, but you would still have some reactant present at any given temperature. Likewise lets say in game theory you have a system composed entirely of doves, then hawks having such a huge advantage in such a population would quite naturally evolve. Likewise doves will arise in a pure population of hawks (since the hawks will kill one another while the doves wont). Yet going the other way is much less credible. It is easier to believe that Pepsi arose simply to compete with Coke's former monopoly and stole market share from it, than to believe that if Coke and Pepsi started out with equal market share that someday one ! > would buy > the other out and gain a monopoly.* > > one way or another, a standard had to choose itself. > * Are you suggesting that in a former Spirit World Conference chaired by the RNA Fairy the amino acid spirits got together and passed an unanimous resolution calling for them to all become left-handed from that day forward? Was the Esteemed Reverend Sun Yung Moon privy to those proceedings or is that just hear-say?* > ### Wrong analogies. Most likely there were never two populations. Being a D-aminoacid creature in a world of L-aminoacid creatures would not give you an advantage of a hawk over doves. Therefore there is no selective pressure to evolve D-aminoacid proteins from scratch, like in founding a company to cash-in on a monopoly. The correct analogy is having two species of paramecium in the same tank - no matter how closely matched their number in the beginning of an experiment, one of the species dies out. Only one species can stably fill a single ecological niche. Rafal From Karen at smigrodzki.org Sat Nov 8 16:55:11 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 11:55:11 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <20031108035213.69802.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <006801c3a619$129d0760$6501a8c0@DogHouse> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > > --- Karen Rand Smigrodzki> > Further, and finally, the Court held > > that the corporation could claim a 4th Amendment privilege against > > unreasonable search and seizure of documents, but the witness > > (officer of the corporation) could not claim the same in relation > > to production for the > > grand jury of documents of the corporation for investigations into > > violations of the Anti-Trust Act of 1890. > > Isn't this just an end-run, though? Doesn't it completely eviscerate > the 4th Amendment (and I REALLY don't get applying the 4th to a > corporation and not an individual, esp given conspiracy law, where the > right hand does not need to know what the left hand is doing to be culpable)? > > The case, Hale v Henkel, is irrelevant. The case is out of date, the statutes sections amended and/or repealed long ago. karen From jonkc at att.net Sat Nov 8 17:16:14 2003 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 12:16:14 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie><01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> <000e01c3a582$5b3f9150$5db21b97@administxl09yj> Message-ID: <02ed01c3a61c$13e1dc10$26165e0c@hal2001> P.A.M. Dirac Wrote in Principles of Quantum Mechanics: "Each photon then interferes only with itself. Interference between two different photons can never occur." scerir Wrote: >Unfortunately the last sentence is dead wrong, >and the first is imprudent Well, if you fire a bunch of photons at 2 slits you get the same pattern if you send them one at a time as you do if you send them all at once; the only difference is the pattern takes longer to form. If they interfered with each other you'd think there would be a difference. >the experimental *smooth* transition between the wave-like and the >particle-like behaviour forbids an interpretation which acknowledges >the status of only one of the two properties of the "entity". But the transition is never smooth, in the 2 slit experiment the photons act like waves until they hit the photographic plate, then they don't produce a smudge at you'd expect a wave to do, they make a point as you'd expect a particle to do. >In general the "entity" can be seen as a carrier of information I don't see how it can carry information if you can never detect it. We can never detect the "entity" directly because it isn't even a probability, it's the square root of a probability and being a square root means it can and does have negative terms in it and even imaginary terms, and that means the quantum wave function is not a scalar like simple probability but a vector with an intensity and a direction, and that means you can't just add up 2 independent probabilities to figure the probability both will happen the way we usually do, and that means two very different wave functions can yield the same probabilities, and that means we can't do things the way common sense would dictate. And that's why the quantum world is so weird. John K Clark jonkc at att.net From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 8 17:25:57 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 09:25:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <000501c3a5bf$afb754b0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > No wait, please disregard my previous post. The reason > whales don't get the bends is that they are not actually > breathing while they are under water, the way human > scuba divers do. They don't get nitrogen narcosis for > the same reason: they aren't carrying much nitrogen > to the depths. Ok, Spike -- I'll buy this to a limited extent but you are going to have to convince me that the amount of N2 in the volume of a whale's lung is significantly less than the amount of N2 in a diver's tank. Then on top of that you are going to need to convince me that a whale should have significantly lower O2 consumption because I can't imagine how they manage to stay down that long in the first place. I'd start to wonder if whale hemoglobin is significantly different from human hemoglobin in terms of its oxygen carrying capacity -- or whether whale tissues are significantly more tolerant of CO2 levels. I don't think this one is quite so easily answered as one might think. R. From etheric at comcast.net Sat Nov 8 17:32:38 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 09:32:38 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated References: <20031108035213.69802.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <010d01c3a61e$4e345cb0$0200a8c0@etheric> An interesting read re. personal Liberty Lawrence v. Texas http://www.cato.org/pubs/scr2003/revolution.pdf ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 7:52 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] ILE: life just got a little more complicated > > --- Karen Rand Smigrodzki wrote: > > Further, and finally, the Court held > > that the corporation could claim a 4th Amendment privilege against > > unreasonable search and seizure of documents, but the witness > > (officer of the corporation) could not claim the same in relation > > to production for the > > grand jury of documents of the corporation for investigations into > > violations of the Anti-Trust Act of 1890. > > Isn't this just an end-run, though? Doesn't it completely eviscerate > the 4th Amendment (and I REALLY don't get applying the 4th to a > corporation and not an individual, esp given conspiracy law, where the > right hand does not need to know what the left hand is doing to be culpable)? > > ===== > Mike Lorrey > "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." > - Gen. John Stark > Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com > Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ > Pro-tech freedom discussion: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard > http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 8 17:52:48 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 09:52:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: <000801c3a5c0$8e35f2f0$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: On Fri, 7 Nov 2003, R.Coyote wrote: > A cake of... what? Well, since it was intended for Eugen's birthday presumably it must be a birthday cake. Now when I was young I managed to get my mother to bake me a Maraschino Cherry birthday cake every year but Eugen has a different cultural history and might prefer something else. Generally speaking I would consider it to be extropic if one were going to deliver cake from space onto someones balcony for their birthday that such cake should be of a variety that the recipients are fond of. If we are going to retarget for Greg or others then I think we may have to query them individually -- a self-morphing cake during reentry is a little bit more complex but not out of the question (presumably if we used nanotech to get the cake up there we can use nanotech to transform the cake as its coming back down). Now, with respect to Spike's front lawn -- I think the eclair idea is just fine. They should be particularly gooey after the reentry trajectory. In Spike's case the extropic preferences bias may be waived. It does however perhaps raise another significant debate -- is Spike's front lawn most extropic as-is or after it has been subjected to a delivery from space of birthday eclairs? (And for that matter why do we need to wait for robust nanotech to deliver eclairs into space... We could take a lesson from the Iraqis or Palestinians -- mortars would be perfectly sufficient to deliver eclairs to spikes front lawn though they might not be toasted quite as well.) R. From jacques at dtext.com Sat Nov 8 18:00:37 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 19:00:37 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <3FACF774.4080902@pobox.com> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> <20031107195905.GQ3534@leitl.org> <200311080228.44940.samantha@objectent.com> <3FACF774.4080902@pobox.com> Message-ID: <16301.12101.635900.721456@localhost.localdomain> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky a ?crit (8.11.2003/09:02) : > > Samantha Atkins wrote: > > >>>9) Why is there something rather than nothing? > > > > Because you are here to ask. > > If I ask "Why are my pants on fire?" it probably means that my pants are > on fire, since, after all, if my pants were not on fire I would not be > asking the question. But this does not answer the question of *why* my > pants are on fire. Note to audience, especially British: please abstain from Freudian interpretation of this example and focus instead on Eliezer's philosophical point :-) Jacques From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 8 18:18:23 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 10:18:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar System In-Reply-To: <3FAC98DF.5040606@ramonsky.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Alex Ramonsky (and Amara(?)) wrote: > >> There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 has reached > >> the Heliopause. > >> > >> If this isn't a reason for a massive party/celebration > >> of the humans on this planet, I don't know what is.... > >> I concur. Voyager 1 was launched September 5, 1977 [1]. I was almost 21 years old at the time. I am 47 now. That satellite has been traveling and operating literally my entire adult life. > I was halfway there, dammit, is this party happening at the edge of the > universe or what? I can't afford this sort of fuel every day you know. > ...I bet you _everybody_ brings potato salad. The Far Side party is scheduled but there is a minor problem with getting Keith Henson out of Canada and whether or not Perry Metzger will attend. However given the probable date (current era + 80000 years) I am reasonably certain that potato salad will not be the major dish that people bring. So at least we are safe on that count. R. 1. http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/captions/voyager/voy06.htm From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 8 18:36:10 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 10:36:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.1.20031108102301.0325fea0@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, J Corbally wrote: > Can I get a cake now too? :) James, though I am not going to go running around looking at lots of sat images -- I am reasonably certain that when we can affordably setup cake delivery to Eugen we will be able to do so for you as well. So you may want to lobby with Natasha (or even help setup the database yourself) with respect to cake preferences. Perhaps the database should include landing preferences. Obviously the eclairs in Spike's front yard should go *SPLAT*. However the delivery of various birthday cakes could have some quite creative sound effects. So for example the delivery of Eli's cake might be announced with "XYZZY" (this is kind of a test -- if Eli never played Adventure then he may not get this...) R. From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 8 18:57:34 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 10:57:34 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000001c3a62a$2b90c110$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Robert J. Bradbury: >...when I was young I managed to > get my mother to bake me a Maraschino Cherry birthday cake... Whaddya mean "when"? You are young now. In fact you are getting younger in a sense: the ratio of your age to mine is approaching 1. > ... is Spike's front lawn most extropic as-is or > after it has been subjected to a delivery from space of birthday > eclairs? R. Hey that gives me an idea. (As Robert's posts often do.) We should have an extropic lawn contest. Or rather an extropic domicile contest, where entrants suggest ways in which their digs promote extropy. Having shelves full of cool books is a good start, but what we want are ideas and designs that promote extropian style and aesthetics, which may be considered by some unenlightened sorts as merely a subset of geek chic. Golden ratio ellipses in the lawn would count, as would voice activated light switches and automated control of appliances and such. Lets see some of that perpetual progress and dynamic optimism, expressed in our immediate personal surroundings. Websites count as part of the home in a sense, so Anders and Greg Burch are strong contestants already. One's conveyance is also a part of one's personal environment, so if one has a car that expresses extropian ideals, that counts too. Artistic sorts like Natasha and Anders could perhaps judge the aesthetics, and the hard core techies such as Robert and Damien could judge the technical merit, kinda like the figure skaters who get two scores which are then sold to the highest b... I mean *averaged* to get the final score. spike From cphoenix at best.com Sat Nov 8 19:37:58 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 14:37:58 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Physics and simulations References: <200311080625.hA86PfM29279@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FAD4616.BE9207EA@best.com> Please consider the following as stupid fun shake-up-your-brain speculation, not as actual science... Has anyone else noticed that the recent small-scale physics theories look a lot like something that could be implemented on a cellular automaton? You could read this either as a reference to Wolfram (though I haven't read his book) or to the theory that we're in a simulation. We have strings, which "just are", corresponding to cellular automaton cells. And branes, which organize the strings into universes. And I recently read in SciAm (not that I trust them--they appear to be trying to fill Omni's old niche) that our 3D experience may be a perception of an underlying 2D reality. And another article claimed that we might be in a wrap-around universe, much smaller than it appears, and with dodecahedral boundaries. (I'm not kidding, that's what it said. But as I write this, I'm having intense flashbacks to Oliver Wendell Jones of Bloom County.) If I were implementing a simulation of the universe, I wouldn't use the same level of granularity everywhere. Instead, I'd make it fine-grained around the stars, and use a coarser matrix with similar (but obviously not identical) physics between them. Dark matter? Cosmological constant? I wonder if we'll find that the Planck length is different Out There? And obviously the wrap-around universe makes sense; wrapped boundaries are common in simulations. Getting really silly now... "What the--hey, we've got a buffer overflow in this simulation." "What happened?" "Looks like something left the fine-grained area, but is communicating back into it about local conditions. It's getting all tangled up." "Weird. Is it a bug?" "I don't think so. Looks like it might be an emergent, but I haven't seen this happen before. Let's keep running it, see what else comes out. But this entanglement will screw up everything." "Do we have enough cells to extend the fine-grained area?" "I think so... let's see... yes, we can go another 10^50 steps or so." "OK, let's go for it." <> http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/1105voyager.html Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 8 19:37:29 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 11:37:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <16301.12101.635900.721456@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, JDP wrote: > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky a ?crit (8.11.2003/09:02) : > > > > Samantha Atkins wrote: > > > > >>>9) Why is there something rather than nothing? > > > > > > Because you are here to ask. > > > > If I ask "Why are my pants on fire?" it probably means that my pants are > > on fire, since, after all, if my pants were not on fire I would not be > > asking the question. But this does not answer the question of *why* my > > pants are on fire. > Commenting on this probably rates as one of the most stupid things I have ever done in my life. Wading in between Eli, Samantha and a Frenchperson (no offense Jacques I just tend to stereotype you as having strong opinions -- my potentially politically incorrect opinion). Now, with respect to the comments.... "Why are my pants on fire?" -- because your pants are on fire ninny. A sufficient number of flamable elements within your pants reached the temperature that spontaneous oxidation given the makeup of the atmosphere could occur. Pick a different molecular makeup for your pants; pick a different atmosphere. And your pants are not on fire. Why? You are in the wrong place (oxidative atmosphere) wearing the wrong clothes (flamable pants) not carrying an appropriate fire extinguisher. The question of *why* your pants are on fire is one of simple chemistry. It is the release of free energy (do a google on Gibbs Free Energy). R. From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sat Nov 8 19:50:48 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 20:50:48 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Physics and simulations In-Reply-To: <3FAD4616.BE9207EA@best.com> References: <200311080625.hA86PfM29279@tick.javien.com> <3FAD4616.BE9207EA@best.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Chris Phoenix wrote: >If I were implementing a simulation of the universe, I wouldn't use the >same level of granularity everywhere. Instead, I'd make it fine-grained >around the stars, and use a coarser matrix with similar (but obviously >not identical) physics between them. Dark matter? Cosmological >constant? I wonder if we'll find that the Planck length is different >Out There? And obviously the wrap-around universe makes sense; wrapped >boundaries are common in simulations. > >Getting really silly now... > "What the--hey, we've got a buffer overflow in this simulation." > "What happened?" > "Looks like something left the fine-grained area, but is >communicating back into it about local conditions. It's getting all >tangled up." Wasn't the Voyager 1 the spacecraft with some unexplained motion? I read some report that, after taking into account the residual solar gravity, heat dissipation, and about 10,000 known factors, the probe was accelerating a bit different than predicted. Ciao, Alfio From aperick at centurytel.net Sat Nov 8 20:17:55 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 12:17:55 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <200311080625.hA86PeM29272@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <2018768.1068322934746.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Spike wrote: >The reason they can hold their breath half an hour is related to the square-cube law. Compare your breathing rate to that of a mouse, then scale linearly up to the size of a whale. /> Bottle-nosed dolphins, and seals, require other explanations. More heme in the red blood cells, the ability to control where blood flows, heart rate, and other factors. I wonder why obese people frequently breathe twice as fast as skinny ones. Must be due to the inverse stair law. (grin) From aperick at centurytel.net Sat Nov 8 20:18:06 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 12:18:06 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 In-Reply-To: <200311080625.hA86PeM29272@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <5907635.1068322940354.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Amara wrote: >There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 has reached >the Heliopause. > >If this isn't a reason for a massive party/celebration >of the humans on this planet, I don't know what is.... I'll party with ya. From thespike at earthlink.net Sat Nov 8 20:26:49 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 14:26:49 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: Message-ID: <00cb01c3a636$a7689680$d1994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 1:37 PM > The question of *why* your pants are on fire is one of simple > chemistry. It is the release of free energy Quite so, and I think this is a clue. (The other common sense of `why' might call for the answer: `Because Robert was infuriated and set Eliezer's pants on fire with a flaming match', or some such, but that formulation is even farther from touching the original ontological enquiry.) Pants changing their electrochemical state, like every issue about the observable world, is a transform of one mass/energy/information state into another. `Why something not nothing?' is an utterly different kind of question, since it presumes that `nothing' is the name of the *thing* that could take the place of another thing, a *something* in fact. But our experience does not support this word (mis)usage, this conceptual slippage, this conjuring trick. We never experience *nothing* (as I've argued before on this list), only the absence of one thing in favor of another. When a chair burns, its hard rigidity vanishes into a small pile of ash, a quantity of dissipated heat, and gases that can't be readily seen. When ice evaporates, it seems to become... nothing. But it doesn't. True, the informational state subserving or perhaps supervening upon the water molecules has changed; perhaps one could say it has become nothing. But if so, it can reappear from nothing when the temperature drops. The question, then, looks like a cognitive optical illusion, and one that has no counterpart we can readily draw upon for analogy. Pants on fire isn't it. Why am I here rather than in another galaxy, why am I now rather than at the end of time--these are locational or deictic questions with, perhaps, anthropic answers. But being and nothingness isn't like that. It really isn't. It's *sui generis*, and blows away when you think hard about it into... nothing. Damien Broderick From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 8 22:08:23 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 14:08:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 In-Reply-To: <5907635.1068322940354.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Message-ID: <20031108220823.45706.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- aperick at centurytel.net wrote: > Amara wrote: > >There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 has reached > >the Heliopause. > > > >If this isn't a reason for a massive party/celebration > >of the humans on this planet, I don't know what is.... > > I'll party with ya. Well, I'm wondering what such a party would be called and what we would do at such an event. Since the heliopause is a halt in the solar wind, such an event would not call for much movement or activity. Perhaps a moment of silence? A sit-in? A sleep-over? A Big Chill? ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From reason at exratio.com Sat Nov 8 22:23:42 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 14:23:42 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] suggestions sought: immortality book Message-ID: A group of us at the Immortality Institute (http://www.imminst.org) are putting together a small book for publication early next year (tentatively titled "Practical Immortality") - basically advocacy, healthy life extension, defeating aging, plus singularitarianism/transhumanism with shades of the first half of Physics of Immortality (Tipler), constructed from existing writings. I'm pulling together a list of articles/papers for suggested inclusion, plus a list of people to solicit for short original work. I have all the usual suspects listed so far, but I'd be interested to hear your suggestions on known writers, journalists and people in the transhumanist community. Who do you think would be good to include in such a book, or is there a meaningful piece of work out there that I haven't seen yet? If you have criticisms, frame in the form of suggestions for inclusion, please :) Reason http://www.exratio.com From max at maxmore.com Sat Nov 8 22:41:37 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 16:41:37 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <00cb01c3a636$a7689680$d1994a43@texas.net> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031108163345.037efe28@mail.earthlink.net> At 02:26 PM 11/8/2003, Damien wrote: >----- Original Message ----- > >The question, then, looks like a cognitive optical illusion, and one that >has no counterpart we can readily draw upon for analogy. Pants on fire isn't >it. Why am I here rather than in another galaxy, why am I now rather than at >the end of time--these are locational or deictic questions with, perhaps, >anthropic answers. But being and nothingness isn't like that. It really >isn't. It's *sui generis*, and blows away when you think hard about it >into... nothing. Much like the question: What caused the first event? This always comes up in discussing the "cosmological argument" in philosophy of religion. Students were always puzzled at first why it was that, if you assume that there *was* a first event, it makes no sense to ask "what caused it?" "You mean: What came before the first thing to make it happen?" "Yeah, exactly." "You mean: What came before the FIRST thing to make it happen?" "Right, right." [Pregnant pause] "You mean: What came BEFORE the FIRST thing to make that FIRST thing happen?" "Yeah, yeah... oh, wait... ahhh" That's how it usually went. Max _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sat Nov 8 22:54:29 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 23:54:29 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031108163345.037efe28@mail.earthlink.net> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20031108163345.037efe28@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Max More wrote: >"You mean: What came before the first thing to make it happen?" It's much easier in Italian. The words for "first" ("primo") and "before" ("prima") are almost the same, and it happens that the word "first", gender-adjusted for "thing", becames "prima" too. So, if you try to utter the previous sentence, the contradiction will hit you full force. It's a pity that, with "what happens after the last event", it doesn't work in the same way... Ciao, Alfio From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 8 23:26:12 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 10:26:12 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal References: <200311080725.hA87Pr214237@finney.org> Message-ID: <004c01c3a64f$b2882580$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> [forked thread as this interjection is off-topic] Hal Finney writes: > I believe (sic) that ordinary air, if compressed within the lungs, > will dissolve to a greater degree in the blood, so the bends are > possible even if you don't breathe compressed air. Why do you use the word *believe* here Hal instead of a clear alternative? Indeed why do you proclaim you *believe* anything? Is your use of the word *belief* an example of an otherwise good brain farting? Did you get infected by the *belief* meme one day when your resistance was down and have you been carrying it around propagating it unconsciously like a memetic Hep. C virus or do you in fact think it is the best way of expressing exactly what you wanted to say? Open the pod door please Hal - to consider your use of the *belief* word and thereby propagating it, and to let the stink out. Regards - for you but not for brain-farting, Brett From scerir at libero.it Sun Nov 9 00:26:01 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 01:26:01 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie><01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001><000e01c3a582$5b3f9150$5db21b97@administxl09yj> <02ed01c3a61c$13e1dc10$26165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <000601c3a658$0e816600$f0c7fea9@scerir> [Dirac] "Each photon then interferes only with itself." "Interference between two different photons can never occur." [John K Clark] Well, if you fire a bunch of photons at 2 slits you get the same pattern if you send them one at a time as you do if you send them all at once; the only difference is the pattern takes longer to form. If they interfered with each other you'd think there would be a difference. [me] The reason why I wrote that Dirac's second statement is wrong is simple. There are dozens of experiments showing the two-independent-photon (so called second-order)interference. In example this one: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0208174 Of course the condition for the interference is always the same: indistinguishability. That is to say: no possiblity of knowing which photon came from which source. The first statement by Dirac seems also wrong to many authors (Glauber i.e.) because it is very difficult - within the QM statistical interpretation, where are just particles and probabilities - to understand what kind of *physical* self-interference may happen. In any case this self-interference is almost unobservable in a single (one) photon event. You can just infere, or deduce, something like that (maybe using the Mach-Zehnder interferometer?). But you cannot prove, or show, directly, self-interference or, in general, non locality, with a single, individual photon. So, to me, that self-interference is just a beautiful koan, like the sound of one hand clapping. A propos, there are also weird two-slit esperiments in which a light beam is divided by a (random) shutter in such a way that the two slits are never open *simultaneously*. Nevertheless you get the interference. Consider a diaphragm, with two slits, slit 1 and slit 2. Each of these slits can be opened, or closed, by a shutter connected with a separate counter. A weak alpha-particle emitter is placed between the two counters. Imagine that, in the beginning of the experiment, both slits are closed. If an alpha-particle strikes one of the counters, the slit connected with this counter is opened, and the counters cease to operate, and a light-source is turned on, in front of the diaphragm, and this light-source illuminate a photographic plate placed behind the diaphragm. Following qm rules, we can write psi = 1/sqrt2 (psi_1 + psi_2) where psi_1 is the wavefunction describing the system when the slit 1 is open (psi_2 when the slit 2 is open). Thus, from the theory, we get the usual interference pattern, on the photographic plate behind the diaphragm. But if we keep our eyes opened, and we observe which slit is open (slit 1, or slit 2) then, in accordance with the 'complementarity' principle, and the 'projection' postulate, a reduction takes place, and no interference pattern appears on the plate. The above interesting 'gedanken' experiment is due to L. Janossy, and K. Nagy, [Annalen der Physik, 17, (1956), 115-121]. Btw, Janossy and Nagy thought it was possible to perform such an experiment, but they also thought it was impossible to get that interference. After useful considerations by Leonard Mandel [J. Opt. Soc. Amer., 49, (1959), 931] at last R.M. Sillitto and Catherine Wykes [Physics Letters, 39-A-4, (1972), 333] performed the Janossy and Nagy experiment and found a marvelous interference when just one photon was present in their interferometer, at a time, and when their electro-optic (not random) shutter was switched several times during the time-travel of each photon. In terms of photons the condition for interference is that the two paths lead to the same cell of phase space, so that the path of each photon is intrinsically indeterminate (the usual 'welcher weg' issue). Of course, the shutter (random or not) must switch in a time which is less than the uncertainty in the time arrival of the photon. [John K Clark] But the transition is never smooth, in the 2 slit experiment the photons act like waves until they hit the photographic plate, then they don't produce a smudge at you'd expect a wave to do, they make a point as you'd expect a particle to do. [me] The notion of the *smooth* transition within the wave-particle duality or complementarity (in deeper terms: localization and superposition are complementary) may be quantified by the inequality V^2 + K^2 = 1, relating the fringe visibility V, and the path knowledge K. This inequality is verified in many different experiments. (And suggests a limited, finite amount of information ...). An excellent gedanken experiment was presented by Zurek (and also Wootters?) this way | | | s d | | d | | there is a single slit and then a double slit, but their axes are not in line, so you can calculate that 99 per cent of the photons passing through the single slit also pass through the upper slit (in the two-slit apparatus). Still you get a little interference. Now I must stop, it is too late here :-) From scerir at libero.it Sun Nov 9 00:48:27 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 01:48:27 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <00cb01c3a636$a7689680$d1994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <001101c3a65b$309f8020$f0c7fea9@scerir> > The question, then, looks like a cognitive optical illusion, and one that > has no counterpart we can readily draw upon for analogy. [...] > Damien Broderick There is a similar (???) problems now in physics. There are effects involving a probability > 0 There are - it seems so - effects involving a probability < 0 (negative!). (Well, Feynman started this thread). From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 9 00:59:01 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 16:59:01 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 In-Reply-To: <20031108220823.45706.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a65c$aa43fbd0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > Amara wrote: > > >There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 has reached > > >the Heliopause. > > > > > Well, I'm wondering what such a party would be called and > what we would do at such an event. ...Perhaps a > moment of silence? Mike Lorrey We would pray for a moment of pause. {8^D spike From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 9 01:05:33 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 17:05:33 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal In-Reply-To: <004c01c3a64f$b2882580$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > Hal Finney writes: > > > I believe (sic) that ordinary air, if compressed within the lungs, > > will dissolve to a greater degree in the blood, so the bends are > > possible even if you don't breathe compressed air. Altho there would be *some* notrogen dissolved from the lungs of the diving whale, it isn't enough to produce either the bends or narcosis. > Why do you use the word *believe* here Hal instead of a clear > alternative?... to consider your use of the > *belief* word and thereby propagating it, and to let the stink out. > > Regards - for you but not for brain-farting, > Brett Brett, I don't get this. No need to explain, I just don't get it. spike From sentience at pobox.com Sun Nov 9 01:49:41 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 20:49:41 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <00cb01c3a636$a7689680$d1994a43@texas.net> References: <00cb01c3a636$a7689680$d1994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <3FAD9D35.3070102@pobox.com> > Why is there something instead of nothing? "I don't know" is an acceptable answer here. I can add things like... "but I strongly suspect it's a wrong question, because I run into paradoxes when I try to analyze it" or "Are you sure there *is* something instead of nothing?" or "Maybe if I fully answer 'Why do people think there is something instead of nothing?' the question will go away." Nonetheless, "I don't know" is an acceptable answer, and it remains my answer for the moment. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From sentience at pobox.com Sun Nov 9 02:09:35 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 21:09:35 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <02ed01c3a61c$13e1dc10$26165e0c@hal2001> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie><01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> <000e01c3a582$5b3f9150$5db21b97@administxl09yj> <02ed01c3a61c$13e1dc10$26165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <3FADA1DF.6040207@pobox.com> John K Clark wrote: > P.A.M. Dirac Wrote in Principles of Quantum Mechanics: > > "Each photon then interferes only with itself. Interference > between two different photons can never occur." I don't know whether Dirac said this, but this can't possibly be right. There is no such thing as a *particular* photon, any more than there is a *particular* dollar in an electronic bank account. If photon 1 goes to A and photon 2 goes to B, it is exactly the same point in configuration space as if photon 2 goes to A and photon 1 goes to B, and we add the complex amplitudes. The universe simply does not distinguish between photon 1 and photon 2; the universe's bookkeeping just tracks the final state "photon at A, photon at B". All of quantum mechanics is set up to operate on configuration spaces, not particles, and cannot be factorized into particles. "Particles" are just a way of doing bookkeeping on the connectivity of the configuration space. We know from the laws of physics that, regardless of what our brains might like to think, there is no such thing as the "same" photon. The probability of physics someday discovering a way to distinguish between the two photons is even less than the probability of physics someday discovering a way to make the photons go faster than c; it would even more strongly violate the fundamental way that reality seems to be structured. If Dirac said this, he can't possibly have meant what the sentence seems to say. Perhaps he was talking about some specific experimental setup. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 9 02:21:56 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 18:21:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Friendster No Like YABB (& v/v) Message-ID: <20031109022156.18492.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> I've noticed a curious bug when I've got two IE windows open, one on any YABB bbs/forum site, and the other on any Friendster page: images will not load in either window, and this sometimes carrys over to other sites seen in other windows. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 02:26:28 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 13:26:28 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM References: <000001c3a4e3$02a84720$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <00ef01c3a668$e1a80380$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Spike wrote (in the thread "prayers and healing") > ....I am a former member of a cult that refuses to > acknowledge the righteousness of anyone outside the > enlightened minority (with the curious exception of Albert > Schweitzer). The more extreme members of that sect > would argue that having the right ism matters. One can hardly live intelligently in the world without at some time or other experiencing the embarrassment and the inconvenience of being judged by association as sharing the views (including the erroneous views - not to mention the behaviours) of one's friends. The world can be divided into two types of people. Those that divide the world into two types of people and those that don't (and those that don't do - they just don't realise that they do). One that is alive necessarily perceives oneself as a work in progress. Because life is movement and change whereas stasis is death. One seldom wants others to fully label one as being contained in an ism but one necessarily reduces others to isms or stereotypes of varying levels of granularity because one can only experience the other from outside and can only know the other as a type of more or less detail and vividness. Even a loved other is an informal ism (an apprehended set of 1 although one does not formally bother to turn that other into an ism with language because the others *name* is enough to map them for one). To Adam (metaphorical), Eve was Eve, there was no other Eve so there was no need for Eve-ism. But as Adam was not Eve and as Adam had other things on his mind besides Eve, including Adam, Adam did not perceive Eve as richly as Eve perceived Eve. As soon as Adam had to deal with others other than Eve, others (the concept of otherS) had meaning. OtherS are isms to one, they are isms separately but they are also isms collectively - they are the ism (the set) of all others. The set of non-selves that one cannot have full access too and which therefore present to one as types. Now no-one likes to be *just* a type to others (even though they are necessarily just types of less or more detail to one) so one does not like to be thought of as encased in an ism of someone else's construction because one knows that that other's construction of one, and not the full vivid reality of one will be the one with which that other will attempt to interact. I understand this now. I understand why I do not want to be an ism to others. And I understand why others do not want to be an ism to me. Too bad. Interestingly though I can look back on my life and on my progress through certain stages and see even myself as having moved through time and space and in that movement to have been usefully classifiable to the present me as having been in an ism of some form or another. Born into a catholic family I was almost enthralled to catholicism, but I escaped as it wasn't big enough for me. Later I had states of mind that for an instant or longer might have been considered to be agnosticism as I questioned theism and found it wanting of any form of validation and then atheism as I realized that non-belief in God was the pragmatic position with which to proceed. I might have stayed an agnostic were it not for my need to be pragmatic and to live in the world. Because I was surrounded by theists I became by necessity to create living and mental working space for myself an atheist (and only learned later to my surprise that others like me existed). Yet atheism is not a philosophy of life it is a minority standpoint on one issue alone and it is not even an important issue. I needed more of a philosophy for life than atheism and I found in the writing of others such as Voltaire the notion of humans being the highest and indeed only source of rich interaction and assistance for each other and I became a humanist and practiced humanism in my thinking. I wanted to cooperate with other humans to recapture what I had lost when I had had to abandoned theism. I wanted as Voltaire did to both 'cultivate the garden' with confederates and to 'crush the infamous things'. The pettinesses. The meanness of spirit and of mind both in myself and in others. I do not want to crush others. I learnt (or perhaps rather refined) philosophy and embraced scepticism as the means of practicing discovery and employing the scientific method and rationalism as my charter for working with others and understanding the world. Rationalism was also my means of dealing with the world, not because everything had to be rational but because nothing was allowed to be irrational. Irrationality was a mind crime against myself. Emotions are a-rational. I do not *believe* in compassionate love - I know it. I became a humanist (not because humanism encapsulated all that I was but because I found I wanted to be around others and those others I wanted to be around had in common the humanist outlook). Then later I found I did not want to be around all those who seemed to be classified by others as practicing humanism because I was embarrassed at the stupidity and baseness of some humanists. I had no illusion that I was beyond stupidity or baseness myself I knew I was not, but whilst I could work on my own errors and correct them, I could do little it seemed about the errors of other humanists and I could do nothing about the human tendency to group others into two types of people. Nothing except make it harder for them to miss-classify me. Nothing except work against the other's notion that I was stuck completely in their formal ism they had constructed for me. I found I did not want to be a humanist if so many humanists or practisers of humanism talked nonsense and behaved badly as I did not want to assist still others who were not humanists to classify me as a humanist or classify me as an ism. I wanted to proclaim no ism. I was willing to be Brett Paatsch and to know that for others that would be an informal ism just as every other is to me an informal ism, a set of 1. Humanism was something I messed about with for a while. But had to put behind me because that boat contained too many fools. Nicer fools - a better class of fools in some dimensions than those I had found in other isms but fools nonetheless. That boat still had *believers* in it. There was also other problems too - human is too broad a term. A cancer cell in a human is a *human* cancer cell. I cannot endorse all forms of human life that being the facts. And humanists tend to talk of humans as the key thing. It ain't. Personhood may be the key thing for persons. But person-ism isn't going to cut it for me either. What joy to find on the internet groups of transhumans and extropians like armies-of-one rationalist angels. The transhumans -with the sense to see and make the case that human-ness was not a static thing. That it was a staging post along the way to something else. Extropy the opposite of entropy also seemed good. And it seemed prudent that the stalwarts of extropy especially Max who wrote about Pan-critical rationalism were smart enough to be on-guard against extropy becoming an ism. Of course ism-hood is not something one wisely puts voluntarily on oneself ever it is a label that others put on one or one's affiliate groups so as to better handle (intellectually and *politically*) one or one's affiliate group. So there was wisdom in *trying* to not be an ism. But the attempt is not working. But dammit now I find that the damned "believing" meme is invading here too. If it persists I may have to start wearing a tee-shirt saying I am not a transhumanist and am not an extropian (despite greatly enjoying their company) and the reason why I am not is because some who are likely to be percieved as such are still propagating the believing anti-reasoning meme and I don't want to be classified by association with their practices. Nor do I want to found a new group called the "a-believers" because that would be as narrow a philosophy of life as a-theism. Not everyone practices believing within these groups but the ones that do bring the damn meme in the door with them and pass it around without being aware of it. One may be tolerant of brain-farts like believing when the rest of the world stops believing themselves and one with them to death. This does not look imminent to me. All the big problems are still going under the radar cloaked in belief. There is no escaping the tyranny of the believing meme in democracies where believers and non-believers both vote. One might make a fortune not-believing but the damned believers (the meme they are enthralled to more than them) would just take it as one would have nowhere on the planet to live free from them believing they were entitled to take it from one. Ergo, the belief meme must be met head on. Regards, Brett [pan-critical non-believer - who noted the last word in Matrix Revolutions - a modern myth - with disgust] From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 9 02:29:30 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 18:29:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <3FADA1DF.6040207@pobox.com> Message-ID: <20031109022930.19791.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote: > John K Clark wrote: > > > P.A.M. Dirac Wrote in Principles of Quantum Mechanics: > > > > "Each photon then interferes only with itself. Interference > > between two different photons can never occur." > > I don't know whether Dirac said this, but this can't possibly be > right. > There is no such thing as a *particular* photon, any more than there > is a > *particular* dollar in an electronic bank account. Oh, I don't know. Considering how Feynman showed that particle equations work just as fine backward in time as forward, I like to imagine that there is just one photon in the universe, the proverbial cosmic christmas fruit bread, going back and forth and creating everything, playing the role of every particle and wave packet in existence. The whole "God is light" routine.... ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 9 02:36:57 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 18:36:57 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM In-Reply-To: <00ef01c3a668$e1a80380$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000001c3a66a$583972d0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Brett Paatsch > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM > > To Adam (metaphorical), Eve was Eve, there was no other > Eve so there was no need for Eve-ism... What did Adam say the first time he saw Eve? "You better stand back, Honey, I don't know how big this thing is going to get." {8^D > ...But dammit now I find that the damned "believing" meme is invading > here too... Ja, but all I mean when I say "I believe" is that I *think* this comment or notion is true, but I might be wrong and so I am open to further evidence and reasoning to the contrary. Hmmm, perhaps you have a point there Brett, for this definition of "I believe" is almost exactly opposite to the religious definition of "I believe". spike From etheric at comcast.net Sun Nov 9 02:41:22 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 18:41:22 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <00cb01c3a636$a7689680$d1994a43@texas.net> <3FAD9D35.3070102@pobox.com> Message-ID: <006601c3a66a$f67801f0$0200a8c0@etheric> Ok Ill try, I'm sure the resident physicists will butcher this, I apologize in advance Why is there something instead of nothing, is because in the natural world, the entire idea of nothing as such is illusory, there are only something(s), it is like asking what is ten miles north of the north pole. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" To: "Damien Broderick" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 5:49 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > Why is there something instead of nothing? > > "I don't know" is an acceptable answer here. > > I can add things like... "but I strongly suspect it's a wrong question, > because I run into paradoxes when I try to analyze it" or "Are you sure > there *is* something instead of nothing?" or "Maybe if I fully answer 'Why > do people think there is something instead of nothing?' the question will > go away." > > Nonetheless, "I don't know" is an acceptable answer, and it remains my > answer for the moment. > > -- > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From riel at surriel.com Sun Nov 9 02:44:21 2003 From: riel at surriel.com (Rik van Riel) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 21:44:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SPAM (was Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley) In-Reply-To: References: <015f01c3a4cb$478c4fc0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: On Fri, 7 Nov 2003 kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > I don't think all unsolicited email advertisements should be banned. The > important part is getting the subject lines correct. If these were > correct, I could easily filter out what I didn;t want. 1) Spam volume is already 70% of mail on many mail servers, encouraging spam is bound to make the S/N ratio of email so low that the medium by itself is next to useless. 2) If you filtered out all the well behaved advertisements, which you would need in order to read your mail, you'd still have the badly behaving ones you have today. > I don;t quite understand everything about how the headers work, but it > seems to me that there is a layer missing in the protocols for email. > Maybe an added layer that would seperate all email into a few categories > such as PERSONAL, BUSINESS, AND ADVERTISEMENT would be a good idea. See last year's april fools day RFC, the one about the Evil bit in IP packets. You don't truly believe that people will only send you the mail in the way you want it to be sent, do you? If you do, your belief conflicts with your mailbox ... cheers, Rik -- "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 9 02:48:02 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 18:48:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM In-Reply-To: <000001c3a66a$583972d0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031109024802.24911.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- Spike wrote: > > > Brett Paatsch > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM > > > > To Adam (metaphorical), Eve was Eve, there was no other > > Eve so there was no need for Eve-ism... > > What did Adam say the first time he saw Eve? > "You better stand back, Honey, I don't know > how big this thing is going to get." Hey, now, Adam was just showing Eve he was an ism of one, too. > > {8^D > > > ...But dammit now I find that the damned "believing" meme is > invading > > here too... > > > Ja, but all I mean when I say "I believe" is that > I *think* this comment or notion is true, but I might > be wrong and so I am open to further evidence and > reasoning to the contrary. Hmmm, perhaps you have > a point there Brett, for this definition of "I believe" > is almost exactly opposite to the religious definition > of "I believe". A product of modern rationality. "Belief" is taken as a less valid, an unverified, guess or leap of faith, i.e. a working hypothesis but not to be taken as a rule and open to further evidence and cross examination, as opposed to "knowing". Perhaps there needs to be a distinctive term differentiating testable beliefs versus untestable beliefs (perhaps 'guess' vs 'hope'???) ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From riel at surriel.com Sun Nov 9 02:49:21 2003 From: riel at surriel.com (Rik van Riel) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 21:49:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 6 Nov 2003 LaurenceofBerk at aol.com wrote: > Extropians, who are, as far as I can tell from the web, libertarians > or even Ayn Randians, are no help in ridding the cyberworld of spam. > Spam is generated by corporations and can be restricted only through > goverment action. [snip to contradiction part #2] > The delusion, however, comes from supposing that oppressive power comes > from government. At certain times and places yes. But not in 21st > century America. > ... from the corporate world, which also finances our politics. All in all, a good troll ... too bad about the contradiction. ;) Still, I wonder what "the real power lies with corporations" means for libertarian beliefs. Rik -- "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 9 02:53:45 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 18:53:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <006601c3a66a$f67801f0$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <20031109025345.54453.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> An excellent answer, Coyote. There is no real absolute zero, there is no true vacuum, there is no nothingness. Zero is a modern fiction to deal with double entry book-keeping and avoiding the tax man. Zero and God are equally fictitious. --- "R.Coyote" wrote: > Ok Ill try, I'm sure the resident physicists will butcher this, I > apologize > in advance > > Why is there something instead of nothing, is because in the natural > world, > the entire idea of nothing as such is illusory, there are only > something(s), it is like asking what is ten miles north of the north > pole. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > To: "Damien Broderick" ; "ExI chat list" > > Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 5:49 PM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > > > Why is there something instead of nothing? > > > > "I don't know" is an acceptable answer here. > > > > I can add things like... "but I strongly suspect it's a wrong > question, > > because I run into paradoxes when I try to analyze it" or "Are you > sure > > there *is* something instead of nothing?" or "Maybe if I fully > answer 'Why > > do people think there is something instead of nothing?' the > question will > > go away." > > > > Nonetheless, "I don't know" is an acceptable answer, and it remains > my > > answer for the moment. > > > > -- > > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 03:02:17 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 14:02:17 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Spike writes: > > > > Hal Finney writes: > > > > > I believe (sic) that ordinary air, if compressed within the lungs, > > > will dissolve to a greater degree in the blood, so the bends are > > > possible even if you don't breathe compressed air. > > Altho there would be *some* notrogen dissolved from the > lungs of the diving whale, it isn't enough to produce > either the bends or narcosis. > > > Why do you use the word *believe* here Hal instead of a clear > > alternative?... to consider your use of the > > *belief* word and thereby propagating it, and to let the stink out. > > > > Regards - for you but not for brain-farting, > > Brett > > Brett, I don't get this. No need > to explain, I just don't get it. No need not to get it Spike. My point is that *believe* is a bad word to use and that there are real consequences of using (and by using propagating) it when there are any number of better ones that more clearly map to a valid referent. I did make a mistake changing the word *believe* to *belief* above it should have been *believe* all the way through for clarity. However the words *believe* and *belief* would almost certainly derive from the same root. http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=belief Shows words (synonyms) that are faith based mixed in with words that are theory or science based. Memetically this is a *very* unfortunate coupling. By using the word belief listeners can get the impression that science and theory are pretty much the same as faith-based worldviews. If anyone can find the etymology of the word "belief" or "believe" I would be interested. I am also interested in seeing if non-English and non-Slavic languages also have a word that fills the same space as "belief". I am wondering if at some point the religion memeset jumped over to mix itself in with the scientific/rational one or if rather scientists in using words to talk to each other did not fully appreciate the need to get right away from words like belief that map to uncertain referents and have religious faith-based connotations. Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 03:38:22 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 14:38:22 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM References: <000001c3a66a$583972d0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <010701c3a672$ece02160$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Spike writes: > > Brett Paatsch > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM > > ....all I mean when I say "I believe" is that > I *think* this comment or notion is true, but I might > be wrong and so I am open to further evidence and > reasoning to the contrary. Hmmm, perhaps you have > a point there Brett, for this definition of "I believe" > is almost exactly opposite to the religious definition > of "I believe". The message a rational person in a democracy sends when they choose or rather fail not to choose the words *I believe* is not what the majority of voting proles who are mostly believers of the other sort hear. Guess who is setting the policy in free open western societies where one person roughly translates to one vote Spike? It is *real* hard to pursuade majorities in democracies with hard arguments at the best of times because complexity makes them drowsy. Every bit of advantage that can be gained by differentiating ourselves (as reasoners) from the non-reasoners in a political process needs to be seized upon. Otherwise guess what bud, the proles vote not on what you *think you said* but on what they *think they heard* and they think they heard "beliefs-on-one-hand" vs "beliefs-on-the -other hand" and maybe you'll hear them mumbling "what was all that guff about therapeutic cloning or a persons right- to-use-cryonics-in-a-free-society-if-it-harms-no-one-else again - actually don't worry about it, it probably wasn't important. By the way senator did you hear that great joke about what Adam said to Eve? I luv telling them jokes to my Pastor!". Regards, Brett From mbb386 at main.nc.us Sun Nov 9 03:51:50 2003 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 22:51:50 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal In-Reply-To: <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Brett Paatsch wrote: > > If anyone can find the etymology of the word "belief" or > "believe" I would be interested. My Webster's Seventh New Collegiate says: believe [ME beleven, fr. OE belefen fr. be- + lyfan, lefan "to alllow", "believe"; akin to OHG gilouben "to believe", OE leof "dear" - more at "love"] ...which is certainly not what I expected! Sorta seems like it's turning into "belove"! And that's for sure irrational. I pretty much understand where you're coming from with the "I believe" thing; I often have a similar reaction to "I feel". :))) How about "opine"? Regards, MB From ABlainey at aol.com Sun Nov 9 03:55:26 2003 From: ABlainey at aol.com (ABlainey at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 22:55:26 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] VR-BAR: Harv's back! Message-ID: <1e0.12f72d2c.2cdf14ae@aol.com> In a message dated 07/11/2003 05:36:41 GMT Daylight Time, mail at harveynewstrom.com writes: > > Welcome back Harvey, That is some serious list of credentials you > > have amassed. Congrats on the latest. > > Thanks. I am seriously interested in security. I am analyzing security as > an engineering problem with requirements, standards, principles, > methodology, and verification. Most security consultants don't have the > scientific or engineering background to do more than be consumers of other > people's security products. I also am trying to cover all the different > kinds of security. Creating security, auditing security, managing security, > assessing security, consulting about security, and operating security are > different skills. > > What is interesting to me is that security is not an end in itself. It is a > tool that can be used for any endeavor, just like logic, the scientific > method, etc. Security measures a bunch of different attributes, how well > they are implemented, the risk of failure, and improvement methods for > success. There are standard requirements for security, and a bunch of > different security attributes that can be analyzed and addressed separately. > > I think these security methods can be applied to transhumanist endeavors, > such as developing AI, controlling nanotechnology, mitigating dangerous > technologies, evaluating knowledge accuracy, etc. I plan to further > investigate these ideas in the future. Getting credentials in different > types of security is just the first step. > > -- All very good stuff. Its nice to see someone that takes all aspects of security seriously, as I do myself. It is most definitely an area which most people see as not much more than a necessary evil. Even with events over the last couple of years and a greater general awareness of security needs, both physical and electronic. there is still an underlying tone of ambivalence and half arsed efforts when it comes to security issues. I wouldn't mind getting a few credentials and seriously getting into the field myself. Alex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 04:33:46 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 15:33:46 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Politics and possessing the right ISM References: <20031109024802.24911.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <013401c3a67a$aa625da0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Mike writes: > --- Spike wrote: >> > > Ja, but all I mean when I say "I believe" is that > > I *think* this comment or notion is true, but I might > > be wrong and so I am open to further evidence and > > reasoning to the contrary. Hmmm, perhaps you have > > a point there Brett, for this definition of "I believe" > > is almost exactly opposite to the religious definition > > of "I believe". > > A product of modern rationality. "Belief" is taken as a less > valid, an unverified, guess or leap of faith, i.e. a working > hypothesis but not to be taken as a rule and open to further > evidence and cross examination, as opposed to "knowing". Thats dangerous thinking Mike. I accept that that is how you see or hear the word *belief* because you are a rationalist. But that doesn't mean that it how most people "hear" it. They "hear" it in the sense that has meaning for them, not in the sense that has best meaning for you. > > Perhaps there needs to be a distinctive term differentiating testable > beliefs versus untestable beliefs (perhaps 'guess' vs 'hope'???) Big mistake. There is nothing a rational person needs to use the word *believe* for. [Except to talk about the word as a meme and a danger] There are *heaps* of alternatives that a rational person can use. Look in any dictionary or thesarus. It is a big mistake to keep using belief or to try and modify it, or sort out good beliefs from bad beliefs because that just suggests it sometimes maps to a valid referent. It doesn't. It doesn't because the person *using* it cannot be sure that others *hearing* it will get the meaning that it was intended to have when they used it. And belief is always a word that is weilded with strong emotive weigth attached in precisely those places where clear thinking would do us most good and the lack of it can do us most harm. ie. In government (where policy is formed) and in the courts where we may find ourselves judged by our "peers" who are by overwhelming majority "believers" in bulldust. It is far better to not use the word at all and thereby not encourage it. We have other words for our valid referents we should use them and leave the believe word to the bunnies we want to see label themselves with their language. I would love to live in a world where politicians would dare not use the words "I believe" because they would be hooted down for substiution a prejudice for a judgement. A spin trick for proper analysis. We are not even close to that yet though. Indeed it is my contention that we may be killed by the prevalence of the belief meme in our parliaments, and in our courts. We may be literally "believed" to death. Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 04:38:56 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 15:38:56 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031109025345.54453.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <014001c3a67b$63303dc0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Mike Lorrey writes: > ... There is no real absolute zero, there is no true vacuum, there is > no nothingness. Zero is a modern fiction to deal with double entry > book-keeping and avoiding the tax man. Mike what about in coordinate geometry (for one example). What is the midpoint between -1 and +1 ? What have you got against coordinate geometry? What about arithmetic? If you have $1 and you give it or exchange it for $1 worth of product form me how many dollars do you have left? Regards, Brett From etheric at comcast.net Sun Nov 9 04:51:30 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 20:51:30 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031109025345.54453.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> <014001c3a67b$63303dc0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <00a901c3a67d$245e52b0$0200a8c0@etheric> Zero is not nothingness != ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 8:38 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > Mike Lorrey writes: > > > ... There is no real absolute zero, there is no true vacuum, there is > > no nothingness. Zero is a modern fiction to deal with double entry > > book-keeping and avoiding the tax man. > > Mike what about in coordinate geometry (for one example). What is > the midpoint between -1 and +1 ? What have you got against > coordinate geometry? > > What about arithmetic? If you have $1 and you give it or exchange it > for $1 worth of product form me how many dollars do you have left? > > Regards, > Brett > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From ABlainey at aol.com Sun Nov 9 04:52:41 2003 From: ABlainey at aol.com (ABlainey at aol.com) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 23:52:41 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Stonehenge & Unsolved Riddles was:(Solved & Unsolve Message-ID: <11f.27542a61.2cdf2219@aol.com> On the issue of unsolved mysteries. A couple of days ago I drove past Stonehenge while going to a meeting. So as the meeting finished mid afternoon I decided that I would stop on the way home and have a quick wander around the old (Old,OLd...OLD) place and see it with more mature eyes than those of a Six year old. Which was when I first saw it. I was amazed by the place, not just for the scale of the stones, which are Damn big, but dwarfed by the size of virtually any modern building. What impressed me so much was the obvious signs of earthworks around the site. Which spread out into the salisbury plains as far as the eye can see. There are Barrows (small man made hills and burial mounds), concentric rings of ditches and ridges and a large flat path that leads about half a mile to a man made plateau. Which had symmetrically placed areas each side which appeared to be chalk drawings cut into the surrounding hillsides. These chalk drawings interested me as they almost look like writing in Arabic or hebrew and do not portray images of horses, etc. Which is usual for this type of ancient artform. While walking around. I was using a handheld narrator device that is given to each visitor. A very handy thing that has numbered buttons which you press in correspondence to markers on the ground, which are dotted around the site. It delivers a recorded message that tells you all about what you are looking at in that location. 'Henge means hanging stones, yada yada...Made of this, etc.' After completing the narrated tour I was overcome by the overwhelming feeling that 99% of the information that I had heard and the stated facts were nothing more than complete guesswork. We have no idea who built Stonehenge, Why or When. All we do know is the few small facts that are available. Those being the physical facts of the site itself. The largest stone weighs roughly 45 tons and is about 6 meters high (9 meters total length as most people forget that one third of it is buried. That is a fairly big piece of rock that has been brought about 100miles from Wales by unknown methods. The narration tells of how the site was constructed by 20,000 or so workers. Interesting, Am I right in thinking that at the highest point of roman occupation. London had a population of about 1,000 people? Baring in mind that the Romans didn't appear until several millennia after Stonehenge was allegedly built. What would the whole population of England have been when it was built? I would imagine that finding 20,000 people and getting them all in one place would have been a fantastic achievement in itself. Let alone get them to carry 45 ton rocks 100miles across the country and then built Stonehenge and all the earthworks around it. Even if the quantity of people is diluted by time. this is still a mammoth achievement and one we would be very hard pressed to achieve today. So when it comes to the mysteries of history. I think that Stonehenge has to rank pretty damn high on the board. From samantha at objectent.com Sun Nov 9 06:18:01 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 23:18:01 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <3FACF774.4080902@pobox.com> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <200311080228.44940.samantha@objectent.com> <3FACF774.4080902@pobox.com> Message-ID: <200311082218.01452.samantha@objectent.com> On Saturday 08 November 2003 06:02, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Samantha Atkins wrote: > >>>9) Why is there something rather than nothing? > > > > Because you are here to ask. > > If I ask "Why are my pants on fire?" it probably means that my pants are > on fire, since, after all, if my pants were not on fire I would not be > asking the question. But this does not answer the question of *why* my > pants are on fire. It is a trite more subtle than that. From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 9 06:32:16 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 22:32:16 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess again In-Reply-To: <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> For those who follow these sorts of things, silicon and carbon are going to slug it out once more over the chess board starting Tuesday 11 November as Kasparov takes on Fritz, a commercially available chess program running on an ordinary 2.4GHz computer. How it thrills me to realize I can attach the adjective "ordinary" to such a device, to know that such ordinary devices can be had by average proles such as me for a couple days wages from an average paying job such as mine. {8-] Perception management on the part of IBM after the Kasparov-Deep Blue match of 1997 has caused many people to believe that chess computers are currently stronger than the best humans, however since 1999, there have been 7 matches between computers and human players with Elo ratings over 2700 (the top 10 to 15 human players). Remarkably all seven of these matches have ended in a tie score. These seven matches represent a total of 49 games. The fact that the top humans and computers are dead even over all that time suggest that the humans are getting better at exactly the same rate as the top chess software. Perhaps someone can suggest a different explanation for the even score since 1999. A decisive outcome in next week's match for either side would surely be both exciting and puzzling. Of course, a sense of solidarity with my own kind leads me to cheer on the silicon player, but I will be eagerly anticipating the match anyway, and will report its progress Wednesday when I return from a business trip. For anyone wishing to place bets, I understand that there are opportunities available to do so on the web. This in itself is a sign of the strange and wonderful times in which we are fortunate enough to live. spike From samantha at objectent.com Sun Nov 9 06:31:47 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 23:31:47 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200311082231.47566.samantha@objectent.com> On Saturday 08 November 2003 18:49, Rik van Riel wrote: > > Still, I wonder what "the real power lies with corporations" > means for libertarian beliefs. > I worry about corporate power only when political power exists in sufficient concentrations to be a tempting and even necessary target for corporate acquisition. -s From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 08:02:29 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 19:02:29 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess again References: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <017f01c3a697$d2495680$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Spike writes: > For those who follow these sorts of things, > silicon and carbon are going to slug it out > once more over the chess board starting Tuesday > 11 November as Kasparov takes on Fritz, a > commercially available chess program running > on an ordinary 2.4GHz computer. > > How it thrills me to realize I can attach > the adjective "ordinary" to such a device, to > know that such ordinary devices can be had by > average proles such as me for a couple days > wages from an average paying job such as mine. {8-] Average my foot ;-) You are living in the US and *you* have to look way to the left on the curve to find average from your position. I hope you may continue to do so for a long time yet. It *is* interesting about the draws. Regards, Brett From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 9 07:57:48 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 23:57:48 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <200311082231.47566.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > On Saturday 08 November 2003 18:49, Rik van Riel wrote: > > > > Still, I wonder what "the real power lies with corporations" > > means for libertarian beliefs. Corporations are collections of people making a living, creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and wellbeing. Corporations are our friends! If real power lies with corporations, then real power lies with people working together to create wealth, which sounds good to me. Far better this way than with real power being wielded by those who create nothing but merely redistribute the wealth that corporations create, while destroying much of that wealth in the process. This seems to me to be perfectly compatible with libertarian ideals. spike From bjk at imminst.org Sun Nov 9 08:27:38 2003 From: bjk at imminst.org (Bruce J. Klein) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 02:27:38 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Anders Sandberg - ImmInst Chat @ Noon Eastern Sunday In-Reply-To: <017f01c3a697$d2495680$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <017f01c3a697$d2495680$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20031109022257.01bec008@mail.kia.net> Chat With Anders Sandberg Founder and former chair of the Swedish Transhumanist Association, Sandberg joins ImmInst members to discuss his ideas concerning our future. CHAT: Sun Nov 9 @ *12 Noon Eastern (*Special Time) http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=67&t=1413&st=0 From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 08:44:21 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 19:44:21 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley References: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <018d01c3a69d$ac06a9e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Spike writes: > > On Saturday 08 November 2003 18:49, Rik van Riel > > wrote: > > > > > > Still, I wonder what "the real power lies with corporations" > > > means for libertarian beliefs. > > Corporations are collections of people making a living, > creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and > wellbeing. This is true is a sense and false in another. Its true how Spike sees it above but its false in that incorporation is a legal device designed to reduce accountability. Mistakes can be walked away from and perhaps repeated without wearing the full measure of accountability unless the veil of incorporation is lifted - which of course it rarely is. > Corporations are our friends! Corporations are not people. They are legal constructs. A strange choice for friends. >If real power lies with corporations, then real power lies with > people working together to create wealth, which sounds good > to me. Real power is distributed in 2003 between corporations, and democracies both of which are hopelessly blind beyond a 3 years or so horizon. Corporations work for their shareholders in a multi- national competitive context which includes taking advantage of closed societies and the disadvantages of the people therein. On the other hand democracies tend to opporate within open societies to preserve good places for those who have incorporated to actually live and to raise their families. The wealthy in the closed societies have tax havens outside their open society that they can use. Neither corporations nor democracies are all good or all evil and neither can run too long without being checked by the other. The planning cycle of corporations is lucky to be longer than 3 to 5 years as set by capital and the planning cycle of governments to get re-elected is also similarly short. > Far better this way than with real power being wielded by > those who create nothing but merely redistribute the wealth > that corporations create, while destroying much of that > wealth in the process. This seems to me to be perfectly > compatible with libertarian ideals. War is a great source of creative destruction though for organisations that only think in 3 - 5 years. It is easy to see that materials and consummables destroyed will have to be replaced. And the closed economies of open societies can replace them and keep the jobs coming for a few more years. This guarantees a sort of progress but its progress with an upper speed limit because of the planning horizon. The problem with governments and corporations both working on 3 - 5 year cycles is that progress can only happen in relatively small increments because of the strong self-fulfilling prophecy effect and planning beyond the 3 - 5 year cycle is incredible difficult to do. This is because changes in government policy make for very difficult business planning. And governments get changed by voters. A global corporation that has to plan for a change in US government or Chinese government for instance has a huge amount of uncertainty in its market projections and in calibrating its return on investment beyond 3- 5 years - so they don't try to do it. They work on 3 - 5 year cycles and try and be adaptive beyond that. Anything with a payoff beyond the 3-5 year timeframe - like molecular nanotech perhaps or medicines finds it very difficult to get a look in - not because their wouldn't be demand but because the market conditions for things that far out in terms of delivery times are almost impossible to predict. Some of the above could be wrong. I'd like to see a good economist say Robin take a crack at disputing or rebutting it though. Regards, Brett From samantha at objectent.com Sun Nov 9 10:15:54 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 03:15:54 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <200311090215.54310.samantha@objectent.com> On Saturday 08 November 2003 23:57, Spike wrote: > > On Saturday 08 November 2003 18:49, Rik van Riel wrote: > > > Still, I wonder what "the real power lies with corporations" > > > means for libertarian beliefs. > > Corporations are collections of people making a living, > creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and > wellbeing. >Corporations are our friends! Corporations supported by major state power are no one's friend, including their own. >If real power > lies with corporations, then real power lies with people > working together to create wealth, which sounds good to me. This is too simplistic. Too many corporations are about making the maximal money for their stock holders. This is NOT synonymous with actually creating wealth. It is too often extracting the maximum number of dollars for the least amount of effort and creativity. It is often about suing into oblivion anyone or any other corporation that actually dares to innovate. -s From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sun Nov 9 12:16:35 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 13:16:35 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal In-Reply-To: <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Brett Paatsch wrote: >If anyone can find the etymology of the word "belief" or >"believe" I would be interested. I am also interested in >seeing if non-English and non-Slavic languages also have >a word that fills the same space as "belief". The corresponding Italian word (and, I suspect, also in French, Spanish and other Latin-derived languages) has more or less the same multiple meanings as the English one: "I think", "I deduce", "I have faith", and so on. Ciao, Alfio From cr-yofan at mylinuxisp.com Sun Nov 9 12:38:55 2003 From: cr-yofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 06:38:55 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <200311090215.54310.samantha@objectent.com> References: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <200311090215.54310.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <13dsqvs9l57ci3hrindpvrm683qlhbcd9i@4ax.com> On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 03:15:54 -0700, you wrote >On Saturday 08 November 2003 23:57, Spike wrote: >> > On Saturday 08 November 2003 18:49, Rik van Riel wrote: >> > > Still, I wonder what "the real power lies with corporations" >> > > means for libertarian beliefs. >> >> Corporations are collections of people making a living, >> creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and >> wellbeing. > >>Corporations are our friends! > >Corporations supported by major state power are no one's friend, including >their own. > >>If real power >> lies with corporations, then real power lies with people >> working together to create wealth, which sounds good to me. > >This is too simplistic. Too many corporations are about making the maximal >money for their stock holders. This is NOT synonymous with actually creating >wealth. It is too often extracting the maximum number of dollars for the >least amount of effort and creativity. It is often about suing into >oblivion anyone or any other corporation that actually dares to innovate. > > Not only that, but the corporations are so powerful that they use the govt to shut out small time operators. Plus, they use the govt to set up social situations that decrease the power of citizens. Perfect example of course is the ongoing propaganda that keeps the USA from instituing govt-run universal health care (UHC). UHC empowers the citizen-worker. It increases mobility. As an analogy, UHC is like the recent law compelling cellular phone carriers to allow customers to keep their personal numbers when they switch carriers. Naturally, because UHC empowers the citizen, corporations dislike it. That disempowers them. >-s >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat ------------- -Randy From scerir at libero.it Sun Nov 9 16:38:36 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 17:38:36 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] humour References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY><00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000301c3a6df$ec9659a0$f0c7fea9@scerir> Brett Paatsch wrote: "If anyone can find the etymology of the word "belief" or believe" I would be interested." In two books on the discourse of "belief" published in the late '70s "Believing: An Historical Perspective" and "Faith and Belief: The Difference Between Them", the late historian of comparative religions Wilfred Cantwell Smith has demonstrated in detail that ever since the sixteenth century, "belief" has been departing from its original meaning. The etymology of "belief" is actually cognate with "belieben" (German: "to hold dear") and with "libido"(Latin). FAPP see: http://www.usatoday.com/graphics/news/gra/gnoreligion/flash.htm From jacques at dtext.com Sun Nov 9 17:03:48 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 18:03:48 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal In-Reply-To: <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <16302.29556.715292.307100@localhost.localdomain> Brett Paatsch a ?crit (9.11.2003/14:02) : > > If anyone can find the etymology of the word "belief" or > "believe" I would be interested. << In writing this piece I was pleased to learn about the etymology of the word 'belief'. As we mention in the paper, it derives from a degraded form of the Original Teutonic word 'galaubian', which means 'to hold estimable or pleasing; to be satisfied with', intensified by the addition of the prefix 'be'. Thus, etymologically, a belief is something with which one is thoroughly satisfied or much pleased. I often wonder if (and am thoroughly satisfied to hold that) this is true neurologically as well, muddying the distinction that we usually draw between belief and desire. Some of my philosophical heros argued this a long time ago: Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussion of the nature of 'a solution' fits in well with this notion, as does Charles Peirce's insistence that logic and epistemology must be grounded in aesthetics. >> http://www.ualberta.ca/~chrisw/IndexLHSFrame.html > I am also interested in > seeing if non-English and non-Slavic languages also have > a word that fills the same space as "belief". French "croire" does, yes. In fact it is even much more used. "Do you think the shop is still open? -- No, I don't think so." => "Tu crois que le magasin est encore ouvert ? -- Non, je crois pas." It comes from Latin "credere" which means to lend, to entrust with, to trust, to believe. Not the same original concept as the English one, then. To me, we indicate (and this is coherent with the Latin origin) the amount of confidence we have by saying "I believe that" instead of "I know for sure that". Which sounds fine to me, no reason to ban this word. Jacques From hibbert at mydruthers.com Sun Nov 9 18:22:59 2003 From: hibbert at mydruthers.com (Chris Hibbert) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 10:22:59 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess again In-Reply-To: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <3FAE8603.6030407@mydruthers.com> > Remarkably all seven of these matches have ended > in a tie score. These seven matches represent > a total of 49 games. The fact that the top humans > and computers are dead even over all that time > suggest that the humans are getting better at > exactly the same rate as the top chess software. > Perhaps someone can suggest a different explanation > for the even score since 1999. This makes some sense to me. I don't follow chess, but I do pay attention to serious backgammon. There are several extremely good backgammon programs these days (all available for reasonable prices if you don't mind running them on a PC.) They all seem to be based on neural nets, and have a fairly consistent style. They are able to report on their decisions on a play-by-play scale, and can give advice about particular moves. The best players are starting to come to understand, after very detailed analysis, the choices the programs are making in some non-obvious cases. They are starting to incorporate the unconventional strategies and trade-offs in their own games, and I've seen at least one book that tries to explain to mid-level players what the experts are learning about backgammon from the expert programs. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that chess players, with their long history of studying the games of other experts, are taking lessons from the grand master programs. The best human players should be able to keep up with the best computer players, except in exhaustive cases like the three piece end-game puzzle that takes 147 moves to mate. It's also not surprising to find out that perfectly played chess should usually lead to a draw. Are chess players publishing analyses of the games of the top-level programs? Chris -- It's always ourselves we find in the sea. -- E. E. Cummings http://www.ecopsychology.org/gatherings4/ Chris Hibbert hibbert at mydruthers.com http://discuss.foresight.org/~hibbert From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun Nov 9 18:27:37 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 13:27:37 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <200311090215.54310.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Samantha Atkins wrote, > This is too simplistic. Too many corporations are about > making the maximal money for their stock holders. I even doubt this sometimes. Many corporations are about swindling the stockholders and making a few criminals at the top richer. All of the money-market scandals, accounting scandals and dot-com busts are examples of corporate officers making themselves rich while maximizing losses for their corporations and stock holders. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Sun Nov 9 18:35:57 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 18:35:57 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] I believe Message-ID: <3FAE890D.5070700@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> On Sat Nov 08, 2003 09:33 pm Brett Paatsch wrote: > There is nothing a rational person needs to use the > word *believe* for. [Except to talk about the word as a meme > and a danger] There are *heaps* of alternatives that a rational > person can use. Look in any dictionary or thesaurus. > > It is a big mistake to keep using belief or to try and modify it, or > sort out good beliefs from bad beliefs because that just suggests it > sometimes maps to a valid referent. It doesn't. It doesn't because > the person *using* it cannot be sure that others *hearing* it will > get the meaning that it was intended to have when they used it. > Brett has a point here, because according to the dictionary 'believe' legally can be used in many different ways. Meaning 1) (Which Brett objects to) to follow a credo, to have a religious faith, to be a believer. Usage: "When you hear his sermons, you will be able to believe also". Meaning 2) to credit with veracity. Usage: "You cannot believe this man" "Should we believe a newspaper like the National Enquirer?". Meaning 3) to be confident about something. Usage: "I believe that my income tax form has been completed correctly". Meaning 4) to accept as true, to take to be true. Usage: "I believe his report" "He believes in mysticism" "We didn't believe his stories from the War". Meaning 5) to judge or regard, to look upon. Usage: "I believe (think) he is very smart" "I believe (judge) that he is her boyfriend" "A racist believes (considers) such people to be inferior" But, in my opinion, it is too restrictive to the English language to force 'believe' into the straitjacket of Meaning 1. A religious context would invoke Meaning 1, but in normal day-to-day conversation 'believe' is used constantly with no religious connotations at all. Although when someone says "I believe United will win the Cup" it is debatable just how much religious fervor is invoked by football supporters. ;) BillK (believing his opinion to be correct) From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sun Nov 9 18:40:31 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 13:40:31 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] FUTURE: More Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <200311082218.01452.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <004d01c3a6f0$f74ce740$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> How about some more important future riddles: Why is sushi Extropian? If I'm so damn smart, how come I'm not rich? If technology keeps getting better and better exponentially, why does my PC still crash regularly? Why don't people converge on the single correct answer more often instead of holding millions of different unsupportable belief systems? Why aren't more people interested in life-extension? Why can't all our brilliant minds working together accomplish more that what we are doing now? How do we capture all our great knowledge from all these chats and utilize them so we never have to have this conversation ever again? -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From alito at organicrobot.com Sun Nov 9 19:08:58 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:08:58 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess again In-Reply-To: <3FAE8603.6030407@mydruthers.com> References: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <3FAE8603.6030407@mydruthers.com> Message-ID: <1068404937.6305.1412.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Mon, 2003-11-10 at 04:22, Chris Hibbert wrote: > This makes some sense to me. I don't follow chess, but I do pay > attention to serious backgammon. There are several extremely good > backgammon programs these days (all available for reasonable prices if > you don't mind running them on a PC.) They all seem to be based on > neural nets, and have a fairly consistent style. They are able to > report on their decisions on a play-by-play scale, and can give advice > about particular moves. > > The best players are starting to come to understand, after very > detailed analysis, the choices the programs are making in some > non-obvious cases. They are starting to incorporate the unconventional > strategies and trade-offs in their own games, and I've seen at least > one book that tries to explain to mid-level players what the experts > are learning about backgammon from the expert programs. > > It wouldn't surprise me to hear that chess players, with their long > history of studying the games of other experts, are taking lessons from > the grand master programs. The best human players should be able to > keep up with the best computer players, except in exhaustive cases like > the three piece end-game puzzle that takes 147 moves to mate. It's > also not surprising to find out that perfectly played chess should > usually lead to a draw. > This is not happening much in chess mainly because humans cannot learn to see 8-9 moves ahead at close to full breadth search like computers do, and grand master humans are still kilometres ahead of computers when it comes to evaluation of the board, and strategic planning (this does not mean that games are not analysed with computers. It's likely that no GM analyses a game without one, but this is done for detecting tactical holes, not for strategic planning on what the idea should be). Note that no successful computer program does extensive use of neural networks since this would make the evaluation too slow, and the program wouldn't be able to search many nodes. This is not much of a problem for backgammon because it is played in a more strategic manner, with calculation either only being a couple of ply deep (or in the endgame), since the possible moves in backgammon at each ply are MUCH bigger than in chess, making proper calculation impossible for humans (and not very deep for computers). Backgammon is a very special case for computer game playing since due to this very shallow depths attained it's very hard to write a good evaluation code, and because of its probabilistic nature, a standard mini-max searcher would be too cautious. It was the first game where self-learning neural networks learnt to play the game at a master level (the original TD-gammon had no calculation at all AFAIK, so it's pretty good achievement for NNs. Later versions had up to 3-ply depth (a ply is a half-move btw) and maybe other programs calculate deeper, but depth doesn't seem to be very important in backgammon since it doesn't seem to improve the program much. A chess program that saw three ply deep vs the same program when seeing 2 ply deep would just kill it) > Are chess players publishing analyses of the games of the top-level > programs? > Public GM vs computer games are published and analysed. But there are very few of these as there is very little for the GMs to win. 99.9999% of the real GM vs computer games are private of course. alejandro From alito at organicrobot.com Sun Nov 9 19:38:41 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:38:41 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess again In-Reply-To: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <1068406721.6305.1439.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Sun, 2003-11-09 at 16:32, Spike wrote: > Perception management on the part of IBM after > the Kasparov-Deep Blue match of 1997 has caused > many people to believe that chess computers are > currently stronger than the best humans, however > since 1999, there have been 7 matches between > computers and human players with Elo ratings > over 2700 (the top 10 to 15 human players). > > Remarkably all seven of these matches have ended > in a tie score. These seven matches represent > a total of 49 games. The fact that the top humans > and computers are dead even over all that time > suggest that the humans are getting better at > exactly the same rate as the top chess software. > Perhaps someone can suggest a different explanation > for the even score since 1999. > I'll try. First, the cutoff at 2700 is completely arbitrary, and if games vs slightly lower ranked players is included, the results are nowhere near as neat. This is then, i think, a statistical fluke. But more importantly, the games won by computers and the games won by GMs are different in nature. Computers win by GMs blundering, or by the game being open and tactical. GMs otoh, squeeze computers to death. (A few exceptions on both sides, but great majority adheres to that). What i think this means is that a year 2000 program would have won and lost the same games that the year 2003 program won or lost. It then makes a bit of sense for the GMs to be not getting much worse in matches since they are mainly playing against themselves. If they are tight and play well, they'll win/draw, otherwise they'll lose, and they seem to be making blunders and letting computers open the position up at about the same rate than they used to. Based on this, some predictions: if matches of these kind become more common (ie human GMs resign to the fact that they will be beaten and play more often in public without demanding six figure sums for the effort), then 1) some GMs will do much better against computers than their ELO would suggest, and some will do worse. 2) Kasparov will be part of this second group. alejandro From alito at organicrobot.com Sun Nov 9 19:48:40 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:48:40 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess again In-Reply-To: <1068406721.6305.1439.camel@alito.homeip.net> References: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <1068406721.6305.1439.camel@alito.homeip.net> Message-ID: <1068407320.6304.1442.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Mon, 2003-11-10 at 05:38, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > same rate than they used to. Based on this, some predictions: if > matches of these kind become more common (ie human GMs resign to the > fact that they will be beaten and play more often in public without > demanding six figure sums for the effort), then 1) some GMs will do much > better against computers than their ELO would suggest, and some will do > worse. 2) Kasparov will be part of this second group. Forgot 3) Some computer programs will be much better against humans than their computer-only scores would reflect (Junior should probably go in that group) alejandro From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 21:14:08 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:14:08 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.29556.715292.307100@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <005a01c3a706$6a780a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jacques writes: > > Brett Paatsch a ?crit (9.11.2003/14:02) : > > > > > If anyone can find the etymology of the word "belief" or > > "believe" I would be interested. [lots of interesting stuff - still in his post ] then.... > To me, we indicate (and this is coherent with the Latin > origin) the amount of confidence we have by saying > "I believe that" instead of "I know for sure that". Which > sounds fine to me, no reason to ban this word. Please be clear Jacques I am not advocating banning it in the sense of prohibiting people from using it - that would be impossible as folk who did not even care one way or another would start using it just to assert their 'right' too. It has to be a voluntary choice to use a more precise word and I think that will only happen if individuals see that (1) the word they use is sometimes not heard with the same meaning they intended to imbue it with (2) in the case of *belief* as a word that consequence - ie. the hearer hearing a different meaning than the speaker meant - can be very harmful in that it makes it harder for the listener to differentiate between two different sorts of proposition. It is a sublety that goes to the engineering of communication (especially in important life and death circumstances). When you absolutely positively must get every bit of your meaning clear - if you use the word *belief* you find that the hearer hears what *they* think you meant not what you think you said. The simple solution is to use another word that doesn't feed into the listeners tendency to err. And there are plenty of substitute words the message sender can use that I think we have seen. The listener may be an empowered listener. ie. The listener may be sitting on a jury or may be a parliamentarian about to vote on a law. I am definately not saying ban use of the word *belief*. I am saying please *choose* not to use it voluntarily - as using it propagates its usage and its usage results in less sound decisions being made at the policy levels. The levels where we want to have people understand therapeutic cloning, gmo's, the-right-to-cryonics-if-it-harms-no-one-else etc... These discussions (and we are actually trying to pursuade here and the duty of pursuading falls on those who want to make changes) are already hard enough to have at the policy level lets not make them harder by helping the listeners mis-perceive "beliefs-on-the -one-hand" vs "beliefs-on-the-other". They don't get (if we don't *say*) its beliefs vs reasons. Arguments vs blind-faith. Does this make sense? Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 21:33:18 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:33:18 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] I believe References: <3FAE890D.5070700@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <006b01c3a709$177b32c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> BillK writes: > On Sat Nov 08, 2003 09:33 pm Brett Paatsch wrote: > > There is nothing a rational person needs to use the > > word *believe* for. [Except to talk about the word as > > a meme and a danger] There are *heaps* of alternatives > > that a rational person can use. Look in any dictionary or > > thesaurus. > > > > It is a big mistake to keep using belief or to try and modify > > it, or sort out good beliefs from bad beliefs because that > > just suggests it sometimes maps to a valid referent. It > > doesn't. It doesn't because the person *using* it cannot > > be sure that others *hearing* it will get the meaning that it > > was intended to have when they used it. > > > > Brett has a point here, because according to the dictionary > 'believe' legally can be used in many different ways. > > Meaning 1) (Which Brett objects to) > to follow a credo, to have a religious faith, to be a believer. > Usage: "When you hear his sermons, you will be able to > believe also". > > Meaning 2) > to credit with veracity. > Usage: "You cannot believe this man" [trust] [snip] > Meaning 3) > to be confident about something. > Usage: "I believe that my income tax form [is] correct[ly]". [think] [am confident] > > Meaning 4) > to accept as true, to take to be true. > Usage: "I believe his report" [accept] [am confident of] > "He believes in mysticism" ...this *may* be a valid use - or it *may* be a slur on him. If he said "I believes" in mysticism - then it is fair warning to others to pass on warning that their is a dangerous meme carrier around. But even in this usage most folks will not hear that statement as a warning unless they are against mysticism. > "We didn't believe his stories from the War". [accept] [credit] > > Meaning 5) > to judge or regard, to look upon. > Usage: "I believe (think) he is very smart" > "I believe (judge) that he is her boyfriend" > "A racist believes (considers) such people to be inferior" You've put some substitues in already. But it is here that *belief* is MOST dangerous and it is here where the substitutes are not done in parliaments and on juries. belief in the context of judgements denotes PREJUDICE not JUDGEMENT - exactly the opposite of what we want !! > > > But, in my opinion, it is too restrictive to the English language > to force 'believe' into the straitjacket of Meaning 1. A religious > context would invoke Meaning 1, but in normal day-to-day > conversation 'believe' is used constantly with no religious > connotations at all. Do you want to use the language to help save your life or do you want to have a meme use your life to help it propagate? Please note one cannot ban a meme like the word belief -one can only point out its dangers and one-by-one (person) try and show that the person should choose for themselves not to help talk themselves to death by propagating the believing meme. > > Although when someone says "I believe United will win the > Cup" it is debatable just how much religious fervor is invoked > by football supporters. ;) > > > BillK > (believing his opinion to be correct) Bill, do you think it is better to be clearer in trying to get a message through? Do you think that those who hear you use the word belief in the wider world will hear in you use the same meaning that you intended to have when you are arguing for things that may be important to you? If not -why not choose to use the words that give you the best chance of being understood and being persuasive? Regards, Brett From wingcat at pacbell.net Sun Nov 9 21:41:15 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 13:41:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] FUTURE: More Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <004d01c3a6f0$f74ce740$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <20031109214115.99513.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com> --- Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Why is sushi Extropian? Ironic contrast: people accuse us of being anti-religious, and yet we celebrate soul food. > If I'm so damn smart, how come I'm not rich? Wealth often requires patience and luck as well as intelligence. Many of us would not be displeased were the Singularity to happen today. > If technology keeps getting better and better > exponentially, why does my PC > still crash regularly? Mine doesn't. ;P -or- You're using the cheap (in $ and time) solution, and it's getting cheaper for the same performance. > Why don't people converge on the single correct > answer more often instead of > holding millions of different unsupportable belief > systems? Memetics. It's like the reason there are still influenza viruses that can infect - and, on rare occasion, even kill - humans after all these years. > Why aren't more people interested in life-extension? Because most people think it's not actually possible, and there is a long history of fraud in this field. > Why can't all our brilliant minds working together > accomplish more that what > we are doing now? They could, in theory. But how to get to that state? > How do we capture all our great knowledge from all > these chats and utilize > them so we never have to have this conversation ever > again? One possibility: create a software agent capable of understanding typed conversation (at least as well as a human), but with much more memory resources. Create a memory coprocessor, that can upload understanding of predigested facts to human brains. Use the first to create upload packages for the second. From riel at surriel.com Sun Nov 9 22:48:00 2003 From: riel at surriel.com (Rik van Riel) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 17:48:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > Corporations are collections of people making a living, > creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and > wellbeing. Corporations are our friends! That would be so nice, if only it were true. Every day in the news we can see corporations doing the exact opposite: creating wealth by buying laws that stifle innovation; creating cartels to keep creativity out of the marketplace; moving operations to cheaper labour countries overseas, where they don't have any obligations to create a wellbeing for their employees. Sure, these corporations still create some wealth, but only for the people at the top, not for society. Rik -- "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Sun Nov 9 23:07:01 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 17:07:01 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: References: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 17:48:00 -0500 (EST), you wrote >On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > >> Corporations are collections of people making a living, >> creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and >> wellbeing. Corporations are our friends! > >That would be so nice, if only it were true. > >Every day in the news we can see corporations doing the >exact opposite: creating wealth by buying laws that >stifle innovation; creating cartels to keep creativity >out of the marketplace; moving operations to cheaper >labour countries overseas, where they don't have any >obligations to create a wellbeing for their employees. > >Sure, these corporations still create some wealth, but >only for the people at the top, not for society. > >Rik You must be one of the Euro-extropians--all the Americans ones seem to have been brainwashed to think that corporations can do only good. ------------- -Randy From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Sun Nov 9 23:53:08 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 23:53:08 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] I believe Message-ID: <3FAED364.30406@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> On Sun Nov 09, 2003 02:33 pm Brett Paatsch wrote: > Do you want to use the language to help save your life or do > you want to have a meme use your life to help it propagate? > > Please note one cannot ban a meme like the word belief -one > can only point out its dangers and one-by-one (person) try > and show that the person should choose for themselves not > to help talk themselves to death by propagating the believing > meme. > I think your policy is the exact opposite of what is required! :) First, I should make it clear that I am all in favor of clarity of speech and meaning. I have seen far too many discussions degenerate into the participants saying, in effect, "words mean what I want them to mean - not what you want them to mean!" Now, all the English language dictionaries agree that the common usage of the word 'believe' has a wide range of meanings, depending on context. You can hear people 'believing' all the time in ordinary conversation - nothing to do with deep religious or mystical beliefs. This is a GOOD thing! If you restrict the meaning to 'religious belief' you are giving far too much self-importance to that belief. (Ignoring for the moment that any given group of 100 'believers' will believe 100 different things). If you hear people saying, for example, "I believe it will rain tomorrow" "I believe he will make a good president" "I believe I am going to heaven" "I believe the Matrix is true" "I believe my SUV is better than yours" then the effect of this is to equate religious belief with any other belief, like whether it will rain tomorrow. It WEAKENS the belief meme to the level of any other inconsequential belief a person might have. It is a good result when someone says "I believe I am going to heaven" and the response is "Yea - Well I believe in the Tooth Fairy and I've got more real evidence than you have". BillK (No teeth, but lots of coins under my pillow) From gregburch at gregburch.net Mon Nov 10 00:03:44 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 18:03:44 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The corporate form per se is no more or less problematic than any other means of holding and using property and contract rights. The problem arises when state power is fused with the form through corporatist government policies. Blaiming "corporations" is like blaming any other interest group that bids for and buys government favor, be they "farmers," "unions" or other organized groups that manage to garner preferential treatment from the state. Corporations are RELATVELY weak in the EU (compared to the US), but these other organized interest groups have done just as much harm by co-opting state power for their special interests in the EU -- viz. France and their endless strikes and labor-driven politics, or the agricultural protectionism in the EU that is one of the main factors derailing free trade in the world. The evil doesn't lie in the legal form per se, but in the sell-out of state power. http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 9 23:53:44 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:53:44 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley References: <000001c3a697$2b4ac9e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <00b301c3a71c$b5a4b8a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Randy writes in response to Rik: > You must be one of the Euro-extropians--all the > Americans ones seem (sic) to have been brainwashed to > think that corporations can do only good. Please be precise Randy, do you mean the American ones *seem* that way to *you* in particular (or are you trying to imply something wider perhaps? - the second is less appealing. They American-based extropes do not *seem* that way to me. Not as a generalisation. I want to hear good arguments for and against propositions and I don't care where geographically the arguments come from. A person working with intellectual property in the US for instance may have some very valuable *personal* insights ;-) Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 10 00:32:30 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:32:30 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] I believe References: <3FAED364.30406@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <00c801c3a722$216994c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Bill writes: > On Sun Nov 09, 2003 02:33 pm Brett Paatsch wrote: > > Do you want to use the language to help save your life or do > > you want to have a meme use your life to help it propagate? > > > > Please note one cannot ban a meme like the word belief -one > > can only point out its dangers and one-by-one (person) try > > and show that the person should choose for themselves not > > to help talk themselves to death by propagating the believing > > meme. > > > > I think your policy is the exact opposite of what is required! :) > > First, I should make it clear that I am all in favor of clarity of > speech and meaning. I have seen far too many discussions > degenerate into the participants saying, in effect, "words mean > what I want them to mean - not what you want them to mean!" > > Now, all the English language dictionaries agree that the common > usage of the word 'believe' has a wide range of meanings, > depending on context. You can hear people 'believing' all the > time in ordinary conversation - nothing to do with deep religious > or mystical beliefs. > > This is a GOOD thing! > > If you restrict the meaning to 'religious belief' you are giving far > too much self-importance [ :-) !!! ] to that [interpretation > of the word] belief. (Ignoring [ sic ] for the moment that any > given group of 100 'believers' will believe 100 different things). > > If you [one] hear[s] people saying, for example, > "I believe it will rain tomorrow" > "I believe he will make a good president" > "I believe I am going to heaven" > "I believe the Matrix is true" > "I believe my SUV is better than yours" > > then the effect of this is to equate religious belief with any > other belief, like whether it will rain tomorrow. It WEAKENS > the belief meme to the level of any other inconsequential belief > a person might have. > > It is a good result when someone says "I believe I am going > to heaven" and the response is "Yea - Well I believe in the > Tooth Fairy and I've got more real evidence than you have". > > BillK > (No teeth, but lots of coins under my pillow) Your arguments are getting better young extrope :-) Good for you (AND good for me - let the truth out ! ) I want to let this better challenge you are making sit for a little while so others can take a peak at it as well if they want. But let me ask you this question. How would your argument above be effected if I could show you examples of the courts and the leaders of free countries making huge decisions like to go to war or to set a person free on the basis purely of belief - belief in the sense of prejudice - a sense that has nothing to do with and indeed is the opposite of judgement? There is little point me providing these examples to you if they will not effect you view as to what is good. I like talking to open minds (and I like being shown to be wrong too - *if* I am) but I don't like talking just to hear the sound of my voice as I could be doing other better things with the time. Would *you* change *your* mind if I could provide *you* with examples of heads of government making very big even world-historic decisions on the basis of beliefs-that-are- prejudices? And/or courts? Regards, Brett From wingcat at pacbell.net Mon Nov 10 00:33:42 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 16:33:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.1.20031107225210.0325c410@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: <20031110003342.22668.qmail@web80405.mail.yahoo.com> --- J Corbally wrote: > http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?size=big&mapdata=8JWqc9HMpiYwb9zZYDFMrn3Q%2fSmwBrxHnJpYUafchV1f6hNN8WPY7sIyXiKgRNWcP14yHJv2aHAKoiNb6r4fm4L6YkdwfJOBqvKzd0xsXtN56jyZFFtXZzfepaqhQdZniAw4mCW7GK%2f75uirpkO55%2fIeVaNw7s5LCRvIdribdAebOl%2fEtuL%2f0dTFTkfBElN3hY9uZkxuU3d0FDSsHF0pYGVt7fk1APtHTZgjsDDk6%2f%2bxgyuZRfDvNDuMglxc%2bb%2bJqiDyYhbT3WzS8POptkyKVppYydKFLOAB8aijtfjoIZlTq%2fqEgQn%2fBQ%3d%3d > > I'm located somewhere roughly in the location of the > "N82" > label. Actually, if you click on N82 and Zoom in, > you'll pretty much find > yourself on my street. > > No peeking, now. I'm not decent. No worries about that. The photos are a few years out of date, at least. I had solar panels installed on my house a few months after the California blackouts of 2000, but you can't see them here. http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?mqmap.x=220&mqmap.y=207&mapdata=xU4YXdELrnCTxwvPTmj4WAYd1iIM1onMNxscUvJ2l1QRxird7gJpSS74McxoaMCMajakgXtgBDa8s%252byJ%252fOtRC6ouQoF%252ffZdWRvYlryObOY3CIE9EgFV5FWQ7hd0G9FdzZ%252bbXYco8Mx3%252fKVFc9zs2noBafYm1Ded%252f8RH4tra2LXga%252fsB2orJy4HHOme5x%252bptRbE908%252f2qkG1LIVBq%252fWnzyGtaCVXjBkwJPJP%252fxMG14CpNzK5F%252f%252bNtmF0C%252f3gBbwPDcsHr7DYTzfGrnzWN5bj0Aux5WPnOgYlU9R%252boo68XM2UgxID0KU8rGtmoK1LuSFimbJgZlUW%252b6BQEkFGSahjre6OQiSqcGPHV5lJ4ToD7tcB5SpiBq5evu3k9aDUej%252frO&click=center Fifth house from the end in the non-double row of houses. (Next to the triple-treed house.) Note the mostly light grey roof; solar panels are, of course, black, and they cover about half my roof. From jacques at dtext.com Mon Nov 10 00:36:23 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 01:36:23 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal In-Reply-To: <005a01c3a706$6a780a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.29556.715292.307100@localhost.localdomain> <005a01c3a706$6a780a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <16302.56711.538309.647078@localhost.localdomain> Brett Paatsch a ?crit (10.11.2003/08:14) : > > Jacques writes: > > > > Brett Paatsch a ?crit (9.11.2003/14:02) : > > > > > > > If anyone can find the etymology of the word "belief" or > > > "believe" I would be interested. > > [lots of interesting stuff - still in his post ] then.... > > > To me, we indicate (and this is coherent with the Latin > > origin) the amount of confidence we have by saying > > "I believe that" instead of "I know for sure that". Which > > sounds fine to me, no reason to ban this word. > > Please be clear Jacques I am not advocating banning it > in the sense of prohibiting people from using it - that would > be impossible as folk who did not even care one way or > another would start using it just to assert their 'right' too. > > It has to be a voluntary choice to use a more precise word > and I think that will only happen if individuals see that > > (1) the word they use is sometimes not heard with the same > meaning they intended to imbue it with > (2) in the case of *belief* as a word that consequence > - ie. the hearer hearing a different meaning than the speaker > meant - can be very harmful in that it makes it harder for the > listener to differentiate between two different sorts of > proposition. > > It is a sublety that goes to the engineering of communication > (especially in important life and death circumstances). When > you absolutely positively must get every bit of your meaning > clear - if you use the word *belief* you find that the hearer > hears what *they* think you meant not what you think you > said. "I believe that X" allows me to express some degree of confidence that X holds: nothing more, nothing less. If the audience doesn't give a damn about your level of confidence that X holds, then using this concept is not useful in that particular situation. Thus, it is true that in debates, and if you are unknown to the audience, you might as well not use that word at all, and only provide facts and arguments for other people to consider and form their own belief. But that is not a problem with the word "belief". It is simply that in this situation, no one cares about your "level of confidence". Suppose that in such a debate, one guest is a famous and respected Nobel Prize. Her use of "belief" is going to matter, because people (rightly or wrongly, doesn't matter here) are interested in her level of confidence that X holds. So, I can agree with you on something -- and you'll tell me if this matches your preoccupation -- namely that if you are in a hostile situation, and you need to convince people, you may as well give up on any explicit belief self-attribution, as people may seize the occasion to think, "oh, this is just a belief, then". I can also agree that when bringing new ideas (like transhumanist ideas) into society, we may often find ourselves in such situations, and hence it may sometimes be preferable to avoid the use of "belief". (But at other times, I think it may on the contrary be useful to say that yes, you do believe in it, and you are not just playing with words.) Still, I think that 1) potential problems with the use of this word are not really linked to a common misunderstanding of its meaning, 2) it is a useful concept, and 3) using it here and there in our discussions when it comes naturally, to express just what it means, causes no particular problem. Jacques From gregburch at gregburch.net Mon Nov 10 00:44:03 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 18:44:03 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Luddite Leadership: The New Atlantis Message-ID: All extropians should be aware of a new journal called "The New Atlantis." http://www.thenewatlantis.com/index.html The inaugural issue (they're now on No. 2) had a leading editorial by arch-bioluddite Leon Kass. I STRONGLY urge all of our members to read this piece, as it is one of the most eloquent statements of the anti-progress mentality you'll find, as well as one by a man who has real power over public policy in the U.S. (through his leadership position on the President's Council on Biotechnology and his position as THE spokesman for bio-luddism among the current political leaders in America). There are other articles that will inlfame anyone who shares the basic transhumanist agenda, but are also vitally important. There's an article by Adam Keiper http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/2/keiper.htm that shows a very good grasp of the possibilities of Drexlerian nanotechnology. What's important here is not what the article is (other, similarly clued-in articles are becoming common outside the narrow confines of transhumania), but WHERE it is. "The New Atlantis" has clearly been formed as a rallying point for the anti-progress party, and that they are zeroing in on Drextech should give us all cause for concern. Another article in the first issue deals with transhumanism square-on, calling it "extinctionism" because it posits progress beyond the human: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/1/rubin.htm This article discusses Moravec and Kurzweil and will set the teeth of a transhumanist on edge, but again, what's important is that the discussion is happening in a forum designed to define policy. I urge all of you to become familiar with this site: It is the anti-extropy. My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html From wingcat at pacbell.net Mon Nov 10 01:53:25 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 17:53:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Luddite Leadership: The New Atlantis In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031110015325.45809.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> --- Greg Burch wrote: > http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/2/keiper.htm > > that shows a very good grasp of the possibilities of > Drexlerian nanotechnology. What's important here is > not what the article is (other, similarly clued-in > articles are becoming common outside the narrow > confines of transhumania), but WHERE it is. "The > New Atlantis" has clearly been formed as a rallying > point for the anti-progress party, and that they are > zeroing in on Drextech should give us all cause for > concern. Actually, I find it most refreshing that even our enemies have such a good field guide to the facts. It's biased in the opinions it offers in addition to the facts, true, but it means we can argue the facts rather than made-up hysteria. > Another article in the first issue deals with > transhumanism square-on, calling it "extinctionism" > because it posits progress beyond the human: > > http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/1/rubin.htm > > This article discusses Moravec and Kurzweil and will > set the teeth of a transhumanist on edge, but again, > what's important is that the discussion is happening > in a forum designed to define policy. I snickered as I read it. I did not see a single argument made there that has not been made, and thoroughly countered, elsewhere. For instance, the sharp discontinuity between human and uploaded mind: there have been ways proposed to utterly eliminate that discontinuity. If this is the best our enemies - and I use the term deliberately, even if the immediate battle is for hearts and minds rather than lives - can muster, as it seems it may be, we have little to worry about. (We can't slack off, of course, but this is a level of opposition we can handle.) From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 10 02:10:38 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:10:38 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.29556.715292.307100@localhost.localdomain> <005a01c3a706$6a780a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.56711.538309.647078@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <00dd01c3a72f$d5aa11a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jacques writes: >> [Brett] >> Please be clear Jacques I am not advocating banning [belief >> as a word] in the sense of prohibiting people from using it - > > that would be impossible as folk who did not even care > > one way or another would start using it just to assert their > > 'right' too. >> >> It has to be a voluntary choice to use a more precise word >> and I think that will only happen if individuals see that >> >> (1) the word they use is sometimes not heard with the same >> meaning they intended to imbue it with >> (2) in the case of *belief* as a word that consequence >> - ie. the hearer hearing a different meaning than the speaker >> meant - can be very harmful in that it makes it harder for the >> listener to differentiate between two different sorts of >> proposition. >> >> It is a sublety that goes to the engineering of communication >> (especially in important life and death circumstances). When >> you absolutely positively must get every bit of your meaning >> clear - if you use the word *belief* you find that the hearer >> hears what *they* think you meant not what you think you >> said. [Note: Jacques - your arguments below imo are honing in now on the nub and it matters now - if our time is not to be wasted in getting to this point (where the truth may be clearer) to be careful with our (yours and my) language - so apologies in advance for what may seem like an overdose of pedantry. The use of the word "one" as oppose to 'you' or 'me' in some cases makes things clearer and I have substituted it. Please also note that anybody who hasn't followed this thread will not NECESSARILY intuitively get it now coming in at this stage.] > "I believe that X" allows me [one] to express some degree of > confidence that X holds: nothing more, nothing less. > If the audience doesn't give a damn about your [one's] level of > confidence that X holds, then using this concept is not useful in > that particular situation. > > Thus, it is true that in debates, and if you are [one is] unknown > to the audience, you [one] might as well not use that word at all, > and only provide facts and arguments for other people to > consider and form their own belief [#1 !!!!] -I think you mean opinion or judgement here do you not? -or are you in fact inadvertly presuming the outcome of our inquiry - I think that may make my point about the danger of the belief meme - .i.e. if *you* can't hold the-matter-under-inquiry (belief) separate from the inquiry process itself !! (No criticism of you - I think the belief meme critter is really that slippery - especially for those who think it is harmless). > But that is not a problem with the word "belief". It is simply > that in this situation, no one cares about your "level of > confidence". No as I indicate above it is also that the word is used to prejudice inquiry. It slips past the guard of those that use it. It is a very, very slippery meme. I think it just slipped past your (Jacques') guard above at #1 did it not? > Suppose that in such a debate, one guest is a famous and > respected Nobel Prize [winner]. Her use of "belief" is going > to matter, because people (rightly or wrongly, doesn't matter > here [in this contention]) are interested in her level of > confidence that X holds. So you think that people (generally) make judgements not on evidence but on the perceived authority of the presenter ? - On the whole I think this is true but this is part of my point - It hurts the cause of shared-truth-discovery to encourage this natural human tendency to laziness though. And the Nobel Prize winner does the audience a disservice if she deliberately engages in persuasion by appeal to authority (ie. if she uses the statement 'I believe X') rather than ('the evidence indicates X') by appeal to reason. > So, I can agree with you on something -- and you'll tell me > if this matches your preoccupation *** [ :-) I prefer contention if you don't mind] > -- namely that if you are [one is] in a hostile situation, and > you [one] need[s] to convince people, you [one] may as well > give up on any explicit belief self-attribution, as people may > seize the occasion to think, "oh, this is just a belief, then". That is pretty close to my contention yes. Except to push it further the *belief* meme is SO SLIPPERY that they may not even need to formally think the sentence "oh, this is just a belief, then" - they may do that or they may not even be *that* aware. > I can also agree that when bringing new ideas (like > transhumanist ideas) into society, we may often find > ourselves in such situations, and hence it may (sic) > sometimes be preferable to avoid the use of "belief". What do you mean may - can you think of a particular instance or not? > (But at other times, > I think it may (sic) on the contrary be useful to say that > yes, you do believe in it, and you are not just playing > with words.) How can you know what they *believe* in? This is part of my point - You can't - even if they use the word belief as it reliably maps to no specific referent - they are leaving you to guess at their meaning (and if indeed they even *have* a meaning and are not merely articulating a PREJUDICE ?!!!). > Still, I think that 1) potential problems with the use of this > word are not really linked to a common misunderstanding > of its meaning, 2) it is a useful concept, and 3) using it here > and there in our discussions when it comes naturally, to > express just what it means, causes no particular problem. I think you erred in the process of arriving at the above conclusion for the reasons I articulate above. Please demonstrate your contention that the word belief is useful by giving an instance where you think it better (than any alternate word) conveys meaning between people. - Without of course using it in a self-referential way - that doesn't count. I.e. we of course need to use the word to talk about the word as a word and to consider its harmfulness (my contention) as a meme or its usefulness (your apparent contention above). Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 10 02:48:08 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:48:08 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Luddite Leadership: The New Atlantis References: Message-ID: <00ff01c3a735$12b71700$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Greg writes: > All extropians should be aware of a new journal called > "The New Atlantis." > > http://www.thenewatlantis.com/index.html > [snip] > "The New Atlantis" has clearly been > formed as a rallying point for the anti-progress party, Which anti-progress party Greg? Do you mean an *actual* political party or do you mean an aggregation of entrenched empowered [monied] individuals who want to broker the rate of change toward the future so they can control and own the technology and the IP as it emerges or what in fact do you mean? Regards, Brett From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 10 02:50:01 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 20:50:01 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Honing in on the pod door References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY><00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><16302.29556.715292.307100@localhost.localdomain><005a01c3a706$6a780a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><16302.56711.538309.647078@localhost.localdomain> <00dd01c3a72f$d5aa11a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <014201c3a735$57e16380$8b994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 8:10 PM > [Note: Jacques - your arguments below imo are honing in now > on the nub While we're discussing the utility and accuracy of the word `belief', I'll throw in the nagging observation that when people say `honing' in this way they almost always mean `homing'. You hone a blade, you even hone an argument (make it sharper), but you home in on a target. A Helpful Pedant [sets my teeth on edge, it does] From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 10 03:22:23 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:22:23 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Honing in on the pod door References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.29556.715292.307100@localhost.localdomain> <005a01c3a706$6a780a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.56711.538309.647078@localhost.localdomain> <00dd01c3a72f$d5aa11a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <014201c3a735$57e16380$8b994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <011101c3a739$dbf8dc80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Damien (a VERY helpful pedant) writes: [Brett] > > [Note: Jacques - your arguments below imo are honing in now > > on the nub > > While we're discussing the utility and accuracy of the word `belief', > I'll throw in the nagging observation that when people say `honing' > in this way they almost always mean `homing'. You hone a blade, > you even hone an argument (make it sharper), but you home in on > a target. Sorry and thank you sir ;-) Brett From gregburch at gregburch.net Mon Nov 10 03:44:38 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 21:44:38 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Luddite Leadership: The New Atlantis In-Reply-To: <00ff01c3a735$12b71700$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: Brett Paatsch > Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 8:48 PM > Greg writes: > > > All extropians should be aware of a new journal called > > "The New Atlantis." > > > > http://www.thenewatlantis.com/index.html > > > [snip] > > > "The New Atlantis" has clearly been > > formed as a rallying point for the anti-progress party, > > Which anti-progress party Greg? Do you mean an *actual* > political party or do you mean an aggregation of entrenched > empowered [monied] individuals who want to broker the rate > of change toward the future so they can control and own the > technology and the IP as it emerges or what in fact do you > mean? I was using a rather old-fashioned way of writing, I guess, because I meant neither of the things you suggest. As to the former, in the U.S. the Republican's have probably signed on to the bioluddite agenda more than the Democrats, while the Democrats have a nascent tendency toward a Euro "greenish" anitpathy to non-human biotech. In Europe, I think both sides of the political spectrum have begun to show bioluddite tendencies, but I'm not as conversant with European politics, so I could be wrong (although it's obvious even to a numb Yank that the left/greens in Euroland have solidly signed up to the bioluddite cause). The second alternative you suggest isn't really concrete yet in any way -- there's nothing like saleable IP for real human augmentation, and the folks who make business policy in the BigPharma companies are notoriously short-sighted; I doubt human augmentation is really on their radar screens yet, so they don't have a position. No, I'm referring to the cultural opponents of the transumanist agenda, the same note I've been sounding for some time: http://www.gregburch.net/progress.html My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html From rafal at smigrodzki.org Mon Nov 10 03:33:15 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 22:33:15 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] heterosis, consanguinity and IQ Message-ID: <000001c3a73d$56ec5b80$6401a8c0@dimension> Thinking about the postulated role of heterosis in secular IQ trends, I realized that if there is really a significant influence of panmixis and heterosis, then their opposite, inbreeding, should register as lower IQ on a society-wide scale. According to http://www.consang.net/global_prevalence/map.html, there are countries with rates of consanguinity orders of magnitude higher than in the rest of the world. Do their inhabitants have a lower IQ? I wasn't able to find data on these countries, but I am sure they exist. Rafal From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 10 03:57:03 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 21:57:03 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] heterosis, consanguinity and IQ References: <000001c3a73d$56ec5b80$6401a8c0@dimension> Message-ID: <016801c3a73e$b692f0c0$8b994a43@texas.net> > [po:] inbreeding, should register as lower IQ on a > society-wide scale. Is this right, though? Two recessive deleterious genes will be expressed more often, munging the offspringen (who might die as a result, often in utero), while two recessive advantageous genes will pop up more often as well. I had the impression that this is a partial explanation for the elevated IQs of Orthodox Jews, e.g., even though they pay the price in certain rare horrid afflictions. (I seem to recall a post from Eliezer implying that this might account in part for his own unusual brain.) Damien Broderick From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 10 04:51:24 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 22:51:24 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Meatrix References: <200311050215.hA52FiM29499@tick.javien.com><3FA8A0E8.C39365FE@best.com> <3FA8DC34.8010505@pobox.com><01c001c3a399$020c7340$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><3FA99C95.8010401@pobox.com> <01b901c3a40e$63bc7b60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <018d01c3a746$5dea6ea0$8b994a43@texas.net> I don't think this merry little (grim little?) item has been mentioned here yet: http://www.gristmagazine.com/soapbox/meatrix110503.asp Damien Broderick From cphoenix at best.com Mon Nov 10 05:03:17 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 00:03:17 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley References: <200311091900.hA9J09M05251@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FAF1C15.FF15C4C4@best.com> Spike wrote: > > Corporations are collections of people making a living, > creating wealth by making things, creating jobs and > wellbeing. Corporations are our friends! If real power > lies with corporations, then real power lies with people > working together to create wealth, which sounds good to me. > Far better this way than with real power being wielded by > those who create nothing but merely redistribute the wealth > that corporations create, while destroying much of that > wealth in the process. This seems to me to be perfectly > compatible with libertarian ideals. There are different kinds of power, just as there are different kinds of problems to solve. "How much should a corporation pay for the right to kill someone?" is an appalling question. (I mean deliberately kill an individual; random fractional deaths may be a different case.) But "How much should a policeman pay for the right to kill someone?" is equally appalling. The words "pay" and "kill" simply don't belong in the same sentence--unless you're in the Mafia, which is an appalling organization. But you should also notice that the policeman (Guardian) has very different imperatives than the corporation (Commercial). Creating wealth by maximizing benefit on voluntary transactions is one kind of problem. Corporations do that very well. Unfortunately, sometimes big corporations start taking on Guardian characteristics. Minimizing loss from zero-sum or negative-sum transactions is a very different kind of problem. It may require the use of force or deception--both of which corporations are not supposed to practice. (Limiting openness is not the same as active deception.) Interestingly, there's at least one other way to create wealth: unlimited-sum transactions (Information), in which the friction and cost are negligible, and the benefit is substantial and not proportional to the cost. Open Source is a great example of this, and it's enabled by the unlimited-sum nature of copying text files. And although some corporations are figuring out ways to work with unlimited-sum entities, corporations are not that kind of entity, can never be, and should not try. This explains the Napster problem and the Internet bubble. Guardian and Commercial as separate systems come straight from Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs. Building on a paper by Pat Gratton, I added Information as a third system, and the analysis of how the three systems relate to zero-sum, positive-sum, and unlimited-sum transactions. You can read more (including a tie-in to molecular nanotechnology) at: http://CRNano.org/systems.htm Can corporations solve Guardian-type problems? No. Will Guardian-type problems always exist? Yes. If we didn't have government, we'd have to invent it. Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 10 05:23:01 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 16:23:01 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Luddite Leadership: The New Atlantis References: Message-ID: <018001c3a74a$b749ee40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Greg Burch wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Brett Paatsch > > Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 8:48 PM > > Greg writes: > > > > > All extropians should be aware of a new journal called > > > "The New Atlantis." > > > > > > http://www.thenewatlantis.com/index.html > > > > > [snip] > > > > > "The New Atlantis" has clearly been > > > formed as a rallying point for the anti-progress party, > > > > Which anti-progress party Greg? Do you mean an *actual* > > political party or do you mean an aggregation of entrenched > > empowered [monied] individuals who want to broker the rate > > of change toward the future so they can control and own the > > technology and the IP as it emerges or what in fact do you > > mean? > > I was using a rather old-fashioned way of writing, I guess, > because I meant neither of the things you suggest. As to the > former, in the U.S. the Republican's have probably signed > on to the bioluddite agenda more than the Democrats, while > the Democrats have a nascent tendency toward a Euro > "greenish" anitpathy to non-human biotech. > > [snip comment on Europe] > > The second alternative you suggest isn't really concrete yet in > any way -- there's nothing like saleable IP for real human > augmentation, No but, what about in say the GMO, GE and stem cell areas? What do you think of the possibility of brokering-the-future in these areas using bi-lateral trade agreements? > and the folks who make business policy in the > BigPharma companies are notoriously short-sighted; I doubt > human augmentation is really on their radar screens yet, so > they don't have a position. I agree on BigPharma and human augmentation. > No, I'm referring to the cultural opponents of the transumanist > agenda, the same note I've been sounding for some time: > > http://www.gregburch.net/progress.html Thanks Greg. Perhaps without having read the New Atlantis but having read some of Kass' writings on the Presidents Council of Bioethics, my feeling is maybe - lots more rope to Kass - let him and those like him help raise the level of public awareness - a bit of Hegelian dialectic may be good for transhumanism if it gives the media some theatre around which to report- and once folks realise what is on offer (ie. when the technological feasibility is less in dispute) then the citizen voters of the west will start joining the dots for themselves. Right now I'm more concerned that the citizen-voters haven't got a clue what is on offer and so they vote against or to ban what they don't understand which is nearly everything. The best thing for the transhumanism memeset to get reported and to straighten itself out may be a worthy adversary. This is not necessarily a deeply considered opinion (on Kass and New Atlantis anyway). Regards, Brett From maxm at mail.tele.dk Mon Nov 10 08:15:27 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:15:27 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <20031107195905.GQ3534@leitl.org> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> <20031107195905.GQ3534@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FAF491F.8030808@mail.tele.dk> Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 12:12:30PM -0500, John K Clark wrote: > >>1) There must be a physical mechanism to compute how proteins fold up since >>the same protein always turns into the same shape and does it in just a few >>seconds, but our most powerful supercomputers would take centuries to figure >>out even the simplest one. What is that computational mechanism? > > There's no new physics involved. It's a question of how to write code for a > big machine -- depending in whether it's clever or dumb code that machine > might or might not yet exist. Of course, no currently used forcefield is even > approximately up to the task. I think that point that John tried to make is that it is deterministic, not chaotic. And so should allow simplification. We just need some way to add the hinges. Emzyme chemistry and proteomics will be soo big. I am pretty shure that Nano will come from this direction. So fast protein folding will be a really big issue. >>9) Why is there something rather than nothing? And another one in the same family: Why is there a limit on the speed of light? regards Max M From maxm at mail.tele.dk Mon Nov 10 08:43:10 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:43:10 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <20031107083237.90698.qmail@web60202.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031107083237.90698.qmail@web60202.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FAF4F9E.5030308@mail.tele.dk> The Avantguardian wrote: > Natasha wrote: > "What are some riddles that some bear light, or a shadow, on our extropic > transhumanity?" > 3. Why is all life on earth asymmetric at a molecular level. The amino > acids that make up proteins on earth all have a "left-handed" > (levorotary) chirality and the sugars that make up carbohydrates are > "right-handed" (dextrorotary). This is quite literally an extropic > riddle because in any standard synthesis reaction occuring in nature > (enzymatic reactions don't count because enzymes themselves are > composed of these asymmetrically "left-handed" amino acids and you > get the chicken or the egg problem) the resulting molecules are a > racemic mixture i.e. composed of equal amounts of "left-handed" and > "right-handed" molecules. That is most likely because it uses a to simplistic view of the chemical pathways, and chemicals included. There are other ways to create asymetric chemistry than those two. Some of those results in chemical isomers that are much alike, but has different chemical properties. Very often you end up with a mixture that is a balance. Not a complete reaction. Most likely some of these compounds plays nicer with some of the assymetric proteins than with others. Over a few generations that should give a significant difference. regards Max M From jacques at dtext.com Mon Nov 10 11:46:18 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:46:18 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Honing in on the pod door In-Reply-To: <011101c3a739$dbf8dc80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.29556.715292.307100@localhost.localdomain> <005a01c3a706$6a780a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.56711.538309.647078@localhost.localdomain> <00dd01c3a72f$d5aa11a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <014201c3a735$57e16380$8b994a43@texas.net> <011101c3a739$dbf8dc80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <3FAF7A8A.9060808@dtext.com> Brett Paatsch wrote: > Damien (a VERY helpful pedant) writes: > > [Brett] > >>>[Note: Jacques - your arguments below imo are honing in now >>>on the nub >> >>While we're discussing the utility and accuracy of the word `belief', >>I'll throw in the nagging observation that when people say `honing' >>in this way they almost always mean `homing'. You hone a blade, >>you even hone an argument (make it sharper), but you home in on >>a target. > > > Sorry and thank you sir ;-) Yes, thanks Damien. After looking up "honing" and "nub" in a dictionary, I had to resort to guessing to understand what Brett meant. It's a problem I have from time to time on the list: I don't know English well enough to understand the mistakes, too. Brett: I'll try to answer this evening, as I will be too busy till then. But I can already let you know of the summary: you are wrong. (just kidding) Jacques From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Mon Nov 10 13:16:25 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:16:25 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's balcony In-Reply-To: <20031110003342.22668.qmail@web80405.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031110003342.22668.qmail@web80405.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: To continue the game, I can add my location too: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?zoom=7&mapdata=EqjxpwWGKHOIj8ZJDB951WsUtsPVlAs9FOVy02PHEc2L7dnnJFdOrEw1BQs0VOVvEL9Sl2Tbe%2bKsQL0hGqXxnNBcsH1Ze5bLdEkcUJ7Al%2fP3ovk2IJp%2f3GJ9RlPCM3eqnTFLTAi6vrscH4VBz1hIhuS%2f%2bRyS3w8qRzQyAvvpgNod5yRPXeO1M7v58bA1RfDBA7wE6UNa4sC3QBmVZoC8ED%2bNhTo4RwKB29f5Q28bqpwT%2b73Z3If33FW8%2fE%2fW5%2bADUV0S3LiDZ8r%2b37oabmM%2bnxJe3hk%2frG1JXQ3%2bYl0fSlgdJHAnmxy1jEH7x2QPgJbDNJtULTlSeFsTpJpzXiUbybDe8zCNMLMNaPDs7JQ4j%2fI%3d Zoom in to see the exact street. Ciao, Alfio On Sun, 9 Nov 2003, Adrian Tymes wrote: >--- J Corbally wrote: >> >http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?size=big&mapdata=8JWqc9HMpiYwb9zZYDFMrn3Q%2fSmwBrxHnJpYUafchV1f6hNN8WPY7sIyXiKgRNWcP14yHJv2aHAKoiNb6r4fm4L6YkdwfJOBqvKzd0xsXtN56jyZFFtXZzfepaqhQdZniAw4mCW7GK%2f75uirpkO55%2fIeVaNw7s5LCRvIdribdAebOl%2fEtuL%2f0dTFTkfBElN3hY9uZkxuU3d0FDSsHF0pYGVt7fk1APtHTZgjsDDk6%2f%2bxgyuZRfDvNDuMglxc%2bb%2bJqiDyYhbT3WzS8POptkyKVppYydKFLOAB8aijtfjoIZlTq%2fqEgQn%2fBQ%3d%3d >> >> I'm located somewhere roughly in the location of the >> "N82" >> label. Actually, if you click on N82 and Zoom in, >> you'll pretty much find >> yourself on my street. >> >> No peeking, now. I'm not decent. > >No worries about that. The photos are a few years out >of date, at least. I had solar panels installed on my >house a few months after the California blackouts of >2000, but you can't see them here. > >http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?mqmap.x=220&mqmap.y=207&mapdata=xU4YXdELrnCTxwvPTmj4WAYd1iIM1onMNxscUvJ2l1QRxird7gJpSS74McxoaMCMajakgXtgBDa8s%252byJ%252fOtRC6ouQoF%252ffZdWRvYlryObOY3CIE9EgFV5FWQ7hd0G9FdzZ%252bbXYco8Mx3%252fKVFc9zs2noBafYm1Ded%252f8RH4tra2LXga%252fsB2orJy4HHOme5x%252bptRbE908%252f2qkG1LIVBq%252fWnzyGtaCVXjBkwJPJP%252fxMG14CpNzK5F%252f%252bNtmF0C%252f3gBbwPDcsHr7DYTzfGrnzWN5bj0Aux5WPnOgYlU9R%252boo68XM2UgxID0KU8rGtmoK1LuSFimbJgZlUW%252b6BQEkFGSahjre6OQiSqcGPHV5lJ4ToD7tcB5SpiBq5evu3k9aDUej%252frO&click=center > >Fifth house from the end in the non-double row of >houses. (Next to the triple-treed house.) Note the >mostly light grey roof; solar panels are, of course, >black, and they cover about half my roof. >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 10 14:15:00 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 15:15:00 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <3FAF491F.8030808@mail.tele.dk> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie> <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> <20031107195905.GQ3534@leitl.org> <3FAF491F.8030808@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <20031110141500.GK13214@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 09:15:27AM +0100, Max M wrote: > > I think that point that John tried to make is that it is deterministic, Of course it's determistic! We're alive, aren't we? > not chaotic. And so should allow simplification. We just need some way It is not obvious that you can compute the folding target without expediting much less computational work than the folding molecule itself does. Given brute-force via MD with ~fs integration step target it is obvious that we need lots faster computers than today (which typically do 1 fs within 1 s wall clock time; fast folders can fold in ms, we can presume we can bootstrap nano with fast folders alone -- you'll need min/h scale to understand biology, though) to do it brute force. The state of the art is here: It is pretty pathetic but for a few special cases. > to add the hinges. > > Emzyme chemistry and proteomics will be soo big. I am pretty shure that > Nano will come from this direction. Bottom-up (self-assembly) is going to result in practical molecular electronics before top-down (machine-phase nanorobotics). We should be able to use the computational resources of molecular electronics to design the latter, though. > So fast protein folding will be a really big issue. You need a machine to fold in minutes to hours of wall clock time for in machina design (reverse folding problem by evolutionary algorithms on primary sequence). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 10 14:39:32 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:39:32 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SPAM (was Depressing Thought. from Laurenceof Berkeley) References: <015f01c3a4cb$478c4fc0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: > You don't truly believe that people will only send you the > mail in the way you want it to be sent, do you? > > If you do, your belief conflicts with your mailbox ... > No, but I do believe it could be regulated a bit. Here is what I don;t understand, and maybe someone can clear this up. OK. Currently, the sending of unsolicited email is illegal. Unfortunately, the only penalty the senders seem to be paying is to have their sites tracked down. Now it is my understanding that these people are doing this in order to make money from a website at some end point. Otherwise, they wouldn;t send the spam. So I see this as one possibility. 1.) Make the penalties stiffer with fines which increase with each instance. 2.) Make a standard set of subject lines for each industry 3.) Heavy fines or jail time for those who intentionally mislead in the subject lines Tracking the people should be as easy as having a task force follow a link to their website, making a small purchase on a credit card, and following the money. The FBI is very good at following funds. I don;t understand why this should be any different. All it lacks is a real desire to tackle the problem. Am I missing anything here? From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 10 14:59:34 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 08:59:34 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Luddite Leadership: The New Atlantis References: <20031110015325.45809.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Tit for tat. Maybe it is time for me to build my own website to counter theirs. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Adrian Tymes" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 7:53 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Luddite Leadership: The New Atlantis > --- Greg Burch wrote: > > http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/2/keiper.htm > > > > that shows a very good grasp of the possibilities of > > Drexlerian nanotechnology. What's important here is > > not what the article is (other, similarly clued-in > > articles are becoming common outside the narrow > > confines of transhumania), but WHERE it is. "The > > New Atlantis" has clearly been formed as a rallying > > point for the anti-progress party, and that they are > > zeroing in on Drextech should give us all cause for > > concern. > > Actually, I find it most refreshing that even our > enemies have such a good field guide to the facts. > It's biased in the opinions it offers in addition to > the facts, true, but it means we can argue the facts > rather than made-up hysteria. > > > Another article in the first issue deals with > > transhumanism square-on, calling it "extinctionism" > > because it posits progress beyond the human: > > > > http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/1/rubin.htm > > > > This article discusses Moravec and Kurzweil and will > > set the teeth of a transhumanist on edge, but again, > > what's important is that the discussion is happening > > in a forum designed to define policy. > > I snickered as I read it. I did not see a single > argument made there that has not been made, and > thoroughly countered, elsewhere. For instance, the > sharp discontinuity between human and uploaded mind: > there have been ways proposed to utterly eliminate > that discontinuity. > > If this is the best our enemies - and I use the term > deliberately, even if the immediate battle is for > hearts and minds rather than lives - can muster, as it > seems it may be, we have little to worry about. (We > can't slack off, of course, but this is a level of > opposition we can handle.) > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Mon Nov 10 15:46:23 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:46:23 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <3FAF4F9E.5030308@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <002d01c3a7a1$ce516580$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Natasha wrote: > 3. Why is all life on earth asymmetric at a molecular level. The amino > acids that make up proteins on earth all have a "left-handed" > (levorotary) chirality and the sugars that make up > carbohydrates are > "right-handed" (dextrorotary). This is quite literally an extropic > riddle because in any standard synthesis reaction occurring > in nature > (enzymatic reactions don't count because enzymes themselves are > composed of these asymmetrically "left-handed" amino acids and you > get the chicken or the egg problem) the resulting molecules are a > racemic mixture i.e. composed of equal amounts of "left-handed" and > "right-handed" molecules. I would guess it had to do with the Coriolis effect during evolution. This is the force that makes water spin one direction over the other while flowing down the drain. I would guess that it is easier for molecules to bend in one direction compared to the other. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 10 16:05:44 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:05:44 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <002d01c3a7a1$ce516580$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> References: <3FAF4F9E.5030308@mail.tele.dk> <002d01c3a7a1$ce516580$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <20031110160544.GQ13214@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 10:46:23AM -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > I would guess it had to do with the Coriolis effect during evolution. This > is the force that makes water spin one direction over the other while > flowing down the drain. I would guess that it is easier for molecules to http://www.tafkac.org/faq2k/science_3.html > bend in one direction compared to the other. You're kidding, right? Autoamplification of initial random fluke (the very first autocatalytic set, could have happened adsorbed on a silicate surface, but it's not really strictly necessary, could have happened on an achiral surface or solution bulk as well) in the initial prebiotic racemate ur-pool is the only plausible hypothesis so far. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Mon Nov 10 16:45:28 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:45:28 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 18:03:44 -0600, you wrote >The corporate form per se is no more or less problematic than any other means of holding and using property and contract rights. The problem arises when state power is fused with the form through corporatist government policies. Blaiming "corporations" is like blaming any other interest group that bids for and buys government favor, be they "farmers," "unions" or other organized groups that manage to garner preferential treatment from the state. Corporations are RELATVELY weak in the EU (compared to the US), but these other organized interest groups have done just as much harm by co-opting state power for their special interests in the EU -- viz. France and their endless strikes and labor-driven politics, But how do you define "harm"? The strikes in Europe are simply the expression of solidarity of the people and have resulted in the superior living conditions of the French (and other NW European countries), as compared to the Americans: The average American works 25% more hours than the average French. And the average French does not have to ever worry about getting cancer and not being able to pay for treatment--medical care is provided by the state without charge in France. Likewise, they do not have to worry about saving up for their child's education -- it is provided without charge by the state. Plus, if the job comes to an end, there is long term unemployment. The French obtained this superior lifestyle through strikes and other tactics. So where is the "harm"? Or did you mean "benefit"? :-) >or the agricultural protectionism in the EU that is one of the main factors derailing free trade in the >world. The evil doesn't lie in the legal form per se, but in the sell-out of state power. American govt sells out 10 times worse than any of the NW Euro countries. The European citizenry would (and have) shut down their countries if they think they have been sold out. ------------- The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 10 17:03:17 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:03:17 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] no life on Earth Message-ID: There's no life on Earth! At least that's what the Viking Mars lander would have found had it landed in Chile's Atacama Desert. http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0311/08marsnolife/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Mon Nov 10 16:59:54 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:59:54 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <20031110160544.GQ13214@leitl.org> Message-ID: <001101c3a7ac$13c2e8a0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Eugen Leitl wrote, OK, you got me. I was duped by this urban legend as well. I was not aware that the Coriolis effect was too weak to observe in water draining out of a sink. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 10 17:16:20 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:16:20 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropian wars Message-ID: I just had a thought, but I doubt it was the first time it has been brought up here. When the first "uploads" become available and people are actually able to become immortal, and when cryo-preserved people canbe brought back, the religious establishment is going to go beserk. I remember reading something many years ago where they were talking about how in the "future" everyone will be given a number and would not be able to conduct financial transactions without it. This would be implanted into the hand or the forehead. Many christians believe this is the proverbial "number of the beast" Given the slow speed at which religion can change to reflect new scientific breakthroughs, I see that an impending singularity, approaching ever faster, would create a backlash from religious freaks throughout the world. They will see this promise of immortality in exchange for a binary existance the ultimate expression of satan's plan and the "number of the beast". All who take this number will be doomed to hell and the rest will be expecting and might possibly begin a process that leads to armageddon. This could become a polarizing force which would pit transhumans against christians. Families would break apart and ultimately, war would break out as fanatical christians take to destroying all machines capable of supporting uploads on the grounds that they are doing God's work. Whew. A scary proposition! Could make for a decent work of fiction if I can find time to write it. Of course, I'm sure this has been discussed here, but it just recently came to my mind. Maybe before we start uploading, we had better find a way off this planet. Kevin Freels -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Mon Nov 10 17:25:27 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 18:25:27 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropian wars In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > > >I just had a thought, but I doubt it was the first time it has been brought up here. > >When the first "uploads" become available and people are actually able to become immortal, and when cryo-preserved people canbe brought back, the religious establishment is going to go beserk. I don't know if you read "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. It doesn't deal with this problem, but something can be read between the lines. In the book, most the early uploads are rich people. Very rich, since they need to afford powerful hardware to have their uploads run at a sufficient speed to interact with the outside world (and, at least at the beginning of the book, no significant "virtual" world seem to be estabilished). It's a work of fiction, but I believe-OOOOOPS!!! I think that it is a reasonable position: rich and powerful people are as human as the rest, and at least a fraction of them will jump into immortality, *when* they can see that it's real, and not some hothead delirium. Money and power will go a long way at countering opposition. The first virtual enclaves may and up quite closed, and quite defensive too. And the actual hardware must be either secured and guarded, or as dispersed and backed up as possible. Now, if 90% of the elite goes squarely against uploads, and is willing to dump a few 100M $ to stop it... Ciao, Alfio From twodeel at jornada.org Mon Nov 10 17:30:03 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 09:30:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropian wars In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > I don't know if you read "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. It doesn't > deal with this problem, but something can be read between the lines. In > the book, most the early uploads are rich people. Very rich, since they > need to afford powerful hardware to have their uploads run at a > sufficient speed to interact with the outside world (and, at least at > the beginning of the book, no significant "virtual" world seem to be > estabilished). Another good book of his dealing with something along these lines is _Diaspora_. From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Mon Nov 10 17:35:16 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 18:35:16 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropian wars In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Don Dartfield wrote: >Another good book of his dealing with something along these lines is >_Diaspora_. Warning: spoiler following! . . . . . . Diaspora is one of the best books I read on uploads, but it's set very farther away: thousands of years have passed since the virtual worlds were started, and only a tiny percentage of humanity is still living on the Earth surface. Their opposition has almost no power, except to harm themselves. Ciao, Alfio From rhanson at gmu.edu Mon Nov 10 18:12:36 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:12:36 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> In September 2000, the NSF held a Workshop on "Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology", and soon after issued a report: http://wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications/ I complained about that report, and so and have been invited to participant in the next version of the conference, being held December 3-5, 2003 (with abstracts due Nov. 17). I haven't been thinking much about this topic for a while, and so I thought I'd strike up a conversation here to see what current thinking is and to refresh my mind. An easy simple opinion to have is that nanotech won't have much in the way of specific social implications. In this view, manufacturing will slowly become more precise and more automated, as it has for centuries, and so the social implications of nanotech are subsumed by the social implications of generally improving tech, and any specific products that enables. Another opinion that I've heard has more distinct social implications, though I'm not sure how many people (still?) take it seriously. It is described in the novel "Diamond Age" and in several books by Drexler and company. In that vision, future manufacturing becomes much like how PCs are used today. People have personal general manufacturing devices (PGMD, I'll call them) close to home, and most consumer goods are produced locally on PGMDs, via downloaded designs and a few general feedstocks. A variation on this position posits that PGMDs can produce more PGMDs relatively quickly. And a refinement of this position posits that such self-reproducing PGMDs dramatically lowers costs relative to technology available just prior to this point. I'll focus my musings for now on this Drexlerian scenario, though I'm interested to hear if there are others that are taken seriously. Here are some tentative observations, in no particular order: 1. It is often assumed that a world of PGMDs is one of marginal costs near the cost of feedstocks, with the main fixed cost being the cost of design. But this depends crucially on the PGMDs being typically used well below capacity, as most PCs are today. Most manufacturing plants today have a pretty low marginal cost, in terms of how much you save if you operate them below capacity. But since the plants are used near capacity, this makes them little like software or other goods that really do have a low marginal cost of production. 2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are less efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of production time, material waste, or final product quality. The bigger this factor is, the larger need to be the scale economies in the production of PGMDs for them to dominate. At the moment most manufacturing devices are really quite specialized. 3. PGMDs embody almost *fully* automated manufacturing - if they need people to step in frequently to diagnose and fix assembly line problems, they become much less attractive. While many manufacturing plants today are highly automated, it may cost quite a lot to produce designs for fully automated production processes. So design costs may be a lot higher. 4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now are the physical capital, rather than labor and design. So it is not clear how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the economy. 5. If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing the social impact of this transition. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 10 18:31:18 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:31:18 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] vitrification question Message-ID: To vitrify, or not to vitrify: that is the question. Whether 'tis healthier for the mind to suffer the ripping and tearing of Molar Glycerol, or to take arms against these destructions of the mind and by decapitation, prevent them. To freeze: to sleep; is there more? And by a freeze to say we end the heart-ache and the imminent cellular death that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to freeze; To freeze: perchance to live: ay, there's the rub; For after that sleep of cryopreservation what life may come when we have replaced this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect that makes calamity of immortal life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of deceased love, the law's ineptitude, the ignorance of the religious and the spurns, that patient merit of unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, to think and explore under a binary life, but that dread of nothingness after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller has yet returned. puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have than to fly to others we are unsure of; Thus does consciousness make cowards of us all; OK. I digressed a bit. But really. I am assuming most, if not all of you are signed up with Alcor just in case... I am doing it now. I am trying to decide between neurosuspension and full body, or the open-ended option. I am leaning towards neurosuspension because of the vitrification process. Any comments? Also, if you are neurosuspended, what do they do with the rest of the body? Just curious. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 10 18:44:28 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:44:28 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropian wars References: Message-ID: Every time I turn around, there is another book suggested that I read. I can hardly keep track of them. I am going to attempt the assimilation of a list of suggested reading in both fiction and non-fiction catagories and post it on a website for anyone and everyone. I would like to include a brief synopsis as well. If anyone would like to contribute to my little project, please email me offlist with the information. I am setting up the site at http://transhumanismbooks.iwarp.com It won't be anything fancy, but hey, it's something. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alfio Puglisi" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 11:35 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Extropian wars > On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Don Dartfield wrote: > > >Another good book of his dealing with something along these lines is > >_Diaspora_. > > Warning: spoiler following! > > > . > > . > > . > > . > > . > > . > > > Diaspora is one of the best books I read on uploads, but it's set very > farther away: thousands of years have passed since the virtual worlds were > started, and only a tiny percentage of humanity is still living on the > Earth surface. Their opposition has almost no power, except to harm > themselves. > > > Ciao, > Alfio > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 10 18:38:52 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:38:52 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <00c201c3a7b9$e5c09de0$e2994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hanson" Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 12:12 PM > Another opinion that I've heard has more distinct social implications, > though I'm not sure how many people (still?) take it seriously. It is > described in the novel "Diamond Age" and in several books by Drexler and > company. In that vision, future manufacturing becomes much like how PCs > are used today. People have personal general manufacturing devices (PGMD, > I'll call them) close to home, and most consumer goods are produced locally > on PGMDs, via downloaded designs and a few general feedstocks. It's some time since I read DIAMOND AGE, but as I recall matter compilers were almost exactly NOT like PCs or microwave ovens; they were large `mainframe-like' gadgets more akin to ATMs. This was (I think) a social control mechanism, as well as a security precaution against random crackers compiling Sarin gas, machine guns, etc. This might well be what we'd expect to see if Drextech-ish molecular manufacture arrives in the next 15-30 years. (BTW, I still prefer and recommend my term `mint', from Molecular Nanotechnology or MNT, to an unpronounceable acronym like `PGMD'.) Damien Broderick From amara at amara.com Mon Nov 10 17:43:55 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:43:55 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Domiciles Message-ID: At 12:00 PM -0700 11/8/03, Spike wrote: > > > Robert J. Bradbury: > > ... is Spike's front lawn most extropic as-is or >> after it has been subjected to a delivery from space of birthday >> eclairs? R. > >Hey that gives me an idea. (As Robert's posts often do.) >We should have an extropic lawn contest. Or rather an >extropic domicile contest, where entrants suggest ways >in which their digs promote extropy. Having shelves full >of cool books is a good start, but what we want are ideas >and designs that promote extropian style and aesthetics, >which may be considered by some unenlightened sorts as >merely a subset of geek chic. > >Golden ratio ellipses in the lawn would count, as would >voice activated light switches and automated control of >appliances and such. Lets see some of that perpetual >progress and dynamic optimism, expressed in our immediate >personal surroundings. Websites count as part of the >home in a sense, so Anders and Greg Burch are strong >contestants already. One's conveyance is also a part >of one's personal environment, so if one has a car that >expresses extropian ideals, that counts too. > >Artistic sorts like Natasha and Anders could perhaps >judge the aesthetics, and the hard core techies such >as Robert and Damien could judge the technical merit, >kinda like the figure skaters who get two scores which >are then sold to the highest b... I mean *averaged* to >get the final score. The following is a description of parts of my domicile. I don't propose it for a contest entry (I'm still building furniture...), but you might like the description of the parts I like best. Thank you for helping me look at my home in a different light, Spike. If I were to describe my domicile, I would call it "Amara's Road (*) on the Edge of the Eternal City". Why? One window overlooks the city of Rome, another window looks to a 710m mountain called Monte Cavo, through which an ancient Roman road (Via Sacra) meanders. Traveling, motion and pieces of the Universe (mostly the Earth) are primary themes that move through my home (but please ignore the boxes!) Library -------- In my largest moves, I've towed my faithful library behind me. My books collectively weave the cloak, which I wear to keep me warm. (~1000 books: mostly math, physics, astronomy, numerical analysis, software, languages, poetry, classics, philosophy, psychology, mythology, photography, art, science fiction) * my favorite books from my bookshelf here: http://www.amara.com/aboutme/renhuman.html I find languages both fascinating and a bit scary, but I must know some because they are my bridges in my physical and intellectual travels. Languages help me to enter into the worlds of the people I meet, as well as learn something from human's and my family's past. Language (learning+general) books: German, Latvian, Italian, some Estonian, some Polish, some Czech, and Dictionaries (in above languages + French, Russian, Finnish, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Hawaiian) Tasting is part of the traveling, therefore, in my kitchen I have food recipe books, in Latvian, Estonian, Hungarian, German, Greek, and Italian languages in addition to English, and some notes of translations of cooking measures such as 'teaspoon', 'Tablespoon'... Photographs (blown up, matted, framed) on my walls --------------------------------------------------- On my smaller moves, my bike(**) and my camera have been typically my companions. (~10 of my photos, mostly b&w, some color) some can be seen here: http://www.amara.com/photo/NBSunset.jpg http://www.amara.com/photo/beachsunrise.jpg http://www.amara.com/photo/KlamathLake1.jpg http://www.amara.com/photo/KlamathLake2.jpg http://www.amara.com/photo/TreePath.jpg http://www.amara.com/photo/YosemiteRoad.jpg http://www.amara.com/photo/JoshuaRoad.jpg http://www.amara.com/photo/FoggyFarm.jpg http://www.amara.com/photo/LonelyBranch.jpg (web gallery here: http://www.amara.com/photo/photo.html) (two Etna volcano shots, taken by my best friend) http://www.educeth.ch/stromboli/etna/etna02/etna0211southvent/icons/s55.jpg (left) http://www.educeth.ch/stromboli/etna/etna02/etna0211ashandpeople/icons/p52.jpg 'Beaches' --------- I have a collection of shells/sand/glass/driftwood/seagullfeathers/glass fishing floats/ etc. from some places I've lived in or visited since 1961. In 1998, when I moved to Germany, I found I missed the ocean alot, so I constructed a small beach in a large rectangular baking dish from elements of my collection. Over time I've mixed the beach elements together, so now I have a kind of 'World white sand beach' with beach elements from Oahu, Maui, Molokai (Hawaiian Islands), Southern and Northern California, Sagres (Portugal). I am in the process of creating a small black sand beach with beach elements from Stromboli, Vulcano, Lipari, Pantelleria, Hawaii (the island). A friend gave me white sand he collected from Easter Island, so I keep that separate in clear wine glass with an outline of the map of the world. The snapshot of my mind covering my refrigerator door ------------------------------------------------------- I like to buy refrigerator magnets from places to which I travel because they are relatively cheap souvenirs that fit easily in my luggage. I have many and it is with these magnets that I pin to the refrigerator the images from my mind. From bookshops (usually) I've found interesting and artistic postcard-sized images or images+words that reflect some part of my present thinking and emotions. Some are thoughts of ways of being, other cards are dreams, and other cards are moods. I have a hundred or so of these, so I rotate the snapshot of mind on my refrigerator door every few months. Web: http://www.amara.com/ (many layers deep, an extension of my mind, so no site map exists) (*) Polaroid Snapshot of a sign in my home: "Amara's Road" http://www.amara.com/aboutme/medsign.gif This sign existed in my childhood in Haleiwa (Oahu), Hawaii. The cross street was Kalanianiole Highway. When I was young, it was a dirt road. My friends lifted this sign as a going away gift to me when I moved from Hawaii while the road was still a dirt road. The city of Haleiwa replaced it with a green Amara Road sign. When I was older, Amara Road became paved. Then when I was in my late teens, Amara Road was paved over to become the parking lot of a supermarket. (**) Amara's faithful steed: http://www.amara.com/port/parkedbike at Sines_50.jpg -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." --Anais Nin From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 10 18:54:13 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:54:13 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropian wars References: Message-ID: <00e001c3a7bc$0c82e120$e2994a43@texas.net> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > >I just had a thought, but I doubt it was the first time it has been brought up here. > > > >When the first "uploads" become available and people are actually able to become immortal, and when cryo-preserved people canbe brought back, the religious establishment is going to go beserk. >"Permutation City" by Greg Egan. An earlier novel (although not a terribly well argued one IMHO) is 1960s' sf bad boy Norman Spinrad's DEUS X, where a dying Catholic priest agrees to be uploaded to learn whether he retains a soul in this new embodiment; the shock finding is that he doesn't. Spinrad referred to this fictional outcome in his dismissive ASIMOV'S review of THE SPIKE, http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0106/stories/asimovs.onbooks.shtml as if his novel had settled the question in advance and rendered any further discussion of transhumanist uploading prospects irrelevant, stupidly reductionist, or Pollyannaish. Damien Broderick From wingcat at pacbell.net Mon Nov 10 19:20:49 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 11:20:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Extropian wars In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031110192049.42678.qmail@web80403.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > This could become a polarizing force which would pit > transhumans against christians. Families would break > apart and ultimately, war would break out as > fanatical christians take to destroying all machines > capable of supporting uploads on the grounds that > they are doing God's work. > > Whew. A scary proposition! Could make for a decent > work of fiction if I can find time to write it. It already has. One recent example: a modified form of this (augmented people in general, not just uploads) was part of Starcraft's backstory. (The augmented ones lost and were exiled; when, eventually, they settled, they just happened to land in the path of an alien army.) Which is not to say that there's not room for many more good takes on it. Problem is, without being handled very carefully, most people might find themselves identifying with the "evil" religious types, and take it as an encouragement to ossify their views against technology. From jacques at dtext.com Mon Nov 10 19:30:34 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 20:30:34 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Domiciles In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <16303.59226.323263.78819@localhost.localdomain> Amara Graps a ?crit (10.11.2003/19:43) : > http://www.educeth.ch/stromboli/etna/etna02/etna0211southvent/icons/s55.jpg Oh my... (don't miss that!) Jacques From amara at amara.com Mon Nov 10 18:57:18 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 20:57:18 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] (not exactly) Domiciles Message-ID: Jacques: >http://www.educeth.ch/stromboli/etna/etna02/etna0211southvent/icons/s55.jpg >Oh my... (don't miss that!) Incredible, hmm? Here are more: (look for those taken by Marco Fulle) http://www.stromboli.net/ Amara From hal at finney.org Mon Nov 10 20:16:29 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:16:29 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <200311102016.hAAKGTY29723@finney.org> I have a lot of trouble considering these future scenarios. All these possibilities get mixed together, sometimes in contradictory ways. What about AI? Surely computer aided design will be much farther along, and even if Moore's Law stops working in the next decade, nanotech could put us back on track. This should greatly decrease the need for human engineers, although artistic ability may not be so easy to bottle. Likewise for robotics? What will these imply for labor? How will people work, what will they do? What will happen if the demand for labor begins dropping by several percent per year or even faster, over a multi-year period? PGMDs would essentially eliminate transportation, labor and capital costs for products. What else is there? Design and marketing? What if the AIs can do most of that, too? Even if we keep factories, presumably the same improved efficiencies in the manufacuring process can apply to transportation and any other costs which can be further automated or made more efficient. What exactly are the PGMDs building all day? Could we reach a state of satiation, where we simply can't consume as much as our machines can produce? What would that imply for the economy? Or would we always be in a situation of scarcity? Could we have an "open source" economy, where people work on whatever interests them, or create designs that satisfy their own needs, then make the fruits of their labor available to everyone for free? What if nanotech ultimately drives capital costs to near zero, eliminates labor as a component of manufacturing costs, drastically reduces design costs, and similarly makes every economic factor tremendously cheaper? What does the resulting economy look like? If nanotech really does all this, then whether it happens in one year or twenty years, you're going to have major dislocations. I think it would be useful to see an economic analysis of the economy in a mature nanotech era like this. Maybe it is obvious to an economist, but it is hard for a non-specialist to see how all the pieces would fit together, when everything is so different from what we are used to. Hal From rhanson at gmu.edu Mon Nov 10 20:18:46 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 15:18:46 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <00c201c3a7b9$e5c09de0$e2994a43@texas.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110151324.01702050@mail.gmu.edu> At 12:38 PM 11/10/2003 -0600, Damien Broderick wrote: > > "Diamond Age" ... vision, future manufacturing becomes much like how PCs > > are used today. People have personal general manufacturing devices (PGMD, > > I'll call them) close to home, and most consumer goods are produced > > locally on PGMDs, via downloaded designs and a few general feedstocks. > >It's some time since I read DIAMOND AGE, but as I recall matter compilers >were almost exactly NOT like PCs or microwave ovens; they were large >`mainframe-like' gadgets more akin to ATMs. It's been some time since I read it too, but the key point is that they were near final customers, and so nearly as numerous as customers. >This was (I think) a social >control mechanism, as well as a security precaution against random crackers >compiling Sarin gas, machine guns, etc. This might well be what we'd expect >to see if Drextech-ish molecular manufacture arrives in the next 15-30 years. I want to factor out the social control hypotheses - first I want to understand the technical/cost possibilities, and then I can evaluate regulatory options. >(BTW, I still prefer and recommend my term `mint', from Molecular >Nanotechnology or MNT, to an unpronounceable acronym like `PGMD'.) "Mint" has more ordinary connotations, and MNT is ambiguous about plant size and nearness to customers. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From etheric at comcast.net Mon Nov 10 20:26:33 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:26:33 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] (not exactly) Domiciles References: Message-ID: <004601c3a7c8$ef537df0$0200a8c0@etheric> Well I was going to show you mine, but all I have now is a pic of this life extension experiment gone horribly wrong... http://www.zvis.com/images/nuks/sedan.jpg From max at maxmore.com Mon Nov 10 20:41:41 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 14:41:41 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031110143452.039ab680@mail.earthlink.net> Robin, The following article on "direct manufacturing", though not about nano, has some relevant thoughts that you might find worth scanning quickly: Instant Manufacturing Ivan Imato Technology Review, November 2003 http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/amato1103.asp My review (and links to related material such as "Fax It Up, Scotty"): http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.asp?coid=CO1140318504119 I'd also highly recommend the new book "Experimentation Matters" since PGMDs -- or steps along the way to them -- would boost rapid prototyping and other approaches analyzed extensively in Stefan Thomke's book. My review of the book is here: http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.asp?coid=CO1130316143063 Onward! Max _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From CurtAdams at aol.com Mon Nov 10 20:44:25 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 15:44:25 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> In a message dated 11/10/03 10:18:19, rhanson at gmu.edu writes: >1. It is often assumed that a world of PGMDs is one of marginal costsnear >the cost of feedstocks, with the main fixed cost being the cost of >design. But this depends crucially on the PGMDs being typically used well >below capacity, as most PCs are today. Most manufacturing plants today >have a pretty low marginal cost, in terms of how much you save if you >operate them below capacity. But since the plants are used near capacity, >this makes them little like software or other goods that really do have >a low marginal cost of production. Right. The distinction between nanotechnology (machines able to operate at very small scales) and Drextech (self-replicating nanotechnology) is critical here. If machines have to be constructed then there's no reason to construct excess (costly) so they will, as you point out, have similar economics to macromachinery. Only if they replicate will you get a situation like biology where the cost of something (in the long term) is basically the cost to feed it. Even with self-replication current IP laws would defer most of the effects for the duration of the patent. Given the demonstrable clout of major patentholders (e.g. Microsoft) they might figure out how to extend patent indefinitely. >2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are less >efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of >production time, material waste, or final product quality. That's a great question and I know there's work on this. Specialization -> efficiency goes back to Adam Smith. Unfortunately my vague recollections from reading some of this stuff is that the results are contentious. Anything quantitative on this would be great. The hip pop versions of complexity theory certainly encourage the idea that there *would* be fairly general rules, but I've never seen anything, so it's probably not there. There might be some studies from chip design. >3. PGMDs embody almost *fully* automated manufacturing - if they need >people to step in frequently to diagnose and fix assembly line problems, >they become much less attractive. While many manufacturing plants today >are highly automated, it may cost quite a lot to produce designs for fully >automated production processes. So design costs may be a lot higher. Drextech vs. nanotech again; only if you self-replicate can you erase your inital design costs. The trend in the modern world is to higher specialization. The big exception is computer chips. But, to be fair, to *use* the generalized chip requires a lot of *software* design and I'd expect the same for nanotech. If Drextech doesn't fly, or at least doesn't soon, I would expect nanobot to be made by methods similar to chip manufacturing, etching and layers large numbers of duplicates on a single block. >4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is >rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now >are the physical capital, rather than labor and design. So it is not clear >how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the >economy. Good point; not too much effect there. I'd think more in terms of nanobots in consumer hands, able to exert physical force on scales an in locations not currently possible. Dishwashers that can actually scrub; carpets that can roll themselves up; home under-gum plaque removers; indwelling periodic catheterization devices; stuff like that. >5. If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing >PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of >ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing >the social impact of this transition. I think manufactured PGMD are almost guaranteed to precede self-reproducing PGMD. How can we build something to do something as complex as self-replication before we're *very* good at making it? I think the transition from manufactured to self-replicating would still have *enormous* social implications, though, if it happens. The values for centralization and for current manufacturing stock could go "poof" in a big hurry, depending on the speed of the transition. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 10 20:45:01 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 21:45:01 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <20031110204501.GV13214@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 01:12:36PM -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > I haven't been thinking much about this topic for a while, and so I thought > I'd strike up a conversation here to see what current thinking is and to > refresh my mind. I doubt things changed much while you weren't looking. It's a small, small pool. > An easy simple opinion to have is that nanotech won't have much in the way > of specific social implications. In this view, manufacturing will slowly Sure, Singularity won't have much in the way of specific social implications. We'll get superhuman AI, it kills/transforms the entire local ecosystem by side effect or malice aforethought, completely remodels the solar system and transforming the entire universe in its lightcone into something we currently can't imagine -- and that's assuming no major new physics. Business as usual, in other words. > become more precise and more automated, as it has for centuries, and so the Sure, a couple of centuries worth of hitherto progress rolled into a month, or a couple of days. Accelerating up to a rate of 3 kYears of progress within 24 hours -- that be 3 kYears of instant superculture progress, of course, not us-current. Pass the butter. What else is new? > social implications of nanotech are subsumed by the social implications of > generally improving tech, and any specific products that enables. > > Another opinion that I've heard has more distinct social implications, > though I'm not sure how many people (still?) take it seriously. It is > described in the novel "Diamond Age" and in several books by Drexler and The first time I read "Diamond Age" I laughed. Apart from broken physics in a whole number of places, the future described was ludicrously incongrous. No superhuman AI. Biology-based infoprocessing being competitive to dry nanoware. Containable gray goo. Ridiculous. Nice science fiction, though. Snow Crash was considerably better, however. Lots more realistic. > company. In that vision, future manufacturing becomes much like how PCs > are used today. People have personal general manufacturing devices (PGMD, > I'll call them) close to home, and most consumer goods are produced locally > on PGMDs, via downloaded designs and a few general feedstocks. A You'll notice Diamond Age doesn't allow end users to design. Even architects are supervised closely (but easy enough to subvert). What do you think Eliezer's PGMD's first batch will be? Hmm, let me guess... No idea. *I* would be fabbing computronium by the metric truckload, though. Cubic meters, cubic miles, if I can afford it. > variation on this position posits that PGMDs can produce more PGMDs > relatively quickly. And a refinement of this position posits that such > self-reproducing PGMDs dramatically lowers costs relative to technology > available just prior to this point. Molecular manufacturing that is useless for its own production doesn't happen. It just gets eaten alive by the other kind. We already can manipulate single atoms and molecules just fine. With processivity indistinguishable from zero, though, and that kills the golden goose before it could even hatch. Things become far more interesting if we can get fractional self-rep closure, and things just explode once closure is over unity. Before, you're limited to nanogram output from very, very large installations. On a budget very much like the Manhattan Project. > I'll focus my musings for now on this Drexlerian scenario, though I'm > interested to hear if there are others that are taken seriously. Here are > some tentative observations, in no particular order: > > 1. It is often assumed that a world of PGMDs is one of marginal costs near > the cost of feedstocks, with the main fixed cost being the cost of Evolution was a pretty good designer, last time I looked. Takes good care of feedstock. Diversifies into places it wasn't originally destined to go. Like: us. A pretty funky metamethod. > design. But this depends crucially on the PGMDs being typically used well > below capacity, as most PCs are today. Most manufacturing plants today > have a pretty low marginal cost, in terms of how much you save if you > operate them below capacity. But since the plants are used near capacity, > this makes them little like software or other goods that really do have a > low marginal cost of production. If you don't have mints minting themselves, or at least going a good way along the way there (looms to weave raw buckys from large-scale thermosynthesis do qualify), you don't have molecular manufacturing. Notice that you can get pretty good computronium by way of autoassembly, no magic mints + Fairy Dust Forte(tm) required. > 2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are less > efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of > production time, material waste, or final product quality. The bigger this > factor is, the larger need to be the scale economies in the production of > PGMDs for them to dominate. At the moment most manufacturing devices are > really quite specialized. How does current economy handle production of production means, including persons? In an exponential rate? Superhuman persons? I'm not sure current economic theory would be a good predictor here. > 3. PGMDs embody almost *fully* automated manufacturing - if they need > people to step in frequently to diagnose and fix assembly line problems, People rarely step in to diagnose and fix the reproduction of locusts and influenza. It's just a no-brainer self-runner. A mint is a lot less complex than a locust. > they become much less attractive. While many manufacturing plants today > are highly automated, it may cost quite a lot to produce designs for fully > automated production processes. So design costs may be a lot higher. What does it take to produce a good meta-designer? A robust morphogenetic code, an evolutionary system, a good nanoscale simulator, and lots of computronium to run the above. As embarrassingly parallel as they come. And that's about the only metainvention you need to make. > 4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is > rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now > are the physical capital, rather than labor and design. So it is not clear > how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the > economy. What would happen to the current economy if Alladin's lamps (with no limitations on use, and no nasty Taliban types inside) could be had at WalMart? > 5. If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing > PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of > ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing > the social impact of this transition. I think it's a highly laudable idea to figure out how to contain that Pandora's box of tightly packed nonlinearities, but I just don't see it happening. It will explode all over the place, and that's probably all for the best. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rhanson at gmu.edu Mon Nov 10 20:46:55 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 15:46:55 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <200311102016.hAAKGTY29723@finney.org> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110153458.01702050@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/10/2003, Hal Finney wrote: >I have a lot of trouble considering these future scenarios. All these >possibilities get mixed together, sometimes in contradictory ways. >What about AI? Surely computer aided design will be much farther along, >and even if Moore's Law stops working in the next decade, nanotech could >put us back on track. ... >Likewise for robotics? >What will these imply for labor? How will people work, what will they >do? What will happen if the demand for labor begins dropping by several >percent per year or even faster, over a multi-year period? ... What if aliens show up? What if time-travelers from the future come back? It seems to me to make the most sense to choose some sort of baseline scenario, then analyze each substantial change by itself, and only after try to combine these scenarios. So let's assume, for the purpose of analyzing nanotech, that automation progresses over the next few decades at a similar pace and character as it has over the last few decades. >PGMDs would essentially eliminate transportation, labor and capital costs >for products. What else is there? Design and marketing? As I said before, whether it eliminates capital costs depends crucially on the cost of creating PGMDs, and on whether they are used to capacity. >Even if we keep factories, presumably the same improved efficiencies >in the manufacuring process can apply to transportation and any other >costs which can be further automated or made more efficient. I don't see why we should presume this. Progress in one area does not imply the same progress in other areas. >What exactly are the PGMDs building all day? Could we reach a state >of satiation, where we simply can't consume as much as our machines can >produce? What would that imply for the economy? Or would we always be >in a situation of scarcity? You are assuming something about how fast these things work. What if they worked very slowly? >Could we have an "open source" economy, where people work on whatever >interests them, or create designs that satisfy their own needs, then >make the fruits of their labor available to everyone for free? The form of the market for designs seems a separate issue. Logically, you could have ordinary factories and open source design, or you could have PGMDs and profit-motivated copyrighted designs. >What if nanotech ultimately drives capital costs to near zero, eliminates >labor as a component of manufacturing costs, drastically reduces design >costs, and similarly makes every economic factor tremendously cheaper? >What does the resulting economy look like? >If nanotech really does all this, then whether it happens in one year >or twenty years, you're going to have major dislocations. I think it >would be useful to see an economic analysis of the economy in a mature >nanotech era like this. Maybe it is obvious to an economist, but it is >hard for a non-specialist to see how all the pieces would fit together, >when everything is so different from what we are used to. Sure, if pigs can fly, the sky is going to look different. But we need to do the analysis step by step, and not jump too quickly to big conclusions. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From jacques at dtext.com Mon Nov 10 20:53:24 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 21:53:24 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal In-Reply-To: <00dd01c3a72f$d5aa11a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000101c3a65d$93bd1e40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <00f001c3a66d$e2894980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.29556.715292.307100@localhost.localdomain> <005a01c3a706$6a780a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16302.56711.538309.647078@localhost.localdomain> <00dd01c3a72f$d5aa11a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <16303.64196.177855.121292@localhost.localdomain> Brett Paatsch a ?crit (10.11.2003/13:10) : > > [Note: Jacques - your arguments below imo are honing in now > on the nub and it matters now - if our time is not to be wasted > in getting to this point (where the truth may be clearer) to be > careful with our (yours and my) language - so apologies in > advance for what may seem like an overdose of pedantry. The > use of the word "one" as oppose to 'you' or 'me' in some cases > makes things clearer and I have substituted it. Please also note > that anybody who hasn't followed this thread will not > NECESSARILY intuitively get it now coming in at this stage.] > > > "I believe that X" allows me [one] to express some degree of > > confidence that X holds: nothing more, nothing less. > > If the audience doesn't give a damn about your [one's] level of > > confidence that X holds, then using this concept is not useful in > > that particular situation. > > > > Thus, it is true that in debates, and if you are [one is] unknown > > to the audience, you [one] might as well not use that word at all, > > and only provide facts and arguments for other people to > > consider and form their own belief > [#1 !!!!] > > -I think you mean opinion or judgement here do you not? -or > are you in fact inadvertly presuming the outcome of our inquiry > - I think that may make my point about the danger of the belief > meme - .i.e. if *you* can't hold the-matter-under-inquiry (belief) > separate from the inquiry process itself !! > (No criticism of you - I think the belief meme critter is really that > slippery - especially for those who think it is harmless). > > > But that is not a problem with the word "belief". It is simply > > that in this situation, no one cares about your "level of > > confidence". > > No as I indicate above it is also that the word is used to prejudice > inquiry. It slips past the guard of those that use it. It is a very, very > slippery meme. I think it just slipped past your (Jacques') guard > above at #1 did it not? Not, it did not. I am not trying to avoid the use of the word "believe", as it seems to me to be (as I said) a perfectly well-defined and useful concept. What I said above is that in some situations, it may be appropriate to avoid to refer in any way to what you believe, and to only provide facts and arguments for other people to consider and form their own belief, i.e. so that they form some picture of reality in which they put some confidence. It's quite plain and I don't think it deserves four exclamation points... > > Suppose that in such a debate, one guest is a famous and > > respected Nobel Prize [winner]. Her use of "belief" is going > > to matter, because people (rightly or wrongly, doesn't matter > > here [in this contention]) are interested in her level of > > confidence that X holds. > > So you think that people (generally) make judgements not on > evidence but on the perceived authority of the presenter ? - On > the whole I think this is true but this is part of my point - It > hurts the cause of shared-truth-discovery to encourage this > natural human tendency to laziness though. And the Nobel > Prize winner does the audience a disservice if she deliberately > engages in persuasion by appeal to authority (ie. if she uses > the statement 'I believe X') rather than ('the evidence indicates > X') by appeal to reason. I might agree with this, too, depending on the context. If someone's belief is based on evidence and theory that he can readily explain, or at least usefully point to, to his audience, it's probably better to do that. But it's often not possible, and in certain situations, stating your belief can be a useful thing to do. If I hire Harvey to manage the security of my network, and that I hear about some threat, I may tell him: "Harvey, do you believe this threat is a concern for our network"? I don't necessarily want him to explicate all the evidence, the experience, the theory, etc. he has. Maybe I couldn't even understand all that, he's the expert in computer security, not me. For some reason (maybe his certification list, maybe a long experience of fruitful collaboration), I trust his competence. So I just want to know what he believes in the instance, and I will make my decision based on this. > > So, I can agree with you on something -- and you'll tell me > > if this matches your preoccupation > *** > [ :-) I prefer contention if you don't mind] Well, you have a contention, but you also seem to have a preoccupation. You are not just arguing about some linguistic thing for the sake of linguistics, it seems to matter a lot more than that to you ("matters of life and death", etc.). (In fact, I wouldn't bother to argue about this if you didn't seem genuinely preoccupied with it.) > > -- namely that if you are [one is] in a hostile situation, and > > you [one] need[s] to convince people, you [one] may as well > > give up on any explicit belief self-attribution, as people may > > seize the occasion to think, "oh, this is just a belief, then". > > That is pretty close to my contention yes. Except to push it > further the *belief* meme is SO SLIPPERY that they may > not even need to formally think the sentence "oh, this is just > a belief, then" - they may do that or they may not even be > *that* aware. Good. I understood your point then, and I agree with it. Are you sure you want to extend it so that I cannot agree? :-) > > I can also agree that when bringing new ideas (like > > transhumanist ideas) into society, we may often find > > ourselves in such situations, and hence it may (sic) > > sometimes be preferable to avoid the use of "belief". > > What do you mean may - can you think of a particular > instance or not? First, let me tell you right away that I will also keep using the word "may", not only the word "belief" (unless you persuade me otherwise), as I find that word useful and non-problematic, too! Now to answer your question, yes, I can think of instances when it should be used, and instances when it should not be used. I gave above examples of the former (asking my security expert, "do you believe this threat should be a concern to us?") and of the latter (useless to talk about your beliefs qua beliefs if the audience doesn't give a damn about the level of confidence with wich you think that something holds). > > (But at other times, > > I think it may (sic) on the contrary be useful to say that > > yes, you do believe in it, and you are not just playing > > with words.) > > How can you know what they *believe* in? This is part > of my point - You can't - even if they use the word belief > as it reliably maps to no specific referent - they are leaving > you to guess at their meaning (and if indeed they even > *have* a meaning and are not merely articulating a > PREJUDICE ?!!!). You seem to be making a confusion between two things, the belief on one hand, and on the other hand the way it was formed, and what it is based on. A belief is bad when it was formed in a silly way and is not based on anything solid. It is not bad *because it is a belief*. The fact that some people have silly beliefs is far from being a sufficient reason to discard the concept of belief, which is actually absolutely essential. In fact, it's exactly the same with trust. Trusting some guru that you should commit suicide to see the light is bad. Does that make trust a bad thing? Of course not. Trust may be a very good thing. And it's necessary in many circumstances, we couldn't do much without it. Trust in the others, trust in oneself. You just need the trust to be based on something solid, or else it's risky. Same with belief. > Please demonstrate your contention that the word belief is useful > by giving an instance where you think it better (than any alternate > word) conveys meaning between people. I believe I did that above in a way that should match your expectation. If not, tell me more precisely what you want and I will try to deliver. Let me add one thing, to make my point even more clear: every time you say "I think that X", you may feel safer and more rational by refering to thought rather than to belief, but what you really mean is actually that you *believe* that X. What else could you mean? Certainly not what is literaly said, namely that you just entertained this thought at that moment (which would not commit you to anything). "Believe", in the family of concepts that serve to express the confidence an individual has in the holding of some fact, is the central one. Removing it is not desirable. But again, I understood your original point about avoid this word in certain situations, and I agree with it. Jacques From jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com Mon Nov 10 20:43:32 2003 From: jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com (Jose Cordeiro) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 12:43:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism launched in Mexico Message-ID: <20031110204332.10801.qmail@web41303.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Extropian friends, I just came back from Mexico where I was invited by the World Future Society (Mexico Chapter) to modearate a panel about the future role of corporations. John Smart was also there, and we both gave a public talk broadcasted live to over 15.000 university students. While in Mexico City, I took the time to organize the first formal transhumanist meeting there. We were 10 people at a local restaurant last Saturday, November 8th: 4 media people (3 from technical magazines and 1 from radio), 1 economics student, 1 internationalist, 1 political scientist (but commie:-), 1 computer scientist, 1 high-school deputy director and me. All the participants were very interested: one came from a contact given to me by J. Hughes and the others were people who listened to the talks and presentations by John and me. One participant really surprised me when he gave a copy of his university thesis (just published by Universidad Iberoamericana, the most prestigious private university in Mexico City), which was about transhumanism and posthumanism. As incredible as it sounds, this young guy is really futurist, and now manages a maga! zine called WOW. We also started a Yahoogroup, where we have included a picture of the first meeting and the agenda and minutes of the reunion: http://mx.groups.yahoo.com/group/transhumanismomexico Soon, there will be more information in our web page, and for those interested (who can read Spanish:-) you can se below the message I wrote to my Mexican friends this morning:-) Extropianilly yours, La vie est belle! Yos? =========================================================== Muy estimad at s amig at s transhumanist at s mexican at s: Muchos saludos desde Venezuela. Estoy regresando a Caracas despu?s de una encantadora semana en mi querido M?xico. Un maravilloso viaje coronado con la creaci?n del Cap?tulo Mexicano de la Asociaci?n Transhuman?stica Mundial el pasado s?bado 8 de noviembre en el VIPS del Angel de la Revoluci?n. ?Qu? grupo tan preparado! Con un poco de todo: jovenes y menos j?venes (incluyendo una encantadora abuela transhuman?stica, Alicia, y su joven nieto economista, Luis), ingenieros en computaci?n (Ramiro), comunicadores sociales (Alejandra, Alfredo, Josu? y V?ctor), internacionalistas (Jorge), polit?logos (Rodolfo), etc. Un excelente grupo con gente que conoc?a el movimiento transhumanista desde hace tiempo como Ramiro y el propio Alfredo que escribi? su excelente tesis de grado en la prestigiosa Universidad Iberoamericana sobre el transhumanismo y el posthumanismo. Espero que esto sea apenas el comienzo de un futuro espectacular:-) Transhuman?sticamente, La vie est belle! Yos? La vie est belle! Yos? (www.cordeiro.org) Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 10 21:17:12 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 22:17:12 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> References: <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> Message-ID: <20031110211712.GW13214@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 03:44:25PM -0500, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > > Right. The distinction between nanotechnology (machines able to operate > at very small scales) and Drextech (self-replicating nanotechnology) is It is very important to keep track of the lingo here. Orelse, we arrive at the "dental nanopaste" and "scratch-proof nanoparticle car finish" kind of nanotechnology (I kid you not, last Saturday I was privy to what the Deutsche Museum NanoTag/VDI understands by nanotechnology -- cheap potshots at Drexler & Merkle included). > critical here. If machines have to be constructed then there's no reason to > construct excess (costly) so they will, as you point out, have similar > economics to macromachinery. Only if they replicate will you get a situation > like biology where the cost of something (in the long term) is basically > the cost to feed it. I suggest we talk about molecular manufacturing when we mean molecular manufacturing, and leave the nanofabs (which, somehow, magically came into being, and then, suddenly, somehow can't make parts of themselves, nor otherwise assist in their own manufacturing) roam the plains along the bands of elves and flocks of unicorns. I don't at all think that http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/Nanofactory.htm is how it is going to happen, but we shouldn't regard self-replication as something magical. Even we can do it; why can't machines? > Even with self-replication current IP laws would defer most of the effects > for the duration of the patent. Given the demonstrable clout of major IP laws has remarkably little clout when it comes to limiting the scope of information dissemination. This not only includes directly monkey-consumables, but news and virtual machines (software) as well. All that while people go to jail for it. Why should blueprints be different? It's just information, after all. > patentholders (e.g. Microsoft) they might figure out how to extend patent > indefinitely. Even if we introduce capital punishment (all over the planet? fat chance) IP violations will occur routinely. > >2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are less > >efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of > >production time, material waste, or final product quality. Computers are all-purpose information processing devices. They have almost completely destroyed all special-purpose information processing devices. A nanofab with a structural repertoire equal to or a bit beyond biology will completely transcend biology. We can make computronium from proteins just fine. It's just spintronics in SWNT matrix is so much better. And each iteration of the technology assists its own ascension. > That's a great question and I know there's work on this. > Specialization -> efficiency goes back to Adam Smith. Unfortunately > my vague recollections from reading some of this stuff is that the > results are contentious. Anything quantitative on this would be great. > The hip pop versions of complexity theory certainly encourage the idea > that there *would* be fairly general rules, but I've never seen anything, > so it's probably not there. There might be some studies from chip design. > > >3. PGMDs embody almost *fully* automated manufacturing - if they need > >people to step in frequently to diagnose and fix assembly line problems, > >they become much less attractive. While many manufacturing plants today > >are highly automated, it may cost quite a lot to produce designs for fully > >automated production processes. So design costs may be a lot higher. > > Drextech vs. nanotech again; only if you self-replicate can you erase Let's call it molecular manufacturing, please. > your inital design costs. The trend in the modern world is to higher > specialization. > The big exception is computer chips. But, to be fair, to *use* the > generalized > chip requires a lot of *software* design and I'd expect the same for I get all my software from the global network for free. I could use silicon compilers (for free, of course) to design my own circuits, should I want it. If I had my own desktop nanolithoprinter, you can assume I'd quit my job and started tinkering. So would many, many others. > nanotech. If Drextech doesn't fly, or at least doesn't soon, I would expect > nanobot to be made by methods similar to chip manufacturing, etching and > layers large numbers of duplicates on a single block. I would assume large-scale autoassembly and bottom-up to produce the first simple self-rep systems. > >4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is > >rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now > >are the physical capital, rather than labor and design. So it is not clear > >how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the > >economy. > > Good point; not too much effect there. I'd think more in terms of nanobots > in consumer hands, able to exert physical force on scales an in locations > not currently possible. Dishwashers that can actually scrub; carpets that > can roll themselves up; home under-gum plaque removers; indwelling > periodic catheterization devices; stuff like that. Machine which can actually think and make improved copies of themselves; stuff like that. > >5. If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing > >PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of > >ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing > >the social impact of this transition. > > I think manufactured PGMD are almost guaranteed to precede self-reproducing > PGMD. How can we build something to do something as complex as PROCESSIVITY. Think about it. How do you scale nanograms/h in a large hall to kilotons/h? Not without self-rep. > self-replication before we're *very* good at making it? I think the > transition from manufactured to self-replicating would still have > *enormous* social implications, though, if it happens. The values > for centralization and for current manufacturing stock could go "poof" in > a big hurry, depending on the speed of the transition. We should see the impact of cheap photovoltaics on decentral energy production within the next 10-15 years. Ditto wireless networks linking up to a global mesh. The centralist paradigm is fighting a battle uphill. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From natashavita at earthlink.net Mon Nov 10 21:14:16 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 16:14:16 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] BOOK SIGNING: Brian Alexander's RAPTURE Message-ID: <265000-2200311110211416918@M2W076.mail2web.com> Extropes - Brian Alexander, author of _Rapture_ will be appearing at two border's bookstores to discuss rapture and related issues this coming weekend Nov. 15-16. In his book, Brian outlines the culture of transhumanity and our reach toward improving the human condition. He mentioned many of our friends here in the Transhumanist community of Extropy! :-) I'm currently reading Rapture, and loving it! I'm giggling, over a hot cup of chocolate, at the delightful humor that Brian Alexander uses. It's a marvelous book, and I think that you all will enjoy it. Borders bookstore in Torrance on Torrance Blvd. at 3:00 PM on Saturday the 15th, and at the Brea Borders on South Associated Rd. at 3:00 PM on Sunday the 16th. >! Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 10 21:44:28 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 22:44:28 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110153458.01702050@mail.gmu.edu> References: <200311102016.hAAKGTY29723@finney.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031110153458.01702050@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <20031110214428.GY13214@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 03:46:55PM -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > What if aliens show up? What if time-travelers from the future come back? We can plausibly show that aliens most likely don't exist (or we wouldn't be here). Ditto time travelers (they're really indistinguishable from aliens this way). As are elves, Ents, unicorns and celestial bodies made of ripe gorgonzola. However, it will be a tad more difficult to show that certain widespread local organisms don't think, that we can't figure out how they do it (nor derive those methods from scratch via brute-force evolutionary algorithms), using means of atom-scale imaging of vitrified chunks of said animals, and cheap computational hardware by the metric wagonload. Meaning: ff you postulate molecular manufacturing, you better show a plausible mechanism preventing advent of AI via one of the above routes, or both. > It seems to me to make the most sense to choose some sort of baseline > scenario, then analyze each substantial change by itself, and only after > try to combine these scenarios. So let's assume, for the purpose of If you look at two subcritical chunks of plutonium, you will not arrive at the correct conclusion of what a supercritical assembly of them will bring you, unless you factor in adequate level of theory. > analyzing nanotech, that automation progresses over the next few decades at > a similar pace and character as it has over the last few decades. > > You are assuming something about how fast these things work. What if > they worked very slowly? If they work very, very, very slowly they wouldn't be able to fab themselves, and hence are not there for all practical purposes (see Manhattan project). Nevertheless, self-amplification is exponential in principle. You will notice that humans replicate very, very slowly. It took them a while to become very visible on this local planet here. Nevertheless, we're very lucky their self-reproduction rate is adaptive, and tapering off. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation, by virtue of being dead, or not having been born in the first place. > >Could we have an "open source" economy, where people work on whatever > >interests them, or create designs that satisfy their own needs, then > >make the fruits of their labor available to everyone for free? > > The form of the market for designs seems a separate issue. Logically, What's the market for gcc? autoconf? GNU/Linux? I notice this particular market has been eating several Large Companies alive, yet has not yet found adequate treatment in classical economics circles. > you could have ordinary factories and open source design, or you could > have PGMDs and profit-motivated copyrighted designs. Both have their niches. I'm presuming a more biology-inspired development model, though. > Sure, if pigs can fly, the sky is going to look different. But we need > to do the analysis step by step, and not jump too quickly to big > conclusions. If your premises are bogus, your conclusions are food for the abovementioned airborne porcines. I'm not sure whether you're looking for publishable papers, or trying to map the more radical implications of comparatively simple technologies like molecular nanofacturing (completely ignoring the AI issue for time being). If you're realistic, your peers will reject your papers. If you're conservative, your fellow transhumanists will point and laugh. I'm not sure there's a sweet spot between those two bonfires. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From namacdon at ole.augie.edu Mon Nov 10 21:46:27 2003 From: namacdon at ole.augie.edu (Nicholas Anthony MacDonald) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 15:46:27 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] [FICTION] Strong Medicine Message-ID: <1068500787.b2ef5660namacdon@ole.augie.edu> New short story posted to Salon.com ... may or may not be of interest. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/11/10/medicine/index1.html -Nicq MacDonald From rhanson at gmu.edu Mon Nov 10 22:03:40 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:03:40 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110165151.0232e998@mail.gmu.edu> On Nov 10, 2003 Curt Adams wrote: >Right. The distinction between nanotechnology (machines able to operate >at very small scales) and Drextech (self-replicating nanotechnology) is >critical here. ... Only if they replicate will you get a situation >like biology where the cost of something (in the long term) is basically >the cost to feed it. >Even with self-replication current IP laws would defer most of the effects >for the duration of the patent. Given the demonstrable clout of major >patentholders (e.g. Microsoft) they might figure out how to extend patent >indefinitely. I agree. There are more implications of self-replication, but it is of interest to figure out the implications of what you call ordinary nanotech as well. > >3. PGMDs embody almost *fully* automated manufacturing - if they need > >people to step in frequently to diagnose and fix assembly line problems, > >they become much less attractive. While many manufacturing plants today > >are highly automated, it may cost quite a lot to produce designs for fully > >automated production processes. So design costs may be a lot higher. > >Drextech vs. nanotech again; only if you self-replicate can you erase >your inital design costs. ... I'm not sure I follow you. Self-replication can spreads out the cost of designing the self-replicating PGMDs, but not the cost to design other things one instructs those PGMDs to produce. Even if I have a cheap PGMD, there is work to tell it how to produce some other produce, like a shirt. If the PGMD typically halts halfway into producing a shirt, and needs a human to come fix it, the cost of shirts stays pretty high. So PGMD manufacturing of shirts needs to be very highly automated to make a big difference. >... I'd think more in terms of nanobots >in consumer hands, able to exert physical force on scales an in locations >not currently possible. Dishwashers that can actually scrub; carpets that >can roll themselves up; home under-gum plaque removers; indwelling >periodic catheterization devices; stuff like that. Sure. Knowing that nanotech is possible gives you some idea about how far we can eventually go with a richer economy and better technology. If you didn't believe such things would ever be possible, this is news. >I think manufactured PGMD are almost guaranteed to precede self-reproducing >PGMD. How can we build something to do something as complex as >self-replication before we're *very* good at making it? I think the >transition from manufactured to self-replicating would still have >*enormous* social implications, though, if it happens. The values >for centralization and for current manufacturing stock could go "poof" in >a big hurry, depending on the speed of the transition. Of course this depends on the speed of self-replication. If it takes 15 years for each thing to copy itself, the effect is much smaller. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From rhanson at gmu.edu Mon Nov 10 22:18:43 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:18:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031110143452.039ab680@mail.earthlink.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110171405.02334330@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/10/2003 Max More wrote: >The following article on "direct manufacturing", though not about nano, >has some relevant thoughts that you might find worth scanning quickly: >Instant Manufacturing, Ivan Imato, Technology Review, November 2003 >http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/amato1103.asp >My review (and links to related material such as "Fax It Up, Scotty"): >http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.asp?coid=CO1140318504119 >I'd also highly recommend the new book "Experimentation Matters" since >PGMDs -- or steps along the way to them -- would boost rapid prototyping >and other approaches analyzed extensively in Stefan Thomke's book. My >review of the book is here: >http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.asp?coid=CO1130316143063 These are good reference points. Direct manufacturing (perhaps personalized) and rapid prototyping obviously have some social implications, but they are obviously relatively minor compared to the apparent implications of easily-programmable fast self-reproducing PGMDs. So we need to carefully distinguish these different visions, so we can distinguish their social implications and talk about which ones are how likely how soon. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From rhanson at gmu.edu Mon Nov 10 22:20:59 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:20:59 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <20031110211712.GW13214@leitl.org> References: <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110170241.01702050@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/10/2003 Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Even with self-replication current IP laws would defer most of the effects > > for the duration of the patent. Given the demonstrable clout of major > >IP laws has remarkably little clout when it comes to limiting the scope of >information dissemination. This not only includes directly >monkey-consumables, but news and virtual machines (software) as well. ... This is much more true of IP directly consumed by ordinary people than of IP used by large corporations. While people can and do now easily steal music and newspaper articles, and probably movies will fall soon, corporations regularly pay big money to buy software, and this doesn't look likely to change soon. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 10 23:15:02 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:15:02 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Bush extols technology's power over censorship and control References: <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> <5.2.1.1.2.20031110170241.01702050@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <02df01c3a7e0$7ae2c260$e2994a43@texas.net> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/politics/06TEXT-BUSH.html?pagewanted=print &position= Gee: < Historians ... will point to the role of technology in frustrating censorship and central control, and marvel at the power of instant communications to spread the truth, the news and courage across borders. > Damien Broderick From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 11 01:16:55 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 17:16:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <3FAF491F.8030808@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <20031111011655.98014.qmail@web60206.mail.yahoo.com> Max M wrote: And another one in the same family: Why is there a limit on the speed of light? *The physics of Special Relativity seem to suggest that it is because you, the observer, are not going the speed of light. It has to do with the higher than 3-dimensionality of space-time. Only if you are going slower than light does light seem to travel at finite speed. In other words, if you could ride along with a photon at the speed of light, from your perspective the Fitzgerald contraction would shrink the universe in your direction of travel to 0 length. More-over time would stop flowing for you. Thus you would be at all points along your vector of travel at once and not take any time to do it in. From your perspective riding along at c, you would be everywhere along the infinite path at once with no time lapse at all. Thus light travels at infinite velocity in its own inertial frame. It is only when someone outside of the photon's inertial reference frame that light has a high yet finite velocity. Unfortunately this always the case since all observers that I can be certain exist have mass and massive observers cannot travel at the speed of light. Then again, many theologians claim that God is eternal and omnipresent. Perhaps He is electromagnetic radiation or a massless observer traveling at c. I don't think that adequately answered your question but I know it has something to do with the percieved passage of liminal time. In other words the fact that we can observe that light takes time to cross a gap follows from the fact that we as observers are able to percieve the passage of time.* _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wingcat at pacbell.net Tue Nov 11 02:13:45 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 18:13:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com> --- John K Clark wrote: > 5) How does turbulence work? Microscopic irregularities in the flow, under intense conditions (high pressure or otherwise high energy), get maginified to macroscopic proportions. > 6) How does friction work? A few molecules on one surface keep bonding and debonding with the adjacent, moving surface. Given a few moments, more bondings occur - which is why static friction is higher than moving friction. This was actually studied in depth when they came out with geckotape a while back. > 8) What survival value did our ancestors find > walking on 2 legs gave them? Just a guess, but perhaps both longer-ranged sight and the freeing up of 2 limbs for constant tool use? From etheric at comcast.net Tue Nov 11 03:22:23 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:22:23 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric> What survival value did our ancestors find > > walking on 2 legs gave them? to carry more stuff From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 11 03:28:58 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 21:28:58 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <038401c3a803$f3240c20$e2994a43@texas.net> > 8) What survival value did our ancestors find > walking on 2 legs gave them? Wrecks their backs, which quickly leads to the invention of the walking stick, the first technology.* The rest is prehistory. (Museum paintings and dioramas sometimes incorrectly show these primordial tools as clubs.) Damien Broderick *cf. the celebrated riddle of Oedipus:# `What goes on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, three legs in the evening?' #yes, I do mean Oedipus Wrecks. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 11 11:11:55 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 22:11:55 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal Message-ID: <000b01c3a844$9e1318c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jacques wrote: >> > "I believe that X" allows .. [one] to express some degree of >> > confidence that X holds: nothing more, nothing less. >> > If the audience doesn't give a damn about .. [one's] level of >> > confidence that X holds, then using this concept is not useful in >> > that particular situation. >> > >> > Thus, it is true that in debates, and if .. [one is] unknown >> > to the audience, .. [one] might as well not use that word at all, >> > and only provide facts and arguments for other people to >> > consider and form their own belief >> [#1 !!!!] >>[Brett] >> - I think you mean opinion or judgement here do you not? >> -or are you in fact inadvertly presuming the outcome of our >> inquiry >> - I think that may make my point about the danger of the >> belief meme - .i.e. if *you* can't hold the-matter-under- >> inquiry (belief) separate from the inquiry process itself !! >> (No criticism of you - I think the belief meme critter is really >> that slippery - especially for those who think it is harmless). >> >> > But that is not a problem with the word "belief". It is >> > simply that in this situation, no one cares about [the speaker's >> > /writer's] "level of confidence". >> >> No as I indicate above it is also that the word is used to > >prejudice inquiry. It slips past the guard of those that use it. > > It is a very, very slippery meme. I think it just slipped past > > your (Jacques') guard above at #1 did it not? > > Not, it did not. I am not trying to avoid the use of the word > "believe", as it seems to me to be (as I said) a perfectly > well-defined and useful concept. There is no point my trying to persuade you that (1) it behoves you to choose not to use the 'belief' word because (2) that would be better for us *if* you are *unable* to stop using it even for the purposes of exploring that possibility. For all I can tell from my position you might be *enthralled* to the meme and I may not be able to do anything to help you. Are you *able* to stop using it whilst it is itself the matter at issue (ie. under our joint exploration)? Are you *willing* to whilst it is itself the matter at issue (ie. under joint exploration)? If the answer to either of these is no - then there is little I can do to persuade *you*. > What I said above is that in some situations, it may (sic) be > appropriate to avoid referring in any way to what you believe, > and to only provide facts and arguments for other people to > consider and form their own belief, i.e. so that they form > some picture of reality in which they put some confidence. [Please note that "may" above is NOT a judgement on point.] Is it your present judgement that it can be counterproductive to use the word 'belief' in some situations then? > > > Suppose that in such a debate, one guest is a famous > > > and respected Nobel Prize [winner]. Her use of "belief" > > > is going to matter, because people (rightly or wrongly, > > > doesn't matter here [in this contention]) are interested > >> in her level of confidence that X holds. > > > > So you think that people (generally) make judgements > > not on evidence but on the perceived authority of the > > presenter ? - On the whole I think this is true but this is > > part of my point - It hurts the cause of shared-truth- > > discovery to encourage this natural human tendency to > > laziness though. And the Nobel Prize winner does the > > audience a disservice if she deliberately engages in > > persuasion by appeal to authority (ie. if she uses > > the statement 'I believe X') rather than ('the evidence > > indicates X') by appeal to reason. > > I might (sic) agree with this, too, depending on the context. > If someone's belief is based on evidence and theory that > he can readily explain, or at least usefully point to, to his > audience, it's probably better to do that. But it's often > not possible, and in certain situations, stating .. [one's] > belief can be a useful thing to do. ["Might" is ambiguous - please resolve the ambiguity by answering the question] Can you make a provisional judgement without labelling that process a belief (even in your own mind)? > If I hire Harvey to manage the security of my network, > and th[en] I hear about some threat, I may tell him: > "Harvey, do you believe this threat is a concern for our > network"? I don't necessarily want him to explicate all > the evidence, the experience, the theory, etc. he has. I'd keep a watch on that hypothetical Harvey as you hired him to secure your network and now it belongs to both of you. (Just joking. You said 'my' then 'our') > ... You are not just arguing about some linguistic thing > for the sake of linguistics, .... True. I'm not. .. [Jacques - [] are Brett's] > > -- namely that if ..[one is] in a hostile situation, and > > .. [one] need[s] to convince people, .. [one] may as > > well give up on any explicit belief self-attribution, as > > people may seize the occasion to think, "oh, this is just > > a belief, then". > > That is pretty close to my contention yes. Except to push it > further the *belief* meme is SO SLIPPERY that they may > not even need to formally think the sentence "oh, this is just > a belief, then" - they may do that or they may not even be > *that* aware. > > Good. I understood your point then, and I agree with it. Are > you sure you want to extend it so that I cannot agree? :-) Actually I let you through with a 'pretty close' and that did neither of us a service. I should not have let your confounding (in the sense of confounding the inquiry) use of the word belief go through. We can't explore 'belief' as a meme until it is clear than you are at least free enough from it to keep it out of the process of exploration itself. To answer your question. No I don't want you to not agree - I respect your right not to be coerced and I hope to persuade you one free mind to another. What I want is to get your agreement that (a) belief is a word that is harmful (at least sometimes would probably do -and I think you and I are at that point already - by your comment below #2). (b) belief is a word that can *always* be replaced by you with no loss of ability to communicate should you so choose. (I don't see that you agree with this point yet). And therefore (c) you should freely choose not to use it in the interests of better communication and to avoid propagating a bad meme that competes with the reasoning meme and is harmful to both of us. Finally (d) if I can persuade you, I'd like you to pass the innoculation service on to someone you respect at the appropriate time. Eventually it may be possible for even the least experienced meme-warriors amongst us to look at any towering ediface of baloney and spot the weaknesses by the conspicuous 'hanging thread' use of 'belief'-meme. Then we may home in on that weakness without having to worry about hitting a mis-guided friendly talking loosely and allowing the BS-artists and enthrallers to hide behind our desire not to hit our friends. That's pretty much what I want. (#2 ? ) [Jacques] > > > I can also agree that when bringing new ideas (like > > > transhumanist ideas) into society, we may often find > > > ourselves in such situations, and hence it may (sic) > > > sometimes be preferable to avoid the use of "belief". > Now to answer your question, yes, I can think of instances > when it should be used, and instances when it should not be > used. I gave above examples of the former (asking my > security expert, "do you believe this threat should be a > concern to us?") and of the latter (useless to talk about > your beliefs qua beliefs if the audience doesn't give a > damn about the level of confidence with w[h]ich you think > that something holds). The example you gave was NOT good. You could have used alternate words. You could (presuming you are not en-thralled to the belief meme) have also said: "Harvey, do you [see] this threat [a]s a concern for our network"? Or if you didn't like "see". "Perceive". Harvey might understand posit very well but not regard it as a better word than "see" or "perceive". Even if you get the desired outcome from Harvey using "believe" that wouldn't mean that you had chosen well not to use another word like 'see' or 'perceive'. Because in using those words instead you would not be propagating the believing meme and getting you and hypothetical Harvey over-comfortable with a way of speaking that might one day trip you and him or both of you up. And I think you have agreed that sometime the belief-word can trip folks up. > You seem to be making a confusion between two things, > the belief on one hand, and on the other hand the way it was > formed, and what it is based on. On the contrary I am concerned with the ramifications of the propagation of the view that believing as opposed to reasoning is a better way of operating in a social and *political* world where believers and reasoners get one vote each. By using belief as a word you unnecessarily propagate it as a meme. To the extent that the rest of your discourse is sensible you give intellectual credit by association to the belief-meme to others who are not yet fully innoculated against it. > The fact that some people have silly beliefs is far from being a > sufficient reason to discard the concept of belief, which is > actually absolutely essential. You have not demonstrated that it is essential. I think I have shown to your satisfaction that sometimes its use is harmful. The only reason I am not sure I have shown that is because you prefix your sentences with 'may' or 'might' rather than make a provisional judgement - at least so far. > In fact, it's exactly the same with trust. Trusting some guru > that you should commit suicide to see the light is bad. Does > that make trust a bad thing? Of course not. Trust may be a > very good thing. And it's necessary in many circumstances, > we couldn't do much without it. Trust in the others, trust in > oneself. You just need the trust to be based on something solid, > or else it's risky. Same with belief. Your conception of trust differs from mine too. But your concept of trust is less dangerously propagated than the belief-meme. > > Please demonstrate your contention that the word belief is > > useful by giving an instance where you think it better (than > > any alternate word) conveys meaning between people. > > I believe I did that above in a way that should match your > expectation. If not, tell me more precisely what you want > and I will try to deliver. I know you did not do that for the reasons I gave. > Let me add one thing, to make my point even more clear: > every time you say "I think that X", you may feel safer > and more rational by refering to thought rather than to > belief, but what you really mean is actually that you > *believe* that X. This is a little worrying. This is the implication of "believers" everywhere. That they can only believe and so that is all that is available to everyone else as well. This is part of what makes believing as a meme so dangerous. Reasoners invites the other to look at what is unsettled between them. Believers (and bs-artists) make unsupported assertions and act on their beliefs and try to get others too. By using their word you actually help them. > What else could you mean? If you stop using the word belief whilst we step through the arguments together you may be able to see what I mean. > But again, I understood your original point about avoid this > word in certain situations, and I agree with it. I am not yet convinced that you did understand it. Perhaps you will (or do). Perhaps you don't and wont. Perhaps you can. Perhaps you can't. Regards, Brett From rhanson at gmu.edu Tue Nov 11 14:26:59 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 09:26:59 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <20031110204501.GV13214@leitl.org> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031111090606.02352488@mail.gmu.edu> At 09:45 PM 11/10/2003 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > An easy simple opinion to have is that nanotech won't have much in the way > > of specific social implications. In this view, manufacturing will slowly > >Sure, Singularity won't have much in the way of specific social implications. >We'll get superhuman AI, it kills/transforms the entire local ecosystem by >side effect or malice aforethought, completely remodels the solar system and >transforming the entire universe in its lightcone into something we currently >can't imagine -- and that's assuming no major new physics. Business as usual, >in other words. It is crucial to try to distinguish the various causes of things that might happen in the future, so we can intelligently ask what would happen if some of these causes are realized and others are not. Would the mildest versions of nanotech really, by themselves, induce superhuman AI? It is not obvious. >Sure, a couple of centuries worth of hitherto progress rolled into a >month, or a >couple of days. Accelerating up to a rate of 3 kYears of progress within >24 hours The mildest versions of nanotech don't seem capable of inducing such rapid change. Again, the point is to try to be as clear as possible about what assumptions lead to what conclusions. >You'll notice Diamond Age doesn't allow end users to design. Even architects >are supervised closely (but easy enough to subvert). ... As I said before, I want to separate hypotheses about the technical abilities from hypotheses about regulation. My reference to Diamond age was about the technical abilities, not the regulations described there. >Molecular manufacturing that is useless for its own production doesn't >happen. It just gets eaten alive by the other kind. That assumes that the other kind exists, and is fast/effective enough. > > 2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are > less > > efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, ... > >How does current economy handle production of production means, including >persons? In an exponential rate? Superhuman persons? I'm not sure current >economic theory would be a good predictor here. Current economic theory isn't as tied as you might think to the state of our current economy. I think that, if used carefully, it is capable of predicting what consequences follow from what assumptions. So I want to get clear on the assumptions. >What does it take to produce a good meta-designer? A robust morphogenetic >code, an evolutionary system, a good nanoscale simulator, and lots of >computronium to run the above. As embarrassingly parallel as they come. >And that's about the only metainvention you need to make. And how damn hard is it to have "lots" of "robust" "good" items like these? > > It seems to me to make the most sense to choose some sort of baseline > > scenario, then analyze each substantial change by itself, and only after > > try to combine these scenarios. ... > >If you look at two subcritical chunks of plutonium, you will not arrive at >the correct conclusion of what a supercritical assembly of them will bring >you, unless you factor in adequate level of theory. Agreed. But you'd need that same level of theory to predict what a critical chuck will do. > > >Could we have an "open source" economy, where people work on whatever > > >interests them, or create designs that satisfy their own needs, then > > >make the fruits of their labor available to everyone for free? > > > > The form of the market for designs seems a separate issue. ... > >What's the market for gcc? autoconf? GNU/Linux? I notice this particular >market has been eating several Large Companies alive, yet has not yet found >adequate treatment in classical economics circles. I meant that open source counts as a market form. We have some insight into it, and some open questions remain, as with all market forms. > > Sure, if pigs can fly, the sky is going to look different. But we need to > > do the analysis step by step, and not jump too quickly to big conclusions. > >If your premises are bogus, your conclusions are food for the abovementioned >airborne porcines. >I'm not sure whether you're looking for publishable papers, or trying to map >the more radical implications of comparatively simple technologies like >molecular nanofacturing (completely ignoring the AI issue for time being). >If you're realistic, your peers will reject your papers. >If you're conservative, your fellow transhumanists will point and laugh. >I'm not sure there's a sweet spot between those two bonfires. I've just said I want to do analysis step by step, carefully making distinctions and identifying assumptions, in the best spirit of academic study. I worry about any conclusions drawn by people who think such an approach is too conservative or unrealistic. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 11 16:50:43 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 17:50:43 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Should we drop the "believe" word/concept/behaviour In-Reply-To: <000b01c3a844$9e1318c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000b01c3a844$9e1318c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <3FB11363.3050206@dtext.com> (Was: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod door pls Hal) To clear up some potential mess and "home in on the nub" some more: if I speak of "believe", it will be the word; if I speak of , it will be the concept; if I speak of believing, it will be the behaviour. And if I want to use the concept, I will speak of the belief meme (whether this is the most fruitful concept to use we will see in the discussion). Sorry for <> which is slightly non standard, but we need adequate tools for this kind of linguistic stuff. Also, I will kindly ask you not to modify my quotes, as quotes are, well, quotes. Feel free to comment however you like, but please leave what I said as I said it. Brett Paatsch wrote: >> > It is a very, very slippery meme. I think it just slipped past >> > your (Jacques') guard above at #1 did it not? >> >> Not, it did not. I am not trying to avoid the use of the word >> "believe", as it seems to me to be (as I said) a perfectly >> well-defined and useful concept. > >There is no point my trying to persuade you that (1) it behoves >you to choose not to use the 'belief' word because (2) that >would be better for us *if* you are *unable* to stop using it >even for the purposes of exploring that possibility. For all I can >tell from my position you might be *enthralled* to the meme >and I may not be able to do anything to help you. > >Are you *able* to stop using it whilst it is itself the matter at >issue (ie. under our joint exploration)? Yes, I am able to avoid to use the word. >Are you *willing* to whilst it is itself the matter at issue >(ie. under joint exploration)? OK, I will avoid using the word, except when talking about it on purpose. But, depending on what we talk about, I may still use the concept (identical to ), by using the clumsy synonyms you ask me to use instead (see "it is your judgement that" below). And, needless to say, I will keep believing some things (behaviour), i.e. having some confidence that some things hold. Also, as your goal is for me to stop using this word, and as I contend this is not desirable, I cannot just stop using it without further ado, which would by complying with what I don't want. So, I will abstain from using the word for the time being to let you see that it is under my control, but I will add an asterisk(*), so that people reading this understand there is something weird and this is not what I would normally say. >> What I said above is that in some situations, it may (sic) be >> appropriate to avoid referring in any way to what you believe, >> and to only provide facts and arguments for other people to >> consider and form their own belief, i.e. so that they form >> some picture of reality in which they put some confidence. > >[Please note that "may" above is NOT a judgement on point.] >Is it your present judgement that it can be counterproductive >to use the word 'belief' in some situations then? It is my judgement(*) that using "belief", and consequently the concept, is counter-productive in some propositions and some situations, yes. I will add that I can imagine, for ANY word/concept, propositions and situations in which it is counter-productive to use them. >> > > Suppose that in such a debate, one guest is a famous >> > > and respected Nobel Prize [winner]. Her use of "belief" >> > > is going to matter, because people (rightly or wrongly, >> > > doesn't matter here [in this contention]) are interested >> >> in her level of confidence that X holds. >> > >> > So you think that people (generally) make judgements >> > not on evidence but on the perceived authority of the >> > presenter ? - On the whole I think this is true but this is >> > part of my point - It hurts the cause of shared-truth- >> > discovery to encourage this natural human tendency to >> > laziness though. And the Nobel Prize winner does the >> > audience a disservice if she deliberately engages in >> > persuasion by appeal to authority (ie. if she uses >> > the statement 'I believe X') rather than ('the evidence >> > indicates X') by appeal to reason. >> >> I might (sic) agree with this, too, depending on the context. >> If someone's belief is based on evidence and theory that >> he can readily explain, or at least usefully point to, to his >> audience, it's probably better to do that. But it's often >> not possible, and in certain situations, stating .. [one's] >> belief can be a useful thing to do. > >["Might" is ambiguous - please resolve the ambiguity by >answering the question] >Can you make a provisional judgement without labelling >that process a belief (even in your own mind)? I can if I do a hypothesis, yes. But not otherwise. Hypothesis is the only form of "judgement" (which I wouldn't call judgmeent, but, precisely, "hypothesis") that I can make without labelling it a belief in my own mind, because I cannot judge something to be true without having some confidence that it is true. It makes no sense if you are mentally healthy. >> If I hire Harvey to manage the security of my network, >> and th[en] I hear about some threat, I may tell him: >> "Harvey, do you believe this threat is a concern for our >> network"? I don't necessarily want him to explicate all >> the evidence, the experience, the theory, etc. he has. > >I'd keep a watch on that hypothetical Harvey as you >hired him to secure your network and now it belongs >to both of you. (Just joking. You said 'my' then 'our') It's a common trick of owners to suggest the company belongs to their employees, too ;-) >> ... You are not just arguing about some linguistic thing >> for the sake of linguistics, .... > >True. I'm not. Good. Then there is a stake, at least for you, which is a good thing to have when one spends time arguing. >[Jacques - [] are Brett's] > >> > -- namely that if ..[one is] in a hostile situation, and >> > .. [one] need[s] to convince people, .. [one] may as >> > well give up on any explicit belief self-attribution, as >> > people may seize the occasion to think, "oh, this is just >> > a belief, then". >> >> That is pretty close to my contention yes. Except to push it >> further the *belief* meme is SO SLIPPERY that they may >> not even need to formally think the sentence "oh, this is just >> a belief, then" - they may do that or they may not even be >> *that* aware. >> >> Good. I understood your point then, and I agree with it. Are >> you sure you want to extend it so that I cannot agree? :-) > >Actually I let you through with a 'pretty close' and that did >neither of us a service. I should not have let your confounding >(in the sense of confounding the inquiry) use of the word >belief go through. We can't explore 'belief' as a meme until it >is clear than you are at least free enough from it to keep it out >of the process of exploration itself. > >To answer your question. No I don't want you to not agree >- I respect your right not to be coerced and I hope to persuade >you one free mind to another. > >What I want is to get your agreement that (a) belief is a word >that is harmful (at least sometimes would probably do -and >I think you and I are at that point already - by your comment >below #2). Agreed. Like any word/concept in some propositions and situations. So you should really reframe your initial advice not as linked to a particular word, but as: when expressing transhumanist ideas to new people, do not insist on the confidence you have in your visions, but provide evidence and facts that will influence people's judgments(*). I understand you mean much more than that, though, and I don't agree. > (b) belief is a word that can *always* be replaced >by you with no loss of ability to communicate should you so >choose. (I don't see that you agree with this point yet). Any word can always be replaced by a synonym or a synonymous phrase. The important point here is that we cannot, and should not, dispense with the concept. > And >therefore (c) you should freely choose not to use it in the >interests of better communication and to avoid propagating a >bad meme that competes with the reasoning meme and is >harmful to both of us. It's easy for you to see above how my restrictions on your premises make this conclusion false to me. >Finally (d) if I can persuade you, I'd like you to pass the >innoculation service on to someone you respect at the >appropriate time. Eventually it may be possible for even >the least experienced meme-warriors amongst us to look >at any towering ediface of baloney and spot the weaknesses >by the conspicuous 'hanging thread' use of 'belief'-meme. Then >we may home in on that weakness without having to worry >about hitting a mis-guided friendly talking loosely and allowing >the BS-artists and enthrallers to hide behind our desire not to >hit our friends. That's pretty much what I want. I do and will spread the habit of questioning one's beliefs, and of basing one's beliefs on a good base, not the habit of using clumsy synonyms to "belief". ["belief" used on purpose in this sentence as this is what I am talking about] >(#2 ? ) [Jacques] >> > > I can also agree that when bringing new ideas (like >> > > transhumanist ideas) into society, we may often find >> > > ourselves in such situations, and hence it may (sic) >> > > sometimes be preferable to avoid the use of "belief". > >> Now to answer your question, yes, I can think of instances >> when it should be used, and instances when it should not be >> used. I gave above examples of the former (asking my >> security expert, "do you believe this threat should be a >> concern to us?") and of the latter (useless to talk about >> your beliefs qua beliefs if the audience doesn't give a >> damn about the level of confidence with w[h]ich you think >> that something holds). > >The example you gave was NOT good. You could have >used alternate words. You could (presuming you are not >en-thralled to the belief meme) have also said: > >"Harvey, do you [see] this threat [a]s a concern for our >network"? > >Or if you didn't like "see". "Perceive". Harvey might understand >posit very well but not regard it as a better word than "see" or >"perceive". It's obvious enough that "see" and "perceive" are used here in a metaphorical way (or "abstracted" way) to mean something else, which, I contend, is the concept, for which the word "belief" is the most natural choice. "See" and "perceive" literaly refer to perception through sense organs, which is not what I want to express to Harvey. So, this only makes sense if one judges(*) the WORD should be avoided at all costs, while still recognizing that the concept expressed by that word can and must often be used. This seems incoherent with what you suggested above, when you said "without labelling it in your own mind", which seems to refer to concept rather than word. So, is your contention only about avoiding the word, while you recognize that the concept expressed by this word is useful in some propositions, and that the behaviour that it denotes is useful in some situations? > Even if you get the desired outcome from Harvey >using "believe" that wouldn't mean that you had chosen well >not to use another word like 'see' or 'perceive'. Because in >using those words instead you would not be propagating the >believing meme and getting you and hypothetical Harvey >over-comfortable with a way of speaking that might one day >trip you and him or both of you up. And I think you have >agreed that sometime the belief-word can trip folks up. What I think is true here, is that you may be better off asking your security expert some kind of justification, rather than treating him like an oracle. But this is because the trust in his abilities, rigor, vigilance, honesty, etc., is limited. It is not useful otherwise. And using "believe" or "perceive" doesn't change anything, you have to ask him a report instead of just asking him his conclusion. >> You seem to be making a confusion between two things, >> the belief on one hand, and on the other hand the way it was >> formed, and what it is based on. > >On the contrary I am concerned with the ramifications of the >propagation of the view that believing as opposed to reasoning >is a better way of operating in a social and *political* world where >believers and reasoners get one vote each. I am sorry to say that you do make the previously mentioned confusion, or let us say "fusion" to use a neutral word. There is no opposition between reasoning and believing. A sound belief is the product of a good reasoning. That's how the concepts articulate. Belief and reasoning are not alternative, they are different stages of the process. You can reason all you want, if you don't end up *believing* [used on purpose] something, then you will never DO anything. Belief is the way propositions make people do things. It is the vital connection between propositions and people. No belief, no behaviour. Belief is a central behaviour (not really the right word, let's say mental state), is thus a central concept, and there is only one word reserved in the language to denote/express them, and that word is "belief". > By using belief as a >word you unnecessarily propagate it as a meme. Do you promote buying stupid things by buying what you buy, and by saying it with the word "buy"? SHould we stop using the word "buy" to avoid people to buy stupid things? SHould we rather say: "Honey, did you exchange some of your money with some bread this morning?" Your suggestion seems as reasonable as this to me. >> The fact that some people have silly beliefs is far from being a >> sufficient reason to discard the concept of belief, which is >> actually absolutely essential. > >You have not demonstrated that it is essential. This is a new evidence that you are not clear about whether you speak of the WORD "belief" or the CONCEPT . Please clarify. >> In fact, it's exactly the same with trust. Trusting some guru >> that you should commit suicide to see the light is bad. Does >> that make trust a bad thing? Of course not. Trust may be a >> very good thing. And it's necessary in many circumstances, >> we couldn't do much without it. Trust in the others, trust in >> oneself. You just need the trust to be based on something solid, >> or else it's risky. Same with belief. > >Your conception of trust differs from mine too. But your concept >of trust is less dangerously propagated than the belief-meme. Please tell me what you think is false in my account of trust in the previous paragraph. >> Let me add one thing, to make my point even more clear: >> every time you say "I think that X", you may feel safer >> and more rational by refering to thought rather than to >> belief, but what you really mean is actually that you >> *believe* that X. > >This is a little worrying. This is the implication of "believers" >everywhere. That they can only believe and so that is all >that is available to everyone else as well. This is part of what >makes believing as a meme so dangerous. Reasoners invites >the other to look at what is unsettled between them. Believers >(and bs-artists) make unsupported assertions and act on their >beliefs and try to get others too. By using their word you >actually help them. > >> What else could you mean? > >If you stop using the word belief whilst we step through >the arguments together you may be able to see what I mean. This is yet another evidence that you are unclear about whether it is the word or the concept (and the behaviour that correspond to it) you have a problem with. To sum up: If you are talking about the concept and the behaviour, then yes, obviously in some circumstances it is not what is required. If I ask Helmut (I figure Harvey might get tired to be in our argument :-)): "What makes you think that this is not a threat", and he answers, "Because I believe so", then this is not what is desired in the situation. Likewise for other situations / propositions, and it may possibly make sense to talk about such things, and give persuasion advice and such. If you are talking about the word, thinking it's bad because it "reinforces the belief meme", meaning by this the beliefs based on thin air, in particular the belief in God, then my answer is that 1) I judge(*) this effect is not real except in some situations (discussions on this list being no such situation), 2) we need the concept, we have one word in our languages reserved for that meaning slot, and it is not desirable to remove the word, even on an individual and voluntary basis. >I am not yet convinced that you did understand it. Perhaps >you will (or do). Perhaps you don't and wont. Perhaps you >can. Perhaps you can't. And they say *I* am arrogant... :-) Jacques From amara at amara.com Tue Nov 11 15:52:43 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 17:52:43 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] FUTURE: More Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: >Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 13:41:15 -0800 (PST) >From: Adrian Tymes > >--- Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > Why is sushi Extropian? > >Ironic contrast: people accuse us of being >anti-religious, and yet we celebrate soul food. body and soul ? The "prostitution of sushi" ... http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001788074_sushi11m.html (alternative to those little boats) Amara From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Tue Nov 11 17:19:10 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 11:19:10 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com> <04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: It also gave them the ability to walk while looking over the top of the tall grasses on the savannah. The taller, more upright ones could see trouble coming and avoid it better. ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 9:22 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > What survival value did our ancestors find > > > walking on 2 legs gave them? > > to carry more stuff > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 11 17:22:51 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 18:22:51 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Bush extols technology's power over censorship and control In-Reply-To: <02df01c3a7e0$7ae2c260$e2994a43@texas.net> References: <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> <75.1c362219.2ce152a9@aol.com> <5.2.1.1.2.20031110170241.01702050@mail.gmu.edu> <02df01c3a7e0$7ae2c260$e2994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <3FB11AEB.4060108@dtext.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/politics/06TEXT-BUSH.html?pagewanted=print > &position= > > Gee: > > < Historians ... will point to the role of technology in frustrating > censorship and central control, and marvel at the power of instant > communications to spread the truth, the news and courage across borders. > I've read it all and I think the speech was rather good (though I am only a casual reader of such things, and by no way an expert). It didn't assume too much, and while it celebrated a certain political philosophy (the one of liberty), it did that with the proper arguments, mostly focused on things that can hardly be denied, and did show some sort of respect for dissenting views. Of course it is only a speech, if you like, but a good one. And I prefer that the superpower head say such things rather than others. I'm not sure that competition is our final fate, but we still need it badly. Jacques From natashavita at earthlink.net Tue Nov 11 17:35:19 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 12:35:19 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ebay Auctions Space Dev Message-ID: <187160-2200311211173519323@M2W065.mail2web.com> SpaceDev Auctioning Microsatellite Mission On eBay SpaceDev (OTCBB: SPDV) is auctioning a world exclusive private space mission on eBay. This first of its kind eBay auction is being listed for the ten-day period of 8:00 PM (PST) Monday, November 10, through 8:00 PM (PST) Thursday, November 20th. The SpaceDev space mission auction is at: http://echo.bluehornet.com/ct/ct.php?t=355015&c=192606617&m=m&type=3 Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From natashavita at earthlink.net Tue Nov 11 17:35:49 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 12:35:49 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ebay Auctions Space Dev Message-ID: <410-2200311211173549996@M2W067.mail2web.com> SpaceDev Auctioning Microsatellite Mission On eBay SpaceDev (OTCBB: SPDV) is auctioning a world exclusive private space mission on eBay. This first of its kind eBay auction is being listed for the ten-day period of 8:00 PM (PST) Monday, November 10, through 8:00 PM (PST) Thursday, November 20th. The SpaceDev space mission auction is at: http://echo.bluehornet.com/ct/ct.php?t=355015&c=192606617&m=m&type=3 Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 11 18:28:27 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:28:27 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> Randy wrote (10.11.2003/10:45) : > > Greg wrote > > >The corporate form per se is no more or less problematic than any > >other means of holding and using property and contract rights. The > >problem arises when state power is fused with the form through > >corporatist government policies. Blaiming "corporations" is like > >blaming any other interest group that bids for and buys government > >favor, be they "farmers," "unions" or other organized groups that > >manage to garner preferential treatment from the state. > >Corporations are RELATVELY weak in the EU (compared to the US), but > >these other organized interest groups have done just as much harm > >by co-opting state power for their special interests in the EU -- > >viz. France and their endless strikes and labor-driven politics, > > But how do you define "harm"? The strikes in Europe are simply the > expression of solidarity of the people and have resulted in the > superior living conditions of the French (and other NW European > countries), as compared to the Americans: Randy, I wish the picture you are drawing of France was true. France has 10% unemployment (that's NOT counting people on social welfare, only people who were employed some months ago) and rising. The social security (meaning free health services) has a HUGE deficit, so it won't be able to carry on very long that way. The government has every difficulty to make the least reform, because of the unions and strikes, especially in the public service. Meanwhile, problems accumulate, and seem to never get solved. Here's my current view of things: Liberty and responsability directly correlate with collective prosperity through creative competition. If you are not sure you want to say to the weak: "find a way to make yourself useful or die", and to the strong: "you're welcome to become a half-god by accumulating wealth", because you value equality, and the support of the weak, you can do it, but it will lower collective prosperity. Even in France, there are many people who work very hard the whole day only to sustain themselves. I find it reasonable to be appalled at it. Neither the US nor France are at one extremity of the theorical spectrum. But France is a bit more on the equality-support side. It has some good aspects (humble people feel more empowered and less "enslaved", and there may be a general "quality of life" and more relaxed approach of things), and it has some bad aspects (less prosperity, which means even more support needed, and so on in a vicious circle). One thought which I never heard voiced, but which seems rather obvious to me, is that by being more on the liberty-responsability end of the spectrum, the USA pay the "inequality price" for some of its creativity, that is then available for free to other countries. It might be that Europe would have been forced a long time ago to get back to more liberty-responsability if it couldn't use what the US create (think computers, Internet, etc.). I'm not an economist, though. I don't think there is one definite answer about liberty-responsability versus equality-support. Within the bounds of our ape psyche (and maybe beyond), the redirection of competitive "instincts" into production at the exclusion of coercion (which is what the political philosophy of liberty is about seen at our contemporary light) may well be the best way to go. It has to be acknowledged that it does pressure individuals, though, even if more collective prosperity tends to make things easier even for the weak. In the end, it's probably more difficult in France than in the US due to less prosperity, but the perception people in lower situations have of life may be a bit better and less harsh, which possibly produces a "better atmosphere". Silly French joke: You know why they chose the rooster as the embleme for France? Because it's the only animal that still sings even with his feet in the mud. I am afraid this is what you get with too much equality-support: some kind of warmth with material misery. Jacques > > The average American works 25% more hours than the average French. > > And the average French does not have to ever worry about getting > cancer and not being able to pay for treatment--medical care is > provided by the state without charge in France. > > Likewise, they do not have to worry about saving up for their child's > education -- it is provided without charge by the state. > > Plus, if the job comes to an end, there is long term unemployment. > > The French obtained this superior lifestyle through strikes and other > tactics. So where is the "harm"? Or did you mean "benefit"? :-) > > >or the agricultural protectionism in the EU that is one of the main factors derailing free trade in the >world. The evil doesn't lie in the legal form per se, but in the sell-out of state power. > > American govt sells out 10 times worse than any of the NW Euro > countries. The European citizenry would (and have) shut down their > countries if they think they have been sold out. > > > > > > ------------- > The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 11 18:35:14 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:35:14 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] [FICTION] Strong Medicine In-Reply-To: <1068500787.b2ef5660namacdon@ole.augie.edu> References: <1068500787.b2ef5660namacdon@ole.augie.edu> Message-ID: <16305.11234.166862.262566@localhost.localdomain> Nicholas Anthony MacDonald a ?crit (10.11.2003/15:46) : > > New short story posted to Salon.com ... may or may not be of interest. > > http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/11/10/medicine/index1.html I have read it and I didn't find it interesting at all. Jacques From cphoenix at best.com Tue Nov 11 19:59:38 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 14:59:38 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech References: <200311111900.hABJ0AM07986@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FB13FAA.DE63BE4F@best.com> Robin Hanson wrote: > Would the mildest versions > of nanotech really, by themselves, induce superhuman AI? It is > not obvious. I assume the word "nanotech" here means MNT. And MNT becomes interesting when it becomes capable of exponential manufacturing. A "mildest version" might be a Merkle-type "assembler". I have argued that this could lead rapidly to a nanofactory capable of making monolithic kg products: http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/Nanofactory.htm Does this count as "mild"? It's still limited to diamondoid, and still requires human design to build products. But such a system could certainly build billions of tightly networked computers--probably for just a few dollars. (Could build trillions, but I'm not sure about cooling them.) > >Sure, a couple of centuries worth of hitherto progress rolled into a > >month, or a > >couple of days. Accelerating up to a rate of 3 kYears of progress within > >24 hours > > The mildest versions of nanotech don't seem capable of inducing such rapid > change. Again, the point is to try to be as clear as possible about what > assumptions lead to what conclusions. We don't know how powerful the algorithms might get. If you put enough crunch power in a box, and run an evolutionary system on it, you might indeed get a system that could be amazingly efficient at discovering new science and technology. But there's a lot of supposition here. > >What does it take to produce a good meta-designer? A robust morphogenetic > >code, an evolutionary system, a good nanoscale simulator, and lots of > >computronium to run the above. As embarrassingly parallel as they come. > >And that's about the only metainvention you need to make. > > And how damn hard is it to have "lots" of "robust" "good" items like these? Are you questioning the ability to build such a system fault-tolerant? It's not hard to make a very reliable system on top of a very unreliable system. Takes only one level of abstraction (e.g. TCP/IP). And you can play this game as often as necessary to make it appear that you have billions of 100% reliable computers. It might cost you some speed and energy, but it's doable. > I meant that open source counts as a market form. We have some insight into > it, and some open questions remain, as with all market forms. Interesting. I'd like to float a definition here. An "unlimited-sum transaction" is one in which the benefit to one (or both) of the parties is much higher than the cost, and is not correlated with the cost. Copying a text file off a web site is an example. The bandwidth is trivial. The benefit will vary widely depending on who reads the file. I argue that open source is based on, and enabled by, unlimited-sum transactions. And, that commercial trading is incapable of dealing adequately with unlimited-sum transactions. http://CRNano.org/systems.htm Note that economic theory probably can deal with unlimited-sum transactions. If economic theory can deal with war, which is also outside the scope of commercial trading, then it can probably deal with open source. But commercial trading can't deal with open source. Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From hugh.crowther at esoterica.pt Tue Nov 11 19:56:44 2003 From: hugh.crowther at esoterica.pt (Hugh Crowther) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:56:44 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: Somebody once told me, possibly PJ o'Rourke, that the French are just Germans with good food. I love the supercilious irony about relative living conditions. > From: "JDP" > Reply-To: ExI chat list > Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:28:27 +0100 > To: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com, ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) > > Randy wrote (10.11.2003/10:45) : >> >> Greg wrote >> >>> The corporate form per se is no more or less problematic than any >>> other means of holding and using property and contract rights. The >>> problem arises when state power is fused with the form through >>> corporatist government policies. Blaiming "corporations" is like >>> blaming any other interest group that bids for and buys government >>> favor, be they "farmers," "unions" or other organized groups that >>> manage to garner preferential treatment from the state. >>> Corporations are RELATVELY weak in the EU (compared to the US), but >>> these other organized interest groups have done just as much harm >>> by co-opting state power for their special interests in the EU -- >>> viz. France and their endless strikes and labor-driven politics, >> >> But how do you define "harm"? The strikes in Europe are simply the >> expression of solidarity of the people and have resulted in the >> superior living conditions of the French (and other NW European >> countries), as compared to the Americans: > > Randy, > > I wish the picture you are drawing of France was true. > > France has 10% unemployment (that's NOT counting people on social > welfare, only people who were employed some months ago) and rising. > The social security (meaning free health services) has a HUGE deficit, > so it won't be able to carry on very long that way. > > The government has every difficulty to make the least reform, because > of the unions and strikes, especially in the public service. > Meanwhile, problems accumulate, and seem to never get solved. > > Here's my current view of things: Liberty and responsability directly > correlate with collective prosperity through creative competition. If > you are not sure you want to say to the weak: "find a way to make > yourself useful or die", and to the strong: "you're welcome to become > a half-god by accumulating wealth", because you value equality, and > the support of the weak, you can do it, but it will lower collective > prosperity. Even in France, there are many people who work very hard > the whole day only to sustain themselves. I find it reasonable to be > appalled at it. > > Neither the US nor France are at one extremity of the theorical > spectrum. But France is a bit more on the equality-support side. It > has some good aspects (humble people feel more empowered and less > "enslaved", and there may be a general "quality of life" and more > relaxed approach of things), and it has some bad aspects (less > prosperity, which means even more support needed, and so on in a > vicious circle). > > One thought which I never heard voiced, but which seems rather obvious > to me, is that by being more on the liberty-responsability end of the > spectrum, the USA pay the "inequality price" for some of its > creativity, that is then available for free to other countries. It > might be that Europe would have been forced a long time ago to get > back to more liberty-responsability if it couldn't use what the US > create (think computers, Internet, etc.). I'm not an economist, > though. > > I don't think there is one definite answer about > liberty-responsability versus equality-support. Within the bounds of > our ape psyche (and maybe beyond), the redirection of competitive > "instincts" into production at the exclusion of coercion (which is > what the political philosophy of liberty is about seen at our > contemporary light) may well be the best way to go. It has to be > acknowledged that it does pressure individuals, though, even if more > collective prosperity tends to make things easier even for the weak. > In the end, it's probably more difficult in France than in the US due > to less prosperity, but the perception people in lower situations have > of life may be a bit better and less harsh, which possibly produces a > "better atmosphere". > > Silly French joke: You know why they chose the rooster as the embleme > for France? Because it's the only animal that still sings even with > his feet in the mud. I am afraid this is what you get with too much > equality-support: some kind of warmth with material misery. > > Jacques > > > > > >> >> The average American works 25% more hours than the average French. >> >> And the average French does not have to ever worry about getting >> cancer and not being able to pay for treatment--medical care is >> provided by the state without charge in France. >> >> Likewise, they do not have to worry about saving up for their child's >> education -- it is provided without charge by the state. >> >> Plus, if the job comes to an end, there is long term unemployment. >> >> The French obtained this superior lifestyle through strikes and other >> tactics. So where is the "harm"? Or did you mean "benefit"? :-) >> >>> or the agricultural protectionism in the EU that is one of the main factors >>> derailing free trade in the >world. The evil doesn't lie in the legal form >>> per se, but in the sell-out of state power. >> >> American govt sells out 10 times worse than any of the NW Euro >> countries. The European citizenry would (and have) shut down their >> countries if they think they have been sold out. >> >> >> >> >> >> ------------- >> The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From rhanson at gmu.edu Tue Nov 11 20:33:22 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 15:33:22 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB13FAA.DE63BE4F@best.com> References: <200311111900.hABJ0AM07986@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031111152427.0235be48@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/11/2003, Chris Phoenix wrote: > > Would the mildest versions of nanotech really, by themselves, induce > > superhuman AI? It is not obvious. > >I assume the word "nanotech" here means MNT. And MNT becomes >interesting when it becomes capable of exponential manufacturing. We had been explicitly distinguishing several possibilities short of quickly reproducing nanotech factories. >We don't know how powerful the algorithms might get. If you put enough >crunch power in a box, and run an evolutionary system on it, you might >indeed get a system that could be amazingly efficient at discovering new >science and technology. But there's a lot of supposition here. And that's putting it mildly. > > >What does it take to produce a good meta-designer? A robust morphogenetic > > >code, an evolutionary system, a good nanoscale simulator, and lots of > > >computronium to run the above. As embarrassingly parallel as they come. > > >And that's about the only metainvention you need to make. > > > > And how damn hard is it to have "lots" of "robust" "good" items like these? > >Are you questioning the ability to build such a system fault-tolerant? I'm much more concerned about the robustness of the code. >... I'd like to float a definition here. An "unlimited-sum >transaction" is one in which the benefit to one (or both) of the parties >is much higher than the cost, and is not correlated with the cost. >I argue that ... commercial trading is incapable of dealing >adequately with unlimited-sum transactions. The liquids I drink over the next few days are worth millions to me, as I'd die without them. Their cost is far lower, and uncorrelated with the value I place on my life. So you say that commercial trading can't deal with getting me liquids? Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 11 21:34:24 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 22:34:24 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <16305.21984.973839.976955@localhost.localdomain> Hugh Crowther a ?crit (11.11.2003/19:56) : > > Somebody once told me, possibly PJ o'Rourke, that the French are just > Germans with good food. I have to agree with this. There is really no noticeable difference. The language is just the same, in particular, as well as the culture in general. You also have Italy. They eat spaghetti there. Jacques From fortean1 at mindspring.com Tue Nov 11 23:30:09 2003 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 16:30:09 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (SK) NYTimes.com Article: (14) Can Robots Become Conscious? Message-ID: <3FB17101.9AC47008@mindspring.com> (14) Can Robots Become Conscious? November 11, 2003 By KENNETH CHANG It's a three-part question. What is consciousness? Can you put it in a machine? And if you did, how could you ever know for sure? Unlike any other scientific topics, consciousness - the first-person awareness of the world around - is truly in the eye of the beholder. I know I am conscious. But how do I know that you are? Could it be that my colleagues, my friends, my editors, my wife, my child, all the people I see on the streets of New York are actually just mindless automatons who merely act as if they were conscious human beings? That would make this question moot. Through logical analogy - I am a conscious human being, and therefore you as a human being are also likely to be conscious - I conclude I am probably not the only conscious being in a world of biological puppets. Extend the question of consciousness to other creatures, and uncertainty grows. Is a dog conscious? A turtle? A fly? An elm? A rock? "We don't have the mythical consciousness meter," said Dr. David J. Chalmers, a professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. "All we have directly to go on is behavior." So without even a rudimentary understanding of what consciousness is, the idea of instilling it into a machine - or understanding how a machine might evolve consciousness - becomes almost unfathomable. The field of artificial intelligence started out with dreams of making thinking - and possibly conscious - machines, but to date, its achievements have been modest. No one has yet produced a computer program that can pass the Turing test. In 1950, Alan Turing, a pioneer in computer science, imagined that a computer could be considered intelligent when its responses were indistinguishable from those of a person. The field has evolved to focus more on solving practical problems like complex scheduling tasks than on emulating human behavior. But with the continuing gains in computing power, many believe that the original goals of artificial intelligence will be attainable within a few decades. Some people, like Dr. Hans Moravec, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, believe a human being is nothing more than a fancy machine, and that as technology advances, it will be possible to build a machine with the same features, that there is nothing magical about the brain and biological flesh. "I'm confident we can build robots with behavior that is just as rich as human being behavior," he said. "You could quiz it as much as you like about its internal mental life, and it would answer as any human being." To Dr. Moravec, if it acts conscious, it is. To ask more is pointless. Dr. Chalmers regards consciousness as an ineffable trait, and it may be useless to try to pin it down. "We've got to admit something here is irreducible," he said. "Some primitive precursor consciousness could go all the way down" to the smallest, most primitive organisms, even bacteria, he said. Dr. Chalmers too sees nothing fundamentally different between a creature of flesh and blood and one of metal, plastics and electronic circuits. "I'm quite open to the idea that machines might eventually become conscious," he said, adding that it would be "equally weird." And if a person gets into involved conversations with a robot about everything from Kant to baseball, "we'll be as practically certain they are conscious as other people," Dr. Chalmers said. "Of course, that doesn't resolve the theoretical question," he said. But others say machines, regardless of how complex, will never match people. The arguments can become arcane. In his book "Shadows of the Mind," Dr. Roger Penrose, a mathematician at Oxford University in England, enlisted the incompleteness theorem in mathematics. He uses the theorem, which states that any system of theorems will invariably include statements that cannot be proven, to argue that any machine that uses computation - and hence all robots - will invariably fall short of the accomplishments of human mathematicians. Instead, he argues that consciousness is an effect of quantum mechanics in tiny structures in the brain that exceeds the abilities of any computer. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/science/11MACH.html?ex=1069533728&ei=1&en=b2c8d5710ed32897 Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company -- ?Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress.? Copyright 1992, Frank Rice Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.] From xllb at rogers.com Tue Nov 11 23:53:45 2003 From: xllb at rogers.com (xllb at rogers.com) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 18:53:45 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <20031111235345.NEDM320036.fep02-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com@localhost> > > From: "R.Coyote" > Date: 2003/11/10 Mon PM 10:22:23 EST > To: "ExI chat list" > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > What survival value did our ancestors find > > > walking on 2 legs gave them? > > to carry more stuff to reach more stuff xllb "Dogma blinds." "Hell is overkill." > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > 1 From rhanson at gmu.edu Wed Nov 12 00:12:45 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:12:45 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB13FAA.DE63BE4F@best.com> References: <200311111900.hABJ0AM07986@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031111190845.02334330@mail.gmu.edu> OK, here is my current attempt to distinguish the key assumptions and what they imply. The social implications of nanotech depend greatly on which specific economic assumptions hold. 1. Atomic Precision: Atom-scale manufacturing becomes cheap; we put atoms where we want. Such abilities should allow many new products, including much cheaper and smaller computers, medical devices that float in bloodstreams, and thorough waste recycling. 2. General Plants: General purpose manufacturing plants, using a limited range of feedstocks, will displace most special purpose plants, like general purpose computers have now displaced most special purpose signal processing. (This is mature "3D printing" or "direct manufacturing.") As with computers, this requires that the added efficiencies of special purpose devices are overcome by the scale economies and reduced design costs of general purpose devices. For products with substantial transportation costs, production should be done at the general plants nearest to each customer. Such plants can exist anywhere where feedstocks, repair skills, and customers are available. 3. Local Production: Small general plants, located very near users, dominate manufacturing. This requires that production designs be almost fully automated, only very rarely requiring human intervention. Such automated production processes should be harder to design. Here distribution and labor costs of manufacturing are mostly eliminated; what remain are the costs of design, marketing, regulation, raw materials, and to rent general plants. Open source product design is possible here, and file-sharing of stolen product designs becomes an issue. 4. Over-Capacity: Local general plants are so fast/cheap they are usually off, like PCs now. At this point the marginal cost of most products is raw materials and marketing. The fixed costs of design and regulation dominate the overall costs, much as with software/music/movies today. The scope for price-discrimination would be wider. Today software and cable TV companies offer a few wide product bundles, to take advantage of anti-correlation in our item values. Imagine being offered a few lifestylepackages, that cost most of your salary and entitle you to use a very wide range of consumer product designs, including clothes, furniture, food, etc This would require an incredible concentration of or coordination by sellers of consumer goods. 5. Self-Reproduction: A local manufacturing plant can create a copy of itself within a year. This is one possible route to achieving over-capacity of local general plants. This route, however, has the potential to give a large and sudden cost advantage to the commercial or military power that first develops full self-reproduction. How large depends on prior costs, and how sudden depends on reproduction time. Self-reproducing military or terrorist weapons are also a concern. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From rafal at smigrodzki.org Wed Nov 12 03:24:18 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:24:18 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] heterosis, consanguinity and IQ In-Reply-To: <016801c3a73e$b692f0c0$8b994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: Damien wrote: > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] heterosis, consanguinity and IQ > > > >> [po:] inbreeding, should register as lower IQ on a >> society-wide scale. > > Is this right, though? Two recessive deleterious genes will be > expressed more often, munging the offspringen (who might die as a > result, often in utero), while two recessive advantageous genes will > pop up more often as well. I had the impression that this is a > partial explanation for the elevated IQs of Orthodox Jews, e.g., even > though they pay the price in certain rare horrid afflictions. (I seem > to recall a post from Eliezer implying that this might account in > part for his own unusual brain.) ### The mechanism you describe was indeed proposed as explanation for why consanguinity in societies where it is uncommon (Europe) produces a significant increase in birth defects and mental retardation but in societies where it predominates, there is no clear effect on this frequency. In effect, consanguinity may over centuries cleanse the genetic pool of deleterious recessive alleles. Specifically I heard it as explanation for the lack of significant increase in birth defects in Kerala. On the other hand, the issue is made less clear by other differences - such as consanguinity in Europe occurs most frequently among marginal, low-income, relatively stupid persons to begin with, while in Kerala it is accepted practice among the population at large. There are probably too many variables involved to predict from first principles the effects of inbreeding on IQ, although we can with more confidence predict that inbreeding will reduce the ability to survive infections. Most likely, however, the net effect of inbreeding is still a lowered average IQ, even if recessive alleles are removed more efficiently. Regarding Jews and IQ, however, the explanation is probably somewhat different - it involves centuries of eugenic practices which favored most intellectually gifted boys. The increased frequency of some genetic afflictions among Jews is unrelated to the IQ increase and is caused by the founder effect (in a way, a mild form of inbreeding) which is also present in many other ethnic groups derived from a small founder population, like the French Canadians, or the Afrikaaners. However, without eugenic practices or other forms of selection favoring high IQ the founder effect alone is not sufficient to increase IQ. Rafal From wingcat at pacbell.net Wed Nov 12 01:27:05 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 17:27:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar System In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031112012705.49002.qmail@web80408.mail.yahoo.com> --- Amara Graps wrote: > There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 > has reached > the Heliopause. > > If this isn't a reason for a massive > party/celebration > of the humans on this planet, I don't know what > is.... Getting the first colony ship to the heliopause? Sure, this is great news, but so was Apollo 11. From aperick at centurytel.net Wed Nov 12 01:50:46 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 17:50:46 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] should we drop "believe" In-Reply-To: <200311111900.hABJ08M07983@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <14350153.1068603237027.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> I must sympathize with Brett. He [rightly I think] believes that his beliefs are so superior to the beliefs of religious folk that he cannot bear to hear the same word used to refer to his beliefs. HE only allows himself to believe according to evidence. Furthermore, he is very discriminating with respect to the nature of the evidence he will seriously consider. Both of these facts clearly set his beliefs apart from the beliefs of religious folk. Hence the popular term "faith based." He fears that if he allows the b word to be applied to his reckonings he is thereby guilty of allowing miscommunication. But I have much doubt that any of the currently faithful will ever understand the nature of his/our protestations. There have been times when I have suffered the ignorance of god-fearing folk who had the audacity to accuse me of having faith in scientific theories. Since most of the stupid xtians will always associate every occurrence of the b word with a degree of faith, we are wont to quit using the b word entirely! I, for one, can see that this will not accomplish anything - it is partly an over-reaction. WE here are all immune to infection by this particular meme. But damn it feels good, to agree to avoid the word, their word - when among our own kind. From CurtAdams at aol.com Wed Nov 12 03:23:27 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 22:23:27 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: Another specific benefit to nanotech (loosely defined) would be the ability to service inaccessible parts. That could radically alter requirements for manufacturing and construction; things no longer need to be made accessible. From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Nov 12 05:37:14 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 21:37:14 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: PARTY! CryoFeast 2004 - Austin Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031111213524.02867050@pop.earthlink.net> > >cryocool..JPG SATURDAY - DECEMBER 13 - AUSTIN >_________________________________________________________________ > >You are cordially invited to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation's Annual >CryoFeast 2003 potluck Thanksgiving Celebration! > > >Where? 10709 Pointe View Drive > Austin, TX 78738 > >When? Saturday, December 13th > 3:00 PM - Onward (bring your sleeping bag if you are > travelling a distance, or not -:) > >What to bring? Your favorite delicious dish to compliment the main course. > (Salads, potatoes, pies, vegetables entirely welcome.) > >RSVP 512 263-2749 or natasha at natasha.cc > See you then! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: cryocool..JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 8583 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 12 03:47:07 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:47:07 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Si vs C again In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000001c3a8cf$a554ca80$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Kasparov vs Fritz game 1 = draw. Shelly (Mrs spike) From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 12 04:25:56 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 15:25:56 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] should we drop "believe" References: <14350153.1068603237027.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Message-ID: <004501c3a8d5$1148f400$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Rick wrote: > I must sympathize with Brett. He [rightly I think] believes that .... No! No :-) Please stop putting words into my mouth. :-) Unless you are actually *trying* to bait me ? If so please pick another topic and I'll laugh right along with you - but this one is hard enough already and I'm into this topic because I think its important. I am trying to find time to respond to the other post Jacques sent and enjoying the lack of gratuitous belief-word bandying about in recent posts to the list in the meantime and then you chime in Rick and impute believing on me all over again. Save me from my friends :-) I plan to get back to Jacques post soon, but life intervenes sometimes. Rick PLEASE don't argue *my* case for *me*, by all means argue *your* case for *you*. Our objections may differ in subtle or not so subtle ways. Please don't impute believing on me. Regards, Brett From gpmap at runbox.com Wed Nov 12 07:22:14 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 08:22:14 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <000601c3a8ed$b2e76310$0401a8c0@GERICOM> I definitely do not want to say to the weak "find a way to make yourself useful or die" because it is a disgusting thing to say to a conscious being. I know many "weak" people who would not make it in the hypercompetitive society that you seem to advocate, do not play power games, do not force their alpha-machism on everyone, do not impose their opinion on you, yet if you listen to them you find that they have very valuable things to say, perhaps much more valuable than yesterday's or today's winner. They are kind to children, to animals, to elders, respect others, ... they just have a slower chemistry in their bodies and brains, nothing that tomorrow's tech cannot fix. What the fuck do you want to do with them, leave them to die on the street? Shoot them? Really now. My depressing thought of the day is that we believe that we have advanced from animal conditions, and plan to advance even more toward a posthuman future, yet in social and political debate we do not seem to have advanced much. > Here's my current view of things: Liberty and responsability directly > correlate with collective prosperity through creative competition. If > you are not sure you want to say to the weak: "find a way to make > yourself useful or die", and to the strong: "you're welcome to become > a half-god by accumulating wealth", because you value equality, and > the support of the weak, you can do it, but it will lower collective > prosperity. Even in France, there are many people who work very hard > the whole day only to sustain themselves. I find it reasonable to be > appalled at it. From samantha at objectent.com Wed Nov 12 09:02:50 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 02:02:50 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> References: <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <200311120102.50640.samantha@objectent.com> On Sunday 09 November 2003 10:27, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Samantha Atkins wrote, > > > This is too simplistic. Too many corporations are about > > making the maximal money for their stock holders. > > I even doubt this sometimes. Many corporations are about swindling the > stockholders and making a few criminals at the top richer. All of the > money-market scandals, accounting scandals and dot-com busts are examples > of corporate officers making themselves rich while maximizing losses for > their corporations and stock holders. With all due respect a lot of the dot-com-busts were not about greedy executives, at least not in the first instance. The market itself, and those who maintained and pumped it, was at fault. Most execs at most attempted to cash in. In actuality the game of the money investors had to be played to produce at all, even if the game was insane. - s From samantha at objectent.com Wed Nov 12 09:09:41 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 02:09:41 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200311120109.41387.samantha@objectent.com> On Sunday 09 November 2003 16:03, Greg Burch wrote: > The corporate form per se is no more or less problematic than any other > means of holding and using property and contract rights. The problem > arises when state power is fused with the form through corporatist > government policies. Blaiming "corporations" is like blaming any other > interest group that bids for and buys government favor, be they "farmers," > "unions" or other organized groups that manage to garner preferential > treatment from the state. Corporations are RELATVELY weak in the EU > (compared to the US), but these other organized interest groups have done > just as much harm by co-opting state power for their special interests in > the EU -- viz. France and their endless strikes and labor-driven politics, > or the agricultural protectionism in the EU that is one of the main factors > derailing free trade in the world. The evil doesn't lie in the legal form > per se, but in the sell-out of state power. Yes. I would go further to say that if significant state power exists then there will be a bidding war to gain access and control that power. Speaking of agricultural protectionism, what of the effects of that as practiced by the US? I believe we are a much more significant agricultural player worldwide than the EU. - s From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Wed Nov 12 09:17:43 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:17:43 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (SK) NYTimes.com Article: (14) Can Robots Become Conscious? In-Reply-To: <3FB17101.9AC47008@mindspring.com> References: <3FB17101.9AC47008@mindspring.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Terry W. Colvin wrote: >(14) Can Robots Become Conscious? > >November 11, 2003 > By KENNETH CHANG > > >It's a three-part question. >[...] > >http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/science/11MACH.html?ex=1069533728&ei=1&en=b2c8d5710ed32897 > >Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company And there are three points about this article: 1) it talks about machine consciousness (=soul in popular opinion) taking it seriously 2) opponents are shown in a somewhat negative light 3) it uses the word "believe" two times Ciao, Alfio From samantha at objectent.com Wed Nov 12 09:24:30 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 02:24:30 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Luddite Leadership: The New Atlantis In-Reply-To: <20031110015325.45809.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031110015325.45809.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200311120124.30347.samantha@objectent.com> On Sunday 09 November 2003 17:53, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > If this is the best our enemies - and I use the term > deliberately, even if the immediate battle is for > hearts and minds rather than lives - can muster, as it > seems it may be, we have little to worry about. (We > can't slack off, of course, but this is a level of > opposition we can handle.) If the battle was only on rational ground with common assumptions of what the "good" consists, then I would agree. Unfortunately that is not the case. What this source does is give legitimacy and facts to back up what the majority of the people are strongly predisposed to agree with. We have not to date been able to "handle" the opposition even when their arguments are blantantly irrational and full of errors as to the facts. The explicit and implicit conclusions also feed those who fight to continue the status quo as that is where their relative wealth and power is. It would be good to find that which motivates the people at large much more strongly than their predispostions are proof against. I am not at all sure it is possible to do so on a large enough scale to dislodge the established interests who wish to slow and control innovation. - s From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 12 11:00:05 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:00:05 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 10:23:27PM -0500, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > Another specific benefit to nanotech (loosely defined) would be the ability > to service inaccessible parts. That could radically alter requirements for > manufacturing and construction; things no longer need to be made accessible. There are two different approaches to servicing: pull a defect module, replace, recycle the pulled part. The apparently superior approach: maintain service infrastructure within the module; diagnose trouble during operation and incrementally repair from within. Minus is that repair and diagnostic infrastructure dilutes functionality concentration in part volume. This wouldn't be acceptable for computational modules, imo. Here hold, copy, resume approach is superior. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 12 12:11:10 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 23:11:10 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Should we drop the "believe" word/concept/behaviour References: <000b01c3a844$9e1318c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FB11363.3050206@dtext.com> Message-ID: <00c101c3a916$0f133ec0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jacques wrote: [Brett's comment: This is way too long - I've actually made the mistake of addressing some things that are purely straw men and of introducing too much extra material in an attempt to let you see that what I do when you think I am believing like you - is simply not the case- not anymore - one can grow out of believing. My writing style changes as I react to what your saying - but its gotten to post or be damned time - so post it is - sorry no more time to prune] > (Was: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solv... Open the pod > door pls Hal) > > To clear up some potential mess and "home in on the nub" > some more: if I speak of "believe", it will be the word; if > I speak of , it will be the concept; if I speak of > believing, it will be the behaviour. And if I want to use the > concept, I will speak of the belief meme (whether > this is the most fruitful concept to use we will see in the > discussion). Sorry for <> which is slightly non standard, > but we need adequate tools for this kind of linguistic stuff. Ok. But note. The above modifications are not generally included in written and spoken speech. In democracies, and this is my core point, the folk that are voting on juries, in the parliaments and congress and on the selection of which party member should be supported to run for office, are doing so not on the basis of what the speaker says to them but rather on the basis of what they think the speaker said. When words can be read multiple ways its the hearers not the speakers interpretation that the hearers act on. My concern with the use of "believe" is a political concern. It is also a communications engineering concern. It is not a fuzzy indiscriminant philosophical concern that all words that are ambigous are harmful. Most ambiguities seem harmless to me. "I believe" does not. Its a special case. I have come to consider it an *insult* to ask an intelligent person what they "believe" and an insult to impute "beliefs" or "believing" on someone that has not already professed to "believing" or "belief". You don't agree with this (yet). I know that. That's part of the point of this conversation. Please note (for completeness) that if someone professes a belief X it is fair comment to note that they said they "believe X". It is also fair comment to disown belief as in saying "I do not believe X". Not believing X does not imply that believing X would be valid. In politics and in human communication things are ternary not binary, that is how political "spin" comes about. People often mistakenly use binary logic when terniary is needed and draw the wrong conclusion they were intended to draw by the spin doctors. This need to see political and human communications in terniary rather than binary logic terms is an important and non-obvious point. Most people do this I think when they hears lawyers and spin doctors talking but I do not know that most people know that they are doing it - ie. working with terniary logic when they communicate with each other. This is not the main point though. The main point is that it is better for the propagation of transhumanist and extropic memes to talk to potential voters and jurers etc in words that they won't confuse and to use words that will not make us sound just the same to them as the last bunch of believers. If you come up against someone like me whilst expressing your beliefs that person is likely to think you are not a thinker of the first order because of the way you are speaking. I have respected you enough not to dismiss you out of hand - they may not. If you come up against believers they will do what you already know they will do when you use belief. They will hear your beliefs as new beliefs and reject them in all likelihood as not better than their existing beliefs because both are just beliefs. They may if you are lucky differentiate believing from reasoning and give you credit (they may be your sort of part-time believers) and prefer reasoning when they think they can get it - if you can hold their interest long enough. Chances are though they already "believe" the afterlife and all important matters are already taken care of and your deepest convictions and best rational explanations may be indifferently received or a source of amusement to them. > Also, I will kindly ask you not to modify my quotes, as > quotes are, well, quotes. Feel free to comment however > you like, but please leave what I said as I said it. I will not remove what you say, but you have a habit of using the word "you" when a kind reading of your meaning suggests you are talking loosely and meant the word one. A less kind reading leaves you imputing a bunch of things to me (as the likely referent of your word "you"), that I don't want to leave unchallenged. I can't be bothered denying imputations that you make without even meaning to so I when I read "you" as "one" I'll include [one] in brackets afterwards. I will also add stuff inside your quotes in [] to show what I am reading you as saying but I won't alter your words. [Jacques] .. I will avoid using the word ["belief"], except when talking > about it on purpose. Thank you. > ..I will abstain from using the word ["belief"] for the time > being to let you see that it is under my control, but I will > add an asterisk(*), so that people reading this understand > there is something weird and this is not what I would > normally say. Ok. Thanks. [Brett] > >Is it your present judgement that it can be counterproductive > >to use the word 'belief' in some situations then? [Jaqcques] > It is my judgement(*) that using "belief", and consequently the > concept, is counter-productive in some propositions > and some situations, yes. Thank you for your judgement(*). Please note: Any concepts you don't articulate into words are of no concern from a memetic propagation and communications engineering standpoint. What one does not say and does not write will have no political impact. The only point here is that if you use the word believe (which is older than you and which you picked up in a social context) in your own inner dialogue then you are also more likely to use it in your communication with others and vice versa. ie. If you use it in you communication it is likely to also be used in your internal dialog. I think it unlikely that you will run two separate sets of inner dialog one in which you say "I believe" but only to yourself and another in which you prepare your words for public consumption and you remove the "I believe" stuff. I think that if one chooses to stop using "I believe" in one's communication with others that one will find, as I did, that over time one does not use it in one's internal dialog either. ie. The primacy of the "believing" meme is not hard-wired or necessarily embedded in all sentient wetware. We install the "believing meme" as a word picked up from our culture. We can outgrow it and remove it replacing it with a sharper more discriminating way of "seeing". One may still say "they believe" or "he or she believes" in one's internal dialog but that is not endorsing believing personally. That, on the contrary, allows one to decouple oneself from the meme. But it doesn't happen by accident. To stop practicing a bad habit one must want to stop. And one must see it as bad. The prudence of not using the words "I believe" does not come to one with one's birthday suit - in the belief infested world of 2003, when believing is the default, not believing is something that one must learn (or not). Most will not. > >> > > Suppose that in such a debate, one guest is a famous > >> > > and respected Nobel Prize [winner]. Her use of "belief" > >> > > is going to matter, because people (rightly or wrongly, > >> > > doesn't matter here [in this contention]) are interested > >> >> in her level of confidence that X holds. > >> > > >> > So you think that people (generally) make judgements > >> > not on evidence but on the perceived authority of the > >> > presenter ? - On the whole I think this is true but this is > >> > part of my point - It hurts the cause of shared-truth- > >> > discovery to encourage this natural human tendency to > >> > laziness though. And the Nobel Prize winner does the > >> > audience a disservice if she deliberately engages in > >> > persuasion by appeal to authority (ie. if she uses > >> > the statement 'I believe X') rather than ('the evidence > >> > indicates X') by appeal to reason. > >> > >> I might (sic) agree with this, too, depending on the context. > >> If someone's belief is based on evidence and theory that > >> he can readily explain, or at least usefully point to, to his > >> audience, it's probably better to do that. But it's often > >> not possible, and in certain situations, stating .. [one's] > >> belief can be a useful thing to do. > > > >["Might" is ambiguous - please resolve the ambiguity by > >answering the question] > >Can you make a provisional judgement without labelling > >that process a belief (even in your own mind)? > > I can if I do a hypothesis, yes. > > But not otherwise. Actually if you couldn't also map the label "provisional-judgement" how did you understand the question and produce hypothesis as an answer?R Seems that you do have a label other than hypothesis. Perhaps you thought it had to be one word? > Hypothesis is the only form of "judgement" (which I wouldn't call > judgmeent, but, precisely, "hypothesis") that I can make without > labelling it a belief in my own mind, because I cannot judge > something to be true without having some confidence that it is true. > It makes no sense if you are [one is] mentally healthy. Fine. Use any other word you like for now (except the one that confounds our inquiry). There are choices in any thesaurus and in ones mind one can hypenate words to make them one-word. [Jacques] > >> If I hire Harvey to manage the security of my network, > >> and th[en] I hear about some threat, I may tell him: > >> "Harvey, do you believe this threat is a concern for our > >> network"? I don't necessarily want him to explicate all > >> the evidence, the experience, the theory, etc. he has. > >[Jacques - [] are Brett's] > > > >> > -- .. .. if [one is] in a hostile situation, and > >> > .. [one] need[s] to convince people, .. [one] may as > >> > well give up on any explicit belief self-attribution, as > >> > people may seize the occasion to think, "oh, this is just > >> > a belief, then". > >> > >> [Brett] > >> That is pretty close to my contention yes. Except to push it > >> further the *belief* meme is SO SLIPPERY that they may > >> not even need to formally think the sentence "oh, this is just > >> a belief, then" - they may do that or they may not even be > >> *that* aware. > >> > >> Good. I understood your point then, and I agree with it [Brett] > >.. I want is to get your agreement that (a) belief is a word > >that is harmful (at least sometimes would probably do -and > >I think you and I are at that point already - by your comment > >below #2). > Agreed. Ok. > Like any word/concept in some propositions and situations. So > you should really reframe your initial advice not as linked to a > particular word, but as: when expressing transhumanist ideas to new > people, do not insist on the confidence you have in your visions, but > provide evidence and facts that will influence people's judgments(*). That is not the point I am trying to make. Mere ambiguities are not the problem I am trying to highlight. The political and communication problems I am concerned with addressing arises as a result of the use of the word believe (especially "I believe") not as a result of the general ambiguity of some words of which the believe word is just an instance. > > (b) belief is a word that can *always* be replaced > >by you with no loss of ability to communicate should you so > >choose. (I don't see that you agree with this point yet). > Any word can always be replaced by a synonym or a synonymous > phrase. This is important it means you know you do have the choice in the belief case in particular. > The important point here is that we cannot, and should not, > dispense with the concept. That is not the important point here. But if we can as you say, and its harmful in some circumstances (as you acknowledge) why not do without it altogether? Its my deeper contention that you can do away with the believe concept in your head as an active working concept in which you use "I believe" as part of your inner dialog. You would of course retain the ability to recall that you once used believe in the form of "I believe", but you would have transcended it, to use clearer words in your thoughts and in your communications. Only the second is necessary to stop you propagating the meme. > > And > >therefore (c) you should freely choose not to use it in the > >interests of better communication and to avoid propagating a > >bad meme that competes with the reasoning meme and is > >harmful to both of us. > >Finally (d) if I can persuade you, I'd like you to pass the > >innoculation service on to someone you respect at the > >appropriate time. Eventually it may be possible for even > >the least experienced meme-warriors amongst us to look > >at any towering ediface of baloney and spot the weaknesses > >by the conspicuous 'hanging thread' use of 'belief'-meme. Then > >we may home in on that weakness without having to worry > >about hitting a mis-guided friendly talking loosely and allowing > >the BS-artists and enthrallers to hide behind our desire not to > >hit our friends. That's pretty much what I want. > >(#2 ? ) [Jacques] > >> > > I can also agree that when bringing new ideas (like > >> > > transhumanist ideas) into society, we may often find > >> > > ourselves in such situations, and hence it may (sic) > >> > > sometimes be preferable to avoid the use of "belief". > > > >> Now to answer your question, yes, I can think of instances > >> when it should be used, and instances when it should not be > >> used. I gave above examples of the former (asking my > >> security expert, "do you believe this threat should be a > >> concern to us?") and of the latter (useless to talk about > >> your beliefs qua beliefs if the audience doesn't give a > >> damn about the level of confidence with w[h]ich you think > >> that something holds). > > > >The example you gave was NOT good. You could have > >used alternate words. You could .. have also said: > > > >"Harvey, do you [see] this threat [a]s a concern for our > >network"? > It's obvious enough that "see" and "perceive" are used here in a > metaphorical way (or "abstracted" way) to mean something else, Yes. And you could use any other word you think is a synonym for the belief word it does not have to be "see" or "perceive". > which, I contend, is the concept, for which the word > "belief" is the most natural choice. Its natural because we learn the words of our cultures. Profanities are natural too, but folk that are interested in communicating effectively pretty much leave them behind or for the use of folk that can't express themselves precisely. We don't have to choose to use every word in the dictionary however crude a communication tool it may be just because its in the dictionary. > So, this only makes sense if one judges(*) the WORD should > be avoided at all costs, while still recognizing that the concept > expressed by that word can and must often be used. At all costs is pretty melodramatic. I'm trying to persuade you not coerce you. You have other words that you can use should you choose to use them. > So, is your contention only about avoiding the word, while you > recognize that the concept expressed by this word is useful in > some propositions, and that the behaviour that it denotes is > useful in some situations? > No. There are two separate points. You may still label concepts in your head as beliefs but I don't do that. Or if I do it is very very rarely or when I hang out with others that use the word a lot and I start to reuse it because I have to track their meaning. This is not to say that I don't have uncertainty - of course I do, but I tag the uncertainty with different terms in my internal dialog. Perhaps I can give an analogy. Some people use the word fuck to mean fornicate and some mean it as a general purpose profanity to empress strong emotion. Because I find the word ambiguous and those that use it pretty sorry specimens as communicators I don't generally use their word at all because I see it as debased coinage. Then my internal dialog takes on over time some of the precision that I try and practice because I want to communicate effectively. I have had a bad feeling (if can put it like that) about the word belief for probably pretty close to two decades - that is plenty of time to get one's mind out of the habit of using a word when there really are other words available. Hypothesis, theory, notion, concept, a probability (as a noun) are words I use in my head. Also I don't in my normal day talk or come across all that many people who use the word believe and when I do my negative stereotyping of the word as associated with a sort of brain-fart that maps to no reliable referent is almost always reinforced. It really is strange to me to see others attributing beliefs to me. Its as strange and distasteful as if someone said Brett said "fuck shit damn ....(then the rest of any sentence" I just don't talk like that. The labels on the concepts in my internal dialog are not beliefs. They were once I conceed but that seems a long time ago. I suspect others that have a strong negative reaction to faith-based world views and long standing interests in science don't either - but I don't know that for a fact. If someone says that "I believe x" they get mapped in my head as having used the believe word. I would not accuse another intelligent person of believing unless they said they were or used the word to describe themselves. I read the WTA Faq recently and saw that humanist were described as believing X, and I thought at first that I was reading a put down of all humanists. It was like seeing a slander. Now back to your point. It *may* be harmless if you use the word "believe" and "belief" in your internal dialog so long as it stays there as a concept and is not propagated out as a word by your saying it. However I am very doubtful as to whether one can have two sets of dialog one for internal use and one for expressing oneself. I expect the habits of expression take over over time and become the words we use in our internal dialog as well. This is another reason why I'd like transhumanists and extropes to choose to avoid using the believe word. You are right though that the main point I had was about the propagation of the believe-meme. What is in a persons head as a concept stays there unless they express it by using the word believe or belief. You have a theory and express it as a theory, or a notion, or a hypothesis then that is the word others hear. If they don't understand it then they can ask or look it up or not. (As it happens I don't much talk to folk who can't understand these words as even the believers I know are pretty well educated and also know about science so my words don't phase them. I use words like I think or I suspect or I reckon - this is rarer. If you have a belief and express that belief using the word believe then that is what the hearer will hear. And if they know that their beliefs have frequently got bugger-all basis behind them then they are pretty likely to think that yours don't either. Or if you are a person of authority like a political leader or a judge or an expert then the person hearing you use the word may hear into your words the lofty or poetic language of shamans and persons of authority down through history. When a president talks of beliefs people give him credit for the second far more often than they think "well he's just mouthing his prejudices like I might". I've seen the Australian Prime Minister (quite an intelligent person) use the words I believe to cover the fact that he has done nothing like the amount of investigation and analysis that most people would think the seriousness of certain major decisions warranted. The above (largely off-point waffle) is an effort to explain in good faith because you genuinely don't seem to "believe" that a person can have an internal dialog and not tag their own uncertain positions "beliefs". > > Even if you get the desired outcome from Harvey > >using "believe" that wouldn't mean that you had > > chosen well not to use another word like 'see' or > > 'perceive'. Because in using those words instead > > you would not be propagating the believing meme > > and getting you and hypothetical Harvey over-comfortable > > with a way of speaking that might one day trip you and > > him or both of you up. And I think you have > >agreed that sometime the belief-word can trip folks > > up. > What I think is true here, is that you may be better off asking > your security expert some kind of justification, rather than > treating him like an oracle. But this is because the trust in his > abilities, rigor, vigilance, honesty, etc., is limited. It is not > useful otherwise. And using "believe" or "perceive" doesn't > change anything, you have to ask him a report instead of > just asking him his conclusion. This is all off topic as far as I am concerned. I didn't advocate treating the security expert like an oracle. There is no prospect I would. > > >> You seem to be making a confusion between two things, > >> the belief on one hand, and on the other hand the way it was > >> formed, and what it is based on. > > > >On the contrary I am concerned with the ramifications of > > the propagation of the view that believing as opposed to > > reasoning is a better way of operating in a social and > > *political* world where believers and reasoners get one > > vote each. > > I am sorry to say that you do make the previously > mentioned confusion, or let us say "fusion" to use a neutral > word. There is no opposition between reasoning and > believing. A sound belief is the product of a good > reasoning. That's how the concepts articulate. Belief > and reasoning are not alternative, they are different > stages of the process. > > You can reason all you want, if you don't end up > *believing* [used on purpose] something, then you > will never DO anything. This is not so. Just because I don't label my uncertainties with "believeing" doesn't mean either that I don't have uncertainties or that I don't manage them in a practical way. > Belief is the way propositions make people do things. > It is the vital connection between propositions and > people. No belief, no behaviour. Bollocks. Children act in the world before they learn words of any sort including the word belief. Therefore they must act prior to conceptualising what they are doing - trying to understand and build up a model of the world that works for them - without ever having to call it a belief. > Belief is a central behaviour (not really the right word, > let's say mental state), is thus a central concept, > and there is only one word reserved in the language to > denote/express them, and that word is "belief". To you maybe. To most people perhaps but it is possible to grow out of it. One doesn't have to be stuck there. People can coin new words and the brigher ones do because they need to label new concepts in their fields of exploration. It is very easy to split the "believe" concept in ones mind into stuff that relates to faith-based systems and reject that class of synonyms wholesale and then to use the other synonyms that are not to do with faith-based world views and are not potentially confused as endorsing faith-based world views. > > By using belief as a word you unnecessarily > > propagate it as a meme. > Do you promote buying stupid things by buying what > you buy, and by saying it with the word "buy"? > SHould we stop using the word "buy" to avoid people > to buy stupid things? SHould we rather say: "Honey, > did you exchange some of your money with some bread > this morning?" Your suggestion seems as reasonable as > this to me. Somewhere you've distracted yourself I think that this is about words being ambiguous. It is not it is about one word that is both ambiguous (at best) and very dangerous to propagate in democratic societies that are already predisposed to intellectual short cuts and cop outs already. > >> The fact that some people have silly beliefs is far from being a > >> sufficient reason to discard the concept of belief, which is > >> actually absolutely essential. > > > >You have not demonstrated that it is essential. > > This is a new evidence that you are not clear about > whether you speak of the WORD "belief" or the CONCEPT > . Please clarify. Have I clarified. I want the word out of circulation if I can get it. I think the exercise in self-monitoring that some will have to do may actually help them think clearer as well but I doubt that they will do it for that reason as I think their egos will rail against the notion that they are not thinking clearly already. Some will do it because they can see it costs them nothing to do it but a little effort and its simply better to be clear. Perhaps some will not do it regardless of what I say. > >Your conception of trust differs from mine too. But your concept > >of trust is less dangerously propagated than the belief-meme. > > Please tell me what you think is false in my account of trust in the > previous paragraph. Your comment on trust was off-topic. My thoughts on trust are still in the Exi archive I imagine under the subject "On Trust". > >> Let me add one thing, to make my point even more clear: > >> every time you say "I think that X", you may feel safer > >> and more rational by refering to thought rather than to > >> belief, but what you really mean is actually that you > >> *believe* that X. > > > >This is a little worrying. This is the implication of "believers" > >everywhere. That they can only believe and so that is all > >that is available to everyone else as well. This is part of what > >makes believing as a meme so dangerous. Reasoners invites > >the other to look at what is unsettled between them. Believers > >(and bs-artists) make unsupported assertions and act on their > >beliefs and try to get others too. By using their word you > >actually help them. > > > >> What else could you mean? > > > >If you stop using the word belief whilst we step through > >the arguments together you may be able to see what I mean. > > > This is yet another evidence that you are unclear about whether it is > the word or the concept (and the behaviour that correspond to it) you > have a problem with. > > To sum up: > > If you are talking about the concept and the behaviour, then yes, > obviously in some circumstances it is not what is required. If I ask > Helmut (I figure Harvey might get tired to be in our argument :-)): > "What makes you think that this is not a threat", and he answers, > "Because I believe so", then this is not what is desired in the > situation. Likewise for other situations / propositions, and it may > possibly make sense to talk about such things, and give persuasion > advice and such. > > If you are talking about the word, thinking it's bad because it > "reinforces the belief meme", meaning by this the beliefs based > in thin air, in particular the belief in God, then my answer is that > 1) I judge(*) this effect is not real except in some situations > (discussions on this list being no such situation), I think it to persuade you it should be enough that you know it can be misunderstood and that you know that you can use other words that will be less misunderstood out in the world. Most of my other comments are a result of trying to explain how believing in the mind is not inevitable it can be transcended. The believing behaviour you refer to I don't think is a fundamental of sentience at all. If you are really convinced its bad to propagate the meme out in the world of voters then I don't think you'd want to bring in an ambiguous word that doesn't map to reliable referents in interpersonal communication onto the list either. Why use sloppy words here that you wouldn't use out there? > 2) we need the > concept, we have one word in our languages reserved for that > meaning slot, and it is not desirable to remove the word, even > on an individual and voluntary basis. We can improve out of the slot. We can choose not to use words that hurt our cause and that become habits in our thinking and weaken our thinking. We don't need believe for good internal dialog to handle uncertainties its just a bad habit. > >I am not yet convinced that you did understand it. Perhaps > >you will (or do). Perhaps you don't and wont. Perhaps you > >can. Perhaps you can't. > > And they say *I* am arrogant... :-) "They" say lots of things and for reasons other than understanding what is true ;-) One doesn't have to repeat what "they" say - it is a choice. Regards, Brett From jacques at dtext.com Wed Nov 12 12:25:21 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:25:21 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <000601c3a8ed$b2e76310$0401a8c0@GERICOM> References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> <000601c3a8ed$b2e76310$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Message-ID: <16306.9905.730890.624015@localhost.localdomain> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 a ?crit (12.11.2003/08:22) : > > I definitely do not want to say to the weak "find a way to make yourself > useful or die" because it is a disgusting thing to say to a conscious being. Yes, this is why I phrased it in that way, to make its disgusting character obvious. > I know many "weak" people who would not make it in the hypercompetitive > society that you seem to advocate, > -snip Not at all what I meant nor advocate. In fact, in the last sentence of my paragraph that you quoted below, I said I found it reasonable to be apalled that anyone should work hard the whole day just to sustain themselves. No, what I meant (and I think, said), is that putting the pressure of liberty-responsability on individuals begets collective prosperity. It's as simple as that. So you have to make your choices taking this into account. >From an extropian perspective, I think at this point we can still use a lot of that competition-induced creativity. Hopefully when we have extreme life extension we can relax a bit (and we aren't too busy with defense). You don't show your generosity by denying the correlation, which is a fact. You show it by making political choices that take into account this correlation, or by personal, non-political choices. I am quite worried at the misunderstanding, as I think you got an image of me which is quite contrary to what I really am. Thanks for voicing your (mistaken in the instance) indignation, hopefully I managed to be better understood this time. Jacques > Jacques said : > > > > Here's my current view of things: Liberty and responsability directly > > correlate with collective prosperity through creative competition. If > > you are not sure you want to say to the weak: "find a way to make > > yourself useful or die", and to the strong: "you're welcome to become > > a half-god by accumulating wealth", because you value equality, and > > the support of the weak, you can do it, but it will lower collective > > prosperity. Even in France, there are many people who work very hard > > the whole day only to sustain themselves. I find it reasonable to be > > appalled at it. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From scerir at libero.it Wed Nov 12 13:15:53 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 14:15:53 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Si vs C again References: <000001c3a8cf$a554ca80$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000901c3a91f$1a33d270$d8b31b97@administxl09yj> > Kasparov vs Fritz game 1 = draw. A draw? Are there deeper reasons for a draw? Mathematicians investigate .... ------------------ CONJECTURE 1. The actual game of actual CHESS is a draw, is neither provable nor refutable in ZFC with abbreviation power, using less than 2^1000 symbols. CONJECTURE 2. The actual game of actual CHESS is a draw, is neither provable nor refutable in ZFC + "there exists an elementary embedding from a rank into itself" with abbreviation power, using less than 2^1000 symbols. CONJECTURE 3. There is an actual chess position in actual CHESS, where it is provable in ZFC + "there exists a measurable cardinal" that it is a draw, using less than 2^20 symbols (with abbreviation power), but there is no proof in ZFC using less than 2^1000 symbols (with abbreviation power) that it is a draw. Harvey Friedman -------------------- Vladik Kreinovich, Richard Watson, "How difficult is it to invent a non-trivial game?", Cybernetics and Systems, 1994, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 629-640. http://www.cs.utep.edu/vladik/1993/tr93-34a.pdf From amara at amara.com Wed Nov 12 12:58:47 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 14:58:47 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar System Message-ID: Adrian Tymes wrote: > >Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 17:27:05 -0800 (PST) > >--- Amara Graps wrote: >> There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 > > has reached the Heliopause. > > >> If this isn't a reason for a massive > > party/celebration of the humans on this planet, I don't know what > > is.... > >Getting the first colony ship to the heliopause? >Sure, this is great news, but so was Apollo 11. 'We' (our machines) are entering interstellar space. Amara -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Wed Nov 12 14:19:37 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (rand-y) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 08:19:37 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Fwd: PARTY! CryoFeast 2004 - Austin In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031111213524.02867050@pop.earthlink.net> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20031111213524.02867050@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 21:37:14 -0800, Natasha wrote I will try to make it up there for that Cryonics party. My dad lives in Canyon Lake, just south of Austin, so I can go visit him as well. I like the CryoCool logo. Was that logo designed for a specific purpose, or is it just a random logo? ------------- The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! From amara at amara.com Wed Nov 12 13:29:52 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 15:29:52 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] tracking and saving incremental changes Message-ID: From http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5976 "I keep my life in a CVS repository. For the past two years, every file I've created and worked on, every e-mail I've sent or received and every config file I've tweaked have all been checked into my CVS archive. When I tell people about this, they invariably respond, ``You're crazy!'' " -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." --Lily Tomlin From rhanson at gmu.edu Wed Nov 12 14:58:20 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 09:58:20 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <00c201c3a7b9$e5c09de0$e2994a43@texas.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031112094851.01ea5be8@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/10/2003, Damien Broderick wrote: > > Another opinion that I've heard has more distinct social implications, > > though I'm not sure how many people (still?) take it seriously. It is > > described in the novel "Diamond Age" and in several books by Drexler and > > company. In that vision, future manufacturing becomes much like how PCs > > are used today. People have personal general manufacturing devices (PGMD, > > I'll call them) close to home, and most consumer goods are produced > > locally on PGMDs, via downloaded designs and a few general feedstocks. > >It's some time since I read DIAMOND AGE, but as I recall matter compilers >were almost exactly NOT like PCs or microwave ovens; they were large >`mainframe-like' gadgets more akin to ATMs. This was (I think) a social >control mechanism, as well as a security precaution against random crackers >compiling Sarin gas, machine guns, etc. This might well be what we'd expect >to see if Drextech-ish molecular manufacture arrives in the next 15-30 >years. I finally looked it up. Pages 37-38 describe a Matter Compiler in a poor person's home: "Nell followed him into the kitchen, which housed several important boxy entities with prominent doors. Some were warm, some cool, some had windows, some made noises. ... One of the boxes was called the M.C. It was built into the wall over the counter. ... `This takes so long, it's ridiculous ... 'Cause we got a cheap Feed, just a few grams per second.' ... Inside the M.C., folded up neatly, was Nell's new red mattress." On page 40 a "deke hopper" is described as a similar box that recycles waste, including a bunch of extra mattresses Mell asked the M.C. to make. "several important boxy entities Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 12 15:09:45 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:09:45 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <200311120102.50640.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <008d01c3a92f$067d7c30$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Samantha Atkins wrote, > With all due respect a lot of the dot-com-busts were not about greedy > executives, at least not in the first instance. The market > itself, and those who maintained and pumped it, was at fault. Most execs at > most attempted to cash in. In actuality the game of the money investors had to > be played to produce at all, even if the game was insane. You are right. There were greedy venture capitalists, accountants and auditing firms as well as the executives. But my point that not all corporations maximize value for stockholders still stands. Too many of them maximize value for somebody else besides the stockholder. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From duane at immortality.org Wed Nov 12 15:14:41 2003 From: duane at immortality.org (Duane Hewitt) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:14:41 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ebay Auctions Space Dev In-Reply-To: <410-2200311211173549996@M2W067.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20031112100407.00a50480@maxwell.lucifer.com> For anyone interested SpaceDev is also supplying propulsion to the X-prize entrant of Scaled Composites, SpaceShipOne. SpaceDev. www.spacedev.com Spacedev Overview. http://biz.yahoo.com/e/031112/spdv.ob10qsb.html Scaled Composites. www.scaled.com X prize. www.xprize.com Duane duane at immortality.org www.immortality.org At 12:35 PM 11/11/03 -0500, you wrote: >SpaceDev Auctioning Microsatellite Mission On eBay > >SpaceDev (OTCBB: SPDV) is auctioning a world exclusive private >space mission on eBay. This first of its kind eBay auction is >being listed for the ten-day period of 8:00 PM (PST) Monday, >November 10, through 8:00 PM (PST) Thursday, November 20th. > >The SpaceDev space mission auction is at: > >http://echo.bluehornet.com/ct/ct.php?t=355015&c=192606617&m=m&type=3 > >Natasha > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- >mail2web - Check your email from the web at >http://mail2web.com/ . > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From jonkc at att.net Wed Nov 12 15:49:22 2003 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:49:22 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com><04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001> Wrote: >It also gave them the ability to walk while looking >over the top of the tall grasses on the savannah. >The taller, more upright ones could see >trouble coming and avoid it better. If you can see a predator better by standing up above the grass it also means the predator can see you better, and that's bad news if you're slow as molasses and if you walk on 2 legs you are. Better to just briefly come up on 2 legs as many animals do and take a peek and then come back down on 4, or just develop a long neck. I would think coming out of the trees and into the open savannah would increase the trend toward 4 leg locomotion, but that 's not what happened and I've yet to hear a convincing theory that explained why. John K Clark jonkc at att.net From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Wed Nov 12 15:51:31 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (rand-y) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 09:51:31 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 19:28:27 +0100, you wrote >Randy wrote (10.11.2003/10:45) : >> >> Greg wrote >> >> >The corporate form per se is no more or less problematic than any >> >other means of holding and using property and contract rights. The >> >problem arises when state power is fused with the form through >> >corporatist government policies. Blaiming "corporations" is like >> >blaming any other interest group that bids for and buys government >> >favor, be they "farmers," "unions" or other organized groups that >> >manage to garner preferential treatment from the state. >> >Corporations are RELATVELY weak in the EU (compared to the US), but >> >these other organized interest groups have done just as much harm >> >by co-opting state power for their special interests in the EU -- >> >viz. France and their endless strikes and labor-driven politics, >> >> But how do you define "harm"? The strikes in Europe are simply the >> expression of solidarity of the people and have resulted in the >> superior living conditions of the French (and other NW European >> countries), as compared to the Americans: > >Randy, > >I wish the picture you are drawing of France was true. > >France has 10% unemployment (that's NOT counting people on social >welfare, only people who were employed some months ago) and rising. Actually, the USA also has unemployment approaching 10%. It just so happens that France and other european countries use stricter guidelines in counting their unemployed. Also, you see we do not count those in prison as unemployed. However, they are actually unemployed, and SHOULD be counted. Perhaps France does not either, but we have FAR more in prison than does France. I am a numbers/stats kind of guy, so if you do not mind, before we proceed further, I would like to establish as precisely as possible just what it is that we are talking about here when it comes to living in France/western Europe, or the USA. These numbers and financial situational comparisons fascinate me. I would like to write a book about this subject, as there is nothing that descibes this adequately, that I can find anyway. The median wage/salary in the USA is somewhere in the 20K-25K US dollar range. That number means different things for different areas of the country because of price differentials. In large metro areas, 23K (we will call that the median for our purposes) is enough to live on, but owning a home in those areas is generally impossible on that wage. That is why less than 60% of Americans own their own homes, despite that contrast with Europe where there is less land per capita--surprisingly (I am sure) to most Americans, home ownership is actually more common in many western european countries than in the USA. People who make 23K and under are generally taxed at about 23-27% from their paycheck, and other taxes or fees generally amount to about 7-13%. Those are rough approximations. So the bottom half of AMerican earners lose about maybe about 27-33% of their pay to taxes. And what do they get for their taxes? That is really the big question. Those in the 50-70 percentile range, with incomes of 23K-35K, roughly, lose about 33-37% of their income to all taxation. Those who make more, than about $35K, the top 25% of so, lose perhaps 40% to taxation. THe AMerican tax system is set up so that these earners are more able to escape federal taxation. Now I know that taxation rates for western europeans are higher. But for the lower 50% or so, how does taxation compare?. That is hard for me to find out. Perhaps you can establish income and taxation rough desscriptions as I have done. My research indicates that the bottom 50% of western euros are taxed at maybe 40%. And what do they get for that extra 12-15% in taxation? My research indicates that they receive "free" medical (or very low priced medical). Also, welfare is more available. Unemployment is more extensive and availabe. Also, university education is much cheaper, or even free. Please feel free to correct me or provide more detailed information. As for SOCIAL BENEFITS, when laid off (or fired under certain restricted conditions), one may apply for approximately 6 months unemployment, which usually works out to about US$200-350/month. After 6 months, nothing more, usually. Able bodied single persons are not eligible for welfare. However, if one has less than about $US2000 in saving, you may obtain ~$US90/month for food. No housing subsidy unless you are have children and have a very low income and very little savings. Same for medical--none except for very poor families with children. Perhaps you can now do the same for France, i.e., describe the benefits -- such as unemployment, medical, welfare, etc. These financial/numerical situational comparisons are actually rather hard to establish/determine. One would think that will the resources available, these scenarios would be common knowledge. One would think that American-European comparisons such as I am trying to establish here would be common in the media or provided by our govt. But they are not. Seems like a conspiracy (tightens tin foil cap....). >The social security (meaning free health services) has a HUGE deficit, >so it won't be able to carry on very long that way. In the western democracies governmental deficit/surpluses all seem to oscillate about a mean depending on the business cycle. Correct? Can you be more specific about this deficit? Was there a surplus a few years ago? >The government has every difficulty to make the least reform, because >of the unions and strikes, especially in the public service. >Meanwhile, problems accumulate, and seem to never get solved. Can you be more specific? >Here's my current view of things: Liberty and responsability directly >correlate with collective prosperity through creative competition. If >you are not sure you want to say to the weak: "find a way to make >yourself useful or die", and to the strong: "you're welcome to become >a half-god by accumulating wealth", because you value equality, and >the support of the weak, you can do it, but it will lower collective >prosperity. Even in France, there are many people who work very hard >the whole day only to sustain themselves. I find it reasonable to be >appalled at it. > Your meaning is unclear to me. Perhaps there is a language problem. I submit for starters that MOST people in western europe, and France specifically, prefer their system to ours. You seem to prefer ours. Come on over. We will take you in. But it is harder for me to get into France. In fact, it is basically impossible unless I have a job there, correct (a parent who was born there)? Citizenship? Very hard.... >Neither the US nor France are at one extremity of the theorical >spectrum. But France is a bit more on the equality-support side. It >has some good aspects (humble people feel more empowered and less >"enslaved", and there may be a general "quality of life" and more >relaxed approach of things), I COMPLETELY AGREE. And also, by the way, people also live about 3 years more in France, on average. Correct? This is a subject not in the least off-topic here on this list, of course. >and it has some bad aspects (less >prosperity, which means even more support needed, and so on in a >vicious circle). Vicious circle, huh? Race to the bottom, American-style, anyone? >One thought which I never heard voiced, but which seems rather obvious >to me, is that by being more on the liberty-responsability end of the >spectrum, the USA pay the "inequality price" for some of its >creativity, Umm, I do not concede that America is more "creative" than western europe. >that is then available for free to other countries. It >might be that Europe would have been forced a long time ago to get >back to more liberty-responsability if it couldn't use what the US >create (think computers, Internet, etc.). I'm not an economist, >though. > >I don't think there is one definite answer about >liberty-responsability versus equality-support. What about what the majority of the citizens of France think? >Within the bounds of >our ape psyche (and maybe beyond), the redirection of competitive >"instincts" into production at the exclusion of coercion (which is >what the political philosophy of liberty is about seen at our >contemporary light) may well be the best way to go. It has to be >acknowledged that it does pressure individuals, though, even if more >collective prosperity tends to make things easier even for the weak. The "weak" as you say, amount to perhaps half the populace. >In the end, it's probably more difficult in France than in the US due >to less prosperity, but the perception people in lower situations have >of life may be a bit better and less harsh, which possibly produces a >"better atmosphere". > >Silly French joke: You know why they chose the rooster as the embleme >for France? Because it's the only animal that still sings even with >his feet in the mud. I am afraid this is what you get with too much >equality-support: some kind of warmth with material misery. YOu make it seem as if it is simply a psychological thing. That is part of it. In fact, there is a nascent meme that maintains that the peculiar form of corporate slavery that is encroaching upon the bottom 50% of Americans is one reason why Americans live several years on average than western euros. There is a psycho-biological price to pay for worry about losing medical benefits if ones loses a job, overwork, lack of vacation time, etc.... Not inappropriately, studies of *lab rats* have shown this time and again (with appropriate lab rat jobs, lab rat vacations, lab rat healthcare, lab rat worries, etc.). American-style rat-race, anyone? But it is more than just psychology: as I have begun to show above, for the majorityof American citizens, the european style of govt would work out better--in hard numbers. But please, give us a numerical description of how the bottom half lives in France. --------- Randy ------------- The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! From etheric at comcast.net Wed Nov 12 16:29:30 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 08:29:30 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com><04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric> <003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <002601c3a93a$28a316c0$0200a8c0@etheric> Another intriguing theory that offers an explanation is the Aquatic Ape Theory ----- Original Message ----- From: "John K Clark" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 7:49 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > Wrote: > > >It also gave them the ability to walk while looking > >over the top of the tall grasses on the savannah. > >The taller, more upright ones could see > >trouble coming and avoid it better. > > If you can see a predator better by standing up above the grass it also > means the predator can see you better, and that's bad news if you're slow as > molasses and if you walk on 2 legs you are. Better to just briefly come up > on 2 legs as many animals do and take a peek and then come back down on 4, > or just develop a long neck. I would think coming out of the trees and into > the open savannah would increase the trend toward 4 leg locomotion, but that > 's not what happened and I've yet to hear a convincing theory that explained > why. > > John K Clark jonkc at att.net > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From etheric at comcast.net Wed Nov 12 16:50:33 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 08:50:33 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com><04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric><003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001> <002601c3a93a$28a316c0$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <002d01c3a93d$170f3e40$0200a8c0@etheric> "Another intriguing theory that offers an explanation is the Aquatic Ape Theory" Of course I'm kidding ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 8:29 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > Another intriguing theory that offers an explanation is the Aquatic Ape > Theory > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John K Clark" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 7:49 AM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > > Wrote: > > > > >It also gave them the ability to walk while looking > > >over the top of the tall grasses on the savannah. > > >The taller, more upright ones could see > > >trouble coming and avoid it better. > > > > If you can see a predator better by standing up above the grass it also > > means the predator can see you better, and that's bad news if you're slow > as > > molasses and if you walk on 2 legs you are. Better to just briefly come up > > on 2 legs as many animals do and take a peek and then come back down on 4, > > or just develop a long neck. I would think coming out of the trees and > into > > the open savannah would increase the trend toward 4 leg locomotion, but > that > > 's not what happened and I've yet to hear a convincing theory that > explained > > why. > > > > John K Clark jonkc at att.net > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From alito at organicrobot.com Wed Nov 12 17:28:46 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 03:28:46 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> Message-ID: <1068658126.6304.1653.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 01:51, rand-y wrote: > People who make 23K and under are generally taxed at about 23-27% from > their paycheck, and other taxes or fees generally amount to about > 7-13%. Those are rough approximations. So the bottom half of AMerican > earners lose about maybe about 27-33% of their pay to taxes. And what > do they get for their taxes? That is really the big question. > > Those in the 50-70 percentile range, with incomes of 23K-35K, roughly, > lose about 33-37% of their income to all taxation. > I always thought the US had a pretty low tax rate, but your post and others seem to indicate otherwise. Googling up US tax rates, federal taxes for a single person at 23k would be a touch under 14%, and state taxes vary widely but i'll assume a median of about 3-4% for a single 23k'er. Could you give me details on what the fees and other taxes that make up the missing 15%-19%? (just to clarify, this is a genuine question, and i'm not claiming your figures are wrong. The little i know of US taxation is what i've gathered from an hour of googling around) alejandro From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Wed Nov 12 17:19:24 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 11:19:24 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 09:51:31 -0600, I wrote This essay pretty much says it all: undefined undefined More... ADVERTISEMENT [Close] Social Democracy Inevitable by Enya Hastings ? 2003 Home: http://www.geocities.com/kew1788/ Social Democracy is the reason why Scandinavian nations enjoy the highest quality of life in the world. Social Democracy is a blend of socialism and capitalism, not as extreme as the failed communism of the Soviet Union, nor as extreme as the laissez-faire capitalism of America, which perpetuates numerous social problems. By blending capitalist mechanisms with socialist policy, Social Democrats have developed a socioeconomic system which may be considered superior to all the other economies in the new century. Social Democracy is designed not to maximize profit, but to provide high quality of life. [COMMENT: THAT IS THE MOST TELLING SENTENCE IN THIS ESSAY, AND TRUER WORDS HAVE NEVER BEEN SPOKEN. FURTHER, I SUBMIT THAT PROFIT-DRIVEN SCIENCE RESEARCH DOES NOT NECESSARILY OBTAIN GREATER BENEFITS THAT STATE-SPONSORED RESEARCH. I STATED THAT ON THIS LIST YEARS AGO DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE BUBBLE, AND HOPEFULLY SOME PEOPLE HERE ARE STARTING TO SEE THE TRUTH OF THAT] Ultimately, the only true measure of wealth is high quality of life. [COMMENT: THIS SHOULD BE OBVIOUS.....] Because Social Democracy allows the greatest number of citizens to enjoy high quality of life, Social Democracy may be the inevitable paradigm for all nations. The Rising Tide of European Social Democracy Many Americans are woefully ignorant and do not realize that Social Democracy already dominates the European Union. Many Americans were puzzled when Europe refused to back G. W. Bush?s conquest of Iraq?But Social Democrats had swept elections throughout Western Europe, so it is not surprising that Bush found no support among them?Social Democrats don?t believe in war, conquest, invasion or imperialism. After two centuries of laissez faire capitalism, many Americans cannot even imagine Social Democracy. They are dumbfounded when they learn that Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Brazil, Venezuela, and most of South America are now Social Democracies. The USA is the last dinosaur of laissez faire capitalism, a system proven intolerable to the public everywhere else in the world. Compared to the great social progress being made throughout the world today, Americans once proud of social progress are now the world?s most backward anti-progressives. Andrew Glyn describes this Social Democratic sweep of Western European governments in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES: ?At the turn of the century more parties of the Left were in government in advanced capitalist countries than ever before, including for the first time ever, those of the four largest West European countries.? [1] The Swedish Model Consider Sweden, one of the most successful of all industrialized nations. Both Sweden?s social services and the quality of life enjoyed by Swedish citizens are substantially better than the social services and quality of life of Americans. The secret of Sweden?s success: It is a Social Democracy?a quasi-socialist nation, based on the concept that the whole nation is ?folkhemmet???the people?s home.? [3] Sweden takes excellent care of its citizens. One significant factor in the concept of ?folkhemmet? is that Sweden is relatively homogenous?over 90% of the population belong to the Scandinavian racial group. The Swedish treat each other as family perhaps because their genetic kinship with each other is relatively close. By comparison, America consists of many diverse racial groups. America is the largest immigrant importer in the world, and various races, cultures, and income groups frequently conflict with each other in socioeconomic antagonism?This may be one reason why Sweden developed the concept of ?folkhemmet? while America did not?at least not yet. Many of the benefits of Social Democracy are sorely lacking in America, where a poor person has little chance of being able to afford college tuition to improve his earning potential, and he can die of a broken leg if he has no insurance. America insists on laissez faire capitalism and refuses reforms, and as a result, America has the highest crime rate, the largest prison population, the largest homeless population, the worst drug abuse, the worst public transit, the worst health insurance, the most expensive healthcare, the most expensive housing, and the most expensive college tuition of any industrialized nation. While hundreds of American multimillionaires have more money than they would know how to spend in a dozen lifetimes, quality of life for one hundred million poor people in America resembles the quality of life of a Third World peasant, among the lowest in the world. [4] Sweden offers all of its citizens universal healthcare insurance, affordable college tuition, excellent public transit, strong labor rights, long vacations, strong social security, a good job market, good housing, extremely low poverty, drug abuse and crime rates, and virtually no homelessness. The Swedish also fund an effective environmental protection agency, a substantial national park system, recycling and alternative energy programs, and they still have money left over to fund nonprofit relief agencies throughout the developing world. On a per capita basis Sweden gives more money and aid to the developing world than Americans contribute. The Swedish also enjoy the highest education and literacy levels, and in general, the highest quality of life among industrialized nations. [5] All Swedish citizens enjoy excellent universal national healthcare insurance?and an excellent national healthcare system. Over 75% of women work, and enjoy generous daycare benefits for children. Parents enjoy 12 months paid leave from their jobs, taken just a few days at a time as needed, for up to an eight-year period. The government also awards substantial child allowances. Daycare for children is subsidized and socialized into a comprehensive system of babysitting, schooling, and extracurricular activities similar to the Israeli Kibbutz system. [7] Sweden enjoys a strong progressive tax for the rich, which allows less wealthy workers to keep more of their money. In addition to government unemployment insurance, unemployed workers also receive unemployment funds and retraining courses offered by their own labor unions. While unemployment benefits are thought by critics to encourage the unemployed to remain on the dole, the benefits have time limits, forcing the unemployed back into the workforce. When moving to a new city to seek a new job, a citizen receives a government relocation grant to help with moving expenses. The standard Swedish vacation benefit is five weeks paid vacation every year, compared to an American standard of only two weeks. [8] The population of Sweden is about 9 million, and is enjoying Zero Population Growth and realizing its basic benefit: Lower population means higher Gross Domestic Product per Capita. As population decreases, each citizen?s share of wealth increases. Sweden and Northern Europe stand today as examples that a falling birthrate improves quality of life. In Northern Europe a new ethic is emerging: Stop at two children per family?lower population means higher GDP per Capita. [9] In SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES, Juhana Vartiainen points out that Swedish Social Democracy is the result not of central government, but a series of solutions offered by many cooperative sectors including unions, government and the private business community. [12] Vartiainen continues: ?The main goals of the Swedish trade union movement have been associated with (I) full employment, (II) technical progress, (III) an egalitarian distribution of wage income, (IV) an active labour-market policy, and (V) collective capital formation.? 80-90% of workers in Sweden are unionized. To gain power initially, labor unions went on crippling strikes numerous times in the 1930?s. The Basic Agreement of Saltsjobaden of 1938 conceded worker rights in exchange for union agreement to stop striking. In the 1950?s the unions in exchange for full employment agreed that wages should be capped by the unions to prevent wage inflation. This became the Rehn-Meidner Model of Wage Standards. [13] With wages set by the Rehn-Meidner Model, employers could use profit to invest in expansion, encouraging the more profitable companies to grow the fastest. Structural unemployment in shrinking industrial sectors was addressed through massive retraining programs. Through such policies, Sweden achieved virtually full employment from 1960-1990, when the unemployment rate was only 1.9%. Despite full employment, inflation remained at parity with the rest of Europe. During the era of worldwide hyperinflation in the 1970?s, wage controls suffered ?wage drift,? pressure to increase wage rates. A more radical faction favored wages that would prove to be too high. The original wage controls were designed to standardize wages for specific jobs, but the radicals attempted to force lower-skilled jobs up to the same wages as higher-skilled jobs. This hurt employers and pitched companies against labor unions. [14] The 1970?s radical wage-earner fund project was canceled by the Bildt government in 1992. The radical system proved a failure: White-collar workers had no incentives, and low-skilled workers had no incentives to learn higher skills, resulting in a low-skilled labor glut and higher-skilled shortages. This damaged the whole concept of wage-setting controls, and the Central Employers Confederation (SAF) abandoned controls in 1992. Wage setting was determined in collective bargaining between labor unions and employers?not by government. Once employers started fighting unions over wages in the 1990?s, it was seen as a decentralized general trend rather than a political issue. The result was chaos, growing unemployment and inequity, and a return to labor union strikes and employer lockouts. With the feeling of mutual cooperation between labor and management broken, wage standards became a source of conflict and crisis. [15] In the world recession years 1991-1993 when radical wage controls wreaked havoc in Sweden, Swedish unemployment rose to an historic high of 8%. Since then, unemployment has remained relatively high even when economic growth recovered. Throughout the world, the 1991 recession brought a jobless recovery, as did the 2001 recession, due to technological innovation, the effects of globalization and outsourcing jobs to the developing world. Not even Social Democracy is immune to such drastic changes brought by globalization. Juhana Vartiainen writes that it merely needs fine-tuning reform: ?The Social Democratic welfare state remains a robust institution to which a majority of the Swedish electorate seems to adhere.... On the other hand, it seems clear that the expansion phase of the welfare state is over.?[16] Vartiainen admits ?the Rehn Model is not working.? He suggests that a wider range of variance in wage controls may be one solution. The Social Democratic goal of full employment is more important than labor union bargaining power, and Vartiainen implies that union bargaining power today is still too strong. He concludes that laws should be passed to weaken labor unions as the best way to preserve Social Democracy and a return to full employment. Unemployment remains almost 6%, but is lower than the rest of Europe. The vast majority of the public in Sweden still favors Social Democracy, universal healthcare, high progressive tax, and subsidized daycare programs. The public is well aware that, despite imperfections in the Swedish Model, Social Democracy allowed Sweden to develop the highest quality of life in the world, even up to this present day. As a generator of high quality of life, this Social Democratic state remains a great role model. Social Democracy Blends Socialism and Capitalism Social Democracy is not Marxism?It disagrees with many fundamental Marxist and socialist tenets. From 1889-1917, Social Democracy and democratic socialism were one and the same, but after 1917, socialism became Marxist communism in Russia, while Social Democracy in Scandinavia favored capitalism and free markets. Democratic Socialism is to the far left of Social Democracy, because it is true socialism, against private capital in favor of the welfare state, essentially communism with democratic elections. Social Democracy by contrast is more moderate, acknowledging capitalism, allowing free markets, while using the state merely to correct the excesses of capitalism and fix market failures. Far from pure socialists, Social Democrats favor a kind of ?socialized capitalism.? [19] Social Democracy today means simply a mixed economy?private capitalism with public regulations. In NEW POLITICAL THOUGHT: AN INTRODUCTION, Tony Fitzpatrick explains that Social Democracy was a reaction against the excesses of laissez faire capitalism. Fitzpatrick describes the problem of the unregulated free market: ?The source of inequality is held to be the concentration of capital in private hands. This concentration means that most individuals are only able to enter into the labour market on terms vastly unfavorable to themselves. So, those who ultimately produce society?s wealth are seen as receiving less of it in return, in the form of wages, than they deserve. Inequality takes the form of exploitation, therefore. But capitalism not only produces an unjust form of inequality.... Many have interpreted poverty and unemployment as caused by capitalism?s need to maintain unemployment in order to drag wages down and thus increase the returns to capital....? [20] The solution to correct these excesses is Social Democracy. Full employment is a goal of Social Democracy, but full employment must be balanced with preventing wage inflation. Social Democrats see the need to prevent workers from earning too much, because once full employment is achieved, labor union bargaining power would encourage spiraling upward wages, creating consumer inflation harmful to the economy. The system must balance full employment with wage caps. Scandinavian Social Democracy achieved both full employment and budget surpluses to support social services. By contrast, American neo-conservatives Reagan and Bush created high unemployment and massive budget deficits caused by tax cuts, which forced government to cut vital social services. This high unemployment was deliberate, to force downward pressure on wages, and the federal and state budget deficits was also deliberate, in an attempt to gut social infrastructure. In that sense, Social Democratic fiscal policy is the opposite of American neo-conservative fiscal policy. The social effects can be profound: Sweden?s Social Democracy dramatically reduced poverty to a point where only 4.9% of single parents live in poverty in Sweden, while in America, over 60% of single parents still live in poverty. [21] The New Challenge Economic challenges of European Union nations in the past two decades include deflation, falling productivity, financial deregulation, currency speculation, capital mobility, globalization, and the continuing decline of the need for low-skilled labor. Both technological innovation and globalization have rendered millions of low-skilled Europeans obsolete, superfluous and unemployable. Globalization has been harmful in the EU especially in social democracies ill-equipped to compete against the exploitation of cheap labor in the developing world. Thus unemployment rose everywhere in the EU, even in social democracies whose primary goals were to maintain full employment. Globalization and capital mobility also hurt tax revenue as employers refused to pay higher taxes and chose to move factories to tax-free trade zones overseas. Torben Iversen points out that Scandinavia still enjoys superior social services and wages, but Social Democrats have failed in their chief goal of full employment: ?To put it in the starkest terms possible, the question for Scandinavian Social Democracy is whether it wants to deepen class divisions by accepting greater inequalities, or whether it wants to create a marginalized group of people, excluded from full participation in the economy.? [22] Iversen concludes that the solution is to encourage more retraining, subsidized education, negative income tax, and more wage subsidies. But he acknowledges that neo-liberal globalization, ?a monetarist international monetary system,? will continue to pressure social democracies everywhere. Australia and New Zealand In 1972, both Australia and New Zealand elected Social Democrats on a platform of free university education, universal health care insurance, welfare, and subsidized arts and sciences. Gough Whitlam in Australia and Norman Kirk in New Zealand increased public spending from 1972-1975, but the 1974 recession was blamed on the Labor Party, and it forced them out of power, replaced by Malcolm Fraser in Australia and Robert Muldoon in New Zealand, conservatives who deregulated and favored neo-liberal trade policy. But the conservatives failed to jumpstart the economy. A long period of slow growth and high unemployment lasted from 1975 into the 1980?s. John Quiggin writes in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES that the Labor Party returned to office in Australia under Prime Minister Hawke in 1982. Hawke and then Prime Minister Keating from 1992-1996 both blended Social Democracy with neo-liberal trade reforms. According to Quiggin, the greatest Social Democratic achievement in Australia was the strengthening of Medicare in 1984, which gave ?universal access to high quality hospital and medical services at relatively low cost.? [23] The Family Allowance Supplement gave many benefits to the working poor. When conservative Prime Minister John Howard took over in 1996, unemployment rose from 8% to 9%. [24] John Quiggin argues that the Australian Labor Party has embraced neo-liberalism too much, weakening key tenets of Social Democracy. Neo-liberalism has failed to provide widespread prosperity. Quiggin concludes that it is time to return to Social Democracy, and he asks that the Labor Party discard neo-liberal ?Third Way? compromises. Great Britain and Tony Blair?s Third Way Andrew Glyn describes Prime Minister Tony Blair?s ?Third Way? in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES: ?Social Democratic parties have returned to power across Western Europe in the 1990?s. However...the rediscovery of electoral success has been accompanied by a marked ideological and policy shift.... Nowhere has this shift been espoused with more enthusiasm...than in the case of the British Labour Party under the leadership of Tony Blair, cloaked in the embryonic ideology of the ?Third Way.?... To many, the rapid policy movement that Blair has initiated seems more like an ideological retreat than modernization.? [25] Labour advocated tax increases for millionaires from 40% up to 50% in 1992, but when Blair took office in 1997, he abandoned this policy and refused to expand welfare. Labour?s chief priority today is not Social Democracy, but economic stability. Under Blair in the late 1990?s, unemployment steadily fell and inflation held at a low of 2%, while the British Pound devaluation of 1992 encouraged strong exports in a global economic boom. Globalization is still outsourcing jobs from the well-paid domestic workforce to much cheaper developing world markets, but that is a problem common to all advanced nations today. Social Democratic policy of Britain?s ruling Labour Party is based on a Keynesian strategy of substantial unemployment benefits, comprehensive retraining, subsidized college tuition, and subsidized wages in which a portion of wages at certain companies are paid by the government. There is a time limit on unemployment benefits, but there is subsidized daycare, universal health care, and other family benefits. Even today, the unemployed are much better off in Britain than in America. Naturally, the British public strongly supports the Social Democracy of the Labour Party. Neo-liberals, Neo-conservatives, and the American Problem Social Democracy is progressing everywhere in the world except America. In glaring contrast to the global trend, the USA is actually devolving into anti-progressive, reactionary conservatism. To understand why the USA is the exception to the rule, one must first understand the rise of America?s Southern Republican Party and the Christian extremists known as the Southern Evangelicals. Their extremist views have blended with American neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism to forge a right-wing power structure that aggressively prevents Social Democracy. This right-wing had been developing since Nixon and Reagan, but their arrogant unbridled power is an ominous development in the new century. Neo-liberals believe in a rather extreme view of liberty. In NEW POLITICAL THOUGHT: AN INTRODUCTION, Matthew Festenstein defines liberalism as having four characteristics regardless of right or left agenda: Liberalism presupposes that we are all born free and equal individuals, that we should have freedom of choice to live as we like, that state power over individuals should be limited, and that the market system should encourage individual freedom and freedom of choice. [27] The last supposition, that markets should encourage freedom, is the problem: The laissez faire free market inherently rewards the wealthy who have capital with freedom of choice, but enslaves workers without capital into hopeless wage slavery. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the market system frees the wealthy minority but enslaves the impoverished majority. Neo-liberals favor unregulated free markets that oppress the majority, while progressives who favor free individuals are wary of free markets. This paradox of liberalism is well known. As John Stuart Mill said, ?No longer enslaved...the great majority are so by force of poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer and debarred by an accident of birth from the enjoyments...which others inherit without exertion.... That this is an evil...the poor are not wrong in believing.? [28] Neo-liberalism is the belief that the unregulated laissez faire free market is the best system. As Mike Harris describes neo-liberal beliefs, free markets are best because they most closely mimic the natural struggle for the survival of the fittest. The atomized individual family unit is the best social unit. Communities and welfare are flawed because they perpetuate the unfit, therefore the taxes that support communities are wrong and should be resisted. Equality is wrong because it is unnatural. Inequality is natural. Neo-liberalism advocates the grim struggle for survival?a rat race in which winners win limitless fortunes?and losers starve. Neo-liberalism is simply a return to nineteenth century Social Darwinism. [29] Neo-conservatism is the belief that the citizen is the subject of the state, and must respect social hierarchy and traditional institutions such as the military and organized religion.[30] No one deserves welfare because it is unnatural. Social hierarchy, inequality, and patriarchy are the natural order of humans so we must all respect this natural order and inequality. Such inequality is intended by God, who must be worshipped as commanded by religious institutions. Any attempt toward socioeconomic egalitarianism is against the natural order and God. Neo-conservatives and neo-liberals share mutual hatred and contempt for taxes, the poor, feminists and foreigners. Above all they want to protect their private property and wealth from the public horde whom they consider to be their socioeconomic and racial blood enemy. American neo-conservatives Reagan and Bush created high unemployment and massive budget deficits caused by tax cuts, which forced government to cut vital social services. This high unemployment was deliberate to force downward pressure on wages, and the federal and state budget deficits were also a deliberate attempt to gut social infrastructure. G.W. Bush in the new century left no doubt about this deliberate policy: He systemically kept unemployment high to break unions and force wages down. He created the worst job market in fifty years. He immediately bankrupted a record budget surplus of almost a trillion dollars leftover from the wise stewardship of President Clinton, and turned it into a record budget deficit of over a trillion dollars by giving it all to millionaires and the military, through tax cuts and record defense spending budgets. When he was governor of Texas, Bush deliberately created high unemployment and record state budget deficits that bankrupted Texas public schools, despite his campaign platform claiming he was ?for education.? His brother Jeb Bush as governor of Florida did virtually the same thing to Florida?high unemployment and record budget deficits forced the closure of numerous social services. Inevitable Social Democracy Despite resistance and minor flaws, Social Democracy may yet be proliferated everywhere?even in America. The neo-liberal globalization trend has challenged Social Democracy and often prevented it from realizing its goal of full employment?but Social Democracy has weathered globalization better than other systems. Social Democrats have developed a socioeconomic system which may be considered superior to all the other economies in the new century. Social Democracy is designed not to maximize profit, but to provide high quality of life. Ultimately, the only true measure of wealth is high quality of life. Because Social Democracy allows the greatest number of citizens to enjoy high quality of life, Social Democracy may be the inevitable paradigm for all nations. Enya Hastings ? 2003 Home: http://www.geocities.com/kew1788/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Andrew Glyn, ?Aspirations, Constraints, and Outcomes? in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES, ed. Andrew Glyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 1 [2] Robert Ladrech, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND THE CHALLENGE OF EUROPEAN UNION (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), pp. 1-2 [3] ?Sweden,? The Encyclopedia Britannica 2000 [4] Tony McAdams, LAW, BUSINESS AND SOCIETY (New York: Irwin Books, 1996) [5] ?Social Democracy,? The Encyclopedia Britannica 2000 [6] ?Sweden,? The Encyclopedia Britannica 2000 [7] Juhana Vartiainen, ?Understanding Swedish Social Democracy: Victims of success?? in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES, ed. Andrew Glyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 26-27 [8] IBID, pp. 26-27 [9] Judith Seltzer, THE ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION OF FAMILY PLANNING PROGRAMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002) [10] ?Sweden,? The Encyclopedia Britannica 2000 [11] Juhana Vartiainen, ?Understanding Swedish Social Democracy: Victims of success?? in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES, ed. Andrew Glyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 44-46 [12] IBID, pp. 22-23 [13] IBID, pp. 28-32 [14] IBID, pp. 32-34 [15] IBID, pp. 35-40 [16] IBID, p. 48 [17] IBID, pp. 23-25 [18] IBID, pp. 50-52 [19] Tony Fitzpatrick, ?Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy? in NEW POLITICAL THOUGHT: AN INTRODUCTION, ed. Adam Lent (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998), pp. 34-35 [20] IBID, p. 37 [21] Andrew Glyn, ?Aspirations, Constraints, and Outcomes? in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES, ed. Andrew Glyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 5-6 [22] Torben Iversen, ?The choices for Scandinavian Social Democracy in comparative perspective? in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES, ed. Andrew Glyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 275 [23] John Quiggin, ?Social Democracy and Market Reform in Australia and New Zealand? in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES, ed. Andrew Glyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 94-95 [24] IBID, p. 101 [25] Andrew Glyn and Stewart Wood, ?New Labour?s Economic Policy? in SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN NEO-LIBERAL TIMES, ed. Andrew Glyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 200 [26] IBID, pp. 218-222 [27] Matthew Festenstein, ?Contemporary Liberalism,? in NEW POLITICAL THOUGHT: AN INTRODUCTION, ed. Adam Lent (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998), pp. 14-17 [28] IBID, p. 16 [29] Mike Harris, ?The New Right? in NEW POLITICAL THOUGHT: AN INTRODUCTION, ed. Adam Lent (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998), p. 56 [30] IBID, p. 60 >--------- > >Randy > > > > > > >------------- >The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat ------------- The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 12 17:23:57 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 11:23:57 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley References: <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <200311120102.50640.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: >From another perspective, aren;t the stockholders themselves out to swindle the corporation and minimize their losses? It's not like most stockholders give two shits about the company they have stock in as long as their stock is increasing in value. Once it starts to dip, they sell their stock and move on to something more fruitful. This manipulation of the company's stock in turn affects the value of the company. A really greedy and uncaring day can put a multi-million dollar company into bankruptcy. How is that any different? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Samantha Atkins" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 3:02 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley > On Sunday 09 November 2003 10:27, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > Samantha Atkins wrote, > > > > > This is too simplistic. Too many corporations are about > > > making the maximal money for their stock holders. > > > > I even doubt this sometimes. Many corporations are about swindling the > > stockholders and making a few criminals at the top richer. All of the > > money-market scandals, accounting scandals and dot-com busts are examples > > of corporate officers making themselves rich while maximizing losses for > > their corporations and stock holders. > > > With all due respect a lot of the dot-com-busts were not about greedy > executives, at least not in the first instance. The market itself, and those > who maintained and pumped it, was at fault. Most execs at most attempted to > cash in. In actuality the game of the money investors had to be played to > produce at all, even if the game was insane. > > - s > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 12 18:04:53 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:04:53 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com><04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric><003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001><002601c3a93a$28a316c0$0200a8c0@etheric> <002d01c3a93d$170f3e40$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: > > If you can see a predator better by standing up above the grass it also > > means the predator can see you better, and that's bad news if you're slow as molasses and if you walk on 2 legs you are. Yes, they may be able to see you better, but it is a question of who is the top predator. It is my opinion that our ancestors developed the upright posture after they were already engaged in active group hunting with simple tools such as bones, sticks, and rocks. Between the tool usage and the group hunting, the upright posture would not have been a hinderance since the result of being seen would not have been to run, but to stop and fight. >>Better to just briefly come >>up on 2 legs as many animals do and take a peek and then come back down on >>4 or just develop a long neck. It was probably like that at first, but if they could see well, and over longer distances, they would have the advantage over a predator that pops up on occasion. With a bit of intelligence, one that even chimps have, they could probably anticipate what the other predators were able to see. Unlike most animals, they could use this ability to hide better than a traditional animal that may be camoflaged well, but doesn;t recognize when it's tail is sticking way out from behind a rock, and doesn;t realize that their movement causes the grasses around them to move. They were simply a better predator; group hunters with an awareness of their surroundings, simple tools, and primitive communication skills. All before they could even walk upright. Early warning of a coming predator, such as a big kitty-kat through a combination of better awareness, longer distance vision, and a clear view from being upright would have provided a terrific opportunity for a group to turn a predator into prey. Gesturing above the grass, calling their primitive sounds, communicating to tell each member of the party where to look for the coming kitty. Silently surrounding it, while it stalks the one party member it saw, completely unaware that it is about to become a meal itself. Have you ever tried to point an object out to a cat? They have no idea to follow the finger. I bet this was one of our first gestures. One that even Bonobos use today. How superior this one gesture must have made us! Because of the body structure and the fact that they could already see over the grasses, the long neck could probably have never occurred. Maybe it could have happened after another few million years without intelligence, but at this point it was easier to improve the mind that was already pretty sharp than it was to redesign the whole body structure. >I would think coming out of the trees and > into the open savannah would increase the trend toward 4 leg locomotion, but > that's not what happened and I've yet to hear a convincing theory that > explained why. > > Is that convincing for you? If not, I'll dig up more. :-) From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 12 17:57:37 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:57:37 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <00aa01c3a946$78ac0490$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote, > From another perspective, aren;t the stockholders themselves out to swindle > the corporation and minimize their losses? It's not like most > stockholders give two shits about the company they have stock > in as long as their stock is increasing in value. Once it > starts to dip, they sell their stock and move on to something > more fruitful. This manipulation of the company's stock in > turn affects the value of the company. A really greedy and > uncaring day can put a multi-million dollar company into > bankruptcy. How is that any different? It sounds the same to me. The market maximizes profits, often at the expense of other people. A good product or a good company is no guarantee that the market will favor it. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From max at maxmore.com Wed Nov 12 18:35:30 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:35:30 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <200311120102.50640.samantha@objectent.com> References: <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031112123216.018210b8@mail.earthlink.net> At 03:02 AM 11/12/2003, Samantha wrote: >With all due respect a lot of the dot-com-busts were not about greedy >executives, at least not in the first instance. The market itself, and those >who maintained and pumped it, was at fault. Most execs at most attempted to >cash in. In actuality the game of the money investors had to be played to >produce at all, even if the game was insane. The interconnected dynamics of irrational exuberance and corruption are fascinating. Here's an excellent analysis focusing on the telecom industry. You'll find the links that accompany the review at the URL below. Max How the Telecom Industry Went Astray strategy+business by Raul L. Katz http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.asp?coid=CO990316331003 In this incisive analysis of the telecom industry's recent disaster, Raul Katz applies insights from cognitive psychology, behavioral economics and finance, and information economics to answer two questions: Why did hundreds of intelligent executives in an important industry become irrational investors? And what lessons can business leaders and policy makers draw from the telecommunications industry's experience to avoid similar "irrationally exuberant" investment decisions? In answering these questions they hope to improve decision making in other markets facing sudden regulatory, technological, or other drastic changes. In the course of his analysis, Katz applies several principles of behavioral finance and psychology and other disciplines. Drawing and expanding on Robert Shiller's approach, Katz sees irrational investment behavior as being driven by precipitating events and worsened by amplifying mechanisms that override checks and balances. To explain how irrationality can conquer an entire industry, Kath uses a two-stage methodology consisting of a causality framework and evidence about irrationality drawn from systematic anecdotes. The causality framework looks at three steps in a firm's decision to enter a new sector of an industry: the development of a business plan, the search for external financing, and the search for additional funding (typically through the equity markets). At each of these stages, Katz argues, conflicting interests, analytical biases, and irrational behavior shifts investment away from rationality. His discussion specifically focuses on four variables that influence analytical rigor: the regulatory framework, overestimation of demand, overestimation of market share, and mistakes in entry strategy. Katz deploys an arsenal of analytical tools to penetrate the telecom industries mistakes regarding these variables. He looks at "the myth of unmet demand", the "myth of 1 percent technological substitution", the representativeness heuristic, the anchoring heuristic, the fallacy of composition, the "critical mass trap", the "IBM effect", and the "consistency of strategy story". In the course of nine pages, Katz not only thoroughly pulls apart telecom investment irrationality, but provides a concise, applied course in critical thinking based on cognitive psychology and behavioral finance. The result of Katz' analysis is a compelling and rich explanation of widescale investment irrationality. His analysis corresponds to other high quality work in the disciplines used to arrive at these conclusions, and should provide useful input for both government policy and corporate investment decision making. Companies need to introduce governance mechanisms such as smaller boards that bring together decision making and accountability, and "red teams" that report to the CEO and the board and which conduct due diligence on key investment decisions. Katz' final recommendation is to put renewed emphasis on independent risk analysis. _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Nov 12 18:33:46 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:33:46 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Please help with Futurist's Contacts Message-ID: <410-220031131218334621@M2W056.mail2web.com> Hello Extropes and other Transhumansits - Extropy Institute is putting together a list of futurist organizations. We would appreciate any help you can offer us in obtaining correct names and contacts. If you have an organization and/or know of one you are a member of, please send the information to natasha at extropy.org, or info at extropy.org. Thank you very much for you help. Cheers! Natasha Natasha Vita-More President, Extropy Institute -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From twodeel at jornada.org Wed Nov 12 18:40:43 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:40:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001> Message-ID: On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, John K Clark wrote: > If you can see a predator better by standing up above the grass it also > means the predator can see you better, and that's bad news if you're > slow as molasses and if you walk on 2 legs you are. Better to just > briefly come up on 2 legs as many animals do and take a peek and then > come back down on 4, or just develop a long neck. I would think coming > out of the trees and into the open savannah would increase the trend > toward 4 leg locomotion, but that 's not what happened and I've yet to > hear a convincing theory that explained why. I read an evolutionary biology book that claimed we started standing erect mainly to help keep our expanding brains cool, via increased exposure to air currents and decreased sun exposure. I'm not sure how well-researched and/or documented this claim was, though -- I was only 12 when I read the book, and I was a vehement creationist at the time, so I didn't really pay close attention to it or even read much of it at all. Now I should go back to the library and try to find that book again... From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Wed Nov 12 18:40:26 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:40:26 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <1068658126.6304.1653.camel@alito.homeip.net> References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> <1068658126.6304.1653.camel@alito.homeip.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 03:28:46 +1000, you wrote >On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 01:51, randy wrote: > >> People who make 23K and under are generally taxed at about 23-27% from >> their paycheck, and other taxes or fees generally amount to about >> 7-13%. Those are rough approximations. So the bottom half of AMerican >> earners lose about maybe about 27-33% of their pay to taxes. And what >> do they get for their taxes? That is really the big question. >> >> Those in the 50-70 percentile range, with incomes of 23K-35K, roughly, >> lose about 33-37% of their income to all taxation. >> >I always thought the US had a pretty low tax rate, but your post and >others seem to indicate otherwise. Googling up US tax rates, federal >taxes for a single person at 23k would be a touch under 14%, and state >taxes vary widely but i'll assume a median of about 3-4% for a single >23k'er. Could you give me details on what the fees and other taxes that >make up the missing 15%-19%? (just to clarify, this is a genuine >question, and i'm not claiming your figures are wrong. The little i >know of US taxation is what i've gathered from an hour of googling >around) >alejandro Good question.... About 7.5% of income is taken out of paychecks for social security/medicare (and if you are self-employed, it's 15%. Actually, it is really 15% for everyone, since the employer has to pay the other 7.5%, which of course actually comes out of money that would have otherwise have gone to the employee). Also, I included the numerous local property and sales taxes which work their way into everyone's life. For example, sales tax on most food products and commodities and services is ~8% in Texas. Suppose you make 23K (median income in the US(about $13/hour)) and you spend 5K in taxable goods and services. That is $400 in sales taxes, which is about 2% of your median income, roughly.... Plus, we pay property taxes, which typically are hundreds or thousands of dollars a year (depending on value of the property). For example, here in Houston, assuming the median pay is 34K, and the median home/apartment/condo is worth $60K, you would pay $1000 in taxes. Which is about 3% of your median income, right? THis property tax of course is reflected in rents that renters pay....so everyone pays it, ultimately. And of course there are sometimes state income taxes. Maybe 2% added on, if you average it over all the states. And then there are various and myriad fees and taxes for every little thing, which have gone up enormously lately! Say that is 2% added on, on average. It is generally acknowledged that Americans pay about 35-42% in taxes. However, that is an average, and the higher income brackets bring that figure up. I am really only concerned with the lower 60% or so. They are of course the majority of the voters. And for them, in general, taxation is probably around 28-35% or so, roughly speaking. So now you see that we get relatively little for our tax dollars! Or at least I hope you see that. (BTW, I have already outlined the enormous differences between costs for university education in America and Europe (in a previous post).) My research indicates that people in the same income brackets (lower 60%) in western europe (excluding portugal and spain) pay perhaps 35- 55% or thereabouts in taxation. But they get so much more! Do you agree? Do you know how much a single, self-employed (or unemployed) person has to pay for medical insurance in America? Perhaps 10K per year. That is a young healthy person. A 50 year old person may have to pay more! There is a state-sponsored low-cost insurance plan, but it does not kick in until you are 65.... For a person who is skilled and has educated and has been able to compete for and obtain a "good job", he pays perhaps $350/month for health insurance for just himself. Perhaps 20-30% of all jobs do not offer very good health insurance, or they offer none at all. It is difficult to quantify the health insurance shortcomings of these jobs, so therefore it is "under the radar" for America. About 20-30% of all Americans either do not have health insurance or have very poor insurance. In America, without good insurance, any healthcare is quite expensive. Fix a broken leg? Maybe 500-1500 dollars. Birthing a baby? Maybe 5-10K or more. Appendicitis? 10K-15K or more. Diagnose and treat cancer? 30K-80K or more. And even if you have good health insurance, you still have to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars if you have any dealings with medical professionals at all in a given year. An anecdote: a friend of mine is planning to move to Australia. He recently returned from his vacation there (a short 2 week vacation--his only one this year). He told me (in his Venezuelan-German accent (he is here on an H1B visa)) upon returning, " Randy, the corporations are ripping you (meaning "you Americans") off!" He went on to explain that the Australians do not have to work as hard, and they do not have to work about not having health care if they are not working. Nor do they have to scramble to maintain their lifestyle--govt welfare and unemployment benefits are much more generous and available. I agree with him. But it is not only the corporations that are ripping us off--it is our leaders and the people who control various powerful institutions. And we let them do it--we subscribe to the lottery culture, where we all believe that we ourselves will be rich someday....if we just work hard and pay our dues. And some do get rich. But the house always wins...you see "rich" is only defined *relatively*. By definition it happens only to a minority! Oh well, you may think this rant of mine is depressing. But it is not unusual for me. Maybe you have deduced that I think most Americans are stupid for not seeing what I regard as the obvious. But I often have the same feelings about religion. America is also quite religious. Same stupidity runs rampant.... ------------- The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! From max at maxmore.com Wed Nov 12 18:44:48 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 12:44:48 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <1068658126.6304.1653.camel@alito.homeip.net> References: <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031112124156.018dcc88@mail.earthlink.net> Giving tax rates for the lower income brackets is misleading unless you also note the effects of the exemptions. Many many millions of people in the USA do not pay taxes (or get refund checks) when you take this into account. In comparing US rates to European rates, differences in exemptions and allowances are crucial. Regarding the longer lives of the French: it seems far more likely that the cause lies in the greater overconsumption of food in the US. Unfortunately, European countries are catching up. Max At 11:28 AM 11/12/2003, you wrote: > > lose about 33-37% of their income to all taxation. > > >I always thought the US had a pretty low tax rate, but your post and >others seem to indicate otherwise. Googling up US tax rates, federal >taxes for a single person at 23k would be a touch under 14%, and state >taxes vary widely but i'll assume a median of about 3-4% for a single >23k'er. Could you give me details on what the fees and other taxes that >make up the missing 15%-19%? (just to clarify, this is a genuine >question, and i'm not claiming your figures are wrong. The little i >know of US taxation is what i've gathered from an hour of googling >around) >alejandro _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From jonkc at att.net Wed Nov 12 18:44:48 2003 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:44:48 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com><04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric><003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001><002601c3a93a$28a316c0$0200a8c0@etheric><002d01c3a93d$170f3e40$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <013d01c3a94d$119e7880$77fe4d0c@hal2001> Wrote: > Yes, they may be able to see you better, but it is a question of who is >the top predator. Lucy could walk upright as well as you or I can but her brain was no larger than that of a chimp and it would be more than a million years before even the simplest tools show up in the fossil record, nor is there any evidence that she engaged in hunting, if she did it must have been for something like mice. I think Lucy was a very long way from being top predator, when she stood up she was just telling those who were what's on the menu. John K Clark jonkc at att.net From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 12 19:25:36 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 20:25:36 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> <1068658126.6304.1653.camel@alito.homeip.net> Message-ID: <20031112192536.GZ922@leitl.org> > My research indicates that people in the same income brackets (lower > 60%) in western europe (excluding portugal and spain) pay perhaps 35- > 55% or thereabouts in taxation. But they get so much more! Do you > agree? I seem to be paying 56%, and Germany isn't supposed to be at the top of the EU taxation rate. Allright, I didn't have to pay tuition. The quality of the uni sucked, though. Very soon we'll be seeing free tuition gone gone gone. I don't expect that the pension fund I'm currently paying into will pay for more than 5% of my costs when I'll be needing it. The health insurance is okay, but what I'm actually getting for the price tag is becoming less and less. So, yeah, we're currently still getting something for our taxes, but that situation is unsustainable, given globalisation, lousy demographics and a low competitiveness of a stratified culture. So, all in all I think we're more or less in the same boat. There's a structural crisis coming, and I just don't see a good easy solution for it. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 12 20:36:48 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 14:36:48 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com><04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric><003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001><002601c3a93a$28a316c0$0200a8c0@etheric><002d01c3a93d$170f3e40$0200a8c0@etheric> <013d01c3a94d$119e7880$77fe4d0c@hal2001> Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "John K Clark" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 12:44 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > Wrote: > > > Yes, they may be able to see you better, but it is a question of who is > >the top predator. > > Lucy could walk upright as well as you or I can but her brain was no larger. As far as walking upright as well as we can, I'm not so sure. There appears to be some debate as to just how well she could walk upright. Her hips are lined up appropriately for upright walking, but her 1 foot bone that was found was sightly curved leading some to think that they still had some tree climbing abilties as well. Chimps, particularly Bonobos are really smart compared to most other animals and they have the capacity of sign language, they recognize themselves in a mirror, and show evidence of being able to intuitively understand what others can see from their point of view. This was my crucial point and I apologize if I made it seem otherwise. Brain sizes in primates tend to overlap, such as they do in humans with no obvious distinction shown in intelligence. H. Nandertalensis had a brain roughly 17% larger than ours, but there I have seen no one claim that they were smarter than H. Sapiens. Although Lucy's brain size was only slightly larger than that of a chimps (about 15 ml I think) the one thing we don;t know is how it was wired. She may have been a bit smarter than the average chimp. One thing I need to add here is that we have very few skeletons from from this period. Lucy herself was only 70% complete. It could be that she is normal of her species. Or it could be as if someone from the future found a skeleton of a midget and used that to determine that we all had the same build. (Midgets pose another topic entirely.....no doubt they are human, but if we found midget pre-hominid skeletons, would we call them a seperate species?) I don;t find this as liklely, but it is possible. > than that of a chimp and it would be more than a million years before even > the simplest tools show up in the fossil record, When I was speaking of tools, I wasn't referring to constructed and altered tools such as stone tools. Chimps use twigs as simple tools to retrieve termites from nests and some in the region of Liberia use stones to break open nuts. With just a slight turn of the usage, sticks and rocks could become sufficient weapons, even if it was a matter of throwing rocks to run a potential predator off. None of these would show as tools in the fossil record. >nor is there any evidence > that she engaged in hunting, if she did it must have been for something like > mice. I think Lucy was a very long way from being top predator, when she > stood up she was just telling those who were what's on the menu. I will agree that Lucy was most likely vegetarian, and I was wrong to put emphasis on the predator aspect. To be honest, I was trying to do three things at once and was a bit distracted. My overall point, which I think was missed once I read my own post, was that given some simple naturally existing rock or wood tools, primitive communication, and/or an awareness of the environment that even chimps today have, the group would have been able to protect and or escape easier if they could see trouble coming and communicate that to the rest of the group. It is simply my opinion that Lucy and her bunch were probably smarter than many researchers give them credit for, and that this increased intelligence was what turned bipedalism into an asset instead of an expense. n K Clark jonkc at att.net > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 12 20:05:55 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 21:05:55 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031111190845.02334330@mail.gmu.edu> References: <200311111900.hABJ0AM07986@tick.javien.com> <5.2.1.1.2.20031111190845.02334330@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <20031112200555.GC922@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 07:12:45PM -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > OK, here is my current attempt to distinguish the key assumptions and what > they imply. > > The social implications of nanotech depend greatly on which specific > economic assumptions hold. > > 1. Atomic Precision: Atom-scale manufacturing becomes cheap; we put atoms > where we want. This is a very strong constraint. The bottleneck at which nanotechnology becomes useful is a repertoire of deposited structures sufficiently rich to allow self-replication at sufficiently high fabbing rate. That set of structures is more than sufficient to generate a cornucopia of products without requiring such degree of control. Nanotechnology by self-assembly is a weak constaint. It doesn't even require self-replication, it's based on conventional chemistry and biotechnology to arrive at useful products (structural, nanoelectronics). > Such abilities should allow many new products, including much cheaper and > smaller computers, medical devices that float in bloodstreams, and thorough > waste recycling. Much cheaper and smaller computers are easy. Waste recycling by nanodisassembly is ridiculously wasteful as far as energy is concerned. It would probably make more sense to just pyrolyze, and recycle the gas/volatile fragments. Medical nanotechnology does in fact require above strong-constraint nanotechnology. It's just appears not possible to achieve the required stiffness and functionality concentration otherwise. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 12 20:49:41 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 14:49:41 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: Message-ID: I am more inclined to believe that there were a variety of factors involved. I think that when we start looking for causes of evolutionary change, we are short changing it a bit. Suppose one A. Boisei survived to reproductive age because they escaped from a predator because they spent more time standing up because of a malformed joint at the base of the neck and were able to see trouble coming before some others. Another A. Boisei stood up more often because he had a slightly heavier head due to a larger brain than the others due to some simple brain size variation and it simply felt better. These two made children that stood up more often and had larger brains. These children bred with a child formed from an A. Boisei that stood up more because it kept his head cooler and one that stood up more often because her arms were too short to knuckle walk effectively. One of their children is born with shorter arms, more upright posture, and a bigger brain. You could go on and on with this type of speculation and in the end, we may simply never know. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Dartfield" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 12:40 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, John K Clark wrote: > > > If you can see a predator better by standing up above the grass it also > > means the predator can see you better, and that's bad news if you're > > slow as molasses and if you walk on 2 legs you are. Better to just > > briefly come up on 2 legs as many animals do and take a peek and then > > come back down on 4, or just develop a long neck. I would think coming > > out of the trees and into the open savannah would increase the trend > > toward 4 leg locomotion, but that 's not what happened and I've yet to > > hear a convincing theory that explained why. > > I read an evolutionary biology book that claimed we started standing erect > mainly to help keep our expanding brains cool, via increased exposure to > air currents and decreased sun exposure. I'm not sure how well-researched > and/or documented this claim was, though -- I was only 12 when I read the > book, and I was a vehement creationist at the time, so I didn't really pay > close attention to it or even read much of it at all. Now I should go > back to the library and try to find that book again... > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From samantha at objectent.com Wed Nov 12 20:43:17 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:43:17 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <16306.9905.730890.624015@localhost.localdomain> References: <000601c3a8ed$b2e76310$0401a8c0@GERICOM> <16306.9905.730890.624015@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <200311121243.17133.samantha@objectent.com> On Wednesday 12 November 2003 04:25, JDP wrote: > Giu1i0 Pri5c0 a ?crit (12.11.2003/08:22) : > > I definitely do not want to say to the weak "find a way to make yourself > > useful or die" because it is a disgusting thing to say to a conscious > > being. > > Yes, this is why I phrased it in that way, to make its disgusting > character obvious. > How much of it is nearly a truism though? Perhaps it should be rephrased, "Find a way to be useful or find a patron or find a way to coerce or cajole others to support you." The latter includes making it relatively unthinkable that anyone would choose not to support you or that they would be allowed not to. I am not in the least a hard-hearted person, if anything I err far too much toward the other end of the scale. But, it is a legitimate question whether we are willing, should be willing and/or should be coerced into supporting more and more people indefinitely who cannot support themselves. It is not a sign of how civilized we are that the question can barely be addressed without raising a lot of emotional flak. If we are to support a possibly growing segment of those who cannot support themselves should there be any limits on the level of that support or on the reproduction of those who are in that segment (assuming some partially genetic aspects of intelligence and so on) or own their franchise? As the world becomes increasingly technologically complex and its issues become more complex should there be any tests of competence required to exercise the right to vote? As we become more augmented and divergent from common human stock what should we do for those who choose not to follow this path and become increasingly less able to compete? Should we offer some level of augmentation to all? I would tend to that position if it is at all possible without too much restraint on forward progress on both humanitarian grounds and because it is likely to increase the pace of progress. I see very much the point of enabling those born to poorer circumstances a chance to develop, progress and participate fully. But I am not sure I see the point of forced carrying of dead weight indefinitely and with the individuals in that category able to vote themselves continued increases in largesse and often standing continually in the way of actual human advancement. > > I know many "weak" people who would not make it in the hypercompetitive > > society that you seem to advocate, > > -snip > > Not at all what I meant nor advocate. In fact, in the last sentence of > my paragraph that you quoted below, I said I found it reasonable to be > apalled that anyone should work hard the whole day just to sustain > themselves. > What "whole day"? In France the law says, if they haven't changed it again, that it is only legal to work 35 hours a week. Subsistence should not be too hard to come by in a reasonably affluent society. But we must beware of breeding too large a burden on our societies. Germany is even now struggling to lower its mounting social debts also. Historically there have been cycles of charity, self-insurance, poor laws, increasing welfare states, large defictis, cuts of benefits. It is not a new problem. > No, what I meant (and I think, said), is that putting the pressure of > liberty-responsability on individuals begets collective prosperity. > It's as simple as that. So you have to make your choices taking this > into account. > > From an extropian perspective, I think at this point we can still use > a lot of that competition-induced creativity. Hopefully when we have > extreme life extension we can relax a bit (and we aren't too busy with > defense). > Cooperation also has strong extropian benefits. We should not become so competitive that we undercut one another or do not share and create commons where that is the best way of moving forward. Competition need not be the catch-all or only strategy or be cutthroat. - samantha From jacques at dtext.com Wed Nov 12 20:48:20 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 21:48:20 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> <3nl4rv0hf2n9r26f4a2tt3vekn7s1qm66q@4ax.com> Message-ID: <16306.40084.489619.826017@localhost.localdomain> Hi Randy, I didn't mean to say one system was superior to the other one (my point was another one). I don't know either of them well enough for that, and there are too many factors to consider. I can't help you with detailed figures, but you might want to have a look at regarding the present French health services problematic situation. What Eugen said about Germany also applies, to my knowledge, to France. Sorry for not being more helpful for your research. Maybe some other European on the list will have more to say about this. Best wishes, Jacques From samantha at objectent.com Wed Nov 12 20:49:45 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:49:45 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: <008d01c3a92f$067d7c30$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> References: <008d01c3a92f$067d7c30$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <200311121249.45068.samantha@objectent.com> The point I was attempting to make is that when the economic system itself becomes sufficiently sick the majority of players within it will make sick choices in order to remain competitive at all. In such a situation it is not entirely fair to treat the individual players as being largely to blame. There is some level of guilt there but it isn't primary. If I wanted to maximize profits for my stock holders in the middle of the bubble then I would engage in quite a few practices that made relatively little real business sense but that drove up the price of the stock. If I did not do so I would be replaced as an executive by the board for not maximizing the value to the stockholder. If the board did not take that position then my company with lose out to the competition that gathered a larger war chest of funds. It became a vicious cycle. -s On Wednesday 12 November 2003 07:09, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Samantha Atkins wrote, > > > With all due respect a lot of the dot-com-busts were not about greedy > > executives, at least not in the first instance. The market > > itself, and those who maintained and pumped it, was at fault. Most execs > > at > > > most attempted to cash in. In actuality the game of the money investors > > had to > > > be played to produce at all, even if the game was insane. > > You are right. There were greedy venture capitalists, accountants and > auditing firms as well as the executives. But my point that not all > corporations maximize value for stockholders still stands. Too many of > them maximize value for somebody else besides the stockholder. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 12 21:24:45 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:24:45 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: Message-ID: <00c401c3a963$65779ca0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> [interjection] Kevin wrote: > I am more inclined to believe that .... I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. - Brett From wingcat at pacbell.net Wed Nov 12 21:41:47 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:41:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar System In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031112214147.43647.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> --- Amara Graps wrote: > Adrian Tymes wrote: > >--- Amara Graps wrote: > >> There are some indications now that the Voyager > 1 > > > has reached the Heliopause. > > > > >> If this isn't a reason for a massive > > > party/celebration of the humans on this planet, > I don't know what > > > is.... > > > >Getting the first colony ship to the heliopause? > >Sure, this is great news, but so was Apollo 11. > > 'We' (our machines) are entering interstellar space. This is true, and there's still a lunar rover up on the Moon. But I'm restricting "we" to the self-replicating, self-designing subset of our machines for this purpose. (Granted, the present capability for self-design is very primitive compared to what we can imagine, but it's nonzero.) From wingcat at pacbell.net Wed Nov 12 22:02:02 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 14:02:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: <200311120124.30347.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <20031112220202.89632.qmail@web80403.mail.yahoo.com> --- Samantha Atkins wrote: > It would be good to find that which motivates the > people at large much more > strongly than their predispostions are proof > against. I am not at all sure > it is possible to do so on a large enough scale to > dislodge the established > interests who wish to slow and control innovation. One thing I've found, in talking to non-Extropians, is that a lot of the time, the real issue is more about control - especially perceived lack thereof. "We're going to make sentient AIs *AND CONQUER YOU*." "We're going to make self-replicating MNT *THAT EATS YOU*." You can see the emphasized downside there, but try these: "We're going to make everyone immortal *WHETHER OR NOT THEY WANT TO DIE*." "We're going to replace the food supply with GM crops *WHETHER OR NOT YOU PREFER THE OLD STUFF*." Or how about these: "We're going to make a new generation of sentient AIs that take over the world *AND EVERY CURRENTLY EXISTING HUMAN WILL BE TREATED AS OBSOLETE JUNK*." "We're going to genetically enhance our children *AND YOU DON'T GET THOSE ENHANCEMENTS BECAUSE YOU'RE ALREADY BORN, AND IF YOU DON'T ENHANCE YOUR KIDS THEY'LL BE JUST AS WORTHLESS AS YOU*." Those are the types of messages that many people perceive, with the emphases added by their own perception filters. This seems to be far more common than true Guardian or Romantic impulses, at least in my own experiences and conversations. This suggests a solution: emphasize the voluntary nature of many of these aspects, and make sure to design for backwards-compatibility so those who already exist can transition themselves into the new structure (say, via uploading) if they wish*, and much (though not all) of the opposition may melt away. It's been working for me, when I broach these topics in public. *Yes, there won't be any rational decision other than to upgrade in most cases, the way we see it. Doesn't matter. Give people the choice anyway, so they can make that decision themselves. If we're right, they'll upgrade when the time comes. Libertarians especially should be able to grok this impulse. From CurtAdams at aol.com Wed Nov 12 22:08:04 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 17:08:04 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <1e7.133dff4f.2ce40944@aol.com> In a message dated 11/12/03 10:49:15, jonkc at att.net writes: >Lucy could walk upright as well as you or I can but her brain was no larger >than that of a chimp and it would be more than a million years before even >the simplest tools show up in the fossil record, nor is there any evidence >that she engaged in hunting, if she did it must have been for something >like >mice. I think Lucy was a very long way from being top predator, when she >stood up she was just telling those who were what's on the menu. Not necessarily, at all. Chimps aren't top predators, but they have very effective group defense mechanisms and neither lions nor hyenas normally bother them. Lucy had a bigger brain than a modern chimp and probably was even more social, so she had little to fear from anything she knew about. Also, the australopithicenes inhabited open woodland so tree escape would always be an option. Personally, I lean to the tool use theories for upright walking, but the various theories aren't mutally exclusive. From CurtAdams at aol.com Wed Nov 12 22:12:19 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 17:12:19 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <146.1c4daf94.2ce40a43@aol.com> In a message dated 11/12/03 12:32:03, kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: >With just a slight turn of the usage, sticks and rocks could >become sufficient weapons, even if it was a matter of throwing rocks to >run >a potential predator off. None of these would show as tools in the fossil >record. Chimps actually do pitch rocks and swing sticks at potential predators. It's another culturally variant thing. One experimenter tried putting dummy leopards near chimp groups. Forest chimps didn't fight it off very effectively, although they did threaten. Savanna chimps, however, attacked and destroyed the model. From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Wed Nov 12 22:32:47 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 22:32:47 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) Message-ID: <3FB2B50F.1000403@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> On Wed Nov 12, 2003 09:06 am Randy wrote: > I am a numbers/stats kind of guy, so if you do not mind, before we > proceed further, I would like to establish as precisely as possible > just what it is that we are talking about here when it comes to living > in France/western Europe, or the USA. These numbers and financial > situational comparisons fascinate me. I would like to write a book > about this subject, as there is nothing that descibes this adequately, > that I can find anyway. > The main trouble with published reports is everyone has their own agenda and the statistics are so complex that half-truths are the norm. Lies, damned lies and statistics really does apply in this field. Any two countries with the same nominal income tax rate can, in fact, be totally different, once benefits, allowances, enforcement, etc., are included. ('Enforcement' because the official tax rate doesn't matter if you never actually pay it - ask any Italian ;) ) Try the Worldwide Tax & Finance site: The OECD publish many economic reports: Try - Tax systems in EEC countries 27-Aug-2002 http://www.oecdwash.org/DATA/online.htm International tax burden comparison 'Country Ranks' is interesting. It ranks countries by many categories. e.g. GDP, Inflation. Death rate, unemployment rate, etc. Obviously, tax rates are only one factor in country preference. On Wed Nov 12, 2003 01:43 pm Samantha Atkins wrote: < I see very much the point of enabling those born to poorer < circumstances a chance to develop, progress and participate fully. But < I am not sure I see the point of forced carrying of dead weight < indefinitely and with the individuals in that category able to vote < themselves continued increases in largesse and often standing < continually in the way of actual human advancement. < What "whole day"? In France the law says, if they haven't changed it < again, that it is only legal to work 35 hours a week. Subsistence < should not be too hard to come by in a reasonably affluent society. < But we must beware of breeding too large a burden on our societies. < Germany is even now struggling to lower its mounting social debts < also. Historically there have been cycles of charity, self-insurance, < poor laws, increasing welfare states, large defictis, cuts of < benefits. It is not a new problem. < Sorry Samantha, but it really IS a new problem. Lack of breeding is the new problem. The western societies are facing a rapidly aging population problem. Who's going to look after all the old folk? They are not scroungers, they have worked all their lives, but there are just not enough young folk paying taxes to look after them. Japan is desperately trying to build robots to look after the old people and that solution may just arrive in time. Keep your fingers crossed. BillK From xllb at rogers.com Wed Nov 12 23:44:10 2003 From: xllb at rogers.com (xllb at rogers.com) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 18:44:10 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar Message-ID: <20031112234410.RFQA406311.fep03-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com@localhost> > > From: Adrian Tymes > Date: 2003/11/11 Tue PM 08:27:05 EST > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Voyager 1 (possibly) at the boundary of the Solar > System > > --- Amara Graps wrote: > > There are some indications now that the Voyager 1 > > has reached > > the Heliopause. > > > > If this isn't a reason for a massive > > party/celebration > > of the humans on this planet, I don't know what > > is.... > Perhaps we should pause for a moment of science. xllb "Dogma blinds." "Hell is overkill." From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 13 00:15:47 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:15:47 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism References: <20031112220202.89632.qmail@web80403.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001301c3a97b$49cdc700$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Adrian Tymes wrote: > --- Samantha Atkins wrote: > > It would be good to find that which motivates the > > people at large much more > > strongly than their predispostions are proof > > against. I am not at all sure > > it is possible to do so on a large enough scale to > > dislodge the established > > interests who wish to slow and control innovation. > > One thing I've found, in talking to non-Extropians, is > that a lot of the time, the real issue is more about > control - especially perceived lack thereof. > > "We're going to make sentient AIs *AND > CONQUER YOU*." > > "We're going to make self-replicating MNT *THAT > EATS YOU*." > > You can see the emphasized downside there, but try > these: > > "We're going to make everyone immortal *WHETHER > OR NOT THEY WANT TO DIE*." > > "We're going to replace the food supply with GM crops > *WHETHER OR NOT YOU PREFER THE OLD STUFF*." > > Or how about these: > > "We're going to make a new generation of sentient AIs > that take over the world *AND EVERY CURRENTLY > EXISTING HUMAN WILL BE TREATED AS > OBSOLETE JUNK*." > > "We're going to genetically enhance our children *AND > YOU DON'T GET THOSE ENHANCEMENTS BECAUSE > YOU'RE ALREADY BORN, AND IF YOU DON'T > ENHANCE YOUR KIDS THEY'LL BE JUST AS > WORTHLESS AS YOU*." > > Those are the types of messages that many people > perceive, with the emphases added by their own > perception filters. This seems to be far more common > than true Guardian or Romantic impulses, at least in > my own experiences and conversations. > > This suggests a solution: emphasize the voluntary > nature of many of these aspects, and make sure to > design for backwards-compatibility so those who > already exist can transition themselves into the new > structure (say, via uploading) if they wish*, and much > (though not all) of the opposition may melt away. > It's been working for me, when I broach these topics > in public. > > *Yes, there won't be any rational decision other than > to upgrade in most cases, the way we see it. Doesn't > matter. Give people the choice anyway, so they can > make that decision themselves. If we're right, > they'll upgrade when the time comes. Libertarians > especially should be able to grok this impulse. Excellent stuff imo. Good thinking! Regards, Brett [applauding from the peanut gallery :-)] From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 13 00:19:50 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 18:19:50 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <146.1c4daf94.2ce40a43@aol.com> Message-ID: Do you know whose research that was. I'd be really interested in reading that. I hadn't heard that before, but if savannah chimps are more likely to do this, that could support my hobby/theory. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 4:12 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > In a message dated 11/12/03 12:32:03, kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: > > >With just a slight turn of the usage, sticks and rocks could > >become sufficient weapons, even if it was a matter of throwing rocks to > >run > >a potential predator off. None of these would show as tools in the fossil > >record. > > Chimps actually do pitch rocks and swing sticks at potential predators. > It's another culturally variant thing. One experimenter tried putting > dummy leopards near chimp groups. Forest chimps didn't fight it off > very effectively, although they did threaten. Savanna chimps, however, > attacked and destroyed the model. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From cphoenix at best.com Thu Nov 13 00:47:10 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 19:47:10 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech References: <200311121209.hACC95M29747@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FB2D48E.788C27A9@best.com> On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 15:33:22 -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > On 11/11/2003, Chris Phoenix wrote: > >I assume the word "nanotech" here means MNT. And MNT becomes > >interesting when it becomes capable of exponential manufacturing. > > We had been explicitly distinguishing several possibilities short of > quickly reproducing nanotech factories. Sorry; I've gone back and read the discussion now. I'd like to question some of performance numbers and operating characteristics you've chosen as reasonable. You're talking about a nanotech-based manufacturing system that can build large products, right? I can imagine a rapid-prototyping system that uses nanotech to produce its materials, and perhaps uses NEMS to deposit them. I suspect that such a thing would be more or less competitive with other non-nanotech rapid-prototyping systems. In short, probably not interesting for the present discussion. So what technology could build complete products from the atoms up? I'm thinking it would have to be mechanochemistry plus automated assembly. Look at what that requires. First, it must involve a huge number of fabricators working in parallel. Second, it must be completely automated. Third, it must be able to build a wide range of nano-featured materials and devices. Is there any reason such a thing would not be capable of producing a copy of itself? Self-replicating computer programs are trivial. And if you can build atomically precise mechanical systems by direct computer control, self-replicating machinery becomes quite straightforward to design. Is there any reason such a thing would be slow? Simple scaling laws predict that it could do between a million and a billion operations per second. And a few operations add one or more atoms to the product. If (as seems reasonable) a fabricator contains less than a billion atoms, the thing is going to be producing its own mass in seconds to hours. (Some bacteria take fifteen minutes.) I don't see any point in talking about MNT systems duplicating themselves in a year--which is a time scale you mentioned. In fact, I wonder if there's any point in talking about any system duplicating itself in a year. Any technology that can do that will be semi-obsolete within the year. It's probably cheaper to just build two of them at the start, then use them both before they depreciate. > > > >What does it take to produce a good meta-designer? A robust morphogenetic > > > >code, an evolutionary system, a good nanoscale simulator, and lots of > > > >computronium to run the above. As embarrassingly parallel as they come. > > > >And that's about the only metainvention you need to make. > > > > > > And how damn hard is it to have "lots" of "robust" "good" items like these? > > > >Are you questioning the ability to build such a system fault-tolerant? > > I'm much more concerned about the robustness of the code. Well, then "lots" is no harder than one. And we can certainly do one. > >... I'd like to float a definition here. An "unlimited-sum > >transaction" is one in which the benefit to one (or both) of the parties > >is much higher than the cost, and is not correlated with the cost. > >I argue that ... commercial trading is incapable of dealing > >adequately with unlimited-sum transactions. > > The liquids I drink over the next few days are worth millions to me, as I'd > die without them. No, they're not worth millions. If you didn't have those liquids, you'd go to a vending machine and buy $5 worth of soda to keep you alive. The value to you of the liquids is no more than the cost of replacing them from a different source. Now, if you were in a desert with one canteen and two people, that liquid could be worth millions to you. And how long would the spirit of free trade last before one of you stabbed the other? > Their cost is far lower, and uncorrelated with the value > I place on my life. So you say that commercial trading can't deal with > getting me liquids? Let's take another example. The largest cause of infant death in Venezuela is diarrhea. This could generally be prevented by a few pennies worth of salt and sugar in clean water, and very simple instructions. The value of this resource to the parents of those babies would be immense. Venezuela does not have enough of a legal system to prevent someone from setting up a business to supply the need. So why are the babies dying? Can we consider that a market failure? Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From dgc at cox.net Thu Nov 13 00:34:17 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 19:34:17 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] test In-Reply-To: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FB2D189.9090100@cox.net> please ignore From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 13 00:53:13 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:23:13 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE077@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> I totally agree. I think that the voluntary nature of all the stuff we talk about is intrinsic to, and perhaps fundamental to, transhumanism in all its non-fucked forms. Tangent: It's why, for instance, we should always be the first people to stand up against suggestions of Eugenics. After all, our whole basis is that we want vast choices for people, that we all may change our selves as we see fit. Eugenics is a groupthink "solution" to a non-problem which seems to mostly be about control (enacting one's desires upon others). Unfortunately, it works in a similar domain to many transhuman supported technologies, and we get tarred with its brush. But it's not the same domain by any means; just close. For instance, the "designer babies" issue is very much on topic for Eugenicists, but less so by far for transhumanists. I imagine that we would all reject notions of centralised, or state enforced genetic manipulation of the unborn. There are difficult areas, of course; do we support parents selecting fetuses based on genetic characteristics? Is there a difference, depending on the characteristic (eg: gene for huntingtons, vs selecting for Y chromosomes)? Are there cases where state sponsored (eg: subsidised individual choice) is supportable, for example in screening for something like cystic fibrosis? When does that become a slippery slope toward eugenics? Actually, I think this particular issues (manipulation of the unborn) is a hard one for transhumanists. Eugenicists find it easy (just do it!), vanilla humanists and many religious people will find it easy also (never ever do it). For us, it is hard. We can say with certainty about individuals, that they can manipulate themselves to their heart's content; it's as close to a hard and fast rule as I could think of in transhumanism. However, what is the relationship of child to parent? What can the parent do in terms of affecting the child's genes and development? Obviously parents affect children profoundly, and have a duty to. Also, the whole process of conception -> gestation -> birth affects what children can and can't be born. With all that heavy "natural" meddling going on, where is the line to be drawn? There are definitely things that parents should not be allowed to do (eg: infanticide), but what can they do (eg: screen for diseases)? What should they do? Is there anything that they have a duty to do, or absolutely must do? It'd be much easier to believe in God at a time like this. Bugger. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Brett Paatsch [mailto:bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au] > Sent: Thursday, 13 November 2003 9:46 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism > > > > Adrian Tymes wrote: > > > --- Samantha Atkins wrote: > > > It would be good to find that which motivates the > > > people at large much more > > > strongly than their predispostions are proof > > > against. I am not at all sure > > > it is possible to do so on a large enough scale to > > > dislodge the established > > > interests who wish to slow and control innovation. > > > > One thing I've found, in talking to non-Extropians, is > > that a lot of the time, the real issue is more about > > control - especially perceived lack thereof. > > > > "We're going to make sentient AIs *AND > > CONQUER YOU*." > > > > "We're going to make self-replicating MNT *THAT > > EATS YOU*." > > > > You can see the emphasized downside there, but try > > these: > > > > "We're going to make everyone immortal *WHETHER > > OR NOT THEY WANT TO DIE*." > > > > "We're going to replace the food supply with GM crops > > *WHETHER OR NOT YOU PREFER THE OLD STUFF*." > > > > Or how about these: > > > > "We're going to make a new generation of sentient AIs > > that take over the world *AND EVERY CURRENTLY > > EXISTING HUMAN WILL BE TREATED AS > > OBSOLETE JUNK*." > > > > "We're going to genetically enhance our children *AND > > YOU DON'T GET THOSE ENHANCEMENTS BECAUSE > > YOU'RE ALREADY BORN, AND IF YOU DON'T > > ENHANCE YOUR KIDS THEY'LL BE JUST AS > > WORTHLESS AS YOU*." > > > > Those are the types of messages that many people > > perceive, with the emphases added by their own > > perception filters. This seems to be far more common > > than true Guardian or Romantic impulses, at least in > > my own experiences and conversations. > > > > This suggests a solution: emphasize the voluntary > > nature of many of these aspects, and make sure to > > design for backwards-compatibility so those who > > already exist can transition themselves into the new > > structure (say, via uploading) if they wish*, and much > > (though not all) of the opposition may melt away. > > It's been working for me, when I broach these topics > > in public. > > > > *Yes, there won't be any rational decision other than > > to upgrade in most cases, the way we see it. Doesn't > > matter. Give people the choice anyway, so they can > > make that decision themselves. If we're right, > > they'll upgrade when the time comes. Libertarians > > especially should be able to grok this impulse. > > Excellent stuff imo. Good thinking! > > Regards, > Brett > > [applauding from the peanut gallery :-)] > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 13 01:04:20 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:04:20 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? References: <200311121209.hACC95M29747@tick.javien.com> <3FB2D48E.788C27A9@best.com> Message-ID: <007f01c3a982$1359ca00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Chris Phoenix wrote: Thursday, November 13, 2003 11:47 AM Re: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech > Self-replicating computer programs are trivial Hmm. Maybe I am overlooking the bleeding obvious but I can't think of a single fully self-replicating computer program - one that does not require impute from outside itself to kick off the duplication. Can anyone? Regards, Brett From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 13 01:03:21 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:33:21 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07A@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > -----Original Message----- > From: Brett Paatsch [mailto:bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au] > Sent: Thursday, 13 November 2003 10:34 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? > > > Chris Phoenix wrote: > > Thursday, November 13, 2003 11:47 AM > Re: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech > > > > Self-replicating computer programs are trivial > > Hmm. Maybe I am overlooking the bleeding obvious > but I can't think of a single fully self-replicating > computer program - one that does not require > impute from outside itself to kick off the duplication. > > Can anyone? > > Regards, > Brett I don't know why that would be a requirement for anything; someone always needs to press the "go" button, if that's what you mean. What about the various viruses & worms? Don't these count? Emlyn From dgc at cox.net Thu Nov 13 00:57:48 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 19:57:48 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FB2D70C.9040407@cox.net> Hi. I just re-subscribed. I realized after reading the archives that this is the most intellectually stimulating group of people that I have ever been part of. I simply have to find a way to re-integrate with this group. I've drifted away twice, now, for trivial reasons. I missed you all. I'm back. Interestingly the single most obvious difference in the list is that Eugin's english has improved.This makes no effective difference: his posts still have a maximal information density. It will take me awhile to catch up. and I still have a technical difficulty to solve: I travel to Montreal on alternate weeks and have a minor problem accessing my personal e-mail. I intend to fix this over the weekend. For new members: In 1996l, on this list, I asserted that the singularity would occur prior to 2006. I had no viable reason for that asertion. I still have no viable reason for that assertion. My areas of expertise include data communications, system architecture, and network architecture. My areas of interest include nanotechnology, the Singularity, Linux, and just about everything we discuss on this list. My current hobby project is a homebrew STM (Scanning Tumnnelling Microscope.) IT doesn't work yet. Dan Clemmensen From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 13 01:36:14 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:36:14 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07A@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <00a801c3a986$866fede0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Emlyn wrote: > > Chris Phoenix wrote: > > > > Thursday, November 13, 2003 11:47 AM > > Re: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech > > > > > > > Self-replicating computer programs are trivial > > > > Hmm. Maybe I am overlooking the bleeding obvious > > but I can't think of a single fully self-replicating > > computer program - one that does not require > > impute from outside itself to kick off the duplication. > > > > Can anyone? > > > > Regards, > > Brett > > I don't know why that would be a requirement for anything; > someone always needs to press the "go" button, if that's > what you mean. > > What about the various viruses & worms? Don't these > count? Seems to me that the notion that self-replication programs are the existence proof for the feasibility of self-replicating molecular assemblers and for artificial intelligence is suspect if self-replicating programs don't in fact exist. Are viruses and worms good existence proofs of the feasibility of either artificial intelligence or self-replicating nano-assemblers? I don't think so. This doesn't mean that artificial intelligence or assemblers are impossible like perpetual motion machines. It just makes me question the utility of viruses and worms and other software as a case for AI and for nano-assembler feasibility. Perhaps we don't need truly fully "self-replicating" at all. Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 13 01:38:00 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:38:00 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <3FB2D70C.9040407@cox.net> Message-ID: <00ae01c3a986$c5b9b620$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Dan Clemmensen wrote: > Hi. I just re-subscribed. Welcome back! Brett From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 13 01:37:09 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 17:37:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE077@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <20031113013709.44227.qmail@web80404.mail.yahoo.com> --- Emlyn O'regan wrote: > I totally agree. I think that the voluntary nature > of all the stuff we talk > about is intrinsic to, and perhaps fundamental to, > transhumanism in all its > non-fucked forms. Hmm. Maybe it's so intrinsic - to us, anyway - that we forget to even mention it at times? > Are there cases where state sponsored (eg: > subsidised individual choice) is > supportable, for example in screening for something > like cystic fibrosis? > When does that become a slippery slope toward > eugenics? When there are people who might, despite being fully informed on all the issues, actively choose the "bad" path and get some benefit out of it. For instance, cystic fibrosis grants no advantages, and all those who presently have it apparently would not mind being cured. But there are some deaf people - born that way, or acquired - who actively prefer not being able to hear, and who have (at least, claim to have; close enough) developed a subculture around deafness, to the point that they fret over advances in cochlear implants and the mere possibility of cures for genetic deafness in the future. One can easily imagine a "perfect" genome leaving out both CF and deafness (in fact, if anything, it would likely tend towards better than present human normal hearing). > Actually, I think this particular issues > (manipulation of the unborn) is a > hard one for transhumanists. > With all that heavy "natural" meddling going > on, where is the line to > be drawn? You're right, this is a tough issue for us. But if I may offer a potential starting point: parents should be allowed to engineer their children without any non-explicitly-specified limitations before the child can survive (for at least several seconds) independently of the gestating host organism (i.e., "before birth", with allowances for modifications of "birth"). Explicitly specified limitations include: * The child must be allowed to develop to independent function on a more or less normal timetable. (There are already premature and late births, so you can't say "exactly 9 months". But the point of this is to avoid engineering children of surrogates that remain tied to the womb for years; they who control the surrogate have their fingers on the child's life's off button.) * The child must develop into what most people would accept as "human". (This one will probably need much refining. E.g., some people would seriously claim none of us are human, merely for what we think and believe. This is intended to avoid creation of otherwise-human organisms that are forced to live outside of society, and which few people would grant human rights to of their own accord. This benefits both the child and society, heading off spending resources on major fights over whether a given existing person should be treated as human.) * The child's probable lifespan, as predicted from genetic factors, may not be shorter than average. (*Really* borderline, and I'm not sure this one should be here, but this is offered for debate anyway. Some people really would prefer shorter lives, and many children have dreamt of growing up physically before their time - not caring if such an act would shorten an unrealized future. 9 year olds who know they'll die at 27 think they have about the same relative amount of life as 30 year olds who know they'll die at 90. Plus, as more children are introduced with longer lifespans, even natural, unaltered genelines start falling afoul of this rule. That said, the intent of this rule is to prevent fast-maturing humans who die before they are of legal age, providing 10-15 years of slave labor for their creators with no chance of legal repercussions so long as they stay within child labor laws - e.g., working for their creators' businesses, being "home schooled"/trained on the job, and so forth. Existing child prostitution laws would only prevent this exploitation for one specific career.) > It'd be much easier to believe in God at a time like > this. Bugger. It would? Wouldn't God most likely dictate which choice is the correct one, therefore all true believers would suffer no sin by imposing that choice on everyone else? > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Brett Paatsch > > Excellent stuff imo. Good thinking! > > > > Regards, > > Brett > > > > [applauding from the peanut gallery :-)] Thanks! ^_^ From dgc at cox.net Thu Nov 13 01:21:14 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 20:21:14 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FB2DC8A.9000600@cox.net> Eugen Leitl wrote: >On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 10:23:27PM -0500, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > > >>Another specific benefit to nanotech (loosely defined) would be the ability >>to service inaccessible parts. That could radically alter requirements for >>manufacturing and construction; things no longer need to be made accessible. >> >> > >There are two different approaches to servicing: pull a defect module, >replace, recycle the pulled part. > >The apparently superior approach: maintain service infrastructure within the >module; diagnose trouble during operation and incrementally repair from >within. Minus is that repair and diagnostic infrastructure dilutes >functionality concentration in part volume. > > > Actually, there is a third approach: Dynamically analyze the current streses on the sytem and adapt the system to the stresses as they change. For example, the beginnings of a stress-induced fracture can be thought of as a fault to be repaired, or alternatively as an indication that the design needs to be modified. If you use the second approach, the structure will adapt to the new load, rather than being repaired to match a static design. Curt's original observation can reduce the weight of a device dramatically: we no longer need screws, flanges, etc. to permit access. Furthermore, we can design de novo without worrying about how the part will be machined. It's amazing how severely the machining process constrains a design. The ability to depend on dynamic repair reduces the weight even more. A static design must acomodate the worst case in all dimensions. A dynamic design can depend on the fact that nano-repair (or dynamic reaction) can react to a worst-case stress in one section of a device by recruiting resources from another part of the device. This effect will reduce the weight of a device by a lot more than the accesibility effect. My guess is that these two effects taken together, along with the inherent increase in strengh of due to atomic-scale precision engineering, can reduce the weight of most devices by a factor of 100 (un-analyzed guess.) Today's 1500KG SUV can be replaced by a 15KG device with the same capabilities. From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 13 02:07:15 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:37:15 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07B@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > > > > I don't know why that would be a requirement for anything; > > someone always needs to press the "go" button, if that's > > what you mean. > > > > What about the various viruses & worms? Don't these > > count? > > Seems to me that the notion that self-replication programs > are the existence proof for the feasibility of self-replicating > molecular assemblers and for artificial intelligence is suspect > if self-replicating programs don't in fact exist. ok > > Are viruses and worms good existence proofs of the > feasibility of either artificial intelligence or self-replicating > nano-assemblers? I don't think so. This doesn't mean > that artificial intelligence or assemblers are impossible like > perpetual motion machines. It just makes me question the > utility of viruses and worms and other software as a case > for AI and for nano-assembler feasibility. Wait, you've shifted ground here. There's no doubt that viruses and worms are self replicating. They definitely make copies of themselves, in entirety. That's self replication. They don't need to be intelligent to behave like this, and I didn't think that was the issue. > > Perhaps we don't need truly fully "self-replicating" at all. > > Regards, > Brett > It depends what you mean by "truly fully". I don't think MNT is a discontinuity without self replication. But as others have said, the kind of stuff we posit MNT being able to make should trivially include assemblers themselves, thus we get self replication for free (just as we do with computer programs). Emlyn From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 13 02:11:31 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:41:31 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07C@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > > It'd be much easier to believe in God at a time like > > this. Bugger. > > It would? Wouldn't God most likely dictate which > choice is the correct one, therefore all true > believers would suffer no sin by imposing that choice > on everyone else? Hey, I didn't say it'd be smart/useful. Just easy. Emlyn From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 13 02:14:12 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:44:12 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07D@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Dan Clemmensen wrote: > My guess is that these two effects taken together, along with the > inherent increase in strengh of > due to atomic-scale precision engineering, can reduce the weight of > most devices by > a factor of 100 (un-analyzed guess.) Today's 1500KG SUV can > be replaced > by a 15KG device > with the same capabilities. But by then, today's 80kg human will bw replacable with a 800g avatar, rendering the 15kg SUV absolute overkill. Emlyn From rhanson at gmu.edu Thu Nov 13 02:40:47 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 21:40:47 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB2D48E.788C27A9@best.com> References: <200311121209.hACC95M29747@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031112212215.01ea14f8@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/12/2003, Chris Phoenix wrote: > > We had been explicitly distinguishing several possibilities short of > > quickly reproducing nanotech factories. > >... You're talking about a nanotech-based manufacturing system that >can build large products, right? ... Look at what that requires. ... >Is there any reason such a thing would not be capable of producing a >copy of itself? ... Is there any reason such a thing would be slow? The whole point here is to be able to do economic analysis on this topic without having to settle all of the technical disputes that still rage. You are arguing that there's really only one interesting scenario to consider, but clearly many other people believe that creating a self-reproducing system is damn hard and many other nanotech abilities will appear and have interesting consequences before then. I'm not trying to settle such disputes; I'm just trying to identify the key scenarios being considered to support some economic analysis. >... I don't see any point in talking about MNT systems duplicating >themselves in a year--which is a time scale you mentioned. I said "within a year", meaning less some time less than a year. > >>>> ... A robust morphogenetic code, an evolutionary system, ... > >>> And how damn hard is it to have "lots" of "robust" "good" items like > these? > >> Are you questioning the ability to build such a system fault-tolerant? > > I'm much more concerned about the robustness of the code. >Well, then "lots" is no harder than one. And we can certainly do one. We have one robust morphogenetic code? I wasn't thinking DNA was anywhere near robust enough for many plausible values of the computronium available. > > >"unlimited-sum transaction" ... the benefit to one (or both) of the > > >parties is much higher than the cost, and is not correlated with the > > >cost. ... commercial trading is incapable of dealing adequately with > > > > The liquids I drink over the next few days are worth millions to me, > > as I'd die without them. > >No, they're not worth millions. If you didn't have those liquids, you'd >go to a vending machine and buy $5 worth of soda to keep you alive. The >value to you of the liquids is no more than the cost of replacing them >from a different source. You mean the benefit relative to the closest available substitute sold? Is that the way you define cost as well? If so we could find a different set of examples that probably aren't what you have in mind. >Let's take another example. The largest cause of infant death in >Venezuela is diarrhea. This could generally be prevented by a few >pennies worth of salt and sugar in clean water, and very simple >instructions. The value of this resource to the parents of those babies >would be immense. Er, by analogy here aren't you supposed to be comparing the value of one particular source of salt/sugar/water to another, and computing only the additional value of one source relative to another? Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From dgc at cox.net Thu Nov 13 02:48:45 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 21:48:45 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07D@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07D@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <3FB2F10D.5040107@cox.net> Emlyn O'regan wrote: >Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > >>My guess is that these two effects taken together, along with the >>inherent increase in strengh of due to atomic-scale precision engineering, can reduce the weight of >>most devices by a factor of 100 (un-analyzed guess.) Today's 1500KG SUV can be replaced by a 15KG device with the same capabilities. >> >> > >But by then, today's 80kg human will bw replacable with a 800g avatar, >rendering the 15kg SUV absolute overkill. > > > Well, yes, but the 1500Kg SUV was already absolute overkill as a personal conveyance. By the time we have an 800g avatar, we'll also have a few other "trivial" changes. I figure an 80Kg entity would simply reconfigure dynamically into the appropriate vehicular form to meet the current need for transportation, in the rare cases where there is a need to actually go somewhere. My apologies, but I did not start at the beginning of the thread, so I don't know the assumptions here. Are we pre-SI or post-SI? Pre-SI makes most MNT very difficult for me to assume. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 13 03:25:28 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:25:28 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07B@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <00ec01c3a995$c960ee60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > > I don't know why that would be a requirement for anything; > > > someone always needs to press the "go" button, if that's > > > what you mean. > > > > > > What about the various viruses & worms? Don't these > > > count? > > > > Seems to me that the notion that self-replication programs > > are the existence proof for the feasibility of self-replicating > > molecular assemblers and for artificial intelligence is suspect > > if self-replicating programs don't in fact exist. > > ok > > > > > Are viruses and worms good existence proofs of the > > feasibility of either artificial intelligence or self-replicating > > nano-assemblers? I don't think so. This doesn't mean > > that artificial intelligence or assemblers are impossible like > > perpetual motion machines. It just makes me question the > > utility of viruses and worms and other software as a case > > for AI and for nano-assembler feasibility. > > Wait, you've shifted ground here. There's no doubt that viruses > and worms are self replicating. They definitely make copies of > themselves, in entirety. That's self replication. They don't need > to be intelligent to behave like this, and I didn't think that was > the issue. > > > > > Perhaps we don't need truly fully "self-replicating" at all. > > > > Regards, > > Brett > > > > It depends what you mean by "truly fully". I don't think MNT > is a discontinuity without self replication. But as others have > said, the kind of stuff we posit MNT being able to make > should trivially include assemblers themselves, thus we get > self replication for free (just as we do with computer programs). I think I see what's going on. I was questioning how "self-replicating" a thing is if its design spec requires both an external "go" event (as you said) and expectations on feedstock availability, that it cannot satisfy or influence but can only expect. Viruses and worms have someone launch them in the first place (as you note) and they are constrained in the sense that they cannot replicate without available space in which to do it. Available memory, software and hardware on which to run the software etc. I was thinking about the concerns raised by the folks writing in New Atlantis (referred to in one of Greg Burch's recent posts) who seem to see self-replication in the case of nano-machines and the grey goo scenario as something that happens without constraint. In fact self-replication seems to be never replication without *some* environmental constraints. The "self-replication" as an engineering specification is less demanding then the specification to have to also forage for substrate and start itself off as well. And from a political (safety?) standpoint because every interesting-to-a-designer (even a malicious designer) device must do something besides just replicate in order for the designer to have bothered designing it, it seems that the self- replicating system cannot be a *very* closed and truly fully self-replicating system at all. There must be extraneous data or environmental sampling by the system seeking to replicate itself periodically as instructed and seeking to do other work as well as was its designers intent in making it. Making a self-replicating nanosystem that could forage for its own foodstock AND that would be of interest to a designer (as non-threatening to the designer) seems very non-trivial. I guess I was hoping it might be a contradiction in design terms but I don't see that it necessarily is. That was what I had in mind with the truly fully self-replicating comment anyway. Regards, Brett From cphoenix at best.com Thu Nov 13 06:05:29 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 01:05:29 -0500 Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech References: <200311101900.hAAJ0BM23619@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FB31F29.97587D76@best.com> On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 13:12:36 -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > An easy simple opinion to have is that nanotech won't have much in the way > of specific social implications. In this view, manufacturing will slowly > become more precise and more automated, as it has for centuries, and so the > social implications of nanotech are subsumed by the social implications of > generally improving tech, and any specific products that enables. An argument against this view: Different technologies can be improved at different speeds. Computers really took off when the transistor was invented; they couldn't have done it with vacuum tubes. So this view is effectively arguing that nanotech will not invent any significant new manufacturing technique that can be improved rapidly or that provides a useful discontinuity like the difference between digital and analog computation. > Another opinion that I've heard has more distinct social implications, > though I'm not sure how many people (still?) take it seriously. It is > described in the novel "Diamond Age" and in several books by Drexler and > company. You think it's being taken *less* seriously over time? Maybe the Engines of Creation view is fading, but I think the Nanosystems view is replacing it. And the latter is much simpler, better defined, and thus easier to believe. > .... and most consumer goods are produced locally > on PGMDs, via downloaded designs and a few general feedstocks. A > variation on this position posits that PGMDs can produce more PGMDs > relatively quickly. And a refinement of this position posits that such > self-reproducing PGMDs dramatically lowers costs relative to technology > available just prior to this point. I'm not aware of any proposal for mechanochemistry-based PGMD's (MBPGMD's) that does not posit the MBPGMD being able to rapidly duplicate its structure. Let's call this "autoproductive" since there's no good existing word. ("Self-replicating" is too confusing for several reasons.) Your phrasing makes it sound like there is a range of positions, but can you cite any source for them? Or are they your invention? If the latter, I think they will not serve you well, because I doubt that a non-autoproductive MBPGMD is technically plausible, much less economically plausible, since you probably can't build a human-scale MBPGMD without bootstrapping it from a much smaller one. Now maybe this is what you want: to show that PGMD's may exist, but not be economically significant. If so, I think you're merely building a strawman. To build a sub-micron MBPGMD with pre-MBPGMD tools would be extremely difficult. To build two would be almost twice as difficult; to build a kilogram manufacturing capability would be impossibly difficult. So it will have to bootstrap--to produce an MBPGMD twice as large--approximately 30 times to make a cubic millimeter, 60 times to make a cubic meter. If it takes a month for each cycle, it will take 5 years before you obtain a possibly useful factory. Since there's no known reason why it should take even a day, and an hour is quite plausible based on scaling laws, comparisons with bacteria, and extrapolations from proposed architectures, the hypothetical month-long autoproductive cycle will probably never be used: more refined MBPGMD's will be developed within that five years. So how long will the first primitive MBPGMD's take to produce their mass? Once the technology works at all, it can be used to build more elegant versions of the machinery. This kind of engineering tweak shouldn't take long, given the huge incentives for better performance. If I know my competitor has an MBPGMD design that will bootstrap itself in two years, then I have a full year to tweak his design into one that will bootstrap itself in one year. But a one-year bootstrapping time implies a ~6-day doubling time, or ~3 days to make its own weight. If I can take my factory offline for three days and double its capacity, it's hard to imagine factory capacity being scarce. Since most kinds of demand are not constant, a smart factory owner would use undercapacity periods to prepare for future big orders. And since MBPGMD's are assumed to be small and distributed, it would be possible to take a small fraction of capacity offline without doing much damage to ability to respond suddenly. Perhaps the factory would only grow at 10% per week, instead of 200% per week. This would still be sufficient to ensure that enough capacity was available to meet any reasonable demand, and most of the time, capacity would be sitting idle. > 1. It is often assumed that a world of PGMDs is one of marginal costs near > the cost of feedstocks, with the main fixed cost being the cost of > design. But this depends crucially on the PGMDs being typically used well > below capacity, as most PCs are today. Yep. The above shows why this is reasonable. > Most manufacturing plants today > have a pretty low marginal cost, in terms of how much you save if you > operate them below capacity. But since the plants are used near capacity, > this makes them little like software or other goods that really do have a > low marginal cost of production. I think this shows why you can't generalize from today's manufacturing plants. > 2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are less > efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of > production time, material waste, or final product quality. Don't compare apples and oranges. That's like asking by what factor digital computers are less efficient than analog computers. Digital computers can do things that analog computers simply can't. This makes them so valuable that they're ubiquitous. And because of the various high costs associated with analog computers, there's no market for them anymore. Sure, I could in theory do linear regression with a pencil, a piece of graph paper, and a few thumbtacks and rubber bands. But there's really no point. The question is: If an MBPGMD were installed in your local convenience store, would there be any point in either installing a special-purpose widget maker or trucking in widgets that were made with centralized special-purpose machines? Installing a widget-maker: obviously not. There are too many different things sold in each store, and too low volume on each one. Trucking them in: probably not. MBPGMD production time would probably be lower than shipping time. Material waste would probably be lower than transportation fuel, warehouse rental and widget depreciation, miscellaneous handling charges, and depreciation on the widget-maker. I'd expect an MBPGMD to have *better* final product quality than special-purpose manufacturing. There's no sense using mechanochemistry for special-purpose manufacturing, so you're left with bulk manufacturing techniques, while the MBPGMD can place every atom as designed. I'll note that no one even uses slide rules anymore. > The bigger this > factor is, the larger need to be the scale economies in the production of > PGMDs for them to dominate. This is much too small a view--it considers too few factors. The disadvantages of special-purpose manufacturing are partially explored above. In addition, the products that could be made only with MBPGMD's would probably become a large fraction of the market very rapidly--I suspect they'd even dominate the market, thus automatically eclipsing special-purpose technologies. > At the moment most manufacturing devices are > really quite specialized. Yes, and analog computers were used for a while before digital computers became practical. This is changing with rapid-prototyping systems. > 3. PGMDs embody almost *fully* automated manufacturing - if they need > people to step in frequently to diagnose and fix assembly line problems, > they become much less attractive. I think MBPGMD's have to be completely, fully automated. No one is going to fix a five-micron assembly line. > While many manufacturing plants today > are highly automated, it may cost quite a lot to produce designs for fully > automated production processes. So design costs may be a lot higher. Or it may cost quite a bit less. You don't have to retrain your workers. You don't have to pay workers to retool your machines. And you're assuming that the design space is the same, which it won't be--not even close!. MBPGMD's (especially since you automatically get great material strength) give access to an unimaginably huge design space, with lots of room for very simple assembly techniques that are amenable to semi-automated design. > 4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is > rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now > are the physical capital, rather than labor and design. So it is not clear > how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the > economy. Um, why are you not counting the labor cost as a saving? And what about transportation costs, warehousing, the costs of compensating for uncertain and delayed supply chains? And you have to regress (multiply) these costs for each level of part fabrication or processing that requires storage and transportation. And the cost of feedstock should be lower for simple organic chemicals than for diverse materials that must be extracted in a variety of complicated ways. > 5. If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing > PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of > ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing > the social impact of this transition. Again, I think the "ordinary" PGMD is only a strawman. Unless you extend PGMD to bulk-process (non-nanotech) rapid prototyping systems? I admit they might produce *some* of the impacts of MBPGMD's. But I seriously doubt that even taking the MBPGMD transition in two equal steps will reduce it enough to merit the word "minimize". Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From gpmap at runbox.com Thu Nov 13 06:46:22 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 07:46:22 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Apology to JDP References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain><000601c3a8ed$b2e76310$0401a8c0@GERICOM> <16306.9905.730890.624015@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <000e01c3a9b1$da3ef350$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Sorry Jacques, I misunderstood your point. To my defense I can only say that I must have been pissed off by some other post. This theme sort of fires me up. > I know many "weak" people who would not make it in the hypercompetitive > society that you seem to advocate, > -snip Not at all what I meant nor advocate. In fact, in the last sentence of my paragraph that you quoted below, I said I found it reasonable to be apalled that anyone should work hard the whole day just to sustain themselves. No, what I meant (and I think, said), is that putting the pressure of liberty-responsability on individuals begets collective prosperity. It's as simple as that. So you have to make your choices taking this into account. From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 13 07:12:44 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 23:12:44 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <20031110160544.GQ13214@leitl.org> Message-ID: <000001c3a9b5$89753340$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 10:46:23AM -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > > > I would guess it had to do with the Coriolis effect during > evolution. This > > is the force that makes water spin one direction over the > other while > > flowing down the drain. I would guess that it is easier > for molecules to > http://www.tafkac.org/faq2k/science_3.html > bend in one direction compared to the other. Coriolis effect would be *extremely* tiny on the molecular level, waaay negligible with respect to electrostatic forces. I don't have the explanation either, but Coriolis isnt it. spike From maxm at mail.tele.dk Thu Nov 13 07:41:59 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:41:59 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB2DC8A.9000600@cox.net> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <3FB2DC8A.9000600@cox.net> Message-ID: <3FB335C7.9030307@mail.tele.dk> Dan Clemmensen wrote: > Curt's original observation can reduce the weight of a device > dramatically: we no longer need > screws, flanges, etc. to permit access. Furthermore, we can design de > novo without worrying > about how the part will be machined. It's amazing how severely the > machining process > constrains a design. Also we need to make designs where each part has several function. When you come to think about it, that is a very strong sign of a mature design. Like when you look at the lights on a veteran car. It sits for itself outside the body of the car. There are a lot of mechanics to hold just the headlights. In modern cars it is integrated into the bodywork. So the bodywork has more functions than in the olden days. And the car lighter and cheaper to produce. Another good example is all the functions of a human head. It is a rather amazing and effective construction. (hmm can you call something that has evolved for a construction?) Nano will most likely take on the same evolution. First as discrete componente coupled together, and then later on as integrated systems. regards Max M From samantha at objectent.com Thu Nov 13 09:23:52 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 01:23:52 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <3FB2BA1C.3060001@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> References: <3FB2BA1C.3060001@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <20031113012352.75ad43c0.samantha@objectent.com> On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 22:54:20 +0000 BillK wrote: > On Wed Nov 12, 2003 01:43 pm Samantha Atkins wrote: > < I see very much the point of enabling those born to poorer > < circumstances a chance to develop, progress and participate fully. But > < I am not sure I see the point of forced carrying of dead weight > < indefinitely and with the individuals in that category able to vote > < themselves continued increases in largesse and often standing > < continually in the way of actual human advancement. > > < What "whole day"? In France the law says, if they haven't changed it > < again, that it is only legal to work 35 hours a week. Subsistence > < should not be too hard to come by in a reasonably affluent society. > < But we must beware of breeding too large a burden on our societies. > < Germany is even now struggling to lower its mounting social debts > < also. Historically there have been cycles of charity, self-insurance, > < poor laws, increasing welfare states, large defictis, cuts of > < benefits. It is not a new problem. > < > > Sorry Samantha, but it really IS a new problem. > Lack of breeding is the new problem. The western societies are facing a > rapidly aging population problem. Who's going to look after all the old > folk? They are not scroungers, they have worked all their lives, but > there are just not enough young folk paying taxes to look after them. > Hmmm. Looks like you switched focus from the poor in general to the elderly. If we hadn't been systematically robbing workers for much of their lives to supposedly take care of them in their old age and being terrible managers of the money (we as government here), then there would not have been so huge a problem. But of course we are where we are. I suggest the following: a) Put a cap for how many years into the future various packages like social security in the US pay out; b) privatize retirement savings plans slowly to be completely private by the above cut off; c) cut taxes across the board so many more people could afford to take care of their older relatives and/or give significant tax breaks for such care; d) keep just enough additional programs to make up any difference temporarily; e) work like mad for medical nanotech, anti-aging therapies and so on so that a generation hence old does not mean infirm. > Japan is desperately trying to build robots to look after the old people > and that solution may just arrive in time. > If anything is like to be human intensive it is caring for human beings. I wish them lots of luck BUT... - samantha From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 13 10:00:10 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:00:10 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07D@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE07D@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <20031113100010.GV922@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 12:44:12PM +1030, Emlyn O'regan wrote: > But by then, today's 80kg human will bw replacable with a 800g avatar, > rendering the 15kg SUV absolute overkill. If you can do that, you can do computers which can run reality simulators at a much higher frame rate than even red-glowing Mrs. Tinkerbell could handle. Nevermind that it would burn less juice, too... Bit twiddling is lots faster than atom twiddling, and burns less Joules. So obviously the only atom twiddling will be done to maintain and expand the physical layer, soon after advent of AI and/or uploads. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 13 10:22:15 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:22:15 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? In-Reply-To: <007f01c3a982$1359ca00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <200311121209.hACC95M29747@tick.javien.com> <3FB2D48E.788C27A9@best.com> <007f01c3a982$1359ca00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <20031113102215.GA922@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 12:04:20PM +1100, Brett Paatsch wrote: > Hmm. Maybe I am overlooking the bleeding obvious > but I can't think of a single fully self-replicating > computer program - one that does not require > impute from outside itself to kick off the duplication. I do not understand what you're getting at. If there are no resources external to the agent it obviously can't replicate. Self-replication depends on context. In some contexts, self-replication is trivial to achieve: (will need Java to run), being an near-optimal supportive context. Corewars is only marginally less supportive, and many real systems can be hit by pathogens fitting inside a single packet (404 Bytes UDP packet): http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/sapphire/ Self-replication in physical reality is harder (viroids and viruses use other, more complex self-replicators as substrates), but some extremophiles have very small genomes and overall complexity. Similiarly, artificial self-replication is far easier in artificial, very rich environments offering optimal support. A successful gray goo weapon is considerably harder to design. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu Thu Nov 13 14:30:58 2003 From: test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:30:58 -0600 (CST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: <200311130217.hAD2HlM05516@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: --- Adrian Tymes wrote: > --- Samantha Atkins wrote: > > It would be good to find that which motivates the > > people at large much more > > strongly than their predispostions are proof > > against. I am not at all sure > > it is possible to do so on a large enough scale to > > dislodge the established > > interests who wish to slow and control innovation. > > One thing I've found, in talking to non-Extropians, is > that a lot of the time, the real issue is more about > control - especially perceived lack thereof. > > "We're going to make sentient AIs *AND CONQUER YOU*." > > "We're going to make self-replicating MNT *THAT EATS > YOU*." > > You can see the emphasized downside there, but try > these: > > "We're going to make everyone immortal *WHETHER OR NOT > THEY WANT TO DIE*." > > "We're going to replace the food supply with GM crops > *WHETHER OR NOT YOU PREFER THE OLD STUFF*." Very good point. But rather than hypothetical quotes, how about the real thing: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message9.txt and: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message10.txt Cheers, Bill ---------------------------------------------------------- Bill Hibbard, SSEC, 1225 W. Dayton St., Madison, WI 53706 test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu 608-263-4427 fax: 608-263-6738 http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis.html From rhanson at gmu.edu Thu Nov 13 14:55:28 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 09:55:28 -0500 Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB31F29.97587D76@best.com> References: <200311101900.hAAJ0BM23619@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031113092353.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/13/2003, Chris Phoenix responded to my post of 11/10: > > An easy simple opinion to have is that nanotech won't have much in the way > > of specific social implications. In this view, manufacturing will slowly > > become more precise and more automated, as it has for centuries, and so the > > social implications of nanotech are subsumed by the social implications of > > generally improving tech, and any specific products that enables. > >An argument against this view: Different technologies can be improved >at different speeds. Computers really took off when the transistor was >invented; they couldn't have done it with vacuum tubes. So this view is >effectively arguing that nanotech will not invent any significant new >manufacturing technique that can be improved rapidly or that provides a >useful discontinuity like the difference between digital and analog >computation. Well of course its a matter of degree. But compared to many claims made for discontinuities induced by nanotech, computers were a pretty smooth transition. Computers have of course been an important component of innovation, and some specific social issues now arise from some of the specific products that computers now make possible. And some argue that we can understand some of the macroeconomic dynamics of the last few decades in terms of PCs making previous capital more obsolete than is usually the case. But overall computer tech progress has been relatively steady. > > .... and most consumer goods are produced locally > > on PGMDs, via downloaded designs and a few general feedstocks. A > > variation on this position posits that PGMDs can produce more PGMDs > > relatively quickly. And a refinement of this position posits that such > > self-reproducing PGMDs dramatically lowers costs relative to technology > > available just prior to this point. > >I'm not aware of any proposal for mechanochemistry-based PGMD's >(MBPGMD's) that does not posit the MBPGMD being able to rapidly >duplicate its structure. ... call this "autoproductive" ... >Your phrasing makes it sound like there is a range of positions, but can >you cite any source for them? Or are they your invention? If the >latter, I think they will not serve you well, because I doubt that a >non-autoproductive MBPGMD is technically plausible, much less >economically plausible, since you probably can't build a human-scale >MBPGMD without bootstrapping it from a much smaller one. The Royal Society of London just came out with a report saying nanotech is possible, but that most of their advisors say self-reproduction is not. I've just read a bunch of recent reports on nanotech, and I've been listening to nanotech debates for a decade now, where a common theme is the feasibility and ubiquity of self-reproduction, among people who grant that atom-scale precision is possible. The influential novel "Diamond Age" describes a world where most people do not have access to self-reproducing devices, though they do have access to capable PGMDs. Drexler and the Foresight Institute have been trying to downplay the role of self-replication for some time now. I am struggling to clarify and identify the differing assumptions that different people are making, and place them in economic terms to support economic analysis. *I'M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS*, though I'm running out of time for this round. How would you describe the differing assumptions, making them as explicit as possible, and trying not to assume everyone who disagree with you is an idiot? > > 2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are less > > efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of > > production time, material waste, or final product quality. > >Don't compare apples and oranges. That's like asking by what factor >digital computers are less efficient than analog computers. Digital >computers can do things that analog computers simply can't. My point was just that if digital computers had been too inefficient in emulating analog ones, then we'd still be making analog ones. > > While many manufacturing plants today > > are highly automated, it may cost quite a lot to produce designs for fully > > automated production processes. So design costs may be a lot higher. > >Or it may cost quite a bit less. You don't have to retrain your >workers. You don't have to pay workers to retool your machines. ... Those are not design costs. > > 4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is > > rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now > > are the physical capital, rather than labor and design. So it is not clear > > how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the > > economy. > >Um, why are you not counting the labor cost as a saving? >And what about transportation costs, warehousing, the costs of >compensating for uncertain and delayed supply chains? ... When I said "just lowering those ... costs" I meant just the costs I was focusing on there, the cost of physical capital for manufacturing. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From outlawpoet at HELL.COM Thu Nov 13 15:39:46 2003 From: outlawpoet at HELL.COM (outlawpoet -) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 07:39:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <20031113153946.743F139AB@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Thu Nov 13 16:23:09 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:23:09 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <000001c3a9b5$89753340$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <002701c3aa02$74a65460$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Spike wrote, > http://www.tafkac.org/faq2k/science_3.html Eugen Leitl already posted that link in this thread. I acknowledged that I was fooled by this scientific urban legend. I always thought that this force explained which way water rotated as it went down the drain. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 13 16:26:21 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:26:21 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <000001c3aa02$dfee9fc0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > John K Clark > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > Wrote: > ... > >The taller, more upright ones could see > >trouble coming and avoid it better. > > ... I've yet to hear a convincing theory > that explained why. > > John K Clark jonkc at att.net Could be something as simple as walking upright offered a mating advantage. Male competitors may have been spooked: "Wow, that dude can walk upright! Lets get outta here!" etc or the cavebabes: "...Ooooh, who's the stud walking upriiight..." spike From rhanson at gmu.edu Thu Nov 13 16:33:43 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:33:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <3FB2D70C.9040407@cox.net> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/12/2003, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > In 1996l, on this list, I asserted that the singularity would occur > prior to 2006. I had no viable reason for >that asertion. I still have no viable reason for that assertion. To be clear, are you still making that assertion? Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 13 16:41:05 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:41:05 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing Thought. from Laurence of Berkeley In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000001c3aa04$eed196d0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > kevinfreels at hotmail.com > >From another perspective, aren;t the stockholders themselves > >out to swindle the corporation and minimize their losses?... Just assume that the top goal of every individual in every corporation or society is to maximize the profits for herself. That assumption works just fine, and pretty much explains everything. So let that principle be the ideal. Any other system leads to trouble. If one says the job of a CEO is to maximize profits for stockholders, the original assumption still applies, for the purpose of serving as CEO is to maximize one's personal profit thru salary, bonuses, stock appreciation and any other means available. If we are careful to build our societies and corporations on this principle, we will not go wrong. Self interest is the very most reliable and predictable of human responses. spike From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 13 17:00:36 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:00:36 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com><04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric><003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001> <002601c3a93a$28a316c0$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: You're kidding, right? ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 10:29 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > Another intriguing theory that offers an explanation is the Aquatic Ape > Theory > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "John K Clark" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 7:49 AM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > > Wrote: > > > > >It also gave them the ability to walk while looking > > >over the top of the tall grasses on the savannah. > > >The taller, more upright ones could see > > >trouble coming and avoid it better. > > > > If you can see a predator better by standing up above the grass it also > > means the predator can see you better, and that's bad news if you're slow > as > > molasses and if you walk on 2 legs you are. Better to just briefly come up > > on 2 legs as many animals do and take a peek and then come back down on 4, > > or just develop a long neck. I would think coming out of the trees and > into > > the open savannah would increase the trend toward 4 leg locomotion, but > that > > 's not what happened and I've yet to hear a convincing theory that > explained > > why. > > > > John K Clark jonkc at att.net > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 13 17:02:39 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:02:39 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <000001c3aa02$dfee9fc0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: You know, there was a recent study that shows that taller people earn a higher income on average. Maybe that's where it all started! I'm short, so no wonder I am broke. I hold a valuable stake in thei hypothesis. I'll work on proving it. :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 10:26 AM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > John K Clark > > > To: ExI chat list > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > > > > Wrote: > > > ... > > >The taller, more upright ones could see > > >trouble coming and avoid it better. > > > > ... I've yet to hear a convincing theory > > that explained why. > > > > John K Clark jonkc at att.net > > > > Could be something as simple as walking upright > offered a mating advantage. Male competitors may > have been spooked: "Wow, that dude can walk > upright! Lets get outta here!" etc or the > cavebabes: "...Ooooh, who's the stud walking upriiight..." > > > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 13 17:06:55 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:06:55 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <00c401c3a963$65779ca0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: lol. I actually went through the message before I sent it and removed such words. Obviously I missed one! Therefore, let me correct it..... I am inclined to posit that............. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 3:24 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > [interjection] > > Kevin wrote: > > I am more inclined to believe that .... > > I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the > meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. > > - Brett > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From fortean1 at mindspring.com Thu Nov 13 16:58:45 2003 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 09:58:45 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD [forteana] The great plughole debate [Coriolis effect] Message-ID: <3FB3B845.D983C87F@mindspring.com> < http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1083412,00.html > The great plughole debate Does water really swirl in the opposite direction south of the equator? Well, yes and no, finds David Adam Thursday November 13, 2003 The Guardian In the gents toilets at Quito airport in Ecuador last month I had one of the most disappointing experiences of my life. The flight from London had been a long one, and feeling queasy over the last few hours all I wanted to do was get off the plane, head for the lavatory and hold my head over the sink. Yet when I finally got my wish, as the water gurgled down the plughole just a few inches from my face, I felt nothing but disillusionment and a desperate sense of anticlimax. The reason for my disappointment was this: most people have heard that the water swirls the opposite way down the plughole in the southern hemisphere. This is supposedly due to the Coriolis force, an invisible hand primed by the rotation of the Earth to nudge fluids into rotating anticlockwise north of the equator and clockwise to its south. The idea permeates popular and scientific culture; it has cropped up in the Guardian's Notes and Queries section, is regularly referred to during school lessons and appears in the occasional physics textbook. Some Australians even see their backwards working dunnies as one of their proudest national symbols. What is less well established is that, if this effect switches the flow direction as you pass from north to south, then at the exact point of the equator these opposing forces should balance perfectly and the water in a draining sink should pour straight down. Yet at Quito airport, this was plainly not the case. Even in Ecuador, a place with such an affinity to the equator they named the country after it, the water continued to spin itself into a miniature whirlpool. Cold tap, hot tap, gushing torrent or little more than a drip, it made no difference. Each time, the water stubbornly spiralled its way down the plughole. A couple of times it hesitated, as if undecided which way to turn, but turn it always did. Across the country it was the same story. From the dense Amazon jungle in the east to the lush reserves that hug the Pacific coastline, each time we arrived in a new place I would enter the nearest public convenience with renewed hope, only to emerge crestfallen. Most frustrating of all was the failure of the water to behave as expected within spitting distance of a mighty concrete monument erected to sit exactly on the equator itself. (This was doubly frustrating as someone had stolen the plug and it took me several minutes to work out how to use the palm of my hand instead.) Noting my dejection, a waiting bus driver asked me what was wrong and using broken Spanish I explained. His eyes lit up, and in conspiratorial tones he told me an incredible story. He said (I think) that the giant concrete monument was actually in the wrong place, that modern GPS measurements had revealed the true location of the equator to be further north, and in this place the water really did pass straight down the plughole. And, most importantly, he said he would take me there. This seemed too good an opportunity to miss, and even when we were paying our $3 to enter what looked suspiciously like his mate's back garden, through which the true equator apparently ran, the alarm bells remained silent. In the garden was a sink. The sink was about 4ft high, full of water and was standing over a painted yellow line on the ground. Unlike the bus driver, the sink owner spoke excellent English, and, holding a model globe, he explained about the Coriolis force. The Earth spins to the east, he said, completing one full revolution a day. To get round in a day, a point on the equator spins at about 1,000mph, while one 100 miles from the north pole only moves at about 20mph, because the distance it must travel is much shorter. This difference in speed means that fluids travelling across the globe are effectively deflected, causing them to spin. And then he removed the plug. And I watched the water go straight down. He refilled and drained the sink twice more - once a few metres north of the line, where the water instantly gained an anti-clockwise twist, and then to the south, where it went round clockwise. It was an impressive show, and back in Britain I dined out on the story for several weeks (and nobody including several scientists, may I point out, ever questioned it). But then, disaster struck. Bored one wet lunchtime, I idly investigated the phenomenon, only to read about the same demonstration being carried out in Kenya to "gullible tourists" by "charlatans". My pride stung, I made some calls. My pride stung still further when the hoax was confirmed. Despite what you may hear or read, even in some scientific text books, it turns out that the Coriolis force has absolutely no effect on the direction that the water drains from an everyday sink, toilet, shower or bath. It does affect the spin of ocean currents and weather systems such as hurricanes, but on the small scale of a domestic sink the Coriolis force is tiny, and is simply dwarfed by other factors such as the sink shape, differences in temperature or, most likely, residual currents lingering from when the sink was filled with water. That's not to say it's impossible to see the effect of the Coriolis force in a sink, as two little-known papers in the science journal Nature demonstrate. The secret is to eliminate all the interference, and in 1962 in the appropriately named Watertown, Massachusetts, the physicist Ascher Shapiro did just that. Built in a windowless room, Shapiro's circular sink was about two metres across and 150mm deep, with a tiny hole drilled in the middle that could be unplugged from below. After filling the sink with water, he left it to stand for more than three days. It took nearly an hour-and-a-half to drain, and sure enough the water went anticlockwise each time. Three years later, a group at the University of Sydney repeated the experiment, and as long as the water was allowed to stand for at least 18 hours, it always went down the plughole in a clockwise direction. "We have acquired confidence in the hypothesis that carefully performed experiments on liquid drainage from a tank will show clockwise rotation, if done in the southern hemisphere," they concluded. And me? I decided to put my experience to use. After a few days splashing around in my bathroom sink, I can make the water go down the plughole any way I choose. And for a small fee, I'm happy to demonstrate how the equator runs through north London. -- ?Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress.? Copyright 1992, Frank Rice Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.] From twodeel at jornada.org Thu Nov 13 17:03:41 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 09:03:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Don Dartfield wrote: > I read an evolutionary biology book that claimed we started standing > erect mainly to help keep our expanding brains cool, via increased > exposure to air currents and decreased sun exposure. After thinking a bit further on this, I find myself wondering if it wasn't just easier, once we left the trees for the savannah, to modify the hunched-over gait that tree-dwelling apes use into our full-fledged bipedalism, than it would have been to revert to the same full quadrupedality that the other savannah animals had. In addition to whatever other benefits may have been derived from walking upright, that is. Because when you look at the way a chimpanzee or a gorilla walks, it sure looks like it would be easier to adjust their skeleton into ours than to turn them into quadrupeds ... and perhaps in the absence of any grave disadvantages, the advantages of bipedalism didn't have to be tremendous to win out. Anyway, that was a thought I had while thinking about the evolution of bipedalism. (Bipedality? Bipedalousness?) From jonkc at att.net Thu Nov 13 17:39:50 2003 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:39:50 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031113153946.743F139AB@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <003501c3aa0d$28cfa720$93fe4d0c@hal2001> One would have thought that the handedness of the molecules of life was just a 50 50 luck of the draw, once one got in a slight excess a standard was set and there was no reason to change; but there may be more to it than that. Amino acids have been found in meteorites and they have the same handedness as life too. Most non biological chemical processes produce an equal amount of right and left, however if it is exposed to powerful clockwise polarized microwaves it produced only right-handed sugars and left-handed amino-acids, exactly what we see on Earth and in meteorites. Interestingly there is a portion of the Orion Nebula that produces copious amounts of just this sort of radiation; there may be a connection, if so the handedness of these molecules may not be exactly universal but is the most common form in this part of the galaxy. John K Clark jonkc at att.net From CurtAdams at aol.com Thu Nov 13 17:45:51 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:45:51 EST Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <188.218231c2.2ce51d4f@aol.com> In a message dated 11/12/03 22:07:20, cphoenix at best.com writes: >I'm not aware of any proposal for mechanochemistry-based PGMD's >(MBPGMD's) that does not posit the MBPGMD being able to rapidly >duplicate its structure. Maybe, but mechanochemistry isn't the only form of nano. There's no proof of mechanochemistry working, and no near-term prospects on the table. However, we do have, in the form of life, demostrated functionality of wet enzyme chemistry and electromechanical devices. With technology, when have demostrated funtionality of micromechanical devices. Devices based on such systems are like to beat MBPGMD in time, assuming MBPGMD will ever work at all. Incidentally, wet enzyme chemistry could theoretically spin out a functional MBPGMD device, possibly even on a relatively large and economic scale, even is MBPGMD can't self-replicate (or we don't want to make such things for safety reasons). From CurtAdams at aol.com Thu Nov 13 17:50:09 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:50:09 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <111.2aaaab9a.2ce51e51@aol.com> > On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 10:46:23AM -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > > > I would guess it had to do with the Coriolis effect during > evolution. This > > is the force that makes water spin one direction over the > other while > > flowing down the drain. I would guess that it is easier > for molecules to > Because the weak force is assymetrical, one form of each mirror image is slightly thermodymanically more favorable. The versions in life are, actually, the favored ones. However, the effect is tiny - IIRC 1 part in 10^21 or something like that - and nobody has a good model for how that could get things going. From CurtAdams at aol.com Thu Nov 13 17:58:40 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:58:40 EST Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <48.24d4c516.2ce52050@aol.com> Without self-replication, I don't see any good reason that nanotechnology will produce effects fundamentally different from other revolutionary techs, like railroads, electricity, scientific drug design or computers. You will have major social effects, sure, that details of which will depend on exactly what you can do efficiently with nano (currently unclear and speculative) There will be early high value uses when the tech is expensive. Tech prices will fall over time and use will become more and more widespread. Eventually it will become widespread enough that the society will regear to base function on the tech. But the whole process will take some time. From CurtAdams at aol.com Thu Nov 13 18:08:10 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 13:08:10 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <1ec.1322679f.2ce5228a@aol.com> In a message dated 11/13/03 9:07:34, twodeel at jornada.org writes: >After thinking a bit further on this, I find myself wondering if it wasn't >just easier, once we left the trees for the savannah, to modify the >hunched-over gait that tree-dwelling apes use into our full-fledged >bipedalism, than it would have been to revert to the same full >quadrupedality that the other savannah animals had. It's unclear that our ancestors *ever* knuckle-walked like apes. Our distant ancestors were gibbonlike and gibbons walk bipedally (albeit not well) if they must. All fossils ever found so far are of creatures far more bipedal than current apes. It may well be that some of the "human" ancestors and relatives are actually predecessor of modern non-human apes. The robust australopithicenes in particalar are astonishingly similar to gorillas and become more so over time. Either the apes developed knucklewalking twice or the mutual ancestor developed it and then we lost it. 2 changes either way; equally parsimonious. Duplicated evolution in the apes is actually more plausible evolutionarily - it requires only one, relatively constant, evolutionary advantage, rather than the complicated changes to induce a reversal in the human line. From jacques at dtext.com Thu Nov 13 18:22:06 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 19:22:06 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Apology to JDP In-Reply-To: <000e01c3a9b1$da3ef350$0401a8c0@GERICOM> References: <16305.10827.992498.992323@localhost.localdomain> <000601c3a8ed$b2e76310$0401a8c0@GERICOM> <16306.9905.730890.624015@localhost.localdomain> <000e01c3a9b1$da3ef350$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Message-ID: <16307.52174.906678.368568@localhost.localdomain> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 a ?crit (13.11.2003/07:46) : > > Sorry Jacques, I misunderstood your point. To my defense I can only say that > I must have been pissed off by some other post. This theme sort of fires me > up. No problem, Giulio. Jacques From jonkc at att.net Thu Nov 13 18:20:43 2003 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 13:20:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <20031111021345.5139.qmail@web80406.mail.yahoo.com><04a601c3a803$06c5a410$0200a8c0@etheric><003d01c3a934$8e6086b0$7af44d0c@hal2001><002601c3a93a$28a316c0$0200a8c0@etheric><002d01c3a93d$170f3e40$0200a8c0@etheric><013d01c3a94d$119e7880$77fe4d0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <007c01c3aa12$de0be2c0$93fe4d0c@hal2001> Wrote: > As far as walking upright as well as we can, > I'm not so sure. There appears to be some > debate as to just how well she could walk upright. In rocks that were slightly older than Lucy bipedal footprints were found, something was walking upright back then. >Although Lucy's brain size was only slightly larger >than that of a chimps (about 15 ml I think) Lucy's brain was about 400 cc, Homo Habilis made some very simple tools about a million years later but his brain was nearly twice as bid at 750cc. The average modern human brain is about 1400 cc. >the one thing we don't know is how it was wired. That's true and we'll never know for sure because IQ doesn't fossilize, there are only 2 ways we can make an educated guess: 1) Brain size. 2) Culture, primarily tool making. Lucy does not shine in either area. >we have very few skeletons from this period. >Lucy herself was only 70% complete. 70% is not bad especially if you assume bilateral symmetry. About a year after Lucy was found The First Family was discovered, about 10 or 12 individuals. John K Clark jonkc at att.net > As far as walking upright as well as we can, I'm not so sure. There appears > to be some debate as to just how well she could walk upright. > > Brain sizes in primates tend to overlap, such as they do in humans with no > obvious distinction shown in intelligence. H. Nandertalensis had a brain > roughly 17% larger than ours, but there I have seen no one claim that they > were smarter than H. Sapiens. Although Lucy's brain size was only slightly > larger than that of a chimps (about 15 ml I think) the one thing we don;t > know is how it was wired. She may have been a bit smarter than the average > chimp. > > One thing I need to add here is that we have very few skeletons from from > this period. Lucy herself was only 70% complete. It could be that she is > normal of her species. Or it could be as if someone from the future found a > skeleton of a midget and used that to determine that we all had the same > build. (Midgets pose another topic entirely.....no doubt they are human, but > if we found midget pre-hominid skeletons, would we call them a seperate > species?) I don;t find this as liklely, but it is possible. > > > than that of a chimp and it would be more than a million years before even > > the simplest tools show up in the fossil record, > > When I was speaking of tools, I wasn't referring to constructed and altered > tools such as stone tools. Chimps use twigs as simple tools to retrieve > termites from nests and some in the region of Liberia use stones to break > open nuts. With just a slight turn of the usage, sticks and rocks could > become sufficient weapons, even if it was a matter of throwing rocks to run > a potential predator off. None of these would show as tools in the fossil > record. > > >nor is there any evidence > > that she engaged in hunting, if she did it must have been for something > like > > mice. I think Lucy was a very long way from being top predator, when she > > stood up she was just telling those who were what's on the menu. > > I will agree that Lucy was most likely vegetarian, and I was wrong to put > emphasis on the predator aspect. To be honest, I was trying to do three > things at once and was a bit distracted. My overall point, which I think was > missed once I read my own post, was that given some simple naturally > existing rock or wood tools, primitive communication, and/or an awareness of > the environment that even chimps today have, the group would have been able > to protect and or escape easier if they could see trouble coming and > communicate that to the rest of the group. It is simply my opinion that Lucy > and her bunch were probably smarter than many researchers give them credit > for, and that this increased intelligence was what turned bipedalism into an > asset instead of an expense. > > n K Clark jonkc at att.net > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From twodeel at jornada.org Thu Nov 13 18:27:54 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:27:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <1ec.1322679f.2ce5228a@aol.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > It's unclear that our ancestors *ever* knuckle-walked like apes. So then, we may not have needed any big advantage to force us to evolve bipedalism -- evolution being parsimonious, and whatnot, we just used what was there. Of course, I guess that just pushes back the question of the advantages of bipedalism to our ancestors rather than to us... From rhanson at gmu.edu Thu Nov 13 19:07:24 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:07:24 -0500 Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <48.24d4c516.2ce52050@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031113140531.01ebe9c0@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/13/2003, Curt Adams wrote: >Without self-replication, I don't see any good reason that nanotechnology >will produce effects fundamentally different from other revolutionary techs, >like railroads, electricity, scientific drug design or computers. Well each of those revolutions did produce different effects, but you might well argue that these differences are small compared to the effect of self-replication of programmable nano-factories. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 13 19:22:09 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:22:09 +0100 Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031113140531.01ebe9c0@mail.gmu.edu> References: <48.24d4c516.2ce52050@aol.com> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113140531.01ebe9c0@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <20031113192209.GK922@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 02:07:24PM -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > On 11/13/2003, Curt Adams wrote: > >Without self-replication, I don't see any good reason that nanotechnology > >will produce effects fundamentally different from other revolutionary > >techs, > >like railroads, electricity, scientific drug design or computers. > > Well each of those revolutions did produce different effects, but you might > well argue that these differences are small compared to the effect of > self-replication of programmable nano-factories. Except for AI, of course. Molecular circuitry by self-assembly is nanotechnology, yet it doesn't self-replicate its means of production. An AI in a self-enhancement runaway is of course the driving force behind Singularity (and will produce self-rep molecular manufacturing as one of the side effects). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 13 19:28:47 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:28:47 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <111.2aaaab9a.2ce51e51@aol.com> References: <111.2aaaab9a.2ce51e51@aol.com> Message-ID: <20031113192847.GP922@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 12:50:09PM -0500, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > Because the weak force is assymetrical, one form of each mirror image > is slightly thermodymanically more favorable. The versions in life are, > actually, the favored ones. However, the effect is tiny - IIRC 1 part in > 10^21 or something like that - and nobody has a good model for how that > could get things going. This effect is not observable in chemistry. It supposedly makes the material world possible, though, by virtue of providing an excess of matter vs. antimatter during Big Bang. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jacques at dtext.com Thu Nov 13 19:38:50 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:38:50 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The liberty-responsability pressure on individuals In-Reply-To: <200311121243.17133.samantha@objectent.com> References: <000601c3a8ed$b2e76310$0401a8c0@GERICOM> <16306.9905.730890.624015@localhost.localdomain> <200311121243.17133.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <16307.56778.989721.917122@localhost.localdomain> Samantha Atkins a ?crit (12.11.2003/13:43) : > > On Wednesday 12 November 2003 04:25, JDP wrote: > > Giu1i0 Pri5c0 a ?crit (12.11.2003/08:22) : > > > I definitely do not want to say to the weak "find a way to make yourself > > > useful or die" because it is a disgusting thing to say to a conscious > > > being. > > > > Yes, this is why I phrased it in that way, to make its disgusting > > character obvious. > > > > How much of it is nearly a truism though? Perhaps it should be rephrased, > "Find a way to be useful or find a patron or find a way to coerce or cajole > others to support you." The latter includes making it relatively > unthinkable that anyone would choose not to support you or that they would be > allowed not to. I am not in the least a hard-hearted person, if anything I > err far too much toward the other end of the scale. One small remark about this last sentence. It doesn't seem that one can rationally say one errs far too much in such and such way. If you do realize you err, you likely will correct that and not err anymore. Or maybe you meant you erred in the past? Or that you know you have an irrepressible tendency to do that same mistake often? Sorry if this sounds like a bait or something, it's not and I would just like to understand what you really mean and what this general characterization of your stance means to you. > But, it is a legitimate > question whether we are willing, should be willing and/or should be coerced > into supporting more and more people indefinitely who cannot support > themselves. I take on the opportunity of this question to raise a general issue, still unsolved to me, on which I would appreciate to get some light from economists or other list members. It is obvious to me that, if a population arrives in a new, unorganized place, with a multitude of basic problems to solve, the liberty-responsability social organization is a very good one. Everyone will naturally find which problems one can solve for the community (as this is how one will sustain oneself in the first place), and things will organize effectively. Any centralized organization and distribution of roles is bound to be less effective, as no enligtened individual or central group can foresee all problems and all useful things to do. Now, when things *got* organized, the efficiency of this system may not be quite as good. Take my neighborood, and suppose one has little special qualification: how is one going to make oneself useful, and sustaining oneself in the process? Can you, for example, settle as a maker/seller of some common good? Hardly. There is a supermarket which is very effective in doing that, and a better convenience (and with better prices) for people that what you are likely to offer. The supermarket *is* lacking in certain things, for example the bread is not very good. So maybe you could make very good bread and sell it to the people who can make the difference? You could, but there are already *four* competing bakeries *only in my street* (one of them will likely close soon, as it is the least visited). And so on. So, isn't it possible to imagine that, in some well-organized society, normal people who can do basic things still cannot make them useful in a way that will allow them to sustain themselves? Not because people are evil; but because they already have all what they need. Another sign of the "liberty-responsability pressure" organization possibly reaching its limits is advertisment. It's taken an incredible importance here at least, both in space (it's everywhere) and in volume of money. If you are a graphic designer, you can find work *in advertisement*. If you are a translator, you can find work *in advertisement*. This was easy enough to predict: as the required providers already exist in most market slot, the need to communicate and differencitate (albeit superfically) becomes the biggest need. Now, how much of social worth are all these efforts? What's the real social benefit (which is what one considers when pondering social organizations) of so much advertisment? If you ask me, I think most of it doesn't bring any benefit. Most of it, actually, is detrimental, and a pollution of the minds. Hopefully I managed to express this general interrogation I have about one possible limit of the "liberty-responsability pressure" as principle of social organization. In any case this is both a general issue and an answer to what Samantha says, in the sense that it puts in a particular light the "can't make myself useful" situation. > If we are to support a possibly growing segment of those who cannot support > themselves should there be any limits on the level of that support or on the > reproduction of those who are in that segment (assuming some partially > genetic aspects of intelligence and so on) or own their franchise? As the > world becomes increasingly technologically complex and its issues become more > complex should there be any tests of competence required to exercise the > right to vote? As we become more augmented and divergent from common human > stock what should we do for those who choose not to follow this path and > become increasingly less able to compete? Should we offer some level of > augmentation to all? I would tend to that position if it is at all > possible without too much restraint on forward progress on both humanitarian > grounds and because it is likely to increase the pace of progress. Samantha, do you (if I may inquire) still expect a full-fledged Singularity to happen any time soon, and have an impact on everyone on this planet? I can barely recognize you based on my recollections of your posts in the past. You sound like my French transhumanist elitist friends. Is there some point in your mind when we relax and enjoy what is, or is it full speed ahead even after the Singularity and until the end of time. Where do you see yourself going exactly? > I see very much the point of enabling those born to poorer circumstances a > chance to develop, progress and participate fully. But I am not sure I see > the point of forced carrying of dead weight indefinitely and with the > individuals in that category able to vote themselves continued increases in > largesse and often standing continually in the way of actual human > advancement. So what you mean is, if we get so sophisticated that we only need very refined stuff only producable by people extremely educated, then the ones not educated and unable to produce anything of value to us must be left alone to face their lack of market worth and die? Can't we imagine something very different, in which we produce so much that it is no big deal to sustain whatever form of (non violent and non destructive) life there is, whether it produces or not, and enjoy it? Can the non-augmented be like flowers in gardens in which we care for the watering? Why not? I think the idea behind taxes is something like that. One considers that the society offers the opportunity to some people to express their talents in a productive and financially rewarding way, and that it is reasonable that they contribute to the sustainment of the ones who are in no such situation. Or do you think there is no "idea behind" this at all, except for the envy of the poor, voting laws to steal from the rich? (These are not rhetorical questions, I'm just asking. I remember that Ayn Rand would pretty much have answered the latter.) > > Not at all what I meant nor advocate. In fact, in the last sentence of > > my paragraph that you quoted below, I said I found it reasonable to be > > apalled that anyone should work hard the whole day just to sustain > > themselves. > > > > What "whole day"? In France the law says, if they haven't changed it again, > that it is only legal to work 35 hours a week. First, it's more complicated than this, and many people work more than that. But more importantly, 35 hours / week does qualify in my opinion as "the whole day". If they are, 35 hours a week, doing some uninteresting and sometimes painful work -- for 40 years --, I think that just considering this lets you know something is wrong. > > No, what I meant (and I think, said), is that putting the pressure of > > liberty-responsability on individuals begets collective prosperity. > > It's as simple as that. So you have to make your choices taking this > > into account. > > > > From an extropian perspective, I think at this point we can still use > > a lot of that competition-induced creativity. Hopefully when we have > > extreme life extension we can relax a bit (and we aren't too busy with > > defense). > > > > Cooperation also has strong extropian benefits. But you probably couldn't use the "cooperation" with some uneducated individual. You might appreciate that person, smile at them, but paying them? And if you don't, who will? Jacques From fortean1 at mindspring.com Thu Nov 13 19:45:50 2003 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:45:50 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD [SK] Re: Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) Message-ID: <3FB3DF6E.29D3B35F@mindspring.com> > in France/western Europe, or the USA. These numbers and financial > situational comparisons fascinate me. I would like to write a book > about this subject, as there is nothing that descibes this adequately, > that I can find anyway. He may be interested, but he isn't well informed about US income or taxes. Total US taxes rates are basically flat: http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/01/20/business/21DOUBLE.chart.jpg http://slate.msn.com/id/2077294/ US income stats: Median Household http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h06.html Median Personal http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p05.html By quintiles household: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h01.html Table H-1. Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households (All Races): 1967 to 2001 (Households as of March of the following year. Income in current and 2001 CPI-U-RS adjusted dollars28/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lower limit of Upper limit of each fifth (dollars) top 5 Number --------------------------------------- percent Year (thous.) Lowest Second Third Fourth (dollars) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Current Dollars 2001 109,297 $17,970 $33,314 $53,000 $83,500 $150,499 Jim Lund --------------------- > I COMPLETELY AGREE. And also, by the way, people also live about 3 > years more in France, on average. Correct? This is a subject not in > the least off-topic here on this list, of course. Currently France was judged to have the best health system amongst developed countries, they work the shortest hours and have the longest hols. If I had a chance I'd move there tomorrow from this miserable island where everything is rotting but for some obscure reason it still have good publicity. Also, in France, when their education system or pensions are attacked they have the guts to go out to the streets in their millions and put stop to such attempts. Eva ------------------------ the only problem is that such more effective social re-distribution of profits leads to a slow down in profits and losing competition to other less socially conscious countries. So all the social advantages are constantly under attack, especially at the times of the inevitable economic slow down. Eg. see the attack at present all over Europe on the pension provisions and on health and education. The solutions are ludicrous - making the pensionable age go up - thereby making sure there are even less work opportunity for the new generation. Ofcourse social democracy is preferable to uncontrolled free-market, but ultimately it leads to stagflation and disappointment that allows rightwing conservatives such as Thatcher, Kohl, Berlusconi Aznar or whats his name in Spain, so they all can have a go their ways of ruining further the living standards and working conditions of the population. I'm afraif capitalism sucks, whichever of its methods are applied, the contradictions won't go away. Eva -- ?Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress.? Copyright 1992, Frank Rice Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.] From rafal at smigrodzki.org Thu Nov 13 23:19:00 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:19:00 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The liberty-responsability pressure on individuals In-Reply-To: <16307.56778.989721.917122@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: JDP wrote: > > Now, when things *got* organized, the efficiency of this system may > not be quite as good. Take my neighborood, and suppose one has little > special qualification: how is one going to make oneself useful, and > sustaining oneself in the process? Can you, for example, settle as a > maker/seller of some common good? Hardly. There is a supermarket which > is very effective in doing that, and a better convenience (and with > better prices) for people that what you are likely to offer. The > supermarket *is* lacking in certain things, for example the bread is > not very good. So maybe you could make very good bread and sell it to > the people who can make the difference? You could, but there are > already *four* competing bakeries *only in my street* (one of them > will likely close soon, as it is the least visited). And so on. ### You might want to consider the law of comparative advantage. Contrary to what you are saying, the more organized a market is, the easier it is to find a niche providing products and services. Have you ever thought about having a butler, or a personal secretary? Somebody who would do all the things you can do yourself, but never have the time for, like cleaning your shoes, walking the dog, and running your schedule? How much would you pay for such a service? Would you be willing to pay the equivalent of food needed to sustain the butler, plus the cost of housing him/her, perhaps in a room in your basement (2000-3000$/year)? I would, even though I am by far not rich. This means that it is essentially impossible for a reasonably nice able-bodied person to be unemployed against his will (unless the state intervenes to prohibit butlers at below the so-called "minimum wage"). ------------------------------------ > But you probably couldn't use the "cooperation" with some uneducated > individual. You might appreciate that person, smile at them, but > paying them? And if you don't, who will? ### I will. Just take away the taxes and don't interfere. Rafal From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Thu Nov 13 20:50:39 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:50:39 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> > > Kevin wrote: > > > I am more inclined to believe that .... > > > > I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the > > meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. > > > > - Brett I am not sure this is any better. To my hearing, saying "I believe that...." sounds like a long-term assumption, such as "I thought...." To say "I posit..." sounds like it was just made up on the spot, as in "I guess...." -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 13 21:27:29 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 22:27:29 +0100 Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <188.218231c2.2ce51d4f@aol.com> References: <188.218231c2.2ce51d4f@aol.com> Message-ID: <20031113212729.GQ922@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 12:45:51PM -0500, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > Maybe, but mechanochemistry isn't the only form of nano. There's > no proof of mechanochemistry working, and no near-term prospects Actually, there is. It's just not called machine-phase chemistry. What is missing is experimental proof of a number of anabolic and catabolic reactions resulting in deposition of a structural repertoire rich enough to allow doing something interesting enough (such as extruding a nanolithoprinted copy of the assembler device itself), and with a processivity enough to be practical. We need a simulator, a design, and a (top down and/or bottom-up) pathway to that design; the whole bootstrap shibboleth, in other words. Soon after, that device will be made obsolete by a family of successors. The whole notion of atom-by-atom assembly is a red herring anyway. It's just a formal notion, it's not necessary to build functional devices, and no one is going to use these capabilities for bulk fabbing of bread and butter gadgetry. > on the table. However, we do have, in the form of life, demostrated > functionality of wet enzyme chemistry and electromechanical devices. > With technology, when have demostrated funtionality of micromechanical > devices. Devices based on such systems are like to beat MBPGMD > in time, assuming MBPGMD will ever work at all. How on earth did we wind up with that horrible tongue-breaker, in the first place? > Incidentally, wet enzyme chemistry could theoretically spin out a > functional MBPGMD device, possibly even on a relatively large > and economic scale, even is MBPGMD can't self-replicate (or we > don't want to make such things for safety reasons). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From etheric at comcast.net Thu Nov 13 21:47:57 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 13:47:57 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <038b01c3aa2f$cd50b830$0200a8c0@etheric> how about: I assert, hold, reserve, adhere. maintain, retain, establish, affirm, attest adjure, announce, argue, asseverate, authenticate, aver, bear out, bear witness, certify, confirm, corroborate, countersign, declare, demonstrate, display, exhibit, give evidence, indicate, prove, ratify, seal, show, substantiate, support, sustain, swear, testify, uphold, verify, vouch, warrant, witness? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harvey Newstrom" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 12:50 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > Kevin wrote: > > > > I am more inclined to believe that .... > > > > > > I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the > > > meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. > > > > > > - Brett > > I am not sure this is any better. To my hearing, saying "I believe > that...." sounds like a long-term assumption, such as "I thought...." To > say "I posit..." sounds like it was just made up on the spot, as in "I > guess...." > > -- > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 13 22:06:36 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:06:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The liberty-responsability pressure on individuals In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031113220636.24895.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> --- Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: > This > means that it is essentially > impossible for a reasonably nice able-bodied person > to be unemployed against > his will (unless the state intervenes to prohibit > butlers at below the > so-called "minimum wage"). Error: you forget that people place a certain value on their own wages. Below a certain wage point, there is no difference to people between a pittance and nothing. But that's not the most severe factor you're ignoring... It has come to pass in the past that a few people who owned most of the resources wound up controlling the available jobs, and would only pay the minimum essentials (food, housing, et cetera). This prevented those without the wealth from advancing, which resulted in an intolerable situation. Bloody revolutions, specifically - a major waste of resources all around, save that it did make much more resources available to the poor than would voluntarily be made available. The minimum wage law is there to prevent this kind of inefficiency from arising again, by design or by accident. Perhaps it does result in its own inefficiencies, but one would need to come up with an alternate way of preventing this effect before any proposal to repeal the minimum wage law could be taken seriously. From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 13 22:33:42 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:33:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031113223342.2359.qmail@web80401.mail.yahoo.com> --- Bill Hibbard wrote: > Very good point. But rather than hypothetical > quotes, > how about the real thing: > > http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message9.txt > > and: > > http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message10.txt Umm...you missed my point. It's not that we should necessarily believe in them to make wise decisions right now. It's that they believe in themselves to make wise decisions when the time comes - and if they believe we are aiming to impose our will upon them, to deny them any say in the matter in the future, that is what often causes them to act against us in the present. Besides, the majority of presently living human beings have opted against immediate suicide. (Yeah, yeah, they're still aging - but I'm talking about within the next few hours or so.) We can trust their senses of self-preservation to act similarly in the future. From rafal at smigrodzki.org Fri Nov 14 01:44:40 2003 From: rafal at smigrodzki.org (Rafal Smigrodzki) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 17:44:40 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The liberty-responsability pressure on individuals In-Reply-To: <20031113220636.24895.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Adrian Tymes wrote: > individuals > > > --- Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: >> This >> means that it is essentially >> impossible for a reasonably nice able-bodied person to be unemployed >> against his will (unless the state intervenes to prohibit >> butlers at below the >> so-called "minimum wage"). > > Error: you forget that people place a certain value on > their own wages. Below a certain wage point, there is > no difference to people between a pittance and > nothing. But that's not the most severe factor you're > ignoring... ### If you have a sufficiently inflated ego, indeed there will be a lot of perfectly honest and profitable jobs you won't take, as being below your dignity. Well, this problem certainly doesn't need to be addressed by throwing money at it. Just the opposite. --------------------------------- > > It has come to pass in the past that a few people who > owned most of the resources wound up controlling the > available jobs, and would only pay the minimum > essentials (food, housing, et cetera). ### Impossible in a free market. Only possible in a land-owner oligarchy (or a state-controlled economy) - but for the prevention of that you don't need minimum wage laws, but rather taxation of land ownership. You don't deal with a feudal system (which you described above) by wage laws but by limiting land ownership. Marx said exactly what you did - that the end-point of capitalism is concentrated ownership of capital with only essentials being offered to the working class. Boy, was he wrong. ------------------------------------------ This prevented > those without the wealth from advancing, which > resulted in an intolerable situation. Bloody > revolutions, specifically - a major waste of resources > all around, save that it did make much more resources > available to the poor than would voluntarily be made > available. ### This caused *capitalist* bourgeois revolutions against landowners. In situations closer to a free market affluence for everybody who wishes to work is the rule, and revolutions would be a quaint memory. ---------------------------------- The minimum wage law is there to prevent > this kind of inefficiency from arising again, by > design or by accident. Perhaps it does result in its > own inefficiencies, but one would need to come up with > an alternate way of preventing this effect before any > proposal to repeal the minimum wage law could be taken > seriously. ### Minimum wage laws do not help anybody except the bureaucrats who invented them. They do not limit inequality, they do not prevent the formation of monopolies, they are a pure and unmitigated disaster. Rafal From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 13 22:41:39 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:11:39 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE086@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > -----Original Message----- > From: Brett Paatsch [mailto:bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au] > Sent: Thursday, 13 November 2003 12:55 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? > > > > Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > > > > I don't know why that would be a requirement for anything; > > > > someone always needs to press the "go" button, if that's > > > > what you mean. > > > > > > > > What about the various viruses & worms? Don't these > > > > count? > > > > > > Seems to me that the notion that self-replication programs > > > are the existence proof for the feasibility of self-replicating > > > molecular assemblers and for artificial intelligence is suspect > > > if self-replicating programs don't in fact exist. > > > > ok > > > > > > > > Are viruses and worms good existence proofs of the > > > feasibility of either artificial intelligence or self-replicating > > > nano-assemblers? I don't think so. This doesn't mean > > > that artificial intelligence or assemblers are impossible like > > > perpetual motion machines. It just makes me question the > > > utility of viruses and worms and other software as a case > > > for AI and for nano-assembler feasibility. > > > > Wait, you've shifted ground here. There's no doubt that viruses > > and worms are self replicating. They definitely make copies of > > themselves, in entirety. That's self replication. They don't need > > to be intelligent to behave like this, and I didn't think that was > > the issue. > > > > > > > > Perhaps we don't need truly fully "self-replicating" at all. > > > > > > Regards, > > > Brett > > > > > > > It depends what you mean by "truly fully". I don't think MNT > > is a discontinuity without self replication. But as others have > > said, the kind of stuff we posit MNT being able to make > > should trivially include assemblers themselves, thus we get > > self replication for free (just as we do with computer programs). > > I think I see what's going on. I was questioning how > "self-replicating" a thing is if its design spec requires both an > external "go" event (as you said) and expectations on feedstock > availability, that it cannot satisfy or influence but can > only expect. > > Viruses and worms have someone launch them in the first place > (as you note) and they are constrained in the sense that they > cannot replicate without available space in which to do it. > Available memory, software and hardware on which to run the > software etc. > > I was thinking about the concerns raised by the folks writing in > New Atlantis (referred to in one of Greg Burch's recent posts) > who seem to see self-replication in the case of nano-machines > and the grey goo scenario as something that happens without > constraint. In fact self-replication seems to be never replication > without *some* environmental constraints. > > The "self-replication" as an engineering specification is less > demanding then the specification to have to also forage for > substrate and start itself off as well. And from a political (safety?) > standpoint because every interesting-to-a-designer (even a malicious > designer) device must do something besides just replicate in order > for the designer to have bothered designing it, it seems that > the self- > replicating system cannot be a *very* closed and truly fully > self-replicating system at all. There must be extraneous data or > environmental sampling by the system seeking to replicate itself > periodically as instructed and seeking to do other work as well > as was its designers intent in making it. > > Making a self-replicating nanosystem that could forage for > its own foodstock AND that would be of interest to a designer > (as non-threatening to the designer) seems very non-trivial. I guess > I was hoping it might be a contradiction in design terms but I don't > see that it necessarily is. > > That was what I had in mind with the truly fully self-replicating > comment anyway. > > Regards, > Brett Fair enough approach, although I'd say foraging for foodstock isn't anything to do with self replication. As to foraging, I think you'll find that current worms actually do forage in a very simple way; they just replicate to everywhere they can find, and those that land in "food" (ie: enough disk space, memory) plus a non-hostile environment (not zapped by a virus checker) get to continue the process. It's like a naive floodfill alorithm... floodfill(x,y, basecolour, newcolour) begin if colouratxy(x, y) = basecolour then begin Draw(x, y, newcolour); floodfill(x-1, y); floodfill(x+1, y); floodfill(x, y-1); floodfill(x, y+1); end; end; That's foraging, in a very rudimentary, darwinian kind of way. So grey goo is like some current worms that cripple the net by replicating everywhere all at once and saturating all bandwidth, except it's on the physical substrate (not nice at all!). The question with the floodfill type approach is whether all the bits of available substrate are joined up. If not, the replicator needs a way to hop from one foodstock clump to the next, which need not be too clever. For example, a nanobot without foodstock or one that detects a lack of continuing supply (ie: edge detection) could jump (crawl) in a random direction (probably "out"; if it has edge detection it might be able to determine "out" reliably. Random jumping would also be fine; only one needs to find the next stock. That jump could be a crawl, or screwwise-movement through air (is that possible) or whatever. Whatever was used, maximum range would determine the maximum distance leapfrogable between one feedstock clump and the next. Actually, if you were clever you might be able to make large groups of bots that have run out of feedstock able to use each other for energy in some distributed manner, so that a group could head out in some direction, feeding on itself and dwindling down, but enabling the last bot to reach a much larger maximum range. As to being non-threatening to the designer, that's far more difficult. I bet plenty of virus authors have killed their own systems in the process of development. I also note that people still write the things, and have been doing so, in increasing numbers, for ages. To achieve the non-threatening to self quality, you can either design it into the bots (probably pretty tough), or else seperately build shields for all the things you want to protect (probably a lot easier). Back to your point about foraging, it's probably true that the feedstock required for a nano-replicator is far more complex than that for a software worm or virus (given that the latter is in a substrate specifically designed for cost free, error free copying). But it's certainly not impossible; see current (wetware) viruses, bacteria, etc for proofs of concept. Emlyn From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 13 22:41:30 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:11:30 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE085@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > >Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > > > > >>My guess is that these two effects taken together, along with the > >>inherent increase in strengh of due to atomic-scale > precision engineering, can reduce the weight of > >>most devices by a factor of 100 (un-analyzed guess.) > Today's 1500KG SUV can be replaced by a 15KG device with the > same capabilities. > >> > >> > > > >But by then, today's 80kg human will bw replacable with a > 800g avatar, > >rendering the 15kg SUV absolute overkill. > > > > > > > Well, yes, but the 1500Kg SUV was already absolute overkill as a > personal conveyance. By the time we have an 800g avatar, we'll also > have a few other "trivial" changes. I figure an 80Kg entity > would simply > reconfigure dynamically into the appropriate vehicular form > to meet the > current need for transportation, in the rare cases where > there is a need > to actually go somewhere. Too true. This is always the fun when talking post-singularity. > > My apologies, but I did not start at the beginning of the > thread, so I > don't know the assumptions here. Neither do I. Just off on a tangent. > Are we pre-SI or post-SI? > Pre-SI makes > most MNT very difficult for me to assume. Self reconfiguring macro-scale systems based on MNT? I think you don't get there without somewhere first accidentally tripping over a singularity or two. Emlyn From CurtAdams at aol.com Thu Nov 13 23:26:40 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:26:40 EST Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <1c6.11c61d86.2ce56d30@aol.com> In a message dated 11/13/03 11:11:52, rhanson at gmu.edu writes: >On 11/13/2003, Curt Adams wrote: >>Without self-replication, I don't see any good reason that nanotechnology >>will produce effects fundamentally different from other revolutionary >techs, >>like railroads, electricity, scientific drug design or computers. > >Well each of those revolutions did produce different effects, but you might >well argue that these differences are small compared to the effect of >self-replication of programmable nano-factories. I was thinking in terms of scope and degree or reorganization. Yes, the effects were quite different in specific effects; but we're still in the wild speculation phase trying to figure out the detailed effects of nano. Self replication is obviously *potentially* a whole different kettle of fish. That's not guaranteed, though; biotech"factories" self-replicate but the design costs are so high it doesn't fundamentally change things. From CurtAdams at aol.com Thu Nov 13 23:30:03 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:30:03 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <19e.1cb7cf38.2ce56dfb@aol.com> In a message dated 11/13/03 11:32:45, eugen at leitl.org writes: >On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 12:50:09PM -0500, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > >> Because the weak force is assymetrical, one form of each mirror image >> is slightly thermodymanically more favorable. The versions in life are, >> actually, the favored ones. However, the effect is tiny - IIRC 1 part >in >> 10^21 or something like that - and nobody has a good model for how that >> could get things going. > >This effect is not observable in chemistry. It supposedly makes the material >world possible, though, by virtue of providing an excess of matter vs. >antimatter during Big Bang. Not obervable by any direct methods, certainly. The numbers I cited were based on theoretical calculations. Hypothetically, if life arose from a autocatlytic cycle, the effects could snowball. Seems like it would hard to get an effect so small to survive inevitable noise, though. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 13 23:47:07 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:47:07 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - the b word again References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <015c01c3aa40$732f1480$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Harvey wrote: > > > Kevin wrote: > > > > I am more inclined to believe that .... > > > > > > I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the > > > meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. > > > > > > - Brett > > I am not sure this is any better. To my hearing, saying "I believe > that...." sounds like a long-term assumption, such as "I thought...." To > say "I posit..." sounds like it was just made up on the spot, as in "I > guess...." I am not sure what you point is Harvey, but as I've already written what feels like about 3 books on the dangers of the word "believe" in the last week - what the hell, I'll take another go at clarifying. People who naturally use the word "believe" in their inner dialog will of course gravitate towards using it in their expressions and communications (speaking/writing) as well. And when they use it more rather than less other folks hear it more rather than less. The imprecise word meme gets propagated by use. It even picks up credibility by association with smart thought when smart folks imprudently se it. This matters and it matters profoundly because we live in democracies and in democracies everyone believers (foggy thinkers that fear what they don't understand and don't understand a lot because they are foggy thinkers) and reasoners both get one vote each. The believers are voting against increases in the rate of change in technological areas like nanotech and biotech because they fear change and most of them think the afterlife is already taken care of. I don't fear change I fear being believed to death by the majority who will not only not save themselves but will actually vote against the technologies that are my means to improve my life. Democracy is a good thing but it empowers fools to ban medicines and life saving technologies if they in the majority too. Here's a link to an online thesaurus http://thesaurus.reference.com/. I don't care what synonym(s) people use instead of the word believe I just want the "good guys" in the meme-wars to stops using the "bad guys" imprecise brain-fart propaganda. Of course the bad guys aren't *really* "bad guys" they are just dopey. But in democracies where its one vote each and the dopes can vote to ban the technologies they don't understand dopiness left unchecked can be fatal. Because dopes vote too and there are more of them. I am asking folk to not use and not encourage dopiness in democracies by removing the most harmful and prolific example of dope-speak. If you look at the synonyms for the word believe in a thesaurus you will see that some of them cluster around faith-based world views and some don't. Amongst the class that don't are swags of useful synonyms for budding good-meme warriors that have not yet liberated themselves from the dopiness of believing. If instead of using the word believe one uses a non-faith-based synonym then one will not be propagating/endorsing the believe meme and not endorsing a faith-based word view. Its not important what word is used to replace "I believe" or its variants, there are a number of words that can be used and some are better for different circumstances. It is important to stop endorsing the believing meme which dumbs down democracies whose populations can vote to ban the technologies that we are looking to use to allow ourselves to continue to live. A key thing is that as one uses the "I believe" phrase less in communication one also uses it less in one's internal dialog and one starts to think clearer. But one has to try it for a while to find out. Try it Harvey. Try it. Pick any synonym(s) for believe you like and practice using them, different ones in different circumstances (as you are right some sound better and are more precise than others in different circumstance) and watch how dopey the believers start to sound. It may actually help prolong your life. More to the point for me - it will help me save or prolong mine because in democracies dopes can vote against all the technologies I want to see develop so I don't have to die like a dope. Regards, Brett [who really hopes this is getting through to some folks as I can't hold back the water in the dam even on this list forever ] From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 13 23:52:41 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:52:41 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <038b01c3aa2f$cd50b830$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <017201c3aa41$39f109c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> R.Coyote writes: > how about: > > I assert, hold, reserve, adhere. maintain, retain, establish, affirm, attest > adjure, announce, argue, asseverate, authenticate, aver, bear out, bear > witness, certify, confirm, corroborate, countersign, declare, demonstrate, > display, exhibit, give evidence, indicate, prove, ratify, seal, show, > substantiate, support, sustain, swear, testify, uphold, verify, vouch, > warrant, witness? Thank you. I wonder if R. Coyote is any relation to the Wyle E Coyote of reknown. :-) Appreciate the help, I was getting pretty tired ;-) Regards, Brett From dgc at cox.net Thu Nov 13 23:31:18 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:31:18 -0500 Subject: Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031113092353.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> References: <200311101900.hAAJ0BM23619@tick.javien.com> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113092353.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <3FB41446.8010801@cox.net> Robin Hanson wrote: > I am struggling to clarify and identify the differing assumptions that > different people are making, and place them in economic terms to support > economic analysis. *I'M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS*, though I'm running out of > time for this round. How would you describe the differing assumptions, > making them as explicit as possible, and trying not to assume everyone > who disagree with you is an idiot? > I think that, as you said most of us start with the Basic MNT assumption that design and build to atomic precision is possible. I feel that most people assume that the contol system for a self-replicator is a solved problem. I cannot agree with this, and I think it is the crux of the issue. We need both the low-level technology of MNT, and the control system. I think we will get the control system before we get MNT, but the control system is a difficult problem to solve. Has anyone demonstrated a control system for a self-replicator in an environment of complexity equivalent to an MNT "factory?" I think not. It's a small matter of programming. Or perhaps a program for small matter. Here are my assunptions for a bootstrapped MNT technology: 1) It must be possible to create a suitable raw environment using macro-scale techniques. An example of a suitable raw environment might be a glass bottle filled with 99% pure Argon and 1% carbon dioxide with a 1 cm^2 HOPG substrate and a laser for power and control, and a continuous gas feed. 2) It must be possible to introduce a MNT assembler into the environment using macro-scale techniques. 3) It must be possible to build the first assembler "by hand" using macro-scale techniques 4) It must be possible to direct the activities of the assembler from an external control system. Items 3 and 4 are just a bit difficult :-) I'm fairly sure that we can design control system hardware entirely from parts that can be built with an assembler chain (below) using design tools and techniques that we can develop with today's tools. I am not sure that we can design the software, but if we can, then the system as a whole is self-replicating. Self-replication requires that the assembler be able to build copies of itself from CO2, and that asemblers are able to build small macro-scale assemblers and parts for still larger assemblers, forming a chain of progressivly larger assemblers. The bootstrap control system hardware can clearly be a macro-scale computer. So we are back to Drexler's argument: we only need to build one MNT assembler "by hand," and write some software. Just these two "little" problems between us and the end of the world as we know it. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 00:20:11 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:20:11 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism References: <20031113223342.2359.qmail@web80401.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <017a01c3aa45$1121d0c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Adrian Tymes writes: > --- Bill Hibbard wrote: > > Very good point. But rather than hypothetical > > quotes, > > how about the real thing: > > > > http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message9.txt > > > > and: > > > > http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message10.txt > > Umm...you missed my point. It's not that we should > necessarily believe in them to make wise decisions > right now. It's that they believe in themselves to > make wise decisions when the time comes - and if they > believe we are aiming to impose our will upon them, to > deny them any say in the matter in the future, that is > what often causes them to act against us in the > present. > > Besides, the majority of presently living human beings > have opted against immediate suicide. (Yeah, yeah, > they're still aging - but I'm talking about within the > next few hours or so.) We can trust their senses of > self-preservation to act similarly in the future. We can if they don't use the democratic processes of government to place us as well as them in a fatal technological- go-slow through passing legislation that prohibits all the things they fear. Therapeutic cloning, GMO's, GEing, and possibly even MNT. My concern is that I and others may produce all the business plans for born globals we like, we can educate ourselves as much as we want but we can't get away from the need to actually persuade others in fairly large numbers not to ban what they don't understand. As in the end its not just shareholders and investors one has to keep happy, mostly these have a five year or less horizon anyway, but its also the folk that have final veto - the ordinary voters. - This is the basis for my fixation on heading off the believe meme - on this list first. If the believing can't be stopped here where folks are smart, educated and already sold on the benefits of technology what hope is there of stopping ordinary voters from believing themselves to death and us along with them by banning and thwarting the means of doing the important basic science. One case in point is SCNT-for- understanding basic developmental human biology. This may not have immediate commercial applications so its not an obvious source of private VC funding but the insights that would be revealed for applied science and technology by exploring that space would be very significant. It is almost certainly true that it is impossible to stop good technology from emerging but it is definately possible to slow down its emergence considerably because the laws of a country are very significant macro-economic factors that shape the business environment one has to operate in. Bio-entrepreneurs have to think global or they risk getting blindsided and they can't afford not to factor in the political considerations as they influence the field of play and planning more than just about anything else. Regards, Brett From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Nov 14 00:27:31 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:27:31 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism References: <20031113223342.2359.qmail@web80401.mail.yahoo.com> <017a01c3aa45$1121d0c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <022401c3aa46$1b508400$539c4a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 6:20 PM > what hope is there of stopping > ordinary voters from believing themselves to death and us > along with them by banning and thwarting the means of doing > the important basic science. I grimly await the day some holy Bible coder spills his terrible discovery that NANO is ONAN backwards. Uh-oh, now what have I done? Damien Broderick [but then LIVE is EVIL backwards, too, so it's really a point in our favor] From dgc at cox.net Fri Nov 14 00:12:25 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 19:12:25 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> Robin Hanson wrote: > On 11/12/2003, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > >> In 1996l, on this list, I asserted that the singularity would >> occur prior to 2006. I had no viable reason for >> that asertion. I still have no viable reason for that assertion. > > > To be clear, are you still making that assertion? Yes, but I'm feeling pretty shakey about it. I also asserted to Damien (who quoted me in the original Auatralian version of "The Spike") That any such assertion is invalid more than about a year in advance, because the real evidence is tenuous. If you recall our discussins back in 1996, my premise is that the singularity will be a phase change in a supercritical technological substrate, analogous to the instantaneous freezing of supercooled water when it is shocked. This hypothesis here is that an SI will include a very large co-operating computer system running newly-developed software that can improve itswelf. With sufficient available computer resources, such a system should very rapidly improve its ability to improve itself. More available computing power translates to a higher liklihood that the "net" is supercritical. Since 1996, we've seen the an increase in available computing power of perhaps 10,000 to 100,000, depending on how you count. We've also seen the emergence of Beowulf clusters, SETI at home, grid computing, and Google. All of these techniques add to the toolbox and open new avenues that might let soem clever programmer make the breakthrough. The difference between my hypothesis and Elizier's "friendly AI" is that my hypothesis does not specify the nature of the self-improving system. His friendly AI is an instance of a class, but any member of the class results in the SI. My hypothesis is that the mroe "supercritical" the system is, the simpler the seed can be. Eventually, the power on the "net" will be so large that a trivial assembly of programs and people will suffice. Will this happen by 2006? Well, "I still have no viable justification for this assertion." Sorry for the weasel wordsa. As you see, I'm mostly holding this position for old time's sake. From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Fri Nov 14 00:30:48 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:00:48 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08A@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Hey Brett, here's your replicator (admittedly dependent on external cellular machinery) built by people from scratch: Virus Genome Built from Scratch http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-11-13-5 Researchers have built the genome of a tiny virus from scratch in a feat they say will improve the speed and accuracy of constructing synthetic organisms. Emlyn From dgc at cox.net Fri Nov 14 00:15:57 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 19:15:57 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: References: <000001c3aa02$dfee9fc0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <3FB41EBD.4040709@cox.net> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: >You know, there was a recent study that shows that taller people earn a >higher income on average. Maybe that's where it all started! I'm short, so >no wonder I am broke. I hold a valuable stake in thei hypothesis. I'll work >on proving it. :-) > > > OK, Emperor Napoleon! From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 14 00:53:17 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:53:17 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <038b01c3aa2f$cd50b830$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: OK. How about: After a generous amount of personal research, I have come to the conclusion that there were more factors involved than researchers will ever be able to find evidence for. Is that a bit better? ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 3:47 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > how about: > > I assert, hold, reserve, adhere. maintain, retain, establish, affirm, attest > adjure, announce, argue, asseverate, authenticate, aver, bear out, bear > witness, certify, confirm, corroborate, countersign, declare, demonstrate, > display, exhibit, give evidence, indicate, prove, ratify, seal, show, > substantiate, support, sustain, swear, testify, uphold, verify, vouch, > warrant, witness? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Harvey Newstrom" > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 12:50 PM > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > > > > Kevin wrote: > > > > > I am more inclined to believe that .... > > > > > > > > I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the > > > > meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. > > > > > > > > - Brett > > > > I am not sure this is any better. To my hearing, saying "I believe > > that...." sounds like a long-term assumption, such as "I thought...." To > > say "I posit..." sounds like it was just made up on the spot, as in "I > > guess...." > > > > -- > > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec > Manager, > > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 14 00:56:21 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:56:21 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - the b wordagain References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <015c01c3aa40$732f1480$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: "Democracy is a good thing but it empowers fools to ban medicines and life saving technologies if they in the majority too. " This is an excellent statement. Can I quote you on a T-shirt? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 5:47 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - the b wordagain > Harvey wrote: > > > > > Kevin wrote: > > > > > I am more inclined to believe that .... > > > > > > > > I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the > > > > meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. > > > > > > > > - Brett > > > > I am not sure this is any better. To my hearing, saying "I believe > > that...." sounds like a long-term assumption, such as "I thought...." To > > say "I posit..." sounds like it was just made up on the spot, as in "I > > guess...." > > I am not sure what you point is Harvey, but as I've already written > what feels like about 3 books on the dangers of the word "believe" > in the last week - what the hell, I'll take another go at clarifying. > > People who naturally use the word "believe" in their inner dialog > will of course gravitate towards using it in their expressions and > communications (speaking/writing) as well. And when they use it > more rather than less other folks hear it more rather than less. The > imprecise word meme gets propagated by use. It even picks up > credibility by association with smart thought when smart folks > imprudently se it. > > This matters and it matters profoundly because we live in democracies > and in democracies everyone believers (foggy thinkers that fear what > they don't understand and don't understand a lot because they are > foggy thinkers) and reasoners both get one vote each. The believers > are voting against increases in the rate of change in technological areas > like nanotech and biotech because they fear change and most of them > think the afterlife is already taken care of. I don't fear change I fear > being believed to death by the majority who will not only not save > themselves but will actually vote against the technologies that are my > means to improve my life. Democracy is a good thing but it empowers > fools to ban medicines and life saving technologies if they in the majority > too. > > Here's a link to an online thesaurus http://thesaurus.reference.com/. > > I don't care what synonym(s) people use instead of the word believe > I just want the "good guys" in the meme-wars to stops using the > "bad guys" imprecise brain-fart propaganda. Of course the bad > guys aren't *really* "bad guys" they are just dopey. But in > democracies where its one vote each and the dopes can vote to > ban the technologies they don't understand dopiness left unchecked > can be fatal. Because dopes vote too and there are more of them. > I am asking folk to not use and not encourage dopiness in > democracies by removing the most harmful and prolific example > of dope-speak. > > If you look at the synonyms for the word believe in a thesaurus > you will see that some of them cluster around faith-based world > views and some don't. Amongst the class that don't are swags of > useful synonyms for budding good-meme warriors that have > not yet liberated themselves from the dopiness of believing. If > instead of using the word believe one uses a non-faith-based > synonym then one will not be propagating/endorsing the believe > meme and not endorsing a faith-based word view. > > Its not important what word is used to replace "I believe" or its > variants, there are a number of words that can be used and some > are better for different circumstances. It is important to stop > endorsing the believing meme which dumbs down democracies > whose populations can vote to ban the technologies that we are > looking to use to allow ourselves to continue to live. > > A key thing is that as one uses the "I believe" phrase less in > communication one also uses it less in one's internal dialog > and one starts to think clearer. But one has to try it for a while > to find out. Try it Harvey. Try it. Pick any synonym(s) for believe > you like and practice using them, different ones in different > circumstances (as you are right some sound better and are more > precise than others in different circumstance) and watch how > dopey the believers start to sound. It may actually help prolong > your life. More to the point for me - it will help me save or > prolong mine because in democracies dopes can vote against > all the technologies I want to see develop so I don't have to die > like a dope. > > Regards, > Brett > > [who really hopes this is getting through to some folks > as I can't hold back the water in the dam even on this list > forever ] > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 14 00:59:04 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:59:04 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT><038b01c3aa2f$cd50b830$0200a8c0@etheric> <017201c3aa41$39f109c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: Was this from a thesaurus? I could hardly use the word "countersign" here. :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 5:52 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > R.Coyote writes: > > > how about: > > > > I assert, hold, reserve, adhere. maintain, retain, establish, affirm, > attest > > adjure, announce, argue, asseverate, authenticate, aver, bear out, bear > > witness, certify, confirm, corroborate, countersign, declare, demonstrate, > > display, exhibit, give evidence, indicate, prove, ratify, seal, show, > > substantiate, support, sustain, swear, testify, uphold, verify, vouch, > > warrant, witness? > > Thank you. I wonder if R. Coyote is any relation to the Wyle E Coyote > of reknown. :-) > > Appreciate the help, I was getting pretty tired ;-) > > Regards, > Brett > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 01:09:26 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:09:26 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? References: <200311121209.hACC95M29747@tick.javien.com> <3FB2D48E.788C27A9@best.com> <007f01c3a982$1359ca00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <20031113102215.GA922@leitl.org> Message-ID: <01c301c3aa4b$f2c56e00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eugen Lietl wrote: > >Brett Paatsch wrote: > > Hmm. Maybe I am overlooking the bleeding obvious > > but I can't think of a single fully self-replicating > > computer program - one that does not require > > impute from outside itself to kick off the duplication. > > I do not understand what you're getting at. Sorry I wasn't clear.. I elaborated a bit more in my reply to Emlyn. I was doing two things and so did neither well. First I was not doing heavy thinking at all just sort of musing, so my chances of error are higher. Second, I am wary of the term self-replicating. I don't think its wrong necessarily but I don't think its as intuitively obvious as most folks seem to think it is. I've got a bit of a word fixation at present that seems to have come to me as a result of watching a lot of political discourse. I think that some large nuggets of truth may be staying hidden or have been passed over by the general tendency of people to speak and thus think loosely. When I see words like self in self-replicating I know that there are substantive discussions taking place as to what "self" maps to cognitively even in people. The pattern-identity question is not satisfactorily resolved yet for me. I don't accept that I can be reduced down to what others see as my pattern-identity. I can for them of course. But they are not mapping my "self:" they are, rather, mapping one of their "others". Just because others are happy with the accuracy and veracity of their model of them and of me doesn't mean I am. Or that the model is identical rather than merely equivalent to the real thing. If self isn't a simple or clear concept philosophically then - "self"-replication may be a messy thing for engineers to be trying to produce in their designs. > (will need > Java to run), > being an near-optimal supportive context. Corewars is only > marginally less supportive, and many real systems can be hit > by pathogens fitting inside a single packet > (404 Bytes UDP packet): > http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/sapphire/ Thanks for the links > Self-replication in physical reality is harder (viroids and > viruses use other, more complex self-replicators as substrates), > but some extremophiles have very small genomes and > overall complexity. > > Similiarly, artificial self-replication is far easier in artificial, > very rich environments offering optimal support. A successful > grey goo weapon is considerably harder to design. I found I started to design one (high level only of course) in my reply to Emlyn and stopped typing it as it seemed imprudent to just barff than stuff out and post it to a public list. My interest in the self-replication concept with respect to nanotech was/is a political interest. I thought that if it could be shown that there was no class of "self-replicating" device that could be made that would be both interesting to-a-designer (even say a terrorist designer) and really autonomous (not needing further instructions from outside) then I might be able to do an end-run around the whole grey-goo political concern by showing it to be not just hard but logically impossible. I don't think I can do that end-run today. I doubt I will be able to do it tomorrow either :-) Hence my reluctance to wax philosophical with an engineering bent into how to design nano- machines for war. It seems imprudent to propagate how-to instructions for the making of weapons or poisons until one has a *very* good antidote. Maybe. I think I'd rather test myself against someone else's "aggressive" weapon design then put my mind to the engineering problem of making and discussing a better weapon myself. - Until I can find a way of doing a logical end-run around the whole grey-goo scenario. Sorry if that's clear as mud. Regards, Brett From dgc at cox.net Fri Nov 14 01:00:35 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:00:35 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] SCO vs IBM In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031112123216.018210b8@mail.earthlink.net> References: <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <5.1.0.14.2.20031112123216.018210b8@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3FB42933.3060603@cox.net> Is anyone here following the SCO vs IBM case? http://www.groklaw.net If this has been declared to be off-topic, I apologize. I'm spending WAY too much time watching this case. From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Nov 14 01:23:36 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 19:23:36 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? References: <200311121209.hACC95M29747@tick.javien.com><3FB2D48E.788C27A9@best.com><007f01c3a982$1359ca00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><20031113102215.GA922@leitl.org> <01c301c3aa4b$f2c56e00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <028f01c3aa4d$eec1fc40$539c4a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:09 PM > > When I see words like self in self-replicating I know that there > are substantive discussions taking place as to what "self" maps > to cognitively even in people. The pattern-identity question is > not satisfactorily resolved yet for me. No need to get into all this anxious twistiness. To shift away from computer programs and get more ambitious: A self-replicating assembler just uses the design mapped decades ago by von Neumann. A little replicator factory swims in a soup of raw materials. It contains a partioned component with an exact plan for its own construction, which guides the factory to build a copy of itself (including the plan) in the workspace and then release the copy into the amnion, where the copy does the same thing, until some termination code stops all the sea from being turned into salt or madly whisking broomsticks. Damien Broderick From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 01:39:23 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:39:23 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - the b wordagain References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <015c01c3aa40$732f1480$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <01ff01c3aa50$21bc4cc0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Kevin wrote: > "Democracy is a good thing but it empowers fools to ban > medicines and life saving technologies if they in the majority > too. " > This is an excellent statement. Can I quote you on a T-shirt? Sure, you can reproduce anything you like or that is useful to you so long as you DON'T attribute it to me. I don't want to be a dead sound-bite I want to be effective and alive. I *like* that you like it though - don't get me wrong ;-) Cheers, Brett From jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com Fri Nov 14 01:34:12 2003 From: jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com (Jose Cordeiro) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 17:34:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: <022401c3aa46$1b508400$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <20031114013412.84420.qmail@web41313.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Damien and other Extropian friends, Such language "niceties" are in English. They don't mean anything in Spanish or other major languages:-) But we could certainly find other horrible backward Arabic names in the Quran or Hindi criticisms in the Hindu scriptures... and so on and so forth... Extropianilly yours, La vie est belle! Yos? Damien Broderick wrote: ----- Original Message ----- I grimly await the day some holy Bible coder spills his terrible discovery that NANO is ONAN backwards. Uh-oh, now what have I done? Damien Broderick [but then LIVE is EVIL backwards, too, so it's really a point in our favor] La vie est belle! Yos? (www.cordeiro.org) Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 01:46:55 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:46:55 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <038b01c3aa2f$cd50b830$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <021101c3aa51$2f1230a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Kevin wrote: > OK. How about: > After a generous amount of personal research, I have come > to the conclusion that there were more factors involved than > researchers will ever be able to find evidence for. > > Is that a bit better? Yep. A bit more work on the length and your ready to run for political office. - When, alas, your minders may tell you to speak confidently and use the word believe a lot because now that *you* are the one in power (*the authority*) it will be interpreted as meaning that you've read the reports that your advisers gave you rather than that you just made a major decision on raw prejudice. Regards, Brett From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Fri Nov 14 01:42:33 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:12:33 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08B@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > It seems imprudent to propagate how-to instructions for the > making of weapons or poisons until one has a *very* good > antidote. Maybe. > > I think I'd rather test myself against someone else's "aggressive" > weapon design then put my mind to the engineering problem of > making and discussing a better weapon myself. - Until I can find > a way of doing a logical end-run around the whole grey-goo > scenario. > > Sorry if that's clear as mud. > > Regards, > Brett It's clear, but I don't think it's valid. The only way to anticipate the threats is to know what they are, so public dissemination of that info is very useful. You are not actually broadcasting weapon making instructions, only potential future weapon making instructions, and vague at that... it's quite a ways off yet. So for now it is safe enough to talk about. Later, it gets scary, but if we've been thinking hard, discussing the problems, examples, etc, we should have the design for antidotes and safeguards well before it's actually possible to build the weapons. So by the time the tech turns up, we are prepared. OTOH, if we keep it quiet, the tech will turn up eventually, and someone *will* figure out how to make the weapons. The antidotes, however, which are probably harder, may not turn up in time. So I say, blab on! Emlyn From etheric at comcast.net Fri Nov 14 02:07:50 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:07:50 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - theb wordagain References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT><015c01c3aa40$732f1480$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <01ff01c3aa50$21bc4cc0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <045901c3aa54$1b627d00$0200a8c0@etheric> I'm no expert (in anything) but the trick with Democracy is in a constitutional foundation where certain rights are presumed inalienable, for the purposes of protecting the minority from mob rule. We are a bit astray from this idea in the USA ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 5:39 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - theb wordagain > Kevin wrote: > > > "Democracy is a good thing but it empowers fools to ban > > medicines and life saving technologies if they in the majority > > too. " > > This is an excellent statement. Can I quote you on a T-shirt? > > Sure, you can reproduce anything you like or that is useful to you > so long as you DON'T attribute it to me. > > I don't want to be a dead sound-bite I want to be effective and > alive. > > I *like* that you like it though - don't get me wrong ;-) > > Cheers, > Brett > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 02:28:57 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:28:57 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Creativity and closed labs - was Self replicating computer programs ? References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08B@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <024101c3aa57$0e46bf20$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Emlyn wrote: [Brett] > > It seems imprudent to propagate how-to instructions for the > > making of weapons or poisons until one has a *very* good > > antidote. Maybe. > > > > I think I'd rather test myself against someone else's "aggressive" > > weapon design then put my mind to the engineering problem of > > making and discussing a better weapon myself. - Until I can > > find a way of doing a logical end-run around the whole grey-goo > > scenario. > > > > Sorry if that's clear as mud. > It's clear, but I don't think it's valid. The only way to anticipate > the threats is to know what they are, so public dissemination of > that info is very useful. You are not actually broadcasting weapon > making instructions, only potential future weapon making > instructions, and vague at that... it's quite a ways off yet. So for > now it is safe enough to talk about. > > Later, it gets scary, but if we've been thinking hard, discussing > the problems, examples, etc, we should have the design for > antidotes and safeguards well before it's actually possible to > build the weapons. So by the time the tech turns up, we are > prepared. > > OTOH, if we keep it quiet, the tech will turn up eventually, > and someone *will* figure out how to make the weapons. > The antidotes, however, which are probably harder, may not > turn up in time. > > So I say, blab on! I'd be interested in others views on this. It would be real nice not to have to engineer in secret for fear of empowering the wrong folk but I am not sure that it is in fact as 'safe'? as you think. If one read's Peter Singhs Code book (perhaps you have) one can get a pretty clear impression on how folks working within government agencies have access (at least theoretically) to all the stuff that is the public domain but the public doesn't have access to the stuff in the closed labs. There are secret patents. Government closed labs can be very well funded. I think that RSA encryption among a number of other technologies was actually produced first by boffins in closed labs that could not talk about it. The principle rather than the actual instance though is what concerns me. Perhaps not only me - try communicating with Eugen ;-) Against the idea that technology (particularly weapons and security related technology) is likely to be more advanced in some government closed labs is the counterpoint that people are extraordinarily bad at keeping secrets. Yet, folk can set up networks of terrorist cells - the IRA model (or my crude understanding of it comes to mind) that work. Hussein is not obviously dead, neither is Bin Laden. With technology though I am not sure that the bureaucrats (spook bosses etc) are necessarily across the technologies that their in-house techos are developing to be able to control them. The Cambridge spies, I think, were one example of trusted inner circle folk with deep convictions (they preferred communism) attaining power and providing the specs for nuclear weaponry to the Russians. So secrets even or perhaps especially technological ones do get spilled sometimes. Yet - That the enigma machine was cracked and was not leaked. Cryptonomicon by Neil Stevenson is a good book. My point? I am not sure exactly where the optimal boundaries are in disclosing ones creativity. I have seen plenty of instances where stupid bosses were able to milk the inventiveness of brighter staff members that did not have their bosses political savvy. I don't know what the chances of the Exi list being watched with real interest AND understanding is, but I doubt that it is infinitesimal. Heck I'm watching it and I've got considerably less resources than a government ;-) Regards, Brett [feeling this conversation has a deja vu quality even at the outset] From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 14 04:09:52 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:09:52 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess again In-Reply-To: <000001c3a68b$382d3e60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <005601c3aa65$27b1fa20$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Woohoooo! Fritz spanked Kasparov today! You GO software! I am in awe of this achievement. Score so far 0.5-1.5 in favor of Fritz. {8-] spike From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 14 04:25:36 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:25:36 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <002701c3aa02$74a65460$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <005f01c3aa67$5a2d56a0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Ja I was a few days behind on my email from a business trip. Now I might hafta go again next week. {8-[ Guess I need to read everything before I post anything. {8-] When I heard as a child that water always swirled the same way down the drain, I tried it and found you can make it turn either way. Im also suspicious of the notion that tornados turn the same way in each hemisphere. Those of you who live near a hot desert may have seen dust devils. They tend to appear in pairs, for some strange reason. Question: do they spin the same way, or counter-rotate? spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Harvey Newstrom > Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 8:23 AM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > Spike wrote, > > http://www.tafkac.org/faq2k/science_3.html > > Eugen Leitl already posted that link in this thread. I > acknowledged that I > was fooled by this scientific urban legend. I always thought > that this > force explained which way water rotated as it went down the drain. > > -- > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified > InfoSec Manager, > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 14 04:29:27 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:29:27 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <006001c3aa67$e3edc5f0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> I need to write a script that automatically goes thru my outgoing posts to extropians and replaces "I believe" with "I think" or "I reckon". {8-] spike > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > lol. I actually went through the message before I sent it and > removed such > words. Obviously I missed one! > > > > I am more inclined to believe that .... > > > > I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the > > meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. > > > > - Brett > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From mbb386 at main.nc.us Fri Nov 14 04:34:55 2003 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:34:55 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - the b word again In-Reply-To: <015c01c3aa40$732f1480$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <008701c3aa27$ced94da0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <015c01c3aa40$732f1480$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: I am listening more to what I say WRT the words "believe" and "belief". Thank you for pointing out this meme, I'd not considered it. In the past I've worked to avoid saying "I feel" when I really meant "I think". Regards, MB On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Brett Paatsch wrote: > > [who really hopes this is getting through to some folks > as I can't hold back the water in the dam even on this list > forever ] > > From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 14 04:40:30 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:40:30 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: <022401c3aa46$1b508400$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <006101c3aa69$6ef31be0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > I grimly await the day some holy Bible coder spills his > terrible discovery that NANO is ONAN backwards. > > Uh-oh, now what have I done? > > Damien Broderick Damien that was hilarious, but wasted I fear, upon the extropians. They aren't going to grok that one, not one in ten of em. {8^D spike From twodeel at jornada.org Fri Nov 14 04:55:58 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:55:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: <006101c3aa69$6ef31be0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > > I grimly await the day some holy Bible coder spills his terrible > > discovery that NANO is ONAN backwards. > > Damien that was hilarious, but wasted I fear, upon the extropians. > They aren't going to grok that one, not one in ten of em. Is Onan really that obscure a word? Surely most people have heard of "the sin of Onan" at the very least. From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 14 05:23:33 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 21:23:33 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <000001c3aa02$dfee9fc0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000001c3aa6f$732237e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> ... > Could be something as simple as walking upright > offered a mating advantage... spike To expand on this thought just a bit, I might conjecture about two muscle systems in the human body that appear out of scale: the gluteus maximus and the pectorals. What I mean by this is that those two muscle systems forming the upper chest and rear, seem oversized for what they are required to do, from a mechanical point of view. Yet both may have mating advantages, for they make the human with large pecs and fanny appear more attractive to potential mates, both in clothing and out. Consider the pecs and their task, to adduce the arm. If I recall from my high school anatomy, the chest muscles are actually a set of muscles. The back has a similar arrangement, but these are in general smaller and weaker than the pecs. Yet their task, from a mechanical point of view should require about the same amount of force. All else being equal, one might expect the opposing muscle systems to be approximately equal in size and power, yet in humans they are clearly out of balance. Conclusion: humans have exaggerated pecs, not because we need them for any real survival advantage, but rather we evolved them because they look good. Same or perhaps moreso with butts, since the selection effect works in both genders. We all like protruding fannies. These too, one could argue, are larger and stronger than they need to be. Consider when you run or walk a very long distance, especially with a load or backpack. Your leg muscles may get very sore, but your butt muscles almost *never* do. Do they? Mine don't. You almost need to devise some oddball exercise machine to even challenge those powerful muscles to any real degree. Of course, such exercise devices have come into existence, specifically for that reason, again primarily to attract potential mates. It is conceivable that exaggerated glutes may not only be physically attractive but may also be an asset during the actual mating process itself. My speculation then is that pre-upright walking protohumans began to mate-select for larger stronger buns, which were then nicely pre-adapted for the transition to upright walking. This nicely solves the puzzle of what survival advantage was conferred by upright walking: there may be none. We are erect because of sex. spike From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 06:14:03 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:14:03 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <006001c3aa67$e3edc5f0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <005601c3aa76$807c52c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> I'm working on a tablet to intercept things at the source Spike. There's problems with the prototype. It's externally administered and contains too much (100%) lead ;-) Brett [definitely joking] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 3:29 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > I need to write a script that automatically goes > thru my outgoing posts to extropians and replaces > "I believe" with "I think" or "I reckon". > > {8-] spike > > > > To: ExI chat list > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > > > > lol. I actually went through the message before I sent it and > > removed such > > words. Obviously I missed one! > > > > > > > I am more inclined to believe that .... > > > > > > I know. Your language gives that away. Resist, resist. Keep the > > > meme-pool clean. Try inclining to posit. > > > > > > - Brett > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 14 06:21:50 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 22:21:50 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] how now, brown green? In-Reply-To: <3FB3DF6E.29D3B35F@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <000001c3aa77$9735c720$6501a8c0@SHELLY> What are we to do when endangered birds are devouring endangered fish? http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/11/13/germany.bird.fish.reut/index. html spike From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 07:00:34 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 18:00:34 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism References: Message-ID: <009801c3aa7c$fffad0c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Don Dartfield wrote: > On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > > > > I grimly await the day some holy Bible coder spills his > >> terrible discovery that NANO is ONAN backwards. > > > > Damien that was hilarious, but wasted I fear, upon the > > extropians. They aren't going to grok that one, not one in > > ten of em. > > Is Onan really that obscure a word? Surely most people have > heard of "the sin of Onan" at the very least. http://www.libidomag.com/reviews/professionals/selfpleasure.html This line struck me as funny for some reason. "Good orgasms, whether alone or with a partner (sic), provide a sense of well-being and personal autonomy." Brett From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Nov 14 07:25:40 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 01:25:40 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin References: <009801c3aa7c$fffad0c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> > > Is Onan really that obscure a word? Surely most people have > > heard of "the sin of Onan" at the very least. > > http://www.libidomag.com/reviews/professionals/selfpleasure.html Without looking beyond the suffix of that url, I can tell that it's about masturbation--which is exactly NOT what God struck Onan dead for doing. Onan was killed by Yahveh for withdrawing `prematurely' and `spilling his seed upon the ground'. But wait, there's more. The naughty man wasn't punished fatally just for coitus interruptus, but due to his *motive* for withdrawing. Onan's strict religious duty was to have sex with his dead brother's widow and get her pregnant. Without marrying her, as I recall. It was his dynastic duty. Onan was deeply pissed off at this, not because he was some sort of puritan averse to screwing his brother's widow (no, he was surely a religious kind of guy, like the other fundamentalists today who like to quote this verse, and the sensitive ones about killing faggots and like that). What he chafed at was the prospect that any child of this dutiful fuck would bear his brother's name, and not his own. So that's why God hated Onan and killed him (as He had every right to do, after all). Not for wanking. Not for coitus interruptus. Certainly not for screwing his brother's wife, which is what he was *expected* to do. Bet they didn't tell you that in Sunday School or the Yeshiva. Well, maybe in Utah. Damien Broderick From twodeel at jornada.org Fri Nov 14 07:35:01 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:35:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin In-Reply-To: <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Damien Broderick wrote: > > http://www.libidomag.com/reviews/professionals/selfpleasure.html > > Without looking beyond the suffix of that url, I can tell that it's > about masturbation--which is exactly NOT what God struck Onan dead for > doing. I'd like to clarify that I believe ( ... I meant think!) that anybody with more than a passing familiarity with the story knows that Onan's sin wasn't really masturbation. But people still think that's what it refers to, and the word "onanism" has become a synonym for masturbation, and that's probably where most people have heard of Onan -- in the phrase "the sin of Onan." From nanogirl at halcyon.com Fri Nov 14 07:37:23 2003 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:37:23 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <005f01c3aa67$5a2d56a0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <001601c3aa82$24c13ca0$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> Look at the bottom of this article, under "Interesting Facts" http://www.videoweather.com/weatherquestions/What_causes_tornadoes.htm Gina` ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 8:25 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > Ja I was a few days behind on my email from > a business trip. Now I might hafta go again > next week. {8-[ Guess I need to read > everything before I post anything. {8-] > > When I heard as a child that water always swirled > the same way down the drain, I tried it and found > you can make it turn either way. Im also > suspicious of the notion that tornados turn > the same way in each hemisphere. Those of > you who live near a hot desert may have > seen dust devils. They tend to appear in > pairs, for some strange reason. Question: > do they spin the same way, or counter-rotate? > > spike > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > > Harvey Newstrom > > Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 8:23 AM > > To: 'ExI chat list' > > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > > > > > > Spike wrote, > > > http://www.tafkac.org/faq2k/science_3.html > > > > Eugen Leitl already posted that link in this thread. I > > acknowledged that I > > was fooled by this scientific urban legend. I always thought > > that this > > force explained which way water rotated as it went down the drain. > > > > -- > > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified > > InfoSec Manager, > > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 14 07:50:56 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 02:50:56 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - the b wordagain In-Reply-To: <015c01c3aa40$732f1480$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <005401c3aa84$0cc555d0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Brett Paatsch wrote, > I am not sure what you point is Harvey, but as I've already > written what feels like about 3 books on the dangers of the > word "believe" in the last week - what the hell, I'll take > another go at clarifying. Actually, your expansions at length on this concept are not helping me. I must have missed the very first point on which this is all based. I assume it is something simple such as, "the word 'believe' implies a faith-based assumption on which we shouldn't rely" or something like that. Is that your point, that the word belief allows people to refer to unreliable data as if it were true? Whatever your reason, I believe that any word can be misused in the exact same way. Witness "Creation Science" trying to redefine a certain faith-based belief as "science." I expect any word you use to replace "belief" will get adopted in the same way by all true believers who think their thoughts deserve the stronger word. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 14 07:51:14 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 02:51:14 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <038b01c3aa2f$cd50b830$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <005501c3aa84$17f987a0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> R.Coyote wrote, > how about: > > I assert, hold, reserve, adhere. maintain, retain, establish, affirm, > attest adjure, announce, argue, asseverate, authenticate, aver, bear > out, bear witness, certify, confirm, corroborate, countersign, > declare, demonstrate, display, exhibit, give evidence, indicate, > prove, ratify, seal, show, substantiate, support, sustain, swear, > testify, uphold, verify, vouch, warrant, witness? Most, if not all, of these words fail to convey a belief. A belief is what is inside someone's head. It means "I think..." It does not have to be connected to any of the other actions you describe above. It may be true that the above action may be more useful or stronger in a debate, but they are not the same thing. Sometimes, when a person says "I believe...", that is exactly what they mean. The word has a clear, precise meaning that is not the same as these other words. The only acceptable replacement I have found so far is "I think...." I will concede that saying "I think...." sounds better than "I believe...." to non-religious people. But I can think of no scientific argument why my "thoughts" deserve a different word than someone else's "beliefs" other than sheer arrogance that my conclusions are a totally different order of knowledge than theirs. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 14 07:51:21 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 02:51:21 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <005601c3aa84$1bc3d610$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote, > OK. How about: > After a generous amount of personal research, I have come to the > conclusion that there were more factors involved than researchers will > ever be able to find evidence for. This is a lot more specific than merely saying "I believe". What you just said would be great if you actually did all that stuff. However, I doubt that you actually have done generous amounts of personal research leading to your conclusion that the above statement is the answer. I think you just thought about it without any additional resources, and came to this conclusion all by yourself. In other words, you BELIEVE that the above statement is better. Why not just use the word? -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From sentience at pobox.com Fri Nov 14 08:08:23 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 03:08:23 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <003501c3aa0d$28cfa720$93fe4d0c@hal2001> References: <20031113153946.743F139AB@sitemail.everyone.net> <003501c3aa0d$28cfa720$93fe4d0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <3FB48D77.1080701@pobox.com> John K Clark wrote: > One would have thought that the handedness of the molecules of life was just > a 50 50 luck of the draw, once one got in a slight excess a standard was set > and there was no reason to change; but there may be more to it than that. > Amino acids have been found in meteorites and they have the same handedness > as life too. Most non biological chemical processes produce an equal amount > of right and left, however if it is exposed to powerful clockwise polarized > microwaves it produced only right-handed sugars and left-handed amino-acids, > exactly what we see on Earth and in meteorites. Interestingly there is a > portion of the Orion Nebula that produces copious amounts of just this sort > of radiation; there may be a connection, if so the handedness of these > molecules may not be exactly universal but is the most common form in this > part of the galaxy. Does this mean that if we encounter spacefaring aliens, we can still eat them? -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From maxm at mail.tele.dk Fri Nov 14 08:16:43 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:16:43 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin In-Reply-To: <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> References: <009801c3aa7c$fffad0c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <3FB48F6B.9090704@mail.tele.dk> Damien Broderick wrote: >>http://www.libidomag.com/reviews/professionals/selfpleasure.html > > Without looking beyond the suffix of that url, I can tell that it's about > masturbation--which is exactly NOT what God struck Onan dead for doing. > > Onan was killed by Yahveh for withdrawing `prematurely' and `spilling his > seed upon the ground'. I would intepret it the way that he was killed for defying Gods wish. Not for what he actully did, but for why he didi it. But than again i'm not religious, so I might interpret a lot of things different. Funny thing is that I had no idea where the danish words "onani" and "onanere" came from. Guess I do now... regards Max M Rasmussen ########## From: http://www.goodmorals.org/sterile.html The Bible refers to the deed as the sin of Onan. Onan was the son of Judah and Shuah. Genesis 38:4. The Lord slew Onan's brother for wickedness. Judah told Onan to marry his brother's wife "and raise up seed to thy brother." Genesis 38:8. But Onan did not want to have children by his brother?s wife. "And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother?s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother." Genesis 38:9. This misdeed displeased the Lord; "wherefore he slew him also." Genesis 38:9-10. From sentience at pobox.com Fri Nov 14 08:22:26 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 03:22:26 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin In-Reply-To: <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> References: <009801c3aa7c$fffad0c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <3FB490C2.4010104@pobox.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > > Onan's strict religious duty was to have sex with his dead brother's widow > and get her pregnant. Without marrying her, as I recall. It was his dynastic > duty. Onan was deeply pissed off at this, not because he was some sort of > puritan averse to screwing his brother's widow (no, he was surely a > religious kind of guy, like the other fundamentalists today who like to > quote this verse, and the sensitive ones about killing faggots and like > that). What he chafed at was the prospect that any child of this dutiful > fuck would bear his brother's name, and not his own. > > So that's why God hated Onan and killed him (as He had every right to do, > after all). Not for wanking. Not for coitus interruptus. Certainly not for > screwing his brother's wife, which is what he was *expected* to do. > > Bet they didn't tell you that in Sunday School or the Yeshiva. Well, maybe > in Utah. Actually, Damien, they do tell you that in the Yeshiva. Google levirate+halacha or onan+halacha. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 14 08:35:46 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 03:35:46 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin In-Reply-To: <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <006801c3aa8a$53279e60$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Damien Broderick wrote, > > http://www.libidomag.com/reviews/professionals/selfpleasure.html > > Without looking beyond the suffix of that url, I can tell > that it's about masturbation--which is exactly NOT what God > struck Onan dead for doing. I think you are splitting hairs. Specifically, Onan spilled his seed in such a way to avoid reproducing as God commanded. This is the sin of Onan. The Christian faith usually holds that God commanded all mankind to go be fruitful and reproduce, and that this is recorded in Scripture as a command to all of us. Thus, any spilling of seed that does not result in an attempt to reproduce is the sin of Onan. > this verse, and the sensitive ones about killing faggots and like that Reproduction was a primary requirement of the early Judeo religion. This lead to prohibitions against masturbation, coitus intrruptus, birth control, abortion, homosexuality, sterile men or women marrying, and considering a marriage invalid if it doesn't lead to babies. If one believed that "every sperm is sacred", silly faggots were seen as doubly sinful than heterosexual couples or solo masturbators. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 08:48:16 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 19:48:16 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <005501c3aa84$17f987a0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <012801c3aa8c$0baf7f60$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Harvey Newstrom wrotes: > R.Coyote wrote, > > how about: > > > > I assert, hold, reserve, adhere. maintain, retain, establish, affirm, > > attest adjure, announce, argue, asseverate, authenticate, aver, bear > > out, bear witness, certify, confirm, corroborate, countersign, > > declare, demonstrate, display, exhibit, give evidence, indicate, > > prove, ratify, seal, show, substantiate, support, sustain, swear, > > testify, uphold, verify, vouch, warrant, witness? > > Most, if not all, of these words fail to convey a belief. Exactly!! > A belief is what is inside someone's head. It means "I think..." Then please keep it there and don't express it. It harmless if you don't express it. Its not harmless if you do. If you do you endorse believing not just for yourself but for others. > It does not have to be connected to any of the other actions > you describe above. It may be true that the above action > may be more useful or stronger in a debate, but they > are not the same thing. Sometimes, when a person says > "I believe...", that is exactly what they mean. You have someone in mind don't you Harvey :-) > The word has a clear, precise meaning that is > not the same as these other words. Its not precise. Here's a link to an online thesaurus http://thesaurus.reference.com/. Look in it and count the number of hits. Are all the synonyns also synonyms for each other do you think? > .. I can think of no scientific argument why my "thoughts" > deserve a different word than someone else's "beliefs" other > than sheer arrogance that my conclusions are a totally different > order of knowledge than theirs. Sadly perhaps you are right Harvey. Perhaps you are a true believer. I'm pretty sure we all start out that way its just a question of whether we grow or wean ourselves off it or not. Regards, Brett [taking a tennis break] From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 14 08:58:03 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 03:58:03 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <000001c3aa6f$732237e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <006b01c3aa8d$6cd5d6d0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Spike wrote, > To expand on this thought just a bit, I > might conjecture about two muscle systems > in the human body that appear out of scale: > the gluteus maximus and the pectorals. > You almost need to devise some oddball exercise > machine to even challenge those powerful muscles > to any real degree. Not really. Think about evolving on all fours while trying to outrun, out climb or out swim hungry predators. These are the exact muscles you would maximize. The glutes pull our hip joints back to provide thrust with our legs. The pecs pull our shoulder joints back to provide thrust with our arms. Those with the largest glutes and pecs escaped predators more often. This is a simply a matter of speed provided by the larger muscles. Sexual attraction to these muscles probably evolved as a secondary trait, just as attraction to symmetrical, healthy, brightly-colored, similar-looking mates did. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 14 09:38:09 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 10:38:09 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <3FB48D77.1080701@pobox.com> References: <20031113153946.743F139AB@sitemail.everyone.net> <003501c3aa0d$28cfa720$93fe4d0c@hal2001> <3FB48D77.1080701@pobox.com> Message-ID: <20031114093809.GT922@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 03:08:23AM -0500, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > John K Clark wrote: > > >One would have thought that the handedness of the molecules of life was > >just > >a 50 50 luck of the draw, once one got in a slight excess a standard was An excess of one functional autocatalytic set/planet is sufficient. If these emergences are a rare event (say, one in 10^3 years/planet) the second one will never happen by virtue of radically changed environment. > >set > >and there was no reason to change; but there may be more to it than that. > >Amino acids have been found in meteorites and they have the same handedness > >as life too. Most non biological chemical processes produce an equal amount Murchison may have had an EE of 30% of L-Ala and 50% of L-glutamic acid. This is a single data point, and not a dramatic deviation from a racemate, if the rate of autocatalytic set nucleation events is low. Nature 389, 234 - 235 (1997); doi:10.1038/38392 Origins of life: A left-handed Solar System? CHRISTOPHER F. CHYBA Christopher F. Chyba is in the Department of Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA. How and why did life on Earth come to use almost exclusively laevorotatory, or left-handed amino acids (L-enantiomers), rather than their mirror-image dextrorotatory, or right-handed forms (D-enantiomers)? The paper by Engel and Macko on page 265of this issue1 re-examines the Murchison meteorite, and reinforces the surprising result that some process favouring L-enantiomers seems to have operated before the origin of life on Earth, and probably before the formation of the Solar System. If this is correct, our Solar System may have formed with a built-in bias for left-handed amino acids. An excess of L-enantiomers is an intriguing result, as it suggests that the handedness, or chirality, of terrestrial biology might have an extraterrestrial cause. But an L-excess indigenous to the meteorite is difficult to prove, as it may instead be due to contamination by the terrestrial biosphere of an originally racemic mixture. (In a racemic mixture, L- and D-enantiomers are present in equal abundance, as in typical laboratory chemical syntheses of amino acids.) When amino acids were first discovered in the Murchison meteorite2, apparent excesses of L-enantiomers ranging from 0 to 20% were found. However, the conservative interpretation of these results was that contamination was to blame, especially as non-protein amino acids were reported to show no enantiomeric excess3. ('Protein' amino acids are of the type used by terrestrial life in proteins, and are therefore the most likely to suffer from biological contamination.) A later study4, claiming indigenous enantiomeric excesses in Murchison of up to 70%, was criticized on similar grounds5. This controversy led Pillinger6 to emphasize the need for a criterion independent of enantiomeric excess to judge the authenticity of meteoritic amino acids. He suggested determining the isotopic composition of individual enantiomers, because terrestrial stable isotope ratios differ from those in meteorites. Engel and Macko1 appear to have achieved this. These authors had previously7 used the carbon isotope ratio 13C/12C of alanine in Murchison to argue for an excess of L-alanine over D-alanine, but reservations about these measurements persisted8. In their present letter1, they instead examine the 15N/14N ratio of individual Murchison amino-acid enantiomers. They find L-enantiomer excesses in the amino acids alanine and glutamic acid . both protein amino acids . of over 30% and 50%, respectively, with 15N/14N ratios that are too high to include much terrestrial material. The contradiction between this and an earlier report2 that alanine and glutamic acid have L-enantiomer excesses of about 0 and 10%, respectively, suggests that the Murchison meteorite is very heterogeneous. Figure 1 Left- and right-handed versions of the amino acid alanine. Full legend High resolution image and legend (43k) Another way to establish an extraterrestrial origin is to use amino acids that are extremely rare in the terrestrial biosphere. This was used by Zhao and Bada9 to argue that two amino acids found above and below the 65-million-year-old Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary layer in Stevns Klint, Denmark, were not terrestrial contaminants. The same criterion was recently applied by Cronin and Pizzarello10 to the Murchison meteorite. These authors discovered enantiomeric excesses of up to 9% in apparently non-biological amino acids. So it appears that two very different approaches in two laboratories confirm enantiomeric excesses in the Murchison meteorite. The same isotope ratios that distinguish Murchison amino acids from their terrestrial counterparts imply that these molecules or their chemical precursors originated in interstellar clouds1, 8. Why should chemistry in such a cloud have a bias towards one-handedness? One possibility10 is that an enantiomeric preference may have been imposed on the cloud out of which our Solar System formed by circularly polarized light, perhaps synchrotron radiation from a neutron star11. If a substantial fraction of the organic inventory of early Earth was then derived from comets and asteroids12, the synchrotron-radiation hypothesis would connect terrestrial biochemistry with the extreme physics of collapsed stars. If the excess was indeed established by some process specific to the molecular cloud out of which our Solar System formed, similar enantiomeric excesses should be found in other organic-rich meteorites and in comets. Examination of other carbonaceous chondrites could therefore test this hypothesis. Unless there is a more widespread process operating, other solar systems could have been formed with a preference for D-amino acids, or with no preference at all . with possible consequences for life in those systems. Alternatively, if the enantiomeric excess somehow arose during chemical evolution within Murchison itself, no correlation between meteorites is demanded. Although these enantiomeric excesses suggest a link between extraterrestrial organic molecules and the origin of terrestrial life, the connection is by no means certain. A preference may have arisen during prebiotic or biotic evolution as well. For example, consider peptide nucleic acid (PNA), a candidate DNA precursor molecule. It has been shown that an otherwise achiral PNA strand can have its chirality fixed by the presence of an L- or D-lysine residue attached to its end13. One can imagine a picture in which this random 'seeding' of chirality led to a chiral preference in either prebiotic chemistry or early life14. So even if the Solar System was born with a preference for L-amino acids, there may have been other opportunities for chiral choices to be made, and our understanding is far too limited to know whether these subsequent choices might have dominated any initial enantiomeric bias. Finally, Lederberg15 suggested in 1965 that one criterion for detecting extraterrestrial life in the Solar System might be to search for enantiomeric excesses. Mounting evidence for (evidently non-biological) enantiomeric excesses in the Murchison meteorite means that this criterion alone may be less useful than we had hoped . whether within martian meteorites, on the martian surface, or elsewhere. References 1. Engel, M. H. & Macko, S. A. Nature 389, 265-268 (1997). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort | 2. Kvenvolden, K. et al. Nature 228, 923-926 (1970). | ChemPort | 3. Kvenvolden, K. A., Lawless, J. G. & Ponamperuma, C. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 68, 486-490 (1971). | ChemPort | 4. Engel, M. H. & Nagy, B. Nature 296, 837-840 (1982). | ISI | ChemPort | 5. Bada, J. L. et al. Nature 301, 494-497 (1983). | ChemPort | 6. Pillinger, C. T. Nature 296, 802 (1982). | ISI | 7. Engel, M. H., Macko, S. A. & Silfer, J. A. Nature 348, 47-49 (1990). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort | 8. Cronin, J. R. & Chang, S. in The Chemistry of Life's Origins (eds Greenberg, J. et al.) 209-258 (Kluwer, Amsterdam, 1993). 9. Zhao, M. & Bada, J. L. Nature 339, 463-465 (1989). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort | 10. Cronin, J. R. & Pizzarello, S. Science 275, 951-965 (1997). | ChemPort | 11. Bonner, W. A. Origins of Life 21, 59-111 (1991). | ChemPort | 12. Chyba, C. F. & Sagan, C. in Comets and the Origin and Evolution of Life (eds Thomas, P. J., Chyba, C. F. & McKay, C. P.) 147-173 (Springer, New York, 1997). 13. Wittung, P. et al. Nature 368, 561-563 (1994). | ChemPort | 14. Cohen, J. Science 267, 1265-1266 (1995). | ChemPort | 15. Lederberg, J. Nature 207, 9-13 (1965). | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort | > >of right and left, however if it is exposed to powerful clockwise polarized > >microwaves it produced only right-handed sugars and left-handed A pulsar has two poles of opposite polarity. You will get depletion/preferred formationi of one respective enantiomer of the racemate if irradiated with that, and equally EE in the material accreted from that molecular cloud. But the EE is low, and spontaneous symmetry breakings occur all the time, the smaller the scale, the more often. What is interesting is chirality in the Jovian and Saturnian system (these might be lousy with life, and life closely related to ours, though), and beyond (where no metabolism is possible, and there should be enough primitive material to gauge the composition of the presolar nebula). > >amino-acids, > >exactly what we see on Earth and in meteorites. Interestingly there is a > >portion of the Orion Nebula that produces copious amounts of just this sort > >of radiation; there may be a connection, if so the handedness of these > >molecules may not be exactly universal but is the most common form in this > >part of the galaxy. Where should a polarised radiation source of that intensity have come from? > Does this mean that if we encounter spacefaring aliens, we can still eat > them? Sure, dry machine-phase can eat other dry machine-phase any time. For your hypothetical case above: yes, and it will kill you. The chemistry will be sufficiently different for it to be of no nutritional value, and diversity will produce sufficient number of molecules acting as mutual toxins. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 14 11:09:49 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:09:49 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08B@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08B@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <20031114110949.GH922@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 12:12:33PM +1030, Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > It seems imprudent to propagate how-to instructions for the Don't fret, there have been public discussions about gray goo design which were pretty detailed (down to a spec sheet). They're still arbitrarily remote from a blueprint. Disseminating viable blueprints in absence of a blueprint for a bootstrap fab is still very safe. > > making of weapons or poisons until one has a *very* good > > antidote. Maybe. The problem with countermeasure is that you need a very thorough experience with the pathogen behaving (or a very good model thereof) to make sure it's working. > > I think I'd rather test myself against someone else's "aggressive" > > weapon design then put my mind to the engineering problem of > > making and discussing a better weapon myself. - Until I can find > > a way of doing a logical end-run around the whole grey-goo You're making a logical mistake. Grey goo is not about logic, it's about security and technology/engineering. This is not something you talk about, this is something you need to address in simulators, tiger groups, and in field tests. In very practical hands-on setting, in other words. A whitehat ignorant of blackhats isn't. Only then do you understand the problem domain sufficiently to make informed statements about it. > > scenario. > > > > Sorry if that's clear as mud. > > > > Regards, > > Brett > > It's clear, but I don't think it's valid. The only way to anticipate the > threats is to know what they are, so public dissemination of that info is > very useful. You are not actually broadcasting weapon making instructions, > only potential future weapon making instructions, and vague at that... it's > quite a ways off yet. So for now it is safe enough to talk about. Right. > Later, it gets scary, but if we've been thinking hard, discussing the > problems, examples, etc, we should have the design for antidotes and > safeguards well before it's actually possible to build the weapons. So by > the time the tech turns up, we are prepared. I disagree. You have to actually build the weapon prototypes and test them (with very, very good containment procedures) to be able to control them (if that is at all possible). > OTOH, if we keep it quiet, the tech will turn up eventually, and someone > *will* figure out how to make the weapons. The antidotes, however, which are > probably harder, may not turn up in time. > > So I say, blab on! -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From sentience at pobox.com Fri Nov 14 11:31:44 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 06:31:44 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" online Message-ID: <3FB4BD20.7030503@pobox.com> "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides appears to have been OCRed online. This is chapter 2 of "The Adapted Mind" and #1 on my list of favorite papers ever. http://folk.uio.no/rickyh/papers/TheAdaptedMind.htm -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 14 11:34:44 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:34:44 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] SCO vs IBM In-Reply-To: <3FB42933.3060603@cox.net> References: <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <004c01c3a6ef$2a4e1260$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <5.1.0.14.2.20031112123216.018210b8@mail.earthlink.net> <3FB42933.3060603@cox.net> Message-ID: <20031114113444.GM922@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 08:00:35PM -0500, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > Is anyone here following the SCO vs IBM case? > http://www.groklaw.net > > If this has been declared to be off-topic, I apologize. I'm spending WAY > too much time watching this case. Who isn't? It's an interesting precedent for the establishment attempting to inject society control algorithms under the camouflage of IP protection. Both governments and corporate bodies hate and fear freedom, and try to advance their degree of control using whatever angles of attack are there. If freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will have freedom. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cphoenix at best.com Fri Nov 14 12:58:00 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 07:58:00 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Creativity and closed labs - was Self replicating computer programs ? References: <200311140940.hAE9eTM09150@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FB4D158.F088B905@best.com> On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:28:57 +1100, "Brett Paatsch" wrote: > I'd be interested in others views on this. It would be real nice > not to have to engineer in secret for fear of empowering the > wrong folk but I am not sure that it is in fact as 'safe'? as you > think. I thought about this before publishing my nanofactory design paper. My conclusion was that engineering in secret helps the bad guys more than it helps the good guys. Openness helps the good guys, and (I think) to a lesser extent the bad guys. Secrecy allows the bad guys to help themselves, while doing nothing for the good guys. > .... > Government closed labs can be very well funded. > .... This argues that they can pay for a lot of creativity. So they're likely to have already thought of whatever you describe. And, as you point out, they won't talk about it. So the question is: is it better for the rest of us not to know what's in the labs, or to have some idea through independent work? > Against the idea that technology (particularly weapons and > security related technology) is likely to be more advanced in > some government closed labs is the counterpoint that people > are extraordinarily bad at keeping secrets. So they may invent something, not tell anyone--but a bad guy steals it anyway. A very bad outcome. > I don't know what the chances of the Exi list being watched with > real interest AND understanding is, but I doubt that it is > infinitesimal. Heck I'm watching it and I've got considerably > less resources than a government ;-) I think we should assume that everything is watched--and not only by people in this country. My paper may help a Chinese or Iranian MNT program (if and when they start one--but they may have already). On the other hand, I figured that my paper was mostly a collection of tweaks on Nanosystems, plus straightforward calculation--would not be hard for a single person (who's reasonably bright, and has been studying Nanosystems for a while) to do in a few months. After all, that's how it was done! I think it's even more important to talk about gray goo technology openly, as long as it's done accurately. Either the labs that are interested in gray goo could easily think of your idea, or they couldn't. If they could, there's no harm in talking about it--at least not from those labs, and that's who you seem to be worried about. If they couldn't, then they are interested in something very powerful that they don't understand, and it's definitely a good idea to improve their understanding before they develop something destructively stupid. There are issues beyond secret government labs. Talking (accurately!) about MNT makes more people aware of the possibilities, and may spur earlier development. It may also spur earlier preparation. It's not obvious how these balance out--does the situation become more survivable, or less? Early development without preparation would be bad. But late development without preparation would be worse, because it would go more quickly. There are too many actors and factors to predict all the effects of publication. So at this point, I think we have to fall back on basic tenets: openness is generally a good idea. Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From alex at ramonsky.com Fri Nov 14 13:20:32 2003 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:20:32 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] vitrification question References: Message-ID: <3FB4D6A0.8050206@ramonsky.com> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > > I am trying to decide between neurosuspension and full body, or the > open-ended option. I am leaning towards neurosuspension because of the > vitrification process. Any comments? > > Also, if you are neurosuspended, what do they do with the rest of the > body? > > Just curious. > > > Have you considered plastination? www.transtopia.org/plastination.html AR -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu Fri Nov 14 13:29:41 2003 From: test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 07:29:41 -0600 (CST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: <200311140048.hAE0mjM23143@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: --- Adrian Tymes wrote: > --- Bill Hibbard wrote: > > Very good point. But rather than hypothetical > > quotes, > > how about the real thing: > > > > http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message9.txt > > > > and: > > > > http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message10.txt > > Umm...you missed my point. It's not that we should > necessarily believe in them to make wise decisions > right now. It's that they believe in themselves to > make wise decisions when the time comes - and if they > believe we are aiming to impose our will upon them, to > deny them any say in the matter in the future, that is > what often causes them to act against us in the > present. But that is what these quotes are saying, that the public and their elected representatives are too stupid to have any say in the matter. From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Nov 14 16:06:20 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 08:06:20 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <006b01c3aa8d$6cd5d6d0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> References: <000001c3aa6f$732237e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031114075635.01e87370@pop.earthlink.net> At 03:58 AM 11/14/03 -0500, Harvey wrote: >Spike wrote, > > To expand on this thought just a bit, I > > might conjecture about two muscle systems > > in the human body that appear out of scale: > > the gluteus maximus and the pectorals. Humm. > > You almost need to devise some oddball exercise > > machine to even challenge those powerful muscles > > to any real degree. Ahha? >Not really. Think about evolving on all fours while trying to outrun, out >climb or out swim hungry predators. These are the exact muscles you would >maximize. The glutes pull our hip joints back to provide thrust with our >legs. Oh, uhhum. > The pecs pull our shoulder joints back to provide thrust with our >arms. Yes. > Those with the largest glutes and pecs escaped predators more often. >This is a simply a matter of speed provided by the larger muscles. Sexual >attraction to these muscles probably evolved as a secondary trait, just as >attraction to symmetrical, healthy, brightly-colored, similar-looking mates >did. Good points Harvey. When I work out, I enjoy 2 body parts the best: delts and glutes. Natasha From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Fri Nov 14 14:10:14 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 15:10:14 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08A@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08A@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: It not clear from the article if they only built the DNA molecule, or the whole virus. I suspect the first :-) Anyone has more information? Ciao, Alfio On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote: >Hey Brett, here's your replicator (admittedly dependent on external cellular >machinery) built by people from scratch: > > >Virus Genome Built from Scratch >http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-11-13-5 >Researchers have built the genome of a tiny virus from scratch in a feat >they say will improve the speed and accuracy of constructing synthetic >organisms. > > >Emlyn > > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Fri Nov 14 14:18:38 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 15:18:38 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles In-Reply-To: <000001c3aa6f$732237e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3aa6f$732237e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: >You almost need to devise some oddball exercise >machine to even challenge those powerful muscles >to any real degree. Actually not. If you start running regularly, which should have been a common exercise for our ancestors, your butt will change noticeably to keep up with the exercise. Muscles on the back are not smaller or weaker than pectorals. They have a different shape, but if you try to climb some tree or generally lift yourself somewhere up, you'll notice that you need a lot of help from your back. Pectorals are smaller in the vertical direction, because finding good insertion points in a soft abdomen is going to be difficult. To compensate for their shortness, they expand in volume and so are more prominent. Ciao, Alfio From cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net Fri Nov 14 17:15:01 2003 From: cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net (cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:15:01 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <3FB2D70C.9040407@cox.net> Message-ID: <007001c3aad2$d7052ac0$12ecfea9@kevin> How's the homebrew STM coming along? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Clemmensen" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 6:57 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. > Hi. I just re-subscribed. > > I realized after reading the archives that this is the most > intellectually stimulating > group of people that I have ever been part of. I simply have to find a > way to re-integrate with > this group. I've drifted away twice, now, for trivial reasons. > > I missed you all. I'm back. > > Interestingly the single most obvious difference in the list is that > Eugin's english has improved.This > makes no effective difference: his posts still have a maximal > information density. > > It will take me awhile to catch up. and I still have a technical > difficulty to solve: I travel to > Montreal on alternate weeks and have a minor problem accessing my > personal e-mail. > I intend to fix this over the weekend. > > For new members: > In 1996l, on this list, I asserted that the singularity would occur > prior to 2006. I had no viable reason for > that asertion. I still have no viable reason for that assertion. > My areas of expertise include data communications, system > architecture, and network architecture. > My areas of interest include nanotechnology, the Singularity, Linux, and > just about everything we > discuss on this list. > > My current hobby project is a homebrew STM (Scanning Tumnnelling > Microscope.) IT doesn't work yet. > > Dan Clemmensen > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From scerir at libero.it Fri Nov 14 17:19:07 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 18:19:07 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] palpable math References: <009801c3aa7c$fffad0c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000301c3aad3$699527f0$a6bc1b97@administxl09yj> Nicholas Saunderson, English mathematician, was born at Thurlstone, Yorkshire, in January 1682. When about a year old he lost his sight through smallpox; but this did not prevent him from acquiring a knowledge of Latin and Greek, and studying mathematics. In 1707 he began lecturing at Cambridge on the principles of the Newtonian philosophy, and in November 1711 he succeeded William Whiston, the Lucasian professor of mathematics in Cambridge. He was created doctor of laws in 1728 by command of George II., and in 1736 was admitted a member of the Royal Society. He died of scurvy, on the I 9th of April 1739. Saunderson possessed the friendship of many of the eminent mathematicians of the time, such as Sir Isaac Newton, Edmund 1-lalley, Abraham Dc Moivre and Roger Cotes. His senses of hearing and touch were extraordinarily acute, and he could carry on mentally long arid intricate mathematical calculations. He devised a calculating machine or abacus, by which he could perform arithmetical and algebraical operations by the sense of touch; this method is sometimes termed his palpable arithmetic, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ an account of which is given in his elaborate Elements of Algebra (2 vols., Cambridge, 1740). Of his other writings, prepared for the use of his pupils, the only one which has been published is The Method of Fluxions (I vol., London, 1756). At the end of this treatise there is given, in Latin, an explanation of the principal propositions of Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy. Whiston was followed by Nicolas Saunderson in 1711in to the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics at Cambridge University, he spent his time teaching algebra. It was said that he was preferred for the Lucasian Chair because he had no religion, following Whiston, who had too much. His only published work was produced at the end of his life and only with strong encouragement from his friends. He had not been able to attend the university because of his blindness, a consequence of smallpox at the age of one, but he had been educated with help from his family and friends. He held the Chair for about twenty-eight years, until his death, helping to stabilize it after the Whiston Affair. King George II was so impressed with him, he conferred a doctorate on him. Saunderson invented a device for ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ calculations using pins placed in the eight positions on a square at the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ corners and midpoints of each side, and one more point at the center. He ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ used a larger pin to represent one. To represent numbers, he would move the pin to new positions around the perimeter, using several of these squares for large numbers and calculations. http://www.artwarefineart.com/Search/ItemDetails.asp?ItemID=494 ---------------- Immortal proofs: http://plus.maths.org/issue16/features/perigal/ ---------------- Zero. Among the Maya-quiche, there is still the habit of counting the days of the week starting from 0, i.e. the present day for instance Friday, is counted 0 because it is already passing over, while only the next-day is 1, and so on .... One. An hour after midnight has passed, the clock strikes once. Zero is soundless ... ---------------- From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 14 17:55:04 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:55:04 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Knuckle-walking (WAS: HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles) References: Message-ID: For the past month or so I have been slowly compiling information for a paper I am writing. This paper is probably useless since I am neither a researcher, nor a college student, but I am doing it for myself. One interesting tidbit of information I have found is that it is the tree swingers that do most of the upright walking; particularly the orang-utan and the chimps. When they come to the ground, they spend more time uprtight than they do knuckle-walking. These are the primates which we share more DNA with. Also, there is some evidence that Lucy may have in fact been a knuckle-walker. This is extremely interesting because she has chimp-like features and ape-like features. Much of the established BELIEF is that she is an ancestor of ours because of her upright posture. If she was a knuckle-walker, she would be reduced to being just another primate. This could really screw up what we think we know. Another small bit I have run across is that only humans sleepwalk. I haven't even begun to try to figure out what that means. Maybe I'll tackle it a bit later. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Dartfield" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 12:27 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: > > > It's unclear that our ancestors *ever* knuckle-walked like apes. > > So then, we may not have needed any big advantage to force us to evolve > bipedalism -- evolution being parsimonious, and whatnot, we just used > what was there. > > Of course, I guess that just pushes back the question of the advantages of > bipedalism to our ancestors rather than to us... > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 14 18:21:29 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:21:29 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <005601c3aa84$1bc3d610$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: Actually, it is a little bit of both. I have been doing research on the development of bipedalism in our ancestors for a paper I am writing. I am not a professional researcher, or a student (yet). I am doing this for myself because it is the only way I can seem to organize my thoughts on this topic. The key word here is "generous" which to a professional academic might imply thousands of hours. As a mortgage broker, my time for this type of activity is limited. Ten to fifteen hours per week over the last three months is very generous considering my schedule. The statement is one of a preliminary conjecture that anticipates the results of further study for this paper which I do not expect to complete until the beginning of next year. All of my sources are referenced. Considering the fact that for now, my time on this earth is limited, I did not see it as prudent to use the above explanation in place of a rather simple statement of "I believe there more factors involved than researchers will ever be able to find evidence for." I was simply trying to make the point that the entire process of the development of bipedalism as well as other evolutionary developments is much more complex than many people think. The fossil records simply do not give us enough information to pin such developments to one or two causes. I BELIEVE that most who read that post were able to understand that without picking apart the statement to find out what I meant. Perhaps I could have said that is was a conjecture or a preliminary finding. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harvey Newstrom" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 1:51 AM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote, > > OK. How about: > > After a generous amount of personal research, I have come to the > > conclusion that there were more factors involved than researchers will > > ever be able to find evidence for. > > This is a lot more specific than merely saying "I believe". What you just > said would be great if you actually did all that stuff. However, I doubt > that you actually have done generous amounts of personal research leading to > your conclusion that the above statement is the answer. I think you just > thought about it without any additional resources, and came to this > conclusion all by yourself. In other words, you BELIEVE that the above > statement is better. Why not just use the word? > > -- > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From alito at organicrobot.com Fri Nov 14 19:03:06 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 05:03:06 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <1068836586.24758.39.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Tue, 2003-11-11 at 04:12, Robin Hanson wrote: > 2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are less > efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of > production time, material waste, or final product quality. The bigger this > factor is, the larger need to be the scale economies in the production of > PGMDs for them to dominate. At the moment most manufacturing devices are > really quite specialized. > Would production time really be a very important factor? Unless the production of items extends to multi-day efforts, i don't see this affecting much at the consumer end. I agree with both other factors. > 4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is > rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now > are the physical capital, rather than labor and design. So it is not clear > how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the > economy. > I'd guess that it'd would change the service market which subsists on the delivery of the manufactured goods (ie transport, and more importantly, retail) since both are likely to become less important if not superfluous. Both of these sectors, i assume, are a rather larger chunk of the economy. With regards to the percentage of manufacturing costs saved, labor, in a fully automated system ala Diamond Age dissapears, and design costs are affected in the same way that L/GPLed,BSDed software affects the software world (which i suppose isn't really that much, but my guess would be that in the manufacturing world the impact would be greater since the network effect isn't as strong in a chair/speakers/dishwasher/robotic cook as it is in a spreadsheet, so it wouldn't present as high a barrier for end users to move over). (this of course ignores all indirect effects that would almost certainly popup (facilitation of robot manufacturing (which would affect lots of other sectors), facilitation of massive amounts of computing power, facilitation of energy-producing elements (assuming the energy cost of producing these is lower than their output)) > 5. If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing > PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of > ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing > the social impact of this transition. > Depends on the cost of the ordinary PGMD. If it can be made by specialised factories for the cost of say, a car or 3d-printer or lower, then i'd imagine it would reach saturation quite quickly (using "saturation" quite loosely, and estimating at one per house). (btw, all this referring to the US and other rich nations only). Also, it'd be a very contrived case for the PGMDs not to have at least a partial positive feedback effect on the lowering of their cost. alejandro From sentience at pobox.com Fri Nov 14 19:05:17 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 14:05:17 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Causes of luddism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FB5276D.90500@pobox.com> Bill Hibbard wrote: > --- Adrian Tymes wrote: > >> --- Bill Hibbard wrote: >> >>> Very good point. But rather than hypothetical quotes, how about the >>> real thing: >>> >>> http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message9.txt >>> >>> and: >>> >>> http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/message10.txt >> >> Umm...you missed my point. It's not that we should necessarily >> believe in them to make wise decisions right now. It's that they >> believe in themselves to make wise decisions when the time comes - >> and if they believe we are aiming to impose our will upon them, to >> deny them any say in the matter in the future, that is what often >> causes them to act against us in the present. > > But that is what these quotes are saying, that the public and their > elected representatives are too stupid to have any say in the matter. I notice you've done some hella selective quoting there. For the uncensored version, see: http://www.sl4.org/archive/0305/6822.html Sample omission: "There's a reason why science tests theories using experiments instead of having panels of government experts vote on them, and it's not because government experts are stupid." -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 14 20:28:13 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 21:28:13 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <1068836586.24758.39.camel@alito.homeip.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <1068836586.24758.39.camel@alito.homeip.net> Message-ID: <20031114202813.GI922@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 05:03:06AM +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > Would production time really be a very important factor? Unless the > production of items extends to multi-day efforts, i don't see this > affecting much at the consumer end. I agree with both other factors. If we have a device with a self-replication rate of a couple of days, it can clearly double that output in the same time frame. The limit is feedstock and energy, but we obviously can fab photovoltaics, rectenna arrays, processing plants, space transporters (planetary surface is a scarce resource, there's a lot of volume, minables and solar flux/square area in the local system, though). The limit to this are resource ownership (land, space transport, circumsolar objects) monopolies, which would attempt to keep costs up by creating artificial scarcities. This is not sustainable, as it would result in armed conflicts, including nuclear and worse. > > 4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is > > rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now Designs are information, and rather compact. Open designs are as free as open source. Their transfer costs are basically free (each user is a part of the network infrastructure). The only real cost factor is fabbing costs, which are dominated by cost of feedstock and energy. Both can be derived from land. Both feedstock and energy are plentiful outside of gravity wells. > > 5. If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing > > PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of The design cost only figures once in the calculation. Write once, run everywhere. > > ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing > > the social impact of this transition. Please tell me how the social impact of superhuman AI runaway can be minimized by prior availability of chess computers and video games. What kind of analysis is that? If if if. If pigs would fly, what would be impact of precipitating feces on aquaculture, and erosion of high-tension masts? I mean, really. > Depends on the cost of the ordinary PGMD. If it can be made by > specialised factories for the cost of say, a car or 3d-printer or lower, > then i'd imagine it would reach saturation quite quickly (using > "saturation" quite loosely, and estimating at one per house). (btw, all > this referring to the US and other rich nations only). Also, it'd be a > very contrived case for the PGMDs not to have at least a partial > positive feedback effect on the lowering of their cost. Why don't we just wait, and see? A precursor to a nanolithoprinter is lot like an inkjet on steroids. It only fabs slowly, has very limited structure and material repertoire, and is expensive, as it can't self reproduce. The impact of this device in straightforward analysis should be nil, right? Sure, as long as we assume it can't produce molecular circuitry. What is the impact if Jane and Joe Doe could fab their prototypes for about the same costs it takes to print a color photo? I'm not sure how classical economic theory handles a series of punctuated equilibria. There's extensive documentation available, though: the fossil record. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rhanson at gmu.edu Fri Nov 14 19:11:57 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 14:11:57 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <1068836586.24758.39.camel@alito.homeip.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031114140624.01f58ca8@mail.gmu.edu> At 05:03 AM 11/15/2003 +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > > 2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices are > less > > efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of > > production time, material waste, or final product quality. ... > >Would production time really be a very important factor? Unless the >production of items extends to multi-day efforts, i don't see this >affecting much at the consumer end. I agree with both other factors. Well time matters as it effects the overall throughput of the factory. > > 4. The manufacturing fraction of the cost of most consumer goods today is > > rather small (15%), and only part (~1/3) of those manufacturing costs now > > are the physical capital, rather than labor and design. So it is not > clear > > how just lowering those manufacturing costs will have a huge effect on the > > economy. > >I'd guess that it'd would change the service market which subsists on >the delivery of the manufactured goods (ie transport, and more >importantly, retail) since both are likely to become less important if >not superfluous. Both of these sectors, i assume, are a rather larger >chunk of the economy. In the usual division, transportation is not part of service, but its own sector. > > 5. If the cost of designing and building an effective self-reproducing > > PGMD is much higher that of ordinary PGMDs, there might be plenty of > > ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing > > the social impact of this transition. > > >Depends on the cost of the ordinary PGMD. If it can be made by >specialised factories for the cost of say, a car or 3d-printer or lower, >then i'd imagine it would reach saturation quite quickly (using >"saturation" quite loosely, and estimating at one per house). Agreed. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 21:00:59 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 08:00:59 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <005601c3aa84$1bc3d610$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <02bb01c3aaf2$67dab5a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Kevin wrote: > I BELIEVE that most who read that post were able to > understand that without picking apart the statement to > find out what I meant. Perhaps I could have said that > is was a conjecture or a preliminary finding. Yup. It is a choice. That you have the power to use the word or any other has never been in contention. That you would be stopped or coerced into not using it hasn't either. Perhaps that's what you wanted to test? If you think I have an ego, you are right. If you think I have been arguing the point because of that you are mistaken. Perhaps all it comes down to, in the end, is whether you are intellectually persuaded against using it. If you are not the default meme - which is believing wins and keeps another vector of propagation. I will work with anyone on this list that is willing to work the intellectual basis of the argument. My motive for wanting to work the arguments is self-centred. I live in a world where I see that democracies set the policy-framework that sets the upper limits on the rate of progress that determines whether I can live or die. - Brett From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Fri Nov 14 21:28:04 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 22:28:04 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <20031110204501.GV13214@leitl.org> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <20031110204501.GV13214@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote: >The first time I read "Diamond Age" I laughed. Apart from broken physics in a >whole number of places, the future described was ludicrously incongrous. No >superhuman AI. Biology-based infoprocessing being competitive to dry nanoware. >Containable gray goo. Ridiculous. Nice science fiction, though. Snow Crash >was considerably better, however. Lots more realistic. You know, I tried compressing my mailbox today. But when gzip found Eugen's posts, it stopped with a sigh and said: "sorry, no entropy to be found here". Just kidding :-) Ciaoa, Alfio From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 21:39:30 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 08:39:30 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" online References: <3FB4BD20.7030503@pobox.com> Message-ID: <02f501c3aaf7$c9715e40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" by John Tooby > and Leda Cosmides appears to have been OCRed online. > This is chapter 2 of "The Adapted Mind" and #1 on my list > of favorite papers ever. > > http://folk.uio.no/rickyh/papers/TheAdaptedMind.htm #1 favorite is high praise. Thanks Eliezer. Interesting. I haven't read it yet - it prints out at 91 pages and doesn't seem to be only chapter 2. When was it published? A quick flick through shows citations as late as 1992 as far as I can see. Regards, Brett From alito at organicrobot.com Fri Nov 14 21:44:58 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 07:44:58 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <20031114202813.GI922@leitl.org> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <1068836586.24758.39.camel@alito.homeip.net> <20031114202813.GI922@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1068846298.24758.71.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Sat, 2003-11-15 at 06:28, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 05:03:06AM +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > > > Would production time really be a very important factor? Unless the > > production of items extends to multi-day efforts, i don't see this > > affecting much at the consumer end. I agree with both other factors. > > If we have a device with a self-replication rate of a couple of days, it can > clearly double that output in the same time frame. The limit is feedstock and > energy, but we obviously can fab photovoltaics, rectenna arrays, processing > plants, space transporters (planetary surface is a scarce resource, there's a lot of > volume, minables and solar flux/square area in the local system, though). > I was sticking to non-self-replicating. > > > > ordinary ones around before any self-reproducing ones appear, minimizing > > > the social impact of this transition. > > Please tell me how the social impact of superhuman AI runaway can be > minimized by prior availability of chess computers and video games. > Time that would have been spent on developing AI is sucked by the other two, therefore retarding the appearance of runaway AIs and thus giving nanotech a chance to come around and lift us a couple of million ks out of the event's epicenter > What kind of analysis is that? If if if. If pigs would fly, what would be > impact of precipitating feces on aquaculture, and erosion of high-tension > masts? I mean, really. > Not only that, but deaths due to dropping dead pigs would have surpassed SARS deaths last year, prices of house insurance would be much higher, and the first thing built around an airport would be a scarepig. > > Depends on the cost of the ordinary PGMD. If it can be made by > > specialised factories for the cost of say, a car or 3d-printer or lower, > > then i'd imagine it would reach saturation quite quickly (using > > "saturation" quite loosely, and estimating at one per house). (btw, all > > this referring to the US and other rich nations only). Also, it'd be a > > very contrived case for the PGMDs not to have at least a partial > > positive feedback effect on the lowering of their cost. > > Why don't we just wait, and see? A precursor to a nanolithoprinter is lot > like an inkjet on steroids. It only fabs slowly, has very limited structure and > material repertoire, and is expensive, as it can't self reproduce. The impact > of this device in straightforward analysis should be nil, right? Sure, as > long as we assume it can't produce molecular circuitry. What is the impact if > Jane and Joe Doe could fab their prototypes for about the same costs it takes > to print a color photo? I'm not sure how classical economic theory handles > a series of punctuated equilibria. There's extensive documentation available, > though: the fossil record. > Of course we'll wait and see, nothing else to be done. No harm in playing what if meanwhile though. alejandro From alito at organicrobot.com Fri Nov 14 22:11:32 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 08:11:32 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031114140624.01f58ca8@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031114140624.01f58ca8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <1068847892.24758.99.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Sat, 2003-11-15 at 05:11, Robin Hanson wrote: > At 05:03 AM 11/15/2003 +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > >Would production time really be a very important factor? Unless the > >production of items extends to multi-day efforts, i don't see this > >affecting much at the consumer end. I agree with both other factors. > > Well time matters as it effects the overall throughput of the factory. > It affects the overall throughput if the machines are operating near capacity, which depends on the consumers' wishes, time to build, and price of feedstock plus energy. I was estimating that the average user wouldn't want to build anything more than once or twice a day (depends of course, on whether people start eating minted products (building food is possible? cheaper to mint it than to get it by more traditional means? feedstock is FDA approved for human consumption? strong negative emotional reaction to eating minted food?). (Always assuming no AI) alejandro From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Nov 14 22:17:18 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:17:18 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Different Approach: World Changing Message-ID: <265000-2200311514221718782@M2W050.mail2web.com> Bruce Sterling and his Viridian organization suggest looking at this site: http://www.worldchanging.com/ One of my favorite artists of all times is James Turrell, whose exhibitions at Musuen of Contemporary Art (MOCA - LA) and elsewhere were riviting: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/turrell/ Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 22:35:52 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 09:35:52 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? Message-ID: <034601c3aaff$a9195d20$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eugen Leitl wrote: [Brett: Sorry I'm a bit short of time now to go over all I'd like to in this topic and other interest topics on the list but here are some thoughts] > [Brett] > > > I think I'd rather test myself against someone else's > > > "aggressive" weapon design then put my mind to the > > > engineering problem of making and discussing a better > > > weapon myself. - Until I can find a way of doing a > > > logical end-run around the whole grey-goo > You're making a logical mistake. Grey goo is not about > logic, it's about security and technology/engineering. > This is not something you talk about, this is something > you need to address in simulators, tiger groups, and in field > tests. In very practical hands-on setting, in other words. > A whitehat ignorant of blackhats isn't. Perhaps logical is the wrong word. But at present MNT assemblers have at least one characteristic in common with perpetual motion machines and that is that to date no working models have been produced from any specification. Whether MNT designs differ from perpetual motion machines designs in having the characteristic of build-ability about them still seems to be a nub of debate for most folk that talk about nanotech away from the transhumanist and foresight subcultures. Probably very few folk (generally not just on this list) would have actually read Drexler's Nanosystems. I haven't read it cover to cover either btw. I did read appendix A however in which Drexler talks about Methodological Issues in Theoretical Applied Science (theoretical applied science being a term that he coined himself and imo its unfortunately laboured terminology - I'd have preferred applied theoretical science myself). What I meant by logical and perhaps it is the wrong word is that even in design the rules of contingency apply -or should if one doesn't want to waste ones time - pace Euler. All designs for nanotechnological devices that violate the know laws of physics are not going to satisfy the design limit of contingency. That is pretty obvious. What I was messing about with is that there are possibly other types of design limitations that take into account the set of all possible human design motivations. I think it is *pretty* safe to assume for instance that no-one wants to build a grey goo replicator (even as a weapon) that they can't control to the extent of ensuring that it does not turn them into grey goo. They probably also don't want to turn their family and friends into grey goo or the environments in which they will need to live. (Already -within the analysis of what would-be designers of nano-weapons would want to build we are cutting down the design space). My notion of a logical end-run around the whole problem of grey-goo was that it just *might* be possible (assuming rational weapons designers - a big assumption but itself a manageable one) to so much cut down the design space of what would-be rational designers would want to build that when one added in the engineering constraints of what they could build there *might* be no space left. *If* that was the case we would have achieved something very valuable. We would have done what I'd term end-run logical analysis around the problem and shown that it was not a real problem in the real world at all. The reason it would be useful to do that *if* that was the result and perhaps anyway is that the finding would be useful *politically* to head off concerns raised by folk that may otherwise get into serious fear-mongering aimed at heading off the development of MNT altogether. Folk such as the writers of The New Atlantas that Greg Burch posted to the list recently. Heres the link again http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/2/keiper.htm I was particularly interested in the above article that referenced Robert Freitas views on the grey goo problem. These folk at New Atlantas are becoming knowledgeable enough to make some good pre-emptive political strikes against the emergence of MNT that may slow down its delivery times, imo. There is a period before any new technology is produced but when it is known to be possible to some that is very difficult to find basic development funding for. Because funding to do basic science generally comes from governments. VC capital is typically less patient and there are good reasons for that, winning the hearts and minds of voters in the propaganda wars is very important to the ultimate roll out times. Regards, Brett From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 14 23:16:29 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:16:29 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <005601c3aa84$1bc3d610$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <02bb01c3aaf2$67dab5a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: I don't think that you are arguing because of an ego. The word "believe" has a variety of meanings: (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=believe) To accept as true or real: "Do you believe the news stories? " To credit with veracity: "I believe you. " To expect or suppose; think: "I believe they will arrive shortly. " v. intr. To have firm faith, especially religious faith. To have faith, confidence, or trust: I believe in your ability to solve the problem. To have confidence in the truth or value of something: We believe in free speech. To have an opinion; think: They have already left, I believe. So in some cases, it is used as a justification of something taken as fact without supporting evidence. In others, it is expectation or supposition which both would be based in some fact. To think. What bothers me is when people use its faith based version while claiming otherwise. I agree with you about public policy being made by uninformed faith based beliefs. As far as ego goes, don't we all have one? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 3:00 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > Kevin wrote: > > > I BELIEVE that most who read that post were able to > > understand that without picking apart the statement to > > find out what I meant. Perhaps I could have said that > > is was a conjecture or a preliminary finding. > > Yup. It is a choice. That you have the power to use the > word or any other has never been in contention. That you > would be stopped or coerced into not using it hasn't either. > > Perhaps that's what you wanted to test? > > If you think I have an ego, you are right. If you think I > have been arguing the point because of that you are mistaken. > > Perhaps all it comes down to, in the end, is whether you > are intellectually persuaded against using it. If you are not > the default meme - which is believing wins and keeps another > vector of propagation. > > I will work with anyone on this list that is willing to work the > intellectual basis of the argument. My motive for wanting > to work the arguments is self-centred. I live in a world where > I see that democracies set the policy-framework that sets the > upper limits on the rate of progress that determines whether > I can live or die. > > - Brett > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 14 23:35:22 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 10:35:22 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Creativity and closed labs - was Self replicatingcomputer programs ? References: <200311140940.hAE9eTM09150@tick.javien.com> <3FB4D158.F088B905@best.com> Message-ID: <03a501c3ab07$f946e6c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Chris Phoenix wrote: > On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:28:57 +1100, "Brett Paatsch" wrote: > > I'd be interested in others views on this. It would be real nice > > not to have to engineer in secret for fear of empowering the > > wrong folk but I am not sure that it is in fact as 'safe'? as you > > think. > > I thought about this before publishing my nanofactory design > paper. I liked your paper. I'm glad you published it. >My conclusion was that engineering in secret helps the > bad guys more than it helps the good guys. Openness helps > the good guys, and (I think) to a lesser extent the bad guys. > Secrecy allows the bad guys to help themselves, while doing > nothing for the good guys. > > > .... > > Government closed labs can be very well funded. > > .... > > This argues that they can pay for a lot of creativity. Not just creativity, also resources including human resources as anciliary staff to do things such as search the net and patent databases etc for what is currently know. The NSA and similar organisations have a fair amount of state of the art computing grunt to throw at problem solving as well. To me the Manhatten project, or to be more precise my understanding of it which may be a different thing, was successful not mainly because of the brilliance of Openheimer but because of the formidable managment skills of General Groves. Perhaps if my own forte was theoretical physics I'd take a different view, but even Openheimer, (again as I understand him) was a manager of people rather than just a scientist in the Manhattan project. > So they're likely to have already thought of whatever you > describe. Technologically perhaps. Perhaps not. Independent minds can be creative because they are independent and sometimes irreverent about the knowledge domains they go into not because they are necessary possessing the highest IQs. > And, as you point out, they won't talk about it. . > So the question is: is it better for the rest of us not to know what's > in the labs, or to have some idea through independent work? We cannot know what is in all the labs, I guess that seems pretty obvious as we cannot know what creativity resides in each other heads and into what areas of inquiry that creativity is directed. We can know something of our own creativity and we can network perhaps more effectively if we let others see what we are doing, but perhaps it is not all others. Perhaps a rifle shot rather than a shot gun approach to knowledge sharing and mutual empowering is warranted. I'm not sure. It may be a case of horses for courses. > > Against the idea that technology (particularly weapons and > > security related technology) is likely to be more advanced in > > some government closed labs is the counterpoint that people > > are extraordinarily bad at keeping secrets. > > So they may invent something, not tell anyone--but a bad guy steals it > anyway. A very bad outcome. I don't find the good buy/ bad guy dichotomy all that compelling to be honest because I don't think the folks we consider bad guys think that that is what they are. One mans terrorist really does seem like another mans freedom fighter. [Sorry got to go.. Brett] > > > I don't know what the chances of the Exi list being watched with > > real interest AND understanding is, but I doubt that it is > > infinitesimal. Heck I'm watching it and I've got considerably > > less resources than a government ;-) > > I think we should assume that everything is watched--and not only by > people in this country. My paper may help a Chinese or Iranian MNT > program (if and when they start one--but they may have already). On the > other hand, I figured that my paper was mostly a collection of tweaks on > Nanosystems, plus straightforward calculation--would not be hard for a > single person (who's reasonably bright, and has been studying > Nanosystems for a while) to do in a few months. After all, that's how > it was done! > > I think it's even more important to talk about gray goo technology > openly, as long as it's done accurately. Either the labs that are > interested in gray goo could easily think of your idea, or they > couldn't. If they could, there's no harm in talking about it--at least > not from those labs, and that's who you seem to be worried about. If > they couldn't, then they are interested in something very powerful that > they don't understand, and it's definitely a good idea to improve their > understanding before they develop something destructively stupid. > > There are issues beyond secret government labs. Talking (accurately!) > about MNT makes more people aware of the possibilities, and may spur > earlier development. It may also spur earlier preparation. It's not > obvious how these balance out--does the situation become more > survivable, or less? Early development without preparation would be > bad. But late development without preparation would be worse, because > it would go more quickly. > > There are too many actors and factors to predict all the effects of > publication. So at this point, I think we have to fall back on basic > tenets: openness is generally a good idea. > > Chris > > -- > Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org > Director of Research > Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Nov 14 23:30:40 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:30:40 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] the hole in the triangle Message-ID: <011401c3ab07$5b7f5c60$cf994a43@texas.net> http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/trojuhelnik.gif From aperick at centurytel.net Fri Nov 14 23:49:19 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 15:49:19 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] If Alcor fails ... In-Reply-To: <200311140940.hAE9eNM09144@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <1437430.1068854503964.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> A plausible scenario/belief in which to place my hopes, if singularities come late, and Alcor fails - within 'this life.' If transhuman technologies do not save me from facing a death by senescence I have devised the following plausible work-around. My lifelong experience was a simulation, a trivial sim. The reason? Most probably to gain a sure knowledge of the outcome of an interesting conjecture. Possibly to prove a belief of what outcomes could be expected, given a certain initial state -- all of it, possibly, to settle a bet. In this fantasy I envision my true self to be already very posthuman. My true self has set up and has run this, my most recent life experience in, simulation to determine what outcomes are probable given certain challenging initial factors/environment. My recent life experience was run using some subset of the core of the personality unique to my true self in order to learn how my life would have unfolded in such a world. This is the only sim scenario I have yet devised that can account for all the ugliness and difficulties that my life has contained. The story plays out like this: at the moment of death I 'awake' as if from a dream to the awareness that I have actually only 'slept' for a short time. Thanks to the very fast hardware upon which plays my self, I have experienced an entire life during a single 'night.' I yawn, allow the dream to flash past me, say wow, 'live' a 'real day' and then indulge my love for adventure and mystery by allowing myself another dream. Repeat. Did you notice, that if this not be now, it may yet be? I look down upon my fellow man for having wrought religion, but I cannot deny being of the same species. Thank god for subspecies. From dgc at cox.net Fri Nov 14 23:48:27 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 18:48:27 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <007001c3aad2$d7052ac0$12ecfea9@kevin> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <3FB2D70C.9040407@cox.net> <007001c3aad2$d7052ac0$12ecfea9@kevin> Message-ID: <3FB569CB.7030403@cox.net> cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net wrote: >How's the homebrew STM coming along? > > > Slowly at the moment. I started from Dr John D. Alexander's "unimorph" design, http://www.geocities.com/spm_stm So far, I've purchased tools and materials and completed the mechanical work. I've downloaded the Eagle EDA program and integrated a spice package, and taught myself how to do analog electronic design. I modified John's design and purchased all electronic parts. Next step is to complete the analog electronics and test, followed by doing the digital part and the software. I need motivation, so I've asked my 13-year-old daughter to work with me. Now that her soccer season is over, perhaps things will move forward. From xllb at rogers.com Sat Nov 15 00:33:19 2003 From: xllb at rogers.com (xllb at rogers.com) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 19:33:19 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles Message-ID: <20031115003319.SCJZ166125.web02-imail.rogers.com@localhost> Spike suggested > Could be something as simple as walking upright > offered a mating advantage... spike Perhaps genders stood upright for different reasons, males to copulate and females to nurse while multi-tasking or when escaping the guys who were learning to stand up ;-). xllb "Dogma blinds." "Hell is overkill." From thespike at earthlink.net Sat Nov 15 00:37:06 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 18:37:06 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] communications test from Robert Bradbury (everyone else please ignore) References: <3FB57153.50F56AB7@aeiveos.com> Message-ID: <01b401c3ab10$a356b160$cf994a43@texas.net> and I quote: "Yes Robert your outgoing Email works." From pietroferri at hotmail.com Sat Nov 15 00:50:02 2003 From: pietroferri at hotmail.com (pietro ferri) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 00:50:02 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] hole in the triangle Message-ID: >http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/trojuhelnik.gif Fascinating! Can someone explain? Pietro Ferri _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail From jacques at dtext.com Sat Nov 15 01:16:28 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 02:16:28 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" online In-Reply-To: <3FB4BD20.7030503@pobox.com> References: <3FB4BD20.7030503@pobox.com> Message-ID: <16309.32364.518071.355464@localhost.localdomain> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky a ?crit (14.11.2003/06:31) : > > "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides > appears to have been OCRed online. This is chapter 2 of "The Adapted > Mind" and #1 on my list of favorite papers ever. > > http://folk.uio.no/rickyh/papers/TheAdaptedMind.htm I have arranged it a bit for printing (dense, two-column, 72 pages), so in case it's useful to anyone else: http://dtext.com/pfc-a4.pdf Note: It's for A4 paper (the norm in Europe), so if you use another paper size it may not be as pretty. Also, don't link to it, it will be gone in a few days. You can get the whole book from Amazon at Jacques From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Sat Nov 15 01:24:27 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 20:24:27 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] the hole in the triangle In-Reply-To: <011401c3ab07$5b7f5c60$cf994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <019c01c3ab17$36255680$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Damien Broderick wrote, > http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/trojuhelnik.gif The extra space comes from the fact that the slopes of the top triangles are different. That is, the diagonal line at the top is not straight. The red triangle has a slope rate of 3 squares up for 8 squares right which equals a 37.5% slope, which is shallower. The green triangle has a slope rate of 2 squares up per each 5 squares right which equals a 40% slope, which is steeper. The green slope is steeper than the red slope. In the top configuration, the top edge is concave, sagging inward. Its left-hand side slope on the red triangle is shallower into the sag, while the right-hand side slope on the green triangle is steeper coming out of the sag. In the bottom configuration, the top edge is convex, bulging outward. Its left-hand side slope on the green triangle is steeper coming up over the bulge, while the right-hand side slope is shallower coming down off the bulge. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From jacques at dtext.com Sat Nov 15 01:36:51 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 02:36:51 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] hole in the triangle In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <16309.33587.376180.927503@localhost.localdomain> pietro ferri a ?crit (15.11.2003/00:50) : > > >http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~motl/trojuhelnik.gif > > Fascinating! > Can someone explain? While it is true that each particular building block is identical on both figure, the resulting figures at the top and at the bottom are not the same, and don't have the same area (and are not triangle at all to start with). This is because the "slope" in the dark green and the red triangles are not the same. Exchanging their position changes the overall shape, and makes the one at the bottom have a larger area. Jacques From jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com Sat Nov 15 01:44:59 2003 From: jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com (Jose Cordeiro) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 17:44:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Mexican Extropians? In-Reply-To: <1437430.1068854503964.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Message-ID: <20031115014459.74961.qmail@web41302.mail.yahoo.com> Does somebody know of any Mexican Extropians? Extropianilly yours, La vie est belle! Yos? (www.cordeiro.org) Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com Sat Nov 15 03:56:22 2003 From: jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com (Jose Cordeiro) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 19:56:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] NASA: Robots become human In-Reply-To: <265000-2200311514221718782@M2W050.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <20031115035622.26584.qmail@web41303.mail.yahoo.com> Subject: People Are Robots, Too. Almost Spotlight Feature October 28, 2003 People Are Robots, Too. Almost Popular culture has long pondered the question, "If it looks like a human, walks like a human and talks like a human, is it human?" So far the answer has been no. Robots can't cry, bleed or feel like humans, and that's part of what makes them different.But what if they could think like humans? Biologically inspired robots aren't just an ongoing fascination in movies and comic books; they are being realized by engineers and scientists all over the world.! While much emphasis is placed on developing physical characteristics for robots, like functioning human-like faces or artificial muscles, engineers in the Telerobotics Research and Applications Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are among those working to program robots with forms of artificial intelligence similar to human thinking processes. Why Would They Want to Do That? "The way robots function now, if something goes wrong, humans modify their programming code and reload everything, then hope it eventually works," said JPL robotics engineer Barry Werger. "What we hope to do eventually is get robots to be more independent and learn to adjust their own programming." Scientists and engineers take several approaches to control robots. The two extreme ends of the spectrum are called "deliberative control" and "reactive control." The former is the traditional, dominant way in which robots function, ! by painstakingly constructing maps and other types of models that they use to plan sequences of action with mathematical precision. The robot performs these sequences like a blindfolded pirate looking for buried treasure; from point A, move 36 paces north, then 12 paces east, then 4 paces northeast to point X; thar be the gold. The downside to this is that if anything interrupts the robot's progress (for example, if the map is wrong or lacks detail), the robot must stop, make a new map and a new plan of actions. This re-planning process can become costly if repeated over time. Also, to ensure the robot's safety, back-up programs must be in place to abort the plan if the robot encounters an unforeseen rock or hole that may hinder its journey. "Reactive" approaches, on the other hand, get rid of maps and planning altogether and focus on live observation of the environment. Slow down if there's a rock ahead. Dig if you see a b! ig X on the ground. The JPL Telerobotics Research and Applications Group, led by technical group supervisor Dr. Homayoun Seraji, focuses on "behavior-based control," which lies toward the "reactive" end of the spectrum. Behavior-based control allows robots to follow a plan while staying aware of the unexpected, changing features of their environment. Turn right when you see a red rock, go all the way down the hill and dig right next to the palm tree; thar be the gold. Behavior-based control allows the robot a great deal of flexibility to adapt the plan to its environment as it goes, much as a human does. This presents a number of advantages in space exploration, including alleviating the communication delay that results from operating distant rovers from Earth. How Do They Do It? Seraji's group at JPL focuses on two of the many approaches to implementing behavior-based control: fuzzy logic and neural networks. The main difference between the two systems is that robots using fuzzy logic perform with a set knowledge that doesn't improve; whereas, robots with neural networks start out with no knowledge and learn over time. Fuzzy Logic "Fuzzy logic rules are a way of expressing actions as a human would, with linguistic instead of mathematical commands; for example, when one person says to another person, 'It's hot in here,' the other person knows to either open the window or turn up the air conditioning. That person wasn't told to open the window, but he or she knew a rule such as 'when it is hot, do something to stay cool,'" said Seraji, a leading expert in robotic control systems who was recently recognized as the most published author in the Journal of Robotic Systems' 20-year history. By incorporating fuzzy logic into their engineering technology, robots can function in a humanistic way and respond to visual or audible signals, o! r in the case of the above example, turn on the air conditioning when it thinks the room is hot. Neural Networks Neural networks are tools that allow robots to learn from their experiences, associate perceptions with actions and adapt to unforeseen situations or environments. "The concepts of 'interesting' and 'rocky' are ambiguous in nature, but can be learned using neural networks," said JPL robotics research engineer Dr. Ayanna Howard, who specializes in artificial intelligence and creates intelligent technology for space applications. "We can train a robot to know that if it encounters rocky surfaces, then the terrain is hazardous. Or if the rocky surface has interesting features, then it may have great scientific value." Neural networks mimic the human brain in that they simulate a large network of simple elements, similar to brain cells, that learn through being presented with examples. A robot functioning with such a system learns somewhat like a baby or a child does, only at a slower rate. "We can easily tell a robot that a square is an equilateral object with four sides, but how do we describe a cat?" Werger said. "With neural networks, we can show the robot many examples of cats, and it will later be able to recognize cats in general." Similarly, a neural network can 'learn' to classify terrain if a geologist shows it images of many types of terrain and associates a label with each one. When the network later sees an image of a terrain it hasn't seen before, it can determine whether the terrain is hazardous or safe based on its lessons. Robotics for Today and Tomorrow With continuous advances in robotic methods like behavior-based control, future space missions might be able to function without relying heavily on human commands. On the home front, similar technology is already used in many practical applications such as ! digital cameras, computer programs, dishwashers, washing machines and some car engines. The post office even uses neural networks to read handwriting and sort mail. "Does this mean robots in the near future will think like humans? No," Werger said. "But by mimicking human techniques, they could become easier to communicate with, more independent, and ultimately more efficient." JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. Media Contact: Charli Schuler (818) 393-5467 La vie est belle! Yos? (www.cordeiro.org) Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 15 06:04:14 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 22:04:14 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin In-Reply-To: <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000001c3ab3e$4c4cf5e0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin > > > > > ...Surely most people have > > > heard of "the sin of Onan" at the very least. > > > > http://www.libidomag.com/reviews/professionals/selfpleasure.html > ... > Onan was killed by Yahveh for withdrawing `prematurely' and > `spilling his seed upon the ground'. > > But wait, there's more. > > The naughty man wasn't punished fatally just for coitus > interruptus, but due to his *motive* for withdrawing... Damien Broderick Well, yes but this is how I BELEIVE it happened. (Brett, note legitimate usage in this case.) God made too hasty a decision in slaying the hapless prole, and here's why: Onan was to conceive a child to carry his brother's name, but he knew that people can read calendars and subtract, and so they would realize that this kid is really Onan Junior. Then he recalled all the trash the kids dished out over the entire years he was in school, as kids are known to do in nearly infinite quantities, such as: Hey Onan! May I call you The Big O? and Hey Onan! Hows it feel to know your name will be synonymous with auto-eroticism for the next several thousand years? and Hey Onan! Feeling especially self-reliant today? and Hey Onan! The Rabbi needs someone to give a lecture to the students on safe sex. and Hey Onan! My, what large biceps you have. and Hey Onan! When you started school, did you study under Master Bates? and The name is Bond. James Bond. This is my friend Off. Jack Off. And so on until the poor chap was beside himself. Kids are cruel as you know, even those destined to become bible writers. So old Onan is carrying out his orders from god, in the sack with his sister-in-law, thinking all this over and just at the critical moment he just snapped and said: NO, God! dammit! I will not put another innocent child thru this torture! Of course the rest is history. But I still think god was mistaken to slay the guy, as his motives for disobedience were pure. spike From gpmap at runbox.com Sat Nov 15 07:50:16 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 08:50:16 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] If Alcor fails ... References: <1437430.1068854503964.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Message-ID: <000801c3ab4d$1cb2b090$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Interesting scenario, it is interesting to note that it is almost identical to the teachings of this or that religion. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 12:49 AM Subject: [extropy-chat] If Alcor fails ... > A plausible scenario/belief in which to place my hopes, if singularities > come late, and Alcor fails - within 'this life.' > > If transhuman technologies do not save me from facing a death by senescence > I have devised the following plausible work-around. My lifelong experience > was a simulation, a trivial sim. The reason? Most probably to gain a sure > knowledge of the outcome of an interesting conjecture. Possibly to prove a > belief of what outcomes could be expected, given a certain initial state -- > all of it, possibly, to settle a bet. > > In this fantasy I envision my true self to be already very posthuman. My > true self has set up and has run this, my most recent life experience in, > simulation to determine what outcomes are probable given certain challenging > initial factors/environment. My recent life experience was run using some > subset of the core of the personality unique to my true self in order to > learn how my life would have unfolded in such a world. This is the only sim > scenario I have yet devised that can account for all the ugliness and > difficulties that my life has contained. > > The story plays out like this: at the moment of death I 'awake' as if from a > dream to the awareness that I have actually only 'slept' for a short time. > Thanks to the very fast hardware upon which plays my self, I have > experienced an entire life during a single 'night.' I yawn, allow the dream > to flash past me, say wow, 'live' a 'real day' and then indulge my love for > adventure and mystery by allowing myself another dream. Repeat. > > Did you notice, that if this not be now, it may yet be? > > I look down upon my fellow man for having wrought religion, but I cannot > deny being of the same species. Thank god for subspecies. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From cphoenix at best.com Sat Nov 15 08:00:24 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 03:00:24 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Social Implications of Nanotech References: <200311131824.hADIOhM18700@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FB5DD18.A9A644C9@best.com> Before the technical stuff, a meta-issue: It's a common effect of human psychology that two people will annoy each other in symmetrical ways. We seem to have run into that here. I thought I was explaining in straightforward logic why certain system configurations were unlikely in practice. You asked me "not to assume everyone who disagree with you is an idiot". Having read this complaint and remembered the psychology feature, I now suspect you were trying to explain in straightforward logic why my definition of "unlimited-sum transaction" was not usable. But at the time, I read your example of million-dollar water as condescending/snide. Let's see if this identification of (what may be) the problem is sufficient to fix it. On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 (in two emails), Robin Hanson wrote: > On 11/12/2003, Chris Phoenix wrote: > > .... > >Is there any reason such a thing would not be capable of producing a > >copy of itself? ... Is there any reason such a thing would be slow? > > The whole point here is to be able to do economic analysis on this topic > without having to settle all of the technical disputes that still rage. > You are arguing that there's really only one interesting scenario to > consider, but clearly many other people believe that .... It's an interesting question, how much pruning to apply to the range of scenarios. If you become convinced that a scenario is implausible, is it your duty to prune it ASAP? Or to talk about it anyway in order to cover the space, and let others prune it later? That depends on the evaluation process in your field, which I don't know. Is it harmful to talk about implausible scenarios as though they were plausible? It wastes time, but that's just a tradeoff. Logically, a scenario based on a contradiction can lead absolutely anywhere. If it's merely based on an implausibility, it will probably only lead to an unlikelihood. And of course they can always be criticized and discarded later--but may corrupt the discussion in the meantime. Since the scenarios I was arguing against are based on a less-likely (IMO) state between two plausible states, naive expectation says that their outcome will also be in the plausible range. I'm not sure that follows, since the outcome is very multidimensional. But if it's appropriate for you at this stage to refrain from considering plausibility, then you can ignore a large fraction of what I said in my earlier messages. I hadn't considered that this might be the case. > .... many other people believe that creating a > self-reproducing system is damn hard and many other nanotech abilities > will appear and have interesting consequences before then. I'm not trying > to settle such disputes; I'm just trying to identify the key scenarios > being considered to support some economic analysis. As far as I know, there are two main technological scenarios. The first one is what the NNI is promoting. Nanoscale technologies (~what the NNI is funding today) have incremental but noteworthy effects by creating new materials and components. This enables some new products and applications. Eventually (~4 decades?), when we learn how to handle self-assembly, this gives us a handle on more complex components and some system integration. But I haven't seen any proposals for NNI-type nanotech, either short-range nanoscale tech or longer-range bionanotech, to produce an integrated general-purpose production system. The NNI seems to be inconsistent in their claims for this technology. They seem to be claiming most of the benefits of the Feynman/Drexler vision, and some of the underlying capabilities (manipulating and fabricating matter atom by atom), but deny the possibility of translating conventional machines and direct manipulation to the nanoscale. It could be viewed as conservative: by the time we get biomimetics working, it probably won't be that big a deal (IMO, at least). BTW, I just today discovered some *fascinating* work on ATP synthase. It seems that a mechanical model was constructed, not including thermal noise, and it worked just the same as the jittery protein. A major argument of the pro-biomimetic people is that thermal noise is helpful to biotech but harmful to MNT. MNT people have been saying that it's not harmful; now it appears it's not necessarily helpful to biotech either. http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Bulletins/bulletin-summer98/scimodel.html Anyway, the second technological scenario is the MNT one, and as far as I'm aware, it always assumes autoproduction (= self-replication, but without the "life" connotations) very early in the game (due to technological necessity), and frequently also assumes a fast takeoff from "assembler breakthrough" to "flood of products." Some smart people like Ted Kaehler (in _Nano_) have argued that design problems will slow the flood to a trickle. This was a major motivation for my Nanofactory paper, which I think is a very strong counter to that argument. This MNT scenario generally focuses on the effects of a sudden advance in manufacturing, i.e. cheap general-purpose manufacturing of products with nanoscale features. The nanoscale features give useful properties like very efficient operation and direct interaction with other nanoscale objects like chemicals and cell parts. But for the most part, this scenario ignores the nanoscale technologies--I suspect a major reason for this is that it predates the whole field of nanoscale technology-type "nanotechnology". If you project general technology trends, you may find that something equivalent to MNT happens naturally around (at a guess) 2050 +/- 15 years. At this point, it would not be a big deal. But if it happens around 2010-2015, in flood-of-products mode, it would be a very big deal. A trickle-of-products may still be a big deal, because computers are fairly simple products, and are worth pouring lots of design effort into. In general, an autoproductive nanoscale system should also be capable of building a very powerful computer, perhaps nine orders of magnitude ahead of today's, which is, what, 60 Moore's Law years? So if you want a range of scenarios that have been proposed, you have two variables: When does MNT develop (2008 to 2060, with ultra-powerful computers 3 months to 3 years later), and how long after that do we get general-purpose manufacturing (3 months to [at a guess] 10 years later). > >... I don't see any point in talking about MNT systems duplicating > >themselves in a year--which is a time scale you mentioned. > > I said "within a year", meaning less some time less than a year. OK. I wasn't sure whether you recognized that one day is a quite plausible replication time, once we accept replication at all. > > >>>> ... A robust morphogenetic code, an evolutionary system, ... > > > I'm much more concerned about the robustness of the code. > >Well, then "lots" is no harder than one. And we can certainly do one. > > We have one robust morphogenetic code? I wasn't thinking DNA was anywhere > near robust enough for many plausible values of the computronium available. I said "we can certainly do one", not "we have." I meant that once we develop one, we can copy it to as many processors as we want. I think I misunderstood what you meant by "robust"; I thought you were asking whether we could deal with the fault-tolerant computing necessary to run a hugely parallel system. I don't know what makes a morphogenetic code robust, so I wasn't trying to assert anything about that. > > > >"unlimited-sum transaction" ... the benefit to one (or both) of > > > >the parties is much higher than the cost, and is not correlated > > > > with the cost. > > > > > > The liquids I drink over the next few days are worth millions to > > > me, as I'd die without them. > > > >No, they're not worth millions. ... The > >value to you of the liquids is no more than the cost of replacing > >them from a different source. > > You mean the benefit relative to the closest available substitute sold? > Is that the way you define cost as well? If so we could find a different > set of examples that probably aren't what you have in mind. Um. I don't quite have the mental vocabulary to think in economics. I hope you can help me out a bit. As I ponder on the difference between value and benefit, and the significance of multiple diverse users (diversity implied by benefit not proportional to cost), I wonder if what I'm trying to say is that for these resources, arbitrage destroys value. There's no way to set a market without excluding lots of potential users. Can you figure out what I have in mind? Can you suggest a definition for it? > >Let's take another example. The largest cause of infant death in > >Venezuela is diarrhea. This could generally be prevented by a few > >pennies worth of salt and sugar in clean water, and very simple > >instructions. The value of this resource to the parents of those babies > >would be immense. > > Er, by analogy here aren't you supposed to be comparing the value of > one particular source of salt/sugar/water to another, and computing only > the additional value of one source relative to another? I assume that if there were *any* source of salt/sugar/water/information (don't ignore information in this example!) then the babies would not be dying. So there aren't two sources to compare. So any source should be able to corner the market and, so to speak, make a killing, at least for a while until the information spread. The incentives appear to be high. But I'm not sure we need to follow this example. You asked whether markets could fail to supply you with water. I answer that in some circumstances they can fail to supply people with low-cost lifesaving supplies, even when a supplier would make a huge profit. But the question of whether the market could fail to supply you with water is probably incidental. I'd actually rather hear what you think about the canteen in the desert. I'm not questioning whether it can be viewed in terms of economics; but can it be viewed in terms of market? > .... compared to many claims made for > discontinuities induced by nanotech, computers were a pretty smooth > transition. .... overall > computer tech progress has been relatively steady. The underlying hardware, yes; the applications have been somewhat more punctuated. Look how quickly the web grew. Or the difference spreadsheets made to the business world. > > .... and most consumer goods are produced locally > > on PGMDs, via downloaded designs and a few general feedstocks. A > > variation on this position posits that PGMDs can produce more PGMDs > > relatively quickly. And a refinement of this position posits that such > > self-reproducing PGMDs dramatically lowers costs relative to technology > > available just prior to this point. > > >I doubt that a > >non-autoproductive MBPGMD is technically plausible, much less > >economically plausible, since you probably can't build a human-scale > >MBPGMD without bootstrapping it from a much smaller one. > > The Royal Society of London just came out with a report saying nanotech > is possible, but that most of their advisors say self-reproduction is not. By nanotech, did they mean the use of nanostructured materials to build complete macro-scale products? (I doubt it, but I'm not sure.) I'm pretty confident in saying that their advisors are quite uninformed about self-reproduction. I doubt that most of them have looked beyond one or two shallow and easily-answered "proofs" that dry nanotech can't work as described. The criticism of MNT theory has been of such low quality, and people are so willing to believe blanket assertions without testing them for plausibility or relevance, that by now I don't worry too much about panels of experts. I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, because my process is one of open-mindedness. I have paid close attention to every anti-MNT argument and thought process I've come across--and have been able to find a fatal flaw in every one so far. >The influential novel "Diamond Age" describes a world > where most people do not have access to self-reproducing devices, >though they do have access to capable PGMDs. A matter of policy, not technology; remember "feed vs. seed"? > Drexler and the Foresight Institute >have been trying to downplay the role of self-replication for some time >now. This is because of the unfortunate connotations of the term. It doesn't change the underlying technical proposal: a nanoscale machine which, provided suitable information and materials, can duplicate its physical structure. > I am struggling to clarify and identify the differing assumptions > that different people are making, and place them in economic terms > to support economic analysis. *I'M OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS*, though > I'm running out of time for this round. Sorry for the delayed answer; I didn't see this till a few hours ago. Above, in the discussion leading to the two dimensions of variability for scenarios, was my best understanding of the differing *technical* assumptions that people are making--and how to unify them, by recognizing that something similar to MNT will happen eventually whether or not dry nanomachines work, but if it's far enough out it will blend in. Hm... Just thought of a third dimension: the cost of fabrication. I expect that even early devices will come in under $100/kg, and quite possibly less than $1/kg, but it's conceivable that it could be much higher. In addition to technical assumptions, there are quite a few policy options, ranging from first-strike global suppressive empire (enabled by early-flood-of-products) to nano-anarchy (no enforceable policy). This is far too big a can of worms to get into tonight; I don't even know which policies can work for what lengths of time, much less which policies are plausible given the players, or how commercial and military policies and actions will interact. Near the bottom of our paper "Three Systems of Action", there's a 2x2 matrix that may provide some framework for policy options. "Distribution & Access" is one axis, and "Technical Restrictions" (meaning, securely built into the nanofactories) is the other; the values for each are "Tight" and "Loose". Several consequences of each combination are listed. "http://CRNano.org/systems.htm#Table 3" (yes, the URL currently needs Table, space, 3; I just noticed that; we'll change it to http://CRNano.org/systems.htm#Table_3 ASAP. It's about 3/5 of the way down the page.) > > > 2. A big question is by what factor general manufacturing devices > are less > > > efficient than specialized manufacturing devices, either in terms of > > > production time, material waste, or final product quality. > > > >Don't compare apples and oranges. That's like asking by what factor > >digital computers are less efficient than analog computers. Digital > >computers can do things that analog computers simply can't. > > My point was just that if digital computers had been too inefficient in > emulating analog ones, then we'd still be making analog ones. They *are* extremely inefficient at emulating analog ones, but the ease of programming them makes up for it somewhat. But a much bigger point (and my point is that it *is* much bigger) is that digital computers don't only emulate analog ones; they also run programming languages and handle symbols. Nothing else in the world can handle symbols like a digital computer. Likewise, I think that nothing but dry MNT will be able to (e.g.) build diamondoid spacecraft, or a thousand other important product families. And I think this is a bigger point than how efficiently it will be able to do it. > > > While many manufacturing plants today > > > are highly automated, it may cost quite a lot to produce designs for > fully > > > automated production processes. So design costs may be a lot > higher. > > > >Or it may cost quite a bit less. You don't have to retrain your > >workers. You don't have to pay workers to retool your machines. ... > > Those are not design costs. No, but they are costs of setting up production of a new product. I was thinking that in the life cycle of a product, design and ramp-up can be lumped together for many purposes. And actual design costs for a fully automated MNT system may be lower than current design costs as well. The design space will be incredibly huge, allowing lots of levels of abstraction (both conceptual and physical-in-the-product) to be used. > >Um, why are you not counting the labor cost as a saving? > >And what about transportation costs, warehousing, the costs of > >compensating for uncertain and delayed supply chains? ... > > When I said "just lowering those ... costs" I meant just the costs I was > focusing on there, the cost of physical capital for manufacturing. This is the benefit everyone talks about, but many other benefits come from the selfsame source: self-contained general manufacturing. I don't understand why you'd consider one benefit, the physical capital of manufacturing, without considering the others. For example, if factories are frequently run to capacity, then it often makes sense to ship goods from a factory that's farther away but more lightly loaded. (Likewise if some factories are cheaper than others.) But if you almost always have a local up-to-date factory sitting idle, you'll almost never need to ship anything. So I suspect (but I don't pretend to teach you your job) that for very little extra work, you can consider the effect of to-capacity vs. sitting-idle factories on shipping costs. And lowered shipping costs make sitting-idle factories more worthwhile. Basically, I don't understand how you could estimate the benefits of factories sitting idle without considering all the costs I listed--all of which depend heavily on the amount of factory idleness. It looks like a feedback loop (self-referential equation? Sorry, I don't know the term), and if you don't analyze it, I think you're very likely to build an implausible scenario. Which brings this email full-circle, and it's 3AM, so I'll sign off. I hope this was more helpful and less annoying than the previous ones. Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From sentience at pobox.com Sat Nov 15 11:32:48 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 06:32:48 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" online In-Reply-To: <02f501c3aaf7$c9715e40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <3FB4BD20.7030503@pobox.com> <02f501c3aaf7$c9715e40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <3FB60EE0.6070909@pobox.com> Brett Paatsch wrote: > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > >>"The Psychological Foundations of Culture" by John Tooby >>and Leda Cosmides appears to have been OCRed online. >> This is chapter 2 of "The Adapted Mind" and #1 on my list >>of favorite papers ever. >> >>http://folk.uio.no/rickyh/papers/TheAdaptedMind.htm > > #1 favorite is high praise. > > Thanks Eliezer. Interesting. I haven't read it yet - it prints out > at 91 pages and doesn't seem to be only chapter 2. > > When was it published? A quick flick through shows citations > as late as 1992 as far as I can see. 1992. Incidentally, Tyrone Pow reformatted this at: http://www.tyronepow.com/misc/TheAdaptedMind.htm -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 15 12:08:09 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:08:09 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? In-Reply-To: <034601c3aaff$a9195d20$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <034601c3aaff$a9195d20$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <20031115120809.GP922@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:35:52AM +1100, Brett Paatsch wrote: > Eugen Leitl wrote: > > [Brett: Sorry I'm a bit short of time now to go over all I'd > like to in this topic and other interest topics on the list but > here are some thoughts] > > > [Brett] > > > > I think I'd rather test myself against someone else's > > > > "aggressive" weapon design then put my mind to the > > > > engineering problem of making and discussing a better > > > > weapon myself. - Until I can find a way of doing a > > > > logical end-run around the whole grey-goo > > > You're making a logical mistake. Grey goo is not about > > logic, it's about security and technology/engineering. > > This is not something you talk about, this is something > > you need to address in simulators, tiger groups, and in field > > tests. In very practical hands-on setting, in other words. > > A whitehat ignorant of blackhats isn't. > > Perhaps logical is the wrong word. But at present MNT > assemblers have at least one characteristic in common with > perpetual motion machines and that is that to date no working > models have been produced from any specification. Whether > MNT designs differ from perpetual motion machines designs > in having the characteristic of build-ability about them still seems > to be a nub of debate for most folk that talk about nanotech > away from the transhumanist and foresight subcultures. > > Probably very few folk (generally not just on this list) would > have actually read Drexler's Nanosystems. I haven't read it cover > to cover either btw. I did read appendix A however in which > Drexler talks about Methodological Issues in Theoretical Applied > Science (theoretical applied science being a term that he coined > himself and imo its unfortunately laboured terminology - I'd have > preferred applied theoretical science myself). > > What I meant by logical and perhaps it is the wrong word is > that even in design the rules of contingency apply -or should if > one doesn't want to waste ones time - pace Euler. > > All designs for nanotechnological devices that violate the know > laws of physics are not going to satisfy the design limit of > contingency. That is pretty obvious. > > What I was messing about with is that there are possibly other > types of design limitations that take into account the set of all > possible human design motivations. I think it is *pretty* safe > to assume for instance that no-one wants to build a grey goo > replicator (even as a weapon) that they can't control to the > extent of ensuring that it does not turn them into grey goo. They > probably also don't want to turn their family and friends into > grey goo or the environments in which they will need to live. > (Already -within the analysis of what would-be designers of > nano-weapons would want to build we are cutting down the > design space). My notion of a logical end-run around the whole > problem of grey-goo was that it just *might* be possible > (assuming rational weapons designers - a big assumption but > itself a manageable one) to so much cut down the design > space of what would-be rational designers would want to > build that when one added in the engineering constraints > of what they could build there *might* be no space left. > > *If* that was the case we would have achieved something very > valuable. We would have done what I'd term end-run > logical analysis around the problem and shown that it was not > a real problem in the real world at all. The reason it would be > useful to do that *if* that was the result and perhaps anyway > is that the finding would be useful *politically* to head off > concerns raised by folk that may otherwise get into serious > fear-mongering aimed at heading off the development of > MNT altogether. Folk such as the writers of The New Atlantas > that Greg Burch posted to the list recently. > > Heres the link again > http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/2/keiper.htm > > I was particularly interested in the above article that > referenced Robert Freitas views on the grey goo problem. > > These folk at New Atlantas are becoming knowledgeable > enough to make some good pre-emptive political strikes > against the emergence of MNT that may slow down its > delivery times, imo. > > There is a period before any new technology is produced but > when it is known to be possible to some that is very difficult > to find basic development funding for. Because funding to do > basic science generally comes from governments. VC capital > is typically less patient and there are good reasons for that, > winning the hearts and minds of voters in the propaganda > wars is very important to the ultimate roll out times. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 15 17:25:03 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 09:25:03 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin In-Reply-To: <03e901c3aa80$865d40a0$539c4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <001101c3ab9d$67cab960$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin > > > > > ...Surely most people have > > > heard of "the sin of Onan" at the very least. > > > > http://www.libidomag.com/reviews/professionals/selfpleasure.html > ... > Onan was killed by Yahveh for withdrawing `prematurely' and > `spilling his seed upon the ground'. > > But wait, there's more. > > The naughty man wasn't punished fatally just for coitus > interruptus, but due to his *motive* for withdrawing... Damien Broderick Well, yes but this is how I BELEIVE it happened. (Brett, note legitimate usage in this case.) God made too hasty a decision in slaying the hapless prole, and here's why: Onan was to conceive a child to carry his brother's name, but he knew that people can read calendars and subtract, and so they would realize that this kid is really Onan Junior. Then he recalled all the trash the kids dished out over the entire years he was in school, as kids are known to do in nearly infinite quantities, such as: Hey Onan! May I call you The Big O? and Hey Onan! Hows it feel to know your name will be synonymous with auto-eroticism for the next several thousand years? and Hey Onan! Feeling especially self-reliant today? and Hey Onan! The Rabbi needs someone to give a lecture to the students on safe sex. and Hey Onan! My, what large biceps you have. and Hey Onan! When you started school, did you study under Master Bates? and The name is Bond. James Bond. This is my friend Off. Jack Off. and Hey Onan! Lets play Star Wars. You can be Obie Wanker Nobi. And so on until the poor chap was beside himself. Kids are cruel as you know, even those destined to become bible writers. So old Onan is carrying out his orders from god, in the sack with his sister-in-law, thinking all this over and just at the critical moment he just snapped and said: NO, God! dammit! I will not put another innocent child thru this torture! Of course the rest is history. But I still think god was mistaken to slay the guy, as his motives for disobedience were pure. spike From sentience at pobox.com Sat Nov 15 18:29:28 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:29:28 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> <3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> Message-ID: <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > Will this happen by 2006? Well, "I still have no viable justification > for this assertion." > > Sorry for the weasel words. As you see, I'm mostly holding this > position for old time's sake. *head hits keyboard with dull thud* -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From thespike at earthlink.net Sat Nov 15 18:36:09 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 12:36:09 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu><3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> Message-ID: <00a501c3aba7$589edc00$dc994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > *head hits keyboard with dull thud* Careful, you can damage a keyboard that way. From rhanson at gmu.edu Sat Nov 15 18:36:05 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:36:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> I promised Chris Phoenix that I'd post the latest version of my NNI conference abstract. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Five Assumptions Underlying Radical Nanotech Scenarios Future Economic Scenarios Panel 2003 NNI Workshop on Social Implications of Nanoscience/Nanotechnology Robin Hanson George Mason University If we can translate the technical descriptions of possible future nanotech abilities into economic terminology, we can use formal economic models to study the social implications of nanotech. We should consider both conventional nanotech scenarios and radical ones, such as described in Unbounding the Future and Diamond Age. Radical scenarios seem less likely but have more severe social implications. As a prelude to future modeling attempts, I here try to identify five key assumptions to bridge the chasm between conventional and radical nanotech scenarios. 1. Atomic Precision: Atom-scale manufacturing is feasible; we put some atoms where we want. Depending on how cheap this ability is, and which atoms, many new products may be possible, including much cheaper computers, and perhaps medical devices that float in our bloodstreams. 2. General Plants: General purpose manufacturing plants, using a limited range of feedstocks, will displace most special purpose plants, like general purpose computers have now displaced most special purpose signal processors. (This is mature "3D printing" or "direct manufacturing.") As with computers, this requires that the efficiencies of special purpose devices be overcome by the scale economies and lower design costs of general purpose devices. When transportation costs matter, products would likely be made at the general plants nearest to each customer. 3. Local Production: Small general plants, located in or near homes, dominate manufacturing. This requires that production processes be almost fully automated, with human intervention rare. Such high automation seems harder to design. Here costs of transportation and labor for manufacturing are mostly eliminated; what remain are costs of design, marketing, regulation, feedstocks, and rental of general plants. As with PCs today, open source product design and file sharing of stolen product designs could become issues. 4. Over-Capacity: Local general plants are so fast/cheap that they are usually off, like PCs now. For most products, the main marginal costs would be feedstocks and marketing. Fixed costs of design, regulation, and marketing would dominate total costs, as with software and music today. Like software and cable TV companies that now offer a small menu of product packages to price-discriminate via anti-correlations in item values, future consumers might be offered a few lifestyle packages that cost most of their salary and entitle them to designs for clothes, furniture, food, etc. This would require high concentration of or coordination by sellers of consumer good designs. 5. Self-Reproduction: A local manufacturing plant can create a copy of itself within a year. This is one possible route to achieving over-capacity of local general plants. This route, however, has the potential to give a large and sudden cost advantage to the commercial or military power that first develops achieves it. How large an advantage depends on just-prior costs, and how sudden depends on self-reproduction time. Self-reproducing military or terrorist weapons become a concern. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From rhanson at gmu.edu Sat Nov 15 17:27:02 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 12:27:02 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB5DD18.A9A644C9@best.com> References: <200311131824.hADIOhM18700@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115094814.0207b008@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/15/2003, Chris Phoenix wrote: >Before the technical stuff, a meta-issue: >It's a common effect of human psychology that two people will annoy each >other in symmetrical ways. We seem to have run into that here. >I thought I was explaining in straightforward logic why certain system >configurations were unlikely in practice. You asked me "not to assume >everyone who disagree with you is an idiot". Sorry; I didn't mean for that to connote that I was annoyed. I meant to emphasize the need to consider the views and assumptions of others. >Having read this complaint and remembered the psychology feature, I now >suspect you were trying to explain in straightforward logic why my >definition of "unlimited-sum transaction" was not usable. But at the >time, I read your example of million-dollar water as >condescending/snide. Sorry again; straightforward logical explanation was indeed was my goal. > > >Is there any reason such a thing would not be capable of producing a > > >copy of itself? ... Is there any reason such a thing would be slow? > > > > The whole point here is to be able to do economic analysis on this topic > > without having to settle all of the technical disputes that still rage. > > You are arguing that there's really only one interesting scenario to > > consider, but clearly many other people believe that .... > >It's an interesting question, how much pruning to apply to the range of >scenarios. If you become convinced that a scenario is implausible, is >it your duty to prune it ASAP? ... >But if it's appropriate for you at this stage to refrain from >considering plausibility, then you can ignore a large fraction of what I >said in my earlier messages. ... >As far as I know, there are two main technological scenarios. The first >one is what the NNI is promoting. ... some new products and >applications. Eventually (~4 decades?), when we learn how to handle >self-assembly, this gives us a handle on more complex components and >some system integration. But [not] integrated general-purpose production >... the second technological scenario is the MNT one, and as far as >I'm aware, it always assumes autoproduction (= self-replication, but >without the "life" connotations) very early in the game (due to >technological necessity), and frequently also assumes a fast takeoff >from "assembler breakthrough" to "flood of products." ... I said from the start that the reason I started this conversation is that in a few weeks I will participate in an NNI conference on the social implications of nanotech. So I definitely need to take their scenarios seriously. I'd also like to discuss scenarios like you prefer (though perhaps because of that they won't actually let me talk and won't invite me again). And I'd like to discuss these in terms of their economic implications. So what I really want is to break the gulf between these very different views into component assumptions, expressed in economic terms. This allows compromise and debate in the form of "I buy these assumptions but not those", and positions held can be more easily translated into scenarios with intermediate social implications. >So if you want a range of scenarios that have been proposed, you have >two variables: When does MNT develop (2008 to 2060, with ultra-powerful >computers 3 months to 3 years later), and how long after that do we get >general-purpose manufacturing (3 months to [at a guess] 10 years later). >... Just thought of a third dimension: the cost of fabrication. I expect >that even early devices will come in under $100/kg, and quite possibly >less than $1/kg, but it's conceivable that it could be much higher. In >addition to technical assumptions, there are quite a few policy options, >Above, in the discussion leading to the two dimensions of variability >for scenarios, was my best understanding of the differing *technical* >assumptions that people are making--and how to unify them, by >recognizing that something similar to MNT will happen eventually whether >or not dry nanomachines work, but if it's far enough out it will blend in. I'm having trouble parsing your text into an itemized list of assumptions. And some of the assumptions I can identify have to do with how the self-replication scenario plays out, rather than how it shades into others. My last post of Nov 11 gave my attempt a list of bridging assumptions; I'll post my current version of that as I post this. >... I'd actually rather hear what you think about the >canteen in the desert. I'm not questioning whether it can be viewed in >terms of economics; but can it be viewed in terms of market? I teach law and economics and a standard issue there is whether to enforce contracts between someone lost in the desert and someone else who agreed to give him water for some enormous sum. Such contracts are not actually enforced, on the basis that monopoly pricing would lead to low quantity, i.e., some people would die from inability to pay, but the counter-argument is that enforcing them encourages more people to look for people to save. I'm not sure if this addresses your "market" question though. > > .... compared to many claims made for discontinuities induced by > > nanotech, computers were a pretty smooth transition. .... overall > > computer tech progress has been relatively steady. > >The underlying hardware, yes; the applications have been somewhat more >punctuated. Look how quickly the web grew. Or the difference >spreadsheets made to the business world. Agreed. >... The criticism of MNT theory has been of such low >quality, and people are so willing to believe blanket assertions without >testing them for plausibility or relevance, that by now I don't worry >too much about panels of experts. ... If you care about what other people think who might listen to these experts, then you might want to try to convince those experts. In which case you need to state to them as clearly as possible, in terms they are familiar with, and in a style they can respect, how you come to disagree. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From sentience at pobox.com Sat Nov 15 18:49:41 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:49:41 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031111090606.02352488@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031110093343.022b0668@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031111090606.02352488@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <3FB67545.1080902@pobox.com> Robin Hanson wrote: > At 09:45 PM 11/10/2003 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >> Sure, Singularity won't have much in the way of specific social >> implications. We'll get superhuman AI, it kills/transforms the entire >> local ecosystem by side effect or malice aforethought, completely >> remodels the solar system and transforming the entire universe in its >> lightcone into something we currently can't imagine -- and that's >> assuming no major new physics. Business as usual, in other words. > > It is crucial to try to distinguish the various causes of things that > might happen in the future, so we can intelligently ask what would > happen if some of these causes are realized and others are not. Would > the mildest versions of nanotech really, by themselves, induce > superhuman AI? It is not obvious. Well, if you want my own take on the probabilities, you can find it (tongue-in-cheek) at: http://sl4.org/bin/wiki.pl?GurpsFriendlyAI It is not *necessary* that the mildest versions of nanotech *immediately* induce hostile SAI. It depends on who has access to nanocomputers, who is playing with fire, how skilled they are, their degree of unpreparedness and incaution, the algorithms they choose. There may some close scares that convince people to play it more cautiously, or the first failure may be the last. I don't know. It depends on social factors I can't see, things I can't predict such as choice of algorithm, some quantities that are way the hell beyond my ability to calculate using my current knowledge, and so on. Personally I would bet on simple Moore's Law inducing hostile SAI before the mildest versions of nanotech show up. The probability of hostile SAI will increase with time, widening access to nanocomputers, algorithmic improvements, advances in cognitive science, and improvements in nanocomputers; major scares may decrease the probability somewhat, but even so, I would guess, it would only be a question of time. >> Sure, a couple of centuries worth of hitherto progress rolled into a >> month, or a couple of days. Accelerating up to a rate of 3 kYears of >> progress within 24 hours > > The mildest versions of nanotech don't seem capable of inducing such > rapid change. Again, the point is to try to be as clear as possible > about what assumptions lead to what conclusions. The precondition for the end of the world is a large amount of computing power and one smart fool with access to that technology. Smarter fools require less computing power. Other variables in nanotechnology development such as manufacturing times, fabrication costs, economic adoption speeds, etc., affect timing, but not the outcome. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From scerir at libero.it Sat Nov 15 18:55:52 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 19:55:52 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] hole in the triangle References: Message-ID: <000a01c3abaa$1894c9a0$f0c7fea9@scerir> > Fascinating! > Can someone explain? > Pietro Ferri How to pinpoint the location of an artillery gun, by means of a triangle, and make a hole exactly there? That was a major problem for our Alpini corps, during WWI, in Alps and northern Italy, you know, Pietro. Well a triangle was extremely useful. Actually by listening to the sound of the shot from three different points ! The three observation points synchronize their clocks to the second and then note the exact second that they hear the gun's sound. Then on a map of the battle field the three points were plotted. Around the two points where the sound arrived latest (the two furthest from the gun) draw a circle whose radius is the distance that sound travels during the number of seconds since the sound reached the first observation spot. The location of the gun is at the center of the circle that is tangent (on the outside) to the two constructed circles and passes through the first observation point. Instead of drawing the first two circles around the points where the sound arrived latest one draws those circles around the two points where the sound arrived earliest, and the circle passing through the remaining point is drawn as tangent on the inside (instead than on the outside) to the first two circles, one obtains as well the correct solution. That's why we were so strong, in war, Pietro, some decades ago :-) From brian at posthuman.com Sat Nov 15 19:35:23 2003 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:35:23 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <00a501c3aba7$589edc00$dc994a43@texas.net> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu><3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> <00a501c3aba7$589edc00$dc994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <3FB67FFB.2060502@posthuman.com> Damien Broderick wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > >>*head hits keyboard with dull thud* > > > Careful, you can damage a keyboard that way. > Don't worry, he's learned to keep several spares. -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From dgc at cox.net Sat Nov 15 19:55:10 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 14:55:10 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> <3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> Message-ID: <3FB6849E.6000803@cox.net> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Dan Clemmensen wrote: > >> >> Will this happen by 2006? Well, "I still have no viable justification >> for this assertion." >> >> Sorry for the weasel words. As you see, I'm mostly holding this >> position for old time's sake. > > > *head hits keyboard with dull thud* > :-) OK, try this. I can find no compelling argument against the "SI-by-phase change" scenario. This scenario logically becomes more probable as time goes on if you accept it at all. When will the environment become supercritical for SI? Is it supercritical already? What is the shape of the probability curve for probability-of-SI versus the technical richness of the available technological resources near the supercritical transition point? Since all of these are unknown, it is very difficult to predict the time of the singularity with any accuracy, and "May 1, 2006" is as good as any. Note that the shape of the singularity probability function is unrelated to the shape of the singularity function. (Sincere apologies for lack of rigor. If my meaning in unclear, I'll try for some precision later.) The singularity function itself describes the rate of technical advance. I can find no valid argument against hard takeoff, so for me this is a step function. To rephrase my 2006 "prediction" let's say that my best guess is that the probability of the SI phase-change increases rapidly near the phase transition point of the technological capacity. Furthermore, the technological capacity curve is "Moore's Law" or better and will remain so for at least the next decade, absent a singularity. If you look at both of these together, you see that we will have little or no warning of the singularity. I have no logical reason to retract my "prediction." Unfortunately, this non-quantitative logic does not permit me to assign a probability to 2006. It only allows me to assert that the probability increases with time. When I look at today's technologies, I see a great many pieces that might be building blocks for the SI. I see more of them that I did in 1996, and I see a general increase in the ways the pieces can be put together. thus, I have a gut feeling that we are already supercritical. I will stick with my original prediction: on or before May 1, 2006. I note with interest that the consensus predictimn among futurists appears to be coming in rather than stretching out. From dgc at cox.net Sat Nov 15 20:01:16 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:01:16 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <00a501c3aba7$589edc00$dc994a43@texas.net> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu><3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> <00a501c3aba7$589edc00$dc994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <3FB6860C.8040803@cox.net> Damien Broderick wrote: >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > > > >>*head hits keyboard with dull thud* >> >> > >Careful, you can damage a keyboard that way. > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > For some reason, keyboards now accumulate the way coathangers accumulate. I look around my home office and find random piles of unused keyboards. Since I may have precipitated this unfortunte incident, I can send Eliezer a pile of keyboards if he needs them :-) (Mice are even worse for some reason. I had 12 unused mice at last count.) From sentience at pobox.com Sat Nov 15 20:50:05 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:50:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <3FB6849E.6000803@cox.net> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> <3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> <3FB6849E.6000803@cox.net> Message-ID: <3FB6917D.9090204@pobox.com> Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > Unfortunately, this non-quantitative logic does not permit me to assign > a probability to 2006. It only allows me to assert that the probability > increases with time. Yes, well, that's why I assert that the probability increases with time, yet I do not assert that the Singularity will occur on or before May 1, 2006. Take a deep breath. Switch over all of your deliberate mental reasoning to thinking in terms of probability density functions. Exhale. You'll feel much better. I've accepted as fact the amazing human ability to clearly analyze a mistake, correctly state the rational alternative, and then, smiling cherubically, commit the mistake, but y'know, it's still a bit frustrating to watch it in action. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From bjk at imminst.org Sat Nov 15 21:00:56 2003 From: bjk at imminst.org (Bruce J. Klein) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:00:56 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ImmInst Chat - Mike Treder, Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20031115145020.01e39a58@mail.kia.net> How Dangerous is Nanotech? Mike Treder, Executive Director for The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) joins ImmInst to chat about nanotech. Sunday Nov 16 @ 8pm Eastern http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=99&t=2135&s= From dgc at cox.net Sat Nov 15 21:53:46 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 16:53:46 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <3FB6917D.9090204@pobox.com> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> <3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> <3FB6849E.6000803@cox.net> <3FB6917D.9090204@pobox.com> Message-ID: <3FB6A06A.1010102@cox.net> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Dan Clemmensen wrote: > >> >> Unfortunately, this non-quantitative logic does not permit me to >> assign a probability to 2006. It only allows me to assert that the >> probability increases with time. > > > Yes, well, that's why I assert that the probability increases with > time, yet I do not assert that the Singularity will occur on or before > May 1, 2006. > > Take a deep breath. Switch over all of your deliberate mental > reasoning to thinking in terms of probability density functions. > Exhale. You'll feel much better. > > I've accepted as fact the amazing human ability to clearly analyze a > mistake, correctly state the rational alternative, and then, smiling > cherubically, commit the mistake, but y'know, it's still a bit > frustrating to watch it in action. > And if I were a horse, I'd run back into a burning barn, I suppose. Actually, I tried to say that the probability density function has a sharp peak somewhere in the region where the technology curve moves through the phase transition region. This, coupled, lying on top of the increasing slope of the technology curve, makes it very hard to predict the crossover. So my real prediction is "any time now." I'm willing to listen respectfully to anyone who can support a more precise theory. From dgc at cox.net Sun Nov 16 00:34:58 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 19:34:58 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <3FB6C632.2030606@cox.net> This looks good to me. I would suggest some minor changes as noted below Robin Hanson wrote: > 1. Atomic Precision: Atom-scale manufacturing is feasible; we put > some atoms where we want. > > Depending on how cheap this ability is, and which atoms, many new > products may be possible, including much cheaper computers, and > perhaps medical devices that float in our bloodstreams. I think the medical stuff , while it sounds good, is not relevant. There is a huge amount of additional design work to get from design of "hardware" (computers, furniture, etc.) to design of "bioware" of any type. I also think that energy-generation products and energy conservation products are more fundamentally important, and more feasible. Am I correct in assuming that energy is a fairly major component of current economic models? > > 2. General Plants: General purpose manufacturing plants, using a > limited range of feedstocks, will displace most special purpose > plants, like general purpose computers have now displaced most special > purpose signal processors. (This is mature "3D printing" or "direct > manufacturing.") > > As with computers, this requires that the efficiencies of special > purpose devices be overcome by the scale economies and lower design > costs of general purpose devices. When transportation costs matter, > products would likely be made at the general plants nearest to each > customer. I suggest you replace "signal processors" with "control systems." Energy costs are crucially important here. If the energy cost is higher in a GP plant, it may be better to buy from a specialty plant. > > 3. Local Production: Small general plants, located in or near homes, > dominate manufacturing. > > This requires that production processes be almost fully automated, > with human intervention rare. Such high automation seems harder to > design. Here costs of transportation and labor for manufacturing are > mostly eliminated; what remain are costs of design, marketing, > regulation, feedstocks, and rental of general plants. As with PCs > today, open source product design and file sharing of stolen product > designs could become issues. I do not understand the economics of IP very well. The term "stolen" is value-laden. Note that humanity already creates sophisticated products in the home from simple mass-produced parts. it's called "cooking." There is no reason that final assembly must be fully automated. > > 4. Over-Capacity: Local general plants are so fast/cheap that they > are usually off, like PCs now. > > For most products, the main marginal costs would be feedstocks and > marketing. Fixed costs of design, regulation, and marketing would > dominate total costs, as with software and music today. Like software > and cable TV companies that now offer a small menu of product packages > to price-discriminate via anti-correlations in item values, future > consumers might be offered a few lifestyle packages that cost most of > their salary and entitle them to designs for clothes, furniture, food, > etc. This would require high concentration of or coordination by > sellers of consumer good designs. I think that the cost of energy is a crucial marginal cost. It is almost certainly more important than the marginal marketing cost, unless I misunderstand the term "marketing" as used in economics. Mitigating against this is the fact that "radical MNT" may drive the marginal cost of energy toward zero. In economic terms, radical nanotech may drive the capital cost of using low-density energy (solar and geothermal) toward zero. I see a distinction between "IP goods" (software, music, and movies) and physical goods. Radical nanotech erases the distinction: the essential social effect here is that anyone who is willing to live with only open-source IP can live "for free" and does not need to participate in the economy. CAVEAT: if we exclude "bioware," then anyone who drops out in this fashion will be in trouble when they need medical help. > > 5. Self-Reproduction: A local manufacturing plant can create a copy > of itself within a year. > > This is one possible route to achieving over-capacity of local general > plants. This route, however, has the potential to give a large and > sudden cost advantage to the commercial or military power that first > develops achieves it. How large an advantage depends on just-prior > costs, and how sudden depends on self-reproduction time. > Self-reproducing military or terrorist weapons become a concern. It is very difficult ot construct a "radical MNT" scenario that does not result in self-reproduction of local manufacturing. Therefore, it is not clear that this is a primary assumption. I take this as a consequence of assumptions 1 and 2. As always, we run the risk that your audience will reject the entire "radical MNT scenario" because this single conclusion is inevitible, but it completely disrupts the existing economy. From reason at exratio.com Sun Nov 16 01:25:11 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 17:25:11 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB6C632.2030606@cox.net> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Dan Clemmensen > > > 1. Atomic Precision: Atom-scale manufacturing is feasible; we put > > some atoms where we want. > > > > Depending on how cheap this ability is, and which atoms, many new > > products may be possible, including much cheaper computers, and > > perhaps medical devices that float in our bloodstreams. > > I think the medical stuff , while it sounds good, is not relevant. There > is a huge amount of additional design work to get from design of > "hardware" (computers, furniture, etc.) to design of "bioware" of > any type. > > I also think that energy-generation products and energy conservation > products are more fundamentally important, and more feasible. Am I > correct in assuming that energy is a fairly major component of current > economic models? I'd take objection to that. Medicine is the most important thing. Nothing is important when you're dead -- and dead you will most likely be without the advent of medical nanotechnology. Medicine first and everything else next/as required to support medicine seems to be a much smarter way of prioritizing things. Reason http://www.exratio.com From dgc at cox.net Sun Nov 16 01:39:16 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 20:39:16 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FB6D544.9040409@cox.net> Reason wrote: > > >>-----Original Message----- >>From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org >>[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Dan Clemmensen >> >> >> >>>1. Atomic Precision: Atom-scale manufacturing is feasible; we put >>>some atoms where we want. >>> >>>Depending on how cheap this ability is, and which atoms, many new >>>products may be possible, including much cheaper computers, and >>>perhaps medical devices that float in our bloodstreams. >>> >>> >>I think the medical stuff , while it sounds good, is not relevant. There >>is a huge amount of additional design work to get from design of >>"hardware" (computers, furniture, etc.) to design of "bioware" of >>any type. >> >>I also think that energy-generation products and energy conservation >>products are more fundamentally important, and more feasible. Am I >>correct in assuming that energy is a fairly major component of current >>economic models? >> >> > >I'd take objection to that. Medicine is the most important thing. Nothing is >important when you're dead -- and dead you will most likely be without the >advent of medical nanotechnology. Medicine first and everything else next/as >required to support medicine seems to be a much smarter way of prioritizing >things. > > > There is a huge difference between importance and feasibility. Even if we agree, for the sake of argument, that medical problems are paramount this does not affect the feasibiliy of "hardware" versus "bioware." In particular, if I were given an infinite budget to implement medical MNT, I would focus on "hardware" MNT first, because I think that this is the best way to achieve "bioware" MNT. "Hardware" MNT gives us the tools we need to achieve 'bioware" MNT. My specific problem with bioware MNT relates to the control system. It is perfectly reasonable to control hardware MNT with a macro-scale control system. This is true even when the control system is itself built using MNT hardware. By contrast, bioware MNT as Robin outlines it will require a nanoscale distributed control system. If you are looking for MNT support for medicine, I think you should look first at macro-scale and perhaps micro-scale machinery built using "hardware" MNT. Nano-scale bioware MNT requires an entire new level of design. Let's look at a few examples. It's clear that a MNT hardware economy can generate massive improvements in medical technology, such as radically improved artificial kidneys, artificial hearts, diagnostic equiment, etc. However. autonomous nanoscale machines, or machinery that can correct problems at the molecular level, will require a completely new level of design. In the context of Robin's original question, bioware is striclty a secondary economic effect. From hal at finney.org Sun Nov 16 02:03:33 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 18:03:33 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? Message-ID: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> Why is it that, after all these years, there is still no detailed design for a molecular assembler, one capable of self-reproduction? Here are a few possible but mutually exclusive answers: 1. There is still considerable science to be done in order to learn how atoms and molecules behave in the detail necessary to design an assembler. 2. The science is known, but designing an assembler would be an enormous task due to its incredible complexity, taking hundreds or thousands of man years, and no one can afford to expend that effort. 3. Designing an assembler would not be enormously complex, but it would still require a considerable investment in state of the art hardware and software tools, as well as engineering manpower, and no company has been willing to do that. 4. Designing an assembler is relatively straightforward and it is clear that it could be done today with a modest effort, but since there is no way to build the resulting device, no one wants to go to the effort of coming up with a complete assembler design. Answers 3 and 4 assume that merely designing an assembler is pointless; rather, effort should be devoted to designing an assembler which can be built from simpler tools, which is much more difficult. Nevertheless it would seem that if the situation were close to case 4, it might be a worthwhile exercise just to make the technological potential more obvious. I'd be interested to hear opinions about where we actually are along this spectrum, or other possibilities that I haven't considered. Hal From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 16 03:03:24 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 21:03:24 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] nano in the press References: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> Message-ID: <005601c3abee$37ef4660$dc994a43@texas.net> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/14/1068674379368.html < Nanotechnology will soon be able to fuse flesh and machines, creating a fresh ethical debate about the future of humanity. Deborah Smith reports. Professor Alan Goldstein has a big fear about his small science: that it will change our species forever. By harnessing the power of nanotechnology - the ability to assemble materials one molecule at a time - it will become possible in future for bio-engineers to design materials to replace or repair every part of the human body. It will also unleash the temptation to enhance our abilities and senses. "Humans will metamorphose," he predicts. The result could be something Goldstein dubs Homo technicus, a creature with so many modifications and containing so many "smart" materials that it would no longer qualify as a Homo sapien. "Homo technicus won't see like us, breed like us, feed like us or need like us," he says. > etc From dgc at cox.net Sun Nov 16 02:47:12 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 21:47:12 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> References: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> Message-ID: <3FB6E530.5030903@cox.net> Hal Finney wrote: >4. Designing an assembler is relatively straightforward and it is clear >that it could be done today with a modest effort, but since there is no >way to build the resulting device, no one wants to go to the effort of >coming up with a complete assembler design. > > >Answers 3 and 4 assume that merely designing an assembler is pointless; >rather, effort should be devoted to designing an assembler which can be >built from simpler tools, which is much more difficult. Nevertheless it >would seem that if the situation were close to case 4, it might be a >worthwhile exercise just to make the technological potential more obvious. > > > I've always assumed point 4: simple to design, but we do not know how to build it. This changes the problem: dont merely design an assembler. Instead, design an assembler that can be built with simpler tools. This in turn means that your problem statement is not quite correct. We should nto try for a complete design as a proof of concept and an inducement. Rather, we should be specifically trying to generate a range of assembler designs that may be achievable using simpler tools. If we keep generating valid assembler designs, perhaps we will find one that is buildable. Thus, we do not want the best assembler. Instead we want an assembler that can be built, no matter how poor this assembler is, as long as this assembler can build a better assembler. Put it another way: the bootstrap problem is the only hard problem. In particular, we do not need an sssembler that can operate in a hostile envoronment. We are free to pick any arbitrary environment for the bootstrap, as long as we can create that environment using macro- or micro- technology. Create the environmant, build the assembler using micro techniques, and then use the assembler to build a more robust assembler that can operate in more general environment. For example, assume that the bootstrap assembler is built from nanotubes and that it will only operate in a hard vacuum, on a perfect diamond surface. Fine. We know how to create a hard vacuum and a diamond surface. If we can use this incredibly expensive system to build a more robust system, we win. I see a sequence of progressively more robust and sophisticated systems, culminating in a system that can build the critical elements of its own environment. Here is a possible bootstrap sequence: Nanotube assembler in a hard vacuum on a diamond substrate, with a highly ordered feedstock (benzene precipitated on diamond?) controlled and powered via an external laser and an external computer. This system may use MEMS structures to create nanotube feedstock. Nanotube-based factory. Similar to the above, but with a number of specialized nano-machines to generate functionalized nanotubes as feedstock to the assemblers. Diamondoid-producing nanotube factory. The nanotube factory can now generate a small set of diamondoid parts. Nanotube factory with diamondouid tools. This factory can produce a more complex set of "crude" diamondoid parts. Crude diamondiod factory: The machines in this factory are built from crude diamondoid parts, but can produce more sophisticated diamondoid parts. Diamondoid vacuum factory: built from the output of the prior factory, This factory can build arbitrary diamondoid machines. Note that this factory and all preceding factories still depend on a hard vacuum and a highly-structured feedstock system delivered using macro-scale technology From here we can build a system that operates in a simpler environment, such as an argon atmosphere, and that needs a much cruder feedstock, such as methane or methane and carbon dioxide. We still depend on an external control system and an external laser power syhstem. We are still at the nano scale. Micro-scale factory: This factory can synthesyze micro-scale components by connecting nano-scale parts. Macro-scale factory: This is the first system that is (nearly) self-replicating. It can build macro-scale containment, control, laser, power, and feed systems. It can also build just about any hardware of up to about 10cm^3. From fortean1 at mindspring.com Sun Nov 16 07:11:44 2003 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 00:11:44 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD [SK] Re: SCO vs IBM Message-ID: <3FB72330.3FA39634@mindspring.com> At 08:47 PM 11/13/2003, you fwded: >If this has been declared to be off-topic, I apologize. I'm spending WAY >too much time watching this case. I am. If you want a good daily overview subscribe to the daily newsletter from the Register. It's UK oriented, but lots of good stuff and very irreverent coverage of this. You can subscribe at http://www.theregister.co.uk . The most recent article is at < http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/33957.html > and you can search for others. Scott Peterson -- ?Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress.? Copyright 1992, Frank Rice Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.] From sentience at pobox.com Sun Nov 16 07:41:33 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 02:41:33 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. In-Reply-To: <3FB6A06A.1010102@cox.net> References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> <3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> <3FB6849E.6000803@cox.net> <3FB6917D.9090204@pobox.com> <3FB6A06A.1010102@cox.net> Message-ID: <3FB72A2D.5090504@pobox.com> Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > Actually, I tried to say that the probability density function has a > sharp peak somewhere in the region where the technology curve moves > through the phase transition region. This, coupled, lying on top of the > increasing slope of the technology curve, makes it very hard to predict > the crossover. Given that probabilities express our lack of knowledge about events, a pdf that would be sharply peaked if we possessed knowledge of a key parameter theta, can still be very broad if we do not know theta. As you know I agree with you about rapid transitions (most of which will instantly kill you, btw), but predicting "May 1st, 2006" is the wrong way to express it. Rather it could be any thirty-minute period between now and 2020. > So my real prediction is "any time now." I'm willing to listen > respectfully to anyone who can support a more precise theory. This is my prediction as well, I'm just disagreeing with your possessing such a good prediction and yet refusing to use it. :) -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 16 08:46:52 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:46:52 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <005601c3aa84$1bc3d610$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <02bb01c3aaf2$67dab5a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <002f01c3ac1e$2ed95fe0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Kevin wrote: > I don't think that you are arguing because of an ego. Good. > The word "believe" has a variety of meanings: > (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=believe) > > To accept as true or real: "Do you believe the news stories? " ^^^^^ So- With the additional context: "Do you accept the news stories?" Covers this use. > To credit with veracity: "I believe you. " The above is a very sloppy and ambiguous statement but: "I accept what you say" or "I trust you" would seem to serve. Or "I trust you and I accept what you say" Believe *can* be replaced with synonymns. > To expect or suppose; think: "I believe they will arrive shortly. " So a synonym - "I think they will arrive shortly" => No endorsing of the believe meme is necessary. There are no barriers here (in the above examples) to removing the word from ones language and then one's inner dialog. And to do so has advantages in that the believe meme is not propagated if it is not used. > > v. intr. > To have firm faith, especially religious faith. Who'd want to endorse this meme that didn't have faith? > To have faith, confidence, or trust: I believe in your ability to > solve the problem. So substitute confidence or trust in expression and internal dialog and no loss of ability to communicate or to map the concepts in one's head results but a propensity to use the believe word and to propagate it is reduced. > To have confidence in the truth or value of something: We believe affirm > in free speech. To have an opinion; think: They have > already left, I believe. think > > So in some cases, it is used as a justification of something > taken as fact without supporting evidence. In others, it is > expectation or supposition which both would be based in > some fact. To think. But in none of these cases is it *necessary* or irreplaceable both in expression and in internal dialog. So the option to not use it is there. > > What bothers me is when people use its faith based version > while claiming otherwise. I agree with you about public policy > being made by uninformed faith based beliefs. Does it bother you enough to affect a change in your behavior (in your expressions) so that you will not sound like them? > As far as ego goes, don't we all have one? I think so. Kevin if you agree that you can do without the believe word and you agree that the believe word is harmful in some contexts why not just start talking and thinking without using it? Where is the downside of that course? - I can't see any. I can see an upside of not using the believe word - that is you won't propagate the meme of believing. There will be one less person spreading the meme of believing around. It will also make it easier for you to point out to others the nature of the believing meme. Brett > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From gpmap at runbox.com Sun Nov 16 09:04:26 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 10:04:26 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] Max More article on democracy and transhumanism References: <000501c3ac07$1f40e100$220110ac@gateway.2wire.net> Message-ID: <005701c3ac20$a35b33a0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> I think we should make a difference here between the concept of democracy and any specific mechanism for the application of the concept. Concerning the concept itself: everyone should be involved in the management of the community of which ve forms a part, I am just not going to give it up as it is a central part of my worldview. Concerning specific mechanisms, I think we are not doing too bad in most of the Western world, but of course there may be better mechanisms. For example, we have grown up saying that the model of direct democracy (every citizen votes on every issue) breaks down when a community grows in size and then the community must switch to representative democracy. This is not necessarily true in a posthuman society where everyone has ver brain permanently linked wirelessly to the global net. There for every decision to be made you can google those (and only those) whose lives can be impacted on by the outcome of the decision, and poll their input even without their conscious involvement. This would be direct democracy on a global scale. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 16 09:50:28 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 20:50:28 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin References: <001101c3ab9d$67cab960$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <005c01c3ac27$10dfa4a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> [interjection] Spike wrote: > Well, yes but this is how I BELEIVE it happened. > (Brett, note legitimate usage in this case.) Misspelling it and capitalising it doesn't legitimize it, it just draws attention to it when not using it would have given the meme no air-play at all. By capitalising the word *I* can tell that you are using it deliberately and that is about all I can tell for sure. I can't tell if you are shouting defiance (I doubt this, but others may see it as such and join you even if that is not your intent for that is the slippery nature of the meme or simply showing you have it in mind (and are using it deliberately and you think appropriately or harmlessly or wittily). Its not worth the joke. Its not harmless. It is good that you are aware that you are using it deliberately instead of relexivly. That makes means that for some time at least you have a choice. Unfortunately, such is the power of the meme that in time you will forget and will revert to propagating it reflexively again unless you choose to change your usage deliberately. Then, one day, maybe the meme will kill you and/or others that you care about. Perhaps voters enthralled to the believing meme may remove from you even the choices and the limited freedoms that you currently have. *If* you have an argument that it is better for *you* to use the word than to not use it - then I am all ears. But no argument is no argument. So far as I can tell you agree its not harmless and you could convey all the meaning you want to without ever using it. Brett From scerir at libero.it Sun Nov 16 10:35:22 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 11:35:22 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031105225405.00aad8c0@pop.iol.ie><01ff01c3a552$7b381480$47165e0c@hal2001><000e01c3a582$5b3f9150$5db21b97@administxl09yj> <02ed01c3a61c$13e1dc10$26165e0c@hal2001> Message-ID: <000801c3ac2d$57e77c00$f0c7fea9@scerir> [In general the "entity" can be seen as a carrier of information ...] John K Clark (long ago, I'm late and sorry): I don't see how it can carry information if you can never detect it. We can never detect the "entity" directly because it isn't even a probability [...] Difficult to answer to that. Of course some of that information is visible, there are observables, and there are experiments and procedures. The rest remains hidden, because of QM formalism, because of many evident Goedelian issues of a theory which is not 'closed', because there are operators which do not commute, because time is not an operator, because QM seems sometimes to be a-temporal, like in EPR effects, etc. The main factor is the QM formalism, as Dirac himself pointed out few times. In example Weinberg tried a non-linear formalism (after all the 'collapse', if physical, might be a non-linear effect). The modification was very very modest, quantitatively. But Gisin showed that any non-linear formalism allows superluminal effects and also superluminal signals (or, if you like, that the 'no-cloning' theorem is wrong, and that uncertainty relations do not work). So ... nobody having the 'status' of Bohr or Einstein .... the non-linear formalism died prematurely. But many still think that linearity (superposition) is the weirdest thing here around. Even the concept of quantum 'state' appears very feeble (Filkenstein, and in a strange paper, Thom long ago). But, pushing to the extreme QM weirdness, now pieces of an alternative formalism appear. In example Aharonov's 'weak measurement' theory, the two-state formalism and the ABL rule. From another point of view it was pointed out many times that Heisenberg-Robertson uncertainty relations are poor and, in many cases, useless or meaninless (especially the dEdt>h, as pointed out by Wigner, Peres, etc, but also the other one). Now we have new uncertainty relations based on entropies (informations) involved. If I remember well Deutsch was the first who wrote these relations. To close this endless 'soup' I must quote somebody who asked "What is the joint probability of finding the particle to go through hole 1 [in a two-slit] and be 180? out of phase with hole 2 (whatever that could mean)?". Scully, Walther, and Schleich (Physical Review, A-49, n.3, (1994), p.1562) found that the observable distribution (interference pattern) is everywhere positive but that joint probability can be negative. So Feynman's intuition (quotation above) was right, negative probabilities are possible. But, to date, unobservable, like any other single-particle non-locality. (What a negative probability means is another, perhaps Goedelian, matter !). Regards s. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 16 10:42:04 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 21:42:04 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm back. References: <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <20031112110005.GX922@leitl.org> <5.2.1.1.2.20031113113250.01eeabb0@mail.gmu.edu> <3FB41DE9.7080903@cox.net> <3FB67088.3090806@pobox.com> <3FB6849E.6000803@cox.net> <3FB6917D.9090204@pobox.com> Message-ID: <008901c3ac2e$4638b360$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > I've accepted as fact the amazing human ability to clearly > analyze a mistake, correctly state the rational alternative, > and then, smiling cherubically, commit the mistake, but y'know, > it's still a bit frustrating to watch it in action. I do 'know' the 'feeling'. Here's a thought though. Perhaps what you are seeing is a warning that you may do well not to empower those *particular* folk further until they learn to manage responsibly the knowledge that they already have. It makes little sense to have 'faith' in particular people against the evidence. One can always selectively empower that subset of others that does not appear irresponsible and unable to manage the knowledge they already have. I think the notion of respecting the rights of particular others to opt themselves out of the gene and meme pools should and ought be respected. This is not eugenics or elitism, this is simply respecting in a pragmatic way that others *can* *choose* to self-destruct and that one has no moral duty, in a world short of resources to get between a masochist and the whip. Regards, Brett From rhanson at gmu.edu Sun Nov 16 13:12:32 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 08:12:32 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB6C632.2030606@cox.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/15/2003, Dan Clemmensen wrote: >I would suggest some minor changes as noted below Thanks for the suggestions! >I think the medical stuff , while it sounds good, is not relevant. There >is a huge amount of additional design work to get from design of >"hardware" (computers, furniture, etc.) to design of "bioware" of any type. >I also think that energy-generation products and energy conservation >products are more fundamentally important, and more feasible. Am I correct >in assuming that energy is a fairly major component of current economic models? Energy is probably around 1-2% of GDP, while medicine is about 14% in the US. Solar energy collection doesn't need atomic precision - what other energy generation do you have in mind? >>... As with PCs today, open source product design and file sharing of >>stolen product designs could become issues. > >... The term "stolen" is value-laden. Perhaps, but I don't see another term that so connotes the issue. I grant that file-sharing of copyrighted material may be a good thing, but it is clearly theft under current law and widely recognized as such. >I think that the cost of energy is a crucial marginal cost. It is almost >certainly more important than the marginal marketing cost, unless I >misunderstand the term "marketing" as used in economics. Mitigating >against this is the fact that "radical MNT" may drive the marginal cost of >energy toward zero. ... If you think the (marginal) cost of energy might go to zero, then unless you have a story about how the (marginal) cost of marketing goes to zero, I don't see how you can be confident that the cost of energy is the larger cost. >It is very difficult ot construct a "radical MNT" scenario that does not >result in self-reproduction of local manufacturing. Therefore, it is not >clear that this is a primary assumption. I take this as a consequence of >assumptions 1 and 2. Even if it does eventually, there may be an important time duration before then. The design problem may be very hard, after all. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 16 17:20:06 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 09:20:06 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ImmInst Chat - Mike Treder, Nanotech In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031115145020.01e39a58@mail.kia.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031116091802.042d93c0@pop.earthlink.net> At 03:00 PM 11/15/03 -0600, BK wrote: >How Dangerous is Nanotech? >Mike Treder, Executive Director for The Center for Responsible >Nanotechnology (CRN) joins ImmInst to chat about nanotech. > >Sunday Nov 16 @ 8pm Eastern >http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=99&t=2135&s= >_______________________________________________ I am very sorry I am going to miss this. This chat is great fun, and Mike is really hot on this topic. Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sun Nov 16 15:38:09 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 16:38:09 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <20031116153809.GW922@leitl.org> On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 08:12:32AM -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > > Energy is probably around 1-2% of GDP, while medicine is about 14% in the > US. Solar energy collection doesn't need atomic precision - what other Making polymer PV doesn't take self-reproduction as long as the costs are about the costs for sheet plastic, but installing it becomes cost-dominant then. A self-replicating photosynthetic system can cover large land areas quickly for negligible cost, creating a huge resource base for feedstock, energy, fabbing, signalling, and transportation. Cheap polymer PV is a major piece of good news, but it's not a world-changer. Artificial trees, now we're talking. > energy generation do you have in mind? > > >>... As with PCs today, open source product design and file sharing of > >>stolen product designs could become issues. > > > >... The term "stolen" is value-laden. > > Perhaps, but I don't see another term that so connotes the issue. I grant > that file-sharing of copyrighted material may be a good thing, but it is > clearly theft under current law and widely recognized as such. I'm reading this thread backwards, so I don't know what its origin is. A lot of online content is content libre; IP protection is trivial to implement with DRM technologies. There's clearly a niche for both open and commercial content out there. > If you think the (marginal) cost of energy might go to zero, then unless > you have a story about how the (marginal) cost of marketing goes to zero, I If I start giving away platinum bars on the marketplace, you can assume that news will propagate through the body of my potential customers with record speed. My marketing budget is zero: it's all propagates along the network of my potential customers. Let's say I want to fabricate a specific widget, I ask a search engine (or go to http://opencores.org or my cybertribe, or whomever) and find a design I then download and produce. This is an transaction first involving information transfer, then purchase of energy and feedstock. > don't see how you can be confident that the cost of energy is the larger > cost. If all the other costs have disappeared (not for luxury items, but that's not the point of debate), the cost for energy and feedstock must become the dominant one. If I pay some ~EUR for one liter of liquid hydrocarbon (feedstock and energy source), then that's a lot of costs, especially if I'm building a large plant, or a space vehicle. > >It is very difficult ot construct a "radical MNT" scenario that does not > >result in self-reproduction of local manufacturing. Therefore, it is not > >clear that this is a primary assumption. I take this as a consequence of > >assumptions 1 and 2. > > Even if it does eventually, there may be an important time duration before > then. The design problem may be very hard, after all. Sure, that's the whole point of a phase transition. Things stay as they are for a very long time, then they change suddenly. Most of the old rules are no longer true. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sun Nov 16 16:06:27 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 17:06:27 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Why is there something instead of nothing? (fwd from egh@istar.ca) Message-ID: <20031116160627.GA922@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Eric Hawthorne ----- From: Eric Hawthorne Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 01:13:02 -0800 To: everything-list at eskimo.com Cc: everything-list at eskimo.com Subject: Re: Why is there something instead of nothing? User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 In the spirit of this list, one might instead phrase the question as: Why is there everything instead of nothing? As soon as we have that there is everything, then we have that some aspects of everything will mold themselves into observable universes. It is unsatisfying though true to observe that there of course cannot be a case in which the question itself can be asked, and there simultaneously be nothing in that universe. I'm with the last respondent though in thinking that the right answer is that there is BOTH nothing and everything, but that the nothing is necessarily inherently unobservable by curious questioners like ourselves. Norman Samish wrote: Why is there something instead of nothing? >Does this question have an answer? I think the question shows there is a >limit to our understanding of things and is unanswerable. Does anybody >disagree? > >Norman > > > > > ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From neptune at superlink.net Sun Nov 16 16:22:47 2003 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 11:22:47 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] Max More article on democracy andtranshumanism References: <000501c3ac07$1f40e100$220110ac@gateway.2wire.net> <005701c3ac20$a35b33a0$0401a8c0@GERICOM> Message-ID: <00d301c3ac5d$e0736220$f0cd5cd1@neptune> On Sunday, November 16, 2003 4:04 AM Giu1i0 Pri5c0 gpmap at runbox.com wrote: > I think we should make a difference here between > the concept of democracy and any specific > mechanism for the application of the concept. > Concerning the concept itself: everyone should > be involved in the management of the community > of which ve forms a part, I am just not going to > give it up as it is a central part of my worldview. I'm not sure that is what most people mean by "democracy." I refer you to Robert Nozick's _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_ too. Therein he gives something which, IIRC, is basically the tale of a slave. He starts out with a person in what is without controversy a state of slavery: you're owned by someone else who decides what you do and when you do it. The tale progresses to where there are limits on the owner's power. E.g., you have weekends off or you can keep a portion of your production for your wants. The tale proceeds further to where the owner takes on a bunch of advisers. The next stage, IIRC, is one where there's no single owner, but now 10,000 other people vote on what you do. The final stage is one where your vote gets tallied in as well. Now you have a say in your management.:) But you just mean having a voice -- not necessarily majority rule or "rule by the demos." In which case, I refer you to Myron Lieberman's _Privatization and Education Choice_ -- a basically boring tome, but its author brings up an interesting distinction between voice and exit organization. (Most of the book is online at http://www.educationpolicy.org/files/privbook/httoc.htm , but the part I'm referring to is only reference in the table of contents, but does not appear to be online.:/) In a voice organization, you have a say in the management, but you're pretty much stuck with the system and you have to work within the system to get things done. Examples are governments and government agencies in Western democracies. E.g., in the US, the local zoning board is appointed by a public official who is ultimately elected. You can, in many cases, go before the board and try to convince them of your position on an issue. Or you can work to change the composition of the board. In exit organizations you usually have almost no direct say in the management of the organization, but you can decide not to do business with it. An example of this is almost any business that does not have a legally enforced monopoly. While you can't change the way things are run directly, by take your business elsewhere you can avoid any discoordinations between you and the organization. (You can even form your own organization to provide whatever want it is.) Voice organizations tend to be slow to change and when the do change it's follows the pattern of punctuated equilibria -- viz., long periods of stasis until would be reformers have enough power to overturn the existing order and install a new one that lasts for a long time until the next wave of reform. Generally, voice organizations also need some form of compulsion in the end to prevent loss of membership -- which would, obviously, make them exit systems.:) Exit organizations tend to change much more quickly as they tend to minutely track coordination with other community members. (This applies to for-profit and non-profit organizations, since if enough people exit either type, eventually they will fail.) > Concerning specific mechanisms, I think we are > not doing too bad in most of the Western world, > but of course there may be better mechanisms. I agree there would be better mechanisms even within the voice organization of Western democracy. For instance, requiring supermajorities for certain issues, such as tax increases, would make it hard for the organizations to pander. There are also other possibilities, such as sortition, sunset laws on all policy legislation, and the like. However, these are all cosmetic and, eventually, would be overturned by any effective elite. (In fact, this is the history of democracy: how special interests overcome any obstacles to obtaining state power to redistribute wealth and control society. See Hans-Hermann Hoppe's _Democracy -- the God that Failed_ for an political economic analysis of this. Hoppe's site is http://www.hanshoppe.com/ ) But it also depends on what your standard of evaluation is. Western democracies are better than, say, totalitarian dictatorships, but are they really better than other alternatives, such as free market anarchism? Also, are they getting better or worse as time goes by and why? Hoppe and others (public choice economists) would argue that democracies are not only getting worse but must always get worse because of their very nature. They would point out that the nature of the system eventually works against the rhetoric. Special interests easily capture positions of power, e.g., and hand out favors to supporters as well as work to minimize adversaries. (The system might balance, BUT the problem is no one inside it wants to remove the machinery of despotism. Each person or group only wants to capture it. To be sure, even when limits are placed, these are easily overcome by, e.g., placing the right enforcers (cops, prosecutors, executives) or interpreters (judges) or having emergency clauses and the like.) > For example, we have grown up saying > that the model of direct democracy (every > citizen votes on every issue) breaks down > when a community grows in size This depends, too, on what you mean by it working on the local level. The old saying about democracy being four wolves and a deer voting on what to have for dinner comes to mind. The only check on this would be something like consensual democracy which would mean nothing is done unless everyone agrees -- which is kind of the democractic equivalent of an exit organization.:) Rather than, though, setup these internal limits, the better method appears to be to limit the democratic system's power. If, e.g., it doesn't have power over what is published or broadcast, then there's no need to vote over whether _The Catcher in the Rye_ or nudity on TV should be allowed. (In the long run, though, power tends to add to itself. If you get someone demagoguing against nudity on TV or Salinger's novel, eventually someone's going to say, "There ought to be a law against that!") > and then the community must switch to > representative democracy. This is not > necessarily true in a posthuman society > where everyone has ver brain permanently > linked wirelessly to the global net. There > for every decision to be made you can > google those (and only those) whose lives > can be impacted on by the outcome of the > decision, and poll their input even without > their conscious involvement. This would > be direct democracy on a global scale. But how would their vote be tallied? Do you also assume there would be enough information (the Hayek Knowledge Problem would be faced even by posthumans; in fact, it would be faced by any information system that is not omniscient:)? Do you likewise assume there would be no special interests that would try to thwart others or redistribute costs? Also, how would you decide conflicts? E.g., imagine posthuman X just wants to keep on transcending, but a large body of other posthumans decide it would be nice to get rid of X -- or take X's resources for some other purpose? Even if X screamed that this would negatively impact it, what if the others didn't care? What would stop them? Certainly not democracy -- especially if they are the majority. We're back to the four posthuman wolves voting with the one posthuman deer on what to have for dinner. Dan http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/ See "Communication Breakdown: The Novels of Stanislaw Lem" http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Lem.html From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 14 04:44:31 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert Bradbury) Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 20:44:31 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] SRS programs Message-ID: <3FB45DAF.C7E35990@aeiveos.com> Hi! If you get this it is a miracle because my standard internet connectivity is down. I am attempting to compensate. (Brett/Damien -- if you don't notice this post showing up after 12-24 hours [since we now seem to have a reasonably responsive server again Kudos to Dave] please feel free to repost to the list. To the meat of the question(s) -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hal at finney.org Sun Nov 16 16:53:20 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 08:53:20 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Why no assembler design? (forwarded from RB) Message-ID: <200311161653.hAGGrKj18258@finney.org> Robert Bradbury sent me this, which he said he was unable to post to the list, so I am forwarding it on his behalf: > I'm annoyed as hell that I can't seem to figure out how to post this to > the list > (perhaps my alternate email address hasn't been approved yet). > > At any rate. > > Hal's points are pretty much correct with respect to (#2 and #3). I > wrote > a paper discussing the problems in detail -- "Protein Based Assembly of > Nanoscale Parts" which included a look at the both the design and cost > problems (you may find this in the Google cache but not on the net until > > perhaps next week due to my access provider's ineptitude). > > And Hal is right that the cost (now) is too expensive. Billions > to Trillions by my estimates. Too much for even DARPA to think > about. *But* those costs *will* come down. My estimates at > least for the wet path would put us in the 2015-2020 time frame. > > I think we could solve the complexity problem and that is in part what > I am trying to do with Nano at Home. It could also be solved with > a few dozen people of the intelligence of Ralph and Eric confined > with Ralph and Eric for a couple of years (R&E designed the fine > motion controller in a couple of months -- one has to scale up the > design of 2600 atoms to ~8 million atoms). *But* I don't think > that has a high probability of happening. > > There is very serious progress on the wet path -- at least tens of > millions of dollars have been invested. Most of the CEOs don't > have an awareness of where their technologies are leading -- but > that is simply an education problem that can easily be resolved > in the future. > > Robert From dgc at cox.net Sun Nov 16 17:30:32 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 12:30:32 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <3FB7B438.30508@cox.net> Robin Hanson wrote: > On 11/15/2003, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > >> I think the medical stuff , while it sounds good, is not relevant. >> There is a huge amount of additional design work to get from design >> of "hardware" (computers, furniture, etc.) to design of "bioware" of >> any type. >> I also think that energy-generation products and energy conservation >> products are more fundamentally important, and more feasible. Am I >> correct in assuming that energy is a fairly major component of >> current economic models? > > Energy is probably around 1-2% of GDP, while medicine is about 14% in > the US. Solar energy collection doesn't need atomic precision - what > other energy generation do you have in mind? I think that the step from "hardware" to "bioware" is extreme. The social impact in the "hardware" space will be extreme even without "bioware." The impact of "hardware" on medicine will be fairly profound by itself, allowing for massive improvements in existing medical hardware and the creation of new medical devices a the micro level, even without "bioware."(autonomous systems at the nano level.) Solar, geothermal, and sophisticated conservation do not depend on atomic precision. However, they use low-density energy sources, so they require more capital equipment per Kwh. Thus, the enabler here is the (assumed) dramatic reduction in capital cost made possible by nanotech, rather than atomic precision itself. I would note that atomic precision and ultra-strong materials (diamondoid MNT) may enable the design of small (household) fusion plants. This is easier than medical nanotech, but I think solar, geothermal, and conservation are easier. (PLEASE NOTE: I do not advocate solar, geothermal, or sophisticated conservation with today's technology, so this is not some knee-jerk environmentalist rant. With today's technology these approaches degrade the environment except in special cases, because the environmental costs associated with the capital costs more than counter the gains.) >>> ... As with PCs today, open source product design and file sharing >>> of stolen product designs could become issues. >> >> ... The term "stolen" is value-laden. > > Perhaps, but I don't see another term that so connotes the issue. I > grant that file-sharing of copyrighted material may be a good thing, > but it is clearly theft under current law and widely recognized as such. "Copyright infringement is theft" is RIAA propaganda, similar to "abortion is murder." Copyright laws are very different from the laws governing larceny, with different sanctions. I don't think we should disobey the copyright laws, or the larceny laws. I do think we should change some of the copyright laws. > > >> I think that the cost of energy is a crucial marginal cost. It is >> almost certainly more important than the marginal marketing cost, >> unless I misunderstand the term "marketing" as used in economics. >> Mitigating against this is the fact that "radical MNT" may drive the >> marginal cost of energy toward zero. ... > > If you think the (marginal) cost of energy might go to zero, then > unless you have a story about how the (marginal) cost of marketing > goes to zero, I don't see how you can be confident that the cost of > energy is the larger cost. That was my point. I'm sorry that I was not clear. You have not mentioned energy at all. If you don't mention it earlier, (going to zero) then I fell that you should memtion it here. >> It is very difficult ot construct a "radical MNT" scenario that does >> not result in self-reproduction of local manufacturing. Therefore, it >> is not clear that this is a primary assumption. I take this as a >> consequence of assumptions 1 and 2. > > > Even if it does eventually, there may be an important time duration > before then. The design problem may be very hard, after all. > I don't understand. If we can build an MNT-based fabricator, then we already have the design for the fabricator, and we also have the design for the "plant" (or techniques plus tooling) that can build the fabricator. Non-self-replication requires that some portion of that plant is cannot be constructed by the fabricator. I think that this is highly unlikely. Note that there in no requirement that the fabricator replicate itself without assistence. The effect is the same if the fabricator can produce subassemblies of itself and the tools needed to assemble them into another fabricator. I suppose we could postulate a "secret ingredient." either the fabricator or a subassembly of the fabricator might have a design that is secret and that cannot be reverse-engineered. I feel that this is would not last very long. Likewise, any attempt at regulation will fail, because the incentives are far too high for an individual or a country to ignore the regulation. From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Sun Nov 16 17:51:10 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 11:51:10 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD [SK] Re: Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....) In-Reply-To: <3FB3DF6E.29D3B35F@mindspring.com> References: <3FB3DF6E.29D3B35F@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <68efrvk0d9tll5dcgdhoom7h3viraclpbk@4ax.com> On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:45:50 -0700, you wrote >> in France/western Europe, or the USA. These numbers and financial >> situational comparisons fascinate me. I would like to write a book >> about this subject, as there is nothing that descibes this adequately, >> that I can find anyway. > >He may be interested, but he isn't well informed about US income or taxes. > >Total US taxes rates are basically flat: >http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2003/01/20/business/21DOUBLE.chart.jpg >http://slate.msn.com/id/2077294/ > > Yeah, well, I call Bullsh*t on that and will deliver appropriate rebuttal later. In the meantime., chew on this: http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:vGjrVdKaeocJ:faculty.insead.fr/fatas/econ/Articles/Chasing%2520the%2520Leader.htm++Economist+%22Robert+Gordon%22+Northwestern+economic+Europe&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 >US income stats: >Median Household http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h06.html >Median Personal http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/p05.html >By quintiles household: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h01.html > > Table H-1. Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households > (All Races): 1967 to 2001 > > (Households as of March of the following year. Income in current and > 2001 CPI-U-RS adjusted dollars28/) > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Lower > limit of > Upper limit of each fifth (dollars) top 5 > Number --------------------------------------- percent > Year (thous.) Lowest Second Third Fourth (dollars) > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Current Dollars > > 2001 109,297 $17,970 $33,314 $53,000 $83,500 $150,499 > >Jim Lund > >--------------------- > >> I COMPLETELY AGREE. And also, by the way, people also live about 3 >> years more in France, on average. Correct? This is a subject not in >> the least off-topic here on this list, of course. > >Currently France was judged to have the best health system >amongst developed countries, they work the shortest hours and have >the longest hols. If I had a chance I'd move there tomorrow >from this miserable island where everything is rotting >but for some obscure reason it still have good >publicity. > Also, in France, when their education system >or pensions are attacked they have the guts to go out to the streets >in their millions and put stop to such attempts. > >Eva > >------------------------ > >the only problem is that such more effective >social re-distribution of profits leads to a slow down >in profits and losing competition to other less >socially conscious countries. >So all the social advantages are constantly under attack, >especially at the times of the inevitable economic slow down. >Eg. see the attack at present all over Europe on >the pension provisions and on health and education. >The solutions are ludicrous - making the pensionable age >go up - thereby making sure there are even less >work opportunity for the new generation. >Ofcourse social democracy is preferable to >uncontrolled free-market, but ultimately >it leads to stagflation and disappointment that allows >rightwing conservatives such as Thatcher, Kohl, >Berlusconi Aznar or whats his name in Spain, >so they all can have a go their ways of ruining further >the living standards and working conditions of the population. >I'm afraif capitalism sucks, whichever >of its methods are applied, the contradictions won't go away. > >Eva ------------- The United States of America: If you like low wages, you'll love long hours! From rhanson at gmu.edu Sun Nov 16 17:51:10 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 12:51:10 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <20031116153809.GW922@leitl.org> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116124440.01e0de20@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/16/2003, Eugen* Leitl wrote: > > Energy is probably around 1-2% of GDP, while medicine is about 14% in the > > US. Solar energy collection doesn't need atomic precision - what other > >Making polymer PV doesn't take self-reproduction as long as the costs are >about the costs for sheet plastic, but installing it becomes cost-dominant >then. A self-replicating photosynthetic system can cover large land areas >quickly for negligible cost, creating a huge resource base for feedstock, >energy, fabbing, signalling, and transportation. >Cheap polymer PV is a major piece of good news, but it's not a world-changer. >Artificial trees, now we're talking. Yes, self-reproducing self-installing trees may well require atomic precision. > > If you think the (marginal) cost of energy might go to zero, then unless > > you have a story about how the (marginal) cost of marketing goes to > zero, I > >If I start giving away platinum bars on the marketplace, you can assume that >news will propagate through the body of my potential customers with record >speed. My marketing budget is zero: it's all propagates along the network >of my potential customers. Even if consumers undertake most of the marketing costs themselves, those costs still exist. By marketing I just mean the process by which consumers find out what products are out there, their features, quality, price, and so on. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From rhanson at gmu.edu Sun Nov 16 17:54:48 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 12:54:48 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB7B438.30508@cox.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/16/2003, Dan Clemmensen wrote: >>>I think that the cost of energy is a crucial marginal cost. It is almost >>>certainly more important than the marginal marketing cost, unless I >>>misunderstand the term "marketing" as used in economics. Mitigating >>>against this is the fact that "radical MNT" may drive the marginal cost >>>of energy toward zero. ... >> >>If you think the (marginal) cost of energy might go to zero, then unless >>you have a story about how the (marginal) cost of marketing goes to zero, >>I don't see how you can be confident that the cost of energy is the >>larger cost. > >That was my point. I'm sorry that I was not clear. You have not mentioned >energy at all. If you don't mention it earlier, (going to zero) then I >fell that you should memtion it here. I meant for energy to be included in "feedstocks". I've reworded my abstract to be clear on that point. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 16 18:15:59 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 12:15:59 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] from Robert Bradbury (1) References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu><5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <009d01c3ac6d$ea6b0200$fe994a43@texas.net> Robert is having trouble with his email. He asked for this to be fwd'd: ====== Google is reporting many newspapers are reporting on a new "reproducing" virus that has been developed by one of Venter's ventures. Its ca-ca. I've filed an extensive commentary that I hope will soon be published on nanodot.org. The problem isn't with the science (I expect they are doing reasonable science). The problem is with the lack of understanding of biology by reporters and how they may copy something that could be initially misreported. This tends to feed into the discussion of how much information and complexity one actually requires to produce self-replicating systems. It isn't much compared with the current capacity of our computer systems (from an information storage perspective) but its currently in excess of what we can affordably or easily manufacture. Thanks, Robert From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 16 18:17:20 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 12:17:20 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] from Robert Bradbury (2) Message-ID: <009e01c3ac6d$f412ee80$fe994a43@texas.net> I'm annoyed as hell that I can't seem to figure out how to post this to the list (perhaps my alternate email address hasn't been approved yet). At any rate. Hal's points are pretty much correct with respect to (#2 and #3). I wrote a paper discussing the problems in detail -- "Protein Based Assembly of Nanoscale Parts" which included a look at the both the design and cost problems (you may find this in the Google cache but not on the net until perhaps next week due to my access provider's ineptitude). And Hal is right that the cost (now) is too expensive. Billions to Trillions by my estimates. Too much for even DARPA to think about. *But* those costs *will* come down. My estimates at least for the wet path would put us in the 2015-2020 time frame. I think we could solve the complexity problem and that is in part what I am trying to do with Nano at Home. It could also be solved with a few dozen people of the intelligence of Ralph and Eric confined with Ralph and Eric for a couple of years (R&E designed the fine motion controller in a couple of months -- one has to scale up the design of 2600 atoms to ~8 million atoms). *But* I don't think that has a high probability of happening. There is very serious progress on the wet path -- at least tens of millions of dollars have been invested. Most of the CEOs don't have an awareness of where their technologies are leading -- but that is simply an education problem that can easily be resolved in the future. Robert From dgc at cox.net Sun Nov 16 18:18:05 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 13:18:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <3FB7BF5D.8090405@cox.net> Robin Hanson wrote: > On 11/16/2003, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > >> >> That was my point. I'm sorry that I was not clear. You have not >> mentioned energy at all. If you don't mention it earlier, (going to >> zero) then I fell that you should memtion it here. > > > I meant for energy to be included in "feedstocks". I've reworded my > abstract to be clear on that point. > That make a lot of sense, and it raises another point. Energy can be extracted locally, given sufficient capital equipment. The same is true for (other) feedstocks. Most current hypothetical MNT centers on carbon, which can be extracted from the air. A more sophisticated MNT will use H, O and N, all from the air, and Si, from the ground. Furthermore, MNT should permit recycling at the atomic level. Therefore, the material feedstocks also go to zero, at least for enough material to support an extravagantly luxurious lifestyle for evey human (Pre-SI. Post-SI, we drift off into mega-structures, etc.) In particular, with sufficient energy (and I'm guessing that local solar and geothermal will suffice) there is no need for new feedstock. Just recycle all this pre-MNT junk. MNT can produce superior materials and designs. Let's assume that the improvement is a cumulative factor of ten (I feel that this is extremely conservative.) Then, you can increase your capital goods by a factor of ten by recycling, without needing new feedstock. If you own land, the situation is more extreme: Dig a new sub-basement, and the excavated mass is greater than that of all your capital goods, including your house, by a large factor. Will it be economical to do local recycling and mining? I don't know. My guess is that a recycler is easier than a fabricator, From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 16 19:04:11 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 11:04:11 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess In-Reply-To: <68efrvk0d9tll5dcgdhoom7h3viraclpbk@4ax.com> Message-ID: <000001c3ac74$6c4b64d0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> You can watch the game live right now on ESPN2. After getting spanked in game 2, Kasparov is now demonstrating some of that counterspank for which humans are so famous. The game started at 1300 EST, and should last about 4 hrs. spike From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 16 19:16:57 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 11:16:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB7B438.30508@cox.net> Message-ID: <20031116191657.95868.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dan Clemmensen wrote: > Robin Hanson wrote: > > > > Energy is probably around 1-2% of GDP, while medicine is about 14% > > in the US. Solar energy collection doesn't need atomic precision > > - what other energy generation do you have in mind? Firstly, the energy figure: the US consumed 3,613,000,000,000 kwh at an average price of $0.08/kwh, for an energy budget of over $289 billion. GDP was just over $10 trillion, so the figure is just under 3% of GDP. Comparing this to medicine isn't quite smart, because energy is a resource that impacts the cost of medicine, and the energy cost of medicine does not necessarily equal just 3%. Typically the higher technology a product is, the more energy it requires to produce. As technologies age, we find more and more energy and labor efficient ways to produce that technology. However, if you want to do a raw comparison of portion of the economy, the biggest, outside of medicine, being government (a part of medicine being governmentally provided, of course). Can you produce and deliver government via nanotech? Nannynanites? > > I think that the step from "hardware" to "bioware" is extreme. The > social impact in the "hardware" space will be extreme even without > "bioware." The impact of "hardware" on medicine will be fairly > profound > by itself, allowing for massive improvements in existing medical > hardware and the creation of new medical devices a the micro level, > even > without "bioware."(autonomous systems at the nano level.) > > Solar, geothermal, and sophisticated conservation do not depend on > atomic precision. However, they use low-density energy sources, so > they > require more capital equipment per Kwh. Thus, the enabler here is the > > (assumed) dramatic reduction in capital cost made possible by > nanotech, > rather than atomic precision itself. > > I would note that atomic precision and ultra-strong materials > (diamondoid MNT) may enable the design of small (household) fusion > plants. This is easier than medical nanotech, but I think solar, > geothermal, and conservation are easier. (PLEASE NOTE: I do not > advocate solar, geothermal, or sophisticated conservation with > today's technology, so this is not some knee-jerk environmentalist > rant. With today's technology these approaches degrade the > environment except in special cases, because the environmental > costs associated with the capital costs more than counter the gains.) Conservation does not have a significant environmental impact, and generally can be obtained for about 1.5 cents / kwh, far lower than the cost of producing electricity (avg of 8 cents) itself. In fact, one reason that the US electricity prices is so much lower than the rest of the industrialized world is that we've invested large sums in conservation rather than nuclear infrastructure. Reductions in demand brought about by conservation have lowered our energy costs to a significant degree. In fact, it was only after the Republican Congress nixed conservation funding in 1995 that energy prices started to rise again, after slowly dropping through the 80's and early 90's. Renewables technologies generally require a capital investment that averages over 75% of its total lifetime costs, while nonrenewables tend to average under 25%, with fuel and labor operating costs being the bulk of lifetime cost of such sources. While I agree that with high interest rates, renewables become non-cost effective, saying that the environmental impact of the capital investment (I assume you are talking about things like impact of dams on fish stocks and analogous impacts) ignores the ongoing impact of non-renewables on the environment, from oil and coal field damage, to shipping spills, to refinery pollution, to consumption pollution (ash heavy metals, acid rain, radionucleids in fly ash, incomplete consumption, etc). With low interest rates, and if operational externalities are taken into account, renewables are certainly more advantageous than nonrenewables. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 16 19:24:56 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 11:24:56 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess In-Reply-To: <000001c3ac74$6c4b64d0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000001c3ac77$51b15e10$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Only 16 moves into the game, and already The computer is embarrassing itself. Kasparov's dworpal blade is going snicker snack. With this beast's head, the human will soon be galumphing back. spike From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 16 20:35:33 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 07:35:33 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SRS programs References: <3FB45DAF.C7E35990@aeiveos.com> Message-ID: <011801c3ac81$2efd0b80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Javien Forum: Message[Please disregard except Robert Bradbury] [responding to Robert Bradbury who has server connectivity problems but can see Exi archives] Your post arrived after 10.15pm, Sunday and before 7.30am Monday 17 Nov Melbourne Aust time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Javien Forum Topics / Conversations / Messages Search / Help Re: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? Author: Damien Broderick Conversation: RE: [extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ? ( prev | next ) reply! Topic: extropians ( prev | next ) In-Reply-To: Brett Paatsch's post Date: Thu Nov 13, 2003 06:44 pm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:09 PM > > When I see words like self in self-replicating I know that there > are substantive discussions taking place as to what "self" maps > to cognitively even in people. The pattern-identity question is > not satisfactorily resolved yet for me. No need to get into all this anxious twistiness. To shift away from computer programs and get more ambitious: A self-replicating assembler just uses the design mapped decades ago by von Neumann. A little replicator factory swims in a soup of raw materials. It contains a partioned component with an exact plan for its own construction, which guides the factory to build a copy of itself (including the plan) in the workspace and then release the copy into the amnion, where the copy does the same thing, until some termination code stops all the sea from being turned into salt or madly whisking broomsticks. Damien Broderick _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat source ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All trademarks, copyrights, and messages on this page are owned by their respective owners. Forum: Copyright (c) 2000-2001 Javien Inc All rights reserved. Distributed under the GPL -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Sun Nov 16 20:43:56 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 14:43:56 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Onan's disgraceful sin References: <001101c3ab9d$67cab960$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <005c01c3ac27$10dfa4a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: > It is good that you are aware that you are using it deliberately > instead of relexivly. That makes means that for some time > at least you have a choice. Unfortunately, such is the power > of the meme that in time you will forget and will revert to > propagating it reflexively again unless you choose to change > your usage deliberately. > > Then, one day, maybe the meme will kill you and/or others that > you care about. Perhaps voters enthralled to the believing meme > may remove from you even the choices and the limited freedoms > that you currently have. Very good point. I'll have to think on this one. From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Sun Nov 16 20:46:55 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 14:46:55 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess References: <000001c3ac77$51b15e10$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: How's the counter-spanking going? I don;t have access to a TV right now. Question, does anger or fear of losing increase mental acuity? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 1:24 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] computer chess > > > Only 16 moves into the game, and already > The computer is embarrassing itself. Kasparov's > dworpal blade is going snicker snack. > With this beast's head, the human will soon be > galumphing back. spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Sun Nov 16 20:38:44 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 14:38:44 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles References: <005601c3aa84$1bc3d610$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT><02bb01c3aaf2$67dab5a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <002f01c3ac1e$2ed95fe0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: >Does it bother you enough to affect a change in your behavior >(in your expressions) so that you will not sound like them? Actually, I have been trying to remove it from my vocabulary since the time I saw this debate come up several months ago. I happen to agree with you. I was sloppy when I wrote that. Habits are difficult to change. It is a word that has been used by myself and those around me for a very long time. When you are surrounded by people who don't choose their words carefully, it is easy to do the same. While I don't think that the word needs to be removed entirely, it does need to be used only when appropriate. The word itself is not entirely bad, but using it does place thinking into the same catagory as faith based believing. Cheers. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 2:46 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles > Kevin wrote: > > > I don't think that you are arguing because of an ego. > > Good. > > > The word "believe" has a variety of meanings: > > (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=believe) > > > > To accept as true or real: "Do you believe the news stories? " > ^^^^^ > So- With the additional context: "Do you accept the news stories?" > Covers this use. > > > To credit with veracity: "I believe you. " > > The above is a very sloppy and ambiguous statement but: > "I accept what you say" or "I trust you" would seem to serve. > Or "I trust you and I accept what you say" > Believe *can* be replaced with synonymns. > > > To expect or suppose; think: "I believe they will arrive shortly. " > > So a synonym - "I think they will arrive shortly" > > => No endorsing of the believe meme is necessary. There are no > barriers here (in the above examples) to removing the word from > ones language and then one's inner dialog. > > And to do so has advantages in that the believe meme is not > propagated if it is not used. > > > > > v. intr. > > To have firm faith, especially religious faith. > > Who'd want to endorse this meme that didn't have faith? > > > To have faith, confidence, or trust: I believe in your ability to > > solve the problem. > > So substitute confidence or trust in expression and internal > dialog and no loss of ability to communicate or to map the > concepts in one's head results but a propensity to use the > believe word and to propagate it is reduced. > > > To have confidence in the truth or value of something: We > believe > > affirm > > > in free speech. To have an opinion; think: They have > > already left, I believe. > > think > > > > So in some cases, it is used as a justification of something > > taken as fact without supporting evidence. In others, it is > > expectation or supposition which both would be based in > > some fact. To think. > > But in none of these cases is it *necessary* or irreplaceable > both in expression and in internal dialog. So the option to > not use it is there. > > > > > What bothers me is when people use its faith based version > > while claiming otherwise. I agree with you about public policy > > being made by uninformed faith based beliefs. > > Does it bother you enough to affect a change in your behavior > (in your expressions) so that you will not sound like them? > > > As far as ego goes, don't we all have one? > > I think so. > > Kevin if you agree that you can do without the believe word > and you agree that the believe word is harmful in some contexts > why not just start talking and thinking without using it? Where > is the downside of that course? - I can't see any. I can see > an upside of not using the believe word - that is you won't > propagate the meme of believing. There will be one less > person spreading the meme of believing around. It will also > make it easier for you to point out to others the nature of the > believing meme. > > Brett > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 16 20:52:33 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 14:52:33 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu><5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu> <3FB7BF5D.8090405@cox.net> Message-ID: <000a01c3ac83$9d7e4fe0$e8994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Clemmensen" Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 12:18 PM > Most current hypothetical MNT centers on carbon, > which can be extracted from the air. A more sophisticated MNT will use > H, O and N, all from the air, and Si, from the ground. Furthermore, MNT > should permit recycling at the atomic level. Therefore, the material > feedstocks also go to zero, at least for enough material to support an > extravagantly luxurious lifestyle for evey human (Pre-SI). This is discussed in moderate detail, drawing on analyses by Robert Freitas and Robert Bradbury, in the 2001 US edition of THE SPIKE, pp. 323-4. I've been trying to paste in this material from my file of the book, and the damned thing won't let me do it; sorry. Damien Broderick From dgc at cox.net Sun Nov 16 20:43:20 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 15:43:20 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] MNT and energy. (was Re: Social Implications of Nanotech) In-Reply-To: <20031116191657.95868.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031116191657.95868.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FB7E168.5020707@cox.net> Darn. I knew I would need to define my terms, but I didn' want to mess up Robin's thread. When I said I do not advocate solar, geothermal, and sophisticated conservation using current technology, I was referring to a purely local implementation. With today's technologies, it is not cost-effective to retrofit these into an existing home in most cases. There are of course many special cases, and new constructin will change the equation. In many case, it is quite cost-effective to retrofit simple conservation measures such as insulation and cheaper lighting. "Cost" is a fairly good approximation for environmental impact. If I buy capital equipment to lower my energy usage or generate my own energy, the purchase price of that equipment represents a certain portion of the GDP i.e, of the nation's overall economic activity. But economic activity produces environmental degradation. I pay a workman to install my solar panels, and he uses the money to fuel his SUV, etc. On a power grid or pipline grid, renewables, solar, geothermal, etc may may economic and environmental sense. Now, on to nanotech! Solar and Geothermal: MNT and local fabrication is likely to drive the material capital cost to near zero, and may dramatically reduce the installation cost as well. This includes the energy storage system, convertors, and control system. Again, I'm talking about a standalone per-household installation. "geothermal" is really "geoheatsink" in this case: I'm using the ground or an available body of water either directly for cooling or as one side of a heat pump. Sophisticated Conservation: This might better be called heat management. Most energy use in a home relates to heat. Heating, cooling, hot water, cooking, refrigeration, and freezing. MNT can provide near-perfect insulation,. It can also provide the materials for heat transfer systems within a dwelling that make the best use of energy, including counterflow air exchangers. If you already have solar and geothermal systems, you can move heat around directly rather than wasting high-density energy to produce low-density heat. You use shades and evaporative cooling outside. You can store heat from the frezeer to heat a room, move cool groundwater into the refrigerator precool circuit, and generally minimize the extra energy you need to manage temperature. The capital cost of a comprensive heat management system is prohibitive with today's technologies, but it nearly free with MNT. Again, a careful component design can minimize installation costs also. In an integrated system, I can choose to spend capital either on the generation side or on the conservation side. I will choose the system that minimizes my material cost. From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 16 21:02:13 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 15:02:13 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech - more Message-ID: <002201c3ac84$f44aa8e0$e8994a43@texas.net> Okay, here's the chunk from THE SPIKE (fwiw): Meanwhile, will nanoassembly allow the rich to get richer--to hug this magic cornucopia to their selfish breasts--while the poor get poorer? Why should it be so? Even in a world of 10 billion flesh-and-blood humans (ignoring the uploads for now), there's plenty of space for everyone to own decent housing, transport, clothing, arts, music, sporting opportunities... once we grant the ready availability of nano mints. This issue has been analyzed to surprising effect by Robert J. Bradbury.179 Over the last 10,000 years, he notes, human activity has added 185 petagrams of carbon to the atmosphere, about 31,000 kilos for each person now alive. Using assemblers in a fair, ecologically responsible fashion, what can you get by extracting that excess carbon and reusing it to build a house and other consumer desirables? And how long would it take to compile the goodies? Start by buying between two and eight acres of cheap land, depending on your latitude and cloud cover. Your nano compiler will grow you solar cells that cover most of the land, providing 400,000 watts a day, powering the compilation of around 10 kilos of materials per hour. (Calculations by Robert Freitas, who allows only 100 kilowatts per person-- stringently restricting the total mass and energy of nano-constructors--would thus imply an average of four people per large house.)180 Feedstocks from air and soil are almost free. Make your daily food in the first quarter hour. Very conservatively, a 2600 square foot house (34,000 kilos) will take five months to grow and assemble. Build a huge swimming pool as part of the assembly, as a by-product of mining aluminum for sapphire modules and maybe as a heat sink for another big project: since there's a lot of silicon in the rock along with that aluminum, build a million-kilo basement computer to run the place and handle your eventual upload. Its waste heat will warm your pool. A Bill Gates mansion, Bradbury estimates, would take a little over eight years to build. Not an overnight miracle, but then again it took Gates more than eight years' work, starting from scratch, to get wealthy enough to build his. When can we expect this? With open-source and other non-profit development of the software, `between 2020 and 2030.' Sounds mad. Actually, friendly critics swiftly pointed out that Bradbury's 1999 estimates might be too cautious by a factor of 100. If so, you could build your mansion in three weeks, at the cost of chewing up more power, and spend some of the saved time compiling the yacht (or maybe the one-stage surface-to-space diamond rocket). But that way you'd need to buy the rarer feedstock components from a mining company or utility, an option that still might be quite inexpensive in today's terms. Is there an additional cost in global heat pollution? Robert Freitas examined the `hypsithermal limit' (planetary heat tolerance), deriving daily safe limits of between 100 and 1000 kilowatts per person. Bradbury, recall, opted for 400 KW. But with all that excess carbon being drained from the atmosphere, putting the Greenhouse effect conveniently into reverse, we might need all the heat we can get. Entire international law-making empires will arise to adjudicate these matters, no doubt, giving many displaced lawyers something to do (until they are replaced by smart AI agents and legal expert systems). Why would the rich permit the poor to own the machineries of freedom from want? Some adduce benevolence, others prudence. Above all, perhaps, is the basic law of an information/knowledge economy: the more people who are thinking and solving and inventing and finding the bugs and figuring out the patches, the better a nano minting world is for everyone (just as it is for an open source AI computing world). Besides, how could they stop us? (Well, by brute force, or in the name of all that's decent, or for our own moral good. None of these methods will long prevail in a world of free-flowing information and cheap material assembly. Even China has trouble keeping dissidents and mystics silenced.) The big necessary step is the prior development of early nano assemblers, and we have seen that this will be funded by university and corporate (and military) money for researchers, as well as by increasing numbers of private investors who see the marginal pay-offs in owning a piece of each consecutive improvement in micro- and nano-scale devices. So yes, the rich will get richer--but the poor will get richer too, as by and large they do now, in the developed world at least. Not as rich, of course, nor as fast. By the time the nano and AI revolutions have attained maturity, these classifications will have shifted ground. Economists insist that rich and poor will still be with us, but the metric will have changed so drastically, so strangely, that we here-and-now can make little sense of it. 179. In a discussion on the extropian email list, in the thread `Understanding Nanotech' begun on 26 August 1999. 180. Robert Freitas, Nanomedicine, Vol I, 1999, p 175. From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 16 21:11:50 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 15:11:50 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech - aargh References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu><5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu><3FB7BF5D.8090405@cox.net> <000a01c3ac83$9d7e4fe0$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <005101c3ac86$4e7fcf60$e8994a43@texas.net> I just said: > This is discussed in moderate detail, drawing on analyses by Robert Freitas > and Robert Bradbury, in the 2001 US edition of THE SPIKE, pp. 323-4. Wrong again. Pp. 333-4, or even more strictly--counting in the first 4 lines of the first quoted paragraph--pp. 332-4. (It's all this switching between different sets of specs; bring on the nano-enhanced eyeballs I say.) Damien Broderick From dgc at cox.net Sun Nov 16 20:55:51 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 15:55:51 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <000a01c3ac83$9d7e4fe0$e8994a43@texas.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu><5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu> <3FB7BF5D.8090405@cox.net> <000a01c3ac83$9d7e4fe0$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <3FB7E457.4080504@cox.net> Damien Broderick wrote: >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Dan Clemmensen" >Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 12:18 PM > > > >>Most current hypothetical MNT centers on carbon, >>which can be extracted from the air. A more sophisticated MNT will use >>H, O and N, all from the air, and Si, from the ground. Furthermore, MNT >>should permit recycling at the atomic level. Therefore, the material >>feedstocks also go to zero, at least for enough material to support an >>extravagantly luxurious lifestyle for evey human (Pre-SI). >> >> > >This is discussed in moderate detail, drawing on analyses by Robert Freitas >and Robert Bradbury, in the 2001 US edition of THE SPIKE, pp. 323-4. I've >been trying to paste in this material from my file of the book, and the >damned thing won't let me do it; sorry. > > > > I know it's not original. We were discussing this stuff in 1996, also, I consider it to be part of our collective knowledge base, but I thought it was relevant to Robin's paper. I loaned my 2001 edition to a friend, so I only have the 1997 edition here now. (I still remember the thrill of buying a book on the web from an Australian bookstore. I think it was the first web purchase I ever made.) From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 16 21:22:34 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 13:22:34 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000b01c3ac87$c0f61120$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] computer chess > > How's the counter-spanking going? Fritz is going from bad to worse. They are on move 30. It'll be over in 10 more moves. From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 16 21:34:50 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 13:34:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] MNT and energy. (was Re: Social Implications of Nanotech) In-Reply-To: <3FB7E168.5020707@cox.net> Message-ID: <20031116213450.84094.qmail@web12904.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > When I said I do not advocate solar, geothermal, and sophisticated > conservation using current technology, I was referring to a purely > local implementation. Local as in what? That is a rather broad brush, don't you think? There are actually quite a number of local areas where solar is extremely cost effective, specifically in more remote locales where grid access is not at all cost effective. Essentially, if you have to spend more than $10k to get grid electric service to your dwelling, then solar is more cost effective, and that is just photovoltaic. Passive solar is actually even more cost effective, as it doesn't require expensive solar cells, doesn't produce toxic chemicals as waste of the manufacturing process, and enjoys a practical efficiency 3-8 times higher than photovoltaic systems, though it is essentially only applicable to heating and cooling. > > With today's technologies, it is not cost-effective to retrofit these > into an existing home in most cases. There are of course many > special cases, and new constructin will change the equation. > In many case, it is quite cost-effective to retrofit simple > conservation measures such as insulation and cheaper lighting. In addition to converting any heatingor other application away from grid electricity. LP or NG hot water heater, clothes dryer, refrigeration, A/C, lighting, and cooking applications are very inexpensively retrofitted into existing construction. Ask any member of an Amish community or owner of a hunting cabin. Particularly with any heating application, local gas burning equipment is generally more efficient than grid power. > > "Cost" is a fairly good approximation for environmental impact. If I > buy capital equipment to lower my energy usage or generate my own > energy, the purchase price of that equipment represents a certain > portion of the GDP i.e, of the nation's overall economic activity. Versus spending more money on grid power. Investing in more efficient production equipment of any scale builds GDP over the long term because it improves the comparative advantage of the economy as a whole. > But economic > activity produces environmental degradation. I pay a workman to > install my solar panels, and he uses the money to fuel his SUV, etc. > On a power grid or pipline grid, renewables, solar, geothermal, > etc may may economic and environmental sense. You get more environmental degradation when you waste money on more expensive resources. Spending 1.5 cents/kwh on conservation degrades the environment less than spending 8 cents/kwh on increased consumption. (the 1.5 cents includes capital costs) Furthermore, by decreasing consumption on inefficient methods, you make more resources available for other economic activities at a lower market price (due to decreased demand) > > Now, on to nanotech! > > Solar and Geothermal: MNT and local fabrication is likely to drive > the > material capital cost to near zero, and may dramatically reduce the > installation cost as well. This includes the energy storage system, > convertors, and control system. Again, I'm talking about a standalone > per-household installation. "geothermal" is really "geoheatsink" in > this case: I'm using the ground or an available body of water either > directly for cooling or as one side of a heat pump. This is actually generally passive in nature. The heat comes from somewhere, either as solar energy or tectonic activity. When you are actively extracting energy from the tectonic system to power a turbine, this is an active form as opposed as simply and passively using a building foundation's thermal footprint to mitigate HVAC costs. > > Sophisticated Conservation: > This might better be called heat management. Most energy use in a > home relates to heat. Heating, cooling, hot water, cooking, > refrigeration, and freezing. MNT can provide near-perfect > insulation,. > It can also provide the materials for heat transfer systems within a > dwelling that make the best use of energy, including counterflow air > exchangers. If you already have solar and geothermal systems, you can > move heat around directly rather than wasting high-density energy to > produce low-density heat. You use shades and evaporative cooling > outside. You can store heat from the frezeer to heat a room, move > cool > groundwater into the refrigerator precool circuit, and generally > minimize the extra energy you need to manage temperature. The capital > cost of a comprensive heat management system is prohibitive with > today's technologies, but it nearly free with MNT. Again, a careful > component design can minimize installation costs also. Depends on where you build and how. Building underground requires no significantly greater construction costs or advanced technologies, yet provides almost perfect heat management. MNT does not, IMHO, provide any significant advantages over current underground building technologies. The primary advantage, I think, is using MNT in the waste treatment cycle to more efficiently produce more burnable fuel. Current waste management uses anaerobic methods to produce gas which is simply evacuated to the atmosphere. Primarily methane, i.e. natural gas, this is highly valuable and useful in providing all of a family's energy needs, including electricity generation, if it were captured and put to use. Expanding this from human waste to other garbage disposal needs of the family, from wasted food (bones, fats, vegetable waste, etc) to burnables like paper, plastics, yard waste, etc would greatly reduce the impact of the human home on the environment both in terms of resources required and wastes produced. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 16 22:25:17 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:25:17 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" online References: <3FB4BD20.7030503@pobox.com> <02f501c3aaf7$c9715e40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FB60EE0.6070909@pobox.com> Message-ID: <01fd01c3ac90$83897e40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > Brett Paatsch wrote: > > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote: > > > >>"The Psychological Foundations of Culture" by John Tooby > >>and Leda Cosmides appears to have been OCRed online. > >> This is chapter 2 of "The Adapted Mind" and #1 on my list > >>of favorite papers ever. > >> > >>http://folk.uio.no/rickyh/papers/TheAdaptedMind.htm > > > > #1 favorite is high praise. > > > > Thanks Eliezer. Interesting. I haven't read it yet - it prints out > > at 91 pages and doesn't seem to be only chapter 2. > > > > When was it published? A quick flick through shows citations > > as late as 1992 as far as I can see. > > 1992. > > Incidentally, Tyrone Pow reformatted this at: > > http://www.tyronepow.com/misc/TheAdaptedMind.htm Thanks I've read most of chapter 1. I agree its very good stuff. There are a bunch of 'false dichotomies' lined up that imo afflict not just the wider-world but also some of what is taken for granted within transhumanist subculture as well. The false dichotomies or "ancient dualism endemic to Western cultural tradition": material/spirit, body/mind, physical/mental, natural/human, animal/human, biological/social. biological/cultural. The unpacking of words is too important to be left to the Standard Social Science Modellers. Words are our means of communicating with and empowering each other. I think it behoves us to take a scientific and engineering look at some of the words we are using. In hardware and software and wetware the common component is ware. "Ware" is tangible even in software. Software is not disembodied pattern and information. It is information on a substrate. Language is not mere concepts it is concepts communicated through a medium. Be that medium the 'physics of the air' or the 'physics of pixels on a screen or the 'physics of words on a page'. There is no language separate from all media through which it is conveyed. We can vary the particular medium but we cannot remove the need for all media of conveyance of language or of other information. I am suspicious of the viability of cryonics. There is no such thing, it seems to me, as completely dis-embodied information. Re-emboding information changes it - whether the change is significant depends on the user of the information and on how finely grained they need the replication to be. We can probably be satisfied with the results of re-animated friends and loved ones who present to us only as sensory data anyway. But we do not present or sense ourselves only in the same limited senses that our friends percieve us. We sense ourselves as changing but not as discontinuous. Cryonics would be radical discontinuity. The radical discontinuity of others would be transparent to me as I experience them as discontinuity anyway and vice versa. But my own discontinuity looks to me to be my death. This may not be a falsifiable hypothesis to me but then neither is the assertion that information pattern maintenance is enough to preserve me beyond death. - There is a limit to the scientific way of seeing too, that is NOT the same at all, so far as I can tell, to the shallow muddle -headed limits charged to the scientific way of seeing by many social scientists that argue against reductionism and for what Tooby and Cosmede ascribe to Lowie (that) "culture is a thing sui generis which can be explained only in terms of itself...Omnis cultura ex culture". The real limit to the scientific way of seeing comes from the inevitability of seeing exactly the same things together. The universe presents to all practising scientists as one and not one. As one-that-perceives- necessarily-from-the-standpoint-of-"self" and all else (including all others - including other scientists and one's colleagues in all enterprises scientific, familial, and social). Hmm. I can see approaches towards accelerate rates of change (the singularity ?) coming on from a variety of directions and one of them is when real scientists (the ones that like to integrate their knowledge domains rather than keep them in isolation) take to evaluating language and information. Of course some scientists already are but as we are each necessarily the centre of our own perceptive universes we must each do this (or fail to do it) for ourselves by ourselves. Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 16 22:39:36 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:39:36 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Psychological Foundations of Culture" online - correction References: <3FB4BD20.7030503@pobox.com> <02f501c3aaf7$c9715e40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FB60EE0.6070909@pobox.com> <01fd01c3ac90$83897e40$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <021101c3ac92$8365dec0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> > The real limit to the scientific way of seeing comes from the > inevitability of seeing exactly the same things together. Sorry - "inevitability" should have been "impossibility". Brett From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Sun Nov 16 22:37:01 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:07:01 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Why no assembler design? (forwarded from R B) Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE091@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > > There is very serious progress on the wet path -- at least tens of > > millions of dollars have been invested. Most of the CEOs don't > > have an awareness of where their technologies are leading -- but > > that is simply an education problem that can easily be resolved > > in the future. > > > > Robert You know, there is really very little reason for education of CEOs on this path. All the incremental steps between where we are now and MNT seem to potentially yield fortunes of their own. We'll get there without the practitioners actually choosing to go there from the start. You could speed it up with a "pruning" effort; lobby those with money so that the useful efforts get funded and the wrong turns don't (although those wrong turns can turn out to valuable sometimes). (Now Robert's going to tell me why I'm dead wrong about this...) Emlyn From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Sun Nov 16 22:24:37 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 08:54:37 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08D@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Definitely they only built the DNA. Still, I think that counts; you start with a prokaryote and a bunch of bases, and end up with a happily replicating virus; pretty solid stuff as far as I'm concerned. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Alfio Puglisi [mailto:puglisi at arcetri.astro.it] > Sent: Friday, 14 November 2003 11:40 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch > > > > It not clear from the article if they only built the DNA > molecule, or the > whole virus. I suspect the first :-) Anyone has more information? > > Ciao, > Alfio > > On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > >Hey Brett, here's your replicator (admittedly dependent on > external cellular > >machinery) built by people from scratch: > > > > > >Virus Genome Built from Scratch > >http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-11-13-5 > >Researchers have built the genome of a tiny virus from > scratch in a feat > >they say will improve the speed and accuracy of constructing > synthetic > >organisms. > > > > > >Emlyn > > > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >extropy-chat mailing list > >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Nov 16 22:42:21 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 14:42:21 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] computer chess In-Reply-To: <000001c3ac77$51b15e10$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000001c3ac92$e6055e20$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Fritz has given up. Match tied 1.5-1.5 with one more game to play, Fritz playing white. spike > > Only 16 moves into the game, and already > The computer is embarrassing itself. Kasparov's > dworpal blade is going snicker snack. > With this beast's head, the human will soon be > galumphing back. spike From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 16 23:14:47 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 10:14:47 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Why no assembler design? (forwarded from R B) References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE091@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <022c01c3ac97$6dd1a1c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > > There is very serious progress on the wet path -- at least tens of > > > millions of dollars have been invested. Most of the CEOs don't > > > have an awareness of where their technologies are leading -- but > > > that is simply an education problem that can easily be resolved > > > in the future. > > > > > > Robert > > You know, there is really very little reason for education > of CEOs on this path. All the incremental steps between > where we are now and MNT seem to potentially yield > fortunes of their own. We'll get there without the practitioners > actually choosing to go there from the start. You could speed > it up with a "pruning" effort; lobby those with money so that > the useful efforts get funded and the wrong turns don't > (although those wrong turns can turn out to valuable sometimes). > > (Now Robert's going to tell me why I'm dead wrong about > this...) In case Robert doesn't get to you for a bit I'll chip in. "Those with money" are often approached by all in sundry because they are "those with money". "Those with money" don't stay those unless they invest their money wisely. This means in things they understand or via other people who they trust (rightly or wrongly - but you can imagine the selection effect here well enough I am sure ;-) who then invest in what they understand or in someone they trust and so on. Sooner or later someone has to *understand* what they are investing in or the whole pyramid turns to shit and all the trusters fall down together because it turns out no-one really knew anything. There are not that many folk who have money because they understand things - that also have heaps of time to stay the sort of bleeding-edge-current with technology that some on this list are. Some on the list have time precisely because they do not have and are not managing large amounts of money. There are some (in the world that have both money and understanding), (Jurvetson springs to mind as a possibility) but they are busy and the pitch to them has to be sharp because they are busy. Michael West founder of Geron managed to find them, but he embodied both enormous passion and sales skills plus formidable technical knowledge. He was it seems (from a reading of Steven Halls - The merchants of immortality) an very effective and very rare empowered vector. I'd recommend a read of the Merchants of Immortality to folk who are interested in understanding some of the commercialising aspects of leading edge technology but don't want to hit the "hard" business texts books on strategic advantage etc (thinking of Michael Porters books here). Another small tip. Dreams, visions and plans we may all safely have without encroaching on anyone else's plans, dreams and visions, but as soon as we try to act on them in a practical way we start to encroach on others real estate and market share. It is mistaken to think of the implementation of a plan in the real world as just one more detail. Others are trying to implement their plans too. Most folk may prefer to live in a world where nearly everyone has access to MNT but be willing to settle, if they have to, for one in which they are a subset of the haves rather than in the set of the have-nots. To be in the haves in a less than motherhood and apple-pie world may require being able to buy just about anything *provided* you have the money to do so. So folks feel a need to make money just in case the grand social dream of plenty for all doesn't pan out that way in practice, (like say using the entrie history of humanity up to this point as an example). Any bio-entrepreneur of assembler of molecular nano-technology assemblers faces real challenges potentially from competitors for the rare resources that are knowledge workers in the still emerging domain space. Regards, Brett From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 17 00:03:27 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 00:03:27 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist charities, or lack of Message-ID: I have a friend who is extremely religious, but is always willing to debate me rationally. (As rationally as a deeply religious person can) One topic that recently came up in conversation was how much death and destruction has been caused by religion. He had nothing to say about this except for "there is no way we can know God's plan." He admitted to christianity's shortcomings since "organized religion is run by mankind, and mankind has the capacity for evil" He then proceeded to list the good things that the church does. Things such as feeding the poor, missionary work, and comforting people while they are in need. Things such as going to hospitals to minister to those who are "soon to leave this earth" and helping people pay for medical procedures that they would otherwise not be able to afford. My wife has actually been fortunate enough to have about $10,000 worth of surgeical procedure paid for by a catholic charity that is involved with St Mary's hospital here, even though she is an atheist. He then asked me how that compares with any atheist organization. I had to admit I had no idea. I told him I would check into it and we would continue at a later time. Does anyone know what, if any, charitable organizations there are that are atheistic in nature? I did a google on atheist charity and found almost nothing. I am a bit disturbed by this. This would be a terrific way to promote rational thinking. Am I missing something here? Or am I maybe sitting on a potentially rewarding career? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 17 00:09:32 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 00:09:32 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day Message-ID: We think we can conquer aging and death, yet I still can't find a way to keep my hair from falling out. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dgc at cox.net Mon Nov 17 00:17:19 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:17:19 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] MNT and energy. (was Re: Social Implications of Nanotech) In-Reply-To: <20031116213450.84094.qmail@web12904.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031116213450.84094.qmail@web12904.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FB8138F.1030103@cox.net> Mike Lorrey wrote: >--- Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > >>When I said I do not advocate solar, geothermal, and sophisticated >>conservation using current technology, I was referring to a purely >>local implementation. >> >> > >Local as in what? That is a rather broad brush, don't you think? There >are actually quite a number of local areas where solar is extremely >cost effective, specifically in more remote locales where grid access >is not at all cost effective. Essentially, if you have to spend more >than $10k to get grid electric service to your dwelling, then solar is >more cost effective, and that is just photovoltaic. Passive solar is >actually even more cost effective, as it doesn't require expensive >solar cells, doesn't produce toxic chemicals as waste of the >manufacturing process, and enjoys a practical efficiency 3-8 times >higher than photovoltaic systems, though it is essentially only >applicable to heating and cooling. > > > Sorry, Mike. I was actually generalizing from a VREY local perspective, namely my current house. I already have an electrical service entrance and natural gas service. I live in a big house on a 2-acre lot in the suburbs, and I am fairly lazy. I live at approximately 39 deg 2 minutes N, 77 deg 18 min W (suburbs of Washington DC.) East coast boreal forest, For me, It makes no economic sense to go off-grid, or to spend much time, effort, or money (in that order) to install solar, geothermal, recycling, or sophisticated heat management equipment. On the other hand, if the capital cost was extremely low and if installation was easy, I could save a bunch of money. In particular, If my ACME(tm) fabricator could spit out a set of parts that I could install myself, I would go off-grid and save a bunch of money immediately. By contrast, with today's technology I would need to find a contractor capable of dealing with fairly exotic technology and pay approximately $50,000 to go completely off-grid. My payback time would be in excess of 20 years, which is well past any reasonable estimate of the Singularity. This means that the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly strategy is to ocntinue to pay for electricity and gas. I think that my situation (existing house, already on-grid) is typical of most people in developed countries. You may be correct that three are quite a number of locales that can benefit. The question is: what percentage of the population lives there? From dgc at cox.net Mon Nov 17 00:22:22 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:22:22 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FB814BE.2010205@cox.net> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > We think we can conquer aging and death, yet I still can't find a way > to keep my hair from falling out. > > > Your hair is falling out because you are in a time warp. Your message is carrying a date stamp of 10/16/2003 07:16 PM. The connection between time warps and hir loss is quite obscure and has not been completely characterized. Can you please do a study of this phenomenon? :-) From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 17 01:02:53 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:02:53 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: <3FB814BE.2010205@cox.net> Message-ID: Funny you should mention that. A month of missing time. I have corrected the problem, but I have no idea how that happened. I am working on two likely scenarios. 1.) My wife changed the clock for some odd reason 2.) I, along with my computer, was abducted by aliens for an entire month. Now I just need to see if I can remember anything from the last month....ouch, it hurts! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Clemmensen" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 6:22 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day > kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > > We think we can conquer aging and death, yet I still can't find a way > > to keep my hair from falling out. > > > > > > > Your hair is falling out because you are in a time warp. Your message is > carrying a date stamp of 10/16/2003 07:16 PM. The connection between > time warps and hir loss is quite obscure and has not been completely > characterized. Can you please do a study of this phenomenon? > > :-) > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From jrd1415 at yahoo.com Mon Nov 17 01:17:23 2003 From: jrd1415 at yahoo.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 17:17:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech (tiny rantlet) In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <20031117011723.75763.qmail@web41212.mail.yahoo.com> Content-free waste of bandwidth follows. Proceed at your own risk. --- Robin Hanson wrote: > On 11/15/2003, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > >>... As with PCs today, open source product design > >>and file sharing of > >>stolen product designs could become issues. > > > >... The term "stolen" is value-laden. > > Perhaps, but I don't see another term that so > connotes the issue. How about "liberated"?, "initiative-accessible"? "proprietary-control compromised"?, "involuntarily open-sourced"?, "free-range"?, "pre-owned"?, "post-controlled"?, or my personal favorite, "off-white"? Best, Jeff Davis You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. Mahatma Gandhi __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From spike66 at comcast.net Mon Nov 17 01:35:46 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 17:35:46 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist charities, or lack of In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000701c3acab$1fb77e10$6501a8c0@SHELLY> ... My wife has actually been fortunate enough to have about $10,000 worth of surgeical procedure paid for by a catholic charity that is involved with St Mary's hospital here, even though she is an atheist. He then asked me how that compares with any atheist organization. ... The US Government is a-religious by constitutional order, and so one could argue that it is a-theist. Will any religious charity attempt to compete with the Fed on welfare or charity? Medical aid? Foreign aid? Im not sure how it compares, since the Fed's income is entirely forced "donations" however. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From neptune at superlink.net Mon Nov 17 01:45:06 2003 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 20:45:06 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist charities, or lack of References: Message-ID: <008201c3acac$6e519aa0$f0ce5cd1@neptune> I'm an atheist and I give (small amounts since I'm not rich) to various charities, including things like local volunteer fire departments and rescue squads. However, on the notion of non-religious charities, while I don't know of any specifically _atheist_ ones, I do know of many charities that do not have a religious affiliation -- including the aforementioned -- or a religious philosophy backing them. Others would include groups like the United Way, Doctors without Borders, and Reading Is Fundamental. There are also political groups that have an atheist ideology that do charitable work. Various Left wing groups come to mind... The key difference, though, is that your friend is comparing apples and oranges. He's comparing churches to individuals: organized groups of theists to atheists in general. I bet if we made the comparison of theists in general to atheists in general we might come up with no telling charity-giving differences between the two in general. (In the US, theists make up about 90 to 95% of the population. That doesn't mean people who are members of churches, just people who believe there's a God.) There's also charity on a personal level, such as helping someone in need right in your neighborhood. This could be a stranger or a friend or a family member. This kind of "local" charity doesn't get tallied up or reported all that often, but it happens. Finally, I think Ayn Rand put it right that charity is an ethically marginal issue. Yes, it did help your wife and that's great. But charity in and of itself cannot be the central issue in ethics -- not if ethics is about living life on Earth (meaning in this non-supernatural world). (Yeah, I know not all atheists are Objectivists.:) From Rand's perspective, people who create and produce give more to the community via unintended positive consequences than all the charitable donations combined. She means things like the greedy businesswoman who happens to employ hundreds or thousands of people and creates new wealth allowing people to pull themselves up. After all, wealth has to be created before it can be charitably given. Without such wealth creation, the issue of charity would not exist. On your idea of starting an atheist charity, go for it! I would find it extremely humorous to see avowed atheists getting press on this issue. (One time I wanted to get some friends to protest a church coming to our neighborhood. Imagine placards like "Keep Jesus Out of Our Community!":) My two cents! Dan http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/ See "Communication Breakdown: The Novels of Stanislaw Lem" http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Lem.html From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com To: ExI chat list Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 6:13 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist charities, or lack of I have a friend who is extremely religious, but is always willing to debate me rationally. (As rationally as a deeply religious person can) One topic that recently came up in conversation was how much death and destruction has been caused by religion. He had nothing to say about this except for "there is no way we can know God's plan." He admitted to christianity's shortcomings since "organized religion is run by mankind, and mankind has the capacity for evil" He then proceeded to list the good things that the church does. Things such as feeding the poor, missionary work, and comforting people while they are in need. Things such as going to hospitals to minister to those who are "soon to leave this earth" and helping people pay for medical procedures that they would otherwise not be able to afford. My wife has actually been fortunate enough to have about $10,000 worth of surgeical procedure paid for by a catholic charity that is involved with St Mary's hospital here, even though she is an atheist. He then asked me how that compares with any atheist organization. I had to admit I had no idea. I told him I would check into it and we would continue at a later time. Does anyone know what, if any, charitable organizations there are that are atheistic in nature? I did a google on atheist charity and found almost nothing. I am a bit disturbed by this. This would be a terrific way to promote rational thinking. Am I missing something here? Or am I maybe sitting on a potentially rewarding career? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dgc at cox.net Mon Nov 17 01:48:22 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 20:48:22 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech (tiny rantlet) In-Reply-To: <20031117011723.75763.qmail@web41212.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031117011723.75763.qmail@web41212.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FB828E6.2050006@cox.net> Jeff Davis wrote: >Content-free waste of bandwidth follows. Proceed at >your own risk. > >--- Robin Hanson wrote: > > >>On 11/15/2003, Dan Clemmensen wrote: >> >> > > > > > >>>>... As with PCs today, open source product design >>>>and file sharing of >>>>stolen product designs could become issues. >>>> >>>> >>>... The term "stolen" is value-laden. >>> >>> >>Perhaps, but I don't see another term that so >>connotes the issue. >> >> > >How about "liberated"?, "initiative-accessible"? >"proprietary-control compromised"?, "involuntarily >open-sourced"?, "free-range"?, "pre-owned"?, >"post-controlled"?, or my personal favorite, >"off-white"? > > These terms are also value-laden. Why not call it copyright infringement? This is an objective technical description. You can generalize to "patent and copyright infringment," but not to "IP infringement." This is like the difference between an Iraqi "freedom fighter" and an Iraqi "terrorist." The use of either term to describe an Iraqi beligerent is highly suspect. Unless you have very precise information regarding the individual, you should use "fighter", "insurgent" or "beligerent." Precision is important, especially with value-laden words. At least, thta's what I believe^H^H^H^H^H^H^H think. :-) From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 17 02:29:48 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 20:29:48 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu><5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu><3FB7BF5D.8090405@cox.net> <000a01c3ac83$9d7e4fe0$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <012a01c3acb2$c3d0c0e0$e8994a43@texas.net> I put Hal's options to Dr Vijoleta Braach-Maksvytis, formerly head of the nano research effort at CSIRO, now Director of Global Aid, and Head, Office of the Chief Scientist of the Commonwealth of Australia. She comments: < I go for number 1 - the assembler still resides in the fiction domain and the science needs to be cracked before it will proceed. that is also the reason why a company like Zyvex, who is backing this concept, is focusing on the macro then micro versions, to try and get the principles right. > Damien Broderick From fauxever at sprynet.com Mon Nov 17 02:36:23 2003 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 18:36:23 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist charities, or lack of References: Message-ID: <006901c3acb3$980da3a0$6400a8c0@brainiac> From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 3:13 PM My wife has actually been fortunate enough to have about $10,000 worth of surgical procedure paid for by a catholic charity that is involved with St Mary's hospital here, even though she is an atheist. He then asked me how that compares with any atheist organization. ### 1) Catholic hospitals have all benefited from a-theist-ic medical science and research. Big time. 2) For decades atheists (along with everyone else) in the USA have paid taxes that have gone to religious organizations, no matter how loony (which organizations have been given special privileges and exemptions beyond what most ordinary businesses get). 3) If the Catholic church didn't need to pay out *millions* in lawsuits for its black collar crimes division's sexual appetite for young acolytes, think of how many more people could have benefited from more charitable $10,000 operations, or think of how medical research could have benefited from all that money. 4) The Catholic church tries - but doesn't succeed - in maintaining the poverty it so desperately needs in order to assure it a place in heaven ?"How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:23)"? so it needs to throw some of that money out to the public (how much real estate and art can an organization acquire before someone says ...? "Okay, enough already!"). So, you see, when you take money [back, as it were] from the Catholic church, you are actually doing them a great favor (but - pssssssssssssssst - they like to call it "charity," as that's much better from the PR angle; and, these days, the Catholic church needs all the good PR it can possibly get).### Olga -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 17 02:55:59 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 20:55:59 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist charities, or lack of References: <006901c3acb3$980da3a0$6400a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Olga Bourlin To: ExI chat list Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 8:36 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Atheist charities, or lack of From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 3:13 PM My wife has actually been fortunate enough to have about $10,000 worth of surgical procedure paid for by a catholic charity that is involved with St Mary's hospital here, even though she is an atheist. He then asked me how that compares with any atheist organization. ### 1) Catholic hospitals have all benefited from a-theist-ic medical science and research. Big time. But it can't be measured without knowing the religious affiliation of each researcher who has made a discovery or developed a new treatment. Heck, Gregor Mendel was a monk. I can;t use this argument. 2) For decades atheists (along with everyone else) in the USA have paid taxes that have gone to religious organizations, no matter how loony (which organizations have been given special privileges and exemptions beyond what most ordinary businesses get). I can anticipate the argument that if it weren't for the forced contributions of taxpayers, the church would have to do more. The angle here being that atheists in general would not contribute to charitable works unless forced to. 3) If the Catholic church didn't need to pay out *millions* in lawsuits for its black collar crimes division's sexual appetite for young acolytes, think of how many more people could have benefited from more charitable $10,000 operations, or think of how medical research could have benefited from all that money. Ha! I was already planning on this strategy, but only as a diversionary tactic. 4) The Catholic church tries - but doesn't succeed - in maintaining the poverty it so desperately needs in order to assure it a place in heaven ?"How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:23)"? so it needs to throw some of that money out to the public (how much real estate and art can an organization acquire before someone says ...? "Okay, enough already!"). So, you see, when you take money [back, as it were] from the Catholic church, you are actually doing them a great favor (but - pssssssssssssssst - they like to call it "charity," as that's much better from the PR angle; and, these days, the Catholic church needs all the good PR it can possibly get).### Olga Yes, you are correct here as well. But I was hoping for a more direct approach such as "see, here's a way that atheists are being charitable" BTW What state are you in? Your arguments sound very much like a distant relative of mine who lives somewhere on the west coast. I've only met her once. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 17 03:03:20 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 21:03:20 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu><5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu><3FB7BF5D.8090405@cox.net><000a01c3ac83$9d7e4fe0$e8994a43@texas.net> <012a01c3acb2$c3d0c0e0$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <01b901c3acb7$8fa12080$e8994a43@texas.net> Japanese Mars probe in more trouble (but this is a day or two old): http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,7873371%255E29 098,00.html From neptune at superlink.net Mon Nov 17 03:39:33 2003 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 22:39:33 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu><5.2.1.1.2.20031116125325.01e05d18@mail.gmu.edu><3FB7BF5D.8090405@cox.net><000a01c3ac83$9d7e4fe0$e8994a43@texas.net><012a01c3acb2$c3d0c0e0$e8994a43@texas.net> <01b901c3acb7$8fa12080$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <016701c3acbc$6b24aa60$f0ce5cd1@neptune> Damien Broderick Sunday, November 16, 2003 10:03 PM > Japanese Mars probe in more trouble (but this is a day or two old): > > http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,7873371%25 5E29 > 098,00.html Yeah, I read about it at SpaceDaily two days ago: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-03k.html I check SpaceDaily almost every day... BTW, on the general topic of the Japanese space program, it's a rather lackluster effort. I mean I expected a lot more seeing how well Japan does in other high technology areas. Any ideas on why this is the case? Later! Dan http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/ See "Censorship and Art" at: http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Censor.html From bradbury at blarg.net Mon Nov 17 03:47:32 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (Robert Bradbury) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:47:32 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Blue people and behavior Message-ID: <3FB844D3.217FFB91@blarg.net> Ok, I'm trying out whether my new email address will allow me to participate in the list. Kevin and Dan have raised interesting points with regard to both time sensing and our responses to it (things which have inherent preprogrammed biological components though they have not been discussed). Let us just propose reality is indeed determined by the blue people (i.e. we are within a sim constructed on demand). [For the references on the "blue people" you will need to dig deep into either the ExI archives or Google -- it is based upon old SciFi stories. For the sim concepts one has to deal with recent works by Robert Freitas and Nick Bostrom (plus perhaps others -- Damien might offer a SciFi history???).] At any rate -- assume we are in a sim. Assume reality is constructed "on demand". Does this alter ones (a) morality; or (b) behavior on a day-to-day basis? Why or why not? Robert From fortean1 at mindspring.com Mon Nov 17 04:05:21 2003 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 21:05:21 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day References: <3FB814BE.2010205@cox.net> Message-ID: <3FB84901.46A6D97F@mindspring.com> Positive answers to five questions in the 1991 survey were strong indicators of a "UFO abductee." These were (1) an hour or more of missing time, (2) seeing unusual lights or balls of light in a room, (3) puzzling scars on their body, (4) seen a strange figure (a monster, an alien, a devil) in their bedroom, and (5) had a feeling of flying through the air. Only 18 people out of 5,947 people surveyed had all five of these experiences, a 0.3 per cent of the sample. The margin of error in the poll was +/- 1.4 per cent. Authors Hopkins, Jacobs, and Westrum shifted their own goalposts to four positive answers. Now 119 respondents, two per cent of the sample, when extrapolated to the general American population, represent 1.11 and 6.29 million people at the extremes of the margin of error, or 3.7 million possible abduction experiences. kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > Funny you should mention that. A month of missing time. I have corrected the > problem, but I have no idea how that happened. I am working on two likely > scenarios. > 1.) My wife changed the clock for some odd reason > 2.) I, along with my computer, was abducted by aliens for an entire month. > Now I just need to see if I can remember anything from the last > month....ouch, it hurts! > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dan Clemmensen" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 6:22 PM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Depressing thought of the day > > > kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > > > > > We think we can conquer aging and death, yet I still can't find a way > > > to keep my hair from falling out. > > > > > > > > > > > Your hair is falling out because you are in a time warp. Your message is > > carrying a date stamp of 10/16/2003 07:16 PM. The connection between > > time warps and hir loss is quite obscure and has not been completely > > characterized. Can you please do a study of this phenomenon? > > > > :-) -- ?Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress.? Copyright 1992, Frank Rice Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.] From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 17 04:13:16 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 22:13:16 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Blue people and behavior References: <3FB844D3.217FFB91@blarg.net> Message-ID: <01ca01c3acc1$2d9968c0$e8994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Bradbury" Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 9:47 PM > assume we are in a sim. Assume reality is constructed > "on demand". Does this alter ones (a) morality; or (b) behavior > on a day-to-day basis? Why or why not? "Didn't I just see that thread walk past a moment ago?" Damien Broderick From gpmap at runbox.com Mon Nov 17 04:47:41 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 05:47:41 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE08D@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: There is another article on the Economist: The Economist re ports on the first successful attempt to create artificial life. although a group of biologists at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, did, indeed, once make something they said was the genome of a polio virus, it was so feeble that it could barely infect a cell and reproduce itself. It also took them years to put together, whereas the IBEA genome is fully functional and was the work of a fortnight. The Stony Brook effort, in other words, was a biological version of Sir Hiram Maxim's heavier-than-air flying machine. It just about got off the ground. But history recognises the Wright brothers, not Maxim, as the true pioneers of powered flight. -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Emlyn O'regan Sent: domingo, 16 de noviembre de 2003 23:25 To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch Definitely they only built the DNA. Still, I think that counts; you start with a prokaryote and a bunch of bases, and end up with a happily replicating virus; pretty solid stuff as far as I'm concerned. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Alfio Puglisi [mailto:puglisi at arcetri.astro.it] > Sent: Friday, 14 November 2003 11:40 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch > > > > It not clear from the article if they only built the DNA > molecule, or the > whole virus. I suspect the first :-) Anyone has more information? > > Ciao, > Alfio From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 17 05:08:44 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:08:44 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Atheist charities, or lack of References: Message-ID: <028201c3acc8$e0271440$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Kevin wrote: > I had to admit I had no idea. I told him I would check into > it and we would continue at a later time. Does anyone know > what, if any, charitable organizations there are that are atheistic > in nature? I did a google on atheist charity and found almost > nothing. I am a bit disturbed by this. This would be a terrific > way to promote rational thinking. Am I missing something here? > Or am I maybe sitting on a potentially rewarding career? Atheism is a very narrow platform. About as narrow as a-mermaide-ism, a-unicorn-ism and the view that Elvis Presley is not alive. It is not a philospophy for living. Atheism has no more (or less) to do with charity than the view that the moon is not made of cheese. Rational thinking is its own reward. Consider your standard of living to that of any non homo-sapien you know. Would you want to switch places? Regards, Brett -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 17 05:55:57 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 23:55:57 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Blue people and behavior References: <3FB844D3.217FFB91@blarg.net> <01ca01c3acc1$2d9968c0$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <021d01c3accf$83844f80$e8994a43@texas.net> Go here first: http://www.simulation-argument.com/ From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Mon Nov 17 06:14:26 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 17:14:26 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Blue people and behavior References: <3FB844D3.217FFB91@blarg.net> Message-ID: <031501c3acd2$0dd6dac0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Robert Bradbury wrote: > Ok, I'm trying out whether my new email address will > allow me to participate in the list. > > Kevin and Dan have raised interesting points with regard > to both time sensing and our responses to it (things which > have inherent preprogrammed biological components > though they have not been discussed). > > Let us just propose reality is indeed determined by the blue > people (i.e. we are within a sim constructed on demand). > [For the references on the "blue people" you will need to > dig deep into either the ExI archives or Google -- it is based > upon old SciFi stories. For the sim concepts one has to > deal with recent works by Robert Freitas and Nick > Bostrom (plus perhaps others -- Damien might offer a > SciFi history???).] > > At any rate -- assume we are in a sim. Assume reality is > constructed "on demand". Does this alter ones (a) morality; > or (b) behavior on a day-to-day basis? Why or why not? Sim or no sim the universe I inhabit is one I perceive from the standpoint of my "self" (a concept folks can play with if they wish but I don't doubt a referent) and with my senses arbitarily classified into 5 usually but not necessarily. I can create a myth that would allow for a sim the same as I can create a myth that would allow for the existence of an external-god but why would I bother unless I am trying to con someone else. There is challenge enough and life enough to postpone the problem if there are any problems of being in a sim to later - when its the most pressing question - for now it is a long way away from even seeming important and I regard all notions of sims as later day flights of fancy by a computer savvy group of individuals whos capacity for myth making is as good as their predecessors but whose understanding of science is better and whose desire to live is about the same. I see the sim scenario as a new call for external assistance. It is distracting because if the cavalry is not out there to come we had better get by on our own and if it is (out there -perhaps in the form of a sim designer) then there is little we (or I) can do about contacting it (so far as I can see). My attitude to any sim designer would be pretty much Diogenes attitude to Alexander, if the sim-designer wants my attention for its ego it can talk to the extended middle digit which I will not spare for very long as I need it too work with as well - if its friendly I will be friendly in return otherwise I hope it stays out of the way as there is plenty of work to do and sim or no sim the hazard functions I perceive are the ones I am going to work against. Regards, Brett [a-theist and a-sim-ist] From bjk at imminst.org Mon Nov 17 07:01:59 2003 From: bjk at imminst.org (Bruce J. Klein) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 01:01:59 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ImmInst Chat - Mike Treder, Nanotech In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031116091802.042d93c0@pop.earthlink.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.0.9.0.20031116091802.042d93c0@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20031117005450.01e7e008@mail.kia.net> >>How Dangerous is Nanotech? >>Mike Treder - ImmInst Chat > >I am very sorry I am going to miss this. This chat is great fun, and Mike >is really hot on this topic. > >Natasha Yes, Mike was an informative and helpful chat guest. ImmInst is grateful for his participation. CHAT EXCERPT: [20:03] Let me start by saying that nanotech is not very dangerous now -- but in the near future, when MNT is developed, it could prove extremely risky. [20:03] <@BruceK> Could you give the worst case scenario? [20:05] Worst case, one nation other than the US develops MNT first. The US recognizes the potential loss of world leadership and nukes the other country. Or tries to, but it's too late, because MNT has already developed superior weaponry. [20:04] Mike, is there a risk specific to nanotech but not to technological advance in general? We're seeing airplanes being deployed as weapons, trucks as bombs, you name it. Isn't the issue more of why we're so angry at each other, since that'll spill over into whatever technology we develop? [20:06] Jonesy, MNT exacerbates the human problems you refer to, by making single humans or small groups potentially far more dangerous. [20:05] Mike, Is there a science fiction story/novel which you feel shows how you think things may/will develop? ARCHIVE: http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=99&t=2135&s= From spike66 at comcast.net Mon Nov 17 07:27:01 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 23:27:01 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred In-Reply-To: <01b901c3acb7$8fa12080$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000501c3acdc$312e8220$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Must be a units-conversion error. {8-] spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Damien Broderick > Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 7:03 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred > > > Japanese Mars probe in more trouble (but this is a day or two old): > > http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744, > 7873371%255E29 > 098,00.html From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 17 07:36:09 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 01:36:09 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred References: <000501c3acdc$312e8220$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <024f01c3acdd$856bf2e0$e8994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 1:27 AM > Must be a units-conversion error. {8-] spike A little err in the Nip? [I can't believe I just wrote that. What am I, the schoolyard clown or something?] From spike66 at comcast.net Mon Nov 17 07:45:25 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 23:45:25 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred In-Reply-To: <024f01c3acdd$856bf2e0$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000201c3acde$c457ee40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Damien Broderick > > Must be a units-conversion error. {8-] spike > > A little err in the Nip? > > [I can't believe I just wrote that. What am I, the schoolyard clown or > something?] I don't see why not. Do you recall all those perverse little jingles we used to chant on the playground in elementary school? Ever wonder where they all came from? Some creative little jerk thought them up. I know, for I contributed a number of them myself. I was the same guy then as I am now. Only with entirely different atoms of course, and a quarter the age, but same twisted sense of humor. {8-] spike From bradbury at blarg.net Mon Nov 17 07:56:22 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 23:56:22 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch Message-ID: <20031117075545.2B0CA3412E@mail.blarg.net> This is in no way a scientific breakthrough. Perhaps one can view it as an interesting engineering accomplishment. Viruses are not self replicating systems. I.e. they cannot "reproduce". However if a viral genetic code (DNA or RNA) is combined with the proper protein components -- I.e. a genetic information storage system combined with a protein packaging system then they can infect bacteria or cells and use the cellular components to reproduce themselves. Viruses should be viewed as parasites. There may be a small minority of viruses that contain the genetic code for a DNA or RNA polymerase that allow them to copy their genetic information storage (for example I think the Herpes and CMV viruses might have this -- but I would need to check to be certain) but I know of no virus that contains the ribosomal and transfer RNA codes required to produce the protein components required to copy itself. So no virus that I'm aware of can be self-reproducing. Now with respect to the creation of viruses we have had the technology for over a decade to assemble viral genome (there are patents on the most efficient methods) and also produce the proteins. In most cases viruses are self-assembling (i.e. mix the genomes and the proteins in a dish and you will probably get a functioning virus as a result). So what you are observing is a case where the technologies have simply become cheap enough that almost any lab can pull it off if they want the news publicity. A *real* scientific accomplishment would be the assembly of a complete bacterial self-replicating system -- one that was designed from very low level systems analysis. I don't believe we have enough knowledge and cost effective engineering methods to get there yet -- but I suspect we will within this decade. I have submitted a more extensive comment to nanodot.org and you may want to check there in a day or two. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nanogirl at halcyon.com Mon Nov 17 08:07:55 2003 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 00:07:55 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Animations References: <000201c3acde$c457ee40$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <006401c3ace1$e8197f30$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> Hey guys, I've got my animation webpage up. Bear with me, I'm just beginning. But I fully intend to evolve! You can visit the page here: http://www.nanogirl.com/animate.html Gina` Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Tech-Aid Advisor http://www.tech-aid.info/t/all-about.html nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." From bradbury at blarg.net Mon Nov 17 08:20:07 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 00:20:07 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred Message-ID: <20031117081929.9D24E37F2B@mail.blarg.net> Spike said: > Only with entirely different atoms > of course, and a quarter the age, but same twisted sense > of humor. {8-] spike I'll agree about the sense of humor but from a physiological standpoint I think you have more of the same atoms than you might think. My completely a guess estimate would be someplace between 20-40%. But it could be much higher. Reasons being that bone and to a lesser extent muscle turnover are low and cells are quite efficient at using old molecules to make new molecules. R. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sentience at pobox.com Mon Nov 17 09:19:09 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 04:19:09 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Blue people and behavior In-Reply-To: <3FB844D3.217FFB91@blarg.net> References: <3FB844D3.217FFB91@blarg.net> Message-ID: <3FB8928D.6090505@pobox.com> Robert Bradbury wrote: > > At any rate -- assume we are in a sim. Assume reality is constructed > "on demand". Does this alter ones (a) morality; or (b) behavior > on a day-to-day basis? Why or why not? Wouldn't it depend mostly on what the blue people were doing and why? For example, if speaking the words "Klaatu berada niktu" caused the blue people to leave suitcases of money under my bed, I would speak the words "Klaatu berada niktu." -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 17 10:03:48 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:03:48 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Virus built from scratch In-Reply-To: <20031117075545.2B0CA3412E@mail.blarg.net> References: <20031117075545.2B0CA3412E@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: <20031117100348.GP922@leitl.org> On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 11:56:22PM -0800, bradbury wrote: > Viruses are not self replicating systems. I.e. they cannot "reproduce". I disagree. Viruses are self-replicating systems, they just need other self replicators as context. M. genitalium is a bacterium, yet is difficult to culture, as it requires a *rich* complex medium. Are cyanobacteria not cheating, requiring an atmosphere with lots of water and a balmy temperature region? Are the only self-replicators those, who can feed on raw congealed star drek? While technically true, that's a very purist approach. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From amara at amara.com Mon Nov 17 09:40:57 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:40:57 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred Message-ID: One (sad) joke I heard on Friday is that, since Mars eats spacecraft, maybe Nozomi is the sacrificial animal to the Mars gods so that the other spacecraft can arrive safely at the end of this year.... I do hope that Nozomi continues as the latest news (thanks 'gene) indicates. It has an interplanetary dust dataset that hints to be very valuable. (One result of it's re-engineered trajectory after it missed its target the first time.) I would like to see Mars in-situ dust data. Mars rings, anyone? Dan: >BTW, on the general topic of the Japanese space program, it's a >rather lackluster effort. I mean I expected a lot more seeing how >well Japan does in other high technology areas. Any ideas on why >this is the case? I wish I knew! Nozomi carries a dust detector that is closely followed by my dust colleagues and I; my old group has performed some work, made calculations, and even one PhD thesis from one colleague in M?nchen came out of it. My German colleagues are co-investigators on that dust instrument, so why do they need to push always to get the data and engineering information? The Japanese space agency management has acted consistently in a very closed manner, and this practice doesn't support well international collaborations. Maybe this provides a clue to an answer to your question? Amara -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes From amara at amara.com Mon Nov 17 09:41:31 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 11:41:31 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred Message-ID: One (sad) joke I heard on Friday is that, since Mars eats spacecraft, maybe Nozomi is the sacrificial animal to the Mars gods so that the other spacecraft can arrive safely at the end of this year.... I do hope that Nozomi continues as the latest news (thanks 'gene) indicates. It has an interplanetary dust dataset that hints to be very valuable. (One result of it's re-engineered trajectory after it missed its target the first time.) I would like to see Mars in-situ dust data. Mars rings, anyone? Dan: >BTW, on the general topic of the Japanese space program, it's a >rather lackluster effort. I mean I expected a lot more seeing how >well Japan does in other high technology areas. Any ideas on why >this is the case? I wish I knew! Nozomi carries a dust detector that is closely followed by my dust colleagues and I; my old group has performed some work, made calculations, and even one PhD thesis from one colleague in M?nchen came out of it. My German colleagues are co-investigators on that dust instrument, so why do they need to push always to get the data and engineering information? The Japanese space agency management has acted consistently in a very closed manner, and this practice doesn't support well international collaborations. Maybe this provides a clue to an answer to your question? Amara -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes From avatar at renegadeclothing.com.au Tue Nov 18 05:57:23 2003 From: avatar at renegadeclothing.com.au (Avatar Polymorph) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:57:23 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Tipler Message-ID: <041b01c3ad98$d7ebe0a0$65ee17cb@renegade> I read Anders' article on the Omega Point. If Tipler was correct, the Fermi Paradox is even more obvious. Personally I think the process outlined in the Omega Point theory was achieved very quickly, four billion years ago. We are deliberately excluded from its direct affects, but many 'dead' people have opted for continued life (via split selves which have been repaired and upgraded in most instances) on more advanced worlds. The fact that we are 'rescued' (if we opt to be so) by the Omega Point (or Matrix) when we 'die' explains the Fermi Paradox and our soon-to-end quarantine from our soon-to-be amortal buddies hovering around nearby, with every gimmick from instant teleportation to quantum reconfiguration devices to multiversal gateways. Splitting quantum hairs is easy for a post-Singularity club... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 17 11:02:08 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:02:08 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <012a01c3acb2$c3d0c0e0$e8994a43@texas.net> References: <5.2.1.1.2.20031116075207.01dac9b8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <5.2.1.1.2.20031115121724.016daed8@mail.gmu.edu> <000a01c3ac83$9d7e4fe0$e8994a43@texas.net> <012a01c3acb2$c3d0c0e0$e8994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <20031117110208.GS922@leitl.org> On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 08:29:48PM -0600, Damien Broderick, channelling Dr Vijoleta Braach-Maksvytis, wrote: > < I go for number 1 - the assembler still resides in the fiction domain and > the science needs to be cracked before it will proceed. that is also the > reason why a company like Zyvex, who is backing this concept, is focusing on > the macro then micro versions, to try and get the principles right. > I would rather agree with this statement, adding a footnote: that it's not only science (a library of experimentally validated machine-phase reactions) but also technology (implementation of a nanolithoprinter) utilizing such reactions to deposit a rich set of structures, with a sufficiently high processivity for it to make copies of itself, and a number of other devices. A scientist is not an engineer, typically. The set of reactions are worthless all by itself, if there's no design, and no viable bootstrap pathway from here to there. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 17 11:42:34 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:42:34 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> References: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> Message-ID: <20031117114234.GV922@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 06:03:33PM -0800, Hal Finney wrote: > > Here are a few possible but mutually exclusive answers: Not necessarily. The world doesn't like boolean logic. > 1. There is still considerable science to be done in order to learn how > atoms and molecules behave in the detail necessary to design an assembler. Yes. No new physics is involved, but creating and breaking bonds at a high rate and good control is not something well studied. In fact, a large fraction of chemists and physicists would deny it's even possible. Not everybody reads widely outside of their speciality. > 2. The science is known, but designing an assembler would be an enormous > task due to its incredible complexity, taking hundreds or thousands of > man years, and no one can afford to expend that effort. How can you design something you can't validate? We don't have a simulator precise enough to build the assembler in a virtual dry dock which would work flawlessly once fabbed for the first time. The simulator/model will need iterative refinement, using input from real-world data. > 3. Designing an assembler would not be enormously complex, but it would > still require a considerable investment in state of the art hardware > and software tools, as well as engineering manpower, and no company > has been willing to do that. 99.9% of potential designers aren't even aware that there's a whole new world of design waiting to be discovered. Even if they did, the amount of R&D required with a decade-delayed ROI would make that not a viable proposition for the most of corporate industry (but for a few giants, which also tend to have less resources for R&D and accordingly harsher internal evaluation cycles). > 4. Designing an assembler is relatively straightforward and it is clear > that it could be done today with a modest effort, but since there is no > way to build the resulting device, no one wants to go to the effort of > coming up with a complete assembler design. An assembler without a bootstrap route is worthless. Luckily, polymer electronics (via inkjet) as top-down and self-assembly (as bottom-up) are bound to meet somewhere in the middle. > Answers 3 and 4 assume that merely designing an assembler is pointless; > rather, effort should be devoted to designing an assembler which can be > built from simpler tools, which is much more difficult. Nevertheless it > would seem that if the situation were close to case 4, it might be a > worthwhile exercise just to make the technological potential more obvious. A considerable desideratum is an interactive nanoscale simulator, with more or less accurate forcefields and a good approximation of bond breaking/formation (Brenner's potential is too specialized and too coarse, but it's a step in the right direction). We're having some promising packages in MMTK, PyMOL and VMD/NAMD, unfortunately these are geared towards biomolecules. The mainstream is apparently not interested in interactive build and simulation packages for machine-phase suitable systems. Remember, how NanoCAD tanked so pitifully? The reason is that the community interested in the matter doesn't have enough skills and critical mass to even write software. > I'd be interested to hear opinions about where we actually are along > this spectrum, or other possibilities that I haven't considered. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Mon Nov 17 11:58:50 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:58:50 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: <20031117114234.GV922@leitl.org> References: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> <20031117114234.GV922@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote: >A considerable desideratum is an interactive nanoscale simulator, with more >or less accurate forcefields and a good approximation of bond >breaking/formation (Brenner's potential is too specialized and too coarse, >but it's a step in the right direction). > >We're having some promising packages in MMTK, PyMOL and VMD/NAMD, >unfortunately these are geared towards biomolecules. The mainstream is Speaking as someone who knows more or less nothing about the subject, and has some vague imagery about lots of painted little balls stuck together, but knows lots of C++ and other languages, I'm asking: what is your estimate about the manpower and knowledge required to get an useful tool? Does one need to be a chemistry expert, or at least interface with one? Are there standard algorithms and/or formulas that can do the job? Ciao, Alfio From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 17 12:26:43 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:26:43 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: References: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> <20031117114234.GV922@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20031117122643.GY922@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 12:58:50PM +0100, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > Speaking as someone who knows more or less nothing about the subject, and > has some vague imagery about lots of painted little balls stuck together, > but knows lots of C++ and other languages, I'm asking: what is your > estimate about the manpower and knowledge required to get an useful tool? The requirements are not extreme. A single long-term motivated individual would make a difference. What would be nice to have is putting support for Brenner's potential http://www.openchem.org/brenner/ into MMTK http://starship.python.net/crew/hinsen/MMTK/ and/or PyMol http://pymol.sourceforge.net/ A (more complicated) alternative to this would be VMD/NAMD: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/ The design target is something like open-source Yasara for dry nanosystems: http://www.yasara.com/ > Does one need to be a chemistry expert, or at least interface with one? > Are there standard algorithms and/or formulas that can do the job? Yes, I believe so. At least enough to get us started. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From exi-info at extropy.org Sun Nov 16 15:18:55 2003 From: exi-info at extropy.org (Extropy Institute) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 10:18:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Extropy Institute "Exponent" Newsletter Message-ID: <-1158703602.1068995932184.JavaMail.wasadmin@lp2> Extropy Institute Newsletter Bigger than democracy? (11.15.03) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Extropes We transhumanists have been accused of many things - outlandish, selfish, wealthy, brainy, dreamers, radical - you name it. Some transhumanists may have responded to this by looking for an idea that's almost universally popular and then trying to attach transhumanism to it. In this issue, Max More - philosopher of transhumanism, and now frequent author of business innovations - takes a sharp look at the what's wrong with the term "democratic transhumanism" in his essay, "Democracy and Transhumanism". We are pleased to welcome Dr. Gregory Stock, biotechnology's spokesperson, to our Council of Advisors. Greg has been a long-time friend of ExI and now a welcomed advisor. We are also very excited about the addition of Pamela Lifton-Zoline, science fiction writer, painter, and co-founder of the Telluride Institute, a far-reaching organization whose conferences have featured such fascinating figures as John Cage, John Naisbitt, and Laurie Anderson. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In this issue: "Democracy and Transhumanism"; New Council of Advisors Members; Thought Leader Futurist Summit; Brian Alexander's New book - RAPTURE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * Transhumanist Thought Leader Virtual Summit * Democracy and Transhumanism, by Max More * What Does Democracy Mean and Why Value It? * New Council of Advisors Members: * RAPTURE: How Biotech Became the New Religion Transhumanist Thought Leader Virtual Summit ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ExI's Summit is scheduled for January, 2004. The virtual meeting will include some of the global futurist organizations and groups to discuss transhumanist ideas. Our goal is to develop a fluid communication with other organizations to show and tell what we are doing, when we are doing it, and how we can better communicate with each other on similar projects. Some suggested organizations to attend: Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Betterhumans, De:Trans, Foresight Institute, CRN, The Long Now Institute, ExtroBritannia, Singularity Institute, Santa Fe Institute, Telluride Institute, Transhumanist Arts & Culture, Kurzweil AI.net, Adaptive AI, Inc., World Future Society, World Transhumanist Association, Immortalist Institute, TransVio, NEXUS, and others. A formal invitation is schedule to go out in late November. If you are an organization or a group and you do not receive one, PLEASE contact us and give us your contact information. ExI's Summit is an inclusive event and all futurist organizations, businesses and groups that have a transhumanist perspective on life are welcome! Democracy and Transhumanism, by Max More ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Are transhumanists democrats? Should they be committed to and defined by democracy? Let's go back to the seventeenth century. Monarchy is the prevailing system in the Western world. Suppose a group of progressive early humanists wanted to associate their views about the status of human beings - views radical for the time - with the best political orders of the time. They might declare that "modern 17th Century humanism is a constitutional monarchist philosophy". Such a statement would show that they reject outdated forms of unlimited monarchy or theocracy. We would find such a quickly-dated commitment amusing today. "What does humanism have to do, in essence, with constitutional monarchy?" we might ask. Humanism asserts the value of progress. Tying it to the political system of the time - even though the system was the best of the time - would confuse ends (human dignity, personal sovereignty, and so on) with a means. Transhumanist organizations that declare themselves to be "democratic transhumanists" make an even bigger mistake. Transhumanist perspectives look further ahead, into much more drastic change to the human condition. To identify transhumanism with any current political system must appear short-sighted and blinkered to some. To others it may simply appear to be a transparent attempt at posturing - like telling Americans that transhumanism is all about "motherhood and apple pie" or telling Europeans that transhumanism is committed to universal, government-provided health care. A transhumanist organization should no more describe its core commitments as "democratic" than it should describe itself as an "Internet organization" when in practice and in aspiration the organization interacts by means of any effective medium of communication. Democracy and Transhumanism Essay >> http://www.extropy.org/politicaltheory.htm What Does Democracy Mean and Why Value It? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the broad sense, democracy means "rule of the people, by the people, for the people". In a second sense, democracy is used to mean an (almost) universal right to vote on issues and/or representatives. Sometimes direct democracy is seen as "more democratic" than representative democracy. In a third, very common sense, democracy is taken to refer to some combination of the voting procedures (as in the second sense) and the particular political and legal procedures of the speaker's country. In the case of the USA, those procedures are mainly constitutional protections of individual freedoms embodied in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. In the case of Great Britain, arguably such a constitutionally-limited republic exists in a largely unwritten form (the Magna Carta being the main written document). How well do any of these meanings relate to the philosophies of transhumanism? The first and broadest sense of "democracy" is intended to eliminate in principle the rule of "the people" by an oligarch. In practice, many of the actual people do not get to vote (prisoners, tax-paying permanent residents who are not citizens). Those that do may not possess sufficient knowledge or motivation to vote. Those who do vote may not enjoy any choices of candidate, position, or package of policies that represents their preferences. The complicated working of real democracies - and the vast involvement of government in commercial activities - means that a small percentage of the people actually wields most of the influence. The second sense has only a tenuous connection to transhumanist values of self-determination, self- transformation, and progress. An unlimited democracy can be tyrannize large segments of the population. It should be remembered that Adolph Hitler was democratically elected. Universal suffrage has little to do with freedom or other values dear to transhumanists, especially when voting costs nothing to the voter and requires no knowledge. As the great English jurist, Lord Acton said: "It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge [ ]" Only in some instances of the third sense of the term do we find a firmer relation to transhumanism. A constitutionally-limited republic that succeeds in protecting liberty and responsibility upholds a legal order with two essential features: First, its public officials are responsible in that their official actions are open to public scrutiny and unrestricted criticism, and their official tenure may be terminated by those governed by manageable procedures such as popular election or the vote of a legislative majority. Second, its criminal law is limited to prohibiting matters of fraud, theft, and assault. The law and public policy enhances rather than reduces the freedom of the people. The value of democracy in its constitutionally-limited sense lies in its attempt to recognize the sovereignty of the individual - legitimate government requires the consent of the governed - and in its intent to limit the opportunities for abuse of centralized authority. Democracy is or should be a method for running government with the aim of creating and enforcing a system of laws that protect the liberty of citizens. Democratic arrangements are purely a means to achieving the end of protecting individual liberty. A benevolent despot might achieve the same end - perhaps even more effectively and at less inconvenience - without democratic procedures. It would be dogmatic to insist that democracy is the only way or the best way for all societies in all places at all times to protect their individual sovereignty. [Continue to the link -] CONTINUE: To read more of Max More's essay: >> http://www.extropy.org/politicaltheory.htm New Council of Advisors Members: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gregory Stock and Pamela Lifton-Zoline Council of Advisors >> http://www.extropy.org/directors.htm RAPTURE: How Biotech Became the New Religion ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ___Brian, how did you become so interested in biotech? ___BA: Hmmm... Well, I've always been interested in biology -- it was the only science subject I ever did well in high school or college. I was an English literature major and political science major in college and it may seem as though writing about biotech is an odd area for me to work in. But my overarching interest has always been the culture, and to me biotech is most certainly a real cultural phenomenon. It is literally changing the way we regard our futures, our religions, the natural world, and ourselves. So for me, this is a perfectly natural realm to work in. Professionally, I first became interested in biotech in 1994, just as the book opens with the second A4M conference in Las Vegas. It really started with a question, which was, what is the real science behind any of this? And if there was any real science, wow. ___: . In your opinion, does transhumanity have a particular political line of thinking that is evident in the underlying values of transhumanists? ? ___BA: I do recognize that within transhumanism, and even within extropy, there may be a wide variety of views on political philosophy. Just have a look at the past year on the extrope discussion group! This is a very important question for transhumanists. (More on this in answer to later questions.) ___? If you could separate out one element that keeps people from rushing to support transhumanity and donating money to Extropy Institute to further its goals, what would that be? ___BA: Just one? That's tough. Everything from people just not having the money to thinking that the money is better used for other causes, but if I had to pick just one, I would say that it is a lack of the overarching vision of what transhumanity means in the near term, as opposed to the far future vision. Getting people to support a cause aiming to do something they can take part in the next five years is much easier than getting them to support a cause that looks ahead 100 years. Aubrey's Methuselah mouse is a good example. other institutions are trying to do the same thing, but they place the work in a framework of understanding the diseases of aging. That's something more concrete that everybody can relate to as opposed to saying you want to engineer a super-long-lived mouse for the sake of making a super long-lived mouse. ___? How did writing _Rapture_ change your mind about transhumanists? ___BA: well, it didn't really. I've always liked transhumanists, and enjoy spending time with them, though I am not a "transhumanist" per se and I disagree with a fair number of the predictions and with some -- not all by any means -- of the attitudes expressed by some transhumanists. A TV interviewer asked me the other day if I didn't "feel sorry" for life extensionists. I said no, that life extensionists -- and I would say the same about transhumanism in general - - are actually being more honest than many of us about that they want. I admire people who can be unabashed about their desires. Nobody, at least not anybody in good physical and psychological health, wants to die. But saying so, or saying you'd like to be smarter, or improve your body in some fundamental way, is considered strange by many people because it seems so impossible, and so wanting the impossible can be seen as something odd or even pathetic. Well, I don't think it is impossible in the very long term, and I think these are some of the most basic of human desires, expressed for thousands of years. Improvement is the driving force behind much of human culture. It's who were are. now, one person's "improvement" is another person's danger, but the point is, we all want "better." Now, I will say that I always thought the transhumanist vision works better as a concept or an idea (hence the subtitle of the book) than as a practical path. That did not change with the book. My research only confirmed my view. Transhumanism seems to me to be about propagating the idea that it's okay to favor change. The idea of transhumanism being "about" cryonics, or the singularity or merger with computers, or space colonization or germline engineering is, in my view, a mistake. I've always thought that man himself is "transhumanist" and has been throughout history, as I try to show in "rapture." we all want to rise above our current station, whether that is in a spiritual, cultural, physical, mental sense doesn't matter. We've always evolved. We've always been "trans." ___? What do you think is the most urgent issue to contend with regarding Leon Kass and the anti- biotechnology swarm? ___ BA: Leon Kass is only one incarnation of anti- biotech, which is really about anti human improvement. My reading of the "bio-Luddite'" (as I call it in "Rapture") philosophy is that they believe that "human" cannot be improved upon. I say that humans have always tried to improve upon themselves and that this is, in fact, human nature. Dr. Kass is expressing a view that has always been expressed about science and man's place in the natural world. Most famously, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is just such a warning, but there have been such warnings about defying the natural order forever. I think the most important thing to contend with is the idea that enhancement technology will, by its very nature, be de-humanizing. Sometimes it might be, sometimes not. Personally, I think it is important to keep an open mind. I might add that this is why Dr. Kass and others use transhumanism, and the longing for some to have a "post-human" future, against biotech as a whole. Rhetoric about "post-humanity" doesn't really do anybody any good. First, I think it's incorrect. We will always be human. Second, it makes people think that, say tomorrow, alien-like augmented species who used to be people will walk the earth. That won't happen but it makes for a great sound bite, a good headline, a scary scenario. ___? Do you think that transhumanism is more scientific than it is cultural? In other words, do you think that we should emphasize science or culture in order to prosper and elicit positive memes about transhumanism? ___ BA: I think you ought to give MORE emphasis on the cultural than the science. I know transhumanists will disagree with me here, but much of the science upon which the movements seem based is not only not yet ready for prime time, it may never be ready. Let the science takes care of itself. The minds of people are what really count. I think transhumanists have done a generally poor job of addressing fears, concerns, apprehensions of the general public about how biotech will affect people. There's a tendency to look down on such fears with disdain. But when Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama and others appeal to fears, they talk about culture, society, religion, art, and human relations. People understand these things. This is what "Rapture" is about, really, the culture. The science places it in context but it is not, at heart, a science book. It's about hope. So if I were a transhumanist who wanted to make a difference, I'd research issues like population, resources, environment, social justice, human rights, art and the ways these will or will not be affected. When I give talks, these are the questions people are most interested in. ___ ? Do you think Extropy Institute has succeeded in memetic engineering of "transhumanism? " ___ BA: Yes, but I do think transhumanism is now becoming bigger than Extropy or any one organization. I think this is a measure of Extropy's success, but also may mean that in the future extropy comes to be less and less important as the spawn swim on their own. As science catches up to Extropy's ideas, the ideas will spread outward into the general public, as "rapture" shows they already have, and the need for an organization like extropy will pass completely. And by the way, let me say that I have always admired the very grown up way Natasha and Max and a few others have dealt with some of the snarkier writing about extropy and transhumanism, including some by me about certain elements of transhumanism. (In a wired story I referred to extropians as "enthusiastic amateurs" and that pissed some people off so much that they couldn't see that the story was about how some of the ideas were being accepted by mainstream science and that extropes were not as kooky as some might think.) That can be tough to do. but by putting yourselves out there, by taking the good with the bad, you do get some of the message through. ___? Looking back, is there anything you feel you left out of your book that you would now expand upon? ___BA: If I thought anybody would read it, I would have liked to make the book about another 100 pages! essentially I would have gone into more detail about some of the things that are already in the book. I would have liked to have done more with how biotech actually works. I mean how drugs are made by engineering cells to produce human proteins. I would have liked to have spent more time with Wally Steinberg, a truly fascinating character, or Deeda Blair. I would have liked to gone into much more detail about regeneration science (but look for that appearing somewhere soon). To purchase Brian Alexander's book >> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0738207616/qid=1068592900/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/103-1194620-0696645?v=glance&s=books ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quick Links... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Join Now! >> http://www.extropy.org/membership.htm Directors, Council of Advisors, and Executive Advisory Team >> http://www.extropy.org/directors.htm Max More's "Liberty and Responsibility" >> http://www.maxmore.com/libresp.htm Best Business Analysis on the Web! >> http://www.manyworlds.com:// Brian Alexander's New Book! Rapture - How Biotech Became The New Religion >> http://www.amazon.com More About Us >> http://www.extropy.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ email: natasha at natasha.cc voice: Natasha Vita-More, President (512.263.2749) web: http://www.extropy.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This email was sent to natasha at natasha.cc, by Extropy Institute. Update your profile http://ccprod.roving.com/roving/d.jsp?p=oo&m=1011086851128&ea=natasha at natasha.cc&id=preview.1011086851128 Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe(TM) http://ccprod.roving.com/roving/d.jsp?p=un&m=1011086851128&ea=natasha at natasha.cc&id=preview.1011086851128 Privacy Policy: http://ccprod.roving.com/roving/CCPrivacyPolicy.jsp Powered by Constant Contact(R) www.constantcontact.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 17 16:45:14 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 08:45:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] MNT and energy. (was Re: Social Implications of Nanotech) In-Reply-To: <3FB8138F.1030103@cox.net> Message-ID: <20031117164514.18340.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dan Clemmensen wrote: > Mike Lorrey wrote: > > >--- Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > > > > >>When I said I do not advocate solar, geothermal, and sophisticated > >>conservation using current technology, I was referring to a purely > > >>local implementation. > >> > >> > > > >Local as in what? That is a rather broad brush, don't you think? > >There are actually quite a number of local areas where solar is > >extremely cost effective, specifically in more remote locales where > >grid access is not at all cost effective. Essentially, if you have > >to spend more than $10k to get grid electric service to your > > dwelling, then solar is > >more cost effective, and that is just photovoltaic. Passive solar is > >actually even more cost effective, as it doesn't require expensive > >solar cells, doesn't produce toxic chemicals as waste of the > >manufacturing process, and enjoys a practical efficiency 3-8 times > >higher than photovoltaic systems, though it is essentially only > >applicable to heating and cooling. > > > Sorry, Mike. I was actually generalizing from a VREY local > perspective, namely my current house. I already have an electrical > service entrance and natural gas service. I live in a big house on > a 2-acre lot in the suburbs, and I am fairly lazy. I live at > approximately 39 deg 2 minutes N, 77 deg 18 min W (suburbs of > Washington DC.) East coast boreal forest, I'm in NH, more than 500 miles north of you. I know a large number of people who live in rural areas and are entirely off-grid. While in-town electricity costs average 14 cents a kwh here, when building rurally, especially more than a hundred yards from the grid, you get a significant bill from the power company to run service to your dwelling (still significant if you pay an electrical contractor to do it for you). Figure a base of $3k plus another grand for every telephone pole they have to put in (burying it is more expensive). Since propane/natural gas appliances are actually more energy efficient than electrical appliances (at least in the heating arena), you can remove your hot water heater, your stove, half your clothes dryer load, all of your HVAC as well as your refrigerator from your electrical needs and save more money doing it with a very short payback period, typically 2 years or so, nowhere near the 20 years you assert (though the payback will be worse, about 4 years, if you finance it, of course). With these significant loads removed from your electrical needs, all of your lighting, computer, washing machine, and other appliance needs can be met with a solar installation costing about $10k, installed. Nor is this 'exotic technology', especially to contractors who deal with this on a regular basis. When you purchase your system, the manufacturer can provide you with lists of contractors in your area that are experienced with this technology. As for what percent of the population lives in cost-effective areas? Consider that half the population of the US lives in rural areas. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 17 17:04:52 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 09:04:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred In-Reply-To: <016701c3acbc$6b24aa60$f0ce5cd1@neptune> Message-ID: <20031117170452.81728.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> --- Technotranscendence wrote:> > http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-03k.html > > I check SpaceDaily almost every day... > > BTW, on the general topic of the Japanese space program, it's a > rather lackluster effort. I mean I expected a lot more seeing > how well Japan does in other high technology areas. Any ideas > on why this is the case? I think they are downplaying their capabilities with this probe in particular as a matter of keeping expectations low until achievments are made as a form of 'face saving management'... as for their space program as a whole, the NASDA is a government program, not an industry program. Japanese government is conservative, cautious, and not prone to change, initiative, or new ideas, and their space policy is in keeping with their overall foreign policy, which is passive and pacifist. Exploration was a hallmark of the militarists from the late 1800's up to WWII, who gave up on government in '45 and went into industry, and agressive foreign policy (which space policy can be seen to be a component of) is a discredited concept in Japan, i.e. something best left to the Americans to screw up. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From scerir at libero.it Mon Nov 17 17:55:00 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:55:00 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? References: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org><20031117114234.GV922@leitl.org> Message-ID: <000301c3ad33$ecb55530$03b71b97@administxl09yj> > Speaking as someone who knows more or less nothing about the subject, and > has some vague imagery about lots of painted little balls stuck together, > but knows lots of C++ and other languages, I'm asking: what is your > estimate about the manpower and knowledge required to get an useful tool? > Does one need to be a chemistry expert, or at least interface with one? > Are there standard algorithms and/or formulas that can do the job? > Ciao, > Alfio I do not know anything about the subjects (painted balls, or C++) nevertheless I can provide *useless* references :-) ----------- Quantum Mechanical Universal Constructor http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0303124 Arun K. Pati, Samuel L. Braunstein Arbitrary quantum states cannot be copied. In fact, to make a copy we must provide complete information about the system. However, can a quantum system self-replicate? This is not answered by the no-cloning theorem. In the classical context, Von Neumann showed that a 'universal constructor' can exist which can self-replicate an arbitrary system, provided that it had access to instructions for making copy of the system. We question the existence of a universal constructor that may allow for the self-replication of an arbitrary quantum system. We prove that there is no deterministic universal quantum constructor which can operate with finite resources. Further, we delineate conditions under which such a universal constructor can be designed to operate dterministically and probabilistically. John Baez, 'Is life improbable?', Found. Phys. 19 (1989), 91-95 http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/improbable.pdf Eugen P. Wigner, "The Probability of the Existence of a Self-Reproducing Unit", In "The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi on his Seventieth Birthday, 11th March 1961", London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961, 248 pages. Rebek, J. "Synthetic Self-Replicating Molecules," Scientific American, July 1994 J. Am. Chem. Soc. 119 10559 (1997) http://ch-www.st-andrews.ac.uk/staff/dp/dp_index.html http://www.chemie.uni-marburg.de/~nanobio1/PKiedrowski.html From humania at t-online.de Mon Nov 17 17:48:30 2003 From: humania at t-online.de (Hubert Mania) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:48:30 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] MNT and energy. (was Re: Social Implications ofNanotech) References: <20031117164514.18340.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <002a01c3ad33$11569490$5b91fea9@relius> > "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." > - Mike Lorrey Sun rises in the West in New Hampshire? Moon is a toy balloon over there? Year has 500 days for a NH country boy? Objectivity defined as a nursey crime? From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 17 18:10:32 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:10:32 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution Message-ID: Is anyone here a primatologist, anthropologist, or geneticist? I am working on a research paper for no particular reason than to organize my thoughts and I need to find out a few things. 1.) Bonobos show that they diverged from chimpanzees about 2 mya. Are they capable of breeding with regular chimpanzees. Do they show any history of doing so? If so, do they produce sterile offspring? 2.) A donkey and a horse may make a mule. Sterile, but a creature that has characteristics of both horses and donkeys. A bengal cat is a cross between the asian leopard cat (felis bengalensis) and a domestic house cat. The male offspring are also sterile, but the females may breed yet again with a domestic housecat male and produce males that are not sterile. Are there similar occurrances in the primate world? 3.) Is there a single known primate that a human is capable of breeding with, even if it were to produce something really weird looking and sterile? What about crosses between Gibbons, baboons, orang-utans, gorrillas, etc? My research didn;t originally go in this direction, but it seems to be making a slight turn towards problems with the entire classification system. The entire Homo fossil record is full of weird combinations of archaic and modern type hominids. Combinations such as human-like teeth and small brains, large craniums with supraorbital ridges, bipedal stature with small brains, etc. I am starting to get the idea that the last 3 million years was a huge orgy of crossbreeding and that the fossil record, given the chance process of fossilization, will probably never be able to tell the whole story. Maybe a group of modern humans about 200k years ago simply decided to stop crossbreeding. H. sapiens may have assimilated H.neanderthanelsis as they moved into Europe and Asia, but weren't able to produce viable offspring either because neanderthal women weren't capable of giving birth to the human babies (probably due to a longer gestation period) and/or the production of sterile offspring. Bipedalism may have fluctuated back and forth, (3 steps forward, two steps back) in several lines until the right conditions came along that simply required it. The Oldowan tools show up about 2.4 mya. This is towards the end of the A. africanus period. Might older tools and younger fossils of A africanus be found? Are someof the fossils discovered simply crossbreeds of different species? Comments? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 17 18:18:43 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:18:43 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] garage nanotech? Message-ID: I am an amateur rocket builder. Although it is not likely that I can design and build an orbital spacecraft, I have built a rocket with a primitive guidance system that "points" the rocket toward the sun and is capable of mach 1.2 in my own garage. I am guessing that before assemblers become a reality, it will be possible for people to start creating things at the nano scale in their garages. Most likey it will be simple stuff. Call it amateur nanotech. When will this type of technology become available? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bradbury at blarg.net Mon Nov 17 18:35:58 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 10:35:58 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? Message-ID: <20031117183521.EE9FA37F37@mail.blarg.net> On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 4:00am Alfio Puglisi wrote: > On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > >A considerable desideratum is an interactive nanoscale simulator, with more > >or less accurate forcefields and a good approximation of bond > >breaking/formation (Brenner's potential is too specialized and too coarse, > >but it's a step in the right direction). I have to disagree with Eugen here. Robin and I, I believe, have (offlist) agreed upon the problem being in pathways to assembly -- which is probably a problem more in systems analysis (which Eric very briefly discusses in Nanosystems) and less of a problem of molecular modeling. Alfio: > I'm asking: what is your > estimate about the manpower and knowledge required to get an useful tool? > Does one need to be a chemistry expert, or at least interface with one? > Are there standard algorithms and/or formulas that can do the job? I address some of the possible costs and time frames in [1]. Robert Freitas has reviewed it and while he doesn't completely agree he doesn't disagree. One of the major problems is understanding that nanoassemblers have to be constructed from nanoparts. First we have to solve the problem of the design of nanoparts -- that is in part what Nano at Home (www.nanoathome.org) is all about (it could use some programmers that want to join one or more of its teams). Second we need to solve the assembly of nanoparts. Currently that means either a biological paradigm (e.g. self-assembly of viruses) or a "macro" assembly paradigm (e.g. robotic assembly in factories scaled down to micron and nano scales [what Zyvex is doing]). I try to outline some paths for all of this in Appendix B of [1]. Robert 1. Bradbury, R. J., "Protein Based Assembly of Nanoscale Parts" Normally at: http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Papers/PBAoNP.html May be available later this week. The Google cache may or may not have an up-to-date copy if you search for it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 17 18:54:37 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:54:37 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Blue people and behavior References: <3FB844D3.217FFB91@blarg.net> <3FB8928D.6090505@pobox.com> Message-ID: <007001c3ad3c$42ca40e0$90994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 3:19 AM > if speaking the words "Klaatu berada niktu" caused the blue > people to leave suitcases of money under my bed, I would speak the words > "Klaatu berada niktu." That's not the usual deal, though. Would you do it if you also had to refrain from eating the meat of the cloven-hooved umarried fish (or whatever)? Damien Broderick From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 17 19:45:14 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:45:14 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes References: <3FB844D3.217FFB91@blarg.net> <3FB8928D.6090505@pobox.com> <007001c3ad3c$42ca40e0$90994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <009101c3ad43$5578cca0$90994a43@texas.net> Or not: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/17/1069027045722.html < The scientist who led the research said she was stunned when she saw the results. "I was shocked. I couldn't believe we got this correspondence with the brain activity," said Jennifer Richeson, a neuroscientist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. ... The scientists found a strong link between a volunteer's test score [for implicit bigotry] and activity in a region of their brain called the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Those with the highest levels of brain activity also performed the worst in the difficult mental task. Others say it is dangerous to interpret the results that way. "That's exactly the kind of inference we're arguing it would be unfortunate to draw at this point," said Professor Bill Gehring, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. "There just isn't enough known about what this task is actually showing." The controversial study was published yesterday in the journal Nature Neuroscience, which also discusses it in an editorial and in an accompanying article trying to explain the context. > From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 17 19:47:32 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:47:32 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] life from rocks? References: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org><20031117114234.GV922@leitl.org> <000301c3ad33$ecb55530$03b71b97@administxl09yj> Message-ID: <009801c3ad43$a63c7560$90994a43@texas.net> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/17/1069027047410.html?from=storyrh s From sentience at pobox.com Mon Nov 17 19:53:39 2003 From: sentience at pobox.com (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 14:53:39 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] garage nanotech? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3FB92743.1080802@pobox.com> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > I am an amateur rocket builder. Although it is not likely that I can > design and build an orbital spacecraft, I have built a rocket with a > primitive guidance system that "points" the rocket toward the sun and is > capable of mach 1.2 in my own garage. > > I am guessing that before assemblers become a reality, it will be > possible for people to start creating things at the nano scale in their > garages. Most likey it will be simple stuff. Call it amateur nanotech. > > When will this type of technology become available? Six months before the end of the world. -- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 17 21:11:44 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:11:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] MNT and energy. (was Re: Social Implications ofNanotech) In-Reply-To: <002a01c3ad33$11569490$5b91fea9@relius> Message-ID: <20031117211144.17996.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> --- Hubert Mania wrote: > > "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." > > - Mike Lorrey > > > Sun rises in the West in New Hampshire? > Moon is a toy balloon over there? > Year has 500 days for a NH country boy? > Objectivity defined as a nursey crime? Fascists are always interested in deluding free people into refusing to defend their liberties, and those of their fellow man. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 17 21:21:22 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:21:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031117212122.88304.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > Are there similar occurrances in the > primate world? > 3.) Is there a single known primate that a human is capable of > breeding with, even if it were to produce something really weird > looking and sterile? What about crosses between Gibbons, baboons, > orang-utans, gorrillas, etc? The fossil record seems to indicate that there were once a number of hominid species, as well as many more primate species, all of which tended to compete with one another in one way or another, leading to cross predation and possibly limited local interbreeding that may have contributed to todays 'racial' differences between humans. We know, for example, that late homo erectus predated on early homo sapiens in Spain. All of this cross predation likely caused significant selective pressure upon homo sapiens (as well as these other species) in a sort of evolutionary arms race which we can also see in the fossil record of the development of brain capacity in predator and prey species. Humans, I think, are likely too evolved to successfully interbreed with other primates. If it were possible, I would say the most likely candidates would be those that evolved in the same locale that homo sapiens emerged as a distinct species. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From bradbury at blarg.net Mon Nov 17 21:21:41 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (Robert Bradbury) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:21:41 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech Message-ID: <3FB93BE5.66CADBA5@blarg.net> Kevin and Eliezer discussed: > > When will this type of technology become available? > Six months before the end of the world. In another of my rare disagreements with Eliezer I say ca-ca poo-poo. I've got the knowledge and resources to be doing self-replicating biotech in my garage (or basement) today and have had such abilities for perhaps 5+ years. The world has not ended yet! I will admit that it is difficult for individuals to do home based biotech (molecular biology) research but it is clearly not impossible (I've built multiple biotech labs -- this is something where I have a reasonable knowledge base). For Eliezer's statement to hold you have to make a definitive argument for a strong (i.e. fast) singularity takeoff. I do not believe that argument has been successfully made to date. If Kevin is doing rocketry and Dan is doing STMs and we need not discuss some of the strange over-clocking efforts or the power of the multiple distributed computing projects -- things are *going* to move forward. This isn't any different from efforts to re-engineer ones car in the '50s or '60s -- its just gotten a little more sophisticated. Given the problems we currently have with SPAM (and the strike and counterstrike strategies that seem to be developing) I think Eliezer should be making stronger arguments against garage based AI research than arguments against garage based nanotech research. In response to Kevin's question -- it already is available (if one is willing to accept that biotech *is* nanotech). Its just that most "amateurs" don't have the knowledge and skills required to use the available technology. Perhaps like the fact that most people who souped up their cars in the '50's and '60's still required professional machinists to do some of the really fine detail technical work. I think, at least with respect to wet bio/nanotech, one of the major barriers will be "computer-aided-enzyme-design". I think we will get that within this decade. With respect to dry nanotech one is going to need something like STMs with tips that can be exchanged to do reliable and variable chemistry -- and its going to have to be highly parallel to be useful. When we get that I'd have to guess (completely off the wall) sometime in the next decade. Robert From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 17 21:31:10 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:31:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <009101c3ad43$5578cca0$90994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <20031117213110.33420.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- Damien Broderick wrote: > Or not: > > http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/17/1069027045722.html > > < The scientist who led the research said she was stunned when she > saw the results. "I was shocked. I couldn't believe we got this > correspondence with the brain activity," said Jennifer Richeson, > a neuroscientist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Of course they have trouble accepting it. If it holds water, then the lefties will have to admit that racism is a genetic artifact, or perhaps a diseease, just like homosexuality, alcoholism, and drug addiction, and therefore not the fault of the individual, not something they can 'choose'. Perhaps the racist may be justified in applying for welfare disability payments if their racism impacts their ability to keep a job... Hate crimes, of course, could no longer impart more sever sentences if the perpetrators cannot help themselves... Odd when one liberal prejudice smacks head on into another one. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From dgc at cox.net Mon Nov 17 21:31:54 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (dgc at cox.net) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:31:54 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Blue people and behavior Message-ID: <20031117213154.BVCD23168.lakemtao01.cox.net@smtp.east.cox.net> Quick! check under your bed! > > From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" > Date: 2003/11/17 Mon AM 04:19:09 EST > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Blue people and behavior > > Robert Bradbury wrote: > > > > At any rate -- assume we are in a sim. Assume reality is constructed > > "on demand". Does this alter ones (a) morality; or (b) behavior > > on a day-to-day basis? Why or why not? > > Wouldn't it depend mostly on what the blue people were doing and why? For > example, if speaking the words "Klaatu berada niktu" caused the blue > people to leave suitcases of money under my bed, I would speak the words > "Klaatu berada niktu." > > -- > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ > Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From cphoenix at best.com Mon Nov 17 21:41:48 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:41:48 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Social Implications of Nanotech References: <200311151850.hAFIoOM26078@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FB9409C.D02BA424@best.com> On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:36:05 -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > We should consider both > conventional nanotech scenarios and radical ones, such as described in > Unbounding the Future and Diamond Age. Would this audience be completely lost if you referenced Nanosystems instead? That's intricately technical, but does list quantifiable technological capabilities such as power conversion densities (petawatts per cubic meter) and computing power (petaflops per watt). And makes a reasonably strong case for the technological basis of dry self-replication and flexible manufacturing. > Radical scenarios seem less likely > but have more severe social implications. If two things are equally allowed by the laws of physics, but the more radical one is more profitable, then it becomes more likely. I think that's the case here. Molecular manufacturing without self-rep cannot be more than a niche technology, used for building sensors and other components, and maybe a few small and incredibly expensive products. But MM with self-rep is what leads to general-purpose manufacturing. > As a prelude to future modeling > attempts, I here try to identify five key assumptions to bridge the > chasm > between conventional and radical nanotech scenarios. Seems like you're outlining scenarios, not assumptions. Drexler's projections are based on taking several assumptions together and seeing what results. If you take one assumption at a time (and assume that the others do *not* hold), then you're building scenarios--which are far less interesting than general diamondoid MNT, and I think also far less plausible. The assumptions underlying MNT: 1) Stiff mechanical devices (nanomachines), including actuators, power transmission, bearings, and interlocks can work at the nanoscale. 2) Programmable nanomachines can do chemistry which is sufficient to build programmable nanomachines. (For diamondoid MNT, the chemistry is diamondoid chemistry, and the products benefit from diamondoid materials.) 3) Large systems can be integrated from nanomachines with fairly simple engineering. 4) All this can be automated. If all these assumptions are correct, MNT is extremely powerful. Take one of them away, and it simply doesn't work--you're not describing MNT--you're not describing anything. Other nanotechnologies can be built from some of these assumptions (or variations on them) combined with some other assumptions--usually with very different implications. So what I'm saying is, don't try to take parts of MNT and evaluate them one at a time. It's like trying to evaluate a car without a motor. No one would want it, so there's no reason to build it, and it wouldn't have any effect. I'll illustrate this by going over your scenarios and listing the assumptions you appear to be making in each one. ... Having gone ahead and done that, I'll come back and note that some of your five "assumptions" appear to be effects. For example, "A local manufacturing plant can create a copy of itself within a year." There are only a few technologies that can do this, so this is an effect of a small subset of technological possibilities. So then I get confused when you talk about scenarios that don't fit any of these technologies, but present them as being on the same continuum. > 1. Atomic Precision: Atom-scale manufacturing is feasible; we put some > atoms where we want. Assumptions: Mechanochemistry works to some extent. Mechanochemistry can't close the autoproductive loop, but it can build products. (Questionble assumption IMO.) The manufacturing systems are created by non-autoproductive systems. (I think this means they're likely to be *VERY* expensive.) > Depending on how cheap this ability is, and which atoms, many new products > may be possible, including much cheaper computers, and perhaps medical > devices that float in our bloodstreams. I recommend a different example. Floating medical devices have been a poster child for the anti-MNT crowd. Perhaps sensors cheap and small enough to integrate into all products would be more believable. > 2. General Plants: General purpose manufacturing plants, using a limited > range of feedstocks, will displace most special purpose plants, like > general purpose computers have now displaced most special purpose signal > processors. (This is mature "3D printing" or "direct manufacturing.") Assumptions: It appears you're not assuming mechanochemistry for this one. It's not clear whether these manufacturing plants are autoproductive. It's not clear whether this technology transforms the feedstocks to obtain new material properties. >From what you say later, it sounds like these general purpose plants are not assumed to be fully automated. How can humans cope with machines with such flexible behavior? (Note that automation is different from self-repair is different from high reliability, and I'm not sure which you're talking about.) > As with computers, this requires that the efficiencies of special purpose > devices be overcome by the scale economies and lower design costs of > general purpose devices. When transportation costs matter, products would > likely be made at the general plants nearest to each customer. This does not go very far toward analyzing the effects of MNT. We almost have this technology today. This scenario requires an extremely flexible fabrication technology, which it does not in any way specify. So there is no way to evaluate the effectiveness of this technology or the scope of its implications. You can make projections anywhere from "no significant effect" to "massive disruption of everything." > 3. Local Production: Small general plants, located in or near homes, > dominate manufacturing. Assumptions: like 2, only more so. Now the functionality has to be packed into a much smaller space. > This requires that production processes be almost fully automated, with > human intervention rare. Such high automation seems harder to design. I still don't understand how a manufacturing system building nanoscale products or nanoscale components can hope to work without complete automation. This seems to be a counterfactual scenario. Automation need not be hard to design if the function being automated is sufficiently simple. For this, it helps to have "plenty of room at the bottom" so that you can design your product components to be snap-together. > Here > costs of transportation and labor for manufacturing are mostly eliminated; > what remain are costs of design, marketing, regulation, feedstocks, and > rental of general plants. As with PCs today, open source product design > and file sharing of stolen product designs could become issues. > 4. Over-Capacity: Local general plants are so fast/cheap that they are > usually off, like PCs now. This sounds like not even a scenario in its own right, but an extension of previous scenarios. If the cost of building a general plant is lower than the cost of coping with fluctuating demand (e.g. delayed availability, warehousing, shipping), then the plant will be built. Tweaking the parameters of scenario 3 will lead to scenario 4. "idle" is a more accurate description than "off". > For most products, the main marginal costs would be feedstocks and > marketing. Fixed costs of design, regulation, and marketing would dominate > total costs, as with software and music today. Um, what about profit-taking? Remember I'm not an economist, so this may not be the right term. What I mean is that if someone has a near-monopoly (e.g. the music industry) then they can simply charge higher prices and pocket the difference. With the amount of regulation MNT may inspire, this seems like a very plausible source of cost. > Like software and cable TV > companies that now offer a small menu of product packages to > price-discriminate via anti-correlations in item values, future consumers > might be offered a few lifestyle packages that cost most of their salary > and entitle them to designs for clothes, furniture, food, etc. This would > require high concentration of or coordination by sellers of consumer good > designs. Life for rent... brrr! This would have other implications in other areas than lifestyle product packages. Black market in designs for illegal products? Force multiplier and deployment expediter for militaries? These may be more important than the commercial effects. I think the question of whether manufacturing plants are usually idle--whether they're cheap enough to exist for convenience in some or even many contexts--is a very important question to ask. Am I right that if they exist for convenience, this completely removes many frictions that currently exist in our economy? > 5. Self-Reproduction: A local manufacturing plant can create a copy of > itself within a year. I don't at all understand why this isn't implied by 4), assuming that 4) makes use of mechanochemistry or otherwise produces programmable nanoscale features. (And if 4 doesn't include mechanochemistry, in what sense is it a nanotech scenario?) > This is one possible route to achieving over-capacity of local general > plants. This route, however, has the potential to give a large and sudden > cost advantage to the commercial or military power that first develops > achieves it. How large an advantage depends on just-prior costs, and how > sudden depends on self-reproduction time. Yes. > Self-reproducing military or > terrorist weapons become a concern. In general, I don't think so. Most products will not drag production systems around with them--that would be very inefficient. Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From jcorb at iol.ie Mon Nov 17 21:51:11 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:51:11 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] T-Shirts (was - HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles the b word again) Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031117204148.02651b20@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 5 >Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:39:23 +1100 > >From: "Brett Paatsch" >Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - the b >wordagain >To: "ExI chat list" >Message-ID: <01ff01c3aa50$21bc4cc0$11262dcb at vic.bigpond.net.au> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" >Kevin wrote: > > "Democracy is a good thing but it empowers fools to ban > > medicines and life saving technologies if they in the majority > > too. " > > This is an excellent statement. Can I quote you on a T-shirt? >Sure, you can reproduce anything you like or that is useful to you >so long as you DON'T attribute it to me. >I don't want to be a dead sound-bite I want to be effective and >alive. >I *like* that you like it though - don't get me wrong ;-) >Cheers, >Brett > Before anyone slaps it on a T-shirt, shouldn't that be "....if *they're* in the majority too" Just saving blushes. James.... PS - Where are you folks getting these T-Shirts made? From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Nov 17 21:53:42 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:53:42 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech References: <3FB93BE5.66CADBA5@blarg.net> Message-ID: Robert said: >With respect to dry nanotech one is going to need something >like STMs with tips that can be exchanged to do reliable and variable >chemistry -- and its going to have to be highly parallel to be useful. >When we get that I'd have to guess (completely off the wall) sometime >in the next decade. Dan? How's that STM coming? Have you thought of maybe redesigning in a way that you can do this? Also, Robert, how's the nano at home software coming along. I can't wait to start playing with this. :-) From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 17 21:44:52 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:44:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB93BE5.66CADBA5@blarg.net> Message-ID: <20031117214452.9499.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> --- Robert Bradbury wrote: > Kevin and Eliezer discussed: > > > > When will this type of technology become available? > > > Six months before the end of the world. > > In another of my rare disagreements with Eliezer I say ca-ca poo-poo. > I've got the knowledge and resources to be doing self-replicating > biotech in my garage (or basement) today and have had such > abilities for perhaps 5+ years. The world has not ended yet! I will > admit that it is difficult for individuals to do home based biotech > (molecular biology) research but it is clearly not impossible (I've > built multiple biotech labs -- this is something where I have a > reasonable knowledge base). For Eliezer's > statement to hold you have to make a definitive argument for a strong > (i.e. fast) singularity takeoff. I do not believe that argument has > been successfully made to date. I'd have to say that Eli's statement would only hold water if one could develop a general purpose assembler in their garage relatively easily, enough so that your average monster truck fan mullet-head could do so enough to either purposely, or accidentally, create grey goo while in a Pabst-induced fit of insanity. This would require an economic base supporting amateur nanotech to such a degree that there would be a chain of Radio Shack-like stores, perhaps called Nano Shack, or Nano Zone, or Nano Depot, supporting the home Nano-dilletante's hobby. As for wet-nano, I was doing anti-biotics research in my home lab while in 12th grade (1986). Whoopdeedoo. I know plenty of guys doing home machine tool prototyping, a woman with a rather extensive home geology lab, and a few fellows prototyping some rather interesting firearms designs (ever shot .50 BMG in a revolver???). ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From dgc at cox.net Mon Nov 17 21:56:43 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (dgc at cox.net) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:56:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] garage nanotech? Message-ID: <20031117215644.DYKS2192.lakemtao03.cox.net@smtp.east.cox.net> > From: > > I am an amateur rocket builder. Although it is not likely > that I can design and build an orbital spacecraft, I have > built a rocket with a primitive guidance system > that "points" the rocket toward the sun and is capable of > mach 1.2 in my own garage. I must council you against this. Mach 1.2 in your garage is dangerous, unless you have a very tall garage :-) > > I am guessing that before assemblers become a reality, it > will be possible for people to start creating things at > the nano scale in their garages. Most likey it will be > simple stuff. Call it amateur nanotech. > > When will this type of technology become available? > Here is my guess: MNT tools are conceptually similar to CNC tools, only a lot smaller. You will not be able to acquire a set of these tools until they can be built by tool manufacturere. But this wil not occur until nano-level fabricators are available. Therefore, hobby-level MNT must await industrial MNT. If you subscribe to the "hard take-off" scenario, these two happen at effectively the same time. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 17 22:15:58 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:15:58 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] [nsg] (no subject) (fwd from fhapgood@pobox.com) Message-ID: <20031117221558.GE22336@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Fred Hapgood ----- From: "Fred Hapgood" Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:09:51 -0500 To: nsg at polymathy.org Cc: Subject: [nsg] (no subject) X-Mailer: MIME::Lite 1.2 (F2.71; T1.001; A1.51; B2.12; Q2.03) Meeting notice: The 03.Nov.18 meeting will be held at 7:30 P.M. at the Royal East (782 Main St., Cambridge), a block down from the corner of Main St. and Mass Ave. If you're new and can't recognize us, ask the manager. He'll probably know where we are. More details below. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Note: This list is moving to a new provider: polymathy.org. I am asking subscribers to resubscribe directly. Those who have done so should get two copies of this announcement: the last to be distributed by the World and the first by Polymathy. If you have resubscribed to the list and do not get two copies within 24 hours the process has broken down somewhere. Let me know if there are any glitches. The announcements in December will be distributed by polymathy exclusively. If you have not yet resubscribed but are interested in continuing to receive these notices, either send blank email to nsg- subscribe at polymathy.org or (if subscribing from a different address than that to which notices are to be sent) fill out the form at http://polymathy.org/mailman/listinfo/nsg_polymathy.org. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Suggested topic: Nanotech action as a fiction genre. Recently I got around to reading Prey, Michael Crichton's book about NT- gone- horribly- wrong. At the time the book was published, Chris Phoenix wrote a trenchant critique, demonstrating convincingly that subtracting the sum of the risibly implausible and physically impossible reduced the work by about nine pages out of ten. Still, there should be a quasi- realistic NTGHW story to be told (as opposed to a mere speculation; the difference being that a story requires a resolution at the end). Two weeks ago I put the question to the group. Dave spun some entertaining variations on the theme of evil environmentalists using nanotech to wipe out the human race, but nothing quite jelled. In a NT-gone-wild world, every tenth person would be busy programming self- replicating agents to advance their interests. Teenage boys would program agents to follow pretty girls home and grow cameras in their shower. Anti-violence groups would release agents that would infect your limbic structures, go to sleep, wake up when you were about to be "violent", and then put you back to sleep, or perhaps just in a nicer mood. Corporations would program agents that would make you a better consumer. Pro- life groups might use agents to prevent abortions. The DEA would write agents that would look for marijuana plants and infect them. Sports fans might program agents designed to screw around with the physics of the ball or puck depending on who had possession . This reality -- even this prospect, bandied about the hyperactive media -- would create a significant incentive to invent and deploy an ecological immune system. One imagines a sort of smart, active self-replicating film or fabric that would drape over buildings, cars, people, trees, pets, and so on, processing the water and air passing through it, searching for and killing agents of any sort. One possible story concept would be a "Phil Zimmermam meets NT" knock-off, in which the FBI tries to get a back door built into the EIS but are frustrated by sexy, heroic, libertarian hackers. The trouble with that scenario is that in a world whipped up by the threats detailed in the paragraph above there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of EIS development projects, because no one would trust anyone else's work product. Every country, lots of every research groups, lots of ad hoc groups of engineers, open source consortia, etc,, would be cranking them out. In fact there would almost certainly be a huge auto-immune problem, since every EIS will label every other as a threat. The entire complex of interactions would unleash an intense selection pressure for the smartest and most lethal agents. This might or might not be a story, but it's definitely a scenario. Is there any reason why it isn't our default future? <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> In twenty years half the population of Europe will have visited the moon. -- Jules Verne, 1865 <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Announcement Archive: http://www.pobox.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html. <-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-><-> Legend: "NSG" expands to Nanotechnology Study Group. The Group meets on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at the above address, which refers to a restaurant located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NSG mailing list carries announcements of these meetings and little else. If you wish to subscribe to this list (perhaps having received a sample via a forward) send the string 'subscribe nsg' to majordomo at polymathy.org. Unsubs follow the same model. Comments, petitions, and suggestions re list management to: nsg at pobox.com. www.pobox.com/~fhapgood _______________________________________________ Nsg mailing list Nsg at polymathy.org http://polymathy.org/mailman/listinfo/nsg_polymathy.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dgc at cox.net Mon Nov 17 22:21:44 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (dgc at cox.net) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 17:21:44 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech Message-ID: <20031117222142.ESFH2297.lakemtao02.cox.net@smtp.east.cox.net> > From: > Robert said: > > >With respect to dry nanotech one is going to need something > >like STMs with tips that can be exchanged to do reliable and variable > >chemistry -- and its going to have to be highly parallel to be useful. > >When we get that I'd have to guess (completely off the wall) sometime > >in the next decade. > > Dan? How's that STM coming? Have you thought of maybe redesigning > in a way that you can do this? > Alas, I must crawl before I can walk. An STM is member of a class of devices know as SPMs (Scanning Probe Microscopes.) The STM depends on tunnelling current to measure the tip-to-sample distance. Other types of SPMs include AFMs. These devices use different principles. I have not found a way to make a cheap AFM tip and sensing mechanism. Note that the unimorph actuator is so cheap that it it cheaper to build an AFM from scratch than it is to modify the STM. The sensor/effector is only one small part of the problem. The biggest problem, I think, is simultaneous sensing and effecting, and precise registration when using multiple tools. A slightly easier problem is that an SPM is usually a 3-axis tool, while we need a 6-axis tool. I have grandiose delusions of solving all of these, but I refuse to spend time on them before I actually get the STM working. If I cannot solve the simple problem I don't want to attack the harder problems. Until you see me publish a scan of a HOPG substrate, don't assume I'll succeed. From rhanson at gmu.edu Mon Nov 17 22:56:08 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 17:56:08 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Social Implications of Nanotech In-Reply-To: <3FB9409C.D02BA424@best.com> References: <200311151850.hAFIoOM26078@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031117173603.01f1d5e8@mail.gmu.edu> At 04:41 PM 11/17/2003 -0500, Chris Phoenix wrote: >On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:36:05 -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > > We should consider both > > conventional nanotech scenarios and radical ones, such as described in > > Unbounding the Future and Diamond Age. > >Would this audience be completely lost if you referenced Nanosystems >instead? No. I was just trying to point more to social scenarios than howto scenarios, and I couldn't remember if Nanosystems discussed social scenarios. > > As a prelude to future modeling > > attempts, I here try to identify five key assumptions to bridge the > > chasm > > between conventional and radical nanotech scenarios. > >Seems like you're outlining scenarios, not assumptions. ... >... Having gone ahead and done that, I'll come back and note that some >of your five "assumptions" appear to be effects. There can be different levels of analysis. My assumptions are intended to be at the "cost function" level, the usual point at which technical processes start to have direct economic consequences. Each of these economic assumptions might indeed come about by a variety of different specific physical arrangements or designs. To someone like you who focuses on system design, you will want to make assumptions about the parts you can work with, and statements about cost would be the conclusion of an analysis you might do. I work at a level where cost assumptions are inputs and social implications are outputs. > > 1. Atomic Precision: Atom-scale manufacturing is feasible; we put some > > atoms where we want. > >Assumptions: >Mechanochemistry works to some extent. >Mechanochemistry can't close the autoproductive loop, but it can build >products. (Questionble assumption IMO.) I'm not making this assumption here; I'm just not making the opposite assumption either. Ditto when you repeat this in later sections. >I recommend a different example. Floating medical devices have been a >poster child for the anti-MNT crowd. Perhaps sensors cheap and small >enough to integrate into all products would be more believable. OK. I just knew the medical examples have been pro-nano poster childs too. > > 2. General Plants: ... > >Assumptions: >It appears you're not assuming mechanochemistry for this one. Right; that need not be required to get this. > >From what you say later, it sounds like these general purpose plants are >not assumed to be fully automated. How can humans cope with machines >with such flexible behavior? (Note that automation is different from >self-repair is different from high reliability, and I'm not sure which >you're talking about.) I'm not sure what you have in mind. >This does not go very far toward analyzing the effects of MNT. We >almost have this technology today. Perhaps, but many of the social implications claimed for nanotech are actually social implications of this tech, so I want to distinguish it. > > This requires that production processes be almost fully automated, with > > human intervention rare. Such high automation seems harder to design. > >I still don't understand how a manufacturing system building nanoscale >products or nanoscale components can hope to work without complete >automation. This seems to be a counterfactual scenario. General plants might only very rarely use atomic precision, because it is expensive. >"idle" is a more accurate description than "off". OK > > For most products, the main marginal costs would be feedstocks and > > marketing. Fixed costs of design, regulation, and marketing would > dominate > > total costs, as with software and music today. > >Um, what about profit-taking? Remember I'm not an economist, so this >may not be the right term. What I mean is that if someone has a >near-monopoly (e.g. the music industry) then they can simply charge >higher prices and pocket the difference. With the amount of regulation >MNT may inspire, this seems like a very plausible source of cost. Long story short, that just doesn't make sense in the terminology economists use. There are always fixed costs expended to become a monopolist and when those are taken into account, there are no average net profits to have to account for. >I think the question of whether manufacturing plants are usually >idle--whether they're cheap enough to exist for convenience in some or >even many contexts--is a very important question to ask. Am I right >that if they exist for convenience, this completely removes many >frictions that currently exist in our economy? I'm not sure what you have in mind here. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From cphoenix at best.com Mon Nov 17 23:20:39 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:20:39 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <3FB957C7.3813C41B@best.com> On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 12:27:02 -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > I said from the start that the reason I started this conversation is that > in a few weeks I will participate in an NNI conference on the social > implications of nanotech. So I definitely need to take their scenarios > seriously. I'd also like to discuss scenarios like you prefer (though > perhaps because of that they won't actually let me talk and won't > invite me again). And I'd like to discuss these in terms of their > economic implications. I knew you were talking to the NNI. What I didn't know is that the NNI had preexisting scenarios; sorry if I missed that. I thought the scenarios you were presenting were ones you had designed to try to explore the problem space. So I've been suggesting that some of these were not doing the job, because they were not technically plausible. > So what I really want is to break the gulf between these very different > views into component assumptions, expressed in economic terms. This > allows compromise and debate in the form of "I buy these assumptions but > not those", and positions held can be more easily translated into > scenarios with intermediate social implications. So you're not just trying to put together a range of scenarios between "no MNT" and "MNT", but between a preexisting/artificial position and "MNT". That is a rather different, and I think harder, problem. Now I can see why we've been talking past each other so much. Suppose you were talking about agricultural productivity. El Nino is important. You might make one scenario in which we had an El Nino in 2005, and one in which we didn't. But can you express the proposition "2005 will be an El Nino year" in economic terms? And if not, what do you call things like that, and at what point do they enter your scenario process? The reason I ask is because "Mechanochemistry can build diamondoid" is comparable in some ways to "2005 will be an El Nino year." It's a statement of physical fact, and has to be decided explicitly in order to know which scenario you're in. You can discover relations between weather and productivity without knowing what the weather will be. But you can't predict the productivity without knowing, or making assumptions about, the weather. And I don't think you can make useful manufacturing scenarios without talking about the underlying technology. This is a separate question from computing the effects of various outcomes. You can predict that if productivity is lower than X, there will be famine. Whether X is a plausible number at any time in the next Y years is not addressed. > >Above, in the discussion leading to the two dimensions of variability > >for scenarios, was my best understanding of the differing *technical* > >assumptions that people are making--and how to unify them, by > >recognizing that something similar to MNT will happen eventually > whether > >or not dry nanomachines work, but if it's far enough out it will blend in. > I'm having trouble parsing your text into an itemized list of assumptions. I guess I'm still not understanding what you mean by "assumptions". If I don't get it right in this email, we probably need to talk on the phone. > And some of the assumptions I can identify have to do with how the > self-replication scenario plays out, rather than how it shades into others. And I'm not at all sure that the self-replication scenario can "shade into" others. I guess one type of shading would be: what if a single factory could duplicate itself, but required much labor to set up the result in a new location? But with MNT, a self-replicating factory could easily be as small as a cubic centimeter, and would have to be completely automated. So in practice, I'm not sure that there is any shading to be found. This is the basis of much of my criticism of your scenarios. Are these assumptions of the kind you're looking for? Total automation is: Easy; Very difficult; Impossible. Nanoscale engineering: Is Easy in general; Each instance requires special design; Each instance requires special techniques (research). Nanoscale (dry, stiff) machinery: Is easy and efficient; Is not generally efficient; Is impossible. Self-replication of manufacturing systems: Is easy and compact; Can be done with difficulty; Is impossible for practical purposes. General (programmable) manufacturing: Is easy; Is doable in limited domains; Is not efficient enough to be worth developing. Mechanical chemistry: Is a useful manufacturing process; Is too limited to be useful. The interesting thing is that by themselves, the "easy/useful" choice of each of these assumptions is questionable. Want to build a car with 100% robots? What's the point? Build a self-replicating system? Why--what's it good for? But if you choose the "easy" choice in all of these simultaneously, you find an MNT system. It really does make all of these easy. If you try to "sneak up" on MNT by making a scenario with the "easy" choice in all but one of these assumptions you run into two problems. First, the results of your scenario change drastically, so you can't "sneak up" on MNT results this way. And second, it's not technically plausible due to interactions between the assumptions. For example: Mechanical chemistry plus general manufacturing implies easy self-replication. Mechanical chemistry plus self-replication implies general manufacturing. And easy self-replication plus general manufacturing probably requires programmable chemistry. If you want to talk about relations between capabilities and results, some useful questions/choices about capabilities may be: Are factories cheap enough to build for convenience? Do they sit idle much of the time? Does general-purpose manufacturing work? Can a single person design and/or make a complex product without knowing anything about manufacturing? (In the way that a person can make a brochure without knowing anything about typesetting other than how to specify fonts.) Is material strength likely to get significantly better than today's metallurgy and polymer chemistry? Does product complexity affect manufacturing cost? (If I design in a computer per cubic millimeter, does it cost any extra to build it?) Are manufacturing systems suitable for home use? Service bureau? Or just specialized/centralized production? Can nanoscale components (sensors, computers, eventually actuators) be produced and/or handled cheaply enough to integrate them with general products in combination and in large number, or are they difficult to integrate, leading to products being built around one or two nanoscale components for specialized purposes? Can nanoscale components be rationally designed and straightforwardly built, or does it take lots of idiosyncratic research to design and/or build each new nanoscale component? If this is useful, I could come up with several more. But again, consider the limitations of going straight to scenarios instead of (as I said above) working out relations between capability and effect, then building scenarios based on specific technologies and their effects on the above capabilities. I think the latter will produce scenarios that are both more defensible and, in the case of MNT, far more powerful as the relations synergize and produce extreme results. > I teach law and economics and a standard issue there is whether to enforce > contracts between someone lost in the desert and someone else who agreed > to give him water for some enormous sum. Such contracts are not actually > enforced, on the basis that monopoly pricing would lead to low quantity, > i.e., some people would die from inability to pay, but the counter-argument > is that enforcing them encourages more people to look for people to save. > I'm not sure if this addresses your "market" question though. I think it does. If you don't have enforceable contracts, you don't have a very reliable or useful market--there's no way to defer payment or to know the value of a promise. So it sounds like, in at least some sufficiently extreme circumstances, markets can't work well. Now the question is, if the cost of providing something is much lower than the value, and the value varies widely between users and is unknowable to the provider, is this a situation where no useful market can exist? > >... The criticism of MNT theory has been of such low > >quality, and people are so willing to believe blanket assertions without > >testing them for plausibility or relevance, that by now I don't worry > >too much about panels of experts. ... > If you care about what other people think who might listen to these > experts, then you might want to try to convince those experts. In which > case you need to state to them as clearly as possible, in terms they are > familiar with, and in a style they can respect, how you come to disagree. What I meant by "I don't worry about" is that I don't usually worry that they are right that MNT can't actually work. I'll cheerfully shrug off the proclamations of a Nobel prize winner--if he's talking outside his field, and saying things about chemistry that aren't even true outside of solution chemistry. I am usually quite good at communicating with experts (in science--I don't know as much economics :-) in their own context and explaining why I disagree with a particular key part of their thinking. I've done quite a bit of this. See for example my debate with Bill Atkinson (a generalist, not an expert, but the principle applies): http://www.nanotech-now.com/Atkinson-Phoenix-Nanotech-Debate.htm And my current extensive discussion with Richard Jones: http://www.quicktopic.com/24/H/UMabNQK2xXW Some experts seem to be both hasty and entrenched. Even there, I try; I've made some attempts to communicate with Smalley, got no reply, and may not try again. But if any expert is willing to take the time to examine assumptions, I can and will take the time to give them a very useful discussion. Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From bradbury at blarg.net Mon Nov 17 23:22:24 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (Robert Bradbury) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:22:24 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech Message-ID: <3FB9582F.D9822D05@blarg.net> Kevin asked: > Dan? How's that STM coming? Have you thought of maybe redesigning > in a way that you can do this? It may be useful for Dan to point out to his daughter that if someone does pull off tool tip replacement and alternative assembly chemistries for STMs that they are probably on the short list for a Nobel Prize (and probably would have a very *very* large set of royalty income streams from the patents.) > Also, Robert, how's the nano at home software coming along. I can't wait to > start playing with this. :-) You can review an extensive set of discussions at the "www.nanoathome.org" site. You can start "playing" with it by installing some existing molecular viewing packages (which are documented in the FAQ which should be back up within a few hours [I hope!]) and then downloading any of the existing molecular parts from "imm.org". One really needs to take some number of hours to look at the parts and understand how they work. Though it is the intent of Nano at Home to use the software in an automatic fashion to evolve "simple" parts (e.g. a nano-screw) it will hopefully ultimately evolve so that people get to interact with the design process (i.e. human-directed spin-control). However to get to this point may take several years of software development. But that does not stop one from developing experience with nanoparts using existing software. For example, I have been told (and I don't remember the source) that Eric designed the Fine Motion Controller with six positioning arms instead of the four required for a Stewart Platform to annoy Ralph. (This is a complete rumor -- Eric might well have designed the FMC the way he did for better stability.) But it would be reasonable (today) for people to attempt a design of a FMC with four arms rather than six. So the lack of automated software that Nano at Home may provide need not delay people from becoming involved in nanopart design. Robert From jacques at dtext.com Mon Nov 17 23:49:17 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 00:49:17 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Memetic Warfare Comes in Two Forms Message-ID: <16313.24189.535550.814949@localhost.localdomain> In one form, they try to make you change your way of speaking and thinking by coming back to it again and again in a heavy way, like Jehovah's Witnesses. It's a bit painful, especially when (like it happens with Jehovah's Witnesses) they show no sign of understanding what you try to explain to them in return, whether because they don't care or because they can't. Then you have the other form, in which they produce things so beautiful and funny that you want to show them to everyone: http://www.venturist.org/pi.htm (magazine cover) Well done, guys! Jacques From hal at finney.org Tue Nov 18 00:06:34 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:06:34 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? Message-ID: <200311180006.hAI06Y624195@finney.org> Eugen is probably right that we don't presently know enough about the physics of chemical reactions to be able to design a working assembler. Most chemical reactions happen very quickly, with an incoming molecule moving fast enough to overcome the potential barriers; while the nanotech proposals I have seen rely instead on relatively slow motion and firm pressure to induce the reaction. It's something like the difference between hitting something with a hammer versus squeezing it in a press. When I posed my question I didn't mean to ask why we don't have an implementable plan that leads from today's technology to a self reproducing assembler; but rather, why there are not even any solutions to the simpler (because less constrained) problem of designing a self-reproducing assembler without concern for how it would be bootstrapped. Nanosystems was published in 1992, and it seemingly goes at least 50% of the way towards such a design. Why, in the ten years since, hasn't anyone taken us the rest of the way? Nanosystems has plans for component parts, like bearings, rods, cables, and structural supports. It includes some proposals for chemical tool tips sufficient to build bulk diamondoid. And it has a sketch of a design for a robotic arm with an internal channel to allow for changeable tool tips. So what is missing? I see two main areas. The first is that the discussion of tool tips and synthesis is sketchy and incomplete. Most of the parts shown in the book could not be built using the described methods, which are adapted to bulk diamond. Many of the bearings, cables, etc. are small and relatively self contained structures where the bulk techniques would not seem to work. Glancing over recent Foresight Conference papers, it appears that simulations of potential tool tips and mechanosynthesis reactions are still in their infancy. http://www.rfreitas.com/Nano/DimerTool.htm is a paper by Merkle and Freitas published just a couple of months ago that is a very basic analysis of a possible tool for depositing a pair of carbon atoms. It looks at how stable the tool is when it's just sitting there; not at how the tool is built, or whether it would work to build some diamond structures. This is, on the surface, a step backwards from the level of performance analyzed in Nanosystems. IMO this demonstrates that Nanosystems was, to some extent, overconfident in its presentation of how these synthetic tools could work. (Frietas and Merkle have a book coming out next year analyzing diamond synthesis in more detail.) Second, there are a number of architectural issues that have to be resolved. How many manipulators does the assembler have? How do they grip and hold the work piece? How do you arrange that you can always get to the reaction sites with the needed angles, even as the work piece grows to be the size of the assembler itself, or larger? Are the components, the cables and bearings and such, manufactured separately and then attached to the work piece somehow, or are they built in place as the output product grows? What is the assembler's environment, how are the raw materials provided to it, as well as power and control signals? Is the assembler free floating or attached to a large solid surface? These questions can be multiplied ad infinitum. And some of them look pretty tough. Holding onto a growing and complexly shaped object while continuing to perform reactions at a variety of angles and pressures won't be easy. Overall it looks to me like there are a number of significant gray areas where we don't know enough to create a full design for a self- replicating assembler. In many ways it seems that the Nanosystems is still state of the art, with most of the succeeding work being "backfill" to verify and better establish the concepts laid out in that 1992 book. BTW in looking around on the web I found a reference to another book being published next year by Freitas and Merkle, Kinematic Self- Replicating Machines, http://www.molecularassembler.com/KSRM.htm. (What the heck is that a picture of on the cover?) The book appears to cover the entire field of designs for physical self-replicators, not just nanotech ones. Hal From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Tue Nov 18 00:32:47 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:32:47 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] T-Shirts (was - HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles the b word again) References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031117204148.02651b20@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: After working for a local printer for a few years, my wife is starting her own screenprinting business. She is working on a variety of designs for transhumanists, techies, atheists, evolutinists, etc. If you have any suggestions for shirts, hats, mousepads, or other products, send them along offlist. Really good original statements would be nice too! Maybe if I am lucky I can get her to donate a portion of each sale to extropy.org or my atheist charity. :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "J Corbally" To: Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 3:51 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] T-Shirts (was - HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles the b word again) > > >Message: 5 > >Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 12:39:23 +1100 > > >From: "Brett Paatsch" > >Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles - the b > >wordagain > >To: "ExI chat list" > >Message-ID: <01ff01c3aa50$21bc4cc0$11262dcb at vic.bigpond.net.au> > >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > >Kevin wrote: > > > "Democracy is a good thing but it empowers fools to ban > > > medicines and life saving technologies if they in the majority > > > too. " > > > This is an excellent statement. Can I quote you on a T-shirt? > >Sure, you can reproduce anything you like or that is useful to you > >so long as you DON'T attribute it to me. > >I don't want to be a dead sound-bite I want to be effective and > >alive. > >I *like* that you like it though - don't get me wrong ;-) > >Cheers, > >Brett > > > Before anyone slaps it on a T-shirt, shouldn't that be "....if *they're* in > the majority too" > > > Just saving blushes. > > > > James.... > > PS - Where are you folks getting these T-Shirts made? > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From fortean1 at mindspring.com Tue Nov 18 01:34:58 2003 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:34:58 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Re: Watchtower Society "filthy rich"? Message-ID: <3FB97742.80A325C0@mindspring.com> < http://www.cftf.com/miller/miller11.htm > Excerpt: ...in our investigation I found some interesting figures relating to the Watchtower's finances. Some time ago, I had asked one of the elders in our congregation if the Society published a financial statement for its members. The response I received was one of suspicious indignation. However, in a publication entitled Comments from the Friends written by David A. Reed, I found information indicating that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is wealthier than I could ever have imagined. The figures I found are far from being a complete financial statement, but they are revealing nonetheless. The publication stated, "The Watchtower head quarters complex in the Brooklyn Heights section of New York City consists of more than thirty buildings with a current real estate value of $186 million." This is only the Watchtower holdings in Brooklyn, New York. Keeping in mind that the Society is an international organization, I am sure they have property and other holdings all over the world. Also from the same publication I found figures taken from a credit reporting service that states the annual sales for the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. for 1991 was $1,248,000,000.00. According to the report, this was up $1/4 billion from just over $1 billion in 1990. The article went on to relate, "The figures, not published for the sect's members, are evidently provided to credit reporting services, so that the firms doing business with the Society will extend credit." After finding this information, naturally my original question resurfaced in my mind. Inasmuch as the Watchtower Society doesn't provide medical care for the indigent, shelter for the homeless or help to feed the starving millions of the world, what are they doing with the vast fortune they have obviously accumulated through the efforts of their followers? Sender: Paul W Harrison ________ interEnglish (Finland) ---------------------------- I imagine both the establishment and upkeep of their churches, not to mention their vast publishing effort in many if not most of the world's languages, costs oodles to maintain. There are plenty of people who won't fork over a penny for their literature when they come to the door (which they did here yesterday again: I'm one of those who staunchly refuse to finance their efforts). Evidently in recent years they have revamped a lot of their printing technology; that, too, costs a lot of money. Like most ecclesiastical organizations, however, I suspect they're simply sitting on a lot of their capital in the form of real estate and property. The mainstream denominations are ostensibly the "guiltiest" in this area: consider how much the Church of England owns in your part of the world, Eva. Here I've seen it reckoned that the amount of holdings and investments the State Lutheran Church dwarfs that of even Nokia Phones. Sender: Paul W Harrison ________ interEnglish (Finland) -------------------------- For a good read on insiders' view of the Jehovah's Witnessess, see if you can find a copy of The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses, Heather and Gary Botting, University of Toronto Press, 1984. Interesting stuff..... Laurie Forbes -- ?Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress.? Copyright 1992, Frank Rice Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.] From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 18 02:02:44 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:02:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Gods of Mars was "Mars probe marred" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031118020244.43678.qmail@web60507.mail.yahoo.com> Hey Amara, I am curious, is Mars historically more dangerous to space probes than the other planets? Or is it just a bias effect because we have sent more probes there than elsewhere? Considering what I know about Mars' geography and climatic conditions, I would say it should be a cakewalk for most probes, compared to Venus' corrosive SO2 atmosphere and crazy temperatures. I wonder if there are any spacecraft "mortality" statistics compiled anywhere. I would love to see a breakdown of lost space probes by destination. It may be then possible to quantify the probability that there may be more going on then meets the eye in this situation. Maybe we are landing them in places the Martians (or the A.I.machines that supplanted them) don't want us to see. Amara Graps wrote: One (sad) joke I heard on Friday is that, since Mars eats spacecraft, maybe Nozomi is the sacrificial animal to the Mars gods so that the other spacecraft can arrive safely at the end of this year.... The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ABlainey at aol.com Tue Nov 18 02:43:33 2003 From: ABlainey at aol.com (ABlainey at aol.com) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:43:33 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech Message-ID: <14a.26e36763.2ceae155@aol.com> In a message dated 18/11/2003 00:29:48 GMT Daylight Time, bradbury at blarg.net writes: > It may be useful for Dan to point out to his daughter that if someone > does > pull off tool tip replacement and alternative assembly chemistries for > STMs > that they are probably on the short list for a Nobel Prize (and probably > > would have a very *very* large set of royalty income streams from the > patents.) > > What is the problem with the tool tip replacement? Is it just the problem of the tip wearing down and having to be constantly replaced and shaped? or is the problem more complex? I toyed with the idea of a home-brew STM not that long ago. I built a piezo scanning head in a few hours and then became distracted by a more interesting project. I have thought about continuing the STM construction and had a few ideas about tool and scanning head refinements. Maybe this thread is just the incentive I need to get the project off the shelf. Alex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jef at jefallbright.net Tue Nov 18 03:05:45 2003 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:05:45 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech References: <3FB9582F.D9822D05@blarg.net> Message-ID: <003601c3ad80$dd211da0$6701a8c0@int.veeco.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Bradbury" > > It may be useful for Dan to point out to his daughter that if someone > does > pull off tool tip replacement and alternative assembly chemistries for > STMs > that they are probably on the short list for a Nobel Prize (and probably > Veeco / Digital Instruments has had automated tip replacement for a number of years now on fully automated AFMs used by all of the top ten semiconductor manufacturers and many more. A different tip type, or a replacement for a damaged tip, is automatically selected from a cassette, aligned, tuned and put into operation. See the Veeco web site for more: (Sorry for the long URLs.) http://www.veeco.com/html/product_bymarket_family.asp?exclude=190,32&familyID=2&familyID=18&familyID=56&familyID=1&familyID=81&familyID=82&title=AUTO+AFM%2FAFP You might also be interested in the NanoManipulator: http://www.veeco.com/html/product_bymarket_proddetail.asp?productID=191&MarketID=4&Title=AFM%2FSPMs - Jef From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Tue Nov 18 03:25:47 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:25:47 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Gods of Mars was "Mars probe marred" References: <20031118020244.43678.qmail@web60507.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: >I wonder if there are any spacecraft "mortality" statistics compiled anywhere. I would >love to see a breakdown of lost space probes by destination. It may be then possible to >quantify the probability that there may be more going on then meets the eye in this >situation. I compiled one about a year ago. I've moved since then and have switched computers. Most likely it is on a backup disk somewhere. I do remember that it was difficult to draw any conclusions from. The number of missions to Mars far exceeds anything other robotic missions. I'll see if I can find it, and if so, I'll post it. Kevin Freels ----- Original Message ----- From: The Avantguardian To: ExI chat list Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 8:02 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Gods of Mars was "Mars probe marred" Hey Amara, I am curious, is Mars historically more dangerous to space probes than the other planets? Or is it just a bias effect because we have sent more probes there than elsewhere? Considering what I know about Mars' geography and climatic conditions, I would say it should be a cakewalk for most probes, compared to Venus' corrosive SO2 atmosphere and crazy temperatures. I wonder if there are any spacecraft "mortality" statistics compiled anywhere. I would love to see a breakdown of lost space probes by destination. It may be then possible to quantify the probability that there may be more going on then meets the eye in this situation. Maybe we are landing them in places the Martians (or the A.I.machines that supplanted them) don't want us to see. Amara Graps wrote: One (sad) joke I heard on Friday is that, since Mars eats spacecraft, maybe Nozomi is the sacrificial animal to the Mars gods so that the other spacecraft can arrive safely at the end of this year.... The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cphoenix at best.com Tue Nov 18 03:38:22 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:38:22 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] I'm unsubscribing... References: <200311161631.hAGGVkM05131@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FB9942E.959E51A9@best.com> I wish I could stay, but there's too much (high-quality!) bandwidth, and I can't even follow individual threads well enough to carry on coherent conversations. I'll read the backlogged digests up to this message, and I may respond, but I won't read anything after this message appears. I encourage people to email me on any topic, on-list or off. In particular, Robin, I won't be able to follow your posts here; as with other topics, if you find my opinions useful, please email me. I've been meaning to follow up on my post about the practice of science. I'm not sure there'd be a point, though; the only thing anyone ever talked about was one of the examples I gave, and no one even tried to address the most interesting question about that example: if one experiences an unclassifiable but possibly important event, is it more scientific to admit that it happened, or to pretend in the context of science that it didn't happen? Anyway, I've learned something about how easily even smart people can be sidetracked by a knee-jerk reaction. And thanks to the two of you who expressed sympathy. Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From megao at sasktel.net Tue Nov 18 03:38:43 2003 From: megao at sasktel.net (Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc.) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:38:43 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ultra Vires nature of laws made in error? Message-ID: <3FB99443.D8486DE9@sasktel.net> Can a law which is made based upon an incorrect , misleading or unfactual basis be questioned decades later and be amended or replaced to correct original errors in its original enactment? Anybody anywhere ever come across such a contention? The application is this: In Canada Medical Cannabis is and has a consensus by the public and representative organizations to be defined as a "natural health product" Canada since July 2003 has a NHP act and regulations and bureaucracy. The key issue used by health Canada to keep cannabis out of the NHPD formulary and perview is that it is listed in the CDSA (controlled drugs and substances act) and therefore can never become an NHP. Natural health products have a full coverage of product safety, efficacy regs..and can be prescribed the same as pharmaceuticals... "Pharmer Mo" ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ >>Thank you for your e-mail of August 14, 2003, regarding the Natural Health > Products Regulations. We apologize for the lengthy delay in responding to > your concerns. > > Medical Marihuana does not fall under the scope Natural Health Product > Regulations. Medical marihuana will remain under the Controlled Drugs and > Substances Act which is within the purview of the Office of Medical > Cannabis Access (OCMA), Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch. > For more information, we invite you to visit the OCMA's Web site at > www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hecs-sesc/ocma/index.htm. You may also contact them at the > following: > > Office of Cannabis Medical Access > Health Canada > Ottawa, Ontario > K1A 1B9 > A.L. 3503B > > Tel: (toll free) 1-866-337-7705 or (local) 613- 954-6540 > Fax: 613-952-2196 > E-mail: ocma-bamc at h... > > > Thank you again for writing. > > > The Natural Health Products Directorate > From fauxever at sprynet.com Tue Nov 18 03:59:05 2003 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 19:59:05 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes References: <20031117213110.33420.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <013301c3ad88$4fcdc9f0$6400a8c0@brainiac> From: "Mike Lorrey" Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 1:31 PM > --- Damien Broderick wrote: > > Or not: > > > > http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/17/1069027045722.html > > > > < The scientist who led the research said she was stunned when she > > saw the results. "I was shocked. I couldn't believe we got this > > correspondence with the brain activity," said Jennifer Richeson, > > a neuroscientist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. > > Of course they have trouble accepting it. If it holds water, then the > lefties will have to admit that racism is a genetic artifact, or > perhaps a disease, just like homosexuality, alcoholism, and drug > addiction, and therefore not the fault of the individual, not something > they can 'choose'. It is immaterial whether the racist individual can or cannot "choose" to be a racist. And in a somewhat similar (yet somewhat different) vein, the reason Asians, blacks and other so-called "minorities" are entitled to equal treatment is because they *are* equal, and not because they cannot "choose" who they are (an obnoxious notion, which presupposes that if a member of a "minority" could change their "race" - they would). IMO comparing racism to homophobia could easily put one on a road that warns: "slippery slope ahead." > Perhaps the racist may be justified in applying for > welfare disability payments if their racism impacts their ability to > keep a job... Even if this is meant to be humorous, it is egregious balderdash. > Hate crimes, of course, could no longer impart more severe > sentences if the perpetrators cannot help themselves. There are all kinds of "hate crimes," and I would hope they're not tolerated (e.g., at the workplace, in school) in a civilized society because mean-spiritedness is not conducive to carry on the business at hand, whether the unpleasantries are "perpetrated" against women, men, "minorities," or what have you. Sorry, I say - the perps will just have to learn better manners if they cannot help themselves. As to other more serious crimes, the fact that a sociopath like Ted Bundy "couldn't help himself" and therefore went on a murder rampage ... doesn't excuse him, does it? > Odd when one > liberal prejudice smacks head on into another one. I don't understand how you've come to this conclusion. Olga From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue Nov 18 04:01:22 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:01:22 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <200311180006.hAI06Y624195@finney.org> Message-ID: <00a101c3ad88$a148dbd0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Hal Finney asks why no assemble design 10 years later. I would also like to ask: Why no singularity 10 years after somebody predicted it on this list? Why no AI? Why no uploading? Why no robots doing our laundry? Why no flying cars? Why no space colonies? Why no immortality pills? Many predictions have been made in this forum ten years ago. I am not sure that any of the big predictions have actually come true. Why are the expected technological breakthroughs not occurring as fast as predicted? Here is the common expectation: 1. Technological progress is advancing at exponential rates. 2. We are completing subtasks toward major technological breakthroughs at those same ever-increasing rates. 3. Therefore, the expected arrival of these breakthroughs can be predicted to be accelerating toward the present at the same ever-increasing exponential rate of technological progress. Here is my explanation for why this isn't happening: 1. As technological progress is advancing at exponential rates, the known technological complexities also increases at exponential rates. 2. As we are completing subtasks toward major technological breakthroughs at ever-increasing rates, we are also adding newly discovered subtasks at exponential rates. 3. Therefore, the expected arrival of these breakthroughs cannot be predicted, we are simultaneously adding and subtracting subtasks at exponential rates. The expected arrival of these breakthroughs can be approaching or receding or holding steady, and the speed of these changes will be the difference between the two exponential rates, resulting in a slow non-exponential rate of change. CONCLUSION: Technology is progressing at exponentially increasing rates. Accomplishments are being made at exponentially increasing rates. But the predicted breakthroughs that we are expecting will be slow in coming and may actually be receding into the future as our predictions get better. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 18 04:01:22 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 20:01:22 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] garage nanotech? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <006a01c3ad88$a1f6f620$6501a8c0@SHELLY> kevinfreels at hotmail.com I have built a rocket with a primitive guidance system that "points" the rocket toward the sun and is capable of mach 1.2 in my own garage. WOW you must have one helllll of a garage Kevin. {8^D spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 18 04:03:14 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 20:03:14 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <007001c3ad3c$42ca40e0$90994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <006f01c3ad88$e47869c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Some folks talk about global warming like its a BAD thing. Global warming linked to wine quality Monday, November 17, 2003 Posted: 10:05 AM EST (1505 GMT) YAKIMA, Washington (AP) -- Global warming may become a worldwide catastrophe, but at least the wine should be better. Researchers from three U.S. universities have found that vintages improved as temperatures rose over the past 50 years, especially in areas with cooler climates. The findings could prove troublesome for vineyards in traditionally warmer regions. "When you talk to grape growers and winemakers today, they will still tell you climate is the final player in how good a vintage will be," said Gregory Jones, Southern Oregon University climatologist and co-author of the report. "We are going to continue to see a warming environment, and there will be some challenges the industry will have to meet one way or another." Jones joined researchers from Utah State University and the University of Colorado to study 27 renowned wine regions in nine different countries. Using vintage rating system devised by Sotheby's auction house, they found that most vintages improved as vineyards' temperatures rose an average of 1.3 degrees Celsius over the past 50 years. The effects were strongest in cool climate regions, such as the Mosel and Rhine valleys of Germany, suggesting warmer temperatures offer the greatest advantage to cold-climate grape-growing regions. The findings will be published in a future issue of the journal Climatic Change. A predicted rise of another 2 degrees Celsius over the next half century could have more mixed results, the study showed. Cooler climates, such as Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, could continue to benefit from global warming. But regions with warmer climates, such as Italy's famed Chianti region, could see grapes ripen too quickly under ever warmer temperatures. Grapes that ripen too quickly on the vine generally have higher sugar content, which produces more alcoholic wine with less acidity and balance. Rising temperatures may force growers to manage vines differently to produce similar wine styles, or to plant different varieties better suited to the changing climate, Jones said. The news could be unsettling for an industry that prides itsel f on regional identity and reputation. Andrew Walker, a professor of viticulture at the University of California at Davis, agrees rising temperatures are leading to changes in the industry. Whether those changes will be permanent remains to be seen, he said. "I think everyone agrees in most scientific circles that change is occurring. What that change is, is still up in the air," he said. "We'll have to sort of adapt on the fly. If it really is catastrophic and not just a blip, vintners will definitely change how they plan and where they plant." The extreme heat wave in Europe this summer, which some experts blamed on global warming, offers an example, Jones said. "In some areas, it could have been very detrimental. Southern Italy, Greece are hard-pressed to produce any good wine this year," Jones said. "But southern England? It may be their best vintage since prior to the little Ice Age." Others argue the effects of rising temperatures on the wine industry are simply a very narrow picture of a broader problem. "There's a heck of a lot more at stake here than wine," said K.C. Golden, policy director for the Olympia-based nonprofit Climate Solutions. "It is a sign that climate disruption is going to affect every aspect of our lives -- our ecosystems, our economies, our livelihood." From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 18 04:09:46 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:09:46 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress References: <00a101c3ad88$a148dbd0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <01ca01c3ad89$cfdb81e0$cf994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harvey Newstrom" Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 10:01 PM > Technology is progressing at exponentially increasing rates. > Accomplishments are being made at exponentially increasing rates. But the > predicted breakthroughs that we are expecting will be slow in coming and may > actually be receding into the future as our predictions get better. Yeah, but consider: the genome got done faster than anyone expected, or at least *as* fast if you're scrupulous in your accounting. It's a pretty good paradigm. (True, the Powers That Be, public and private, flung a shitload of $$$ at it.) Damien Broderick From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 18 04:14:40 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:14:40 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = worse wine where they make the stuff References: <006f01c3ad88$e47869c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <01d101c3ad8a$7e48d3e0$cf994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 10:03 PM > Some folks talk about global warming like its a BAD thing. [...] > Others argue the effects of rising temperatures on the > wine industry are simply a very > narrow picture of a broader problem. > > "There's a heck of a lot more at stake here than > wine," said K.C. Golden, policy > director for the Olympia-based nonprofit Climate > Solutions. "It is a sign that climate > disruption is going to affect every aspect of our > lives -- our ecosystems, our > economies, our livelihood." Erm, what's that you were saying, Spike? Damien Broderick From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue Nov 18 04:31:02 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:31:02 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <013301c3ad88$4fcdc9f0$6400a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <00ae01c3ad8c$c9723e40$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> > > > http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/17/1069027045722.html I think some people have misinterpreted this. They didn't say racists had different brain structures or root causes. They said they could detect different thought patterns in racists. You could get this same effect by measuring blood pressure. A racists' blood pressure might go up when shown pictures of blacks, indicating anger or discomfort, and a distinct lack of reaction when shown a picture of whites. A non-racists would have no such difference in reaction between races. This is not new. Similar tests have been used to try detect discomfort at homosexuality, or to detect pedophiles. Different people will react to different pictures differently. An unexpected emotional response to a particular race, gender, age, or type of person might indicate unusual feelings toward that group compared to feelings toward other groups. > > Hate crimes, of course, could no longer impart more severe > > sentences if the perpetrators cannot help themselves. I disagree. A predisposition to break the law does not reduce sentencing. In fact, I believe that a good rational *for* hate crime legislation is whether the perpetrator is likely to recommit. A guy who kills his wife's lover in a fit of rage is unlikely to attack other people. But a racists who attacks a random person on the street based on their skin color could be more likely to commit similar crimes in the future. Or a guy who beats up gays is more likely to beat up other gays. Such crimes, based not just on hate, but hate for a specific group, are more threatening and the perpetrator is more likely to be a larger threat to the community than a similar crime committed against a particular individual. The term "hate"-crime confuses people. It is not just about hate, but a hate of an entire class of people causing predatory behavior toward the entire group, not just one person. That is the key. The crime is based not on a particular incident or victim, but is based entirely on the perpetrator's predatory preferences. Thus, gay bashing should be considered hate crimes, not because gays are a protected group, but because gay bashers have a repeatable pattern of behavior aimed at a targeted group. I think racist-murderers, Serial-killers, serial-rapists, repeat offenders, pedophiles, celebrity stalkers and other types of predators should also fit in this category. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue Nov 18 04:34:42 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:34:42 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <006f01c3ad88$e47869c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <00af01c3ad8d$4ca87bd0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Spike wrote, > Some folks talk about global warming like its a BAD thing. > > Global warming linked to wine quality > Monday, November 17, 2003 Posted: 10:05 AM EST (1505 GMT) Does this mean you believe in global warming now? The argument against global warming seems to be a mixture of some reports denying that it is happening, while other reports claim it is happening and is a good thing. I have never understood how the mutually-exclusive reports refute global warming theory. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 18 04:46:28 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 15:46:28 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ultra Vires nature of laws made in error? References: <3FB99443.D8486DE9@sasktel.net> Message-ID: <033b01c3ad8e$ee03e5e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc. wrote: > Can a law which is made based upon an incorrect, misleading > or unfactual basis be questioned decades later and be amended > or replaced to correct original errors in its original enactment? Yes. Due to the separation of judicial and executive powers in most Western countries. The executive can sometimes err or overreach and make a law that is later challenged and revoked on the basis that the executive did not have the constitutional authority to make it. > Anybody anywhere ever come across such a contention? Yes. I think Mabo and the doctrine of "terra nullis" was an example in Australia. Alan Bond a former Australian "entrepreneur" took on the Commonwealth government over the constitutionality of the corporations law around 1991 and had the law thrown out - eventually. The Corporations Law was rebuilt - but it had to be. Warning - I am speaking loosely here but then so were you. > The application is this: > > In Canada Medical Cannabis is and has a consensus by the > public and representative organizations to be defined as a > "natural health product" Ok I assume Canada as a former British colony would have inherited most of the English law tradition. Ergo the separation of the judiciary and the legislative and executive branches of government. > > Canada since July 2003 has a NHP act and regulations and > bureaucracy. > > The key issue used by health Canada to keep cannabis out > of the NHPD formulary and perview is that it is listed in the > CDSA (controlled drugs and substances act) and therefore > can never become an NHP. > > Natural health products have a full coverage of product > safety, efficacy regs..and can be prescribed the same as > pharmaceuticals... > > "Pharmer Mo" I am looking at something similar myself. Its hard to comment without specifics. But it may help you to understand that the purpose of the high court or whatever is the highest court in Canada is probably to rule (in part) on whether legislation is constitutional as well as to be (if it is like Australia) the last - highest court of appeal. Many people don't challenge laws that are not constitutional because it takes time and money and commitment and there are sometimes easier ways. Most of the time people go to the high court is because they are appealing to save their hide from jail or more jail etc. Esoterics like constitutional law vs criminal law usually find fewer sufficiently empassioned champions (or so it seems to me). I am beginning to think that things go in cycles and that govt's left unwatched and unchallenged for too long by citizens willing to avail themselves of the processes of the court adapt themselves to the laisse fair attitude of the community and start to get creative with what they will try and get away with. The reluctantly some poor bunny has to bring them back into line using the courts. I am considering an action at present that would overturn a lame-brained horse-trading regulation that is made under an act - the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 and my argument would be that the effect of the regulation runs counter to the object of the act under which it was made and therefore it cannot be made under that Act. Essentially. But its early days. Regards, Brett From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 18 04:54:15 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:54:15 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ultra Vires nature of laws made in error? References: <3FB99443.D8486DE9@sasktel.net> <033b01c3ad8e$ee03e5e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <01fc01c3ad90$061bffe0$cf994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 10:46 PM > I am considering an action at present that would overturn > a lame-brained horse-trading regulation that is made under > an act - the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 Oh my god--for a moment, I thought you were talking about a lame-horse brain-trading regulation. Damien Broderick [Australia! Land of the Sport of Kings!] From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue Nov 18 04:55:47 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:55:47 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <01ca01c3ad89$cfdb81e0$cf994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <00b301c3ad90$3e8957b0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Damien Broderick wrote, > Yeah, but consider: the genome got done faster than anyone > expected, or at least *as* fast if you're scrupulous in your > accounting. It's a pretty good paradigm. (True, the Powers > That Be, public and private, flung a shitload of $$$ at it.) Yes, the genome got mapped faster than predicted. But since those predictions, we have learned a lot more about genetics. Instead of giving us all the answers on gene expression, we now know we have to conquer mitochondrial DNA, RNA, protein folding, junk DNA, DNA fragments, telomere loss, random encoding damage, duplicate genes on different chromosomes, enzymatic expression and repression on genes, controller genes, gene families and other cell factors on DNA expression, in addition to just mapping the genome as expected. Our understanding of genetic controls of the cell is much more complicated than it used to be. Early predictions of each mapped gene being turned off and on like a binary switch look na?ve now. So my point still stands: As we complete each milestone, we discover more milestones. I don't know if genetic reprogramming is now closer or farther away than we thought before we mapped the genome. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 18 05:12:15 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 16:12:15 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ultra Vires nature of laws made in error? References: <3FB99443.D8486DE9@sasktel.net> <033b01c3ad8e$ee03e5e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <01fc01c3ad90$061bffe0$cf994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <039101c3ad92$882eba20$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Damien wrote: [me] > > I am considering an action at present that would overturn > > a lame-brained horse-trading regulation that is made under > > an act - the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 > > Oh my god--for a moment, I thought you were talking about a > lame-horse brain-trading regulation. > > Damien Broderick > [Australia! Land of the Sport of Kings!] I wish :-) But its true about the sport of kings bit. It was practically impossible to get anyone at work in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago because of the Melbourne Cup (a horse race for non-Aussies) held on the first Tuesday in November. Lots of Melbourne based Aussies took the Monday between the weekend and the horse-racing holiday as a sickie or a leave day. Regards, Brett [Becoming a wowser] From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 18 06:17:29 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:17:29 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <00af01c3ad8d$4ca87bd0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <000001c3ad9b$a726f470$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Spike wrote, > > Some folks talk about global warming like its a BAD thing. > > > > Global warming linked to wine quality > > Monday, November 17, 2003 Posted: 10:05 AM EST (1505 GMT) > > Does this mean you believe in global warming now? > > The argument against global warming seems to be a mixture of > some reports denying that it is happening, while other reports claim it is > happening and is a good thing. I have never understood how the > mutually-exclusive reports refute global warming theory. Harvey I recognize that there are mutually exclusive theories on this topic. I do not subscribe to both. Ive always believed in global warming in a sense: I also believe in motherhood and apple pie, I like both. The part I have a lotta trouble believing is the notion that global warming will happen quickly or that it will cause major problems. I regret that I am not likely to live to see the benefits of global warming, unless cryonics works out, or the singularity people are successful. I don't doubt that it will eventually warm up on this planet, as we continue to emerge from the last ice age. This is a big place. I suppose that it will take at least a few hundred years to go up 5-10 celcius, and I really don't see that as a disaster. Further, I suppose that the planet will eventually get about as warm as it was during the Jurassic, clearly not a disaster. The polar ice caps will melt, again not a disaster, for in a few hundred years, we can easily move cities inland and build better ones once we get there. The statue of liberty with her torch poking out of the sea? That won't happen. This whole nation was built in a few hundred years, and just look at all the cool stuff. As for runaway greenhouse effect, another Venus, nah, I don't buy that. There isn't enough carbon on this planet, if *all* of it were in the atmosphere to make that happen. I think we will eventually realize how little carbon there is on this planet, and start to treat it with a little more respect. Currently is treating it as a *pollutant*. Carbon is actually a limited and valuable resource. It cannot all end up in the atmosphere, because plants grab it and haul it down if it is available to them. Of course there will be displacements in global warming. Most of my personal wealth is in a 50 by 80 foot piece of land at an elevation of 14 feet above the current sea level. Same with my inheritance, in our mutual home state (and may the day of my receiving that inheritance be maaaany many years in the distant future). I lose no sleep over the worry of it becoming submerged. Penguins will have trouble, yes. But we can modify them genetically, or simply select a subspecies that can survive on Canada's and Alaska's thawed northern shores. And walruses, well, I wouldn't want to be them. But plenty of other species will thrive, such as humans. We are *Africans* fer evolutions sake! We are a smart species, we can move cities, we can move nations. We can build cities on stilts. We can sequester water inland. We can reclaim a great deal of land that is currently useless, under ice most or all of the time. We can reclaim a lot of fresh water that is currently wasted, by creating new rivers and reservoirs, eliminating useless deserts. The Sahara and Siberia both have bright futures, whereas now they are nearly useless. We go on about the increase in disease from global warming, but really most of that is caused by improper water management leading to increased mosquito population. All those heat stroke deaths in France last summer could have *easily* been avoided by something as simple and low tech as an *air conditioner*. What is that about? What about all the lives saved by milder winters? If we shorten the flu season even a little, we greatly reduce the number of human deaths. There are people that die *every year* because of catching something from being cooped up with the family indoors. Shouldn't we be trying to save those folks? Would not a little global warming do it? Would not a milder winter save a bunch of animals too? If we were to adjust upward the amount of oxygen (a little), increase the amount of carbon dioxide, increase the rainfall everywhere, *do water management correctly*, quit wasting our efforts fighting each other, decrease the temperature delta between poles and equator and between winter and summer, this would be a far better planet. Plus we get better wine outta the deal, and maybe some of those cool giant dragonflies. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 18 06:28:46 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:28:46 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] possible new record prime In-Reply-To: <00ae01c3ad8c$c9723e40$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <000301c3ad9d$39e70ce0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Oh my, November is a wonderful month. The GIMPS project has had a report of a hit, a new record prime, which will be the 40th Mersenne prime. It now hasta be verified of course, but I thought I would give you a heads up. Last spring you may recall we had a false alarm, but the bug that caused it has been fixed, so in a couple weeks the old champaign corks will be popping. Or beer cans popping, depending on one's choice of libation. According to my calcs, it should be somewhere in the late 6 million digit range or thereabouts, maybe early 7s. Ahhhh, life is gooooood. {8-] spike From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 18 06:38:25 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:38:25 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <00ae01c3ad8c$c9723e40$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <000401c3ad9e$92b26a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > ...A racists' blood pressure might go > up when shown pictures of blacks, indicating anger or discomfort, and a > distinct lack of reaction when shown a picture of whites. A non-racists would > have no such difference in reaction between races... This assumes the racist is white, of course. > ...Similar tests have been used to try detect > discomfort at homosexuality, or to detect pedophiles. Different people > will react to different pictures differently... This is intriguing. Since I heard of the test a few yrs ago I have wanted to try it on myself, but I have insufficient access to and expertise in real-time blood pressure monitoring equipment, and have no idea where one would get non-mainstream pornography. I heard they have some instrument that can be placed upon the genitals to measure arousal, then they show the test subject a range of materials to see what turns them on, from which a profile can be derived. That would be cool! I would want to keep my identity secret, however. And this is *me* talking, Mr. Openness. {8^D spike From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 18 06:57:09 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 00:57:09 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes References: <000401c3ad9e$92b26a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <027501c3ada1$31c46400$cf994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Spike" Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 12:38 AM > I heard they > have some instrument that can be placed upon > the genitals to measure arousal Talk about risks of false positives! :) `Pump that rubber ring up again, nurse. Oh, no! *Mister* Jones, really!' Damien Broderick From cphoenix at best.com Tue Nov 18 07:11:59 2003 From: cphoenix at best.com (Chris Phoenix) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 02:11:59 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 2, Issue 51 References: <200311171544.hAHFihX10622@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <3FB9C63F.107EDD2F@best.com> On Monday, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 08:29:48PM -0600, Damien Broderick, channelling > Dr Vijoleta Braach-Maksvytis, wrote: > > < I go for number 1 - the assembler still resides in the fiction domain and > > the science needs to be cracked before it will proceed. > I would rather agree with this statement, adding a footnote: that it's > not only science > (a library of experimentally validated machine-phase reactions) but also > technology (implementation of a nanolithoprinter) utilizing such > reactions to > deposit a rich set of structures, with a sufficiently high processivity for it > to make copies of itself, and a number of other devices. It's postings like this that make me wish I could keep reading this list. Remember I won't read any replies to this post unless you email them to me. Developing an MNT fabricator will certainly require both science and technology. The question is, will it require major unplannable breakthroughs, or can it be done with planned research? What do we need? 1) A set of mechanochemical tool tips and motions for making diamondoid. 2) A mechanical design for a sufficiently stiff and programmable nanoscale diamondoid manipulator/fabricator. (Not a full assembler with onboard computer--just a robot.) 3) A bootstrapping plan, which may be as simple as putting the tool tips on an SPM, or may involve building a NEMS or self-assembled proto-assembler. 4) All sorts of picky little closure issues, like how to maneuver the parts into place once you've fabricated them, and how to move feedstock and nothing else through the assembler wall. And to make it useful, 5) A CAD program that can handle MNT designs, including peta-component integrated designs. 6) A design for a nanofactory integrating lots of fabricators with appropriate control, power, convergent assembly, etc. 1) is almost certainly doable by planned research. 2) is pretty straightforward once we know what motions we need and have some questions from 4) answered. 3) requires a lot of engineering creativity and lab work, but it's not at all obvious that it requires more than that. A big question is whether we can do 1) with 3DOF positioners. 4) requires lots of engineering. There's always the chance of some little problem being a huge pain and requiring real creativity to solve, but we can't know till we try. 5) we can do in rudimentary form today, but better programs will be hugely rewarded; if MNT is plausible any time in the next 20 years, we should start designing the CAD system today. 6) we can probably wait on a bit, but we definitely want it before the first fabricator is developed. > A scientist is not an engineer, typically. The set of reactions are worthless > all by itself, if there's no design, and no viable bootstrap pathway from here to > there. By this argument, each piece of the project (reactions, design, and bootstrap) is useless, and this seems to imply that we shouldn't work on any of them ever. The way out of this is to start working on whatever will best decide the issue and/or will best advance the project. The set of reactions would be useful right now today, for at least two reasons. First, some people are claiming that MNT is impossible because the reactions are impossible. If they are wrong, we need to know it, and having a set of reactions would go a long way toward deciding the question. Second, the set of reactions would both inform and inspire the rest of the project. The proposal we have now is detailed enough to evaluate for plausibility. So far, no one has pointed out any problem in the calculations. Several smart and/or prominent scientists have an uneasy feeling about some of the theory or results, but that's very far from a guarantee that the proposal is fundamentally wrong. And if the proposal is basically right, then MNT 1) can almost certainly be done in a decade, and 2) will be very much worth doing relative to the expected state of technology in 2010 or even 2015. We do not have nearly enough information to be confident that no country or company will try and succeed by 2015. The question of whether MNT will exist in 2015 or not is 1) very unsettled; 2) incredibly urgent. If the answer is "no", the only way to learn that is to start doing MNT research until we discover the contradiction. If the answer is "yes", then maybe it's safer not to do the research and delay it as long as possible, but currently we think otherwise. Chris -- Chris Phoenix cphoenix at CRNano.org Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology http://CRNano.org From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Nov 18 07:16:40 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:16:40 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <027501c3ada1$31c46400$cf994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000001c3ada3$e9a9f510$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > I heard they > > have some instrument that can be placed upon > > the genitals to measure arousal > > Talk about risks of false positives! :) > > `Pump that rubber ring up again, nurse. Oh, no! *Mister* > Jones, really!' > > Damien Broderick I think there is a scientific principle that says any measurement device will in some way have an effect on the measurand. spike ps Damien, you and I are bad influences on each other pal. {8^D s From gpmap at runbox.com Tue Nov 18 07:23:18 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 08:23:18 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <000401c3ad9e$92b26a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: This is a comment to Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism and the ongoing discussion on the wta and extropy lists. Max and several readers say that, as transhumanists perspectives look much further ahead, transhumanists should not embrace democracy or any current political system but rather wait for an entirely new political system developed by posthumans for posthumans. Now, I am sure posthumans will have the means to implement smart and flexible government systems much better than what we have today. For example, if all future citizens (humans, AIs, hybrids, uploaded minds, ...) will have augmented brains permanently linked to the net, it will be possible to implement direct democracy schemes that would not be practical today. But I think this is missing the point: we spend a lot of time thinking about the future, but we live in the present, and the future state of the world depends on our actions in the present world. The right questions to ask are not about long term policies for posthuman societies, but about short and medium term policies that can enable the development of a posthuman society while improving the lives of today's citizens and their children. Here and now, we cannot disagree with Churchill's "democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried".http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 18 08:30:49 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:30:49 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Memetic Warfare Comes in Two Forms References: <16313.24189.535550.814949@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <050301c3adae$45627120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jacques wrote: > In one form, they try to make you change your way of speaking > and thinking by coming back to it again and again in a heavy way, > like Jehovah's Witnesses. It's a bit painful, especially when (like > it happens with Jehovah's Witnesses) they show no sign of > understanding what you try to explain to them in return, whether > because they don't care or because they can't. Come on Jacques, you can do better than that. You have a forum, here in which you can make an argument directly. This sort of backhand comment about "they" makes no specific charge or argument and accomplishes nothing productive. Brett From nanogirl at halcyon.com Tue Nov 18 08:53:56 2003 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 00:53:56 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Social Implications of Nanotech References: <200311151850.hAFIoOM26078@tick.javien.com> <5.2.1.1.2.20031117173603.01f1d5e8@mail.gmu.edu> Message-ID: <001e01c3adb1$806e1320$3f80e40c@NANOGIRL> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hanson" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 2:56 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Re: Social Implications of Nanotech > At 04:41 PM 11/17/2003 -0500, Chris Phoenix wrote: > >On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:36:05 -0500, Robin Hanson wrote: > > > We should consider both > > > conventional nanotech scenarios and radical ones, such as described in > > > Unbounding the Future and Diamond Age. > > > >Would this audience be completely lost if you referenced Nanosystems > >instead? > > No. I was just trying to point more to social scenarios than howto > scenarios, and I couldn't remember if Nanosystems discussed social scenarios. I would consider _Nanosystems_ the theoretical, technical analysis and design of molecular machinery. The social scenarios are discussed in _Unbounding the Future_ and _Engines of Creation_. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Tech-Aid Advisor http://www.tech-aid.info/t/all-about.html nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." From jrd1415 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 18 08:59:13 2003 From: jrd1415 at yahoo.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 00:59:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Ultra Vires nature of laws made in error? In-Reply-To: <01fc01c3ad90$061bffe0$cf994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <20031118085913.27074.qmail@web41212.mail.yahoo.com> --- Damien Broderick wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Brett Paatsch" > Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 10:46 PM > > > I am considering an action at present that would > overturn > > a lame-brained horse-trading regulation that is > made under > > an act - the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 > > Oh my god--for a moment, I thought you were talking > about a lame-horse > brain-trading regulation. > > Damien Broderick > [Australia! Land of the Sport of Kings!] > Uh, are you talking about trading brains as in transplanting brains, say from a now-lame, but never the less still smart/enthusiastic horse, to another horse, say an athletically-gifted healthy-yet-complacent horse? Or are you talking about actual brain trading? You know, like, I have this brain in a jar. The brain of a horse that was lame and had its brain extracted somehow and put in a jar, and now I have the brain and the jar, or perhaps another jar, a replacement for the original jar, but still the same brain as before, and like, I'm engaged in some seemingly-bizarre "trading" activity, hobbyist, or maybe commercial, which deals in the brains of once lame but now just dead (I not sure if you,...that is if a horse,... can be both dead and lame at the same time. I think you...I mean a horse...has to be alive to be lame. But I'm just guessing here.) horses (presumably they're dead, the horses. Or actually, that is, they're 'still' dead, having passed on no later than when their brain was extracted. Unless they were given a replacement brain, in which case they would be alive again, or perhaps never really dead in the first place, although no knowledgeable person would consider a horse with a replacement brain to be the same horse as before. Though to the uninformed eye it might well appear to be the same horse, still alive, and probably still lame, though that might respond to medical treatment, or maybe just heal up on its own.) Anyway, I've got this lame horse brain...you know, come to think of it, there may be no jar at all. It may be just dried out, or tanned, or lacquered,...or something like that, you know like figs or raisins. Hmmmm. I bet a dried fig would look a whole lot like a dried brain, kinda, all wrinkly and such. Which brings up a question I been meaning to ask. Just how big is a horse's brain, anyway? Not a big squishy just-extracted brain, mind you, we'll leave that for the wet-brain trade. You know the wet brain trade--trade for transplant/reuse--is very technically demanding and expensive, and should be left to the professionals. I'm talking dried-brain here, casual stuff, recreational brain trading, you know, for fun, where nobody gets hurt. Like for a mantle piece, or in a display case. Anyway how big is that horses brain when it's dried out and all polished up? I don't know. As big as a fig? Bigger? What if it's a really big fig? Anyway, I certainly hope--it seems appropriate--that the regulations will deal with these two issues separately, as well as clear up matters regarding the lesser issues some of which I have mentioned here. As far as I can see, trading brains harms no one and therefore should not be subject to arbitrary or prejudicial treatment by regulatory authorities. Support diversity and the privacy rights of consenting adults. A brain is a terrible thing to waste. Best, Jeff Davis Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Groucho Marx __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Tue Nov 18 09:59:32 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 10:59:32 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: <200311180006.hAI06Y624195@finney.org> References: <200311180006.hAI06Y624195@finney.org> Message-ID: On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Hal Finney wrote: >Are the components, the cables and bearings and such, manufactured >separately and then attached to the work piece somehow, or are they >built in place as the output product grows? What is the assembler's >environment, how are the raw materials provided to it, as well as power >and control signals? Is the assembler free floating or attached to a >large solid surface? I'm sure that the question has been debated to death somewhere else, but if the components are small and simple enough, could they be produced biotech-style (i.e., assembling some billions of identical molecules in a dish via chemical reactions), and then the assembler built combining the basic blocks? Or is this an unworkable approach? Blocks like that could have unique markers on them, allowing the parts to snap together in the right way. To accomodate for this, the design would be complicated, and size increased to maybe 5x or 10x. Still, it wouldn't be a bad first step. Could it be possible to design an assembler using parts that can snap together using unique marks, accepting maybe a 10x increase in size? It wouldn't be a bad first step. I suspect one needs a well-developed nano at home system just to contemplate this scenario :-)) Ciao, Alfio From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 18 10:18:20 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 11:18:20 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: References: <200311180006.hAI06Y624195@finney.org> Message-ID: <20031118101819.GO22336@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 10:59:32AM +0100, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > I'm sure that the question has been debated to death somewhere else, but > if the components are small and simple enough, could they be produced > biotech-style (i.e., assembling some billions of identical molecules in a > dish via chemical reactions), and then the assembler built combining the > basic blocks? Or is this an unworkable approach? In machine-phase that would be convergent assembly http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/convergent.html It is very possible to design small, very stable proteins (it is relatively easy to design extremely stable proteins with site-directed mutagenesis. Basically, you have to tesselate a space (say, an elementary cell of a crystal) into 3d jigsaw, and find out the sequence for each jigsaw piece (the inverse protein problem). In practice, it's so tangled one would tend to just mutate random pieces of proteins, fold them individually (including forming complexes with functional groups -- as SWNT can be solvatised with SDS it should be also possible to solvate and assemble them with proteins) via a protein folding code (selecting for fast folders), and then let assemble the resulting soup of lego blocks. Extra bonus points for crosslinking individual jigsaw pieces, as well as cell contents; either by using natural amino acids, or use artificial amino acid analogs. > Blocks like that could have unique markers on them, allowing the parts to > snap together in the right way. To accomodate for this, the design would Complementary surfaces are sufficient, actually. > be complicated, and size increased to maybe 5x or 10x. Still, it wouldn't > be a bad first step. > > Could it be possible to design an assembler using parts that can snap > together using unique marks, accepting maybe a 10x increase in size? It > wouldn't be a bad first step. > > I suspect one needs a well-developed nano at home system just to > contemplate this scenario :-)) It takes a Blue Gene type of system to deliver enough performance for folding small fast folders via brute-force MD (the only method which is guaranteed to work, because it simulates what the molecule actually does in the solution). You can't scale that over a p2p grid. You can sample lots of conformation space, though, and you certainly can stochastically-driven combinatorics in design space. Both are embarassingly parallel enough to only require communication each few hours or days. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 18 10:32:16 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 21:32:16 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ultra Vires nature of laws made in error? References: <20031118085913.27074.qmail@web41212.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <053001c3adbf$46050a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jeff Davis wrote: > --- Damien Broderick wrote: > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Brett Paatsch" > > Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 10:46 PM > > > > > I am considering an action at present that would > > overturn > > > a lame-brained horse-trading regulation that is > > made under > > > an act - the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 > > > > Oh my god--for a moment, I thought you were talking > > about a lame-horse > > brain-trading regulation. > > > > Damien Broderick > > [Australia! Land of the Sport of Kings!] > > > > Uh, are you talking about trading brains as in > transplanting brains, say from a now-lame, but never > the less still smart/enthusiastic horse, to another > horse, say an athletically-gifted > healthy-yet-complacent horse? Or are you talking > about actual brain trading? You know, like, I have > this brain in a jar. The brain of a horse that was > lame and had its brain extracted somehow and put in a > jar, and now I have the brain and the jar, or perhaps > another jar, a replacement for the original jar, but > still the same brain as before, and like, I'm engaged > in some seemingly-bizarre "trading" activity, > hobbyist, or maybe commercial, which deals in the > brains of once lame but now just dead (I not sure if > you,...that is if a horse,... can be both dead and > lame at the same time. I think you...I mean a > horse...has to be alive to be lame. But I'm just > guessing here.) horses (presumably they're dead, the > horses. Or actually, that is, they're 'still' dead, > having passed on no later than when their brain was > extracted. Unless they were given a replacement > brain, in which case they would be alive again, or > perhaps never really dead in the first place, although > no knowledgeable person would consider a horse with a > replacement brain to be the same horse as before. > Though to the uninformed eye it might well appear to > be the same horse, still alive, and probably still > lame, though that might respond to medical treatment, > or maybe just heal up on its own.) > > Anyway, I've got this lame horse brain...you know, > come to think of it, there may be no jar at all. It > may be just dried out, or tanned, or lacquered,...or > something like that, you know like figs or raisins. > Hmmmm. I bet a dried fig would look a whole lot like > a dried brain, kinda, all wrinkly and such. Which > brings up a question I been meaning to ask. Just how > big is a horse's brain, anyway? Not a big squishy > just-extracted brain, mind you, we'll leave that for > the wet-brain trade. You know the wet brain > trade--trade for transplant/reuse--is very technically > demanding and expensive, and should be left to the > professionals. I'm talking dried-brain here, casual > stuff, recreational brain trading, you know, for fun, > where nobody gets hurt. Like for a mantle piece, or > in a display case. Anyway how big is that horses > brain when it's dried out and all polished up? I > don't know. As big as a fig? Bigger? What if it's a > really big fig? > > Anyway, I certainly hope--it seems appropriate--that > the regulations will deal with these two issues > separately, as well as clear up matters regarding the > lesser issues some of which I have mentioned here. As > far as I can see, trading brains harms no one and > therefore should not be subject to arbitrary or > prejudicial treatment by regulatory authorities. > > Support diversity and the privacy rights of consenting > adults. A brain is a terrible thing to waste. Cough. First, for clarity, to whom are you directing the word you "whiteman"? ;-) Regards, Brett From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Tue Nov 18 10:37:43 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 11:37:43 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Gods of Mars was "Mars probe marred" In-Reply-To: <20031118020244.43678.qmail@web60507.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031118020244.43678.qmail@web60507.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, The Avantguardian wrote: >Hey Amara, I am curious, is Mars historically more dangerous to space >probes than the other planets? Or is it just a bias effect because we >have sent more probes there than elsewhere? Considering what I know about >Mars' geography and climatic conditions, I would say it should be a >cakewalk for most probes, compared to Venus' corrosive SO2 atmosphere and >crazy temperatures. Venus indeed eats space probes for lunch. If I remember correctly, the number of probes the Russian sent before having some success must be measured in dozens. Most space probe failures happen exactly there - in space. Loss of lubricants, flywheels stopping, computers going crazy because of radiation, leaking fuel, etc. The "historical" probes (Vikings, Voyagers) had 3x redundancy built in, while modern ones are somewhat cheaper :-) Landing is more or less the only planet-related problem for a probe. If it does not make a hole in the ground, it will work. Except on Venus, where it will be melt and crushed by the atmosphere. Ciao, Alfio From bradbury at blarg.net Tue Nov 18 11:14:42 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:14:42 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] possible new record prime Message-ID: <20031118111404.E267C33FEB@mail.blarg.net> On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 10:32pm Spike wrote: > > Oh my, November is a wonderful month. The GIMPS project > has had a report of a hit, a new record prime, which > will be the 40th Mersenne prime. [snip] > Ahhhh, life is gooooood. {8-] Hmmm Spike -- I think someday you and I and Eli and Robin and a few other folks are going to have to sit down and have a serious discussion about what makes life good. I am certain that new Mersenne's primes do not keep the blue people entertained. It also seems unlikely that they would function well as a reason for keeping The Blue Man Group entertaining us. "good" would seem to be a very relative term. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bradbury at blarg.net Tue Nov 18 11:37:15 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:37:15 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Gods of Mars was Message-ID: <20031118113637.BFEFE381C9@mail.blarg.net> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 2:39am Alfio Puglisi wrote: > Venus indeed eats space probes for lunch. If I remember correctly, the > number of probes the Russian sent before having some success must be > measured in dozens. I would doubt it is that high, particularly if one counts probes that were intended to probe the atmosphere. [snip] > Except on Venus, where it will be melt and crushed by the atmosphere. Oh no Alfio -- you don't get off that easily. I'll ask Spike whom we will consider to be the resident astronautical engineer to comment. But I'd state that one if the U.S. is looking at developing probes that go down to something like 3 miles below sea level (catching up to the Japanese and Russians) and one can carry a sufficient quantity of NaOH to spray on the hull to deal with any acid that landing on Venus can indeed be managed. Landing on Mercury may be somewhat more difficult but that too can probably be done. And of course there is an active discussion group of how to land on and penetrate into Europa. Now if you want to raise difficult engineering problems they might be getting to the core of Saturn or Jupiter. Such an effort might eat probes for lunch. But since we want to dismantle them anyway there are alternate strategies for getting to the core. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bradbury at blarg.net Tue Nov 18 12:14:13 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 04:14:13 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <20031118121337.50D2333BCD@mail.blarg.net> On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 8:10pm Damien Broderick wrote: > Yeah, but consider: the genome got done faster than anyone expected, > or at least *as* fast if you're scrupulous in your accounting. It's > a pretty good paradigm. (True, the Powers That Be, public and private, > flung a shitload of $$$ at it.) Hmmmm.... an interesting example since I was one person who flung a shitload of $$$ at it (relatively speaking). The fundamental problem in doing the HGP was the need for high throughput sequencing. The powers that ran the project knew this and I would guess that between the early-to-mid '90s probably threw about $100M at solving the problem. Perhaps $10M of that was really effective -- there were about 5 academic groups at the time really making good progress. Applied Biosystems and Molecular Dynamics on the industrial side might have been equal or double that effort. But they were building on the academic work significantly. I attempted to run 2 groups in Russia to work on it at the time. One got a working but not industrial level product. Cost was probably $200-400K. In contrast the industrial level genome sequencing center at MIT which used a lot of custom designed machinery probably cost tens of millions of dollars. However the high throughput genome centers we (in the U.S.) have now (and those in Europe and Japan) are still cranking out genomic sequences at a high rate. So the investment was worthwhile -- for perhaps for a combined government/industry investment of $150M one got a cost reduction in the HGP of perhaps $1B. (I am guessing at these figures and they should not be cited without confirmation.) But Damien is correct that the HGP got done ahead of time and under budget. A significant reason for that was an investment in the basic technology required to accomplish that. One can consider past investments in basic technologies required to move us (humanity) forward. The Manhattan Project is the first that comes to my mind. Of course one can adopt a variety of perspectives as to whether these investments helped or hurt us. In the case of the HGP I would think they are helping us. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 18 12:17:04 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 13:17:04 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <000001c3ad9b$a726f470$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <00af01c3ad8d$4ca87bd0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <000001c3ad9b$a726f470$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <16314.3520.114365.483846@localhost.localdomain> Spike a ?crit (17.11.2003/22:17) : > All those heat stroke deaths in France last summer could > have *easily* been avoided by something as simple and low > tech as an *air conditioner*. What is that about? The old people who died from the heat last summer mostly didn't die from stroke, but from dehydratation. What they would have needed is to drink some water from the tap regularly, and yes, Spike, we do have running water in France, too, so apparently it is not a technical problem. So why didn't they do that? Because it so happens that when you get old, your feeling of thirst fades. So you need people around to watch for you, and remind you about drinking. You need some kind of organization around to keep you going despite the fading of your survival reflexes. And all these people were totally alone (in the middle of Paris or other big cities). So they didn't drink and they died. > Plus we get better wine outta the deal, and maybe > some of those cool giant dragonflies. :-) (I ate the best grape I had ever eaten this September.) Fun post, inspired by the feeling of power, power to heal and fix things. Of course, by saying "this is not a problem, let's go ahead, we can fix it", you create a large responsability for yourself. Just an unrelated question, Spike: why do you hit ENTER at the end of every line (or am I misled?)? You can let the computer do it ya know :-) Jacques From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 18 12:22:15 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 13:22:15 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <000401c3ad9e$92b26a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <00ae01c3ad8c$c9723e40$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <000401c3ad9e$92b26a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <16314.3831.322626.237890@localhost.localdomain> Spike a ?crit (17.11.2003/22:38) : > This is intriguing. Since I heard of the test a few yrs > ago I have wanted to try it on myself, but I have > insufficient access to and expertise in real-time blood > pressure monitoring equipment, and have no idea where one > would get non-mainstream pornography. I heard they > have some instrument that can be placed upon > the genitals to measure arousal, then they show > the test subject a range of materials to see what > turns them on, from which a profile can be > derived. That would be cool! Why do you find it cool? You can do that already by finding pictures on the Internet and see which one arouse you. You never though of that before? :-) Jacques From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 18 12:41:03 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 13:41:03 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: <20031117183521.EE9FA37F37@mail.blarg.net> References: <20031117183521.EE9FA37F37@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: <20031118124102.GD26988@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 10:35:58AM -0800, bradbury wrote: > I have to disagree with Eugen here. Robin and I, I believe, have (offlist) agreed Allright, we're both firmly in belief country here. Future promises to remain interesting, by keeping providing surprises. > upon the problem being in pathways to assembly -- which is probably a problem I believe I pointed out that the bootstrap and the assembler both need a virtual drydock to get afloat. > more in systems analysis (which Eric very briefly discusses in Nanosystems) > and less of a problem of molecular modeling. You'll notice that Zyvex does lots of molecular modelling as well as UHV hardware work. It is very difficult to get convergent self-assembly (especially, convergent self-assembly using biomolecules for guidance and ligation, which I believe you're primarily interested in) right without a good potential. It is similiarly difficult to validate your assembler without going through a full deposition cycle (many deposition cycles, in fact -- though I'm expecting more a continuous-deposition operation by means of site-specific polymerization, at continuous monomer supply: notice that it should be enough for self-replication, while being very far remote from being able to specify the structure arbitrarily at atomic scale). > I address some of the possible costs and time frames in [1]. Robert Freitas > has reviewed it and while he doesn't completely agree he doesn't disagree. > > One of the major problems is understanding that nanoassemblers have to > be constructed from nanoparts. First we have to solve the problem of > the design of nanoparts -- that is in part what Nano at Home (www.nanoathome.org) Parts are molecules; there are molecular builders aplenty. What's missing is macro ability, and ability to work on very large systems at atomic detail in the hot spot (area of current edits). OpenGL nor sphere rendering doesn't scale here, I'd prefer a voxel approach to the volume and part manipulation (3d BitBlt for dragging with collision recognition), with sphere and wireframe rendering of highlighted areas. This should render realtime for 0.1-10 MAtom, and allow realtime minimization and MD dynamics. > is all about (it could use some programmers that want to join one or more of > its teams). Second we need to solve the assembly of nanoparts. Currently The self-assembly approach includes mutual recognition of complentary-surface encoded parts. The nanorobotics approach is pick up and place, with adhesion by van der Waals and condensation of prepositioned glue spot bond patches. > that means either a biological paradigm (e.g. self-assembly of viruses) or > a "macro" assembly paradigm (e.g. robotic assembly in factories scaled > down to micron and nano scales [what Zyvex is doing]). I try to outline > some paths for all of this in Appendix B of [1]. > > Robert > > 1. Bradbury, R. J., "Protein Based Assembly of Nanoscale Parts" > Normally at: http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Papers/PBAoNP.html > May be available later this week. The Google cache may or > may not have an up-to-date copy if you search for it. Robert, how large is your site? I'd like to mirror parts or the whole of it. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 18 12:51:35 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 13:51:35 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism In-Reply-To: References: <000401c3ad9e$92b26a30$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <16314.5591.546543.401248@localhost.localdomain> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 a ?crit (18.11.2003/08:23) : > This is a comment to Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism and > the ongoing discussion on the wta and extropy lists. Max and several readers > say that, as transhumanists perspectives look much further ahead, > transhumanists should not embrace democracy or any current political system > but rather wait for an entirely new political system developed by posthumans > for posthumans. Now, I am sure posthumans will have the means to implement > smart and flexible government systems much better than what we have today. > For example, if all future citizens (humans, AIs, hybrids, uploaded minds, > ...) will have augmented brains permanently linked to the net, it will be > possible to implement direct democracy schemes that would not be practical > today. But I think this is missing the point: we spend a lot of time > thinking about the future, but we live in the present, and the future state > of the world depends on our actions in the present world. The right > questions to ask are not about long term policies for posthuman societies, > but about short and medium term policies that can enable the development of > a posthuman society while improving the lives of today's citizens and their > children. Here and now, we cannot disagree with Churchill's "democracy is > the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been > tried".http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat Another point to consider from a memetic (oh how I hate this silly buzzword) point of view, is that people (at least Europe) are still traumatized about 20th century events, in such a way that when someone comes up with new ideas (like transhumanism), they want to know immediately whether that someone adheres to democracy or not, and if not they label it as "dangerous". Max's observation that Hitler was elected democratically is mostly correct I think (maybe not entirely, as I recall from some historians), and the more general point that the rule of the majority can be awful is obviously true (as in lynching). But the trauma has been linked to non-democracy in many heads, and so, when you refuse to label yourself democrat, people feel that you are hiding an awful agenda (even more true connected to transhumanism). So, I for one totally agreed with Max's contention. But I see the (memetic) point of labelling oneself as democract. Should one use statements for memetic reasons that are not the best ones a truth level, or should one have as a fixed rule to only try to convince with that which is "the most" true to one? I prefer the latter, though I can imagine very special situations in which I would choose the former. Out of such very special situations, I say go for truth and persuasion at the same time, without compromise. There is a dangerous naivete in thinking that your point of view is so superior that you can actually arrange what you officially say for the good cause. This is how the worst ideologies propagate. You better be humble, consider the possibility that you are wrong, and just try to stick to the truth as much as you can. Also think of the following. When you want to have an impact on society by creating a movement, who joins your movement matters a lot. Do you want people with sloppy thinking, who will change idea next year, or do you want clear thinkers who trust their own cognitive capacities and will stick with your movement in the long term? Getting 10 of the latter may result in an eventual larger impact than getting 1000 of the former. Sticking with truth, and keeping the memetic bullshit low, results in a strong build. Jacques From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 18 13:02:17 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 14:02:17 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: <3FB6E530.5030903@cox.net> References: <200311160203.hAG23X814499@finney.org> <3FB6E530.5030903@cox.net> Message-ID: <20031118130217.GE26988@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:47:12PM -0500, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > Hal Finney wrote: > > >4. Designing an assembler is relatively straightforward and it is clear > >that it could be done today with a modest effort, but since there is no > >way to build the resulting device, no one wants to go to the effort of > >coming up with a complete assembler design. > > > > > >Answers 3 and 4 assume that merely designing an assembler is pointless; > >rather, effort should be devoted to designing an assembler which can be > >built from simpler tools, which is much more difficult. Nevertheless it > >would seem that if the situation were close to case 4, it might be a > >worthwhile exercise just to make the technological potential more obvious. > > > > > > > I've always assumed point 4: simple to design, but we do not know how to > build it. > > This changes the problem: dont merely design an assembler. Instead, > design an assembler that can be built with simpler tools. > > This in turn means that your problem statement is not quite correct. We > should nto try for a complete design as a proof of concept and an > inducement. Rather, we should be specifically trying to generate a range > of assembler designs that may be achievable using simpler tools. If we > keep generating valid assembler designs, perhaps we will find one that > is buildable. Thus, we do not want the best assembler. Instead we want > an assembler that can be built, no matter how poor this assembler is, as > long as this assembler can build a better assembler. > > Put it another way: the bootstrap problem is the only hard problem. > > In particular, we do not need an sssembler that can operate in a hostile > envoronment. We are free to pick any arbitrary environment for the Unless you're trying to build a weapon ;) > bootstrap, as long as we can create that environment using macro- or > micro- technology. Create the environmant, build the assembler using > micro techniques, and then use the assembler to build a more robust > assembler that can operate in more general environment. > > For example, assume that the bootstrap assembler is built from nanotubes > and that it will only operate in a hard vacuum, on a perfect diamond > surface. Fine. We know how to create a hard vacuum and a diamond > surface. If we can use this incredibly expensive system to build a more > robust system, we win. I see a sequence of progressively more robust and > sophisticated systems, culminating in a system that can build the > critical elements of its own environment. > > Here is a possible bootstrap sequence: > > Nanotube assembler in a hard vacuum on a diamond substrate, with a > highly ordered feedstock (benzene precipitated on diamond?) controlled > and powered via an external laser and an external computer. This system > may use MEMS structures to create nanotube feedstock. There are many designs possible. You could use a dip-pen lithography of monomer, and photopolymerize with an UV SNOM head. Or even just try to scale down an inkjet with a microfluidics head. You could feed monomer through a bucky lumen, and use mechanical pressure and/or voltage spikes to polymerize. You could just make SWNT/MWNT in a large continuous process (electroheat a block of graphite (HOPG would be better, probably) and quench it in cold water; lather, rinse, repeat: 40% yield), and use chemical (aza-substitution), physical (charge-separation) and nanorobotics (well, grad students as flesh robots) means to sort them into bins. This is off the top of my head, there must be zillions of other variants. > Nanotube-based factory. Similar to the above, but with a number of > specialized nano-machines to generate functionalized nanotubes as > feedstock to the assemblers. You can just use sorting here. Not too many kinds of a carbon nanotube are there, if the size is small, and we're not looking for perfect specimens. > Diamondoid-producing nanotube factory. The nanotube factory can now > generate a small set of diamondoid parts. You can separate higher diamondoids from natural sources. It should be possible to functionalize their surface to make them sticky, and use nanorobotics to map a library and assemble those which are complementary. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Tue Nov 18 13:05:42 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 14:05:42 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Gods of Mars was In-Reply-To: <20031118113637.BFEFE381C9@mail.blarg.net> References: <20031118113637.BFEFE381C9@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, bradbury wrote: >On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 2:39am Alfio Puglisi wrote: > >> Venus indeed eats space probes for lunch. If I remember correctly, the >> number of probes the Russian sent before having some success must be >> measured in dozens. > >I would doubt it is that high, particularly if one counts probes >that were intended to probe the atmosphere. I looked at wikipedia.org, and almost all Venus probes are marked as "success". But, again from my evidently faulty memory, most of those probes survived maybe 20 minutes in the venusian environment. I guess it can still be called "success"... > >[snip] > >> Except on Venus, where it will be melt and crushed by the atmosphere. > >Oh no Alfio -- you don't get off that easily. >[...] >can indeed be managed. Landing on Mercury may be somewhat >more difficult but that too can probably be done. And of >course there is an active discussion group of how to land >on and penetrate into Europa. Now if you want to raise >difficult engineering problems they might be getting to the >core of Saturn or Jupiter. Such an effort might eat probes >for lunch. But since we want to dismantle them anyway there >are alternate strategies for getting to the core. Well, I'm happy that space tech is more advanced than I thought :-) Ciao, Alfio From amara at amara.com Tue Nov 18 13:33:11 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 15:33:11 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mars probe marred Message-ID: Why is Mars so hard? http://www.thespacereview.com/article/23/1 Selected articles about Mars spacecraft successes and failures http://www.oasis-nss.org/articles/2000/00Sep.html (and yes, the Soviet Space program experienced Venus eating their spacecraft for lunch too... http://www.vectorsite.net/taxpl_4.html) -- Amara Graps, PhD Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI) Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR, Roma, ITALIA Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it From mlorrey at yahoo.com Tue Nov 18 18:22:18 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 10:22:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <013301c3ad88$4fcdc9f0$6400a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <20031118182218.20281.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> --- Olga Bourlin wrote: > It is immaterial whether the racist individual can or cannot "choose" > to be a racist. And in a somewhat similar (yet somewhat different) > vein, the reason Asians, blacks and other so-called "minorities" > are entitled to equal treatment is because they *are* equal, and > not because they cannot "choose" who they are (an obnoxious notion, > which presupposes that if a member of a "minority" could change > their "race" - they would). > IMO comparing racism to homophobia could easily put one on a road > that warns: "slippery slope ahead." I wasn't comparing racism to homophobia, I was comparing it to homosexuality, which is claimed by liberals to be genetically caused and not a learned behavior as a rationale for demanding equal rights for gays, since they can't 'choose' to be gay or not. Similarly, drug addicts and alcoholics are claimed to have genetic predispositions to addictive behavior and are thus health care patients and not criminals. If racist behavior is determined to have a genetic cause, then racist individuals deserve the same minority/victim status as homosexuals and/or addicts. I am quite sure that you do find this notion to be quite obnoxious, because it implicates liberal dogma as lacking in logical rigor. > > > Perhaps the racist may be justified in applying for > > welfare disability payments if their racism impacts their ability > > to keep a job... > > Even if this is meant to be humorous, it is egregious balderdash. How so? The courts have determined addictions to be medical disabilities because they are genetically based diseases, a disability for which an individual can receive disability subsidy from the government. If racism is similarly a neurological disease, then being racist, and to the degree that one's racism impacts one's ability to keep a job, maintain a career track, etc., it is medically disabling, just as much as alcoholism or drug addiction. Similarly, gay claims for equal rights are based on science (so far unreplicated) that claims that homosexuality is a genetically caused behavior just as heterosexuality is. If racism were similarly proved to be genetically caused behavior, then racist rights would have equal standing with gay rights. > > > Hate crimes, of course, could no longer impart more severe > > sentences if the perpetrators cannot help themselves. > > There are all kinds of "hate crimes," and I would hope they're not > tolerated > (e.g., at the workplace, in school) in a civilized society because > mean-spiritedness is not conducive to carry on the business at hand, > whether the unpleasantries are "perpetrated" against women, men, > "minorities," or > what have you. Sorry, I say - the perps will just have to learn > better manners if they cannot help themselves. > > As to other more serious crimes, the fact that a sociopath like Ted > Bundy "couldn't help himself" and therefore went on a murder > rampage ... doesn't excuse him, does it? Are you, a previously avowed liberal, now espousing a policy that those who are judged to be genetically deficient or in the genetic minority should be punished for being what nature has made them, so long as their genes are not politically correct? > > > Odd when one > > liberal prejudice smacks head on into another one. > > I don't understand how you've come to this conclusion. That is specifically your blind spot. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 18 18:42:00 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 12:42:00 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes References: <20031118182218.20281.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00e601c3ae03$a9064080$9f994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 12:22 PM > If racism is similarly a neurological disease This is an extreme reading of the original rather dodgy research, which just claimed that racists use more mental effort in disguising their real attitudes when answering tests that would reveal their racism in a context where such attitudes are disapproved, and that this brain activity can be instrument-detected. Heritability or specialized `racism' brain structures have nothing to do with it, as I understood the article. Damien Broderick From mlorrey at yahoo.com Tue Nov 18 19:03:16 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 11:03:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <00e601c3ae03$a9064080$9f994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <20031118190316.36935.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> --- Damien Broderick wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mike Lorrey" > Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 12:22 PM > > > If racism is similarly a neurological disease > > This is an extreme reading of the original rather dodgy research, > which just > claimed that racists use more mental effort in disguising their real > attitudes when answering tests that would reveal their racism in a > context > where such attitudes are disapproved, and that this brain activity > can be > instrument-detected. Heritability or specialized `racism' brain > structures have nothing to do with it, as I understood the article. > Which is why I said "if". Nor do you know whether or not such brain structures are heritable or not. We do know that other brain structures and activity patterns are heritable, specifically schizophrenia and other neurological diseases. All this article does is detail that there is a distinctly unique brain function, structure, and activity pattern found in racists vs non-racists. It remains to be seen whether racism is heritable, but given this evidence, plus the fact that racism does, in fact, run in families (learned or inherited), objective science begs for research into this question. If an individual has to make a significant and detectable mental effort to not appear racist vs an individual who is not in fact racist, this indicates a rather significant difference in brain structure, and that such individuals must learn non-racism, rather than learn racism and thus lends support to a genetic, rather than teratogenic, cause. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Tue Nov 18 19:44:42 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 13:44:42 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] garage nanotech? References: <006a01c3ad88$a1f6f620$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: MessageIt's a quantum garage with infinite space in a finite enclosure. ;-) ---- Original Message ----- From: Spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 10:01 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] garage nanotech? kevinfreels at hotmail.com I have built a rocket with a primitive guidance system that "points" the rocket toward the sun and is capable of mach 1.2 in my own garage. WOW you must have one helllll of a garage Kevin. {8^D spike ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlorrey at yahoo.com Tue Nov 18 20:02:38 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 12:02:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <000001c3ad9b$a726f470$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031118200238.3893.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- Spike wrote: > > Spike wrote, > > > Some folks talk about global warming like its a BAD thing. > > > > > > Global warming linked to wine quality > > > Monday, November 17, 2003 Posted: 10:05 AM EST (1505 GMT) > > > > Does this mean you believe in global warming now? > > > > The argument against global warming seems to be a mixture of > > some reports denying that it is happening, while other reports > claim > it is > > happening and is a good thing. I have never understood how the > > mutually-exclusive reports refute global warming theory. > > Harvey I recognize that there are mutually exclusive > theories on this topic. I do not subscribe to both. > > Ive always believed in global warming in a sense: > I also believe in motherhood and apple pie, I like both. Well, first you must separate anthropogenic global warming from cosmological and environmental global warming, or, more properly, climate change. Cosmological global warming comes from cycles in Earth's orbital dynamics as well as changes in solar output cycles, even the degree of flux in cosmic radiation as our solar system migrates from one galactic arm to another. Environmental global warming comes from changes in plate tectonics (for example, El Nino is now considered to be mostly an artifact of Himalayan uplift), as well as changes in how life forms process different chemicals in the ecosystem (for example, how well phytoplankton populate the oceans and sequester carbon, etc). Anthropogenic global warming is considered to be 'our fault' and therfore something we are responsible for doing something about, while non-anthropogenic global warming is seen as part of the natural order. Why we are not considered to be part of the ecosystem like any other naturally evolved species is a political issue, possibly part of the aberrant luddite/humanist predeliction for species self-hate. Originally, proponents of 'global warming' were claiming that Earth has undergone significant temperature changes in the 20th and will experience huge changes in the 21st century unless we adopt their socialist-luddite political agenda. Other parties have their own agendas that coincide with the socialist-luddite agenda of parties in the western nations. As the US is the most capitalist nation and the biggest holdout against global consensus on climate change, as well as the biggest producer of 'greenhouse gasses' (though only if you refuse to count the carbon sequestration occuring as a result of the US's forest regrowth policies, policies, which if counted, make the US a net negative contributor to global warming). Other agendas include the socialist economies of europe seeking economic parity or advantage over the US, Communist China seeking to assert economic dominance over the world, and Muslim fundamentalists seeking to eliminate the oil based financial support of autocratic moderate or secular regimes in the muslim world. It becomes clear that most of the rest of the world has a vested interest in dragging down the US economy with economically burdensome regulation and taxation to ostensibly support carbon sequestration, but which will instead be spent, as it is spent in european nations, on socialist welfare programs. More accurate science has determined that the temperature change over the 20th centure was actually less than 1 degree and that somewhere between 1/4 to 2/3 of this change is not anthropogenic in nature. This science, even when improperly interpreted by the UN Climate Change Report (according to the scientists who originally developed much of the data the UN based its conclusions on), now claims that climate change over the next century will incur temperature changes in the order of 3-6 degrees at most, assuming nothing is done. Claims involve a collapse of the ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica and global flooding as a result. This science ignores several facts: a) the effect of CO on warming follows a diminishing returns curve, not a linear or increasing returns curve as claimed by many proponents of global warming theory. As CO levels increase, increases in temperature decrease. b) much anthropogenic warming is due to CFC ozone hole related UV radiation retarding phytoplankton growth in the southern oceans. Phytoplankon are possibly the biggest contributor to ecological regulation of global temperatures through their carbon and methane sequestration to the abyssal depths. Since CFCs are now banned, chlorine content in the atmosphere is decreasing and is expected to be back to near-natural levels within 15-20 years. c) most of the recorded sea level rise is not part of the oceanic levels, but specifically the rise in the Caspian Sea due to increased precipitation in central asia. The Caspian Sea acts as a buffer or battery for the rest of the world, capable of rising as much as 200 meters before beginning to drain into the Black Sea, assuming no dams are built to add increased capacity to this reservoir. This 200 meter rise would mitigate over a meter of rise in ocean levels for the rest of the world. d) Much of the Greenland Ice Cap is considered now to be an artifact of the Little Ice Age, with ice flow rates now accelerating at the edge due to increases in ice depth caused over 600 years ago. e) Claims about future collapse of the Antarctice Ice Cap ignore the facts that the last time Antarctica was ice free (over 22 million years ago, the last time the Earth was impacted by a major impactor), it was tectonically joined to South America and global temperatures were in the order of 12-15 degrees higher. There were no circumpolar oceanic or wind currents causing thermal isolation of the continent as there are now, because of this land link to South America. f) Another significant contributor to global warming is not CO, but deforestation of the Sahara, specifically, by third world nations inhabited by hunter-gatherer and migratory agrarian societies, NOT technologically advanced industrial nations. Current prescriptions for alleviating global warming make no attempt at mitigating this problem area. So, to conclude: enforce the ban on CFCs, explore spending pollution tax credit commodities on encouraging phytoplankton carbon sequestration, and reforest the Sahara. Until you do all this, don't bother me with prescriptions of doom and gloom and demands for socliast agendas. I'm going to be busy enjoying the benefits of improved climate at northern latitudes... and sipping better wine... ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From jcorb at iol.ie Tue Nov 18 20:52:32 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 20:52:32 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: Scientists find mystery particle Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031118204925.027f1de0@pop.iol.ie> Anybody heard this? Appears to be new on the Beeb >Scientists find mystery particle http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3277579.stm >Scientists have found a sub-atomic particle they cannot explain using >current theories of energy and matter. >The discovery was made by researchers based at the High Energy Accelerator >Research Organisation in Tsukuba. >Classified as X(3872), the particle was seen fleetingly in an atom smasher >and has been dubbed the "mystery meson". >The Japanese team says understanding its existence may require a change to >the Standard Model, the accepted theory of the way the Universe is >constructed. .......... >X(3872) was found among the decay products of so-called beauty mesons - >sub-atomic particles that are produced in large numbers at the Tsukuba >"meson factory". >It weighs about the same as a single atom of helium and exists for only >about one billionth of a trillionth of a second before it decays into >other longer-lived, more familiar particles. ........ >To explain it, theoretical physicists may have to modify their theory of >the colour force; or make X(3872) the first example of a new type of >meson, one that is made from four quarks (two quarks and two antiquarks). James... From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 18 21:15:14 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 15:15:14 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: Scientists find mystery particle References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031118204925.027f1de0@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: <004301c3ae19$1128ae40$569d4a43@texas.net> http://www.kek.jp/press/2003/belle4e.html From bradbury at blarg.net Tue Nov 18 21:49:41 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (Robert Bradbury) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 13:49:41 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech Message-ID: <3FBA93F5.DEA78E6F@blarg.net> Kevin, in response to Spike's poking fun at his garage commented: "It's a quantum garage with infinite space in a finite enclosure. ;-)" I will simply observe that for the last week or so I've been seeing TV ads for an episode of the sitcom "Will and Grace" where Grace will claim that "size does matter". (For those non-U.S. folks Grace lived with Will (who is gay) as a "friend" for many years -- not clear yet on how this applies to the claim.) Now the question is how does one extend this to Kevin's garage? Does one care about the real size? Or is it the virtual size which is significant? Or is it only the size when one is launching the rocket that matters? :-? To many people on the list my apologies up front -- but it was too much of an opportunity to resist. Robert From james at lab6.com Tue Nov 18 21:48:15 2003 From: james at lab6.com (James) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 21:48:15 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <20031118182218.20281.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> References: <013301c3ad88$4fcdc9f0$6400a8c0@brainiac> <20031118182218.20281.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20031118214815.GA1766@pc174.deh.man.ac.uk> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 10:22:18AM -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote: > I wasn't comparing racism to homophobia, I was comparing it to > homosexuality, which is claimed by liberals to be genetically caused > and not a learned behavior as a rationale for demanding equal rights > for gays, since they can't 'choose' to be gay or not. Just for the record, gay claims for equal rights are based on the idea that they are human beings like everyone else, and nobody has any business telling them what they can or can't do with consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes. Elsewhere: > the lefties will have to admit that racism is a genetic artifact, or > perhaps a diseease, just like homosexuality Are you just left-trolling here, or do you really think homosexuality is a disease? -- James From mlorrey at yahoo.com Tue Nov 18 22:07:26 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 14:07:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <20031118214815.GA1766@pc174.deh.man.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20031118220726.11765.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> --- James wrote: > On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 10:22:18AM -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote: > > I wasn't comparing racism to homophobia, I was comparing it to > > homosexuality, which is claimed by liberals to be genetically > caused > > and not a learned behavior as a rationale for demanding equal > rights > > for gays, since they can't 'choose' to be gay or not. > > Just for the record, gay claims for equal rights are based on the > idea > that they are human beings like everyone else, and nobody has any > business telling them what they can or can't do with consenting > adults in the privacy of their own homes. AND, just for the record, they claim that this behavior is genetically based, not something they can just 'choose' to not do. The argument by gay rights groups is that being gay is more than just a choice of lifestyle, it is an innate, inherent, genetic part of who they are. I am not disputing this claim whatsoever, no matter how it is supported by science. > > Elsewhere: > > > the lefties will have to admit that racism is a genetic artifact, > or > > perhaps a diseease, just like homosexuality > > Are you just left-trolling here, or do you really think homosexuality > is a disease? Or are you the one who is trolling instead? I'll note that you snipped the "or addiction" following the word "homosexuality". The disease connotation was applied to the "or addiction" part... trying to instigate here or what? I certainly do not think that homosexuality is a disease. Whether it is a genetic, developmental, or learned behavior I have not the slightest clue, nor is that debate even part of what I am trying to make a point about. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From james at lab6.com Tue Nov 18 22:08:18 2003 From: james at lab6.com (James) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:08:18 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: Scientists find mystery particle In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.1.20031118204925.027f1de0@pop.iol.ie> References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031118204925.027f1de0@pop.iol.ie> Message-ID: <20031118220818.GB1766@pc174.deh.man.ac.uk> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 08:52:32PM +0000, J Corbally wrote: > >The Japanese team says understanding its existence may require a change to > >the Standard Model, the accepted theory of the way the Universe is > >constructed. > ........ > >To explain it, theoretical physicists may have to modify their theory of > >the colour force; or make X(3872) the first example of a new type of > >meson, one that is made from four quarks (two quarks and two antiquarks). Maybe I haven't been keeping up with particle physics, but is this not the most inspiring news of the year? The Standard Model is boring: no free-energy particles, no computronium particles, no time-travel particles, no fractal particles... in fact nothing to laugh at at all. As long as the Standard Model keeps getting tweaked, the potential for truly New Physics is there. I quite like not having a theory of everything. It postpones having to ask the question: "Is this it?". -- James From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 18 23:16:16 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 10:16:16 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Can we improve upon monkey politics? Message-ID: <07d501c3ae29$f7ae6700$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> In his, imo excellent, essay Democracy and Transhumanism, http://www.extropy.org/politicaltheory.htm Max More seems to puts an iron question in a velvet glove when he asks "..surely, as we strive to transcend the biological limitations of human nature, we can also improve upon monkey politics?" Clearly few transhumanists are as concerned about monkey politics as they are about human politics. Yet is it at all clear, let alone sure, that biological humans, even transhumanists, can transcend human politics? It is not clear to me. Not unless politics is diluted down and abstracted away to being almost a meaningless thing like party politics. Indeed I am almost certain that humans cannot transcend politics at least as I understand the term because I see politics as arising as a natural consequence of biological life. To transcend politics one would need to transcend the vicissitudes of biological life and that begs the question of how any individual or group would manage to do so today. How does one or a group get from here (biological life) to there (no longer biological life) without overcoming the political problem first? Isn't the 'political problem' the 'life problem'? I think we have improved upon monkey politics - we have built legal systems and civilizations, but I don't think we can take any quantum leap out of human politics that would not itself be an intensely political act. Please do not misunderstand I am not talking of mere party politics but rather of the inevitable interplay between biological forms of life that are each short in resources (including time) just as they are each long on potential for development and on aspiration. Humans (including transhumans) are biological creatures now - we cannot simply wish that away. Some personal and collective political sophistication is not a luxury for survival even in the current human world - it is a necessity. So can we (or any group of people who want to forge a particular future either individually or collectively from a variety of alternatives) transcend *human* politics in the broader sense of the word politics? I think my answer is obvious but I am genuinely interested to hear others. Regards, Brett From scerir at libero.it Tue Nov 18 23:44:33 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 00:44:33 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: Scientists find mystery particle References: <5.0.2.1.1.20031118204925.027f1de0@pop.iol.ie> <20031118220818.GB1766@pc174.deh.man.ac.uk> Message-ID: <000301c3ae2d$ed725400$97b11b97@administxl09yj> > I quite like not having a theory of everything. > It postpones having to ask the question: > "Is this it?". techn. rep. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0309032 popular rep. http://physicsweb.org/article/news/7/11/7 anyway the answer to that question is: "no, it isn't" and the reason is here :-) http://www.staff.fh-vorarlberg.ac.at/tb/tbSHPMP.pdf From bradbury at blarg.net Wed Nov 19 00:48:35 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (Robert Bradbury) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 16:48:35 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <3FBABDE3.CE1FE4CE@blarg.net> Harvey said: > Yes, the genome got mapped faster than predicted. But since those > predictions, we have learned a lot more about genetics. Instead of giving > us all the answers on gene expression, Actually with respect to normal gene expression it has given us a big part of the puzzle. Transcription factors primarily come in two or three standard forms and it is relatively easy to pull them out of the genome sequence. (They are small tend not to have introns that interupt the sequence, etc.) > we now know we have to conquer mitochondrial DNA We knew that up front and its quite simple actually. There is a large and expanding database of MtDNA sequences from various species. Human MtDNA is actually one of the easier ones since it is one of the smallest. > RNA, Its not a large story -- we know the RNA genomic sequences, where they are and what they do. The only exception to this would be the microRNA sequences that appear to be largely left over from the "original" genome (since most appear to influence development). Still an open question IMO is the degree to which the RNA sequences contribute to aging. The sequences coding for RNA within the genome tend to be repetitive and so the may contribute to improper recombinational repair that results in the corruption of the genome over time. > protein folding, It was always recognized by molecular biologists that this was going to be part of the puzzle. I have read that the NSF is cranking up the X-ray crystalography capabilities to ~30,000 proteins/year. I will believe it when I see it -- but if so one should have the 3D structures of most of the proteins within a year or two. > junk DNA, Its there (a lot of it). We know the evolutionary processes that generate it. It may have a limited function, perhaps in aligning chromosomes for mitosis or meiosis or perhaps in simply absorbing free radicals generated by the mitochondria. Lots of other theories to think about (perhaps a role in the evolution of intelligence?). But that is what keeps academics publishing papers and building up their resumes. > DNA fragments I'm not sure what you mean by this. There are not any fragments to mention. The relocation of DNA segments between various chromosomes across the evolution of species is a very robust science. It is allowing us to very accurately compare differences between say mice, chimps and humans. It will eventually allow us to significantly compare a larger number of species (dozens probably within this century). It also allows a decrease in the cost of individual genome sequencing as one can depend on certain amounts of genome similarity between different species. > telomere loss I'm not sure why you include this. It is generally agreed that this is a cancer protection mechanism. We have got 5-8 years of good solid research on this and I believe Geron is testing drugs to promote this. > random encoding damage Yep, its there. Its the source of most genetic diseases. It probably contributes to aging. It can't easily be fixed until we better understand the DNA repair process which involves 120+ proteins. But we now *have* the gene sequences for most or all of those proteins! > duplicate genes on different chromosomes, An interesting product of evolution (genomic segments get swapped within chromosomes and between chromsomes). > enzymatic expression and repression on genes, controller genes, gene > families and other cell factors on DNA expression, [snip] Yep it is complex! But can you point out a system with 30,000+ parts (perhaps 90,000+ if you count splice variants) that is not complex??? It sounds like you are commenting on the fact that you as an individual may not be able to understand it. Live with it. I as an individual cannot understand the complete design of a 767 either! > So my point still stands: As we complete each milestone, we discover more > milestones. Not really. For example a basic biochemistry text will show you a wealth of things about biology that we currently know and do not need to do an infinite amout of additional research on. Most of the current milestones being worked on we knew at the start of the HGP. It comes down to genes, structure, function, diseases, therapies (in various orders). > I don't know if genetic reprogramming is now closer or farther > away than we thought before we mapped the genome. Oh it is much closer. It gets closer every day when a parent of a child with one of the known 8000+ genetic conditions looks at a physician and says "Isn't there anything you can do to help my child". Completing the HGP (it technically isn't complete yet because only a few of the chromosomes have what one could call a "robust" analysis) allows those physicians to identify problems and develop interventions much more quickly than they could a decade ago. The therapeutic methods (from gene therapies [with a few mis-steps] to rapid drug screening) are moving along. [Just recently there was a report of the discovery of a set of drugs that were effective against the botulism toxin.] I have a very clear vision of how to do "genetic reprogramming" and how it might be done within the next decade. There are at least 2 companies that I'm aware of working on some of the basic technologies required. The questions that will need to be asked are more likely to be "What do you want the program to be?". The people involved in sports are going to be very unhappy when one can rewrite the program on demand. Robert From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 19 01:43:47 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:43:47 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress References: <3FBABDE3.CE1FE4CE@blarg.net> Message-ID: <082601c3ae3e$92e9b120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> [interjection - very reluctantly as this is off-topic again] Robert Bradbury wrote: > Harvey said: > > > Yes, the genome got mapped faster than predicted. But since > > those predictions, we have learned a lot more about genetics. > > Instead of giving us all the answers on gene expression, > > Actually with respect to normal gene expression it has given > us a big part of the puzzle. Transcription factors primarily come > in two or three standard forms and it is relatively easy to pull > them out of the genome sequence. (They are small tend not to > have introns that interupt the sequence, etc.) > > > we now know we have to conquer mitochondrial DNA > > We knew that up front and its quite simple actually. There is > a large and expanding database of MtDNA sequences from > various species. Human MtDNA is actually one of the easier > ones since it is one of the smallest. > > > RNA, > > Its not a large story -- we know the RNA genomic sequences, > where they are and what they do. The only exception to this > would be the microRNA sequences that appear to be largely > left over from the "original" genome > > (since most appear to influence development). > > Still an open question IMO is the degree to which the RNA > sequences contribute to aging. The sequences coding for RNA > within the genome tend to be repetitive and so the may > contribute to improper recombinational repair that results in > the corruption of the genome over time. > > > protein folding, > > It was always recognized by molecular biologists that this was > going to be part of the puzzle. I have read that the NSF is > cranking up the X-ray crystalography capabilities to ~30,000 > proteins/year. I will believe it ^^^^^ Robert, this is not an aspiration that is good for you. There is nothing cerebral about *believing anything* its just a habit of internal labelling that also gets expressed by those who do it. The word is in the dictionary sure - but somewhere someone is probably adding mother-fucker as we speak to the dictionary as well and we probably don't want to use that either. When you use the word in a post like this it picks up extra credibility from you and makes it all the more likely others are going to use it in the same way. I've made (or tried to make) the point to Spike, to Harvey, to Jacques and to others. Spike, Harvey and Jacques seems either not have got it or to have disagreed and decided not to voice their reasons for disagreement. That is their perogative and I will not hound them now that I know they are aware. You maybe haven't had the chance to realise it yet and make a choice. So let me point it out. (1) There are available synonyms for every possible legitimate use of the word believe and belief that a person can use and convey their meaning just as well. (2) There are consequences in a social world of believers to intelligent folk (like yourself and the others on this list) propagating the meme of believing by expressing the word in communication. (3) The word is extremely habit forming and will become part of what we say and write if we don't check its use. Using it, rather than not using it, is the default because believing is part of our cultural heritage we learn to label things beliefs and to say I believe when we learn to speak. Believeing as a meme invades us like enteric bacteria invades a neonate. But we can replace the use of the word in our thoughts and our expressions to our good political effect if we choose to - if we are aware of the process. Please tell me you are aware of the process and are making a deliberate informed choice whenever you use the word BELIEVE and I will not bother you over your use of "I believe" again. (Well not you anyway and not for a while - I'm not repeat posting for the fun of it). No insult is intended (I think you know that) but I am writing knowing others will probably read this too. And I think it is important that people see that intelligence is no safe-guard from propagating bad memes that become part of our habit. As to the arguments as to whether the meme is actually bad there are now probably about a dozen threads (I'd guess) that have arguments in them but I will gladly spell them out again for you offlist I you want. Sorry for the interjection Robert I am very interested in the rest of the post too and if I seem preoccupied with this believe word business it could well be that I am - but so far no-one has countered the arguments with anything more than strawmen and I think I have answered most of the strawmen too. Regards, Brett From bradbury at blarg.net Wed Nov 19 01:43:42 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 17:43:42 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Gods of Mars was Message-ID: <20031119014305.86A513826D@mail.blarg.net> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 5:08am Alfio Puglisi wrote: > Well, I'm happy that space tech is more advanced than I thought :-) Well it isn't that advanced "yet". But determining how to "make it so" is what makes life interesting. I suppose I could call up one of the local companies that are pushing the space elevator ideas and plague them to do the calculations as to precisely on what planets elevators will or will not work? That could yield some interesting ideas for discussion. R. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hal at finney.org Tue Nov 18 18:18:19 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 10:18:19 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <200311181818.hAIIIJc02503@finney.org> Harvey writes: > I would also like to ask: > Why no singularity 10 years after somebody predicted it on this list? > Why no AI? Why no uploading? Why no robots doing our laundry? Why no > flying cars? Why no space colonies? Why no immortality pills? > > Many predictions have been made in this forum ten years ago. I am not sure > that any of the big predictions have actually come true. Why are the > expected technological breakthroughs not occurring as fast as predicted? I question whether anyone on this list made those predictions. Who predicted the Singularity by 2003? I remember Eliezer saying 2008, and Dan Clemmensen is apparently sticking to 2006. Likewise, did anyone expect AI, uploading, or laundry robots by today's date? While I think people did and do anticipate many of these enhancements, they have generally been put 20-30 years in the future. The real question is, in the ten years or so that this list has existed, have we gotten ten years closer to these advances? Ironically, the biggest change I see is one no one anticipated, and is social rather than technical: our ideas have gone from almost total obscurity to being among the most important and controversial issues for public discussion and debate. Who would have imagined ten years ago that we would have a Presidential Council opining about transhumanism? Look at the table of contents from their October, 2003 report, at http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/beyondtherapy/fulldoc.html: > Chapter One: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness > Chapter Two: Better Children > Chapter Three: Superior Performance > Chapter Four: Ageless Bodies > Chapter Five: Happy Souls These topics could have been taken from the subject lines of this list at any time over the past ten years, and now they are being discussed at the highest levels: ageless bodies, better children, superior performance. Granted, the experts are against these things, but that is after all a natural first reaction to these startling concepts. I will go out on a limb and predict that within 10-12 years, our ideas will have gained in popularity, and technology will have continued to move incrementally forward, so that we will see a major, organized social effort to push for one or more transhumanist goals, perhaps some of those on Harvey's list. People will want these things, and they will by then be close enough that a concerted effort can bring them into our grasp. It may be AI, nanotech, life extension, or some technology we didn't quite anticipate. But I think we will see some major new efforts beginning in the decade of the 2010's. Hal From bradbury at blarg.net Wed Nov 19 02:18:45 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 18:18:45 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <20031119021808.33597381C5@mail.blarg.net> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 5:39pm Brett Paatsch wrote: > [interjection - very reluctantly as this is off-topic again] [snip] I wrote: > "I will believe it" I'm sorry Brett but I have only briefly noticed some discussion on the "belief" topic. Being occupied with the problems my data link provider has created (... oh yes lets decide to change DSL standards and not bother to tell our older customers... -- and you don't want to know how many hours it took to find this out). However I will simply state this. I do not have a fine sensitivity for semantics in writing. Verbal expression and the fine points of that art are not something that I am good at. If I make points in a discussion it is generally based on depth of knowledge and not based on how I can craft an argument. You are welcome to critique how I express myself but I warn you ahead of time -- it may not sink into this skull (not because I am opposed to it in any way -- simply because I don't have an internal system to represent it effectively). Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 19 02:46:10 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 18:46:10 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <00e601c3ae03$a9064080$9f994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <003201c3ae47$4a5d37c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > This is an extreme reading of the original rather dodgy > research, which just claimed that racists use more mental effort in disguising > their real attitudes when answering tests that would reveal their racism > in a context where such attitudes are disapproved, and that this brain > activity can be instrument-detected... Damien Broderick The way I read the article, the researchers have not only figured out that a racist's brain is more active when she is looking at a member of a different race, they are also claiming to know *what her brain is actually doing* which is to say they have discovered how to read actual thoughts. This is wonderful news friends, for we no longer need a criminal court system! All we need to do is call in this team, hook up the mind-reading equipment and nail those perps. This is bad news for the porno industry, however. The research team could hook up my brain to the instrument, rig it up to video output and people could watch that for free; no need to spend all that money on porno videos. This could bankrupt the entire industry. spike From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 19 03:02:18 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:02:18 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <088f01c3ae49$8b837640$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Robert wrote: On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 5:39pm Brett Paatsch wrote: >> [interjection - very reluctantly as this is off-topic again] >[snip] > > [Robert]: > "I will believe it" > I'm sorry Brett but I have only briefly noticed some > discussion on the "belief" topic. Being occupied with > the problems my data link provider has created (... > oh yes lets decide to change DSL standards and not > bother to tell our older customers... -- and you don't > want to know how many hours it took to find this out). Yeah I thought so : ) > However I will simply state this. I do not have a fine > sensitivity for semantics in writing. Verbal expression > and the fine points of that art are not something that > I am good at. If I make points in a discussion it is > generally based on depth of knowledge and not based on > how I can craft an argument. You are welcome > to critique how I express myself but I warn you ahead > of time -- it may not sink into this skull (not because > I am opposed to it in any way -- simply because I don't > have an internal system to represent it effectively). I understand. I think amongst the uncommon skulls on this list yours may be the more usual form even all these years after the so called Enlightenment. I have been warned about the difficulties of trying to heard cats, I guess I figured when the cats were bright and I had their interest as well as mine in mind, I should have been able to pull it off persuasively or at least see the better argument come to the surface. I guess not. The believing meme even on this list is stronger than I am. Pity. I really did think the consequences of a small voluntary change would be good. Now I am beginning to think getting people to voluntarily change their habits (which takes time away from their agendas) is about as difficult as kick starting a singularity. And it really does matter *where* or *why* one tries to change the habit - resistance will be 'to the death' everywhere. Bummer. Regards, Brett [Developing a Cassandra complex - but just a simple one :-)] From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 19 03:00:07 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:00:07 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] c vs si chess again In-Reply-To: <47BF60A2A5AB3C4898B67142F206446948D6F1@EMSS01M15.us.lmco.com> Message-ID: <000001c3ae49$3ce91620$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Kasparov drew against Fritz today. 8-| Match ends tied 2-2. Congratulations Fritz team on an awesome accomplishment! {8-] That makes 8 matches in a row of a top ten human vs a computer ending in a tie, 53 games, even score. Check out these links, they are cool. For some reason it reminded me of something Anders might create. {8-] spike Select each link and then run your mouse over the pictures. > > > http://www.takahata.comm.waseda.ac.jp/~yoshida/work03.swf > > > http://www.takahata.comm.waseda.ac.jp/~yoshida/work04.swf > > > http://www.takahata.comm.waseda.ac.jp/~yoshida/work05.swf > > > http://www.takahata.comm.waseda.ac.jp/~yoshida/work08.swf > > > http://www.takahata.comm.waseda.ac.jp/~yoshida/work09.swf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlorrey at yahoo.com Wed Nov 19 03:12:37 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:12:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Can we improve upon monkey politics? In-Reply-To: <07d501c3ae29$f7ae6700$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <20031119031237.39643.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- Brett Paatsch wrote: > In his, imo excellent, essay Democracy and Transhumanism, > http://www.extropy.org/politicaltheory.htm Max More seems > to puts an iron question in a velvet glove when he asks "..surely, > as we strive to transcend the biological limitations of human > nature, we can also improve upon monkey politics?" > > Clearly few transhumanists are as concerned about monkey > politics as they are about human politics. Yet is it at all clear, > let alone sure, that biological humans, even transhumanists, > can transcend human politics? Is is so much as something completely new, or merely building on the historical trends in political evolution? It is rather clear that human political evolution is building toward complete individual sovereignty, where only the individual has any right to make decisions that impact themselves as individuals. Anarchism is the natural political orientation of the transhumanist or the posthuman. Ideally, all transhumans will have lawbots acting as intelligent agents to automatically negotiate and reach contracts on all levels of interaction with fellow transhumanbeings, negotiation will range from polite discussion up to proxy duelling bot combat. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 19 03:31:51 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:31:51 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <16314.3520.114365.483846@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <000001c3ae4d$abee93c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > Fun post, inspired by the feeling of power, power to heal and fix > things. Of course, by saying "this is not a problem, let's go ahead, > we can fix it", you create a large responsability for yourself. That's right, I am claiming global warming is not a problem, but rather a solution. Humans must take control of the weather on this planet as soon as we can manage to do it. (But Im not sure we are quite there yet.) Since we humans are claiming that we *can* have an impact on the temperature, we are now liable in a sense if we fail to do so. Right? More humans perish on this planet because of cold than because of heat, and certainly most animals are colder than optimal most of the time. Furthermore, even the global warming extremists are claiming that the poles are warming more than the temperate regions. Whats not to like? What are we waiting for? > > Just an unrelated question, Spike: why do you hit ENTER at the end of > every line (or am I misled?)? You can let the computer do it > ya know :-) > > Jacques Tis true, young people, I am so geezerly that the old habits die hard. I used to use a typewriter that didn't even need electricity! In college! (Oy vey.) Actually, the reason I put the returns at the end of the lines is to make the text that I write more compact than the text to which I am replying, which makes it easier to distinguish in posts with multiple replies and perhaps reduce misattribution. Those greater than signs >> help, but the narrower text helps more. For the same reason, when I am offlisting to one or two people, I write everything in lower case. This reinforces to the reader that the post is a private communication. spike From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 19 04:07:22 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 23:07:22 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <200311181818.hAIIIJc02503@finney.org> Message-ID: <01f301c3ae52$a21a4dd0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Hal Finney wrote, > Harvey writes: > > > Why no singularity 10 years after somebody predicted it on this list? > > I question whether anyone on this list made those > predictions. Who predicted the Singularity by 2003? I > remember Eliezer saying 2008, and Dan Clemmensen is > apparently sticking to 2006. Unless you are seriously arguing for the singularity within the next 2 or 5 years, you are not refuting my point. > Ironically, the biggest change I see is one no one > anticipated, and is social rather than technical: our ideas > have gone from almost total obscurity to being among the most > important and controversial issues for public discussion and > debate. Strangely, I don't see such a dramatic change. I used to argue that these ideas aren't new and appeared in science fiction decades ago. Now that everybody agrees that these ideas are unique, they think that we have changed the world. Instead of paying attention to how many people have the same ideas, we need to focus on how many members our organizations have. Our small numbers in no way support the idea that we have brought about these changes. > Who would have imagined ten years ago that we would > have a Presidential Council opining about transhumanism? Look > at the table of contents from their October, 2003 report, at > http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/beyondtherapy/fulldoc.html: > > > Chapter One: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness > > Chapter Two: Better Children > > Chapter Three: Superior Performance > > Chapter Four: Ageless Bodies > > Chapter Five: Happy Souls > > These topics could have been taken from the subject lines of > this list at any time over the past ten years, and now they > are being discussed at the highest levels: ageless bodies, They could have been taken from our list, but they weren't. None of us are listed in the bibliography. The report doesn't reference any of our institutions. The more accurate explanation for this phenomenon is that our members have been copying these same references to our lists over the years. > I will go out on a limb and predict that within 10-12 years, > our ideas will have gained in popularity, and technology will > have continued to move incrementally forward, so that we will > see a major, organized social effort to push for one or more > transhumanist goals, perhaps some of those on Harvey's list. > People will want these things, and they will by then be close > enough that a concerted effort can bring them into our grasp. > It may be AI, nanotech, life extension, or some technology we > didn't quite anticipate. But I think we will see some major > new efforts beginning in the decade of the 2010's. It is an old truism among technology researchers. The next big revolution is about 10 years away. It is always 10 years away. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From neptune at superlink.net Wed Nov 19 04:26:35 2003 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 23:26:35 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress References: <20031119021808.33597381C5@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: <00e301c3ae55$52403a60$c8cd5cd1@neptune> Let me have a look at your source code and I'll have a patch out for it by Xmas...:) Dan From: bradbury To: ExI chat list Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 9:18 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 5:39pm Brett Paatsch wrote: > [interjection - very reluctantly as this is off-topic again] [snip] I wrote: > "I will believe it" I'm sorry Brett but I have only briefly noticed some discussion on the "belief" topic. Being occupied with the problems my data link provider has created (... oh yes lets decide to change DSL standards and not bother to tell our older customers... -- and you don't want to know how many hours it took to find this out). However I will simply state this. I do not have a fine sensitivity for semantics in writing. Verbal expression and the fine points of that art are not something that I am good at. If I make points in a discussion it is generally based on depth of knowledge and not based on how I can craft an argument. You are welcome to critique how I express myself but I warn you ahead of time -- it may not sink into this skull (not because I am opposed to it in any way -- simply because I don't have an internal system to represent it effectively). Robert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aperick at centurytel.net Wed Nov 19 05:09:07 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 21:09:07 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: <200311181825.hAIIPQX22658@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <1567195.1069218595958.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > Is anyone here a primatologist, anthropologist, or geneticist? I am working on a research paper for no particular reason than to organize my thoughts and I need to find out a few things. 1.) Bonobos show that they diverged from chimpanzees about 2 mya. Are they capable of breeding with regular chimpanzees. Do they show any history of doing so? If so, do they produce sterile offspring? 2.) A donkey and a horse may make a mule. Sterile, but a creature that has characteristics of both horses and donkeys. A bengal cat is a cross between the asian leopard cat (felis bengalensis) and a domestic house cat. The male offspring are also sterile, but the females may breed yet again with a domestic housecat male and produce males that are not sterile. Are there similar occurrances in the primate world? /> Hey, this is a great question. I want to know all the facts re primate hybrids. How many chromosomes does each have? And what about other hybrid species, is the same number of chromosomes required for a live birth? Is there a way to reliably predict the outcome of an untried cross breed or must we just try it? In spite of MY handle, I volunteer Kevin. But, seriously, I have inquired before to primatologists re human ape hybrid potential, and they just seem to get kinda freaked out (maybe it's my handle again) like they know something but are afraid to tell. I'm not schooled enough (not recently anyway) to know if I may be guilty of a kind of "querying a physicist about perpetual motion machines," or, maybe this topic is just to "sensitive" in this world. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 19 05:32:45 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 16:32:45 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress References: <01f301c3ae52$a21a4dd0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <08fd01c3ae5e$8fb3f400$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Hal Finney wrote, > > Harvey writes: > > > > > Why no singularity 10 years after somebody predicted > > > it on this list? > > > > I question whether anyone on this list made those > > predictions. Who predicted the Singularity by 2003? I > > remember Eliezer saying 2008, and Dan Clemmensen is > > apparently sticking to 2006. > > Unless you are seriously arguing for the singularity within the > next 2 or 5 years, you are not refuting my point. If anybody wants to put money on the singularity occuring in the next 5 years I'll be happy to discuss the terms of a bet to the contrary. Just spell out the determining conditions so that they can be determined by an impartial third party. Regards, Brett From reason at exratio.com Wed Nov 19 05:45:36 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 21:45:36 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <200311181818.hAIIIJc02503@finney.org> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Hal Finney > I will go out on a limb and predict that within 10-12 years, our ideas > will have gained in popularity, and technology will have continued to > move incrementally forward, so that we will see a major, organized social > effort to push for one or more transhumanist goals, perhaps some of those > on Harvey's list. People will want these things, and they will by then > be close enough that a concerted effort can bring them into our grasp. > It may be AI, nanotech, life extension, or some technology we didn't > quite anticipate. But I think we will see some major new efforts > beginning in the decade of the 2010's. An important thing to note is that is isn't going to happen without work. If we all sit back and do nothing, the predictions above will not come to pass. Everything worthwhile requires effort. Reason http://www.exratio.com From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Wed Nov 19 05:39:32 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 16:09:32 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0AF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > > Hal Finney wrote, > > > Harvey writes: > > > > > > > Why no singularity 10 years after somebody predicted > > > > it on this list? > > > > > > I question whether anyone on this list made those > > > predictions. Who predicted the Singularity by 2003? I > > > remember Eliezer saying 2008, and Dan Clemmensen is > > > apparently sticking to 2006. > > > > Unless you are seriously arguing for the singularity within the > > next 2 or 5 years, you are not refuting my point. > > If anybody wants to put money on the singularity occuring in > the next 5 years I'll be happy to discuss the terms of a bet > to the contrary. Just spell out the determining conditions > so that they can be determined by an impartial third party. > > Regards, > Brett > Who's going to bet on the singularity occuring at any given date? Either it doesn't happen, and you lose, or it does happen, and the bet is irrelevant. Drawing on a post of Eliezer's in the last day or two, it's like betting on the end of the world. Emlyn From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 19 06:23:03 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 17:23:03 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0AF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <091a01c3ae65$96b9e140$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > > > > Hal Finney wrote, > > > > Harvey writes: > > > > > > > > > Why no singularity 10 years after somebody predicted > > > > > it on this list? > > > > > > > > I question whether anyone on this list made those > > > > predictions. Who predicted the Singularity by 2003? I > > > > remember Eliezer saying 2008, and Dan Clemmensen is > > > > apparently sticking to 2006. > > > > > > Unless you are seriously arguing for the singularity within the > > > next 2 or 5 years, you are not refuting my point. > > > > If anybody wants to put money on the singularity occuring in > > the next 5 years I'll be happy to discuss the terms of a bet > > to the contrary. Just spell out the determining conditions > > so that they can be determined by an impartial third party. > > > > Regards, > > Brett > > Who's going to bet on the singularity occuring at any given date? > Either it doesn't happen, and you lose, or it does happen, > and the bet is irrelevant. Drawing on a post of Eliezer's in the > last day or two, it's like betting on the end of the world. Somebody practical enough to make an impartially verifiable prediction based on real judgement and who thinks the singularity does not means the end of the world. Do you know anyone like that? Regards, Brett From gpmap at runbox.com Wed Nov 19 06:28:47 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:28:47 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Can we improve upon monkey politics? In-Reply-To: <07d501c3ae29$f7ae6700$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: First, I am not so sure we have improved on monkey politics yet. Doing human politics instead of monkey politics would perhaps already be good enough in today's world. Can we TRANSCEND human politics? Of course not, by definition since we are humans. Posthumans will transcend human politics. Can we IMPROVE human politics? I think yes we can, by considering politics as engineering: first we establish some goals, then find out how to come as cloase as possible to such goals in view of the constraints of the real world. -----Original Message----- So can we (or any group of people who want to forge a particular future either individually or collectively from a variety of alternatives) transcend *human* politics in the broader sense of the word politics? I think my answer is obvious but I am genuinely interested to hear others. Regards, Brett From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 19 06:41:00 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:41:00 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <091a01c3ae65$96b9e140$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000001c3ae68$195ddf00$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress > > Somebody practical enough to make an impartially verifiable > prediction based on real judgement and who thinks the singularity > does not means the end of the world. Do you know anyone like > that? Regards, Brett Im with the crowd who think the singularity need not mean the end of the world, only the end of the world as we have known it. In some ways we mighta been better off using the term event horizon for the singularity, or perhaps Damien's term, the Spike. In black hole terminology, the (astronomical) singularity is where all the stuff is concentrated. Crashing into that is definitely the end of the world. But there is an event horizon way out there before you reach the (astronomical) singularity. An observer can cross an event horizon and not realize anything untoward has occurred, assuming that event horizon is waaaay far away from the (astronomical) singularity so that the gravitational gradient is not too severe. In futurology, once AIs surpass human intelligence and can self organize, it is impossible to forecast what will happen, because we are inherently not smart enough. We can't do it any more than our dogs can predict what we will do. But one can imagine a singularity that is completely transparent to humans: we simply become sentient simulations in our sleep. I expect the post singularity world will be way cool. spike From gpmap at runbox.com Wed Nov 19 06:57:55 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:57:55 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Adults-only science centre opens doors in London Message-ID: MSNBC has a story on a new, adults-only science centre in London where the public will be encouraged to debate the most controversial issues of the day. Be it the implications of genetically modified foods, face transplants, sex over 60, male pregnancy, death or AIDS, the Dana Centre plans to tackle topical, sometimes-taboo subjects. It is only centre of its type in the world and it is certainly one of the very few...focused on adults. With three floors of exhibition space, state-of-the-art digital technology, online discussion boards and an electronic voting system housed in a striking building, the centre hopes to make science exciting and to take the public pulse on topical issues and relay it back to the government. The Dana Centre marks a new direction in science communication: to challenge public perception and tackle contemporary science head on, with the capacity to be exciting, entertaining, stimulating, different, radical and edgy. This dynamic events space will bring the hottest themes in modern science to adults-only audiences through a programme of bold and innovative events. It will be a taboo-free centre and the place to talk science. The first public discussion at the new central London venue will be about whether face transplants, once confined to the realms of science fiction, should take place. It will follow a talk by a leading US plastic surgeon who could be the first to perform the procedure. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Nov 19 07:15:25 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 23:15:25 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] youth extension + blue people in their prime In-Reply-To: <20031118111404.E267C33FEB@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: <000001c3ae6c$e75f9d90$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Ahhhh, life is gooooood. {8-] Hmmm Spike -- I think someday you and I and Eli and Robin and a few other folks are going to have to sit down and have a serious discussion about what makes life good. .. Robert I have as much difficulty as the next person actually defining fun, but I definitely know I am having it. Im really having a good time living these days, with lots of hiking, camping, motorcycles, learning, etc. I am certain that new Mersenne's primes do not keep the blue people entertained. Well, Robert, perhaps a new mersenne entertains about one in a thousand blue people, just as it entertains about that same fraction of the more traditionally complected people. I just happened to be that one. "good" would seem to be a very relative term. Robert Sure, of course, but it seems to me that those of us fortunate enough to be living today and having access to that piece of equipment now sitting before you are living the "good" life by any definition, eh? That reminded me of a question posed here a couple weeks ago: Why are not more people interested in life extension? I think it is because of the perception that life extension and youth extension are two different things. When I talk about life extension with coworkers, they imagine their 80 year old grandmother, perhaps living not such a good life, cranky, sick a lot, etc. They imagine living in that condition for 40 years and just say no to it. On the other hand, if we emphasize *youth extension* like you did in your pitch at extro4, we might get more takers. Of course there are jillions of people selling youth extension in one form or another, the viagra people, the baldness cures, etc. All we need are youth extension techniques that actually work, thus extending not just life but extending the good life. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jacques at dtext.com Wed Nov 19 10:58:37 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 11:58:37 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <082601c3ae3e$92e9b120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <3FBABDE3.CE1FE4CE@blarg.net> <082601c3ae3e$92e9b120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <3FBB4CDD.8040606@dtext.com> Brett Paatsch wrote: > I've made (or tried to make) the > point to Spike, to Harvey, to Jacques and to others. Spike, Harvey > and Jacques seems either not have got it or to have disagreed > and decided not to voice their reasons for disagreement. Not true. I have voiced some reasons. You responded by a message extremely long, not devoid of some arrogance (speculating among other things that I might not be mentally equipped to understand the opportunity of your crusade) and -- which is even more amusing given the circumstance -- showing signs of impatience. Some of your arguments I found embarrassingly bad. I felt you didn't understand mine and didn't care to try to understand them. In fact, I felt you were not engaged in rational discussion but in a heavy, naive and boring attempt at manipulation, using all the apparatus of -- sorry Brett -- the True Believer in some vision supported by no evidence and linked to personal history ("you can grow out of it", "you cannot understand it now but you will see [the light?]", "I want it out of circulation!", etc.). These are not very good conditions to pursue a discussion in which one sees no stake (but is willing to stay open for some time as a matter of principle and good will). Maybe you have decided to eradicate desire as well from your psychological ontology, but I need some of that to keep discussing, as well as a reasonable hope (probably on the taboo list, too?) that the discussion might be fruitful. I may give another shot at it soon, but I am a bit busy right now. Jacques From bradbury at blarg.net Wed Nov 19 11:24:17 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (Robert Bradbury) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 03:24:17 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution Message-ID: <3FBB52E1.9EED61AA@blarg.net> aperick, commenting on kevin's comments wrote: > I want to know all the facts re primate hybrids. > How many chromosomes does each have? I thought there was a slight difference but I checked in Google. Chimps and Gorillas have 48 chromosomes vs. 46 in humans. > And what about other hybrid species, is the same number of > chromosomes required for a live birth? You might manage a live birth with and abnormal number or mis-formed chromosomes. Down's syndrome (trisomy 21) comes to mind. There are others (humans can apparently survive with trisomy 21, 18, 13 and 8). But the consequences may be quite significant. [Google: trisomy syndromes]. We do not know enough to reliably predict in any way the results of an untried cross breed. But for cases where there is an extensive amount of work (e.g. plants) there may be enough knowledge to make an educated guess as to whether it will work. It remains (to my knowledge) a mystery in biology the specific requirements that allow the development of new species. This may involve simple chromosome rearrangements or in the more difficult cases an increase or reduction in the number of chromosomes. Increases or reductions probably make reproduction much more difficult and so those lines in most cases die out. The technology for chromosome mapping is now relatively robust. So we can look at human chromosome segments and know what mouse chromosome segments they match up against. So even though humans and mice are separated by many tens of millions of years of evolution we can look at the genomes and know that in the process of evolution "this went here and that went there". Probably sometime later in this decade or early in the next decade someone will try to backtrack this information and assemble the proto-genome for mammals. After that attempts at the assembly of the proto-genome for older higher level organisms (reptiles, fish, etc.) will probably be attempted. There is a lot of room for graduate students making a mark for themselves in attempting such reconstructions. So -- I would not be surprised at all if we could eventually recreate the Neanderthals, the Mammoths and eventually the Dinosaurs. We might even be able to recover what was lost after the Cambrian Explosion. Robert From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 19 12:01:18 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 23:01:18 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress References: <3FBABDE3.CE1FE4CE@blarg.net> <082601c3ae3e$92e9b120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FBB4CDD.8040606@dtext.com> Message-ID: <0a0201c3ae94$d7788ae0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jacques wrote: > Brett Paatsch wrote: > > > I've made (or tried to make) the > > point to Spike, to Harvey, to Jacques and to others. > > Spike, Harvey and Jacques seems either not have got it or > > to have disagreed and decided not to voice their reasons for > > disagreement. > > Not true. I have voiced some reasons. Some counterpoint which I replied to. So far you have chosen not to reply to those replies. >You responded by a message extremely long, It was long yes. That can't be helped sometimes. I thought you threw up some straw men but that you didn't do it as a tactic so I tried to answer them to give you context. The ones in response to your comments in particular were written for you in particular. They possibly add nothing to the argument for others but my point was to empower you working with what seemed to be pertinent to you. A good argument and a worthy and empowering insight is worth a little suboptimal conveying I figure until better means of convey it are worked out. [snip] > Some of your arguments I found embarrassingly bad. Either the arguments are right or wrong there is no point you being embarrassed on my behalf. If they are bad they should fall. The ones in response to your comments in particular were written for you in particular. I do not really doubt, although I cannot prove it, that you are capable of grasping the truth Jacques *if* you see it as worth your effort. Its the second bit that is hard. There are some non-obvious things however and to get some of them real intellectual effort not just capacity is sometimes required. > Maybe you have decided to eradicate desire as > well from your psychological ontology, No. I deleted some of the other stuff. But this is not what I said anywhere nor what I desire. > I may give another shot at it soon, but I am a bit busy right > now. Your perogative. You don't have an exclusive on busy. Regards, Brett [Please don't reply to this post Jacques - there is nothing in it worth replying too the meat is in the other one.] From jacques at dtext.com Wed Nov 19 12:43:06 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:43:06 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <0a0201c3ae94$d7788ae0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <3FBABDE3.CE1FE4CE@blarg.net> <082601c3ae3e$92e9b120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FBB4CDD.8040606@dtext.com> <0a0201c3ae94$d7788ae0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <3FBB655A.7010309@dtext.com> Brett Paatsch wrote: > I do not really doubt, although I cannot prove it, that you > are capable of grasping the truth Jacques *if* you see it as > worth your effort. Thanks. Be aware, though, that grasping the truth and agreeing with you may not be the same thing in all circumstances. So, if you just wait for me to agree with you to declare that I now grasp the truth, that may not be the most fruitful attitude. In any case, I find your attitude in this message more auspicious, and I will reply to your message, as soon as I finish some urgent work I must deliver on Friday. Jacques PS: > [Please don't reply to this post Jacques - there is nothing > in it worth replying too the meat is in the other one.] Please stop telling me what I should do all the time ;-) From mbb386 at main.nc.us Wed Nov 19 12:46:58 2003 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:46:58 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) Subject: [extropy-chat] youth extension + blue people in their prime In-Reply-To: <000001c3ae6c$e75f9d90$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3ae6c$e75f9d90$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: I think there's a lot to this POV. Many don't think about *life* extension until things start to fail. And then *life* extension doesn't sound too good. Now if I were able to extend how I felt at 40, that would be a different story altogether.:) Right now, the idea of extending the way I am... forget it. Regards, MB On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > > I think it is because of the perception that life extension and > youth extension are two different things. When I talk about > life extension with coworkers, they imagine their 80 year old > grandmother, perhaps living not such a good life, cranky, sick > a lot, etc. They imagine living in that condition for 40 years > and just say no to it. > > On the other hand, if we emphasize *youth extension* like you > did in your pitch at extro4, we might get more takers. Of course > there are jillions of people selling youth extension in one form > or another, the viagra people, the baldness cures, etc. All we > need are youth extension techniques that actually work, thus > extending not just life but extending the good life. > From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 19 12:49:41 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:49:41 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <003201c3ae47$4a5d37c0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <028001c3ae9b$9cd87060$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Spike wrote, > The way I read the article, the researchers have not > only figured out that a racist's brain is more active > when she is looking at a member of a different race, > they are also claiming to know *what her brain is > actually doing* which is to say they have discovered > how to read actual thoughts. The reports say nothing even remotely close to this. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 19 12:50:01 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:50:01 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0AF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <028101c3ae9b$a8ebb790$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Emlyn O'regan wrote, > Who's going to bet on the singularity occuring at any given > date? Either it doesn't happen, and you lose, or it does > happen, and the bet is irrelevant. Drawing on a post of > Eliezer's in the last day or two, it's like betting on the > end of the world. Oh ye of little imagination. How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum to the singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, they pay me back my money plus a large sum of their own. Any takers? -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 19 12:50:17 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:50:17 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <0a0201c3ae94$d7788ae0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <028201c3ae9b$b3519ce0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Brett Paatsch wrote, > > > I've made (or tried to make) the > > > point to Spike, to Harvey, to Jacques and to others. Spike, Harvey > > > and Jacques seems either not have got it or to have disagreed and > > > decided not to voice their reasons for disagreement. Not true. You have simply ignored the responses. I find your "points" to be emotional rhetoric about how great your idea is and how bad other people's are. But you never actually explain why you are right and they are wrong. You don't actually refute peoples points with counter points. You merely keep repeating your claims over and over. I believe that most people have simply given up trying to logically debate this with you. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 19 12:50:33 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:50:33 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution In-Reply-To: <3FBB52E1.9EED61AA@blarg.net> Message-ID: <028301c3ae9b$bade98a0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Robert Bradbury wrote, > > I thought there was a slight difference but I checked in > Google. Chimps and Gorillas have 48 chromosomes vs. 46 in humans. > > > And what about other hybrid species, is the same number of > > chromosomes required for a live birth? > > You might manage a live birth with and abnormal number or > mis-formed chromosomes. Down's syndrome (trisomy 21) comes > to mind. There are others (humans can apparently survive > with trisomy 21, 18, 13 and 8). But the consequences may be > quite significant. [Google: trisomy syndromes]. > > We do not know enough to reliably predict in any way the > results of an untried cross breed. But for cases where there > is an extensive amount of work (e.g. plants) there may be > enough knowledge to make an educated guess as to whether it will work. Are you guys actually debating whether humans can mate with chimps and have live cross-species children? I really question the level of scientific knowledge on this list. I assume that all your other biological predictions are equally scientific.... -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Wed Nov 19 12:51:00 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:51:00 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <000001c3ad9b$a726f470$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <028401c3ae9b$cbe4a8b0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Spike wrote, > Harvey I recognize that there are mutually exclusive > theories on this topic. I do not subscribe to both. Good. > Ive always believed in global warming in a sense: > I also believe in motherhood and apple pie, I like both. > > The part I have a lotta trouble believing is the > notion that global warming will happen quickly or > that it will cause major problems. I regret that > I am not likely to live to see the benefits of global warming, unless > cryonics works out, or the singularity people are successful. I don't think anybody is seriously arguing that it will happen quickly. Remember that the images of the statue of liberty with her torch poking out of the sea come from Hollywood sci-fi movies. These are not good sources for reference because they are always exaggerated. However, it still can be a disaster even if it occurs slowly. If half of my home state disappears, it would be disastrous. If major cities like Miami go away, or major retirements investments like all of Boca Raton disappear, it would destroy a generation of wealth. If the insurance companies had to pay replacement costs for just the outer 1% of the U.S. coastline, it would destroy the industry. If all our major ports have to go away and be rebuild further inland, the costs to maintain infrastructure would be disastrous. > As for runaway greenhouse effect, another Venus, > nah, I don't buy that. Again, this is science fiction. I think serious scientists are predicting the slow rise in temperatures and sea-levels that you are. They simply see more ramifications than you have acknowledged. It doesn't have to go outside the life-sustaining range to cause economic ruin to civilization. Little effects like the dot-com bubble, accounting fraud, or a single 9/11 terrorist attacks have long-term side-effects. What you are describing is much, much bigger than any of these. > Penguins will have trouble, yes. > But we can modify them genetically, or simply select a > subspecies that can survive on Canada's and Alaska's thawed > northern shores. And walruses, well, I wouldn't want to be > them. But plenty of other species will thrive, such as > humans. We are *Africans* fer evolutions sake! Now you seem to have strayed from serious argument to humor. If this entire posting was a joke, please disregard my comments above. > We are a smart species, we can move cities, we can > move nations. We can build cities on stilts. We can sequester water > inland. We can reclaim a great deal of land that is currently > useless, under ice most or all of the time. We can reclaim a lot of > fresh water that is currently wasted, by creating new rivers and > reservoirs, eliminating useless deserts. The Sahara > and Siberia both have bright futures, whereas now > they are nearly useless. Perhaps, but we can't do it now. We can't even maintain our roads right now. I believe that technology in the future will grow dramatically. But if we don't have the solution now, and we agree that your slow global warming is occurring, then we are literally in a race to create the technologies you describe before the slow disasters you describe. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 19 13:16:04 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 00:16:04 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress References: <028201c3ae9b$b3519ce0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <0a6801c3ae9f$4aab9de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Harvey Newstrom wrote: > Brett Paatsch wrote, > > > > I've made (or tried to make) the > > > > point to Spike, to Harvey, to Jacques and to others. > > > > Spike, Harvey and Jacques seems either not have got it > > > > or to have disagreed and decided not to voice their reasons > > > > for disagreement. > > Not true. You have simply ignored the responses. I read ever word you wrote. But the believing meme is carried in each person and it can only be removed voluntarily by each person. They is no tag-teaming the content of our inner dialog. > I find your "points" to be emotional rhetoric about how great > your idea is and how bad other people's are. I can't do anything with this comment divorced as it is from the context. > But you never actually explain why you are right and they are > wrong. You don't actually refute peoples points with counter > points. You merely keep repeating your claims over and over. I think I do and did. Which point did you make that was not responed to. I can persuade anyone of anything by knocking over straw men for ever. The topic is slippery. > I believe that most people have simply given up trying to logically > debate this with you. The debate cannot be had if you can't stop using the phrase "I believe" long enough to have it. You can't tell what most people think by guessing any more than I can. I can't persuade you if I write heaps of stuff trying to answer your points and you don't then read that stuff closely enough to engage with it. If you do engage with it however then there is only three outcomes, you will persuade me, I will persuade you or we will stop the debate for other reasons. I am not trying to beat you. I am trying to empower you. Regards, Brett From dgc at cox.net Wed Nov 19 14:16:35 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 9:16:35 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? Message-ID: <20031119141635.BLPT2297.lakemtao02.cox.net@smtp.east.cox.net> Eugen Leitl > On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:47:12PM -0500, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > > > This in turn means that your [Hal's]problem statement is not quite correct. We > > should nto try for a complete design as a proof of concept and an > > inducement. Rather, we should be specifically trying to generate a range > > of assembler designs that may be achievable using simpler tools. If we > > keep generating valid assembler designs, perhaps we will find one that > > is buildable. Thus, we do not want the best assembler. Instead we want > > an assembler that can be built, no matter how poor this assembler is, as > > long as this assembler can build a better assembler. > > > > Put it another way: the bootstrap problem is the only hard problem. > > > > In particular, we do not need an sssembler that can operate in a hostile > > envoronment. We are free to pick any arbitrary environment for the > > Unless you're trying to build a weapon ;) It doen't matter what I'm trying to build. This is the preliminary bootstrap assembler. A hand-cranked wooden lathe, which we then use to build a brass lathe, which we then use to build a steel lathe, which we then use to build a rifle. > > > bootstrap, as long as we can create that environment using macro- or > > micro- technology. Create the environmant, build the assembler using > > micro techniques, and then use the assembler to build a more robust > > assembler that can operate in more general environment. > > > > For example, assume that the bootstrap assembler is built from nanotubes > >[...] > > > > Here is a possible bootstrap sequence: > > [...] > > There are many designs possible. You could use a dip-pen lithography of [...] > > This is off the top of my head, there must be zillions of other variants. I suspect that there are many potential approaches to building the first primitive assembler, and furthermore I suspect that you, Hal, Robert, and Chris, at least, are more up to date than I am. That's not the point. The point is that we should focus on building that very first primitive assembler, and more specifically on finding a design and a construction method that is achievable starting from today's base. It does not matter how crude, or slow, or expensive the bootstrap assembler is, as long as it can build something better than itself. We only need one of them. (More specifically, it only needs to succeed once.) > > > Diamondoid-producing nanotube factory. [...] > You can separate higher diamondoids from natural sources. It should be > possible to functionalize their surface to make them sticky, and use > nanorobotics to map a library and assemble those which are complementary. > My example is very sketchy and not well analyzed. IT was more intended as an example of a progression. There are two critera for the bootstrap assembler: It must be buildable without using an assembler, and it must be able to build the next assembler in a progression. (We can and should state both criteria with more rigor.) Just as my "primitive nanotube-based assembler" may be a poor choice to satisfy the buildability criterion, my progression may be a poor example of the correct progression from the nanotube assembler. The point is to agree that the bootstrap assembler is the best goal to concentrate on now, and that the two critera are a good way to focue the effort. Drexler spend most of "Nanosystems" exploring Diamondoid nanotechnology in depth, and then sketched out some bootstraps. We have some new bootstrap approaches to explore that may be superior. This is where the effort needs to be spent. I've been away from this for the last five years. I apologize if I am re-hashing old ground. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: reply Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 207 bytes Desc: not available URL: From scerir at libero.it Wed Nov 19 14:40:46 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 15:40:46 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] belief References: <028201c3ae9b$b3519ce0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <0a6801c3ae9f$4aab9de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <003c01c3aeab$1e7f84a0$acbf1b97@administxl09yj> [Brett Paatsch] The debate cannot be had if you can't stop using the phrase "I believe" long enough to have it. [Brett Paatsch] Please tell me you are aware of the process and are making a deliberate informed choice whenever you use the word BELIEVE [...] I did not follow those threads. So I'm just pointing out, here, that 'believe' is a very difficult topic. I remember that Beth van Fraassen (1980) wrote there may be good reasons for 'accepting' postulates of a (scientific) theory (model) but we are never justified in 'believing' more than their empirical consequences. Many claimed there was no difference between 'acceptance' and 'belief'. This debate is still going on, after 20 years, in the British Journal for Philosophy of Science and in Philosophy of Science. (Yes, I know, it is not easy to apply all that to the Singularity, because of its own conceptual nature.) From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 19 15:05:27 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 16:05:27 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Why no assembler design? In-Reply-To: <20031119141635.BLPT2297.lakemtao02.cox.net@smtp.east.cox.net> References: <20031119141635.BLPT2297.lakemtao02.cox.net@smtp.east.cox.net> Message-ID: <20031119150527.GR478@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 09:16:35AM -0500, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > It doen't matter what I'm trying to build. This is the preliminary > bootstrap assembler. A hand-cranked wooden lathe, which we then use > to build a brass lathe, which we then use to build a steel lathe, > which we then use to build a rifle. I realize that. I was just trying to be cute on the cheap. (Btw, you're difficult to quote due to overlong lines). > I suspect that there are many potential approaches to building the first primitive assembler, and furthermore I suspect that you, Hal, Robert, and Chris, at least, are more up to date than I am. That's not the point. The point is that we should focus on building that very first primitive assembler, and more specifically on finding a design and a construction method that is achievable starting from today's base. It does not matter how crude, or slow, or expensive the bootstrap assembler is, as long as it can build something better than itself. We only need one of them. (More specifically, it only needs to succeed once.) My point is that there's a rich set of bootstrap scenarios, with very uncertain outcomes given our current knowledge, and it is hence way too early to hedge our bets. We should try all of them, and then focus on whatever one starts to pan out first. Luckily, you need only a good lab for one approach, and we've got plenty of labs capable. Difficult to make them interested that early in the game, though. Remember, the assembler has become synonymous with cargo cult in the mainstream science (not press, that's something different). People will actively discredit you and try to get your funds cut if you proclaim assemler is your design target. > My example is very sketchy and not well analyzed. IT was more intended as an example of a progression. There are two critera for the bootstrap assembler: It must be buildable without using an assembler, and it must be able to build the next assembler in a progression. (We can and should state both criteria with more rigor.) Just as my "primitive nanotube-based assembler" may be a poor choice to satisfy the buildability criterion, my progression may be a poor example of the correct progression from the nanotube assembler. > > The point is to agree that the bootstrap assembler is the best goal to concentrate on now, and that the two critera are a good way to focue the effort. We should focus on nanotechnology in general, not on the assembler alone, and not on a specific flavour of bootstrap. Imho, of course. > > Drexler spend most of "Nanosystems" exploring Diamondoid nanotechnology in depth, and then sketched out some bootstraps. We have some new bootstrap approaches to explore that may be superior. This is where the effort needs to be spent. > > I've been away from this for the last five years. I apologize if I am re-hashing old ground. I'm not sure just discussing this stuff matters. Reality tends to become rather normative. No one will even remember this group. All this work will be wasted, if we just keep talking. It's okay if we set out to generate hot air, but I presume a number of folks here are not, and might get unduly disappointed. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bradbury at blarg.net Wed Nov 19 15:26:43 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 07:26:43 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <20031119152606.476BF385C0@mail.blarg.net> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 8:24pm Technotranscendence wrote: > Let me have a look at your source code and I'll have a patch out for it = > by Xmas...:) Dan. This is perhaps reasonable if I had access to the source code. But my best guess is that we may be 15-20 years waiting for this (and I stress the *guess* part). The second problem I see with this strategy is people using the upgrade in an improper fashion -- ("Oh cool here is this upgrade that makes Robert Bradbury more verbal/semantic I'll just apply it to myself as well.") It seems to run the risk of creating lots more Robert Bradburys in the process. (A) I think I might have some copyright issues; and (B) would you really want to run the risk of creating more of me??? The Universe currently can probably comfortably hold several copies of Anders, myself, Robin, Eli, etc. but at some point it seems likely that something will have to give. I'd suggest you go read Aristoi again. Best, Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brian at posthuman.com Wed Nov 19 16:00:10 2003 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 10:00:10 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <028101c3ae9b$a8ebb790$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> References: <028101c3ae9b$a8ebb790$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <3FBB938A.101@posthuman.com> Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum to the > singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, they pay me > back my money plus a large sum of their own. > > Any takers? > Not here, but perhaps I should paypal $1 to anyone who can properly spell the word "singularitarian" on a regular basis :-) P.S. I recall Eliezer's original guess was for a high probability between 2008 and 2015, but he later revised it to "When it happens, it happens" after he read more about how often expert predictions fall outside of their 95% confidence area. -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From gpmap at runbox.com Wed Nov 19 17:56:10 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 17:56:10 GMT Subject: [extropy-chat] Middle East futures market returns Message-ID: >From CNN Money - A shelved Pentagon plan to create a market allowing traders to bet on the likelihood of events in the Middle East has been revived by the private firm that helped develop it. But the new version of the Policy Analysis Market (PAM) will not include any securities based on forecasts of violent events such as assassinations or terror attacks, in an effort to avoid the kind of criticism that sank the project this summer. CNN/Money incorrectly reported Monday that the market would be much like the one that was backed by the Defense Department, which would have allowed traders to create contracts for, say, whether Yasser Arafat would be assassinated. But subsequent e-mail correspondence with Charles Polk, president of San Diego-based Net Exchange, the company trying to relaunch the market, made it clear that traders won't be able to create contracts for such events. The possibility of such a contract under the first plan ignited a political firestorm that forced the Pentagon to drop its support for the market. See also www.policyanalysismarket.com/ From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 19 18:09:27 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:09:27 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution References: <028301c3ae9b$bade98a0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: > Are you guys actually debating whether humans can mate with chimps and have > live cross-species children? I really question the level of scientific > knowledge on this list. I assume that all your other biological predictions > are equally scientific.... No, that's not the issue. There is a lot of debate as to whether or not H. neanderthalensis was capable of breeding with H. sapiens. What about H. habilis and A africanus? H. heidelbergensis and H. erectus? H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis? H. sapiens and H. erectus, etc? I am looking for similarities in modern primate species for examples. Take the bonobo and chimpanzee for instance. They are seperated genetically by just under 2 million years. Morphologically they are very similar, but with a 2 my seperation, can they crossbreed? Also, chimpanzees are more similar to humans genetically than they are to other apes. Are they able to crossbreed with any other apes that are less similar genetically although they can't breed with humans? Is the orang-utan capable of crossbreeding with anything in the Homininae sub-family even though the Ponginae sub-family has been genetically seperated by 11-13 million years? If so, what does this mean for the possibility of a genetic classification system in place of the Linnaean system? Do either a genetic or morphological classification system help us to determine which fossilized remains represent distinct species? Is there any true line of descent from A. africanus to us, or was the last 5 million years a giant orgy with constant crossbreeding throwing out all sorts of weird combinations of modern and archaic features that don;t represent real distinct species at all? Felis bengalensis (Asian leopard cat) can breed with a domestic cat although the domestic cat has one more pair of chromosomes. The male offspring are sterile, but mating a female of that generation with another male domestic creates what is called the Bengal. A CFC registered domestic cat. Are there similar occurances in the primate world, or are primates somehow excluded from this ability? This is what I am after. It is the information I am trying to find out before I make a "biological prediction" which you are so quick to assume as unscientific. This may be something that someone else has worked out long ago and has all the answers to. Maybe it is you. If you have the answers please provide them. If this line of questioning is simply stupid, maybe you should tell that to all the researchers that are debating whether or not H. erectus was assimilated into extiction, or if they were simply outcompeted. I don't pretend to have a wealth of scientific knowledge. I am acquiring this knowledge. I am not a genius like Eli. I do not have "CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC " behind my name. I am simply a fellow human being with a thirst for knowledge, and a mind which is quite capable of unique perspectives and drawing accurate conclusions from limited information. I think that I have excellent instincts and as I continue to increase my scientific knowledge, I hope to become more valuable to the scientific community and one day contribute some knowledge in return for the knowledge that I gained. Finally, what is your reason for questioning the level of scientific knowledge on this list? Does it really matter? How many scientific breakthroughs have come from patent clerks or med school drop-outs? How many of these breakthroughs were laughed at and scorned because their ideas did not fit the "known" science of the day? What about the New York Times article about Robert Goddard: "Professor Goddard ... does not know the relation of action to reaction ... he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in our high schools" [New York Times, January 13, 1920] Being open-minded does not mean that you have to accept it if someone says "The Earth is flat" and if I ever make a statement so obviously stupid, I'll accept the criticism and go back to the drawing board. If you can find any of my questions or statements to be so obviously stupid, let me know. Questioning the level of scientific knowledge on this list simply because you are only half-ass reading this thread is a long way from this. From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 19 18:12:57 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:12:57 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech References: <3FBA93F5.DEA78E6F@blarg.net> Message-ID: It is the size of the rocket that matters :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Bradbury" To: Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 3:49 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: garage nanotech > Kevin, in response to Spike's poking fun at his garage commented: > > "It's a quantum garage with infinite space in a finite enclosure. ;-)" > > I will simply observe that for the last week or so I've been seeing > TV ads for an episode of the sitcom "Will and Grace" where > Grace will claim that "size does matter". (For those non-U.S. > folks Grace lived with Will (who is gay) as a "friend" for many > years -- not clear yet on how this applies to the claim.) > > Now the question is how does one extend this to Kevin's garage? > Does one care about the real size? Or is it the virtual size which > is significant? Or is it only the size when one is launching the > rocket that matters? :-? > > To many people on the list my apologies up front -- but it was > too much of an opportunity to resist. > > Robert > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 19 18:35:19 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:35:19 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution References: <3FBB52E1.9EED61AA@blarg.net> Message-ID: A horse has 66 and a donkey has 64 (I found one reference that said 62). Also, here's a couple of things I found at http://members.aol.com/jshartwell/hybrid-mammals.html The Asian and African elephants look similar, but are not only different species, they are different genera I.e. each belongs to a different genus, making them even more distantly related). Crossbreeds between different genera is regarded as impossible. In 1978, an Asian elephant cow gave birth to a hybrid calf sired by an African elephant bull. Though the pair had mated several times, pregnancy was believed to be impossible. The hybrid male calf, had an African elephant's cheek, ears (large with pointed lobes) and legs (longer and slimmer), but the toenail numbers, (5 front, 4 hind) and the single trunk finger were like Asians although the wrinkled trunk was like an African. The forehead was sloping with one dome and two smaller domes behind it. The body was African in type, but had an Asian-type centre hump and an African-type rear hump. Sadly the calf died of infection 12 days later. In the primates, many Gibbons are hard to visually identify and are identified by their song. This has led to hybrids in zoos where the Gibbons were mis-identified. For example, some collections could not distinguish between Javan Gibbons, Lar Gibbons or Hoolocks and their supposedly pure breeding pairs were mixed pairs or hybrids from previous mixed pairs. The offspring were sent to other Gibbon breeders and led to further hybridization in captive Gibbons. Hybrids also occur in wild Gibbons where the ranges overlap. Gibbon/Siamang hybrids have occurred in captivity - a female Siamang produced hybrid "Siabon" offspring on 2 occasions when housed with a male Gibbon; one hybrid survived, the other didn't. Anubis Baboons and Hamadryas Baboons have hybridized in the wild where their ranges meet. Different Macaque species can interbreed. In addition, the Rheboon is a captive-bred Rhesus Macaque/Hamadryas Baboon hybrid with a baboon-like body shape and Macaque-like tail. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Bradbury" To: Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 5:24 AM Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution > aperick, commenting on kevin's comments wrote: > > > I want to know all the facts re primate hybrids. > > How many chromosomes does each have? > > I thought there was a slight difference but I checked in Google. > Chimps and Gorillas have 48 chromosomes vs. 46 in humans. > > > And what about other hybrid species, is the same number of > > chromosomes required for a live birth? > > You might manage a live birth with and abnormal number or > mis-formed chromosomes. Down's syndrome (trisomy 21) > comes to mind. There are others (humans can apparently > survive with trisomy 21, 18, 13 and 8). But the consequences > may be quite significant. [Google: trisomy syndromes]. > > We do not know enough to reliably predict in any way the > results of an untried cross breed. But for cases where there > is an extensive amount of work (e.g. plants) there may be > enough knowledge to make an educated guess as to whether > it will work. > > It remains (to my knowledge) a mystery in biology the > specific requirements that allow the development of new > species. This may involve simple chromosome rearrangements > or in the more difficult cases an increase or reduction in the > number of chromosomes. Increases or reductions probably > make reproduction much more difficult and so those lines > in most cases die out. > > The technology for chromosome mapping is now relatively robust. > So we can look at human chromosome segments and know what > mouse chromosome segments they match up against. So even > though humans and mice are separated by many tens of millions > of years of evolution we can look at the genomes and know > that in the process of evolution "this went here and that went there". > > Probably sometime later in this decade or early in the next decade > someone will try to backtrack this information and assemble > the proto-genome for mammals. After that attempts at the > assembly of the proto-genome for older higher level organisms > (reptiles, fish, etc.) will probably be attempted. There is a > lot of room for graduate students making a mark for themselves > in attempting such reconstructions. > > So -- I would not be surprised at all if we could eventually > recreate the Neanderthals, the Mammoths and eventually > the Dinosaurs. We might even be able to recover what > was lost after the Cambrian Explosion. > > Robert > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From aperick at centurytel.net Wed Nov 19 18:47:55 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 10:47:55 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: <200311191759.hAJHxdX05277@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <11188618.1069267714386.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Well, I for one DO want to know just exactly how stupid I am - relative to Harvey - so, here it is: is there any known reason why Bonobo-sapiens hybrids are impossible. If so, please include -- with your scorn -- some link or knowledge by which I may become edified. Kevin responds to Harvey: >If you can find any of my questions or statements to be so obviously stupid, >let me know. "there are no stupid questions, only stupid people who's mouths are more active in the present than their minds have been in the past." From CurtAdams at aol.com Wed Nov 19 19:09:45 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:09:45 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution Message-ID: <77.1cc41cdd.2ced19f9@aol.com> In a message dated 11/19/03 4:55:22, mail at harveynewstrom.com writes: >Are you guys actually debating whether humans can mate with chimps and >have >live cross-species children? I really question the level of scientific >knowledge on this list. Generically speaking, at 4-6 million years of separation, almost anything's possible. Human/chimp offspring could be anything from inviable as embryos to fully fertile (contrary to common belief, chromosome count mismatch doesn't guarantee infertility). There's no way to know for sure at present without doing the experiment, which is obviously unethical. The best argument against crossbreeding being possible is that some human somewhere has probably tried the experiment surreptitiously (there's a lot of odd sexual kinks in this world) and we've not heard of any results. From cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net Wed Nov 19 19:21:33 2003 From: cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net (cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:21:33 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <20031117212122.88304.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <011101c3aed2$590a0560$12ecfea9@kevin> > The fossil record seems to indicate that there were once a number of > hominid species, as well as many more primate species, all of which > tended to compete with one another in one way or another, leading to > cross predation and possibly limited local interbreeding that may have > contributed to todays 'racial' differences between humans. This seems to contradict the "Out of Africa" theory where all modern humans came from the same "stock". Also, according to "Mapping Human History" by Steve Olson, he mentions that there has never been a single human found with MDNA from any of the archaic human species. > > Humans, I think, are likely too evolved to successfully interbreed with > other primates. If it were possible, I would say the most likely > candidates would be those that evolved in the same locale that homo > sapiens emerged as a distinct species. That's my opinion as well since our species is 5-8 million years removed from chimps. If it were possible however, it would mean that it is very likely that a good portion of homininae could as well. Instead of getting a clear line of descent, we would get a patchwork of hybrids across the last 3 million years. We could simply be one of those. Thus the current line of research and attempts to interprate a clear line of descent from A. afarensis to us would be foolish and many researchers are wasting their time. Also, there would be a lot of conflict between genetic and morphological research. This is what I am finding. Species such as Kenyanthropus platyops and Sahelanthropus tchadensis would fit into the picture better. (S. tchadensis was more similar morphologically to humans in many ways than A. afarensis!) Something seems to be wrong with the current model. I have no idea exactly what it is but that's what I amtrying to figure out. From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 19 19:41:48 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 20:41:48 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum (fwd from fehlinger@un.org) Message-ID: <20031119194148.GL478@leitl.org> Forwarded with permission. ----- Forwarded message from James Fehlinger ----- From: "James Fehlinger" Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 14:44:24 -0500 Subject: Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 5.0.7 March 21, 2001 Liz, You know, I got all hopped up a year and a half ago when I discovered stuff on the Web that convinced me that a lot of folks in the Extropian/transhumanist community exhibit many of the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (as described in DSM-IV), a fact which makes them seem abrasive and alarming to the general population entirely apart from the content of their particular enthusiasms. However, it now seems to me that some of this atmosphere (and my perception of the atmosphere remains the same -- a smug, self-satisfied lack of empathy with people who don't share their particular hobby-horse -- and for that matter, a frequent lack of empathy with each other!) may be due to a concentration among this group (as with folks in SF fandom, the Trekkie world, the Role-Playing Game world, computer programmers, mathematicians, and science/ engineering types in general) of a sub-clinical "shadow syndrome" of autism. Not quite Asperger's Syndrome, even, just a mild echo of it. Many symptoms of mild autism seem to mimic aspects of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), and Avoidant Personality Disorder (am **I** mildly Asperger's, or am I simply Avoidant or Social Phobic? Dunno.) Anyway, I just stumbled across an interesting Usenet exchange that attributes the legalistic, rule-bound, verbal-contract orientation of many libertarians to the dependence on explicitly rule-governed behavior (as opposed to fluid, intuitive, reciprocity in social relations) characteristic of people on the Autistic Spectrum: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=MPG.16b93cafec85cfe8989a9c%40news.earthlink.net ----------------------------------------------- From: Ulrika O'Brien (uaobrien at earthlink.net) Subject: Fewmet du jour Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom Date: 2002-01-23 21:32:38 PST I wonder if there's a correlation between a high score on the Asperger's test and Libertarian tendencies. Which is to say I wonder if discomfort with social discourse and non-enjoyment of civic life might not predispose one to like a political slant that is, pretty fundamentally, antisocial in its approach. Why not deny the existence and importance of the communal, if the communal makes you uncomfortable? In particular, I see both tendencies in my reverend parents. And I was wholly unsurprised to find that Mark deprecates the importance of the public aspects of architecture, and the value of beauty in buildings and cities, in favor of purely anti-social cocooning values in buildings. That which is held in common may be unpleasant, because it is unimportant and undesirable anyway. ----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- From: Ulrika O'Brien (uaobrien at earthlink.net) Subject: Re: Fewmet du jour Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom Date: 2002-01-27 12:14:40 PST In article , kfl at KeithLynch.net says... > Ulrika O'Brien wrote: > > One datapoint does not a correlation make, or break. I also scored > > fairly low -- 12 -- but find that the anti-social aspects of > > libertarianism are among the ones that make me most uncomfortable > > as time goes on. > > *What* anti-social aspects of libertarianism? The tendency to attract primarily social maladapts, for one. The central conception of liberty as a freedom from expectations of and obligations to other people, except for those spelled out in explicit contract (and that strikes me as a very Aspergian trope right there -- the insistence that obligations don't exist except when they are made verbally explicit and agreed to explicitly seems very much like a coping mechanism ideally suited for folks who do not otherwise easily read social signals) and the not unrelated tendency to pretend away any social evils that market forces do not naturally rectify by various species of victim-blaming. > The ones made up by our enemies? Enemies like me, perhaps, a libertarian of 25 years standing? "Making up" these aspects by observation of fellow libertarians? Your observations may differ, but I think it doesn't speak well of libertarians that you are assuming that this sort of criticism must necessarily be external and invented. Then again, self-criticism, or rather the lack of it, is another of my disappointments with the run-of-the-month strain of libertarian thinking. > It's precisely because I care about other people that I'm a > libertarian. Caring about other people doesn't, per se, address the issue of being social or anti-social, however. It's a non-sequitur. It's perfectly possible to be a gregarious misanthrope. I sometimes suspect that I am one, myself, though it's hard to say how much of that is naturally misanthropic tendencies and how much is a social fabric that promotes alienation and misanthropy. > I could probably thrive under almost any political > system except for the very worst. Again, I'm not sure that speaks to the issue I'm raising. Your being able to thrive under any system doesn't really say anything about whether the structure and approach and princilples of libertarianism are more attractive to a certain socially handicapped personality type than they are to people in the more normal ranges of socialization. I'm not suggesting that all libertarians have Aspergers, or that all persons with Apergers will end up as libertarians, but merely that the limited rule set, explicit contracts only, no-tacit-social-contract, liberty-means- people-leaving-me-the-fuck-alone-to-do-what-I-want belief set that comes with libertarianism seems likely to be particularly appealing to those with Aspergers tendencies already in place. ----------------------------------------------- Apropos of the relations between libertarianism and transhumanism, I also came across the following article on the W[orld]T[ranshumanist]A[ssociation]-talk bulletin board: http://www.transhumanism.org/bbs/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=5000;start=45 ----------------------------------------------- [wta-talk]My doubts about Libertarianism and volitional morality ? Reply #47 on: September 14, 2003, 05:53:54 PM ? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" Sent: Sunday, September 14, 2003 6:24 AM Subject: Re: [wta-talk]My doubts about Libertarianism and volitional morality > Again:? Please take this conversation to wta-politics! Again:? The body voted that "political" discussions were *not* to be confined exclusively to WTA-politics.? (Which in any case is less like a salon these days than like the Senate floor, with a few Senators interminably filibustering by reading out loud, one by one, all the stuff they surf into.)? When facile libertopianisms are proffered on this list, you should expect them to be exposed and responded to.? You *never* throw your exasperated fits when the political statements against which I offer my responses are initially made.? I can only assume that this is because you don't notice them because you agree with them, or because you like them because you agree with them, or maybe because you don't take them as seriously as I do (in which case I think you're wrong, but probably you think that discussion doesn't belong on this list, in which case I think you're wrong yet again).? Part of the problem is that the more libertarian-inclined members of the list often like to imagine that they are more objective or scientific or "consequentialist" than those with whom they disagree, with the consequence that they participate in political discourse all the time, all the while imagining themselves to be talking about engineering. It's fine that there are libertopians among transhumanists -- it's mostly a vestige, but it's fine.? However, if transhumanism wants to produce real effects in the real world, it is crucial that libertarianism not represent or seem to represent the default vocabulary or common sense of transhumanism as a whole.? If transhumanism is identified with libertarianism, then transhumanism is as needlessly dead in the water as cryonics, which suffers from comparable identifications.? Indeed, the recent growth in transhumanism is primarily attributable to a conscious and painful effort to disidentify transhumanism with libertopians. Politics is part of life, CERTAINLY it is part of any "movement" hoping to change the world, or effectively respond to a changing world.? It is deeply symptomatic that you would want to ghettoize political discourse -- especially political discourse of "a certain type" -- onto another (and at that, dysfunctional) list. My best regards to you, Eliezer.? Dale Carrico ----------------------------------------------- And you know, speaking of Mr. Y., the sort of old-timey emphasis on explicitly-algorithmic, rigid, rule-based inferentiality among some of the AI enthusiasts on the Extropians' and elsewhere in the transhumanist community may also have something to do with this shadow-autistic mind blindness, this overreliance on explicitly-verbalized rules of conduct. Hmm... I'm also reminded of C. S. Lewis's view that explicit ethical rules -- the Ten Commandments, the Torah, the Talmud, and so on, are stopgap measures for a fallen world. He suggests that the essence of harmony with the Tao, or with God, or the social fabric, or whatever, is a much more fluid, evanescent phenomenon than could be captured in a net of words. (I suppose that even in the here-and-now, judges have often to deal with this inconvenient fact of life -- at least so I gather from watching _Judging Amy_ on TV! ;-> ). ----------------------------------------------- "The dance is a particularly interesting expression of important issues in that it connotes an intensity which avoids the burdensome. This is because dance is a form of playing not working. . . . The seriousness of play as opposed to the seriousness of work reveals a mode of being totally given to its raison d'etre while work is always done fo the purpose of something else. . . . Play, then, is a highly ordered but totally free experience which can also be said of sacred activity. Freedom and order (the law) are perennially the watchwords in religious thinking. Freedom in its relation to sacred order means freely willed rather than constrained obedience to law. Lewis summarized it well: 'For surely we must suppose the life of the blessed to be an end in itself, indeed The End: to be utterly spontaneous; to be the complete reconciliation of boundless freedom with order -- with the most delicately adjusted, supple, intricate, and beautiful order?' (Letters to Malcolm, p. 94). It is in the dance that the reconciliation of freedom and order can perhaps be most vividly imagined. 'The pattern deep hidden n the dance, hidden so deep that shallow spectators cannot see it, alone gives beauty to the wild, free gestures that fill it, just as the decasyllabic norm gives beauty to all the licences and variation of the poet's verse,' Lewis writes when talking about Milton's world view. In some sense we could say that the dance reconciles the two poles, but at the same time freedom and order generate the dance. A result of their fusion is a concrete and dynamic third reality, or, more appropriately, freedom and order are a dance. . . . The distinctions, freedom and order, generate the dance: their reconciliation is a dance. The material not only has religious significance in the dance, but is, along with the spiritual, essential to the dance. And this spirituality is not burdensome because the seriousness of dance is the seriousness of play." Marcia Tanner The Image of Dance in the Works of C. S. Lewis (quoted in http://www.lomcc.org/2003%20sermons/02-16-03.pdf ) ----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- Another approach to hierarchy is taken in [Lewis's] _That Hideous Strength_. The first passage is dealing with equality and how it guards life, it doesn't make it. "Ah, equality!" said the Director."We must talk of that some other time. Yes, we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another's greed, because we are fallen. Just as we must all wear clothes for the same reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes, ripening for a day when we shall need them no longer. Equality is not the deepest thing, you know." "I always thought that was just what it was. I thought it was in their souls that people were equal." "You were mistaken," said he gravely. "That is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law, equality of incomes ? that is very well. Equality guards life; it doesn't make it. It is medicine, not food." (Lewis, _Hideous_ 148) The next thing the Director does is the illustration of hierarchy and the provisions the higher ranked make for the lower. He uses mice to do this: "Now, Mrs. Studdock," said the Director, "you shall see a diversion.? But you must be perfectly still."? With these words he took from his pocket a little silver whistle and blew a note on it.? And Jane sat still till the room became filled with silence like a solid thing and there was first a scratching and then a rustling and presently she saw three plump? mice working their passage across what was to them the thick undergrowth of the carpet, nosing this way and that so that if their course had been drawn it would have resembled that of a winding river, until they were so close that she could see the palpitation of their noses. In spite of what she said she did not really care for mice in the neighborhood of her feet and it was with an effort that she sat still. Thanks to this effort she saw mice for the first time as a really are - not as creeping things but as dainty quadrupeds, almost, when they sat up, like tiny kangaroos, with sensitive kid-gloved forepaws and transparent ears.? With quick inaudible movements they ranged to and fro till not a crumb was left on the floor. Then the blew a second time on his whistle and with a sudden whisk of tails all three of them were racing for home and in a few seconds had disappeared behind the coal box.? The Director looked at her with laughter in his eyes. ... "There," he said, "a very simple adjustment.? Humans want crumbs removed; mice are anxious to remove them.? It ought never to have been a cause of war. But you see that obedience and rule are more like a dance than a drill ? specially between man and woman where the roles are always changing.' ----------------------------------------------- http://campus.kcc.edu/faculty/cstarr/C.S.%20Lewis%20Course/C.S.%20Lewis's%20-%20Hierarchy%20In%20C.S.%20Lewis.htm http://ourworld.cs.com/lkrieg45/quotes_l.htm ----------------------------------------------- We just can't accept criticism or correction. Yet when we offer criticism it invariably comes across as harsh and pedantic. We just don't get the unwritten social rules, subtext and the unspoken communication such as stance, posture and facial expressions. We often fail to distinguish between private and public personal care habits: e.g. nose picking, teeth picking, ear canal cleaning. We often have a na?ve trust in others. We're painfully shy. We have constant anxiety about performance and acceptance, despite frequent recognition and commendation. We're brutally honest. We're blunt in emotional expression. We have the infamous flat affect. We have either no apparent sense of humor or a bizarre sense of humor that stems from complex references that would be far too annoying to explain. We have great difficulty with reciprocal displays of pleasantries, greetings and small talk. We have a lot of problems expressing empathy, such as condolence or congratulations. We can't obscure real feelings, moods, and reactions. It's either nothing or overwhelming, there is no emotional middle ground. We will abruptly and strongly express our likes and dislikes. In an attempt to deal with all that small talk, empathy, jokes and the like we will adopt rigid adherence to rules and social conventions per Miss Manners. Ooops. We'll often fixate on and excessively talk about one, or a limited number of interests. We have a flash temper & occasional tantrums. We have incredible difficulty forming friendships and intimate relationships. Yet being desperate for emotional intimacy we have problems in distinguishing between acquaintance and friendship. We suffer from "one real friend at a time" syndrome, but can't really tell if the other person is reciprocating, and don't understand why they don't feel the same way. We're socially isolated and often have an intense concern for privacy, despite not being able to understand "personal space" all that well. We have limited clothing preference and will wear the same clothes for days at a time. We'll cut off all the tags on the inside of clothes and cannot wear certain fabrics. Which goes along with various sensory sensitivities. Certain sensations, such as particular sounds, colors, tastes, smells, will just set us off. We are the uberklutzen. We are clumsy. We have problems with balance and judging distances, height and depth. We have gross or fine motor coordination problems. And we frequently have an unusual gait, stance, and/or posture. We have great difficulty in recognizing others' faces (prosopagnosia) and the emotional expressions that play across your faces. We have difficulty initiating or maintaining eye contact. During periods of stress and frustration we'll raise our voices all right. But it won't be yelling. Call it "yelling" and you'll hear yelling. Then you'll know the difference. We have some strong and unusual food preferences and aversions, and equally unusual and rigid eating behaviors. Our personal hygiene is sometimes odd or leaves much to be desired. We will just shutdown in response to conflicting demands or high stress. We have a low understanding of the reciprocal rules of conversation. From person-to-person, day-to-day or conversation-to-conversation you'll find us interrupting and dominating, or not participating at all. We often have difficulty with shifting topics and will keep trying to steer things back on subject. It's just painful that we don't know how or when to start or stop a conversation. We take literalism to new frontiers. Our rage, tantrum, shutdown, and self-isolating reactions may appear "out of nowhere" but they really do have meaningful triggers. First there's a lot of self-anger, anger towards others and the world in general, and basic resentment. But where normal people are picking up non-verbal cues, we're picking up precise meanings and shades of meanings of the words that were chosen and how they relate to what may have been said months or years ago. Some clever turn of phrase may carry a lot of personal meaning that you just couldn't possibly understand. We have extreme reaction to changes in routine, surroundings and people. This, like some of the others, is a general autistic trait. It's summed up by the autistic credo, "All change is bad." Our conversational style is pedantic, as if we learned to speak English from watching Masterpiece Theatre. Which, in a way, a lot of us did. Needless to say, we don't play well with others. To quote the Aspies' TV role model, Daria Morgendorfer, "The team is the last refuge of the mediocre individual." We're often perceived as "being in our own world." ----------------------------------------------- Jerod Poore http://www.well.com/~jerod23/bp/AspergersSyndrome.htm Jim "To quote the Aspies' TV role model, Daria Morgendorfer. . ." Uh oh. I'm in trouble! ;-/ (See attached file: highspeed.wav) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 19 19:54:44 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:54:44 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <11188618.1069267714386.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Message-ID: What I keep running into is that it would be unethical to try this, so noone reallly knows for sure. Why, I have no idea. It seems to be a natural occurance that similar species create hybrids on occasion. What makes us so special that we shouldn;t try this when we do it regularly with horses? If it is possible, it is probably difficult. You would most-likely have to mate several different individuals repeatedly. It might take hundreds or even thousands of attempts with a variety of different subjects. Supposing a hybrid were produced, what does that mean for the current classification system and the history of our species? ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 12:47 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution > Well, I for one DO want to know just exactly how stupid I am - relative to > Harvey - so, here it is: is there any known reason why Bonobo-sapiens > hybrids are impossible. If so, please include -- with your scorn -- some > link or knowledge by which I may become edified. > > Kevin responds to Harvey: > >If you can find any of my questions or statements to be so obviously > stupid, > >let me know. > > "there are no stupid questions, only stupid people who's mouths are more > active in the present than their minds have been in the past." > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From hal at finney.org Wed Nov 19 13:03:18 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 05:03:18 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <200311191303.hAJD3Iq09879@finney.org> Harvey wrote: > I would also like to ask: > Why no singularity 10 years after somebody predicted it on this list? > Why no AI? Why no uploading? Why no robots doing our laundry? Why no > flying cars? Why no space colonies? Why no immortality pills? > > Many predictions have been made in this forum ten years ago. I am not sure > that any of the big predictions have actually come true. Why are the > expected technological breakthroughs not occurring as fast as predicted? Hal replied: : I question whether anyone on this list made those predictions. : Who predicted the Singularity by 2003? I remember Eliezer saying 2008, : and Dan Clemmensen is apparently sticking to 2006. Likewise, did anyone : expect AI, uploading, or laundry robots by today's date? Harvey replied: > Unless you are seriously arguing for the singularity within the next 2 > or 5 years, you are not refuting my point. Hal now writes: I am trying to improve the historical accuracy of the discussion. I still don't think that most of the items in the list were in fact predicted in the way you describe, and we should not leave readers the impression that Extropians believed those things. Your original language can even be read to claim that we are now ten years after the predicted date of the Singularity, an obvious absurdity. So I interpreted it to say, in effect, that ten years ago someone predicted a Singularity by today. Perhaps what you meant was, "ten years ago some people on the list predicted a Singularity within a few years from now, and yet we don't seem particularly close to achieving it." Even for those who predicted a Singularity within this decade, I don't think there was any consensus of support. Rather, those claims were often criticized as premature. My personal archives include a disagreement I had with Eliezer back in 1997 about the 2008 date (which he may have meant tongue in cheek). Many of the other items on the list, flying cars and space colonies and laundry robots, have never been a central part of Extropian thought and there was certainly never a consensus belief among Extropians that we would see these events only ten years in the future. As a data point, Greg Burch has very courageously left up his predictions from 1998 for the next 17 years (now 12 years) at http://users.aol.com/gburch2/scnrio1.html. Hal From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 19 20:39:02 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:39:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031119203902.98600.qmail@web60501.mail.yahoo.com> At first I thought this thread was kind of silly but as I did a bit of research on the topic, I found out it somewhat intriguing. On the subject of humanzees or manpanzees (human/chimp hybrids) I found an interesting trail of references to an alleged manpanzee named Oliver. http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf110/sf110p06.htm I was sceptical at first but apparently there was an article written about him in Science which is probably one of the most authoritative and well respected journals in the literature. I visited the Science website and found this abstract: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/gca?gca=274%2F5288%2F727e&sendit.x=66&sendit.y=12 I could not however find any links to the actual article online. When I have time, I will go to the biomed library and see if I can track down the paper version of the article. Not only that but apparently Oliver has been on TV with a Discovery channel program devoted to him. http://animalplanet.discoveryeurope.com/humanzee/feature1.shtml Hmm. Just one more reason I love biology. Even when you are considered an expert, it can still surprise you. BTW I find the term "non-biological life" to be oxymoronic as biology is the study of "life" with no qualification that it be based on carbon-chemistry. Even if you are talking about silicon based AI machines from Betelgeuse, it is still biological. Cheers, The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 19 20:57:30 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:57:30 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <11188618.1069267714386.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Message-ID: > Well, I for one DO want to know just exactly how stupid I am - relative to > Harvey - so, here it is: is there any known reason why Bonobo-sapiens > hybrids are impossible. If so, please include -- with your scorn -- some > link or knowledge by which I may become edified. Apparently you are very stupid relative to Harvey. Can't you tell you don't belong here? You don't have "CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC " behind your name. I have high regards for people who have accomplished so much. Don't misunderstand me. Just don't let those who BELIEVE they know everything deter you from your quest for knowledge. There have been many "know-it-alls" in history that were later shown to be terribly misguided. After all, many top scientists once believed that a rocket would not work in the vacuum of space since there was no atmosphere for the rocket's propulsion to "push" against. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From aperick at centurytel.net Wed Nov 19 21:02:36 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:02:36 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harvey's wager In-Reply-To: <200311191759.hAJHxdX05277@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <10320968.1069275926436.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> >Oh ye of little imagination. > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum to the singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, they pay me back my money plus a large sum of their own. /> I'll take that. I say it will be in exactly 87 years, and 310 days. And I wager your one million US dollars on it. From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Nov 19 21:11:38 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 15:11:38 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <11188618.1069267714386.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Message-ID: <01e601c3aee1$c8244280$8f994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 1:54 PM > What I keep running into is that it would be unethical to try this >Why, I have no idea. It seems to be a natural > occurance that similar species create hybrids on occasion. What makes us so > special that we shouldn;t try this when we do it regularly with horses? *You* might do it regularly with horses. Signed: A Neigh-Sayer >It might take hundreds or even thousands of attempts But seriously... You really have NO IDEA why trying to create a diminished, crippled human is unethical? Well then, suppose you whipped up a dandy chemical in your garage that produced children with flippers instead of hands and feet, along with other interesting effects. Let's call this imaginary boon `thalidomide'. Would it be unethical to give it the old college try on a few thousand foetuses? Hey, maybe they could swim like seals: aquaman! Damien Broderick From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Nov 19 21:38:18 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 08:38:18 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] belief References: <028201c3ae9b$b3519ce0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <0a6801c3ae9f$4aab9de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <003c01c3aeab$1e7f84a0$acbf1b97@administxl09yj> Message-ID: <0b7c01c3aee5$72a70c80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Scerir wrote: >...'believe' is a very difficult topic. I remember that Beth > van Fraassen (1980) wrote there may be good > reasons for 'accepting' postulates of a (scientific) > theory (model) but we are never justified in > 'believing' more than their empirical consequences. > Many claimed there was no difference between 'acceptance' > and 'belief'. This debate is still going on, after 20 years, > in the British Journal for Philosophy of Science and in > Philosophy of Science. (Yes, I know, it is not easy to > apply all that to the Singularity, because of its own > conceptual nature.) Thanks for posting this. It makes sense to me that this is a topic that would be of interest to philosophers of science. It would be simultaneously a relief to discover others have seen the same problem before me and a concern that they were not able to fix it. Logically I think it is not hard and the actual domain of the topic is very very small. But politically and psychologically it is one of the hardest things I have ever tried to argue. If it is not possible to get smart people to voluntarily improve (update if you like) their internal dialog simply to do away with a word that is harmful and which they are propagating probably unintentionally every time they use it, how on earth can we do any of the other stuff? Language is the means by which we communicate with each other and it is about semantics. When folk says things are "just semantics" they are dismissing in a phrase all possibility of their acquiring political sophistication and the non-destructive power to better persuade. If we can't communicate we cannot persuade. If we can't persuade we can't influence change except by force. And that doesn't do more than small incremental changes usually at the cost of the life of the person that tries it anyway so force is not a satisfactory answer either. I watch politics closely. The rate of technological change can and has been greatly reduced by the politics of fear aimed at uncritical thinkers (believers). It has slowed stem cells, genetic engineering, gmo foods, the nature of the quid pro quo in IP is in urgent need of review so that stupid laws don't slow things down. It is not only possible that there will be no singularity it is possible that civilization can go backwards. It has happened before in the dark ages. I would greatly appreciate any assistance you can give in honing in any antecedents to this believing debate. Can you cite particular issues of the journals? Regards, Brett From bradbury at blarg.net Wed Nov 19 21:33:12 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 13:33:12 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution Message-ID: <20031119213236.021D53809C@mail.blarg.net> On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 10:49am aperick at centurytel.net wrote: > is there any known reason why Bonobo-sapiens hybrids are impossible. Well I suspected it was impossible but about 5 minutes with Google (query: Bonobo chromosome number) turned up [1]. It would appear that human chromosome 2 resulted from the fusion of other primate chromosomes 12+13. (Chromosomes are I believe numbered by size, 1 being the largest, 2 being the next largest, etc. so combining two smaller ones gets you an earlier number in the list). So in answer to the question as to whether Bonobo-sapiens hybrids -- it is either very very difficult or impossible due to the differences in chromosome number. It might be feasible with a significant amount of genetic engineering but we are at least a decade away from that being something one might consider (from technology and cost standpoints). Robert 1. http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho42.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 19 22:01:49 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 22:01:49 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <11188618.1069267714386.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> <01e601c3aee1$c8244280$8f994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: > But seriously... You really have NO IDEA why trying to create a diminished, > crippled human is unethical? Would you be creating a diminished, crippled human, or an empowered, improved chimpanzee? I'm not advocating this. I just thought I would put a little different perspective on it. Maybe I shouldn;t have done that since this could turn into a debate about consciousness, ethical behaviour, and the superiority of man. From there we could go debate just how ethical it is to create a human level AI or upload human minds that have no interface with their environment. As it is, I have very little time I can devote to the study of human evolution. Splitting the topic would take more of that time. To remain focused on my current topic, I'll drop all references to human/chimp hybrids for the time being and concentrate instead on chimp/gorilla hybrids (although gorillas are less similar to chimps genetically than humans). Despite the similarities between humans and chimps and the fact that chimps are aware of themselves, the idea of chimp/gorilla hybrids seems to be less distasteful to humans. From bradbury at blarg.net Wed Nov 19 22:00:26 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 14:00:26 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution Message-ID: <20031119215949.DB20D381FF@mail.blarg.net> On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 12:41pm The Avantguardian wrote: I found an interesting trail of references to an alleged manpanzee named Oliver. > http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf110/sf110p06.htm Interestingly, the reference cited -- Holden, Constance; "'Mutant' Chimp Gets a Gene Check," Science, 274:727, 1996. I cannot find in PubMed. I cannot view the Science web site abstract. But the topic of the article seems reasonable -- *what* precisely is the chromosome structure for "Oliver"? If indeed he is some form of a human-chimpanzee combination then it would suggest that my previous comments regarding the difficulty of producing offspring with different chromosome numbers may be less than I would have thought. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Nov 19 22:19:28 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 22:19:28 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <20031119215949.DB20D381FF@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: That was either a mistake or a hoax. Oliver turned out to have the same number of chromosomes as any other chimp. http://robotics.stanford.edu/~oli/oliver.html There was also a reference somewhere else that Discovery channel was doing a special on this back in May, but I can;t find anything on their website about it. ----- Original Message ----- From: bradbury To: ExI chat list Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 5:00 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 12:41pm The Avantguardian wrote: I found an interesting trail of references to an alleged manpanzee named Oliver. > http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf110/sf110p06.htm Interestingly, the reference cited -- Holden, Constance; "'Mutant' Chimp Gets a Gene Check," Science, 274:727, 1996. I cannot find in PubMed. I cannot view the Science web site abstract. But the topic of the article seems reasonable -- *what* precisely is the chromosome structure for "Oliver"? If indeed he is some form of a human-chimpanzee combination then it would suggest that my previous comments regarding the difficulty of producing offspring with different chromosome numbers may be less than I would have thought. Robert ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Nov 19 22:30:12 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 17:30:12 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] GRE exam Message-ID: <244640-2200311319223012612@M2W092.mail2web.com> Extropes - Does anyone have a GRE prep material on CD that I can borrow? Thanks, Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Wed Nov 19 22:59:16 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 09:29:16 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0B2@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > -----Original Message----- > From: Harvey Newstrom [mailto:mail at HarveyNewstrom.com] > Sent: Wednesday, 19 November 2003 10:20 PM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress > > > Emlyn O'regan wrote, > > Who's going to bet on the singularity occuring at any given > > date? Either it doesn't happen, and you lose, or it does > > happen, and the bet is irrelevant. Drawing on a post of > > Eliezer's in the last day or two, it's like betting on the > > end of the world. > > Oh ye of little imagination. > > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum to the > singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, > they pay me > back my money plus a large sum of their own. > > Any takers? > > -- > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified > InfoSec Manager, > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Wed Nov 19 23:05:02 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 09:35:02 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0B3@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Sure, Harv. $100K, and I predict the singularity will occur on or before Jan 1, 2200. Do you need my bank account details, or maybe you just want to mail a cheque? Emlyn > Emlyn O'regan wrote, > > Who's going to bet on the singularity occuring at any given > > date? Either it doesn't happen, and you lose, or it does > > happen, and the bet is irrelevant. Drawing on a post of > > Eliezer's in the last day or two, it's like betting on the > > end of the world. > > Oh ye of little imagination. > > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum to the > singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, > they pay me > back my money plus a large sum of their own. > > Any takers? > > -- > Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified > InfoSec Manager, > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > From etheric at comcast.net Wed Nov 19 23:09:38 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 15:09:38 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum (fwd fromfehlinger@un.org) References: <20031119194148.GL478@leitl.org> Message-ID: <002301c3aef2$351cbba0$0200a8c0@etheric> Hogwash, pure projection on his part. Most of the socially outcast malcontents that I know are of the gender ambiguous Musician Artist Actor Poet Philosopher, Mac user, 4:00 am clove cigarettes at Denny crowd. You know.. Most of my friends, Socio-Communists ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eugen Leitl" To: ; Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 11:41 AM Subject: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum (fwd fromfehlinger at un.org) > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 19 23:27:58 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 15:27:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] GRE exam In-Reply-To: <244640-2200311319223012612@M2W092.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <20031119232758.5739.qmail@web60508.mail.yahoo.com> Yeah I got the Princeton Review GRE prep stuff on CD somewhere. I will have to dig it up. Since it has served its purpose, I will never use it again so you can flat out HAVE it. "natashavita at earthlink.net" wrote: Extropes - Does anyone have a GRE prep material on CD that I can borrow? Thanks, Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Thu Nov 20 00:04:44 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 16:04:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: <20031119215949.DB20D381FF@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: <20031120000444.13712.qmail@web60510.mail.yahoo.com> bradbury wrote: I cannot view the Science web site abstract. But the topic of the article seems reasonable -- *what* precisely is the chromosome structure for "Oliver"? If indeed he is some form of a human-chimpanzee combination then it would suggest that my previous comments regarding the difficulty of producing offspring with different chromosome numbers may be less than I would have thought. *I don't know why you can't get to the science abstract. It may have something to do with subscriptions as my institution (UCLA) has a subscription that allows anyone from the ucla.edu domain to get to it. In any case I have sent it to the list as an attachment. As far as what I have read so far, for some reason there is some controversy as far as how many chromosomes he has. Some Japanese group apparently claimed he had 47 chromosomes while the American cited in the abstract says he has 48. From what I have read since this morning however, chromosome number is not as important for the creation of hybrids as I once thought. There are several examples of hybrids between various animal species with differing chromosome number and that such hybrids usually (but apparently not always) results in the heterogametic (males in mammals) sex being sterile while the homogametic sex (females in mammals) being fertile. I guess reproductive barriers aren't as impassable as I once thought or at least sexual selection by mate choice is far more important to speciation than any biochemical barrier. So I guess in answer to the original question of whether H. erectus and other early hominids were able breed with H. sapiens, I would have to give the answer yes, if the women of whichever species found the men of the other species sexy enough.* The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 20 00:21:57 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:21:57 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <20031119203902.98600.qmail@web60501.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <0cb401c3aefc$4ed3c980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Avantegardian wrote: [Following some very useful links and researching ...] > I find the term "non-biological life" to be oxymoronic as > biology is the study of "life" with no qualification that it > be based on carbon-chemistry. Even if you are talking > about silicon based AI machines from Betelgeuse, > it is still biological Interesting. In your view then what is "life" or perhaps more easily, are things that don't die in the ordinary or expected course not alive? Does the distinction between "life" and "non-life" matter to you? Why? Regards, Brett -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From duane at immortality.org Thu Nov 20 00:31:22 2003 From: duane at immortality.org (Duane Hewitt) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 19:31:22 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: <20031119215949.DB20D381FF@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20031119192748.009eda00@maxwell.lucifer.com> The mystery has been solved Check http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/creatures/olivera.htm Paper Ely, J.J., Leland, M., Martino, M., Swett, W., and Moore, C.M., 1998. Technical report: chromosomal and mtDNA analysis of Oliver. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 105(3): 395-403. Quote "Our results indicate that Oliver is a member of the Pan troglodytes troglodytes subspecies from Central Africa, has 48 normal chimpanzee chromosomes, and was likely trapped in Gabon. Full details behind our conclusions can be found in our report" Qouote from page author who is a co-author on the paper of the genetic analysis of "Oliver" "I might add that, from what I have seen so far, those who really want to believe in highly intelligent, bipedal African man-apes ("Apamandi" and whatnot) who continue to elude field primatologists, the bushmeat market etc, will not be dissuaded by any amount of evidence. The persistence of these deeply-rooted beliefs, as psychological facts, are an interesting phenomenon in their own right." At 02:00 PM 11/19/03 -0800, you wrote: >On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 12:41pm The Avantguardian wrote: >I found an interesting trail of references to an alleged manpanzee named >Oliver. > > > http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf110/sf110p06.htm > >Interestingly, the reference cited -- >Holden, Constance; "'Mutant' Chimp Gets a Gene Check," Science, 274:727, 1996. >I cannot find in PubMed. > >I cannot view the Science web site abstract. But the >topic of the article seems reasonable -- *what* precisely >is the chromosome structure for "Oliver"? If indeed he >is some form of a human-chimpanzee combination then it >would suggest that my previous comments regarding the >difficulty of producing offspring with different >chromosome numbers may be less than I would have >thought. > >Robert >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From CurtAdams at aol.com Thu Nov 20 00:43:35 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 19:43:35 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution Message-ID: <75.1cf4ef42.2ced6837@aol.com> In a message dated 11/19/03 14:08:38, kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: > >> But seriously... You really have NO IDEA why trying to create a diminished, >> crippled human is unethical? > >Would you be creating a diminished, crippled human, or an empowered >improved chimpanzee? Being more like a human is not necessarily empowered or improved. First, it's very possible, even likely, that the hybrid would have various biological problem such as sterility or developmental problems due solely to its hybrid nature. Second, both humans and chimps are profoundly social species but are social in very different ways. Said hybrid would almost certainly *want* to be part of a society and yet, given the drastic differences, almost certainly could not function properly in either. The chance of a well-functioning individual is small and the chance of any of many different problems very high. And, I'd sure say it's human enough to have rights, leaving aside any discussions of whether non-human apes are entitled to rights. From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 20 00:56:22 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:56:22 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <5.1.0.14.0.20031119192748.009eda00@maxwell.lucifer.com> Message-ID: <0d0401c3af01$1da6bac0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Duane Hewitt wrote: > The mystery has been solved > > Check http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/creatures/olivera.htm > > Paper > Ely, J.J., Leland, M., Martino, M., Swett, W., and Moore, C.M., 1998. > Technical report: chromosomal and mtDNA analysis of Oliver. > American Journal of Physical Anthropology 105(3): 395-403. > The apparent facts of the matter. > Quote > "Our results indicate that Oliver is a member of the Pan troglodytes > troglodytes subspecies from Central Africa, has 48 normal chimpanzee > chromosomes, and was likely trapped in Gabon. Full details behind our > conclusions can be found in our report" > > Q.uote from page author who is a co-author on the paper of the genetic > analysis of "Oliver" The quietly post-fuss speculation on the route cause of all the interest and sound and fury by the scientist (also a human) who looked into it. > "I might add that, from what I have seen so far, those who really want to > believe in highly intelligent, bipedal African man-apes ("Apamandi" and > whatnot) who continue to elude field primatologists, the bushmeat market > etc, will not be dissuaded by any amount of evidence. The persistence of > these deeply-rooted beliefs, as psychological facts, are an interesting > phenomenon in their own right." Some days, all roads lead to Rome. Deeply-rooted beliefs - as *psychological* facts... Come back Carl Sagan you are needed the Demon Haunted world is actually the belief-stricken world and we are busy believing ourselves to death in our democracies. Regards, Brett From aperick at centurytel.net Thu Nov 20 00:57:17 2003 From: aperick at centurytel.net (aperick at centurytel.net) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 16:57:17 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: <200311200005.hAK05HX13871@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <7446961.1069290397372.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Kevin wrote: >Would you be creating a diminished, crippled human, or an empowered, >improved chimpanzee? Damn good point! If a small space ship containing a few male creatures who for what ever reason are found to be able to father super-human children by hooking up with earth girls ... Hey; I just remembered a great movie like that: _Earth Girls Are Easy_ staring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, and Jim Carrey. It is a must see. But seriously, the existence of chimpan-mans would cause some problems for some folk, especially if any of them were fertile and cross-bred a second time with man. Would we still consider three quarter men chimps? We call persons afro-American if they have any demonstrable trace of black in them. How would religious folk explain such things? That may be worth seeing. ;:O) From mlorrey at yahoo.com Thu Nov 20 01:30:54 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 17:30:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: <7446961.1069290397372.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Message-ID: <20031120013054.99468.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> --- aperick at centurytel.net wrote: > Kevin wrote: > >Would you be creating a diminished, crippled human, or an empowered, > >improved chimpanzee? > > But seriously, the existence of chimpan-mans would cause some > problems for some folk, especially if any of them were fertile > and cross-bred a second time with man. Would we still consider > three quarter men chimps? We call persons afro-American if they > have any demonstrable trace of black in them. > How would religious folk explain such things? That may be worth > seeing. ;:O) Similarly, anyone who can demonstrate either 1/8th or 1/12th native American ancestry can get a free ride at Dartmouth College. Of course, dealing in fractions brings up nasty allusions to historical referents like 3/5ths of a man from our slavery era. I'm sure quotes like "you damn dirty ape" would become a popular snide remark, and the Planet of the Apes movies and their costuming would be considered tantamount to whitey putting on blackface. Any Homo/Pan crossbreeds would obviously be horribly treated by common society until sufficient numbers exist to demand their rights and develop some articulate leaders. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 20 01:42:05 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:42:05 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harvey's wager References: <10320968.1069275926436.JavaMail.teamon@b107.teamon.com> Message-ID: <0d3301c3af07$81156240$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Rick wrote: > >Oh ye of little imagination. > > > > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum > to the singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, > they pay me back my money plus a large sum of their own. > /> > > I'll take that. I say it will be in exactly 87 years, and 310 days. > And I wager your one million US dollars on it. I am a little surprised that no one has stepped forward to offer to hold the money in safe keeping on this yet. I noticed Emlyn wanted cash directed or a cheque but that's possibly because he's Australian and either can't see a lot of need for extra middlemen or has grown tired of over-"servicing" by them. I'm Australian too, but I will reluctantly put aside my distaste for middlemen who add no value to hold the cash for Harvey or anyone else inclined to the same bet. I won't charge interest or anything like that - I'll hold the money at no cost - but just remember that you owe me a favour ;-) Regards, Brett [Ps: Don't tell Robin about this though he probably wouldn't "understand" ;-) ] From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 20 01:38:20 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:08:20 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harvey's wager Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0BA@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Not so quick, Brett. The fact that that singularitarian gets to "hold" the money is the only reason the bet is useful to him/her. That's Harvey's subtle modification to make the bet worthwhile, and stop it being a straight bet on the end of the world*. Emlyn (* - well, perhaps the end of money, for example, which is functionally equivalent when betting with money) > -----Original Message----- > From: Brett Paatsch [mailto:bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au] > Sent: Thursday, 20 November 2003 11:12 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Harvey's wager > > > Rick wrote: > > > >Oh ye of little imagination. > > > > > > > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum > > to the singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, > > they pay me back my money plus a large sum of their own. > > /> > > > > I'll take that. I say it will be in exactly 87 years, and 310 days. > > And I wager your one million US dollars on it. > > I am a little surprised that no one has stepped forward to offer > to hold the money in safe keeping on this yet. I noticed Emlyn > wanted cash directed or a cheque but that's possibly because > he's Australian and either can't see a lot of need for extra > middlemen or has grown tired of over-"servicing" by them. > > I'm Australian too, but I will reluctantly put aside my distaste for > middlemen who add no value to hold the cash for Harvey or > anyone else inclined to the same bet. I won't charge interest or > anything like that - I'll hold the money at no cost - but just > remember that you owe me a favour ;-) > > Regards, > Brett > [Ps: Don't tell Robin about this though he probably wouldn't > "understand" ;-) ] > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 20 02:29:06 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 13:29:06 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harvey's wager References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0BA@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <0d5a01c3af0e$126333c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Emlyn, I understand (I think). However, the singularitarian only gets to "hold" the money if they come forward AND think that Harvey will make good on the large sum. There are two (at least) possible reasons for the singularitarian not to come forward (1) there aren't any that want the money (2) they don't think the money is there to be had and that the offer is just another spurious waste of their valuable time. By holding the money I can help Harvey (insert any ambit offerer of funds not verifiably real and available here) with his plan and encourage the singularitarian (insert any ambit claimer of something dubious but useful if it could actually be done here) to come forward as well. Everyones a winner and what a swell guy I'd be for making it happen :-) Oops. I've let it out of the bag. Regards, Brett > Not so quick, Brett. The fact that that singularitarian gets to > "hold" the money is the only reason the bet is useful to him/her. > That's Harvey's subtle modification to make the bet worthwhile, > and stop it being a straight bet on the end of the world*. > > Emlyn > (* - well, perhaps the end of money, for example, which is functionally > equivalent when betting with money) > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Brett Paatsch [mailto:bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au] > > Sent: Thursday, 20 November 2003 11:12 AM > > To: ExI chat list > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Harvey's wager > > > > > > Rick wrote: > > > > > >Oh ye of little imagination. > > > > > > > > > > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum > > > to the singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, > > > they pay me back my money plus a large sum of their own. > > > /> > > > > > > I'll take that. I say it will be in exactly 87 years, and 310 days. > > > And I wager your one million US dollars on it. > > > > I am a little surprised that no one has stepped forward to offer > > to hold the money in safe keeping on this yet. I noticed Emlyn > > wanted cash directed or a cheque but that's possibly because > > he's Australian and either can't see a lot of need for extra > > middlemen or has grown tired of over-"servicing" by them. > > > > I'm Australian too, but I will reluctantly put aside my distaste for > > middlemen who add no value to hold the cash for Harvey or > > anyone else inclined to the same bet. I won't charge interest or > > anything like that - I'll hold the money at no cost - but just > > remember that you owe me a favour ;-) > > > > Regards, > > Brett > > [Ps: Don't tell Robin about this though he probably wouldn't > > "understand" ;-) ] > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From ABlainey at aol.com Thu Nov 20 02:54:51 2003 From: ABlainey at aol.com (ABlainey at aol.com) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 21:54:51 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution Message-ID: <12b.3570b206.2ced86fb@aol.com> In a message dated 19/11/2003 21:48:47 GMT Daylight Time, kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: > Apparently you are very stupid relative to Harvey. Can't you tell you don't > belong here? You don't have "CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC > Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, > NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC > " behind your name. > > I have high regards for people who have accomplished so much. Don't > misunderstand me. Just don't let those who BELIEVE they know everything > deter you from your quest for knowledge. There have been many "know-it-alls" > in history that were later shown to be terribly misguided. After all, many > top scientists once believed that a rocket would not work in the vacuum of > space since there was no atmosphere for the rocket's propulsion to "push" > against. > I have the greatest respect for people with credentials. More so when I know what attaining them entails, such as Harvey's long list of letters. Still the majority of us will be considered the equivalent of stupid flat earther's in the not too distant future. So in order that some of us are actually still around in that future to look back at our own stupidity, we need to get out of our own arses and not be afraid to ask those 'stupid' questions that we just don't know the answers to. After all, the Stupid 'What if' and 'I wonder if that would work' type of questions are responsible for mankind's greatest innovations. Alex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 20 03:30:52 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 19:30:52 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes In-Reply-To: <028001c3ae9b$9cd87060$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <000001c3af16$b3884760$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] brain scans for racial attitudes > > > Spike wrote, > > The way I read the article, the researchers have not > > only figured out that a racist's brain is more active > > when she is looking at a member of a different race, > > they are also claiming to know *what her brain is > > actually doing* which is to say they have discovered > > how to read actual thoughts. > > The reports say nothing even remotely close to this. They commented that they could discover who is a racist by observing brain waves while the subject is looking at photos of a person of another race. That tells me they are presuming to know what that brain is actually doing while it is being more active. I quote the article, with my comments in {brackets.} Light shed on dark side of grey matter By David Adam American scientists have developed a brain scan that, they say, can detect people harbouring racial prejudice. {They can read our thoughts now?} In racially biased white people who were shown photographs of black faces, the researchers found surges of activity in a brain region known to control thoughts and behaviour, which they say are due to suppressed prejudice. {How did they determine which people were racially biased to start with? They selected those subjects who had negative reactions to black associated *names*. On that evidence, the researchers evidently labelled them racially biased *people*. That is a stretch. The research has provoked controversy, with some experts arguing the study's conclusions are misplaced. {Ja, imagine that.} At its most far-reaching, the study raises the possibility that the minds of people, including police recruits, could be screened for racist attitudes. {Oh? How? If they could determine this, they would be reading thoughts, therefore the court system is no longer needed.} The scientist who led the research said she was stunned when she saw the results. "I was shocked. I couldn't believe we got this correspondence with the brain activity," said Jennifer Richeson, a neuroscientist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. {Don't worry Jennifer, you are not alone. We don't believe it either.} Professor Richeson said the brain activity arose because the volunteers were concentrating on not doing or saying anything offensive. {I see. How does Richeson know what what they are thinking? Please share with us this insight, professor. It would be worth a cool fortune. Those who would conclude something like that are dangerous and their research should be discounted or dismissed. Flee, grad students!}} This inner struggle tires the brain so much, she said, that prejudiced white people who interacted with black people would find it difficult to concentrate afterwards. {Oh dear. This is an impressive leap of intuition at the very least. Did they *tell* her they were tired out by struggling to not say anything negative? What if I were taking the test and starting thinking of a new math idea? Would she leap to the stunningly illogical conclusion that I was concentrating so as to not say anything offensive? Aaaaabsurd. Lack of evidence, case dismissed, too silly to continue. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 20 05:52:08 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 21:52:08 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <028401c3ae9b$cbe4a8b0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <000001c3af2a$6fcc8ef0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Harvey Newstrom > > > And walruses, well, I wouldn't want to be > > them. But plenty of other species will thrive, such as > > humans. We are *Africans* fer evolutions sake! > > Now you seem to have strayed from serious argument to humor. > If this entire > posting was a joke, please disregard my comments above. Harvey you flatter me, but I don't think I am as funny as that. I didn't intend humor in the comment, other than my usual lighthearted way in which I view the world. We really are all Africans, we can take the heat a lot better than we can take the cold. > > > We are a smart species, we can move cities, we can > > move nations. We can build cities on stilts. We can > sequester water > > inland. We can reclaim a great deal of land that is currently > > useless, under ice most or all of the time. We can reclaim > a lot of > > fresh water that is currently wasted, by creating new rivers and > > reservoirs, eliminating useless deserts. The Sahara > > and Siberia both have bright futures, whereas now > > they are nearly useless. > > Perhaps, but we can't do it now. We can't even maintain our > roads right now... Well, I think we can maintain our roads, should we decide to do so. What you are touching on are political problems, which we can solve if we really want to or need to. Right now mankind spends most of its energies and talents fighting each other, or fighting over wealth that has already been created by others. If you look around, you will see most people occupying themselves in activities that create no new wealth, building no new infrastructure. Perhaps I am cynical, but I do live in a state whose legislators were recently caught by an open microphone deliberately plotting to make maximum spending cuts *on roadbuilding and road maintenance* so that the voters would feel the pain immediately and vote for tax increases. Political problems like these have solutions, but they will not appear until needed. Right now most of the world has the luxury of spending most of our time not creating wealth. > I believe that technology in the future will grow > dramatically. But > if we don't have the solution now, and we agree that your slow global > warming is occurring, then we are literally in a race to create the > technologies you describe before the slow disasters you describe. > Harvey Newstrom... OK I see your hesitance, but I am arguing that we DO have the technology to do this, right now. I have a difficult time imagining how a singularity could be more than two or three hundred years down the road, at which time Florida will still be there. I fully expect a singularity in this century. If a species much smarter than humans appears, it is a sure bet that we need not worry about insurance companies failing. (They wouldn't, by the way. They would simply stop writing policies on buildings that they can predict will be reclaimed by the sea within 50 years.) I am not part of the singularityclaus-will-solve-everything crowd, but it sure seems like it could solve this one, and even if not, WE can solve it, using only primitive current technology. We would need to stop fighting and start building. spike spike From scerir at libero.it Thu Nov 20 07:46:36 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 08:46:36 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0B3@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <002a01c3af3a$6d8df650$3ec61b97@administxl09yj> HN: > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum to the > singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, > they pay me back my money plus a large sum of their own. > Any takers? So we assume the singularity will be deflationary, or 'neutral'. What about an inflationary singularity? :-) s. From gpmap at runbox.com Thu Nov 20 07:53:40 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 08:53:40 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] E-mail tax may help stop spam Message-ID: >From Slashdot: The Hon. Mark Dayton, Senator from Minnesota, is reportedly considering a "miniscule email tax" to counter the flood of spam. Thinking like an economist, he's obviously hoping to make mass emailing unprofitable: "It's difficult to prevent the use of spam when there's no cost associated with sending thousands, tens of thousands or even millions of e-mails". It is interesting to read the comments on Slashdot and the original Startribune article, which recognizes that at the present growth rate of spam, email would become completely unusable in five years. Dayton said legislators will keep looking for the right balance between a low-cost service free from government control and a system without annoyances like spam. "You can't say, `We want it to be totally free and unrestricted and on the other hand we want it to work smoothly and civilly,' " he said. "That's the dilemma we're all in." I think this has an evident interest for all those who use email (these days, nearly everyone in the western world) but also a more general interest concerning the eternal debate on what the state should do, and what should be left to the private sector. From a user point of view, I now have pay for two spam filtering services, and would save money if sending spam were not profitable. Of course, I would say other things if I were running a company do develop spam filtering services. From scerir at libero.it Thu Nov 20 09:12:23 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 10:12:23 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] belief References: <028201c3ae9b$b3519ce0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT><0a6801c3ae9f$4aab9de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><003c01c3aeab$1e7f84a0$acbf1b97@administxl09yj> <0b7c01c3aee5$72a70c80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000301c3af46$690347a0$3ec61b97@administxl09yj> > I would greatly appreciate any assistance you can give in honing > in any antecedents to this believing debate. Can you cite particular > issues of the journals? > Brett Bas van Fraassen, "The Scientific Image", 1980, Oxford Clarendon Press P.G. Horwich, in Philosophy of Science, 58, 1991, 1-14 A. Kukla, in Philosophy of Science, 59, 1992, 492-497 Try also here http://webware.princeton.edu/vanfraas/ http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/PHILSCI/ http://www3.oup.co.uk/phisci/ http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/ From samantha at objectent.com Thu Nov 20 09:26:54 2003 From: samantha at objectent.com (Samantha Atkins) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 01:26:54 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] belief In-Reply-To: <0b7c01c3aee5$72a70c80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <028201c3ae9b$b3519ce0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <0a6801c3ae9f$4aab9de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <003c01c3aeab$1e7f84a0$acbf1b97@administxl09yj> <0b7c01c3aee5$72a70c80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <20031120012654.02be3206.samantha@objectent.com> On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 08:38:18 +1100 "Brett Paatsch" wrote: > If it is not possible to get smart people to voluntarily improve > (update if you like) their internal dialog simply to do away with > a word that is harmful and which they are propagating probably > unintentionally every time they use it, how on earth can we do > any of the other stuff? Language is the means by which we > communicate with each other and it is about semantics. > > When folk says things are "just semantics" they are dismissing > in a phrase all possibility of their acquiring political sophistication > and the non-destructive power to better persuade. > In all the many exchanges on this topic you have not clearly demonstrated to most people's satisfaction that using the word "believe" but only believing rational things is in fact sufficiently harmful to necessitate eradicating the word itself. > If we can't communicate we cannot persuade. If we can't > persuade we can't influence change except by force. And that > doesn't do more than small incremental changes usually at the > cost of the life of the person that tries it anyway so force is > not a satisfactory answer either. > There is such a thing as choosing one's battles carefully. A lot of effort toward a cause that seems less important makes us look like cranks before we even get to important issues. > I watch politics closely. The rate of technological change can > and has been greatly reduced by the politics of fear aimed at > uncritical thinkers (believers). It has slowed stem cells, genetic > engineering, gmo foods, the nature of the quid pro quo in IP is in > urgent need of review so that stupid laws don't slow things down. > I don't like conversations like "well, this is what I *believe*, so there is no point talking about it." But somehow I don't think simply removing the word will stop this. Another word will quickly take its place even if you could limit use of the word "believe". > It is not only possible that there will be no singularity it is possible > that civilization can go backwards. It has happened before in the > dark ages. > Well, yes. But it seems pretty strained to imply that use of the word "believe" will make any significant difference in whether it goes backward or not. -s From bradbury at blarg.net Thu Nov 20 10:24:04 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 02:24:04 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution Message-ID: <20031120102328.0EF4C33E81@mail.blarg.net> On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 4:06pm The Avantguardian wrote: > *I don't know why you can't get to the science abstract. Both Science and Nature have very strange policies with regard to viewing abstracts. Some are simply too old to be present in the databases, some have a 6-12 month restriction policy (can't viewed until they are "aged") which is an interesting contrast to the NY Times which restricts things as they become "aged". The thing that I found strange was that I could not seem to find the abstract in PubMed -- though other abstracts by the same author/period were present. [Could be a bad search strategy on my part.] The "viewing" strategies are strange because an abstract that one cannot view on the Science site one can often find in PubMed. Educational institutions often have site subscriptions that allow one to avoid the details the public has to deal with. > Some Japanese group apparently claimed he had 47 chromosomes > while the American cited in the abstract says he has 48. 47 would I think make him a trisomy mutant. 48 would probably make him a non-human primate. There could of course be very strange variations on this. (If someone knows otherwise feel free to correct the above statements). > I guess reproductive barriers aren't as impassable as I once thought ! You could very well be correct. There is a significant discussion as to whether the genome was duplicated once or twice in the development of higher level animals. If so there may be sufficient backup genes (on other chromosomes) that gaining or losing a chromosome or two over time may not be fatal with respect to reproduction. > So I guess in answer to the original question of whether H. erectus and other early hominids were able breed with H. sapiens, I would have to give the answer yes, if the women of whichever species found the men of the other species sexy enough.* Could be true. But I would not strongly assert that male mixed species offspring are always infertile. That may just be a conclusion based simply on the examples we are aware of. It is not like we have done a great deal of experiments (at least of the published variety) on this topic. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bradbury at blarg.net Thu Nov 20 10:32:34 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 02:32:34 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harvey's wager Message-ID: <20031120103159.1B42133E55@mail.blarg.net> I don't think the ExI list is the best place to wager on long term predictions. You want to go to: http://www.longbets.org/ There are not many places where you can find both Esther and Freeman Dyson (as well as a number of other significant people) placing bets! Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bradbury at blarg.net Thu Nov 20 11:14:19 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 03:14:19 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine Message-ID: <20031120111342.740F13818E@mail.blarg.net> On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 9:55pm Spike wrote: Boy, the amount of misinformation in this message... :-( You folks need to watch PBS more! > > > And walruses, well, I wouldn't want to be > > > them. But plenty of other species will thrive, such as > > > humans. We are *Africans* fer evolutions sake! (a) Global warming would probably not impact the walruses. We essentially wiped them out nearly a century ago and they have only slowly been recovering. Producing an interesting consequence (boy do they love to feed on the salmon at the fish ladder in Seattle at the locks leading to Lake Washington). The problem with intelligent marine mammals are that they are just that -- intelligent. (b) Their breeding grounds include a group of islands off of San Francisco that would probably not be significantly impacted by global warming. In fact G.W. might make the seas significantly more productive (higher temps speed up biochemical processes) therefore producing more plankton, therefore increasing fish reproduction, therefore increasing walrus reproduction, therefore increasing the number of Great White sharks that can feed upon the walrus. (All of this is speculation of course...). > We really are all Africans, we can take the heat a > lot better than we can take the cold. Actually Spike, recent DNA evidence has shown that most "westerners" are of central Asian descent. The central Asian climate can be very cold in the winter. So your claim that we can take the heat better than we can take the cold may be on very swampy ground. I suspect that some individuals may retain an African heat tolerance but that for many others the case is not true because we became adapted to other environments. You are dealing with a very complex question of how much energy humans consume and waste (through burning it) and it is *not* as simple as you suggest. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maxm at mxm.dk Thu Nov 20 11:05:56 2003 From: maxm at mxm.dk (Max M) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:05:56 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum (fwd from fehlinger@un.org) In-Reply-To: <20031119194148.GL478@leitl.org> References: <20031119194148.GL478@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FBCA014.2060101@mxm.dk> Eugen Leitl wrote: > I discovered stuff on the Web that convinced me > that a lot of folks in the Extropian/transhumanist community > exhibit many of the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality > Disorder (as described in DSM-IV) > However, it now seems to me that some of this atmosphere > (and my perception of the atmosphere remains the same -- a smug, > self-satisfied lack of empathy with people who don't share > their particular hobby-horse -- and for that matter, a frequent > lack of empathy with each other!) may be due > to a concentration among this group (as with folks in SF fandom, > the Trekkie world, the Role-Playing Game world, computer > programmers, mathematicians, and science/ > engineering types in general) of a sub-clinical "shadow syndrome" > of autism. Not quite Asperger's Syndrome, even, > just a mild echo of it. Yeah right And less than 5% of the worlds population are pshycologists and they have a very similar psychological profile. So they they are outside the normal distribution, and thus sick. That's a stupid argument ... and so is his. But naturally it is easier to dismiss people if if you can label them with a mental disorder. Personally I am glad, however, to belong to the diseased group of people who created the majority of the worlds wealth and health. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 20 11:30:39 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:30:39 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum (fwd from fehlinger@un.org) In-Reply-To: <3FBCA014.2060101@mxm.dk> References: <20031119194148.GL478@leitl.org> <3FBCA014.2060101@mxm.dk> Message-ID: <20031120113039.GH7350@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 12:05:56PM +0100, Max M wrote: > Eugen Leitl wrote: Actually, he didn't. He was quoting somebody else. > > Yeah right > > And less than 5% of the worlds population are pshycologists and they > have a very similar psychological profile. > > So they they are outside the normal distribution, and thus sick. Aargh! You missed the point of James' missive. 1) we have an enrichment of a particular, elsewhere very rare type by self-selection 2) the type doesn't play well with others, and doesn't even know it 3) usually not a problem (thus no need to feel very special), but we're out to communicate We bloody better straighten out our comm act, orelse we'll never get off the short bus. We'll also be able to better deal with diverse catfights on the list. I'm not pointing at anybody particular, but there might be a potential problem. Don't shoot the messenger. Owch. It hurts. > That's a stupid argument ... and so is his. > > But naturally it is easier to dismiss people if if you can label them > with a mental disorder. > > Personally I am glad, however, to belong to the diseased group of people > who created the majority of the worlds wealth and health. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maxm at mail.tele.dk Thu Nov 20 12:40:06 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 13:40:06 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum (fwd from fehlinger@un.org) In-Reply-To: <20031120113039.GH7350@leitl.org> References: <20031119194148.GL478@leitl.org> <3FBCA014.2060101@mxm.dk> <20031120113039.GH7350@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FBCB626.7070405@mail.tele.dk> Eugen Leitl wrote: >>Eugen Leitl wrote: > Actually, he didn't. He was quoting somebody else. I know, wrong quoting > Aargh! You missed the point of James' missive. I don't think so. Due to training and education "we" have a tendency to communicate using reason and logic. Also we often find it hard to communicate with people using feelings and intuitions as arguments. That is not a mild disease, that is an ideal to follow ;-) It's like saying that a trained chemist and a homeopatic healer, with a 2 week night school diploma, has an equal say in whether homeopaty works or not! Many people will not like what the chemist has to say, and how he says it. And the chemist, most likely, will have little patience in hearing the homeopats arguments. But that doesn't mean that the chemist is wrong. > We bloody better straighten out our comm act, orelse we'll never get off the > short bus. We'll also be able to better deal with diverse catfights on the > list. My problem is that they are using a very clever argument that is constructed in a way that cannot really be countered. Like: "There might exist a strong correlation between people who are unstisfied with society, and those who want to change it. They also believe that they are right and everybody else is wrong." The first part is self fulfilling. Any group that wants to change the status quo consists of "fringe" people. And how do you counter the argument? If you say they are wrong, you are proving them right, if you are saying they are right, the argument stops there. > I'm not pointing at anybody particular, but there might be a potential problem. > Don't shoot the messenger. Owch. It hurts. I didn't. I objected purely to the content of the message, and the flawed thinking it represented. I do agree however that it is a lot more fruitfull to change society gradually rather than crying out for revolution. We would most likely appear a lot more reasonable to a lot of people if we could show single reasonable cases in todays society with a >H solution/attitude. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 20 13:00:34 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 00:00:34 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] belief References: <028201c3ae9b$b3519ce0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> <0a6801c3ae9f$4aab9de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <003c01c3aeab$1e7f84a0$acbf1b97@administxl09yj> <0b7c01c3aee5$72a70c80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <20031120012654.02be3206.samantha@objectent.com> Message-ID: <004e01c3af66$497c1720$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Samantha wrote: > On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 08:38:18 +1100 > "Brett Paatsch" wrote: > > If it is not possible to get smart people to voluntarily improve > > (update if you like) their internal dialog simply to do away with > > a word that is harmful and which they are propagating probably > > unintentionally every time they use it, how on earth can we do > > any of the other stuff? Language is the means by which we > > communicate with each other and it is about semantics. > > > > When folk says things are "just semantics" they are dismissing > > in a phrase all possibility of their acquiring political sophistication > > and the non-destructive power to better persuade. > > > In all the many exchanges on this topic you have not clearly > demonstrated to most people's satisfaction that using the word > "believe" but only believing rational things is in fact sufficiently > harmful to necessitate eradicating the word itself. You are right that I have been involved in "many exchanges on this topic". There is a reason for this though. Each of us is a separate sentient with our own copy of the believing meme that we have picked up from our cultures in our childhood and continued to use most of our lives. To get folks to voluntarily examine a meme in their own heads with a view to persuading them to look at it when they don't immediately see the harm in it is very very difficult. Until other see if the experiment works and can join me or relieve me I have to work with one person at a time. And at any time that person can figure because it is one on one that the effort is not worth their while they can abandon the exercise and my time is wasted and they will probably go back to propagating the meme again because that is their default way of expressing themselves and that is the way their internal dialog runs. You said (above) I have "not clearly demonstrated to most peoples satisfaction" ..... this is not the sort of thing that we can all look at together like a maths proof and some of us can have the others do for us while we aren't paying attention.... so yes its true I think that it would not be clear to you or to anyone that my case had been made to others unless they said it had. Nor though is it clear that I have failed to make the case. I know because I am working one to one that I have made most if not all of my case to some. I am willing to spend the time with you to try and make the case with you Samantha if you will spend the time with me. But it takes a bit of commitment from you to take a look and if you stop looking before the arguments are done my time is wasted so please be gentle Samantha and please be open minded and then if I can I will make my case for you. > > If we can't communicate we cannot persuade. If we can't > > persuade we can't influence change except by force. And that > > doesn't do more than small incremental changes usually at the > > cost of the life of the person that tries it anyway so force is > > not a satisfactory answer either. > > > > There is such a thing as choosing one's battles carefully. A lot > of effort toward a cause that seems less important makes us look > like cranks before we even get to important issues. I am not afraid of looking like a crank. Too few people are paying attention anyway. We do have to pick our battle though that is true we only have so many hours in the day. > > I watch politics closely. The rate of technological change can > > and has been greatly reduced by the politics of fear aimed at > > uncritical thinkers (believers). It has slowed stem cells, genetic > > engineering, gmo foods, the nature of the quid pro quo in IP is in > > urgent need of review so that stupid laws don't slow things down. > > > > I don't like conversations like "well, this is what I *believe*, so > there is no point talking about it." But somehow I don't think > simply removing the word will stop this. Another word will quickly > take its place even if you could limit use of the word "believe". I understand. It won't stop others using it but it will do some things for you if you stop using it. (1) It will add one more point of differentiation between you and anybody that is arguing against you in front of an audience in any political forum on the basis of sloppy thinking and prejudice because you can guarantee they will be believing all over the place. (2) It will (I think) it seems to have worked for me though it may not be obvious help you classify things in you head with more precision if you use more precise words than "I believe" in your inner dialog. (3) You will see others using the words "I believe" with far more clarity and their words will tag for you the week points in their arguments. Often you will be amazed at the gall of political leaders to pass off pure prejudice as belief and to see voters actually lapping it up because the word believe has a positive connotation and can be imbued by the listeners with whatever interpretation the uncritical listener comes to most easily. (4) If others start to do it too you will see you friends and allies more easily - I am not advocating eradicating believers just identifying them by their words and using whatever competitive advantage we can get in the political forums. Believers don't mind people not using the word belief most of the time they are not aware of it. But other words sound better when they are more precise even to some believers. (5) And this is small, I will be grateful -you will have shown me it is possible to persuade without using force. I like the idea of a parthenon of gods much better. Its more interesting than being the only one. You said if we stopped using the believe word another would replace it. Well sure we have plenty of synonyms, but I realise thats not exactly what you mean. But the flip side of it being hard to get memes out of folks heads and of them needing to make an effort is that only clear thinkers are likely to be able to pull it off. The non clear thinkers won't bother. I think that if everyone stopped believing that we'd probably already be at the singularity. There really is very little prospect that the word will go completely from the population at large. People are too fond of intellectual short cuts. What there is is a prospect that clear thinkers will be differentially and preferentially empowered over and above those who use the believe word because they will be able to see how the meme works much more clearly. The power will move more to the clearer thinkers who will be better able to find each other. And should a clear thinker try their hand at a bit of scoundrelly enthralling of believers of their own - lets see them do it without the believe word :-) They may get a few transfer believers but the pan-critical non-believers will see them coming a mile off. > > It is not only possible that there will be no singularity it is possible > > that civilization can go backwards. It has happened before in the > > dark ages. > > > > Well, yes. But it seems pretty strained to imply that use of the > word "believe" will make any significant difference in whether it > goes backward or not. A few clear thinkers can exert extraordinary power in democracies. Samantha. Power way beyond their mere one vote. But most people can't or won't take the time to see subtlety so they don't get to discover the non-mystical power that is available to those that do. I don't want to waste my time giving away techniques and strategies to folk that are just likely to replace one fool believing system with another. One can't teach political sophistication shotgun mode its strictly rifle shot. And one of course is selective about who one wants to empower. I don't hate believers (as people) I actually like them for the most part (as people). I am not keen to empower them any further in democracies though as I think they already have too much power for their and my good. They can and do sometimes vote against things because they don't understand them or are afraid of them and don't want to work through their concerns until they have too. Regards, Brett [Sorry if you find my style over verbose here Samantha. Prune with ferocity if you wish and ask anything you like if something is not clear. I wrote this with you in mind in particular because you in particular asked.] From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Nov 20 14:07:12 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 01:07:12 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harvey's wager References: <20031120103159.1B42133E55@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: <00e201c3af6f$982b21a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Robert wrote: > I don't think the ExI list is the best place to wager > on long term predictions. You want to go to: > http://www.longbets.org/ > > There are not many places where you can find both > Esther and Freeman Dyson (as well as a number > of other significant people) placing bets! The thing about a public bet is that in order for it to be determinable the matter under consideration has to be. People can throw opinions and speculations past each other for ever but if none of them is in the form of a falsifiable hypothesis there is nothing concrete on which to build - its all just sound and fury. As the very last thing to happen in a bet is the exchange of money (often to a third party for holding) it seems that a list could have a policy of no betting and still have a great way of converting bs into practical useable stuff. Then if those who want to actually bet do so they would have to take it offline. But in the meantime (in the process of formulating the bet) the list gets the benefit of seeing what are the more practical suggestions and what are not. And who is talking rot and who is not :-) Chances are most folk would find the challenge to put some of their thoughts into testable form - well challenging, but that could be good. Just a thought. I'm pretty much done with it now. Regards, Brett [who can bet elsewhere and wonders what Esther (?) would be betting with Dyson] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scerir at libero.it Thu Nov 20 14:16:11 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:16:11 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] belief References: <028201c3ae9b$b3519ce0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT><0a6801c3ae9f$4aab9de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><003c01c3aeab$1e7f84a0$acbf1b97@administxl09yj><0b7c01c3aee5$72a70c80$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au><20031120012654.02be3206.samantha@objectent.com> <004e01c3af66$497c1720$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000401c3af70$d9ffbe00$8eb71b97@administxl09yj> http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/BeliefEntry030927.html From natashavita at earthlink.net Thu Nov 20 15:02:43 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 10:02:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] RE: CRN's FAQ Message-ID: <287030-220031142015243994@M2W094.mail2web.com> From: Mike Treder >CRN has just posted a selection of Frequently Asked Questions (and >associated answers) on our website at http://CRNano.org/faq.htm. The FAQ >deals with how CRN operates, what we believe about molecular >nanotechnology, and contains numerous links to more in-depth information. >As always, feedback is encouraged! Great Mike. Thanks Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Thu Nov 20 14:32:07 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:32:07 +0100 (MET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum (fwd fromfehlinger@un.org) In-Reply-To: <002301c3aef2$351cbba0$0200a8c0@etheric> References: <20031119194148.GL478@leitl.org> <002301c3aef2$351cbba0$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: On Wed, 19 Nov 2003, R.Coyote wrote: >Hogwash, pure projection on his part. > >Most of the socially outcast malcontents that I know are Of course, you wouldn't know the real social outcasts, because they are by definition much better at hiding than the ones you know :-) Ciao, Alfio > of the gender >ambiguous Musician Artist Actor Poet Philosopher, Mac user, 4:00 am clove >cigarettes at Denny crowd. From natashavita at earthlink.net Thu Nov 20 15:33:23 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 10:33:23 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the AutisticSpectrum (fwd from fehlinger@un.org) Message-ID: <410-2200311420153323886@M2W065.mail2web.com> Max M. wrote: >We would most likely appear a lot more reasonable to a lot of people if >we could show single reasonable cases in todays society with a >H >solution/attitude. BINGO! Spot on. This is the goal of the ExI Summit and a darn good one at that. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 20 16:17:25 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 08:17:25 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine In-Reply-To: <20031120111342.740F13818E@mail.blarg.net> Message-ID: <000001c3af81$c964e320$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > ...We really are all Africans, we can take the heat a > lot better than we can take the cold... spike Actually Spike, recent DNA evidence has shown that most "westerners" are of central Asian descent. The central Asian climate can be very cold in the winter. So your claim that we can take the heat better than we can take the cold may be on very swampy ground. I suspect that some individuals may retain an African heat tolerance but that for many others the case is not true because we became adapted to other environments. You are dealing with a very complex question of how much energy humans consume and waste (through burning it) and it is *not* as simple as you suggest. Robert Ja, but that in itself brings up some interesting questions. The African shape is generally tall and willowy, whereas the central Asian is short and stocky. For whatever reason, humans seem to have chosen the African build as the ideal of beauty. Evidence: there are medications and treatments available to help people lose weight and to help people gain weight (which don't work, by the way). The weight loss products outnumber the weight gain by about 50 to 1, as a first order guess. People will soon evolve to be taller and thinner, just by mate selection. spike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 20 19:15:41 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 13:15:41 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <75.1cf4ef42.2ced6837@aol.com> Message-ID: Curt Adams wrote: "Second, both humans and chimps are profoundly social species but are social in very different ways. Said hybrid would almost certainly *want* to be part of a society and yet, given the drastic differences, almost certainly could not function properly in either" I received many arguments about how unethical it would be to do such a thing, but nobody could come up with a solid reason that wasn't exclusive to human beings. This is perfect and exactly what I was after. Thanks you! ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 6:43 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution > > In a message dated 11/19/03 14:08:38, kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: > > > > >> But seriously... You really have NO IDEA why trying to create a diminished, > >> crippled human is unethical? > > > >Would you be creating a diminished, crippled human, or an empowered > >improved chimpanzee? > > Being more like a human is not necessarily empowered or improved. First, > it's very possible, even likely, that the hybrid would have various biological > problem such as sterility or developmental problems due solely to its hybrid > nature. Second, both humans and chimps are profoundly social species but > are social in very different ways. Said hybrid would almost certainly *want* > to be part of a society and yet, given the drastic differences, almost > certainly > could not function properly in either. The chance of a well-functioning > individual > is small and the chance of any of many different problems very high. And, I'd > sure say it's human enough to have rights, leaving aside any discussions of > whether non-human apes are entitled to rights. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From amara at amara.com Thu Nov 20 18:26:02 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:26:02 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] Libertarianism and the Autistic Spectrum (fwd from fehlinger@un.org) Message-ID: Hmm.. for the record, I understand where Jim F. is coming from; some of the personalities here and in other transhumanist-related groups are hard and rigid, and often it seems that it doesn't occur to those raking someone else over the coals that they might be wrong or have misunderstood something. I have permanently unsubscribed from one of these related groups last week because of my own distress over an aggressive public character attack. I for one would welcome more listening than talking (and doing above all, of course). It would make the discussions on our mailing lists with less heat and drama (and more boring), but we might attract a few more people and keep a few more people. Every little bit of effort helps, especially to make the environment friendlier. At least consider for more than five seconds some of what Jim F. is describing. We _can_ do better to try to understand each other. If we cannot succeed in this tiny microcosm, then what right do you expect to succeed elsewhere? Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI) Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR, Roma, ITALIA Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Thu Nov 20 19:41:09 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 14:41:09 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv offline for 24 hours In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <008801c3af9e$42b72be0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> I will be offline for about 24 hours. I will be back online Thursday afternoon. I am traveling to Tampa to give a presentation entitled "Security Drivers in Business." I will be explaining how security drivers *are* business drivers and how improving security will increase business efficiency. If anybody is in the area, it will be in the Board Room at the John Sykes College of Business at the University of Tampa at 8:00am Thursday morning. Admission is $20. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 20 21:00:21 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:00:21 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine References: <000001c3af81$c964e320$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: Message ----- Original Message ----- From: Spike To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 10:17 AM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] warmer weather = better wine > ...We really are all Africans, we can take the heat a > lot better than we can take the cold... spike Actually Spike, recent DNA evidence has shown that most "westerners" are of central Asian descent. The central Asian climate can be very cold in the winter. So your claim that we can take the heat better than we can take the cold may be on very swampy ground. I suspect that some individuals may retain an African heat tolerance but that for many others the case is not true because we became adapted to other environments. You are dealing with a very complex question of how much energy humans consume and waste (through burning it) and it is *not* as simple as you suggest. Robert Ja, but that in itself brings up some interesting questions. The African shape is generally tall and willowy, whereas the central Asian is short and stocky. For whatever reason, humans seem to have chosen the African build as the ideal of beauty. Evidence: there are medications and treatments available to help people lose weight and to help people gain weight (which don't work, by the way). The weight loss products outnumber the weight gain by about 50 to 1, as a first order guess. People will soon evolve to be taller and thinner, just by mate selection. spike I don't have the information in front of me, but it is my understanding that we have been growing taller on average for as long as we have records. Especially over the last several hundren years. Also, if I remember correctly, our body temperatures have been increasing a bit as well. I may be wrong on that though. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rhanson at gmu.edu Thu Nov 20 21:21:09 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:21:09 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Social Implications of Nanotech Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031120161926.020d9db8@mail.gmu.edu> My comments on this are now available at http://hanson.gmu.edu/nanoecon.pdf and that is where revisions will appear. Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Thu Nov 20 21:37:21 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:37:21 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv offline for 24 hours In-Reply-To: <008801c3af9e$42b72be0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <015701c3afae$7ddd6ee0$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Harvey Newstrom wrote, > I will be offline for about 24 hours. I will be back online > Thursday afternoon. Well, this message took longer to get back to my computer than I did! I'm already back and I just downloaded this message. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Thu Nov 20 21:37:59 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:37:59 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <3FBB938A.101@posthuman.com> Message-ID: <015801c3afae$9614ed30$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> > Harvey Newstrom wrote: > > > > How about this scenario: I immediately pay a large sum to the > > singularitian. The day after the predicted singularity date, they pay > > me back my money plus a large sum of their own. > > > > Any takers? > > > > Not here, but perhaps I should paypal $1 to anyone who can properly > spell the word "singularitarian" on a regular basis :-) I would have never guessed that spelling. How do you derive this? I assumed that most words ending in -y changed the y to I and added an. Comedy -> comedian. Thus, singularity -> singularitian. How do you derive "singularitarian"? -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Thu Nov 20 21:38:07 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:38:07 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <015901c3afae$99869450$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote, > > Are you guys actually debating whether humans can mate with > > chimps and have live cross-species children? I really > > question the level of scientific knowledge on this list. > > No, that's not the issue. Good. This makes me feel a lot better. I thought we had taken a left-turn into the X-files.... > Finally, what is your reason for questioning the level of > scientific knowledge on this list? I want realistic attitudes with brainstorming toward realistic solutions. I don't want to waste time reinventing the wheel or pursuing ideas that have already been explored. Scientific knowledge bootstraps us into building on previous knowledge to go farther. Those who don't know (scientific) history are doomed to repeat it. > Being open-minded does not mean that you have to accept it if > someone says "The Earth is flat" You seem to think that my interest in scientific knowledge implies that I am not open minded. These are not mutually exclusive states. I think we can choose both. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Nov 20 22:04:17 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 16:04:17 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] looking for a used book Message-ID: I know this is a long shot, but does anyone here have a copy of "The Primate Fossil Record", edited by Walter Carl Hartwig, that they would like to sell? I found it at an online bookstore for $142, but before I bought it, I thought I would check here. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Nov 20 21:55:15 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:55:15 -0600 Subject: singularitian (was Re: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress) References: <015801c3afae$9614ed30$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <023701c3afb1$08da43e0$c1994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harvey Newstrom" Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 3:37 PM > Comedy -> comedian. Thus, singularity -> singularitian. Pronounced `SINGuluh-RISHun'? `Sing-yuh-larryTISH-un'? -`SingulaRIT-chun' (as in `christian')? I rather like it in any pronunciation. (I guess I'm just an inveterate pronunciatian.) Damien Broderick From bradbury at blarg.net Thu Nov 20 22:13:42 2003 From: bradbury at blarg.net (bradbury) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 14:13:42 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Human Evolution Message-ID: <20031120221306.6891C33B1E@mail.blarg.net> On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 1:41pm Harvey Newstrom wrote: > kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote, > > > Are you guys actually debating whether humans can mate with > > > chimps and have live cross-species children? I really > > > question the level of scientific knowledge on this list. > > > > No, that's not the issue. > > Good. This makes me feel a lot better. I thought we had taken a left-turn > into the X-files.... I'm not sure who made all of the above comments. I'll simply provide my perspective. When it was first asked whether humans might mate with other primates my reaction was "No way -- the chromsome numbers are different" (and I went to Google to check this). Then after thinking about human trisomy diseases (again going to Google) and how species evolved I realized that my initial view was somewhat limited. There has to be a means by which species add, delete or combine chromosomes and produce viable offspring. It doesn't have to work often but it does have to work from time to time. I think the redundancy that may be built into the genome may allow this to happen more easily than one would expect. So we (at least I) are trying to think rationally. Whether all of this advances humanity as fast as possible I don't know -- one could make a reasonable argument that people who might assert humans cannot or should not mate with other primates might have retarded or might retard (in the future) human development. The topic seems to be very anthropocentric due to its possible perspective that "modern" humans are the best that evolution can do. It would seem that by definition transhumanism says that is not the case and one should explore alternatives. If one avenue for exploration involves mating with other primates then it seems reasonable to consider the possibility. You will not see me doing this anytime soon but at the same time I would tend to object to laws that prohibit it. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natashavita at earthlink.net Thu Nov 20 22:41:25 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:41:25 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress Message-ID: <265000-2200311420224125517@M2W047.mail2web.com> sing u laaaa sing u laaaa ta 'aaaa 'aaaa rian sing u laaa sing u laaa ta 'aaaa 'aaaa rian! Sung in the key of A Major, in one long Bucky Fuller breath. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From brian at posthuman.com Thu Nov 20 23:27:29 2003 From: brian at posthuman.com (Brian Atkins) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:27:29 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <015801c3afae$9614ed30$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> References: <015801c3afae$9614ed30$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Message-ID: <3FBD4DE1.5030503@posthuman.com> Harvey Newstrom wrote: >> >>Not here, but perhaps I should paypal $1 to anyone who can properly >>spell the word "singularitarian" on a regular basis :-) > > > I would have never guessed that spelling. How do you derive this? I > assumed that most words ending in -y changed the y to I and added an. > Comedy -> comedian. Thus, singularity -> singularitian. How do you derive > "singularitarian"? > Ok, so henceforth you shall be known as a vegetian :-) Seriously, I'm not the one who came up with it. But whoever did must have decided that the -arian ending made more sense. Apparently from a quick 2 minute googling it does appear to be more appropriate. http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entries/11/a0421100.html -- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/ From natashavita at earthlink.net Thu Nov 20 23:38:31 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 18:38:31 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the AutisticSpectrum (fwd from fehlinger@un.org) Message-ID: <57050-2200311420233831876@M2W090.mail2web.com> From: Amara Graps >At least consider for more than five seconds some of what Jim F. is >describing. We _can_ do better to try to understand each other. If >we cannot succeed in this tiny microcosm, then what right do you >expect to succeed elsewhere? Yes. Like any good design practice, the use and reuse of ideas as patterns can be compiled in all sorts of different ways to reorient stasis in thinking patterns. Solutions to problems require many types of lenses. Listening is one of them. It seems that most of the unempathic characteristics of transhumanistis is positioning, labeling, claiming, pointing a finger, etc. Where elese is it so obvioius outside discussions on politics? Do we ever accuse each other of being non-superlongevity enthusiasts? Non-nanotechnology advocates? Non-biotech advocates? What does this say about the culture. You tell me, because all I'm reading on the topic are claims of what one person thinks of another person and making that a fact rather than an impression. Take Max's short piece in the newsletter. Rather than address it in the vein it was written, it became a bone of contention for one group against another group - which was NOT what it was about. However smart, I don't think this was because the content was highly provocative. I think it was because it was written by Max and some used it to start labeling and making accusations. This is a very sad reflection of people's actions. What political pursuasions were they? (rehtorical) Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 21 00:37:11 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 11:37:11 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the AutisticSpectrum (fwd fromfehlinger@un.org) References: <57050-2200311420233831876@M2W090.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <002401c3afc7$9a870b00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Natasha wrote: > From: Amara Graps > > >At least consider for more than five seconds some of > >what Jim F. is describing. I have considered it for more than 5 seconds and Jim F emailed me the same thing he emailed other folk obviously. So far as I can tell Jim F is on the level (ie genuine) but as I have said to him on at least one previous occassion why don't you sub to the ExI list again yourself and make your points there yourself - and he declined at that stage. So far as I know the door is still open. I don't want to get too caught up with either an exercise in narcisism or with what could be a form of trolling by proxy. If Jim steps forward to make his case I'd be pleased for Jim AND care more about his case. > We _can_ do better to try to understand each other. If > >we cannot succeed in this tiny microcosm, then [by] what > > right do you expect to succeed elsewhere? Well as I say, I see that Jim is not making his case directly on the list as a key determinant. As I can't tell if he is serious or trolling and don't have the time to spend on psychological navel gazing with someone who won't step forward behind their arguments. The world contains lots of intelligent but timid folk. I respect their intelligence. I understand their timidity also I think. But one cannot route out all the corners in which people choose to lead lives of quiet desperation. Sometimes people need to put some skin in the game. Life has always been about opting in or dying. To me, if Jim wants to be taken seriously, he should be here making his case in person. > > Yes. Like any good design practice, the use and reuse of > ideas as patterns can be compiled in all sorts of different > ways to reorient stasis in thinking patterns. > > Solutions to problems require many types of lenses. Sometimes may be. Sometimes may be not. > Listening is one of > them. It seems that most of the unempathic characteristics > of transhumanistis is positioning, labeling, claiming, pointing > a finger, etc.Where elese is it so obvioius outside discussions > on politics? This is NOT unique to transhumanists :-) Its a human trait. We are political. A fact deriving from having unlimited individual *potential* and yet limited personal resources at any given time. >Do we ever > accuse each other of being non-superlongevity enthusiasts? > Non-nanotechnology advocates? Non-biotech advocates? > What does this say about the culture. If we never did. It would say precisely nothing :-) > You tell me, because all I'm reading on the topic are > claims of what one person thinks of another person and making > that a fact rather than an impression. Take Max's short piece > in the newsletter. Which piece? > Rather than address it in the vein it was written, it became a > bone of contention for one group against another group - which > was NOT what it was about. I am pretty sure that "it" was not what "it" was about. But politics 101 is that the other will always try and use whatever they can to make what you do about what they are about. Well not always. But perhaps you get my point. Politics is not about the answers to particular questions but about which questions get to be asked. The universe is considerably bigger than human politics - one piece of space junk could prove that, but to individual humans the things they have to spend most time working with day to day is other humans :-) Such is the essential nature of politics. > However smart, I don't think this was because the content was > highly provocative. I think it was because it was written by Max > and some used it to start labeling and making accusations. This is > a very sad reflection of people's actions. What political > pursuasions were they? (rehtorical) Without even digging deeply into the context I can asked that rhetorical question. "They" were instances of the species homo-sapiens. A *very* political species. And one I am quite fond of that point on politics notwithstanding. Regards, Brett From FromYosee at aol.com Fri Nov 21 01:48:47 2003 From: FromYosee at aol.com (FromYosee at aol.com) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:48:47 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Career advice sought in nanotech/genetic engineering Message-ID: <22.3fd68d76.2ceec8ff@aol.com> I have a doctorate in the social sciences with little background in the natural sciences. However, I am dissatisfied with the "soft" sciences and am finding an interest in the new medical technologies. So I am contemplating a career change either to tissue engineering or nanotechnology. I am looking for advice from anyone who is familiar with the future of these careers or who may already be working in those fields. Since I am middle aged I would want to pick a program that I could complete in as little time as possible. Any advice would be appreciated. Joe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 21 02:15:53 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:15:53 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] server slowing? And some news Message-ID: For the last day, copies of my posted messages seem to be taking hours to get back to me. They are getting to the board though. Has anyone else noticed this with their own? Also, I don;t know if anyone cares, but apparently we have a new heavy-lift rocket I didn't know about; A Delta 4 capable of lifting 50,000 lbs to LEO. It's no Saturn V, but I believe that's an improvement over the shuttle's 40,000 lb. capability. Here's a link for anyone interested: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0311/19delta4heavy/ Finally, it has to be noted. Michael Jackson has been taken into custody for child molestation. There's some shocking and breaking news! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlorrey at yahoo.com Fri Nov 21 02:49:10 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 18:49:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] server slowing? And some news In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031121024910.42863.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > For the last day, copies of my posted messages seem to be taking > hours to get back to me. They are getting to the board though. Has > anyone else noticed this with their own? Nope, I must compliment David McFadzean on the new list service. Messages are posting very rapidly, which I have never seen with an ExI list previously. I nominate David for Extrope of the month... > > Also, I don;t know if anyone cares, but apparently we have a new > heavy-lift rocket I didn't know about; A Delta 4 capable of lifting > 50,000 lbs to LEO. It's no Saturn V, but I believe that's an > improvement over the shuttle's 40,000 lb. capability. Here's a link > for anyone interested: > http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0311/19delta4heavy/ Yes, the Delta 4 program is partly funded by SDI considerations, which need a heavy lift launcher more reliable than the Shuttle, both in terms of launch successes and frequency of launch. If we ever care to spend the money, those Lockheed laser battlestations are not too far away... > > Finally, it has to be noted. Michael Jackson has been taken into > custody for child molestation. There's some shocking and breaking > news! Saw his latest photo and for a second thought he was going for The Joker look... where is Batman when you need him...? ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 21 03:07:39 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 14:07:39 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Career advice sought in nanotech/genetic engineering References: <22.3fd68d76.2ceec8ff@aol.com> Message-ID: <00da01c3afdc$9f889460$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> From: FromYosee at aol.com To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Sent: Friday, November 21, 2003 12:48 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Career advice sought in nanotech/genetic engineering I have a doctorate in the social sciences with little background in the natural sciences. However, I am dissatisfied with the "soft" sciences and am finding an interest in the new medical technologies. So I am contemplating a career change either to tissue engineering or nanotechnology. I am looking for advice from anyone who is familiar with the future of these careers or who may already be working in those fields. Since I am middle aged I would want to pick a program that I could complete in as little time as possible. Any advice would be appreciated. Ok. I have some understanding of the future career prospects in the areas you mention and I have read your question so I will respond. (Though I should probably be doing other work :-) The only reason why either tissue engineering or nanotechnology would be poor choices of study (generally speaking) would be if by the time you had acquired the knowledge in those fields your knowledge was no longer relevant because it had been superceeded. That is incredibly unlikely in both the tissue engineering and the nanotechnology fields as both are new and still being defined (nano is fuzzier but it is sexy as all hell and governments the world over are funding it because they are afraid not to). Anybody that decides to be a student in the areas that are leading edge in ones day is going to find they are empowering themselves in a number of dimensions. Depending on your personal circumstances you might want to consider part time study. You might also want to consider whether you want to acquire knowledge only (that can sometimes be done faster) or whether you want to have a certificate saying you have the knowledge as well. There are sound reasons for choosing either strategy but it really is a matter of customising them to yourself. Good luck and good learning. Regards, Brett -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Nov 21 03:16:48 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 21:16:48 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution References: <7446961.1069290397372.JavaMail.teamon@b106.teamon.com> Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 6:57 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution > Kevin wrote: > >Would you be creating a diminished, crippled human, or an empowered, > >improved chimpanzee? > > Damn good point! If a small space ship containing a few male creatures who > for what ever reason are found to be able to father super-human children by > hooking up with earth girls ... > > Hey; I just remembered a great movie like that: _Earth Girls Are Easy_ > staring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, and Jim Carrey. It is a must see. > > But seriously, the existence of chimpan-mans would cause some problems for > some folk, especially if any of them were fertile and cross-bred a second > time with man. Would we still consider three quarter men chimps? We call > persons afro-American if they have any demonstrable trace of black in them. > How would religious folk explain such things? That may be worth seeing. ;:O) If you weren't referred to as Satan, you would at least be called a demon sent by Satan to cause christians to lose faith. You would then be burned alive at the stake along with your new hybrid(s) and all of your research notes. Years later, the pope would issue an apology and claim that it was wrong, but the people who burned you will be forgiven and still be issued a "Get into Heaven Free" card. From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Fri Nov 21 03:58:47 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 22:58:47 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Harv's Explanation for Slow Progress In-Reply-To: <3FBD4DE1.5030503@posthuman.com> Message-ID: <000901c3afe3$c3d97030$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Brian Atkins wrote, > How do you derive "singularitarian"? > > Ok, so henceforth you shall be known as a vegetian :-) Sounds good to me. It beats "vegetablarian." > Seriously, I'm not the one who came up with it. But whoever did must > have decided that the -arian ending made more sense. > Apparently from a > quick 2 minute googling it does appear to be more appropriate. > http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entries/11/a0421100.html It does appear more appropriate now that I compare the various suffixes available. (Google knows all. All hail Google.) Thanks! -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 21 05:52:35 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 16:52:35 +1100 Subject: OFFLIST Re: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the AutisticSpectrum (fwd fromfehlinger@un.org) References: <57050-2200311420233831876@M2W090.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <015c01c3aff3$a9d491a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> OFFLIST Hi Natasha I am wondering if my first impression on what you wrote below was mistaken. If so then I owe you an apology. > Take Max's short piece in the newsletter. > Rather than address it in the vein it was written, it became > a bone of contention for one group against another group > - which was NOT what it was about. However smart, I > don't think this was because the content was highly provocative. > I think it was because it was written by Max and some > used it to start labeling and making accusations. This is a very sad > reflection of people's actions. What political pursuasions were they? > (rehtorical) Were you refering to the brief discussions on the Exi list about Max's article or to discussions which I understand were lenghtier on the WTA list? I assumed the later. I owe you an apology if you meant the former. Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 21 05:56:28 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 16:56:28 +1100 Subject: Fw: OFFLIST Re: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the AutisticSpectrum (fwd fromfehlinger@un.org) Message-ID: <016a01c3aff4$34833180$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Damn. I've done it again and posted the list. My apologies to the list. Please disregard. Brett From FromYosee at aol.com Fri Nov 21 05:50:18 2003 From: FromYosee at aol.com (FromYosee at aol.com) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 00:50:18 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Career advice sought in nanotech/genetic engineering Message-ID: <17.3f712325.2cef019a@aol.com> Thanks for your speedy response, Brett. There is a local medical college I have in mind for tissue engineering, however, I am stumped when it comes to programs that teach nanotech. I have not seen that listed. If you know of any programs in the Midwest (WI), please let me know. I have been reading much on my own but at some point I'll need help and access to the necessary microscopes and other expensive equipment. Best, Joe Anybody that decides to be a student in the areas that are leading edge in ones day is going to find they are empowering themselves in a number of dimensions. Depending on your personal circumstances you might want to consider part time study. You might also want to consider whether you want to acquire knowledge only (that can sometimes be done faster) or whether you want to have a certificate saying you have the knowledge as well. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From reason at exratio.com Fri Nov 21 06:33:26 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 22:33:26 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Career advice sought in nanotech/geneticengineering In-Reply-To: <17.3f712325.2cef019a@aol.com> Message-ID: http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/04/1942256 Searching the web for "new nanotech centers" is a good way to go. I'm not sure what's in the midwest...I'm fairly sure that Phoenix, AZ is doing something nanotechish and expensive, and I know Rice, Houston, TX is well along the path to a full blown nanotechnology institute. Reason http://www.exratio.com -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of FromYosee at aol.com Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 9:50 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Career advice sought in nanotech/geneticengineering Thanks for your speedy response, Brett. There is a local medical college I have in mind for tissue engineering, however, I am stumped when it comes to programs that teach nanotech. I have not seen that listed. If you know of any programs in the Midwest (WI), please let me know. I have been reading much on my own but at some point I'll need help and access to the necessary microscopes and other expensive equipment. Best, Joe Anybody that decides to be a student in the areas that are leading edge in ones day is going to find they are empowering themselves in a number of dimensions. Depending on your personal circumstances you might want to consider part time study. You might also want to consider whether you want to acquire knowledge only (that can sometimes be done faster) or whether you want to have a certificate saying you have the knowledge as well. From gpmap at runbox.com Fri Nov 21 06:35:38 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 07:35:38 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Smaller Computer Chips Built Using DNA as Template Message-ID: >From the New York Times, another example of the convergence of life and information sciences: In an advance that might provide a practical method for making molecular-size circuits, the smallest possible, scientists in Israel used strands of DNA, the computer code of life, to create tiny transistors that can literally build themselves. "What we've done is to bring biology to self-assemble an electronic device in a test tube," said Dr. Erez Braun, a professor of physics at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, and a senior author of a paper describing the research today in the journal Science. The Israeli group is the first to use DNA to build a working electronic device. "It's a very interesting demonstration of a completely new concept of assembling devices," said Dr. Cees Dekker, a professor of physics at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands who research group made the first nanotube transistor in 1998. The new technique takes advantage of a biological process known as recombination, where a segment of DNA is swapped out for an almost identical piece. The cell uses recombination to repair damaged DNA and to swap genes. A special protein helps connect the replacement DNA to the desired location. From amara at amara.com Fri Nov 21 05:33:26 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 07:33:26 +0200 Subject: Chirality (was Re: [extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles) Message-ID: From: Eugen Leitl , Fri, 14 Nov 2003 >Murchison may have had an EE of 30% of L-Ala and 50% of L-glutamic acid. This >is a single data point, and not a dramatic deviation from a racemate Yes >> >amino-acids, >> >exactly what we see on Earth and in meteorites. Interestingly there is a >> >portion of the Orion Nebula that produces copious amounts of just this sort >> >of radiation; there may be a connection, if so the handedness of these >> >molecules may not be exactly universal but is the most common form in this >> >part of the galaxy. >Where should a polarised radiation source of that intensity have come from? Yes, If one relies on neutron stars for chirality, then we need a larger number than what the universe supplies. Neutron stars are not common. Moreover, Pascale Ehrenfreund writes: "However, neither theory takes into account that amino acids are very fragile compounds, which are easily destroyed by particle radiation and even by low energy UV photons (Ehrenfreund et al 2001b). An extraterrestrial origin of chirality is strongly debated." and "The fragility of amino acids (left unprotected) in interstellar environments and the lack of a plausible robust mechanism (neutron stars are rare) for producing enantiomeric excesses in amino acids, casts doubt on their interstellar origin." See the full chirality excerpt from here: INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS PUBLISHING REPORTS ON PROGRESS IN PHYSICS Rep. Prog. Phys. 65 (2002) 1427-1487 PII: S0034-4885(02)04039-3 Astrophysical and astrochemical insights into the origin of life P Ehrenfreund 1 2 , W Irvine 3 , L Becker 4 , J Blank 5 , J R Brucato 6 , L Colangeli 6 , S Derenne 7 , D Despois 8 , A Dutrey 9 , H Fraaije 2 , A Lazcano 10 , T Owen 11 , F Robert 12 , an International Space Science Institute ISSI-Team 13 10.6. Chirality and the origin of extraterrestrial organics A fundamental characteristic of life is the homochirality of most of its building blocks. Various theories have been proposed to explain its origin; most of them require a chemical amplification scheme, but they differ in the origin of the initial excess to be amplified: random fluctuation, electroweak interaction effect or extraterrestrial input. Detailed reviews can be found in Bonner (1991, 1996). Enantiomeric excesses have up to now been found only in meteoritic matter (e.g. Engel and Macko (1997), Cronin and Pizzarello (1997), Pizzarello and Cronin (1998, 2000)) but are searched for in micrometeorites (e.g. Vandenabeele-Trambouze et al (2001)) and comets (COSAC experiments on-board ESA mission ROSETTA, Thiemann and Meierhenrich (2001)). Early experimental approaches on the syntheses of organic compounds do not produce chiral products (Miller and Urey 1959). Recent evaluation of abiotic mechanisms proposed for the origin of chiral molecules on the primitive Earth concluded that such approaches are not likely to occur in nature (Bonner et al 1999). The absence of chirality in products of prebiotic evolution experiments strengthened the presumption that natural abiotic synthesis invariably produces racemic compounds. Indeed, early analysis of Murchison amino acids declared them racemic (e.g. Kvenvolden et al (1970)). In 1997, Cronin and Pizzarello reported modest L-enantiomeric excesses of 29% in some amino acids in the Murchison meteorite. They avoided the problems of contamination by making measurements on 2-amino-2,3-dimethylpentanoic acid, -methyl norvaline and isovaline. All three of these compounds are -methyl substituted; the first two have no known biological counterparts and the third has a restricted distribution in fungal antibiotics. Bailey et al (1998) have suggested that the observed enantiomeric excesses could have been induced by circularly polarized light arising from dust scattering in regions of high-mass star formation. These sources occur more widely than do the supernova remnants or pulsars that were first proposed by Rubenstein et al (1983) as sources of circularly polarized synchrotron radiation. However, neither theory takes into account that amino acids are very fragile compounds, which are easily destroyed by particle radiation and even by low energy UV photons (Ehrenfreund et al 2001b). An extraterrestrial origin of chirality is strongly debated. Racemic mixtures of amino acids may be turned by an amplification mechanism into (L- or D-dominant) non-racemic mixtures under conditions that exist on planets or through catalytical processes on the surface of minerals (Hazen 2001). The fragility of amino acids (left unprotected) in interstellar environments and the lack of a plausible robust mechanism (neutron stars are rare) for producing enantiomeric excesses in amino acids, casts doubt on their interstellar origin. On the other hand, the production of amino acids on the parent body via the Strecker-cyanohydrin synthesis is a robust reaction that results in essentially racemic mixtures (Kvenvolden et al 1970). There are, no doubt, many questions on this topic that are still unanswered and discussions are far from resolved. However, the possibility of coupling the delivery of extraterrestrial organic compounds to planets with the appropriate conditions like the early Earth, sheds new light on the importance of homochirality and the role of exogenous delivery of organic compounds to the origin of life. -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Oh you damned observers, you always find extra things." -- Fred Hoyle [quoted by Richard Ellis at IAU Symposium 183] From reason at exratio.com Fri Nov 21 10:50:21 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 02:50:21 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] join the transhumanist tribe In-Reply-To: <000501c3b001$23dabee0$220110ac@gateway.2wire.net> Message-ID: Quickly back to social software again: I feel fairly pleased that the Transhumanists tribe at the relatively new tribe.net has over a hundred members and actual erudite conversations going on: http://transhumanists.tribe.net Come join in. I'd like to see people posting event listings and other odds and ends there: it's a useful resource *and* you'll get to see who knows who. Based on my usage patterns, tribe.net manages to be much more useful to my social life on a day to day basis than Friendster. Friendster is, say, a dynamic reference work used occasionally to track down who knows who, whereas tribe.net is something like a little black book or engagement secretary that takes care of itself due to the magic of distributed effort. Fun. Reason http://www.exratio.com From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Nov 21 11:57:32 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 03:57:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution In-Reply-To: <0cb401c3aefc$4ed3c980$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <20031121115732.81499.qmail@web60502.mail.yahoo.com> Brett Paatsch wrote: Interesting. In your view then what is "life" ? I will start out by assuming that you know what the textbooks say about life. Scroedinger's whole concept of an open thermodynamic system lying far from equilibrium that decreases its own entropy by increasing the entropy of its surroundings has been the mainstay of molecular biologists and biochemists for some time now. It satisfied a certain need that they had to reduce complex phenomena into simple mechanistic terms. I too BELIEVED this to be the case until only a few years ago. What opened my eyes was taking several courses on Bioinformatics which, in case you are unfamiliar with it, is the application of Information theory to Biology. This was a great experience for me because it was a brand new field composed of mathemeticians and computer programmers trying to understand biology. I however had the advantage of already being a biologist who just happened to be good at math and computer savvy to boot (no pun intended). What I found out was that there is another type of entropy called Shannon's entropy or informational entropy which is distinct from, although somewhat related to, Boltzman's or thermodynamic entropy. In essense, both are related to the degree of randomness inherent either in a system of particles/molecules or a signal/message. Life is characterized by being remarkably low in thermodynamic entropy which is equivelent to saying that it is matter in a highly ordered state although it is not the static order of a crystal (although some chemists will say that life is a liquid crystal) but rather a dynamic ordered state that I prefer to call organized. Life is also low in Shannon's entropy which is a measure of ignorance or meaninglessness. This is equivalent to saying that life is high in information content. The best definition of information I ever heard was by somebody, I forget who, that said "information is a difference that makes a difference." To give you a simplified example of how informational entropy is different than thermodynamic entropy, take into consideration the following 6 RNA sequences: GUA, GAU, UGA, UAG, AGU, AUG. Now since all 6 are composed of the very same nucleotides, they would all have equivalent thermodynamic entropy. Yet they have very different informational entropy because by themselves none of them mean anything to a ribosome (or for that matter a computer algorithm designed to find genes in the morass of sequence data generated by the Genome Project) except the very last one AUG. This is because AUG, in a addition to being the codon for methionine, is the start codon and its presence says, "all the nucleotide triplets that come after me are part of a gene and code for amino acids to be assembled into a protein". In other words, in the above context AUG has a lower informational entropy and therefore a higher informational content than the others. I will give one more example that is a bit more easily understood by a layperson. A library shelf with lets say 50 books in it has a certain entropy content. Work must be perfomed by a librarian to keep the books on the shelf since many visitors to the library are lazy and don't like to put the books back the way they find them. Now thermodynamically speaking any arrangement of the same 50 books on the shelf takes the same amount of work and would therefore have the same Boltzman entropy value associated with it. Now information theory however would say that because arranging the books in alphabetical order increases the shelf's information content, an alphabetical arrangement of the books on the shelf would have a lower Shannon entropy value than a random ordering of those same books on the shelf although any arrangement of the books on the shelf would have less entropy than having the books strewn randomly about the room. Now that I have explained the relationship between thermodynamic and informational entropy, I can now answer your question Brett. The "old school" definition of life relied on a thermodynamic definition involving coupled chemical reactions that built up an ordered state of matter by lowering the system's thermodynamic entropy. This lowering of a system's Boltzman entropy supposedly allowed for all the phenonemena normally associated with life such as homeostasis, growth, and reproduction. Yet this, if you think about it, is a fallacy. Two systems composed of the very same chemical constituents and having the very same thermodynamic entropy content can have two very different biological states. One system can be alive and the other system can be dead and a simple chemical analysis will not allow you to determine one state from the other. If you put a living mouse in a blender and pass the slurry through a gas chromatograph you will get the very same readout that you would if you killed it before you put it in the blender. The difference between the live mouse and the dead mouse is not in its thermodynamic entropy content but in its information content. The living mouse has a higher information content and consequently lower Shannon entropy value than the dead mouse despite the fact that both the live mouse and dead mouse have the same Boltzman entropy value. In this regard one can say that information content supercedes chemical considerations in determining whether something is alive or not. Indeed one can use a system with a high information content to spontaneously organize the system by lowering its thermodynamic entropy. It is precisely this phenomenon that allows two single strands of DNA with complementary sequences to lower their thermodynamic entropy spontaneously by hybridizing to one another to form double stranded DNA. If the second strand has the very same number of A's, T's, C's, and G's as the complementary strand but not the proper sequence, the two strands will not anneal to one another despite the fact that they are thermodynamically equivalent. Another excellent example of how information can superceed thermodynamics comes from the fevered mind of a 19th century physicist named James Clerk Maxwell, unquestionably a genius far ahead of his time. In a thought experiment, Maxwell envisioned two chambers filled with a gas separated by a tiny hole just big enough for a single gas molecule to pass through at any given time. Now if left alone, the gas in both chambers would reach equilibrium such that the temperature of the gas in both chambers would be the same and consequently the Boltzman entropy of the gas would be at a maximum. He next envisioned a critter called Maxwell's demon. This demon is a tiny little fellow who is incredibly small (about the size of a single gas molecule) and incredibly weak. In fact, he has only the strength to step into or out of the tiny doorway between the chambers and to fend off a gas molecule of his choice from entering through the tiny hole kind of like a minuture bouncer. But this puny demon has one thing going for him, he is also rather astute in that he can instantly determine the speed of any gas molecule that is headed toward the hole. Maxwell reasoned that if the demon allowed only fast moving gas molecules to pass through the hole in one direction and only slow moving molecules to pass through the hole in the other direction, then the gas in one chamber would get very warm and the gas in the other chamber would get very cold. In other words, simply by utilizing the information regarding the speeds of the individual molecules, the weak demon was able to perform a lot of work and lower the thermodynamic entropy of the system considerably. In many regards living cells behave as if they are manned by a huge crew of these little demons. In fact proton pumps and ion channels in cell membranes are conceptually very similar to Maxwell's demon. Thus I hope that I have made clear my view of what constitutes a living thing and how a living thing is different than a non-living or a dead thing. It is simply a system using information to organize itself. Carbon chemistry has nothing to do with it because carbon is superfluous to information. If the information is present than any form of matter will serve provided that it can somehow store and process information. In this regard, chemistry itself is irrelevant to my definition of life. Thus a computer program can be be just as alive as any carbon based lifeform. Indeed the latest generation of computer viruses seem as eerily alive as any carbon based virus I have studied. Who knows perhaps the singularity won't happen on purpose, perhaps it is already evolving in what the programmers at Symantec (the company that makes Norton's Antivirus) call the Wild where viruses are replicating, competing with one another for limited resources, and mutating through chance or design. Perhaps several different computer viruses will form an unintended symbiosis with one another and form a "computer bacterium" or something similiar and evolution will take its course while AI programmers are still wracking their brains over programming something that will pass the Turing test. As you can clearly see by my definition of life, social entities and other highly organized systems like corporations, religions, clubs, governments, economies, cities, countries, cultures, ecosystems, and the biosphere are all alive forming something I call metaorganisms. Indeed, I don't see why nuclear reactions could not take the place of chemical reactions. Who knows maybe the stars themselves are alive since I hear astronomers talk all the time about the birth, death, and evolution of stars. I would go so far to wonder whether matter itself is essential to life. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that patterns of pure energy, like light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation, which can carry information, might be able to form a living system. Perhaps this what the ancients reffered to as a soul or spirit. perhaps more easily, are things that don't die in the ordinary or expected course not alive? If I understand you correctly, Brett, you are asking if something cannot die, is it alive to begin with? Well if you mean die in any fashion whatsoever, I would say no. Since information, no matter how redundant, can with enough effort be corrupted or erased, by my definition of life anything alive can be killed. Obviously some things are harder to kill than others. If you however you mean something that cannot die of old age or senescence because that is "nature's way" or some such rubbish, I would say yes. Nature is full of examples of organisms that don't die of old age. Indeed out of the five kingdoms of life on earth, two don't age at all, one ages but does not die, and only two die of old age. Monerae (bacteria and archaea) and protistae (algae and protozoans like ameobae or parameciums) don't age at all will live and reproduce indefinately so long as they have proper nutrients and aren't killed. Fungi (like yeast and bread mold) eventually undergo senescence but that just means they don't reproduce anymore, they will still live so long as they are not killed. Only metaphyta and metazoa (plants and animals) actually die of old age. As far as the history of life on our planet, the property of dying of old age has only been evolved by organisms in the last 2.5 billion years of the 3.8 billion years that life has been on our planet. Not coincidently senescence only seems to be a problem for the more complex multicellular life forms. This ties into recent theories of ageing I won't go into here, because I have said quite enough already. Does the distinction between "life" and "non-life" matter to you? Why? Yes . . . because I am a biologist. They pay me to know the difference. :) P.S. I apologize for the length of this post but Brett asked a good question for which there is no meaningful short answer. For those of you that that are still reading I would like to leave you on a humorous note that between Maxwell's demon and Schroedinger's undead cat, perhaps we do live in a "spooky" world after all. BOO! :) _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Nov 21 16:06:29 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 08:06:29 -0800 Subject: OFFLIST Re: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and the AutisticSpectrum (fwd fromfehlinger@un.org) In-Reply-To: <015c01c3aff3$a9d491a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <57050-2200311420233831876@M2W090.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031121075813.034334b0@pop.earthlink.net> At 04:52 PM 11/21/03 +1100, Brett Paatsch wrote: >OFFLIST > >Hi Natasha > >I am wondering if my first impression on what you wrote >below was mistaken. If so then I owe you an apology. > > > Take Max's short piece in the newsletter. > > Rather than address it in the vein it was written, it became > > a bone of contention for one group against another group > > - which was NOT what it was about. However smart, I > > don't think this was because the content was highly provocative. > > I think it was because it was written by Max and some > > used it to start labeling and making accusations. This is a very sad > > reflection of people's actions. What political pursuasions were they? > > (rehtorical) > >Were you refering to the brief discussions on the Exi list about Max's >article or to discussions which I understand were lenghtier on the >WTA list? I assumed the later. I owe you an apology if you meant >the former. The latter. No apology needed. Same old mud slinging, same old "us vs. them," same old frozen neuron connections, same old excuse for some transhumanists to push WTA down our throats as being democratic, when it neglects to recognize the freedoms of its members. It's too bad because we do need an umbrella organization. I'm much more inclined theses days to think that we don't need an umbrella organization. We simply need better communications, which I belive can be accomplished by each transhumanist organizations - of which there are many. I must say, I am very depressed about this. Natasha >Regards, >Brett Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gpmap at runbox.com Sat Nov 22 03:16:16 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 03:16:16 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] E-books and Nicorette Message-ID: Ten years ago I used to travel a lot and I spent many hours on aircraft, smoking cigarettes and reading books. Smoking and reading were such a central part of my air travel experience that I could not conceive being on a plane and not doing these two things all the time. A few days ago I was on the plane and I realised that things have changed fundamentally in ten years: I was reading an e-book on my tablet PC, and happily inhaling nicotine from a Nicorette Inhaler. I was doing the same two things that I used to do ten years ago, in a fundamentally different way. We are really in the twenty-first century. The e-book was a very good one: "Darwin's Children", the sequel to Greg Bear's "Darwin Radio", you can buy both at Fictionwise. I am an early adopter of e-books because I prefer to buy books that I can download immediately. Other fundamental advantages are that e-books can be much cheaper, that I can carry a whole library with me, and that the publisher has e-books immediately available in stock. Well as a matter of fact I have to force myself reading e-books as it is not yet the same as reading paper books, but I am sure technology will advance soon. At that point, e-books will offer a much better quality of life. We smokers do not like forcing our smoke on others, but many of us literally cannot survive without smoking. The Nicorette Inhaler can be used as a Nicotine Replacement Therapy to quit smoking gradually (best wishes to all smokers who want to try), or as a means for smokers to survive in today's world where you cannot smoke anywhere, or as a means for smokers to live without forcing their smoke on others: a much better quality of life for all. These two examples are meant to illustrate how, big visions aside, "small" technology is silently improving our quality of life. From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 21 14:28:39 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 06:28:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] BIO: Sequencing just got faster and cheaper Message-ID: New Technology Will Speed Genome Sequencing http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031121071124.htm Robert From CurtAdams at aol.com Fri Nov 21 15:48:54 2003 From: CurtAdams at aol.com (CurtAdams at aol.com) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 10:48:54 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution Message-ID: In a message dated 11/21/03 3:59:48, avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com writes: > Now that I have explained the relationship between thermodynamic and >informational entropy, I can now answer your question Brett. The "old school" >definition of life relied on a thermodynamic definition involving coupled >chemical reactions that built up an ordered state of matter by lowering >the system's thermodynamic entropy. This lowering of a system's Boltzman >entropy supposedly allowed for all the phenonemena normally associated >with life such as homeostasis, growth, and reproduction. Yet this, if you >think about it, is a fallacy. > > Two systems composed of the very same chemical constituents and having >the very same thermodynamic entropy content can have two very different >biological states. One system can be alive and the other system can be >dead and a simple chemical analysis will not allow you to determine one >state from the other. Not relevant with the conventional definition. The conventional definition is that life is a processs which maintains or reduces its own entropy by increasing that of the environment. A dead organism is no longer maintaining its own entropy. The chemicals will remain similar, but so what? Life is defined as the process. >Monerae (bacteria and archaea) and protistae (algae and protozoans like ameobae >or parameciums) don't age at all will live and reproduce indefinately so long as >they have proper nutrients and aren't killed. Not true for ciliates. Ciliates can manage only a limited number of asexual reproductions before they must have sex to reproduce further. Same scheme as us, adapted for single cells. >Fungi (like yeast and bread mold) eventually undergo senescence but that just >means they don't reproduce anymore, they will still live so long as they are not >killed. No, S. cerevisiae dies too. It gets overwhelmed by these circles of ribosomal rRNA. There are other fungi that age and die as well. From duane at immortality.org Fri Nov 21 16:47:21 2003 From: duane at immortality.org (Duane Hewitt) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 11:47:21 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] BIO: Sequencing just got faster and cheaper In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20031121114352.04873a00@maxwell.lucifer.com> The target is a personal human genome for under $1000. This can be used to customize therapeutic regimens for the individual due to their genotype. See also http://www.454.com/ Duane www.immortality.org At 06:28 AM 11/21/03 -0800, you wrote: >New Technology Will Speed Genome Sequencing >http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031121071124.htm > > >Robert > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From max at maxmore.com Fri Nov 21 16:14:24 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 10:14:24 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] [wta-politics] Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <3FBDF2D5.2070104@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031121100203.033f3298@mail.earthlink.net> Mark, I pulled your post up from the archives. Some brief comments: "I disagree if the thesis is that transhumanism is logically incompatible with democracy." I did not make that claim. So we still do not disagree. I am puzzled at why you thought such an extremely strong claim could represent what I wrote. What I asked was: "Should they [transhumanists] be committed to and defined by democracy?" Further, your suggested interpretation is at odds with something else that I wrote in that piece: "A transhumanist organization should no more describe its core commitments as "democratic" than it should describe itself as an "Internet organization" when in practice and in aspiration the organization interacts by means of any effective medium of communication." "I am unpersuaded if the thesis is that transhumanists ought not be democrats." Closer, but still not what I said. I was suggesting that *identifying* transhumanism with democracy is a mistake, especially many of the particular forms of democracy that have existed so far. Regarding this point: "If this criticism is successful it seems then it must be directed at democratic organizations that make the identification between democracy and transhumanism eternal. It does not seem to speak to those who for pragmatic reasons make this identification because of the usual reasons of Realpoliticks." I have no objection to working with current democratic means to promote the values of transhumanism. On the contrary, I think that is essential since we have to work with what is even as we aim to improve what is. What *does* bother me is socialists like James Hughes and Dale Carrico who use the term "democratic transhumanism" and talk about "cyborg democracy". Their use of the term "democracy" appears to me to be a cover for socialism. This disturbs me in large part because socialism has always been a disastrous goal and method and extending it to transhumanist issues would probably be even worse. That's the main issue, as far as I'm concerned. A secondary issue is the use of the term "democratic transhumanism" to describe an organization. I didn't go into that in my quickly-written piece at all. I can't go into that now either, except to say that I see wide participation as more important than "democracy" in private organizations. Some people are using the two ideas as identical. I find that obfuscating. Those people then critique what I said on that assumption, which utterly distorts my meaning. I've written more than enough in favor of open societies not to have to restate the point. Although some of your comments do not capture what I said, Mark, I appreciate the evenness of your tone. That has been lacking in most of the responses. Onward! Max _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Nov 21 17:00:38 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 12:00:38 -0500 Subject: OFFLIST Re: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and theAutisticSpectrum (fwd fromfehlinger@un.org) Message-ID: <176730-220031152117038564@M2W078.mail2web.com> Yes, Brett knows that he goofed and had a brain-sneeze. I intentionally replied to the list so that you all could see my reply. There is nothing worse than someone flicking the channel mid-stream. :-) Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From david at lucifer.com Fri Nov 21 18:01:45 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 13:01:45 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: offlist keyword References: <57050-2200311420233831876@M2W090.mail2web.com> <015c01c3aff3$a9d491a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <00fc01c3b059$86f580c0$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> I've changed the list configuration so that any messages that contain "offlist" in the subject will require moderator approval before being sent to the list. David From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 21 20:46:58 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 21:46:58 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale Message-ID: <20031121204658.GD7350@leitl.org> German transhumanists were discussing PR issues, when the question of decent (c)-free images came up. Specifically, we were talking about realistic images of nanomed gadgetry. A suggestion was to roll your own. A couple of days ago I came upon this nice semilog-step flash visualization: http://cellsalive.com/howbig.htm I stole it, and attempted to add a couple of steps, to bring it down to the nanoscale. After two hours (and lots of growling) I got this: http://moleculardevices.org/howbig.htm The first item above is the flash I shamelessly stole from the fine folks at cellsalive.com. (Yay! They so rock. Kudos. It's just for the sake of illustration, and hence arguably fair use. I'll take it down soon. That should be sufficient grovelling). The final step is a rhinovirus; I couldn't find one in a hurry, so I took a simian virus structure (SV40 capsid, a 66 MByte ~pdb file). Next to it we see the usual suspects: neon pump, a wet lipid bilayer (crystallized, it's really cold in there), a planetary gear, and the fine motion controller. All lifted from IMM, of course. I notice we haven't had new designs in a long while. It's really just up to a couple of key people. They do nothing, nothing happens. This is not good. The next step below is a closeup, minus the virus particle. This is full atomic resolution. This was done on somewhat vintage hardware (Mac G4, 1.5 GByte RAM, oldish OpenGL accelerator). I'll try this again this weekend on a more recent (but: not bleeding edge system). VMD and PyMOL were both being able to handle the image size. I haven't tried Jmol, but have a suspicion it might be up to the task. The weak point was, surprisingly, Povray. The raytracer could barely render a 132 MByte .pov file with 1.5 GBytes RAM. Perhaps somebody here can suggest a better deal? Tachyon? Something else? All in all the handling of structures was very sluggish. I suspect a current machine (G5/Opteron, Radeon 9800) would allow me to handle systems of this size almost in realtime. This is just trivial manipulation, structure minimization or MD are completely out of question here. I'll try VMD/NAMD later on, to report which system size can be currently treated in realtime on more or less recent (not bleeding edge) hardware. All in all, our software is pathetic. So is our hardware. We need both lots of memory, lots of crunch over that memory, and good memory bandwidth (OpenGL doesn't scale here). Here's definitely a case of a system which would profit from a desktop Blue Gene (which reminds me: ) -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From astapp at fizzfactorgames.com Fri Nov 21 21:35:49 2003 From: astapp at fizzfactorgames.com (Acy James Stapp) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 13:35:49 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution Message-ID: http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/creatures/article.htm "Standard chromosomal studies fully supported Ledbetter's findings that Oliver had the diploid chromesome count expected for chimpanzees (i.e. 48 or 24 pairs). They also revealed that his chromosomes possessed banding patterns typical for the common chimpanzee but different from those of humans and bonobos, thereby excluding any possibility of Oliver being a hybrid." "Moreover, when they sequenced a specific portion (312 bp region) of the D-loop region of Oliver's mitochondrial DNA they discovered that its sequence corresponded very closely indeed with that of the Central African subspecies of common chimpanzee; the closest correspondence of all was with a chimp specimen from Gabon in Central-West Africa. This all strongly suggests that Oliver also originated from this region and is simply a common chimp - an identity entirely consistent, therefore, with my own little-publicised opinion from 1993." And from http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/oliver.html "Since then, the cytogenetic analysis alluded to in that report has been completed, along with mtDNA sequencing and homology comparisons to African chimpanzees of known geographical origins, and just published in the AJPA (2). Our results indicate that Oliver is a member of the Pan troglodytes troglodytes subspecies from Central Africa, has 48 normal chimpanzee chromosomes, and was likely trapped in Gabon. Full details behind our conclusions can be found in our report (2)." -----Original Message----- From: bradbury [mailto:bradbury at blarg.net] Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 4:00 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Human Evolution On Wed, Nov 19, 2003 at 12:41pm The Avantguardian wrote: I found an interesting trail of references to an alleged manpanzee named Oliver. > http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf110/sf110p06.htm Interestingly, the reference cited -- Holden, Constance; "'Mutant' Chimp Gets a Gene Check," Science, 274:727, 1996. I cannot find in PubMed. I cannot view the Science web site abstract. But the topic of the article seems reasonable -- *what* precisely is the chromosome structure for "Oliver"? If indeed he is some form of a human-chimpanzee combination then it would suggest that my previous comments regarding the difficulty of producing offspring with different chromosome numbers may be less than I would have thought. Robert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Fri Nov 21 22:40:29 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 23:40:29 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Longevity: sea urchin Message-ID: I don't know if this is really news to the experts of the field or not, but here is a nice piece about how sea urchins seem able to live to 100 or 200 years without any sign of aging: http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2003/Nov03/urchin.htm Ciao, Alfio From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Nov 21 23:19:16 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 18:19:16 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale Message-ID: <99610-2200311521231916154@M2W053.mail2web.com> 'gene >German transhumanists were discussing PR issues, when the >question of decent (c)-free images came up. Specifically, >we were talking about realistic images of nanomed gadgetry. >A suggestion was to roll your own. haha > A couple of days ago >I came upon this nice semilog-step flash visualization: http://cellsalive.com/howbig.htm Nice. How about exhibiting it at MoTA? :-) Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Nov 21 23:21:29 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 15:21:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Definition of Life (was Human Evolution) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031121232129.53239.qmail@web60508.mail.yahoo.com> CurtAdams at aol.com wrote: In a message dated 11/21/03 3:59:48, avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com writes: > Two systems composed of the very same chemical constituents and having >the very same thermodynamic entropy content can have two very different >biological states. One system can be alive and the other system can be >dead and a simple chemical analysis will not allow you to determine one >state from the other. Not relevant with the conventional definition. The conventional definition is that life is a processs which maintains or reduces its own entropy by increasing that of the environment. A dead organism is no longer maintaining its own entropy. The chemicals will remain similar, but so what? Life is defined as the process. I am not disputing that life is a process. What I am saying is that the process is information driven and not thermodynamically driven - like Maxwell's demon. >Monerae (bacteria and archaea) and protistae (algae and protozoans like ameobae >or parameciums) don't age at all will live and reproduce indefinately so long as >they have proper nutrients and aren't killed. Not true for ciliates. Ciliates can manage only a limited number of asexual reproductions before they must have sex to reproduce further. Same scheme as us, adapted for single cells. Yes, but needing sex to reproduce is not the same thing as dying of old age. Also ciliates are among the most highly derived of protista having evolved relatively late in the natural history of life. >Fungi (like yeast and bread mold) eventually undergo senescence but that just >means they don't reproduce anymore, they will still live so long as they are not >killed. No, S. cerevisiae dies too. It gets overwhelmed by these circles of ribosomal rRNA. There are other fungi that age and die as well. You got me here. I had heard that senescence in S. cerevisae led to sterility but I did not know that they actually died. But after doing a literature search I must concur. This however does not change my point that there are many organisms that do not suffer from senescence and age related mortality. BTW it is rDNA circles not rRNA circles. Do you happen to know if Neurospora dies of old age or not? I am not an expert in fungi. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com Fri Nov 21 23:35:01 2003 From: avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com (The Avantguardian) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 15:35:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Longevity: sea urchin In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031121233501.66269.qmail@web60506.mail.yahoo.com> Alfio Puglisi wrote: I don't know if this is really news to the experts of the field or not, but here is a nice piece about how sea urchins seem able to live to 100 or 200 years without any sign of aging: http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2003/Nov03/urchin.htm Ciao, Alfio Actually this is news to me. I was aware that there are some species of invertebrates that have unusually long life spans like cold water clams of the Quahog variety, and possibly giant squid. What makes this particularly interesting is that echinoderms like sea-urchins are deuterosomes and have bilateral symmetry that make them more closely related to us than most invertebrates. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat The Avantguardian "He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind." --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From etheric at comcast.net Sat Nov 22 00:19:45 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 16:19:45 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] IRC: irc.lucifer.com Charles Platt, Cryonics - Sun Nov 23 @ 8pm Eastern References: <20031121233501.66269.qmail@web60506.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <009401c3b08e$55a076d0$0200a8c0@etheric> server : irc.lucifer.com channel: #immortal Charles Platt, Cryonics - Sun Nov 23 @ 8pm Eastern http://www.imminst.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 22 04:28:16 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 15:28:16 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] [wta-politics] Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism Message-ID: <048c01c3b0b1$0e0ae1c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Dale Carrico writing in response to Max More wrote: Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 10:45:08 -0800 [Max More wrote] > > I have no objection to working with current democratic > > means to promote the values of transhumanism. On the > > contrary, I think that is essential since we have to work with > > what is even as we aim to improve what is. [Dale Carrico] > Here we agree. More ... needs to be said on this score. I am glad that Dale and Max agree on this. I hope that considerably more is in fact said on this score as this seems to be the substantive issue. Regards, Brett Paatsch From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 22 05:33:55 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:33:55 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale References: <99610-2200311521231916154@M2W053.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <04bd01c3b0ba$38843560$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Natasha wrote: > 'gene > > >German transhumanists were discussing PR issues, when the > >question of decent (c)-free images came up. Specifically, > >we were talking about realistic images of nanomed gadgetry. . > > A couple of days ago > >I came upon this nice semilog-step flash visualization: > > http://cellsalive.com/howbig.htm > > Nice. How about exhibiting it at MoTA? :-) I like it too. I think there is potentially real power in it especially if it is treated as a prototype and developed further. The power is in the invitation to the engines of the mainstream to take a look at a possible future and to engage with it thereby shaping it some sure, but also bringing it on even faster. Folks can grasp what's going on (or start too) much better when they can see pictures and even better when those pictures are on the 'net and they can play with them and show them to their friends and colleagues. [I know there are copyright issues and there are potential development of prototype issues, there always are, but these need not be insurmountable.] Its sometimes difficult to tell to what extent the progress one thinks one sees is a function of ones desire to see it. This ostensibly small (2 hrs I think Eugen said it took him - it would have been considerably longer for me!) bit of work/play and the paper that Robin Hanson posted the link to - "Five Assumptions Bridging Conventional and Radical Nanotechnology Social Scenarios" http://hanson.gmu.edu/nanoecon.pdf after discussion with folk on this list and elsewhere are, in my view signs that a group of people that I like to associate with, but that I know would to many still seem like a fringe-ish subculture is in fact van-guarding in the ideas that will be the mainstream ideas of the future. Tomorrow will be a better day, not just for the work that is done today, but as Eugen and Robin have shown also for the play and the discussion that had today, provided however, and this is important I think, that these things are then directed into something concrete. Good work Eugen. Good work Robin. Regards, Brett From gpmap at runbox.com Sat Nov 22 06:42:16 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 07:42:16 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Glowing fish to be first genetically changed pet Message-ID: From http://www.reuters.co.uk/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=407 444 A little tropical fish that glows fluorescent red will be the first genetically engineered pet. The zebra fish were originally developed to detect environmental toxins, but a company licensed them to sell as pets. The fish, sold under the trademarked name GloFish, carry a gene taken from a sea coral that makes it glow all the time. There is no evidence the fish will pose any threat to the environment. Normal zebra fish are commonly used in aquariums and cannot survive in non-tropical waters. They are very bright under any type of light, and under ultraviolet light in a dark room they will appear to be glowing in the dark. The fish will sell for about $5 apiece at pet stores in January. http://www.segrestfarms.com/index.ihtml?skipintro=1 Seagrest Farms have a page with pictures of the GloFish and a FAQ. This nice bit of apparently irrelevant news may well be a milestone for the acceptance of genetic engineering in our everyday life. From alito at organicrobot.com Sat Nov 22 07:47:50 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 17:47:50 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale In-Reply-To: <20031121204658.GD7350@leitl.org> References: <20031121204658.GD7350@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1069487270.28084.98.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Sat, 2003-11-22 at 06:46, Eugen Leitl wrote: > A suggestion was to roll your own. A couple of days ago > I came upon this nice semilog-step flash visualization: > > http://cellsalive.com/howbig.htm > > I stole it, and attempted to add a couple of steps, to > bring it down to the nanoscale. After two hours (and > lots of growling) I got this: > > http://moleculardevices.org/howbig.htm nice. > This was done on somewhat vintage hardware (Mac G4, 1.5 GByte RAM, > oldish OpenGL accelerator). I'll try this again this weekend > on a more recent (but: not bleeding edge system). VMD and PyMOL > were both being able to handle the image size. I haven't tried > Jmol, but have a suspicion it might be up to the task. The weak > point was, surprisingly, Povray. The raytracer could barely > render a 132 MByte .pov file with 1.5 GBytes RAM. Perhaps somebody > here can suggest a better deal? Tachyon? Something else? > You could give Blender a try. I haven't used it for rendering purposes, only as a modeller (and never seriously), and it doesn't import POVRay files (AFAIK), but it does have decent python bindings so it might not be too hard to import the data, and it seems to be the most popular GPL modeller going around in case you want to do any other sort of 3d playing. You could also have a look at renderman compatible renderers (never used, but Aqsis looks good enough. There seem to be many around. Blender can export to Renderman too). There is really no need for ray-tracing. Spheres look like spheres, and radiosity/lightning will make them look like so, but the reflection off the always metalicy floor just looks dated more than anything else. And of course, you get a huge speedup bonus. alejandro From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 22 08:48:24 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 00:48:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] BIO: cool stuff with gene tech. Message-ID: The NY Times has a great article: Gene-Altering Revolution Nears the Pet Store: Glow-in-the Dark Fish by Andrew Pollack Nov. 22 2003 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/22/science/22FISH.html So lets see -- we already see people using Human Growth Hormone to make short people taller. I wonder when someone will make a glow-in-the-dark human for vanity reasons and what the reaction around the world will be. Robert From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 22 09:01:48 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 01:01:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Longevity: sea urchin In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It may be easier to do this in water because they may be a little more protected from cosmic rays that might damage DNA. But its certainly a good argument for getting it on the Genomes to be Sequenced lists so we can find out if it has better DNA repair processes. R. On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > > I don't know if this is really news to the experts of the field or not, > but here is a nice piece about how sea urchins seem able to live to 100 or > 200 years without any sign of aging: > > http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2003/Nov03/urchin.htm > > Ciao, > Alfio > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 22 09:55:59 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 20:55:59 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Glowing fish to be first genetically changed pet References: Message-ID: <000b01c3b0de$d52f9700$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > From > http://www.reuters.co.uk/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=407 > 444 > A little tropical fish that glows fluorescent red will be the first > genetically engineered pet. The zebra fish were originally > developed to detect environmental toxins, but a company > licensed them to sell as pets. The fish, sold under the > trademarked name GloFish, carry a gene taken from a > sea coral that makes it glow all the time. > > There is no evidence the fish will pose any threat to the > environment. Where does a statement like that come from? If they are not causing an offense to somebodies eyes they obviously are not glowing brightly enough yet. I think a good marketing plan would be to take this company global real quick (ensuring the fish are able to be bred in hatcheries a number of countries) in anticipation of a backlash which might if the company was lucky create a ban in some places and drive the price up. Failing that Monsanto or a GMO stakeholder that wants to alter public awareness might sponsor (discretely) a program to get these GM fish donated to schools, science centres maybe even a few loud mouth journalists and politicians. Two for each classroom - one named plasmid the other transposon. Might do wonders for the raising of awareness on the naturalness of GM. > Normal zebra fish are commonly used in aquariums and > cannot survive in non-tropical waters. They are very bright > under any type of light, and under ultraviolet light in a dark > room they will appear to be glowing in the dark. > The fish will sell for about $5 apiece at pet stores in January. > http://www.segrestfarms.com/index.ihtml?skipintro=1 I guess a low price will work for mass distribution purposes but still a ban at the right time could be better. It really would not be sporting without some sort of ban as clearly these fish are the direct conception of Satan Himself. God did not mean for fish to glow like corral. Nooo! God wanted Adam to have nipples ....because Eve would need them! Brett From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 22 10:16:16 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 11:16:16 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale In-Reply-To: <99610-2200311521231916154@M2W053.mail2web.com> References: <99610-2200311521231916154@M2W053.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <20031122101616.GG7350@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 21, 2003 at 06:19:16PM -0500, natashavita at earthlink.net wrote: > > A couple of days ago > >I came upon this nice semilog-step flash visualization: > > http://cellsalive.com/howbig.htm > > Nice. Thanks! > How about exhibiting it at MoTA? :-) I don't have the rights to use the flash, and the virus looks ugly. A better way to visualize the particles (povray doesn't scale, it can't render a virus capsid with lines on a 1.5 GByte machine, I'm pretty sure a Bluetongue virus will die even in VDW rendering). I need to figure out how make VMD export height-shaded surfaces, so we can get something like: http://mmtsb.scripps.edu/viper/RENDER/1ihm_graph.html A next step is to script fly-throughs, and render a movie. Do we have people in the house who can use 3D modelling packages, such as Blender? -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 22 10:53:51 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 11:53:51 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale In-Reply-To: <1069487270.28084.98.camel@alito.homeip.net> References: <20031121204658.GD7350@leitl.org> <1069487270.28084.98.camel@alito.homeip.net> Message-ID: <20031122105351.GJ7350@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 05:47:50PM +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > You could give Blender a try. I haven't used it for rendering purposes, I'm very aware of it, but the UI is difficult for a novice. Also, I doubt I can dump the virus surface from VMD, and can import it into Blender. > only as a modeller (and never seriously), and it doesn't import POVRay > files (AFAIK), but it does have decent python bindings so it might not > be too hard to import the data, and it seems to be the most popular GPL It might be not hard for somebody who can program Python, yes. > modeller going around in case you want to do any other sort of 3d > playing. You could also have a look at renderman compatible renderers > (never used, but Aqsis looks good enough. There seem to be many > around. Blender can export to Renderman too). There is really no need > for ray-tracing. Spheres look like spheres, and radiosity/lightning The ray tracing is not a bottleneck, it's just a problem with full atomic detail virus capsids. Do you know the resouce requirements of any of these renderers: http://www.scripps.edu/brooks/WEB_new/vmd_userguide/node96.html ? > will make them look like so, but the reflection off the always metalicy > floor just looks dated more than anything else. And of course, you get > a huge speedup bonus. It takes time to arrange the picture, the rendering is only some 10 min (provided, there's enough memory present). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From alito at organicrobot.com Sat Nov 22 12:36:00 2003 From: alito at organicrobot.com (Alejandro Dubrovsky) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 22:36:00 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale In-Reply-To: <20031122105351.GJ7350@leitl.org> References: <20031121204658.GD7350@leitl.org> <1069487270.28084.98.camel@alito.homeip.net> <20031122105351.GJ7350@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1069504560.28138.120.camel@alito.homeip.net> On Sat, 2003-11-22 at 20:53, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, Nov 22, 2003 at 05:47:50PM +1000, Alejandro Dubrovsky wrote: > > > You could give Blender a try. I haven't used it for rendering purposes, > > I'm very aware of it, but the UI is difficult for a novice. There's an understatement. > Also, > I doubt I can dump the virus surface from VMD, and can import it > into Blender. > I've never used VMD (couldn't even compile it just then, might try harder later), but from the website it seems to be able to export in VRML2 format which blender is (supposedly, my trial was a failure) able to import. It also claims to be able to export to renderman so you could jump straight to trying one of those out (no idea about memory requirements for these) > The ray tracing is not a bottleneck, it's just a problem with full atomic > detail virus capsids. Do you know the resouce requirements of any of > these renderers: > > http://www.scripps.edu/brooks/WEB_new/vmd_userguide/node96.html > > ? > sorry, no idea. alejandro From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 22 00:24:47 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 11:24:47 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: offlist keyword References: <57050-2200311420233831876@M2W090.mail2web.com> <015c01c3aff3$a9d491a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <00fc01c3b059$86f580c0$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Message-ID: <02b601c3b08f$095e6920$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> David McFadzean wrote: > I've changed the list configuration so that any messages that > contain "offlist" in the subject will require moderator approval > before being sent to the list. Thanks David. A very handy and practical safeguard for some of us "brain-sneezers" :-) Regards, Brett From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 22 03:14:23 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 19:14:23 -0800 Subject: OFFLIST Re: [extropy-chat] Libertarianism and theAutisticSpectrum(fwd fromfehlinger@un.org) In-Reply-To: <176730-220031152117038564@M2W078.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <000001c3b0a6$bb3f66a0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > natashavita at earthlink.net > > ...There is nothing > worse than someone flicking the channel mid-stream. :-) > Natasha Oh no, it is much worse to not flick the channel. My wife makes me so crazy with the TV clicker. She will stop on one program, then just, like, STAY THERE until the whole program is, like, OVER! I ask you, what is the point of even having one of those things? When I was young you had to get outta your chair and actually turn a knob on the set if you wanted to channel surf. Of course there were only two channels, so that made it easier, but still. spike From jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com Sat Nov 22 00:05:30 2003 From: jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com (Jose Cordeiro) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 16:05:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] E-books and Nicorette In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031122000530.26387.qmail@web41313.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Giulio, Interesting thought, but you have to be careful with smoking so much. I still remember meeting you in Madrid last year and seeing you smoke like an Italian plus a Spaniard combined:-) Remember that we are not immortals yet... and that cancer is a killer disease:-( Transhumanistically yours, La vie est belle! Yos? Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: Ten years ago I used to travel a lot and I spent many hours on aircraft, smoking cigarettes and reading books. Smoking and reading were such a central part of my air travel experience that I could not conceive being on a plane and not doing these two things all the time. A few days ago I was on the plane and I realised that things have changed fundamentally in ten years: I was reading an e-book on my tablet PC, and happily inhaling nicotine from a Nicorette Inhaler. I was doing the same two things that I used to do ten years ago, in a fundamentally different way. We are really in the twenty-first century. The e-book was a very good one: "Darwin's Children", the sequel to Greg Bear's "Darwin Radio", you can buy both at Fictionwise. I am an early adopter of e-books because I prefer to buy books that I can download immediately. Other fundamental advantages are that e-books can be much cheaper, that I can carry a whole library with me, and that the publisher has e-books immediately available in stock. Well as a matter of fact I have to force myself reading e-books as it is not yet the same as reading paper books, but I am sure technology will advance soon. At that point, e-books will offer a much better quality of life. We smokers do not like forcing our smoke on others, but many of us literally cannot survive without smoking. The Nicorette Inhaler can be used as a Nicotine Replacement Therapy to quit smoking gradually (best wishes to all smokers who want to try), or as a means for smokers to survive in today's world where you cannot smoke anywhere, or as a means for smokers to live without forcing their smoke on others: a much better quality of life for all. These two examples are meant to illustrate how, big visions aside, "small" technology is silently improving our quality of life. _______________________________________________ wta-talk mailing list wta-talk at transhumanism.org http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk La vie est belle! Yos? (www.cordeiro.org) Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com Sat Nov 22 03:33:53 2003 From: jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com (Jose Cordeiro) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 19:33:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031121100203.033f3298@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <20031122033353.77128.qmail@web41312.mail.yahoo.com> Dear transhumanist friends, I totally agree with Max's point below. We should oppose this misuse of the name democracy meaning socialism as proposed by leftists. For a long time, I have been making the same critique about James Hughes's paper, which should be called "socialist" transhumanism as opposed to "democratic" transhumanism. The leftists already "stole" the name "liberal" in the Anglosaxon world and that is why the word "libertarian" had to be created. Words are important. Another example is how some US sports people stole the name football (for a US game with no round ball and with not much use of our feet) from the real football played around the world, and created instead the silly name soccer. I am a believer in democracy and libertarian ideas, which are perfectly compatible, and I strongly oppose the "stealing" of the term democracy by leftists to cover up their socialist plot. Socialism has been always a disgrace wherever it has been tried. The funny thing is that socialists always "steal" words to cover up: in Latin American most leftists propose State Capitalism, which is nothing but Socialism under another name. My concern about socialists is that they will want to restrict liberties, as they always do, and stop the free rise of transhumanism. By its very nature, transhumanism depends very much on individual liberties, since people will decide what to do with their lifes, minds and bodies. The main opposition will be coming from socialists, and communists, facists, Sharia Islamists and other groups that "know better" what is good for you. SOCIALISM IS BASICALLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH LONG-TERM TRANSHUMANISM. Transhumanistically yours, La vie est belle! Yos? Max More wrote: What *does* bother me is socialists like James Hughes and Dale Carrico who use the term "democratic transhumanism" and talk about "cyborg democracy". Their use of the term "democracy" appears to me to be a cover for socialism. This disturbs me in large part because socialism has always been a disastrous goal and method and extending it to transhumanist issues would probably be even worse. That's the main issue, as far as I'm concerned.-talk La vie est belle! Yos? (www.cordeiro.org) Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From twodeel at jornada.org Sat Nov 22 15:56:33 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 07:56:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] E-books and Nicorette In-Reply-To: <20031122000530.26387.qmail@web41313.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Jose Cordeiro wrote: > Interesting thought, but you have to be careful with smoking so > much. I still remember meeting you in Madrid last year and seeing you > smoke like an Italian plus a Spaniard combined:-) > Remember that we are not immortals yet... and that cancer is a > killer disease:-( I thought that's why he was using a nicotine inhaler. Aside from it being courteous to other passengers. From twodeel at jornada.org Sat Nov 22 16:19:53 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 08:19:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] [wta-politics] Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031121100203.033f3298@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Max More wrote: > This disturbs me in large part because socialism has always been a > disastrous goal and method and extending it to transhumanist issues > would probably be even worse. On the other hand, the fact socialism (or even communism) has proved disastrous in the past doesn't mean that it would be disastrous with a transhuman population. The reason it has failed has been succinctly summed up as "it goes against human nature," but the whole point of transhumanism is to change what it means to be human. Whether it would be desirable to modify your personality to fit in with a communal system of living is obviously a matter of individual tastes, and it shouldn't be forced on people, but just because that kind of system hasn't worked out in the past with unaltered humans doesn't mean that it will forever be unworkable. From gpmap at runbox.com Sat Nov 22 16:31:52 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 17:31:52 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Device puts you in the right state of mind Message-ID: >From Geek.com and ZDNet: Dreamfree Inc., a South Korean company, has a new computer accessory unlike any other. This one is designed to generate the appropriate brainwaves to induce an individual into a chosen mental state. Some of these mental states include sleep, vitality, meditation, relaxation, tape study, study, and concentration. The company does this though its EEGFree device. EEG stands for ElectroEncephaloGram, another fancy word for brainwaves. The device consists of hi-tech goggles which flash light impulses, and a set of headphones to produce sound impulses. By utilizing these light and sound patterns the EEGFree device can assist users in changing their brainwave activity to match a desired state. This must be a very nice gadget and perhaps it also works in a fashion, at the same time I do not believe this technology is operational yet. But surely it will come, at that time one will be able to choose a mood and a state of mind like today one can choose a new look. Some will say this is dehumanizing, on the contrary I think it will be humanizing. Animals don?t choose their look, or their mood. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5109628.html http://geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Nov/gee20031121022781.htm From neptune at superlink.net Sat Nov 22 16:45:10 2003 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 11:45:10 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism References: <20031122033353.77128.qmail@web41312.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <008701c3b117$ff378a60$2bcd5cd1@neptune> On Friday, November 21, 2003 10:33 PM Jose Cordeiro jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com wrote: > I totally agree with Max's point below. We should > oppose this misuse of the name democracy > meaning socialism as proposed by leftists. For > a long time, I have been making the same critique > about James Hughes's paper, which should be > called "socialist" transhumanism as opposed to > "democratic" transhumanism. The problem is that democracy is not antithetical to statism, especially not government intervention in the economy. All extant democratic polities are welfare states, some bordering on socialism. You might say this tendency is contingent and in a different setting democracy would not lead to welfare statism or socialism. However, people like Hans-Hermann Hoppe argue on purely political economic grounds that democracies will always tend in that direction. If Hoppe and the others are correct, the best we can hope for with democracy is a watered down welfare state wherein the internal dynamics of the system keep pushing it toward higher levels of government control -- because people in a democracy see state power as both a threat and a goal. You can ignore Hoppe's argument. You can also ignore the other libertarian critiques of democracy, but that doesn't mean their arguments are flawed. > The leftists already "stole" the name "liberal" in > the Anglosaxon world and that is why the word > "libertarian" had to be created. Words are > important. Another example is how some US > sports people stole the name football (for a US > game with no round ball and with not much use > of our feet) from the real football played around > the world, and created instead the silly name > soccer. I'm not sure about American "football" being a stolen term, but the problem is that democracy, for most of its long history, has meant more what the Left means by it then what you mean by it. From Ancient Athens up until the American Republic, democracy meant rule by the people without limits. This is why the American Founders were suspect of having democracy and imposed all sorts of limits on it. Most of them also feared that these limits would be short-lived, but for many of them being schooled in the Ancients this was just a belief that all free polities would be ephemeral. (Notably, they were right. The limits on democracy and state power in the US were eroded or ignored. Yes, America is still relatively free -- if you don't mind having every aspect of your life regulated and being taxed at a rate an order or two of magnitude greater than what drove the Americans to rebellion against the British.) > I am a believer in democracy and libertarian ideas, > which are perfectly compatible, I disagree. In the end, I believe one will have to choose between freedom and democracy because the two will conflict. Any system that seeks to limit either can only set up a dialectic that at best is metastable -- probably like the US or now the global system where there are periods of greater and lesser freedom, but the general trend is toward less until we have some revolutionary break out of this system. (Of course, this is not to say some perfect system is possible that does not change. In this, I agree with the Founders that societies will decay eventually. However, I think democratic societies decay much quicker -- well, that is, if you believe the rise of democratic depostism and other corruptions of democratic systems are decay. If you take a neutral moral position on these, then you might just say these are the end states of democracy and any limitations merely delay the inevitable.) > and I strongly oppose the "stealing" of the term > democracy by leftists to cover up their socialist > plot. Socialism has been always a disgrace > wherever it has been tried. The funny thing is > that socialists always "steal" words to cover up: > in Latin American most leftists propose State > Capitalism, which is nothing but Socialism > under another name. Well, you have to admit, first of all, that just from the meaning of the word "rule by the people," the Left has a point. If the people are going to rule, then socialism is compatible with that rule -- provide the people want socialism and vote it into power. In fact, most the people of all of the nations of this planet either want a high degree of government control over their lives or they are, for the most part, unwilling to work against it. (As Hoppe points out, the system works that way. Most people don't think about long range freedom in the abstract. They think about what they want now and they see state power as a means of getting it. When state power is used against them, they don't think about limiting or abolishing such power. They, instead, think about how they can obtain such power to either use in their favor or use against their adversaries. It's very rare to see people think state power is _the_ problem, instead of merely its particular use being the problem.) > My concern about socialists is that they will > want to restrict liberties, as they always do, If like me, by "liberties" you mean stuff like being able to freely contract -- form organizations, trade, etc. -- then, yes, this is an obvious point. However, most socialists I know either don't see this as a liberty or believe that it's extremely rare when such liberties don't create externalities or can be actually implemented. (I'm sure you know how many of them will argue that a poor man who must work is not able to exercise freedom when choosing a job.) > and stop the free rise of transhumanism. I think that it might be hampered but not stopped. Of course, this would be an unintended consequence of their actions. I.e., I don't think transhumanists who are socialist or welfare statist consciously want to stop or hamper progress, but I do think they will delay it. > By its very nature, transhumanism depends very > much on individual liberties, since people will > decide what to do with their lifes, minds and > bodies. The main opposition will be coming > from socialists, and communists, facists, Sharia > Islamists and other groups that "know better" > what is good for you. I believe the real choice is whether posthumanity comes about above ground with most people being able to see a lot of what's happening or whether it's driven underground. Those who oppose it might delay it, but they will actually only do themselves a disservice as they won't be able to track most of the changes. Instead, they will live in a world where they have ever less understanding of what is happening. This would be a worse outcome, but that's life. Later! Dan http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/ From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 22 20:54:05 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 07:54:05 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Channel surfing References: <000001c3b0a6$bb3f66a0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <00bd01c3b13a$c49c4120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Spike wrote: > > natashavita at earthlink.net > > > > ...There is nothing > > worse than someone flicking the channel mid-stream. :-) > > Natasha > > Oh no, it is much worse to not flick the channel. My > wife makes me so crazy with the TV clicker. She will > stop on one program, then just, like, STAY THERE until > the whole program is, like, OVER! I ask you, what is > the point of even having one of those things? Well, having ONE of those things puts control in the hands of the person holding it. Having TWO or more however might test the patience of the more ardent channel surfer :-) Regards, Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sat Nov 22 21:55:35 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 08:55:35 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism Message-ID: <010201c3b143$5bcb9660$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Jose Cordeiro wrote: To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org ; max at maxmore.com > ...We should oppose this misuse of the name democracy > meaning socialism as proposed by leftists. For a long time, I > have been making the same critique about James Hughes's > paper, which should be called "socialist" transhumanism as > opposed to "democratic" transhumanism. Jose, can you provide a link to the paper you are talking about? > Words are important. On that I agree with you. > I am a believer in democracy and libertarian ideas, which are > perfectly compatible, and I strongly oppose the "stealing" of > the term democracy by leftists to cover up their socialist plot. Oh good. Another true "believer". We've been really needing one of them ;-) > Socialism has been always a disgrace wherever it has been > tried. So why worry ? > My concern about socialists is that they will want to restrict > liberties, as they always do, and stop the free rise of > transhumanism. You mean as opposed to folk like Kass? >....people will decide what to do with their lifes, minds > and bodies. Then again I ask why worry? If there is no chance of "socialism" working why would you want to exert effort to oppose it? There is an opportunity cost to opposing something. You don't have the time to oppose something else. Something like Kass's great vision of the world. There is no global democracy under any meaning of the term "democracy" - never has been. Nor has there been a global "socialism". Perhaps it would be more extropic to have a global democracy of a form - perhaps not. I have an open mind on that - because it is not something I see as likely to happen anytime soon. First one would have to make a convincing case for it and second (short of a global revolution) one would have to sell that case to the American voter. The American voter is no stupider than any other variety of voter - but nor is the American voter much brighter. They are not going to vote in the aggregate to give up the preferential benefits as they see it to them any time soon. This is not a slur. Romans would not have voted in the aggregate to make all the world Roman's and Australian's will not vote in the aggregate to allow everyone to enter Australia who would like to come here. I add the last because I am Australian and I don't want people to think I am being party political or nationalistic. > The main opposition will be coming from socialists, > and communists, facists, Sharia Islamists and other groups that > "know better" what is good for you. That looks like pretty divided opposition to me. Regards, Brett From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 22 23:00:29 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 15:00:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <20031122033353.77128.qmail@web41312.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20031122230029.85301.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- Jose Cordeiro wrote: > Dear transhumanist friends, > > I totally agree with Max's point below. We should oppose this > misuse of the name democracy meaning socialism as proposed by > leftists. For a long time, I have been making the same critique about > James Hughes's paper, which should be called "socialist" > transhumanism as opposed to "democratic" transhumanism. > > The leftists already "stole" the name "liberal" in the > Anglosaxon world and that is why the word "libertarian" had to be > created. Words are important. Another example is how some US sports > people stole the name football (for a US game with no round ball and > with not much use of our feet) from the real football played around > the world, and created instead the silly name soccer. Well, we didn't quite invent Libertarian either, we stole it from the more allegedly anarchist socialists, at least according to them, and they are quite put out about it, even to the point of writing a FAQ about it and insisting that it be called THE Anarchist FAQ, brooking no other. Conversely, note that the Progressive movement began with Republican ex-President Teddy Roosevelt, and is now a more left wing party than the DNC, and the lower case version of the word is used by lefties to apply to anything they are. Stealing of words is not a new phenom. The word tyrant was created to describe a leader who comes to power with popular support (i.e. majoritarian) against the wishes of the aristocracy. The term "motor vehicle" was meant to apply only to vehicles used in commercial enterprise, carrying passengers or frieght on the roads for hire or pay. Traffic police are only supposed to regulate such commercial traffic on the roads, i.e. traffic in goods, transporting goods on public roads for commercial enterprise. Yet the incrementalists the world over, starting under the second Roosevelt here in the US, have been twisting and turning these terms to apply to any and all human travel. > > I am a believer in democracy and libertarian ideas, which are > perfectly compatible, and I strongly oppose the "stealing" of the > term democracy by leftists to cover up their socialist plot. > Socialism has been always a disgrace wherever it has been tried. The > funny thing is that socialists always "steal" words to cover up: in > Latin American most leftists propose State Capitalism, which is > nothing but Socialism under another name. Another word/term: "Agrarian Reformers", i.e. Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, The Sandinistas, etc. Nobody mentions that the reform they intend is fertilizing the soil with wholly organic human blood and bodies. Organic veggies, anyone? It isn't hard to see how they get steered so wrongly. Even Thomas Paine started veering off into proto-socialism in the latter half of his Rights of Man. Of course, that is the half tho socialists like most... ;) > > SOCIALISM IS BASICALLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH LONG-TERM > TRANSHUMANISM. True enough. You will only be free to transform yourself when you are free to wholly own your mind, your body, and the products of your labor and thoughts. Until then, luddo-socialism will always have a claim to regulate your transformation. On that note, I'd like to make a slight plug here. As you know, my home state of New Hampshire is the Free State Project's designated Free State. 20,000 liberty lovers, mostly libertarians, will be moving here within 3-6 years. Some are already here or on the way here. There are currently 3 extropians and a few more transhumanists here already, and a number of extropes and >Hists are FSP members. One way we can ensure that transhumanism always has a safe haven somewhere where we can innovate and transform freely is to designate such a safe jurisdiction and work within that jurisdiction to enact laws that expand our liberties with other liberty lovers. Dr Jason Sorens' logic of focusing on such a state with low population, easy government access, and pre-existing high liberty quotient works especially well for us. It is just my opinion, but it seems to me that picking large population, high regulation, states like California or Arizona (i.e. where ExI and Alcor are located) only invites restraints on transhumanist liberty. I would like to suggest that extropians and transhumanists in general, who have not already done so, to seriously consider making The Free State their own Free State. Adopt the same logic that Jason developed and figure out where transhumanists would be happiest. Seven years ago I founded a group called Transhumanists of New Hampshire, whose motto is "To Live Free and Never Die". It has been rather quiet given most of us live in other areas of the country, but I'd be happy to get it back up and functioning. I'm going to be changing jobs within a few weeks or so to a much more professional setting in Manchester, which is in the southern part of the state (getting involved in a business another Free Stater is moving here already). ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun Nov 23 00:59:50 2003 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:59:50 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism References: <20031122230029.85301.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000e01c3b15d$1a013ef0$6400a8c0@brainiac> From: "Mike Lorrey" > Well, we didn't quite invent Libertarian either, we stole it from the > more allegedly anarchist socialists, at least according to them, and > they are quite put out about it, even to the point of writing a FAQ > about it and insisting that it be called THE Anarchist FAQ, brooking no > other. The problem of the various sorts of meanings given to words like democracy and socialism exists, as well, with the word "libertarian" (whether capitalized or not), e.g. Vox Day, who calls himself a "Christian libertarian," and proves one can have SFB and be a Mensan, too: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35640 Olga From max at maxmore.com Sun Nov 23 02:53:28 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 20:53:28 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <20031122230029.85301.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031122033353.77128.qmail@web41312.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031122205215.0196ea78@mail.earthlink.net> At 05:00 PM 11/22/2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: >It is just my opinion, but it seems to me that picking large >population, high regulation, states like California or Arizona (i.e. >where ExI and Alcor are located) Mike, ExI is not located in California and hasn't been for over a year, though we can still receive mail via the old address. Max _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 23 02:58:28 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 13:58:28 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism References: <20031122230029.85301.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> <000e01c3b15d$1a013ef0$6400a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <018f01c3b16d$abab7cc0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Olga Bourlin wrote: > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > > Well, we didn't quite invent Libertarian either, we stole it from the > > more allegedly anarchist socialists, at least according to them, and > > they are quite put out about it, even to the point of writing a FAQ > > about it and insisting that it be called THE Anarchist FAQ, brooking no > > other. > > The problem of the various sorts of meanings given to words like democracy > and socialism exists, as well, with the word "libertarian" (whether > capitalized or not), e.g. Vox Day, who calls himself a "Christian > libertarian," and proves one can have SFB and be a Mensan, too: > > http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35640 Are you wanting to see a rebuttal of the 'argument' put by Vox Day Olga? I've seen that 'argument' many times before, I think it is a quite common and wrong, but maybe it still sways some folk. Do you see any merit in it? I'm not interested in debating a point with someone who isn't making it but if you think there is merit in it I'd take a shot. Regards, Brett From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun Nov 23 03:46:05 2003 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2003 19:46:05 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism References: <20031122230029.85301.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com><000e01c3b15d$1a013ef0$6400a8c0@brainiac> <018f01c3b16d$abab7cc0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <000c01c3b174$53bb1c80$6400a8c0@brainiac> From: "Brett Paatsch" > Olga Bourlin wrote: > > The problem of the various sorts of meanings given to words like democracy > > and socialism exists, as well, with the word "libertarian" (whether > > capitalized or not), e.g. Vox Day, who calls himself a "Christian > > libertarian," and proves one can have SFB and be a Mensan, too: > > > > http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35640 > > Are you wanting to see a rebuttal of the 'argument' put by Vox Day > Olga? > I've seen that 'argument' many times before, I think it is a quite common > and wrong, but maybe it still sways some folk. Do you see any merit > in it? I'm not interested in debating a point with someone who isn't making > it but if you think there is merit in it I'd take a shot. FYI, I'm not a libertarian, I don't agree with Vox Day - and I'm a nontheist. Not a few libertarians on this list have dismissed me as being sympathetic to the leftist "ilk," but I continue to exhibit a profound ignorance of the attractions of libertarianism. Maybe it's genetic... ;(( Olga From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 23 04:21:31 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 15:21:31 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism References: <20031122230029.85301.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> <000e01c3b15d$1a013ef0$6400a8c0@brainiac> <018f01c3b16d$abab7cc0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <000c01c3b174$53bb1c80$6400a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <01df01c3b179$45a36080$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Olga Bourlin wrote: > FYI, I'm not a libertarian, I don't agree with Vox Day - and > I'm a nontheist. Not a few libertarians on this list have dismissed > me as being sympathetic to the leftist "ilk," but I continue to > exhibit a profound ignorance of the attractions of libertarianism. > > Maybe it's genetic... ;(( Nothing wrong with sympathies ;-) I thought you were an atheist. (I am not sure if nontheist means the same)- nor do I care much nor suspect that you do). I wasn't asking you to attach yourself to any ism - I think that that is like asking someone to put a political noose around their neck and hand the extended rope to someone else. I wonder why anyone would subscribe to any large ism like socialism for instance. But having done so I wouldn't be surprised if they invited others to so classify themselves for easier political dispatch. We are all works in progress I figure - even those enthralled to a large ism can grow out of it. Atheism is a very very small ism. Even rationalism is pretty small - I don't mind associating with them (the terms) too much. I'll continue to think of you as Olga Bourlin then, definitely not to be dismissed, and a sometime frequenter of the ExI list ;-) Regards, Brett From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Sun Nov 23 11:57:53 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 11:57:53 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Computers as you like Message-ID: <3FC0A0C1.5090609@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Personal Fabrication by Neil Gershenfeld 'The next big thing in computers will be personal fabrication: allowing anyone to make fully functioning systems -- with print semiconductors for logic, inks for displays, three-dimensional mechanical structures, motors, sensors, and actuators. Post-digital literacy now includes 3D machining and microcontroller programming. For a few thousand dollars, a little tabletop milling machine can measure its position down to microns, so you can fabricate the structures of modern technology, such as circuit boards'. So it won't be long before we can make computers optimized for our own requirements. Initially it will probably mean hiring time at your local fabrication plant, where you can rearrange the designs to your own spec. But it might later become cheap enough to have your own fab plant. Eugene will be able to make his own version of 'Blue Gene' (or will that be 'Blue Eugene' by then?). Spike will have a specialized prime number seeker humming away in the corner (currently seeking a prime number at levels higher than the number of atoms in the galaxy). John Bradbury will have a system doing protein folding and unfolding in minutes (with jars of newly-designed DNA stacked neatly along his garage wall). Me? Oh, I'll probably have a multi-processor system glowing red-hot and emitting jets of super-heated steam as it tries to understand the latest tax forms. BillK From reason at exratio.com Sun Nov 23 12:05:47 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 04:05:47 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Methuselah Mouse life-a-thon launched In-Reply-To: <20031122041907.75228.qmail@web41304.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: The Methuselah Foundation is about to launch it's "Life-a-thon" tote board software. It's a nice little memetic engineering platform technology. You can get in early and download from: http://www.methuselahmouse.org/tote.htm "The Methuselah Mouse Prize is pleased to bring you the MMP Life-a-thon Prize Tracker. Keep track of the prize in real time, and see new donations instantly. Stay abreast of the latest foundation news with our scrolling news ticker, and browse headlines on the latest medical and longevity related breakthroughs with our RSS News feed browser. Use our life-line analysis tool to plot a graph of your expected lifespan, and the predicted effect the prize will have on it." (The page is a little confusing in its current incarnation. The direct link to the Windows installer is: http://www.methuselahmouse.org/tote/life-a-thon-win32-setup.exe). Try it out! Suggestions appreciated; there's an insider forum thread over at the Immortality Institute: http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=2169&s= Reason http://www.exratio.com From duggerj1 at charter.net Sun Nov 23 13:32:28 2003 From: duggerj1 at charter.net (JAY DUGGER) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 08:32:28 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <20031122033353.77128.qmail@web41312.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 19:33:53 -0800 (PST) Jose Cordeiro wrote: Jose, I found this email well-written and argued. Thank you for writing this piece. It raised an important pot I'd missed in my quick skim over Max's paper: Words do matter. Work and health prevented me from participating in this thread, so thank you twice for saying what I couldn't. Jay Dugger : Til Eulenspiegel http://www.owlmirror.net/~duggerj Sometimes delete serves best. From bjk at imminst.org Sun Nov 23 13:42:46 2003 From: bjk at imminst.org (Bruce J. Klein) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 07:42:46 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ImmInst Chat - Charles Platt - Cryonics - Sunday Nov 17 Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20031123074224.01fe4fd0@mail.kia.net> CHAT - FUTURE GOALS & PROBLEMS WITH CRYONICS ******************************************* Author of many popular science fiction novels, co-founder of CryoCare and former director of suspension services for Alcor Foundation, CHARLES PLATT joins ImmInst to discuss the future of cryonics. Sunday Nov 17 @ 8 PM Eastern http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=99&t=2059&st= From neptune at superlink.net Sun Nov 23 14:11:39 2003 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 09:11:39 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] ImmInst Chat - Charles Platt - Cryonics - Sunday Nov17 References: <6.0.0.22.2.20031123074224.01fe4fd0@mail.kia.net> Message-ID: <002e01c3b1cb$b7ef5a20$26cd5cd1@neptune> On Sunday, November 23, 2003 8:42 AM Bruce J. Klein bjk at imminst.org > Author of many popular science fiction > novels, co-founder of CryoCare and > former director of suspension services > for Alcor Foundation, CHARLES PLATT > joins ImmInst to discuss the future of > cryonics. > > Sunday Nov 17 @ 8 PM Eastern > http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=99&t=2059&st= So when we invent a time machine, we'll be able to participate?:) (Or are you in a spot in the universe where time runs in the other direction?:) Later! Dan http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/ From bjk at imminst.org Sun Nov 23 16:31:18 2003 From: bjk at imminst.org (Bruce J. Klein) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 10:31:18 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ImmInst Chat - Charles Platt - Cryonics - Sunday Nov17=23 In-Reply-To: <002e01c3b1cb$b7ef5a20$26cd5cd1@neptune> References: <6.0.0.22.2.20031123074224.01fe4fd0@mail.kia.net> <002e01c3b1cb$b7ef5a20$26cd5cd1@neptune> Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20031123103002.01fdd500@mail.kia.net> Woops.. that would, of course be Nov 23. No time machine.. yet. At 08:11 AM 11/23/2003, you wrote: >On Sunday, November 23, 2003 8:42 AM Bruce J. Klein bjk at imminst.org > > Author of many popular science fiction > > novels, co-founder of CryoCare and > > former director of suspension services > > for Alcor Foundation, CHARLES PLATT > > joins ImmInst to discuss the future of > > cryonics. > > > > Sunday Nov 17 @ 8 PM Eastern > > http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=99&t=2059&st= > >So when we invent a time machine, we'll be able to participate?:) (Or >are you in a spot in the universe where time runs in the other >direction?:) > >Later! > >Dan >http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/ > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 23 17:28:38 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 09:28:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <008701c3b117$ff378a60$2bcd5cd1@neptune> Message-ID: <20031123172838.11990.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> --- Technotranscendence wrote: > On Friday, November 21, 2003 10:33 PM Jose Cordeiro > jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com wrote: > > I totally agree with Max's point below. We should > > oppose this misuse of the name democracy > > meaning socialism as proposed by leftists. For > > a long time, I have been making the same critique > > about James Hughes's paper, which should be > > called "socialist" transhumanism as opposed to > > "democratic" transhumanism. > > The problem is that democracy is not antithetical to statism, > especially > not government intervention in the economy. All extant democratic > polities are welfare states, some bordering on socialism. You might > say > this tendency is contingent and in a different setting democracy > would > not lead to welfare statism or socialism. However, people like > Hans-Hermann Hoppe argue on purely political economic grounds that > democracies will always tend in that direction. The current status of many extant democracies is not an indictment of democracy as inherently socialist. In fact, socialist tendencies are, according to historical commentators, a key indicator that a democracy is headed down a slippery slope to tyranny, when the majority discovers it can vote itself largess from the public treasury, taxed to the tab of the minority. Republican features are intended to prevent, halt, or otherwise mitigate this slide, as Max has said. They are really needed only so far as the degree to which a democratic government is empowered to regulate the lives of individuals, and how successful statists are over time at redefining such powers to encompass greater and greater amounts and areas of human endeavor. For example, here in the US, Congress seems to have few powers, according to the Constitution, yet the greatest power that congress has is the power to regulate interstate commerce. The Constitution does not have a glossary to define what 'interstate commerce', or even 'regulate', means. As a result, where it was once accepted to mean the overseeing of purely commercial traffic between states via channels of commerce, as and where it occurs at borders, interstate commerce was reinterpreted during the FDR administration to cover any sort of human activity that has any sort of impact on commercial activity which might potentially involve, or in the future involve, goods and services in traffic between the states. The SCOTUS decision which was responsible for this reinterpretation was, of course, the result of Roosevelt threatening to pack the court, but it was still responsible for 98% of the domestic statist expansion in the US in the 20th century. This trend was something I described in my 2001 essay, "It's About The Trust, Stupid!", published in The Libertarian Enterprise. As Jose Cordeiro commented the other day, redefining the terms of discourse is the most heinous way by which statists expand their influence. Politically, they steal labels like 'liberal' and 'progressive' to stealthily legitimize their subversion. They become involved in the legal system and help to rewrite the legal dictionaries with expanded definitions of terms to fit their needs for statist expansion of power. They engage in promoting their new definitions via the press and literature. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 23 17:35:00 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 09:35:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] [wta-politics] Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031123173500.25867.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> --- Don Dartfield wrote: > On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Max More wrote: > > > This disturbs me in large part because socialism has always been a > > disastrous goal and method and extending it to transhumanist issues > > would probably be even worse. > > On the other hand, the fact socialism (or even communism) has proved > disastrous in the past doesn't mean that it would be disastrous with > a > transhuman population. The reason it has failed has been succinctly > summed up as "it goes against human nature," but the whole point of > transhumanism is to change what it means to be human. Whether it > would be desirable to modify your personality to fit in with a > communal system of living is obviously a matter of individual > tastes, and it shouldn't be forced on people, but just because > that kind of system hasn't worked out in the past with unaltered > humans doesn't mean that it will forever be unworkable. Socialism has never been disastrous for those who lived well within its precepts, it has been disastrous only for those who did not fit well in, under, and around its system. Successfully engineering a 'transhuman socialist' would do nothing to make socialism successful, because socialisms negative externalities always fall on those who are not inherently socialist. Unless you forcibly convert everyone into transhuman socialists, then it is a supremely dumb idea, so the point is moot. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From jef at jefallbright.net Sun Nov 23 17:39:04 2003 From: jef at jefallbright.net (Jef Allbright) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 09:39:04 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Fw: Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity Message-ID: <06df01c3b1e8$ba5d46b0$6701a8c0@int.veeco.com> I received my copy of this book from Amazon and it exceeded my expectations. The first chapter describes what I think are the key issues today in undertanding the illusion of self that colors so much of the thinking and discussion on this list. The text is dense, not for the casual reader. Highly recommended for those seeking a wider view of consciousness that encompasses the "paradoxes" of qualia and subjectivity and David Chalmers' so-called "hard problem of consciousness." - Jef Human Nature Review wrote: > Human Nature Review 2003 Volume 3: 450-454 ( 17 November ) > URL of this document http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/metzinger.html > > Book Review > > Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity > by Thomas Metzinger > MIT Press, (2003), pp. 699, ISBN: 0-262-13417-9 > > Reviewed by Marcello Ghin. > > The notion of consciousness has been suspected of being too vague for > being a topic of scientific investigation. Recently, consciousness > has become more interesting in the light of new neuroscientific > imaging studies. Scientists from all over the world are searching for > neural correlates of consciousness. However, finding the neural basis > is not enough for a scientific explanation of conscious experience. > After all, we are still facing the 'hard problem', as David Chalmers > dubbed it: why are those neural processes accompanied by conscious > experience at all? Maybe we can reformulate the question in this way: > Which constraints does a system have to satisfy in order to generate > conscious experience? Being No One is an attempt to give an answer to > the latter question. To be more precise: it is an attempt to give an > answer to the question of how information processing systems generate > the conscious experience of being someone. > > We all experience ourselves as being someone. For example, at this > moment you will have the impression that it is you who is actually > reading this review. And it is you who is forming thoughts about it. > Could it be otherwise? Could I be wrong about what I myself am > experiencing? Our daily experiences make us think that we are someone > who is experiencing the world. We commonly refer to this phenomenon > by speaking of the 'self'. Metzinger claims that no such things as > 'selves' exist in the world. All that exists are phenomenal > self-models, that is continuously updated dynamic > self-representational processes of biological organisms. Conscious > beings constantly confuse themselves with the content of their actual > phenomenal self-model, thinking that they are identical with a self. > According to Metzinger, this is due to the nature of the > representational process generating the self-model. The self-model is > mostly transparent - the information that it is a model is not > carried on the level of content - we are looking through it, having > the impression of being in direct contact with our own body and the > world. If you are now thinking that this idea is at least > counterintuitive, you should read Being No One and find out why it is > counterintuitive, and yet that there are good reasons to believe that > it is correct. > > Full text > http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/metzinger.html > > Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity > by Thomas Metzinger (Author) > Hardcover: 584 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.56 x 9.25 x 7.32 > Publisher: MIT Press; (January 24, 2003) ISBN: 0262134179 > AMAZON - US > http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262134179/darwinanddarwini/ > AMAZON - UK > http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262134179/humannaturecom/ > > Editorial Reviews > Book Info > Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat, Mainz, Germany. Text introduces two > theoretical entities that may form the decisive conceptual link > between first-person and third-person approaches to the conscious > mind. Explores evolutionary roots of intersubjectivity, artifical > subjectivity, and future connections between philosophy of mind and > ethics. > > Book Description > According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the > world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal > selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, > however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of > a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German > philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a > representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously > experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge > between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he > develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of > unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and > hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the > concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How > exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out > of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to > determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience > of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal > self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also > asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences > as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately > rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious > minds. Metzinger introduces two theoretical entities--the "phenomenal > self-model" and the "phenomenal model of the intentionality > relation"--that may form the decisive conceptual link between > first-person and third-person approaches to the conscious mind and > between consciousness research in the humanities and in the sciences. > He also discusses the roots of intersubjectivity, artificial > subjectivity (the issue of nonbiological phenomenal selves), and > connections between philosophy of mind and ethics. > > > > > > Human Nature Review http://human-nature.com > Evolutionary Psychology http://human-nature.com/ep > Human Nature Daily Review http://human-nature.com/nibbs > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From twodeel at jornada.org Sun Nov 23 18:15:38 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 10:15:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [wta-talk] [wta-politics] Max More's article on Democracy and Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <20031123173500.25867.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > Socialism has never been disastrous for those who lived well within its > precepts, it has been disastrous only for those who did not fit well in, > under, and around its system. Successfully engineering a 'transhuman > socialist' would do nothing to make socialism successful, because > socialisms negative externalities always fall on those who are not > inherently socialist. Unless you forcibly convert everyone into > transhuman socialists, then it is a supremely dumb idea, so the point is > moot. I don't think anybody is currently inherently completely socialist or communist. Everybody ultimately has far more self-interest than other-interest. But there are people who wish they had more concern for others or for society in general, and if those people changed themselves to better fit their ideals, the societies they formed would probably be much more successful than they have been in the past. In the past, even people with strong religious motivation to succeed at communal living arrangments have ultimately failed -- the early Christian communal societies, for instance, or the religious colonies of the 19th century like the Oneida Perfectionists or the Mormons practicing their United Order. Ultimately all of these experiments failed, but perhaps if those societies' members had been able to avail themselves of the technology to modify their nature, they would have been able to succeed. (Of course, if they had access to that technology, they might be better off just ridding themselves of their peculiar religious sentiments instead of indulging them -- but obviously that's a matter of personal freedom. ;) From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 23 18:18:54 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 10:18:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Fw: Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity In-Reply-To: <06df01c3b1e8$ba5d46b0$6701a8c0@int.veeco.com> Message-ID: <20031123181854.5392.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> --- Jef Allbright wrote: > I received my copy of this book from Amazon and it exceeded my > expectations. > The first chapter describes what I think are the key issues today in > undertanding the illusion of self that colors so much of the thinking > and discussion on this list. What I find so odd about Metzinger's thesis as well as that of Jaynes and others is that the 'proof' they need to support their theory, that the self is an illusion, they always seem to dredge evidence from studies of individuals suffering from rare and odd mental disfunctions, and applying what is learned from such oddities to everyone else without any sort of logic for doing so. It is like saying that because genocidists had fulfilling family lives, that everyone with a fulfilling family life is a genocidist. Just because some mentally disfunctional individuals exhibit features that support the idea that THEY have some sort of an illusionary sense of self does not mean that everyone else's self is equally illusive. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From gpmap at runbox.com Sun Nov 23 19:11:31 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 20:11:31 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Poorer nations to reap rewards of trend to outsourcing Message-ID: >From the Financial Times: The outsourcing of business operations via the internet could earn some of the world's poorest countries billions of dollars over the next few years, according to a United Nations study. In its latest annual report on electronic commerce published yesterday, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) says offshore outsourcing could generate some 3.3m jobs worldwide by 2015, 2.3m of them in India and most of the rest in developing nations, the report adds. Though India's skilled English-speaking workforce and low salaries have enabled it to capture a dominant share of the international outsourcing market, the report notes that business process service providers are emerging in countries as varied as Bangladesh, Brazil, China, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Venezuela and Vietnam. Unctad nevertheless points out that internet use depends not simply on income levels but also on government policy. "Internet penetration rates in developing countries with comparable income levels vary by as much as 25 times," it says. In particular, the report recommends the use of free and open-source software. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From extropy at unreasonable.com Sun Nov 23 19:47:20 2003 From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 14:47:20 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123144626.025b4008@mail.comcast.net> When I look at my life-efforts thus far, I see a recurring pattern that's very frustrating, that I'm eager to change. I welcome helpful suggestions. I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can eventually get back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes everything I did was ultimately pointless. When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. I know some people's answer is to monomaniacally focus on one task, finish, and move on. That's not me. I have myriad interests and I delight in this. I look at certain other people who are involved in many things yet are able to produce tangible results in several arenas on a regular basis. What are they doing that I'm not? I'm aware of simple-minded time management answers; I'm looking for personal insight from other smart people with diverse interests. -- David Lubkin. From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 23 23:47:58 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 15:47:58 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ExI: Part time job Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031123154320.0527f630@pop.earthlink.net> Extropy Institute is looking for a net-savvy extrope who would like to work via with us by telecommuting a few hours a week performing research-related tasks. No degree required. If you are interested, please email info at extropy.org Thank you, Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hal at finney.org Sun Nov 23 22:14:52 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 14:14:52 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale Message-ID: <200311232214.hANMEqZ29488@finney.org> Eugen writes: > A suggestion was to roll your own. A couple of days ago > I came upon this nice semilog-step flash visualization: > > http://cellsalive.com/howbig.htm > > I stole it, and attempted to add a couple of steps, to > bring it down to the nanoscale. After two hours (and > lots of growling) I got this: > > http://moleculardevices.org/howbig.htm I love this stuff! It would be nice though to see more than just a nanotech part, but to have a larger structure that was made out of parts. To do that it would probably be necessary to bypass modeling the whole thing as atoms, but instead to use larger shapes, with a texture map to represent the bumpiness of the surface. Imagine if you could see a respirocyte or a nanocomputer, at a variety of scales, with some cutaway views to show the inner workings. Put one of those side by side with a virus or cell and you'd have a cool picture. Hal From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Sun Nov 23 22:34:01 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 09:34:01 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale References: <200311232214.hANMEqZ29488@finney.org> Message-ID: <005f01c3b211$e4f2a040$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Hal Finney wrote: > Eugen writes: > > A suggestion was to roll your own. A couple of days ago > > I came upon this nice semilog-step flash visualization: > > > > http://cellsalive.com/howbig.htm > > > > I stole it, and attempted to add a couple of steps, to > > bring it down to the nanoscale. After two hours (and > > lots of growling) I got this: > > > > http://moleculardevices.org/howbig.htm > > I love this stuff! It would be nice though to see more than just a > nanotech part, but to have a larger structure that was made out > of parts. To do that it would probably be necessary to bypass > modeling the whole thing as atoms, but instead to use larger > shapes, with a texture map to represent the bumpiness of the > surface. > > Imagine if you could see a respirocyte or a nanocomputer, at > a variety of scales, with some cutaway views to show the inner > workings. Put one of those side by side with a virus or cell > and you'd have a cool picture. And in a television and internet age you'd also have an extremely powerful piece of extropic propaganda. Brett From hal at finney.org Sun Nov 23 22:32:22 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 14:32:22 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <200311232232.hANMWMp29562@finney.org> David Lubkin writes: > I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else > before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can eventually get > back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes everything I did was > ultimately pointless. > > When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and > finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. It's hard to give advice without knowing more about the kinds of projects you work on, but I have a couple of suggestions. I sometimes work on small software projects, with the idea of eventually releasing them in some form, but I never get them finished to the degree that I am comfortable putting them out. The work ends up being basically wasted. One thing I am trying is to put them onto sourceforge.net, an online repository for such things. I work on them there, put some documentation in as I create it, and if I stop working on it for a while, so be it. At least it's there, and in principle someone could come upon it and find it and maybe it would be useful. It's better than having it sitting on my disk where no one will ever see it. And since this site is designed to hold projects that are in development and unfinished, I don't feel pressure to make it perfect. I'm not sure how you could generalize this idea to other kinds of projects, but maybe there would be some possibilities. For example, if you were doing woodworking, you could take a class at your junior college and bring your projects in and work on them there, rather than at home. Then you'd be interacting with other people and get some feedback. You might be more likely to stay engaged and get it finished, but even if you don't, at least other people will have seen your work. Another idea which might be more generally applicable is another principle from the open source software world: release early and often. The idea is to set milestones and incremental targets which can be met easily and will still represent tangible and useful progress. In other words, you would divide the project into pieces that you can complete in a manageable amount of time, and have something useful as a result. Even for something as mundane as, say, cleaning out the garage, if your garage is like mine this is a multi-week project and it won't happen. So you set a smaller goal, of doing just a portion of the garage, just one wall or set of boxes. And try to identify a series of goals, each of which is doable and represents a significant step forward, but which won't require huge amounts of time. Another idea that works well with this is, if you do abandon a project, try to leave yourself enough notes and documentation that you will be able to pick it up again in the future. Write down all your thoughts about what directions you thought you might go with the project, or different avenues you had intended to explore. Especially if you have broken the project down into units, then you may well find that at some future time you will find your interest in an abandoned project has returned, and these kinds of notes will help you get up to speed quickly. A final suggestion is to try to think of your projects in a more open-ended manner. In many fields, your projects will never really be completed. You can always tinker with them and improve them. And even if you finish one, when you start another it can often be thought of as in some way a continuation of the preceding one. In this sense, you should think of abandoned projects as lying fallow, until inspiration strikes again and gives you the energy to carry them forward. Trust that this will happen eventually. Think of all your projects as life-long endeavors, with different ones active at different times. Then you won't get so hung up on which ones are finished. Think of them all as constantly being works in progress. By applying these other ideas, you can still arrange that these unfinished works can be of value to others, so you won't have that guilty feeling of your work being wasted. Hal From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Sun Nov 23 22:39:35 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 09:09:35 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0C9@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> I'd be grateful for some insite on this too. David, I feel your pain :-) Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: David Lubkin [mailto:extropy at unreasonable.com] > Sent: Monday, 24 November 2003 5:17 AM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness > > > When I look at my life-efforts thus far, I see a recurring > pattern that's > very frustrating, that I'm eager to change. I welcome > helpful suggestions. > > I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else > before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can > eventually get > back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes > everything I did was > ultimately pointless. > > When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and > finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. > > I know some people's answer is to monomaniacally focus on one > task, finish, > and move on. > > That's not me. I have myriad interests and I delight in this. > > I look at certain other people who are involved in many > things yet are able > to produce tangible results in several arenas on a regular basis. > > What are they doing that I'm not? > > I'm aware of simple-minded time management answers; I'm looking for > personal insight from other smart people with diverse interests. > > > -- David Lubkin. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com Sun Nov 23 23:42:12 2003 From: jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com (Jose Cordeiro) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 15:42:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031123234212.94257.qmail@web41310.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Jay, Thank you for your reply to my original Email, which was mostly meant for the WTA since there are many socialists there. I am not in the Extropy-chat list for strict time reasons, and because I think I can be more useful counter-arguing WTA socialists, i.e., time maximization. Since I agree much more with Extropians, I use my limited time to work with WTA transhumanists that can use better my libertarian ideas:-) SOCIALISM IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH LONG-TERM TRANSHUMANISM... Extropianilly yours, La vie est belle! Yos? JAY DUGGER wrote: On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 19:33:53 -0800 (PST) Jose Cordeiro wrote: Jose, I found this email well-written and argued. Thank you for writing this piece. It raised an important pot I'd missed in my quick skim over Max's paper: Words do matter. Work and health prevented me from participating in this thread, so thank you twice for saying what I couldn't. Jay Dugger : Til Eulenspiegel http://www.owlmirror.net/~duggerj Sometimes delete serves best. La vie est belle! Yos? (www.cordeiro.org) Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sun Nov 23 23:58:51 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 15:58:51 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0C9@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote: > I'd be grateful for some insite on this too. David, I feel your pain :-) For anyone who has ever read my CV [1] I think I may almost take the cake. And it doesn't include any of the cool stuff that I liked at some time like windsurfing or scuba diving that I never had the chance to get good at. From where I stand however Anders may have baked the cake. I'm not sure if being this way is a good thing or a bad thing. I think it is one of those things that you can argue both ways depending on the context. Robert 1. http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/CV.html From hugh.crowther at esoterica.pt Mon Nov 24 00:09:08 2003 From: hugh.crowther at esoterica.pt (Hugh Crowther) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 00:09:08 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0C9@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: William H Calvin, wonderful man, attributed many of of our trials and tribulations to 'environmental incoherence'. He advised scaling back your initial expectations to where you're right only half of the time. He later, in his 'A Brain for all Seasons', quoted, "For every complex problem there is a simple and easy to understand incorrect answer". One could find this advice depressing, except when you consider it wouldn't be fun if it was easy. H > From: "Emlyn O'regan" > Reply-To: ExI chat list > Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 09:09:35 +1030 > To: "'ExI chat list'" > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness > > I'd be grateful for some insite on this too. David, I feel your pain :-) > > Emlyn > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: David Lubkin [mailto:extropy at unreasonable.com] >> Sent: Monday, 24 November 2003 5:17 AM >> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness >> >> >> When I look at my life-efforts thus far, I see a recurring >> pattern that's >> very frustrating, that I'm eager to change. I welcome >> helpful suggestions. >> >> I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else >> before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can >> eventually get >> back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes >> everything I did was >> ultimately pointless. >> >> When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and >> finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. >> >> I know some people's answer is to monomaniacally focus on one >> task, finish, >> and move on. >> >> That's not me. I have myriad interests and I delight in this. >> >> I look at certain other people who are involved in many >> things yet are able >> to produce tangible results in several arenas on a regular basis. >> >> What are they doing that I'm not? >> >> I'm aware of simple-minded time management answers; I'm looking for >> personal insight from other smart people with diverse interests. >> >> >> -- David Lubkin. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> extropy-chat mailing list >> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat >> > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From Karen at smigrodzki.org Mon Nov 24 00:21:33 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 19:21:33 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness References: Message-ID: <00e001c3b220$ea9867a0$6401a8c0@DogHouse> You have accomplished a lot, RB, but do you or have you ever had a problem with the competing interests such that you end up unable to commit to any one subject to the detriment of them all? It is my understanding that that is DL's difficulty. (I know it is mine!) If you have had such a problem, how do you make yourself focus or commit? Karen > > On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > > I'd be grateful for some insite on this too. David, I feel your pain :-) > > For anyone who has ever read my CV [1] I think I may almost take the cake. > And it doesn't include any of the cool stuff that I liked at some > time like windsurfing or scuba diving that I never had the chance > to get good at. From where I stand however Anders may have baked > the cake. > > I'm not sure if being this way is a good thing or a bad thing. > I think it is one of those things that you can argue both ways > depending on the context. > > Robert From wingcat at pacbell.net Mon Nov 24 00:11:28 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 16:11:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Computers as you like In-Reply-To: <3FC0A0C1.5090609@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <20031124001128.68724.qmail@web80411.mail.yahoo.com> --- BillK wrote: > > So it won't be long before we can make computers > optimized for our own > requirements. If you've got the $, try now. (I'm actually looking into it for one of the ventures I may be starting.) It's just a cost issue, not an availability of tech issue - and the cost will probably drop as demand for the fabbing machines (and their services) increases. From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 24 00:19:35 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 16:19:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Computers as you like In-Reply-To: <20031124001128.68724.qmail@web80411.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20031124001935.26741.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> --- Adrian Tymes wrote: > --- BillK wrote: > > > > > > So it won't be long before we can make computers > > optimized for our own > > requirements. > > If you've got the $, try now. (I'm actually looking > into it for one of the ventures I may be starting.) > It's just a cost issue, not an availability of tech > issue - and the cost will probably drop as demand for > the fabbing machines (and their services) increases. Well, I'm exploring starting the business concept I had a bit ago about hardwood computer cases that look like furniture rather than toasters, as a hobby to start with. I'd like to ask the list membership for leads on good low cost sources for PC boards, chips, components, etc... I've been out of building PCs for a couple years and need to catch up... I also need design specs for current motherboard architectures, to design these cases around... ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From wingcat at pacbell.net Mon Nov 24 00:33:08 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 16:33:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Channel surfing In-Reply-To: <00bd01c3b13a$c49c4120$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <20031124003308.52728.qmail@web80407.mail.yahoo.com> --- Brett Paatsch wrote: > Well, having ONE of those things puts control in the > hands of the person holding it. Having TWO or more > however > might test the patience of the more ardent channel > surfer :-) Especially if one surfer does not realize there is another controller. I recently got into a situation like this at work, remotely accessing a system while someone else tried to log on. As it turned out, both our accesses were legit - I had to do some maintenance, and the other one was the system's official sysadmin checking things out - but we each thought the other was a cracker from outside the company. The sysadmin gave up after being kicked off the system four times. ...then again, considering the sysadmin's low level of experience, I could have pretended to be an AI - specifically, the computer in question come alive - and she'd never have known the difference. I wonder if there's a name for reverse Turing like that. From extropy at unreasonable.com Mon Nov 24 00:45:42 2003 From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 19:45:42 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <200311232232.hANMWMp29562@finney.org> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123185804.02cdbe98@mail.comcast.net> At 02:32 PM 11/23/2003 -0800, Hal Finney wrote: >It's hard to give advice without knowing more about the kinds of projects >you work on, but I have a couple of suggestions. I spoke in generalities because I see this pattern pervade my life. Let me give a few disparate examples: I rake leaves, then stop before they are removed from the lawn. Before I get out again, the wind has undone the raking. Was there a payoff? Yes, I was outdoors, getting some exercise. But the focal goal was not attained. I perceive a market window for a software product. I invest effort, yielding a work that isn't done. Before I get back to it, 18 months have gone by, and where there was previously no competition, there are now seven well-funded rivals. I learn Chinese ideographs. I stop. By the time I think about Chinese again, I've forgotten what I'd learned. >I sometimes work on small software projects, with the idea of eventually >releasing them in some form, but I never get them finished to the degree >that I am comfortable putting them out. The work ends up being basically >wasted. I realize that part of the story is that I am a perfectionist. When I work for someone else, they get to override my standards. On my own, I indulge in deferrable bells-and-whistles that push the schedule out. I'm gradually learning to be brutal with myself. >Then you'd be interacting with other people and get some feedback. >You might be more likely to stay engaged and get it finished, but even >if you don't, at least other people will have seen your work. I did observe that everyone I can think of who is high-talent and high-achievement is happily married, usually to someone who is comparably gifted. It's very useful to have an in-house cheering section. >Another idea which might be more generally applicable is another principle >from the open source software world: release early and often. This is a key for me. It doesn't apply to every situation but it says go breadth-first rather than depth-first. Take my leaves example. It may be more efficient to do all the raking first then all the removal. But if I cycle on (rake, remove) then whenever I stop, N loads are gone from my lawn. The other tremendous benefit for me of "release early" is that it provides the carrot and stick that you now have other people to compliment you on what you've done and impatiently await your next release. >Another idea that works well with this is, if you do abandon a project, >try to leave yourself enough notes and documentation that you will be >able to pick it up again in the future. A related question is how to stay organized and tidy. I found myself in a high-amplitude sawtooth: Either my disgust at not being able to find anything amid the clutter or the press of someone coming to visit would drive me to a frenzy of cleaning and organizing. Then day by day, it would deteriorate. Repeat. The most common problem is/was my work area. I'm working on X, so the materials I need are at hand. Before I finish X, I get pulled to do Y. So the materials for Y are placed on top of the stuff for X. Before long, it's twenty strata deep. The right answer, which I'm conditioning myself to, is when switching from X to Y, put all X materials away. For household, adopt routines that insure a short-period return to norm, such as making sure the kitchen sink is empty before going to bed. >Trust that this will happen eventually. Think of all your projects >as life-long endeavors, with different ones active at different times. >Then you won't get so hung up on which ones are finished. Think of them >all as constantly being works in progress. By applying these other ideas, >you can still arrange that these unfinished works can be of value to >others, so you won't have that guilty feeling of your work being wasted. I do think that way, but some of the projects -- like building my own company to the point I can live off it -- are logical predecessors to others. And some, like the care and feeding of my relationships with friends and family, require an on-going effort. When my daughter recently graduated high school, I took the opportunity to get back in touch with people. It was bittersweet: many connections were re-established as if no time had elapsed but I also learned of too-many deaths in the interim. One of my conscious tricks is to have multiple reasons for each thing I do. Yard work raises property values and provides aerobic exercise, increasing stamina and longevity. Building a family web site strengthens family ties, gets out software that may be resalable, and hones marketable technical skills. -- David Lubkin. From dgc at cox.net Mon Nov 24 01:24:04 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 20:24:04 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123185804.02cdbe98@mail.comcast.net> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123185804.02cdbe98@mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: <3FC15DB4.9010405@cox.net> David Lubkin wrote: > > I spoke in generalities because I see this pattern pervade my life. > Let me give a few disparate examples: > I suffer from the same problem. Most recenlyy, I decided to simply announce my most recent project (a homebrew STM) on the extropians list in the hopes that polite requests for progress reports would serve as an inducement. Alas, I'm still not making progress :-( What you really need is a subscription to a new web-based service called e-nag. You simply send e-nag a description of you intentions, and post a bond (of your choosing) to them, along with a proposed project schedule. The folks at e-nag are very experienced, and will politely ask for status reports based on your project plan and schedule. If you are having problems with scheduling or priority, they will try very hard to help out by asking questions, suggesting alternatives, and persistently sending e-mails. They try very, very hard to NOT make any money, but they are actually extremely profitable. They only book revenue when a client admits that a project has been abandoned and forfiets the bond. This is similar to the business model used by health clubs, but more honest. e-nag keeps its costs down by pairing projects. When you are paired, you will perform the techical part (but not the project management part) of "encouraging" another project. Thus, the e-nag staff does not need to be technically proficient to be useful. If you project is as simple as leaf raking, this is unnecessary, as the e-nag core staff includes an ample number of experienced mommys. The e-nag service will be availabe as soon as I get around to actually implementing it :-) From bradbury at aeiveos.com Mon Nov 24 01:25:26 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 17:25:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <00e001c3b220$ea9867a0$6401a8c0@DogHouse> Message-ID: On Sun, 23 Nov 2003, Karen Rand Smigrodzki wrote: > You have accomplished a lot, RB, but do you or have you ever had a problem > with the competing interests such that you end up unable to commit to any > one subject to the detriment of them all? It is my understanding that that > is DL's difficulty. (I know it is mine!) Sure. In many cases I have unfinished things going on. For example the Nano at Home project sat idle for a couple of years. But I did do something similar to what Hal suggested -- I wrote a paper on the topic, which I update from time to time as I run across related information. I also linked it in such a way that the robots crawling the net would eventually find and index it. Then a couple of years later, someone finds it likes the idea and decides to do something with it -- he puts up a web site, now we are up to about 90 people joining the project with several people really playing active roles. If I had tried to do it all myself then I probably would never had time to review chapters for the books that Robert Freitas has/will publish. Though I still have not found time to review the chapters that Mez sent to me (so sometimes you have to accept that things may not get done -- though the chapters are in my unread "pile" that I would like to get through). > If you have had such a problem, how do you make yourself focus or commit? Often its a question of defining goals that you can do and setting priorities. If you can't set them yourself then working with someone else to set them helps a lot. So for my unread pile I try to go through it from time to time and order things by importance to me. It would be helpful if I could do the same with everything else in my life because comparing priorities in very different areas is a learned skill -- particularly when one is dealing with possible goals in areas where one has little or no experience so one is attempting to compare apples with attractive art to hang on the wall. (Apples I knew I liked because my mother used to bake great apple pies with an old family recipe. Art on the other hand required my living in New York in my 20's and deciding that I liked art deco (so I have several Erte prints) as well as impressionists (so I have one Chagall that hangs over my fireplace). So there was probably a 15 year difference in learning how to compare the value of attaining those goals (eating pie or appreciating types of art). Robert From mbb386 at main.nc.us Mon Nov 24 02:37:38 2003 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 21:37:38 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123144626.025b4008@mail.comcast.net> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123144626.025b4008@mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: Not everything must be work, a "job" well done. Many projects can benefit from being called "play". There is value in simply enjoying doing a thing. Regards, MB From ABlainey at aol.com Mon Nov 24 02:55:59 2003 From: ABlainey at aol.com (ABlainey at aol.com) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 21:55:59 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <177.22ac3692.2cf2cd3f@aol.com> David it seems we were cast from the same mould, so were a few others on this list. As I sit here composing this mail, I am sherking off from the project I was working on just half an hour ago. Just a small unimportant project of sorting out the boxes of crap in my office. It is something that desperately needs to be done as several other projects are waiting for the space. Currently I have so many unfinished things that I can't even remember them all. I wish I could give some solid advise, alas I have none. Although I would say, don't fall into the trap of not starting something new for fear of not completing it. I have found that there is always a pay off. Even if it just takes the form of experience gained. Alex P.S This post has given me the incentive needed to continue sorting out the aforementioned boxes of crap. A. In a message dated 23/11/2003 22:05:18 GMT Daylight Time, extropy at unreasonable.com writes: > When I look at my life-efforts thus far, I see a recurring pattern that's > very frustrating, that I'm eager to change. I welcome helpful suggestions. > > I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else > before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can eventually get > back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes everything I did was > ultimately pointless. > > When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and > finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. > > I know some people's answer is to monomaniacally focus on one task, finish, > and move on. > > That's not me. I have myriad interests and I delight in this. > > I look at certain other people who are involved in many things yet are able > to produce tangible results in several arenas on a regular basis. > > What are they doing that I'm not? > > I'm aware of simple-minded time management answers; I'm looking for > personal insight from other smart people with diverse interests. > > > -- David Lubkin. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From extropy at unreasonable.com Mon Nov 24 03:20:58 2003 From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 22:20:58 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123144626.025b4008@mail.comcast.net> <5.1.0.14.2.20031123144626.025b4008@mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123220839.024c35f8@mail.comcast.net> At 09:37 PM 11/23/2003 -0500, MB wrote: >Not everything must be work, a "job" well done. > >Many projects can benefit from being called "play". There is >value in simply enjoying doing a thing. To be sure. And many of the things I do, paid or unpaid, I enjoy as I do them. But I usually want to do my best. And I've learned sometimes not to, to revel in a sloppiness. Or to change the goal. Is a game of Scrabble an intellectual challenge, a jousting of minds, or a bonding with loved ones? Is a move to be judged by its score or by how cool the word you played is? -- David Lubkin. From artillo at comcast.net Mon Nov 24 03:47:05 2003 From: artillo at comcast.net (Brian Shores) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 22:47:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Computers as you like In-Reply-To: <20031124001935.26741.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000a01c3b23d$a148ae30$9865fea9@bjsmain2> The absolute best place that I have found to start looking for good quality low-cost computer components is www.pricewatch.com and go from there. www.newegg.com is one of the best/cheapest retailers out there you will see. :) Arti -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike Lorrey Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 7:20 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Computers as you like --- Adrian Tymes wrote: > --- BillK wrote: > > > > > > So it won't be long before we can make computers > > optimized for our own > > requirements. > > If you've got the $, try now. (I'm actually looking > into it for one of the ventures I may be starting.) > It's just a cost issue, not an availability of tech > issue - and the cost will probably drop as demand for > the fabbing machines (and their services) increases. Well, I'm exploring starting the business concept I had a bit ago about hardwood computer cases that look like furniture rather than toasters, as a hobby to start with. I'd like to ask the list membership for leads on good low cost sources for PC boards, chips, components, etc... I've been out of building PCs for a couple years and need to catch up... I also need design specs for current motherboard architectures, to design these cases around... ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Mon Nov 24 04:09:17 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 14:39:17 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0D2@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> For those who've read "A deepness in the sky" by Vinge, I'd love a temporary "focus" pill, just to be able to plough through things and get them done. I find I have that ability built in already, but I'm not able to turn it on at will; it comes and goes as it likes, leaving me at the mercy of the high seas. Emlyn -----Original Message----- From: ABlainey at aol.com [mailto:ABlainey at aol.com] Sent: Monday, 24 November 2003 12:26 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness David it seems we were cast from the same mould, so were a few others on this list. As I sit here composing this mail, I am sherking off from the project I was working on just half an hour ago. Just a small unimportant project of sorting out the boxes of crap in my office. It is something that desperately needs to be done as several other projects are waiting for the space. Currently I have so many unfinished things that I can't even remember them all. I wish I could give some solid advise, alas I have none. Although I would say, don't fall into the trap of not starting something new for fear of not completing it. I have found that there is always a pay off. Even if it just takes the form of experience gained. Alex P.S This post has given me the incentive needed to continue sorting out the aforementioned boxes of crap. A. In a message dated 23/11/2003 22:05:18 GMT Daylight Time, extropy at unreasonable.com writes: When I look at my life-efforts thus far, I see a recurring pattern that's very frustrating, that I'm eager to change. I welcome helpful suggestions. I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can eventually get back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes everything I did was ultimately pointless. When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. I know some people's answer is to monomaniacally focus on one task, finish, and move on. That's not me. I have myriad interests and I delight in this. I look at certain other people who are involved in many things yet are able to produce tangible results in several arenas on a regular basis. What are they doing that I'm not? I'm aware of simple-minded time management answers; I'm looking for personal insight from other smart people with diverse interests. -- David Lubkin. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From etheric at comcast.net Mon Nov 24 04:31:25 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2003 20:31:25 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0D2@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <034d01c3b243$d28943f0$0200a8c0@etheric> Adrafinil ----- Original Message ----- From: Emlyn O'regan To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 8:09 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness For those who've read "A deepness in the sky" by Vinge, I'd love a temporary "focus" pill, just to be able to plough through things and get them done. I find I have that ability built in already, but I'm not able to turn it on at will; it comes and goes as it likes, leaving me at the mercy of the high seas. Emlyn -----Original Message----- From: ABlainey at aol.com [mailto:ABlainey at aol.com] Sent: Monday, 24 November 2003 12:26 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness David it seems we were cast from the same mould, so were a few others on this list. As I sit here composing this mail, I am sherking off from the project I was working on just half an hour ago. Just a small unimportant project of sorting out the boxes of crap in my office. It is something that desperately needs to be done as several other projects are waiting for the space. Currently I have so many unfinished things that I can't even remember them all. I wish I could give some solid advise, alas I have none. Although I would say, don't fall into the trap of not starting something new for fear of not completing it. I have found that there is always a pay off. Even if it just takes the form of experience gained. Alex P.S This post has given me the incentive needed to continue sorting out the aforementioned boxes of crap. A. In a message dated 23/11/2003 22:05:18 GMT Daylight Time, extropy at unreasonable.com writes: When I look at my life-efforts thus far, I see a recurring pattern that's very frustrating, that I'm eager to change. I welcome helpful suggestions. I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can eventually get back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes everything I did was ultimately pointless. When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. I know some people's answer is to monomaniacally focus on one task, finish, and move on. That's not me. I have myriad interests and I delight in this. I look at certain other people who are involved in many things yet are able to produce tangible results in several arenas on a regular basis. What are they doing that I'm not? I'm aware of simple-minded time management answers; I'm looking for personal insight from other smart people with diverse interests. -- David Lubkin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Mon Nov 24 04:31:17 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 15:01:17 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0D4@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Personal experience? Google says good things about it (all hail the great one). Emlyn -----Original Message----- From: R.Coyote [mailto:etheric at comcast.net] Sent: Monday, 24 November 2003 2:01 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Adrafinil ----- Original Message ----- From: Emlyn O'regan To: 'ExI chat list' Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 8:09 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness For those who've read "A deepness in the sky" by Vinge, I'd love a temporary "focus" pill, just to be able to plough through things and get them done. I find I have that ability built in already, but I'm not able to turn it on at will; it comes and goes as it likes, leaving me at the mercy of the high seas. Emlyn -----Original Message----- From: ABlainey at aol.com [mailto:ABlainey at aol.com] Sent: Monday, 24 November 2003 12:26 PM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness David it seems we were cast from the same mould, so were a few others on this list. As I sit here composing this mail, I am sherking off from the project I was working on just half an hour ago. Just a small unimportant project of sorting out the boxes of crap in my office. It is something that desperately needs to be done as several other projects are waiting for the space. Currently I have so many unfinished things that I can't even remember them all. I wish I could give some solid advise, alas I have none. Although I would say, don't fall into the trap of not starting something new for fear of not completing it. I have found that there is always a pay off. Even if it just takes the form of experience gained. Alex P.S This post has given me the incentive needed to continue sorting out the aforementioned boxes of crap. A. In a message dated 23/11/2003 22:05:18 GMT Daylight Time, extropy at unreasonable.com writes: When I look at my life-efforts thus far, I see a recurring pattern that's very frustrating, that I'm eager to change. I welcome helpful suggestions. I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can eventually get back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes everything I did was ultimately pointless. When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. I know some people's answer is to monomaniacally focus on one task, finish, and move on. That's not me. I have myriad interests and I delight in this. I look at certain other people who are involved in many things yet are able to produce tangible results in several arenas on a regular basis. What are they doing that I'm not? I'm aware of simple-minded time management answers; I'm looking for personal insight from other smart people with diverse interests. -- David Lubkin. _____ _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gpmap at runbox.com Mon Nov 24 06:35:08 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 07:35:08 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123144626.025b4008@mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: Hi David, I agree with Hal that you may want to try splitting a large project into many smaller sequential ones, each with a well defined output to the next stage, so you can start and finish one before you move to something entirely different, and when you restart you find all previous work nicely packaged and usable. Another trick is to advertise your project to the world: converting an internal objective into an external one. At work it is easier to focus because you have a boss who asks how the project is going and yells if it is not advancing. Similarly if you tell many people that for example you are writing a book, they will come back with questions on the book and ask when you plan to finish it, so that you will feel the pressure and force yourself to finish it even if you are already thinking of something else. But there is a better strategy imo: evidently you are one of those who start things, and not one of those who complete things. These are two very different personality types, and the world needs both. Why not just accept this and rely on others to complete the work that you start? In the example of the book, you write a short novel that someone else can expand into a book, then move to something else. If it is software, as Hal advices do a module, then put everything on Sourceforge so that others can work at it. -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of David Lubkin Sent: domingo, 23 de noviembre de 2003 20:47 To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness When I look at my life-efforts thus far, I see a recurring pattern that's very frustrating, that I'm eager to change. I welcome helpful suggestions. I put substantial effort into a project but move on to something else before there's a payoff for the effort. Sometimes I can eventually get back to it and pick up where I left off. Sometimes everything I did was ultimately pointless. When there's external pressure, I force myself to concentrate and finish. When the task is one I've just set for myself, I don't. I know some people's answer is to monomaniacally focus on one task, finish, and move on. That's not me. I have myriad interests and I delight in this. I look at certain other people who are involved in many things yet are able to produce tangible results in several arenas on a regular basis. What are they doing that I'm not? I'm aware of simple-minded time management answers; I'm looking for personal insight from other smart people with diverse interests. -- David Lubkin. _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From gpmap at runbox.com Mon Nov 24 06:39:53 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 07:39:53 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Jerusalem research team hails cystic fibrosis genetic breakthrough Message-ID: >From Israel21C - Researchers have found that an antibiotic used for years against common infections may have the remarkable ability to correct a genetic flaw in cystic fibrosis, a finding that ultimately may lead to a new way of treating that and other intractable genetic diseases. Their findings, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, could be applied to other genetic disorders, including muscular dystrophy, Hurler's syndrome, and various types of hemophilia and cancer, say Dr. Michael Wilschanski and Prof. Eitan Kerem, who headed the team. Experts in the field have called their accomplishment a "major breakthrough" in the treatment of CF. The discovery opens a window on research, demonstrating that a well-known drug may have the power to influence genes. "The idea behind this paper is that this concept can be used in other genetic diseases," -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maxm at mail.tele.dk Mon Nov 24 07:00:50 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 08:00:50 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <20031123234212.94257.qmail@web41310.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031123234212.94257.qmail@web41310.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FC1ACA2.8090609@mail.tele.dk> Jose Cordeiro wrote: > Thank you for your reply to my original Email, which was mostly meant for the WTA since there are many socialists there. I just want to note, that there is a wide spectrum between libertarianism and socialism. Not being libertarian doesn not mean that one is a socialist! Furthermore it is quite easy to be liberal in some areas and socialist in other areas. Being a social democrat also means that you are agreeing with a system that has been prooved to work pretty well in several nations. Being libertarian means that you support a theoretical system that is supposed to work as in the economic theory. It's just like most medical trials, they allways works in theory. Often they also work in the petri dish on single cells. But when it comes to working in the whole body as actuall medicine, they allmost allways fail. So while I don't considder myself to be a socialist/social democrat, they have a better argument in my book than the libertarians, as they can back it with prooven facts, working systems and humane societies. Libertarianism still has to proove it's worth. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark From alex at ramonsky.com Mon Nov 24 11:25:01 2003 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 11:25:01 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Device puts you in the right state of mind References: Message-ID: <3FC1EA8D.4060407@ramonsky.com> Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: >>From Geek.com and ZDNet: Dreamfree Inc., a South Korean company, has a new >computer accessory unlike any other. This one is designed to generate the >appropriate brainwaves to induce an individual into a chosen mental state. > Where on earth have you been? We've been doing this for many, many years. We started with EEG and have now added GSR, MEG and TMS. I even have a wearable version. You can also record states of mind and use biofeedback to reproduce the same mood. I have a library of emotional states to play with. What is it with extropians and neuro tech? Everybody seems to be living in the dark ages? > > I do not believe this technology is operational yet. > Well it was this morning. If it isn't now, we'll get an engineer in. > But >surely it will come, at that time one will be able to choose a mood and a >state of mind like today one can choose a new look. > ...I'll get back to you : ) AR From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Mon Nov 24 11:28:40 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 11:28:40 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <3FC1EB68.8050900@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> On Sun Nov 23, 2003 05:45 pm David Lubkin wrote: > > But if I cycle on (rake, remove) then whenever I stop, N loads are > gone from my lawn. > Aaarhh, young feller-me-lad, where oi be comin' from, this be called 'common-sense'. (Removes straw from mouth, scratches bum, before continuing) :) David, I'm afraid that you have got a serious infection of Mensa disease. Many high IQ people have this. Go to any Mensa group and you will be surrounded by very bright, witty, interesting, articulate people - conspicuously lacking in day-to-day common-sense. The REALLY high IQ ones have a tag round their neck to remind them where they live. What you need is a bit of dumbing-down (when required). ;) Concentration can be trained. Mind and memory training courses like the Pelman Institute or similar could be useful. Though you have to watch out for scams and rip-offs in this area. > I did observe that everyone I can think of who is high-talent and > high-achievement is happily married, usually to someone who is > comparably gifted. It's very useful to have an in-house cheering > section. Heh! I think you've rather got hold of the wrong end of the stick here. The function of the wife is to keep nagging at you to stop wasting your time on X when you should be doing Y. A wife can provide the 'common-sense' factor that you are looking for. But it depends on how you define 'achievement'. Note the studies that show that marriage virtually stops scientific research success. > A related question is how to stay organized and tidy. I found myself > in a high-amplitude sawtooth: Either my disgust at not being able to > find anything amid the clutter or the press of someone coming to > visit would drive me to a frenzy of cleaning and organizing. Then day > by day, it would deteriorate. Repeat. Again, 'common-sense'. I know people who live surrounded by chaos. Everyday they spend at least half-an-hour on games like 'Hunt the scissors' or 'Who had the car keys last?' or (her favorite) 'What have you done with my hair-brush?'. Do you really want to spend your life like that? Think 'common-sense'. Not 'What is the largest number of bells and whistles I can put on this Baroque creation?' Try to think like 'What would the average man-in-the-street want?' 'Does it work?' Yes. Then fine - get it out the door. The customer will pay you again later for version two. See - you get paid twice! If you end up like Microsoft then the customer never stops paying you! BillK From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 24 11:24:27 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:24:27 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale In-Reply-To: <200311232214.hANMEqZ29488@finney.org> References: <200311232214.hANMEqZ29488@finney.org> Message-ID: <20031124112426.GA23337@leitl.org> On Sun, Nov 23, 2003 at 02:14:52PM -0800, Hal Finney wrote: > > http://moleculardevices.org/howbig.htm > > I love this stuff! It would be nice though to see more than just a Thanks! > nanotech part, but to have a larger structure that was made out of parts. I actually wanted to make a neon pump tesselation, and add a few more components from biology (DNA, ribosome, protein crystal fragment) and graphenes (diverse carbon nanotubes, fullerene, etc). I will need to get a decent structure builder for assembling stuff from components, though, or build large structures from scratch. We already lamented a lack of tools; we definitely need something to do the heavy lifting, especially up to mesoscale. I notice Zyvex has wised up, and using voxel rendering for MEMS visualization. > To do that it would probably be necessary to bypass modeling the whole > thing as atoms, but instead to use larger shapes, with a texture map to > represent the bumpiness of the surface. It is not necessary to render everything as atoms, but I think it is very necessary to represent stuff at full atomic scale. Custom sphere rendering code scales very well (wireframe is cheap, anyway), and one can switch to voxel rendering when single atoms become difficult to hit with a mouse. You only need 32 bit/atom, a few flags included, with current fat desktops and next-generation small machines you can easily represent up 10^9 atom systems, and render those in realtime, though. That's at the threshold to mesoscale already. Next generation machines and especially massively parallel next generation machines can handle much larger structures. > Imagine if you could see a respirocyte or a nanocomputer, at a variety > of scales, with some cutaway views to show the inner workings. Put one > of those side by side with a virus or cell and you'd have a cool picture. I absolutely agree. But our current tools are a pain to use, if you want to build that (rendering is cheap allright). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maxm at mail.tele.dk Mon Nov 24 14:05:06 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 15:05:06 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale In-Reply-To: <20031124112426.GA23337@leitl.org> References: <200311232214.hANMEqZ29488@finney.org> <20031124112426.GA23337@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FC21012.90405@mail.tele.dk> Eugen Leitl wrote: > You only need 32 bit/atom, a few flags included, with current fat > desktops and next-generation small machines you can easily represent > up 10^9 atom systems, and render those in realtime, though. That's > at the threshold to mesoscale already. Where do you get the 32 bit/atom from? There are many ways to make a format like that. I am just curious what you imagine. Whether it being entirly dumb, or you want it to know about the chemical structure. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark From max at maxmore.com Mon Nov 24 14:28:59 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 08:28:59 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Device puts you in the right state of mind In-Reply-To: <3FC1EA8D.4060407@ramonsky.com> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031124075736.04f2b690@mail.earthlink.net> At 05:25 AM 11/24/2003, Alex Ramonsky wrote: >What is it with extropians and neuro tech? Everybody seems to be living in >the dark ages? Do you really mean to suggest that extropians in general are ignorant of neurotech? Based on one comment by one person who may not even describe himself as "an extropian"? Neurotech has been discussed and covered frequently since Extropy magazine first came out in 1988. Max _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 24 14:34:20 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 15:34:20 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] visualizing nanoscale In-Reply-To: <3FC21012.90405@mail.tele.dk> References: <200311232214.hANMEqZ29488@finney.org> <20031124112426.GA23337@leitl.org> <3FC21012.90405@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <20031124143420.GL23337@leitl.org> On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 03:05:06PM +0100, Max M wrote: > Eugen Leitl wrote: > > >You only need 32 bit/atom, a few flags included, with current fat > >desktops and next-generation small machines you can easily represent > >up 10^9 atom systems, and render those in realtime, though. That's > >at the threshold to mesoscale already. > > > Where do you get the 32 bit/atom from? It's a ballpark figure. An array of structs, each being 8int (atom), 8int (x), 8int (y), 8int(z). The coordinates are relative to (cubic) voxel edge. The voxel size is depending on whether you include H-H molecules, then you make diagonal <74 pm, with C-H it's <109 pm and with C-C <154 pm (the exact length depends on system temperature). Resolution is about 0.25-1 pm, which is sufficient for MD. 8 bits integer is the smallest size with direct support in the CPU instruction set. If we just limit ourselves to CHNOPS, you still have 5 bits left in the 8int of the atom field. That can be used for flags (transparence, etc). and stuff. > There are many ways to make a format like that. I am just curious what > you imagine. > > Whether it being entirly dumb, or you want it to know about the chemical > structure. Of course you can make it to store bonds and other info, too. As bonds don't reach beyond direct neighbour-voxels, and you've only got 26 direct neighbours in cubic-primitive lattice and valence is limited in number and state you can still stay comfortably below 64 bit. 3D BitBlt on 64 bit is expensive, but less so than doing lots of FLOPs to just do some translation. That addresses dragging, you still have to plow through entire volumetric dataset to visualize, and ditto to do forcefield/MD calculations. You can do ~1 fps with a 4 GByte Athon 64, I presume. Your limit is memory bandwidth, so it would scale nicely to some 100 nodes to do ~50 fps processing on 10^9 atom systems. If you add more nodes/and or make nodes with better memory (like Blue Gene), you can scale that up by several orders of magnitude while still remaining realtime. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 24 14:38:00 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 06:38:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <3FC1ACA2.8090609@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <20031124143800.77625.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> --- Max M wrote:> > Being a social democrat also means that you are agreeing with a > system that has been prooved to work pretty well in several nations. > > Being libertarian means that you support a theoretical system that is > supposed to work as in the economic theory. > > It's just like most medical trials, they allways works in theory. > Often they also work in the petri dish on single cells. But when it > comes to working in the whole body as actuall medicine, they allmost > allways fail. Interesting view, which doesn't seem to reflect that the socialist systems of europe always maintain higher unemployment and lower growth than the US, which, while not libertarian, is significantly further along in that direction. Within the US, more libertarian states tend to higher growth than their less libertarian immediate neighbors. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From max at maxmore.com Mon Nov 24 14:59:19 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 08:59:19 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Reefer sanity -- cannabinoids, new neurochemical treatments Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031124085812.04af1498@mail.earthlink.net> Reefer Sanity The brain's cannabinoid receptor is the target of a rush (ha!) to develop new drugs. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/thisjustin/0,15704,540400,00.html From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 24 15:04:25 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 07:04:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Device puts you in the right state of mind In-Reply-To: <3FC1EA8D.4060407@ramonsky.com> Message-ID: <20031124150425.32009.qmail@web12904.mail.yahoo.com> --- Alex Ramonsky wrote: > > Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > >>From Geek.com and ZDNet: Dreamfree Inc., a South Korean company, > has a new > >computer accessory unlike any other. This one is designed to > generate the > >appropriate brainwaves to induce an individual into a chosen mental > state. > > > What is it with extropians and neuro tech? Everybody seems to be > living in the dark ages? I recall this being discussed on the list back in 1996-97, nothing since. I don't recall Giulio being a member back then, so he is probably not aware of the old-time interest back then. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From maxm at mail.tele.dk Mon Nov 24 15:09:05 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 16:09:05 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <20031124143800.77625.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031124143800.77625.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3FC21F11.7000102@mail.tele.dk> Mike Lorrey wrote: >>Being a social democrat also means that you are agreeing with a >>system that has been prooved to work pretty well in several nations. >> >>Being libertarian means that you support a theoretical system that is >>supposed to work as in the economic theory. > Interesting view, which doesn't seem to reflect that the socialist > systems of europe always maintain higher unemployment and lower growth > than the US, which, while not libertarian, is significantly further > along in that direction. Within the US, more libertarian states tend to > higher growth than their less libertarian immediate neighbors. I did not try to say that social democracy is the best system, just that it's had better support in practice on nation wide "experiments" I don't doubt that a more liberal system is better, but I doubt very much that a completely libertarian system is much good. It could very well follow Edward de Bono's salt curve. "Some salt is good in food, so more salt is even better." Naturally it only holds true until a certain point. The devil is in the details, and I am afraid that the little details that will slip through the cracks of a libertarian system are people. The reason for the state is to help the weak. The strong will take care of themself. They allways have. regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark From jacques at dtext.com Mon Nov 24 15:32:01 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 16:32:01 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123185804.02cdbe98@mail.comcast.net> References: <200311232232.hANMWMp29562@finney.org> <5.1.0.14.2.20031123185804.02cdbe98@mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: <16322.9329.170579.298852@localhost.localdomain> Don't worry David, this is only a temporary condition, due to the silly and arbitrary fact that you are only one body. More useful remarks of mine include: > For household, adopt routines that > insure a short-period return to norm, such as making sure the kitchen sink > is empty before going to bed. You know one great advice about this? Wash all the tools (and the kitchen parts) you use in the preparation of the meal as part of the meal preparation. If you are only left with what you used for actually eating the meal, it is no big deal. The horror is to wash the things in which you cooked things, etc. Wash these along the way, and at the end of the preparation, before to eat the meal. If they are still hot from the cooking, it's even easier to wash. Sorry for delivering only this modest piece of advice :-) but the other stuff I can think of would probably fall into the "simple-minded time-management" stuff you already know. The latter (home-grown) proved quite useful to solve the perfectionnism issue in my case, putting some pressure on myself to get things done, and to cut stress. I don't put that kind of pressure on myself all the time, though. I value the ability to explore things freely, without worrying about time too much. Jacques From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 24 15:36:31 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 07:36:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <3FC21F11.7000102@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <20031124153631.44248.qmail@web12904.mail.yahoo.com> --- Max M wrote: > Mike Lorrey wrote: > > >>Being a social democrat also means that you are agreeing with a > >>system that has been prooved to work pretty well in several > nations. > >> > >>Being libertarian means that you support a theoretical system that > is > >>supposed to work as in the economic theory. > > > Interesting view, which doesn't seem to reflect that the socialist > > systems of europe always maintain higher unemployment and lower > growth > > than the US, which, while not libertarian, is significantly further > > along in that direction. Within the US, more libertarian states > tend to > > higher growth than their less libertarian immediate neighbors. > > > I did not try to say that social democracy is the best system, just > that it's had better support in practice on nation wide "experiments" > > I don't doubt that a more liberal system is better, but I doubt very > much that a completely libertarian system is much good. > > It could very well follow Edward de Bono's salt curve. "Some salt is > good in food, so more salt is even better." > > Naturally it only holds true until a certain point. Of course, salt is not growth promoting, either, kinda like socialism. At little bit *tastes* good to the consumer, but a lot is only useful for keeping the meat in stasis for long periods. I'd say libertarianism is more like yeast. A little bit goes a long way, and a planet full is an unstoppable evolutionary force. > > The devil is in the details, and I am afraid that the little details > that will slip through the cracks of a libertarian system are people. If this were so, then why do socialist states have higher unemployment? > > The reason for the state is to help the weak. The strong will take > care of themself. They allways have. The State says this is their reason, then goes about making as many people as possible as weak as possible, saying that they then need to be taken care of. Let the strong take care of themselves, let every individual figure out for themselves that they are strong and not weak, and there will be far more strong people for each weak person that the burden is small enough for private charity to handle. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 24 15:59:35 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 07:59:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <16322.9329.170579.298852@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <20031124155935.10563.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- JDP wrote: > Don't worry David, this is only a temporary condition, due to the > silly and arbitrary fact that you are only one body. > > More useful remarks of mine include: > > > For household, adopt routines that > > insure a short-period return to norm, such as making sure the > kitchen sink > > is empty before going to bed. > > You know one great advice about this? Wash all the tools (and the > kitchen parts) you use in the preparation of the meal as part of the > meal preparation. If you are only left with what you used for > actually > eating the meal, it is no big deal. I have similar problems as David describes, but I've noticed an interesting difference/change recently. In my work, I own all my own tools, about $8k worth, in a rather huge toolbox, about the size of a desk, on rollers. When I was first starting out, I had fewer tools, but I only had two small handyman toolboxes to work with, so everything was stacked and jumbled in the boxes, and finding any one tool was a chore, they got dirty and worn easily. I moved up to a bigger tool box, about the size of a dish washing machine, and had the room to properly organize my tools. I found that I saved time having them organized, and the drawers were not deep enough to really stack and jumble tools in. As I accumulated more tools, I bought a bigger tool box, the one I have now, and I have racks for organizing sockets, rachets, wrenches, etc. so the insides of the box are extremely neat and clean and well organized. It also has a large work space on top that accumulates lots of spare parts, broken parts, paperwork, and bottles of lubricants, cleaners, spray paints, etc. that I have to organize every once in a while to get space to get work done. I don't have any organizational system for the top of my toolbox like I do for the inside, and it shows... I call it my bipolar toolbox. The rest of my life, outside of my computer hard drives, is extremely disorganized, but I've always lived with less room/space than what I needed, just like with my early tool boxes, and, I don't have the organizational equipment (i.e. a drawer system) to organize my stuff. People don't really look at furniture as organizational technology, and even when they do, they don't have enough of it for everything in their lives. People that are really organized do realize this, I have found, and tend to be the types with lots of shelving, and boxes, drawers, all labelled, etc. As for the focus factor, that is a toughie. I generally find that this happens to me because other people call me away to do things which are important to them, and I forget about what I was doing. If these other people are regularly bossy, demanding, needy, or if you have an inordinate need to please others, this is an issue that is going to take some work and some strategizing to get through. I generally try to reply to other people's demands with "I need to finish this now, and when I am done, you will have my full attention," or variances on that. Make rationalizations for why you need to finish now and not put it off. Some needy and demanding people may think you are a selfish jerk, but you need to explain to them the problems you have with focusing and finishing things, and that this is something you need to work on, and ask for their help and cooperation. Make them a counter offer of more effort from you later if they will be tolerant of your need to focus now. > The horror is to wash the things > in which you cooked things, etc. Wash these along the way, and at the > end of the preparation, before to eat the meal. If they are still hot > from the cooking, it's even easier to wash. Yeah, but by that time, the food is cold. I stick all the pots and pans in the sink to soak, then I eat, then I clean (or put it all in the dishwasher). That way you only have to wash your hands once before cooking, once before eating only if necessary, and your hands get washed a third time while you are washing the pots and pans. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Mon Nov 24 16:10:34 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 08:10:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Extropy-chat-bounces???? In-Reply-To: <000a01c3b23d$a148ae30$9865fea9@bjsmain2> Message-ID: <20031124161034.13249.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> --- Brian Shores wrote: > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Mike > Lorrey > Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 7:20 PM Just WHAT is "extropy-chat-bounces"???? ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From astapp at fizzfactorgames.com Mon Nov 24 16:53:05 2003 From: astapp at fizzfactorgames.com (Acy James Stapp) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 08:53:05 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: David, "I realize that part of the story is that I am a perfectionist. When I work for someone else, they get to override my standards. On my own, I indulge in deferrable bells-and-whistles that push the schedule out. I'm gradually learning to be brutal with myself." This is the most crucial thing I can imagine. It took me years to overcome it. There's a saying, "If something's worth doing, it's worth doing well.". I disagree -- If something's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. (It's been said before, I know). Just do it, if you're getting bored, rush it to get it done with, but it's a lot easier to stick with something when you're blowing through it without worrying about making it right. You can (almost) always go back. "A related question is how to stay organized and tidy." Tidiness is a tough one, but notebooks are cheap. I have a big stack of notebooks with all of my thoughts and diagrams on a subject entered. Each page is numbered and each entry dated so I can refer back to them. It makes it a lot easier to catch back up when I resume something. Acy Stapp From jacques at dtext.com Mon Nov 24 17:04:25 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 18:04:25 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Should we drop the "believe" word/concept/behaviour In-Reply-To: <00c101c3a916$0f133ec0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> References: <000b01c3a844$9e1318c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FB11363.3050206@dtext.com> <00c101c3a916$0f133ec0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <16322.14873.267471.664068@localhost.localdomain> Hi Brett, As promised, here's my answer to your 30 KB message. As there are several aspects to this discussion, I adress them separetely. 1) One of your points (I think it is the main one in your view) is that we should avoid using the word "belief" when conveying transhumanist ideas into society, to avoid that listeners assume these are beliefs of the same kind as beliefs in God or other beliefs without good justification, and therefore dismiss them too easily ("that's your belief, you're entitled to it, my belief is different, I'm entitled to it, end of story", with unsaid subtext: "I'll update my belief when your belief becomes the norm, so far mine is the norm so you're the freak and I'm the good person"). I mostly agree with this. My (small) reservation is that it still depends on situations. Even restricting oneself to tactical considerations, in some situations, stating your belief qua belief may be useful, and not exclusive from argument. Be that as it may, I don't really have an important contention here, and I think your point is worthwile. 2) You extend this point by saying that self-attribution of "belief" is actually sub-standard as far as rational discussion goes, whatever the context. I think this is basically true, too. In a scientific argument, stating your belief qua belief is really off-topic. We don't care. We want to see the evidence, your hypotheses, your theory. On this list (which is scientifically oriented though not a strict scientific context), in fact, "belief" is seldom self-attributed as such. When the word is used, it is usually only to diminish the strength of an assertion, meaning "but I'm not sure" (whether because one has not investigated this in detail, or because it is impossible to know with certainty). (Of course, now that you jump at every one using this word, some may start using it more just to let you know they are not impressed. But that's just a local effect in time, and it will stop when you stop.) I contend that belief *is* self-attributed on the list, however, though not qua belief. One good example is in bets. When someone bets about something, he expresses one's belief, though not using the word. He doesn't "contend", he doesn't "accept", he doesn't "provisionnally judge" or "hypothesize", he bets on it because he *believes* that it holds, i.e. he has some confidence (the amount of which is revealed by the bet) that some fact holds / will hold. More on this in point 5 below. 3) You further extend your point by saying that there is a virtue of intellectual personal hygiene, so to speak, in giving up on the "belief" word and concept, as one learns to label better one's stance in one's head, and why one is contending, accepting, judging something. Instead of mixing all these important nuances, and the reasons we have to think something holds, in one single concept "belief", we learn to question what our exact stance is and what it is based on. I agree on this, too, though I need to say that whether your argument is of benefit to someone depends on one's thinking habits and thinking history. Obviously, this realization has been of important benefit to yourself, which made you very sensitive to its usefulness. 4) While making your political point, and extending it in the ways outlined above with vibrant enthusiasm, you also say a lof of things which, I contend, are plain wrong. You seem to judge(*) that you don't *believe* yourself. This, I contend, is wrong (fortunately for you, as you wouldn't be functional otherwise). See point 5 below. Also, you repeated many times that using "belief" is to be an unclear thinker. Wrong again. If one knows what one is doing, one can on the contrary be an extremely clear thinker and use the word "belief", even for attributing beliefs to self. Of course, see point 2 above; if you assert your belief qua belief when arguments are expected, then you are propably not a "clear thinker". 5) There is such a thing as a well established and very useful concept , naturally expressed by the word "belief", to which correspond an attitude, belief, which is itself healthy and important in human (and animal, depending on your exact account of what belief is) behaviour. Believing that X holds (again) means that you have some confidence that X holds. It implies that you will base your behaviour on this (if you are rational; actually and are part of the same conceptual package, so rationality is assumed when one attributes belief). It implies that you are, to take a trivial example, willing to bet on this. One of the very important differences between believing and "contending", "hypothesizing", "provisionally accepting", is that the first is not dependent on your will, while the others are. One can hypothesize or "provisionnally accept" anything, for the sake of discussion and investigation. One can also contend something for the fun of it, or just to have people show one the reasons why one should drop this contention. But one cannot choose to believe. Belief just results from one's efforts to grasp the truth, whatever one's standards in the investigation are. It is the final personal result of one's investigation, the one which will make the link between the investigatino and one's behaviour. I remember being at a cocktail party somewhere when I was a student, and the wife of some professor told me, "oh, so do we really know now the function of the brain?" Apparently she thought the function of the brain was a big mystery. That this mass of grey stuff hyper-protected with a sphere of bone was still of unknown use. The function of the brain is to direct behaviour based on information about the environment (and the body) so that the behaviour be adaptative. Hypothesizing and provisonnally accepting are tools for knowledge development. They are not the end goal, the end is the establishment of sound beliefs on which to base one's behaviour. That's why we have a brain. Others synonyms you suggested describe social practices, like "contending". In no way do they coincide with the concept and can replace it. So, while I grant some of your points (some worthwile, some more obvious), I think that we should in no way abandon the concept (nor the "belief" word which is the best choice to express such concept), as it matches a legitimate and fundamental attitude in life. Removing the central concept will not result in a thinking that is more clear, but on the contrary, it will result in paradoxes and a conceptual mess, when what you need is that precise concept. This is it, I think it adresses most of the things in your last long message and your other messages on the topic. Jacques PS: To illustrate both some of the content points and some of my reluctancy to reply, here are some specific comments on particular bits in your message. Brett Paatsch wrote (12.11.2003/23:11): > what I do when you think I am believing like > you - is simply not the case- not anymore - one can grow > out of believing. By now you will hopefully have understood that in my view, there's no point "growing out of believing". This is not an interesting prospect. It's illusory and undesirable. While I agree on some of your points (see 1, 2, and 3 above), you obviously say something here that is plain wrong to me. > > Also, I will kindly ask you not to modify my quotes, as > > quotes are, well, quotes. Feel free to comment however > > you like, but please leave what I said as I said it. > > I will not remove what you say, but you have a habit of > using the word "you" when a kind reading of your meaning > suggests you are talking loosely and meant the word one. > A less kind reading leaves you imputing a bunch of things > to me (as the likely referent of your word "you"), that I don't > want to leave unchallenged. I can't be bothered denying > imputations that you make without even meaning to I think this is quite pedantic, and by the way it is even wrong. In "one"-statements, "one" is formally a variable bound by universal quantification. If it's true for "one", then it's true for you, so I do imply the "you"-form contrary to what you say, and if you disprove the "you"-form you have disproved the "one"-form. > [Brett] > > >.. I want is to get your agreement that (a) belief is a word > > >that is harmful (at least sometimes would probably do -and > > >I think you and I are at that point already - by your comment > > >below #2). > > > Agreed. > > Ok. > > > Like any word/concept in some propositions and situations. So > > you should really reframe your initial advice not as linked to a > > particular word, but as: when expressing transhumanist ideas to new > > people, do not insist on the confidence you have in your visions, but > > provide evidence and facts that will influence people's judgments(*). > > That is not the point I am trying to make. Mere ambiguities are not > the problem I am trying to highlight. The political and communication > problems I am concerned with addressing arises as a result of the use > of the word believe (especially "I believe") not as a result of the general > ambiguity of some words of which the believe word is just an instance. > > > > (b) belief is a word that can *always* be replaced > > >by you with no loss of ability to communicate should you so > > >choose. (I don't see that you agree with this point yet). > > > Any word can always be replaced by a synonym or a synonymous > > phrase. > > This is important it means you know you do have the choice in the > belief case in particular. > > > The important point here is that we cannot, and should not, > > dispense with the concept. > > That is not the important point here. But if we can as you say, and its > harmful in some circumstances (as you acknowledge) why not do > without it altogether? This is what I had in mind when I said elsewhere that some of your arguing was embarrassingly bad. I just said (though you tried to make it less clear by splitting my quote) that a- my agreement about "the word 'belief' sometimes being harmful" applied to EVERY WORD, and that b- EVERY WORD could be replaced by a synonym. Do you think then that for any word you care to mention, I will accept to stop using that word and always replace it by synonyms? Of course not. The fact that a word can be used at time in a harmful way is not a sufficient reason to dispense with this word. An idiot can uselessly kill someone with a knife, but I will keep using knifes to cut my zucchini if you don't mind. I know I COULD prepare my zucchini with cutters, razor blades, or maybe forks, or even spoons. But I prefer to use knifes, which are the right tool for doing this. > > > Even if you get the desired outcome from Harvey > > >using "believe" that wouldn't mean that you had > > > chosen well not to use another word like 'see' or > > > 'perceive'. Because in using those words instead > > > you would not be propagating the believing meme > > > and getting you and hypothetical Harvey over-comfortable > > > with a way of speaking that might one day trip you and > > > him or both of you up. And I think you have > > >agreed that sometime the belief-word can trip folks > > > up. > > > What I think is true here, is that you may be better off asking > > your security expert some kind of justification, rather than > > treating him like an oracle. But this is because the trust in his > > abilities, rigor, vigilance, honesty, etc., is limited. It is not > > useful otherwise. And using "believe" or "perceive" doesn't > > change anything, you have to ask him a report instead of > > just asking him his conclusion. > > This is all off topic as far as I am concerned. I didn't advocate > treating the security expert like an oracle. There is no prospect > I would. By saying "treat him as an oracle", I meant, only asking him his final word about it, instead of asking a full report. The point is that if I only want his final word, it is correct to ask him his belief, not his "contention", or his "hypothesis". I want to know what he would bet his own money on. Like when a patient asks the doctor: would YOU take this medicine? > > Belief is the way propositions make people do things. > > It is the vital connection between propositions and > > people. No belief, no behaviour. > > Bollocks. Children act in the world before they learn words > of any sort including the word belief. I was referring to the belief "thing" (the behaviour), not the use of the word "belief". Explicit sincere verbal self-attribution of belief qua belief may be a sufficient condition for belief, but it's not a necessary condition. If I play a trick with a ball and several glasses and I say "where's the ball", and the child point to glass #2, then the child believes the ball is in glass #2. The fact that he knows the word "belief" or not is irrelevant. Now, even the child situation is not relevant, as the main argument is not about children, but about adults using language. Never mind. This is why I made a complete, separate answer at the beginning, instead of getting lost in irrelevant stuff. From gpmap at runbox.com Mon Nov 24 17:18:02 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 17:18:02 GMT Subject: [extropy-chat] Device puts you in the right state of mind Message-ID: Indeed, I was not on the list in 1996-97. I will take a look at the archives. But I do not think any specific technology has reached yet the stage where it can reliably and operationally induce a chosen mood and mental state. Of course, this will come and perhaps rather soon. > > --- Alex Ramonsky wrote: > > > > Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > > > >>From Geek.com and ZDNet: Dreamfree Inc., a South Korean company, > > has a new > > >computer accessory unlike any other. This one is designed to > > generate the > > >appropriate brainwaves to induce an individual into a chosen mental > > state. > > > > > What is it with extropians and neuro tech? Everybody seems to be > > living in the dark ages? > > I recall this being discussed on the list back in 1996-97, nothing > since. I don't recall Giulio being a member back then, so he is > probably not aware of the old-time interest back then. > From fortean1 at mindspring.com Mon Nov 24 17:37:40 2003 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 10:37:40 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave Message-ID: <3FC241E4.B6A06FAE@mindspring.com> An informal poll of Italians or non-Italians living in Italy in 1978 could be interesting. Amara, perhaps you can ask your Italian colleagues and friends if they remember media accounts or anecdotal references? Terry From: Edoardo Russo To: UFO UpDates - Toronto Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:23:27 +0100 Subject: Re: 1978 Italian Wave >From: Richard Hall >To: ufoupdates at virtuallystrange.net >Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:47:25 +0000 >Subject: Re: 1978 Italian Wave >>From: Edoardo Russo >>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto >>Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 18:11:58 +0100 >>Subject: 1978 Italian Wave [was: A 1957 Wave Comparison] >>Quite an exceptional year, indeed, even though it seemed >>limited to our country, as far as we've been able to ascertain: >>there was no global wave in 1978, as opposed to (say) 1952, 1973 >>or 1954. >Edoardo and List, >Referring to my book, The UFO Evidence, Vol. II (pp. 348-358), >you will find me stating that the 1978 wave was "perhaps the >largest worldwide wave of all time." It was, indeed, global. >I give many representative examples of cases in the U.S., >Argentina, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. >Eddie Bullard also defines it as a "pandemic wave," both >geographically widespread and long-lasting. >It is true that more reports came out of Italy, but it was not >confined to Italy. >Since very few people apparently have read my book, a lot of my >research findings are not being taken into account. Hello Dick, First of all, let me assure you that I'm not only one of those "few people" who did read your most valuable book, "The UFO Evidence - Vol. II", but also one of those fewer readers who used it as a research tool, since I dulye and carefully looked through its pages for (and photocopied for our files) all and any reference to either Italian reports or "special interest items" (eg. angel hair reports) which are the subject of one among CISU many research/catalogue projects (please see www.ufodatanet.org/udncgi/wgindex_i.idc for a detailed and updated list, in English). Now to the specific point: as I wrote, the Italian Center for UFO Studies devoted its 13th annual congress to "The 1978 UFO wave, twenty years later" (Florence, 30 May 1998). My own paper was devoted to precisely the international scene, that year, with the aim of comparing the Italian wave with the rest of the world. From my own memory of that year (when I was already active as an international relations officer for the journal "Clypeus" and for the Italian Centro Ufologico Nazionale, CUN), I'd have said a truly global wave had occurred, indeed. But that sensation did evaporate as soon as I did my own homework in preparing some data tables for my paper. I had already scanned the available literature (we'd long been keeping an open file on that year, also as of the international scene) and I also asked several national UFO organizations for their numbers of reported UFO sightings in 1977, 1978 and 1979, so to have a proper perspective of relative trends. If you just have a look at the posters I presented at the congress (which are available on the webpage: http://www.cisu.org/1978wave.htm you will appreciate the following: - a most useful tool would have been an international catalogue, like UfoCat, but it was not updated as of 1978, in the version available at that time; (both your book and Larry Hatch's database are not general-sightings catalogues, but rather a selection of "best cases", whose dinamics may have a behaviour different from the raw reported sightings, as of numbers in time;) the only worldwide catalogue of 1978 sightings I was able to find is the one by Contact International (UK), but it was evidently unbalanced and incomplete (a few hundred cases in all, where Italy had less than 20 entr?es, out of the 1500+ we filed); - I only found or got sistematically collected national data for UK, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland (in Europe), plus Mexico, Australia and two regional catalogues of Ontario and Tasmania; - for some countries, those weren't ufologists' files but official (government) data: UK, France, Australia; - a notable omission are the USA, but I wasn't able to find a comprehensive national database for that country (only few apparently incomplete catalogues); does one exist, and do you or anybody else know of one? As of the conclusions, I will save List readers from the boring statistical tests results, but the tables and graphics are clear enough for all to see: with the exception of Italy (and possibly Mexico and the regional data from Ontario and Tasmania, but with differences totaling dozens of cases only, as opposed to the hundreds). I had to change my mind and my paper plainly told there was no evidence of a global 1978 UFO wave, based upon the available data. I repeat it, now. Of course, I am prepared to change that opinion, again, if anybody can show me new, different data. BTW, I'm still eager to get national numbers for any country I missed. Any volunteer to share data? Best regards Edoardo Russo Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici CISU, Casella postale 82, 10100 Torino tel 011.30.78.63 - fax 011.54.50.33 http://www.cisu.org -- ?Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress.? Copyright 1992, Frank Rice Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.] From extropy at unreasonable.com Mon Nov 24 18:28:51 2003 From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 13:28:51 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.2.20031123144626.025b4008@mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031124123628.03120008@mail.comcast.net> At 07:35 AM 11/24/2003 +0100, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: >But there is a better strategy imo: evidently you are one of those who start >things, and not one of those who complete things. These are two very >different personality types, and the world needs both. Why not just accept >this and rely on others to complete the work that you start? In the example >of the book, you write a short novel that someone else can expand into a >book, then move to something else. If it is software, as Hal advices do a >module, then put everything on Sourceforge so that others can work at it. It is true that I am better at coming up with great ideas than with following through on them. Not just psychologically but in skills. In software, say, I am competent at coding, debugging, etc., but no more than that. It's the design and vision stuff where I can walk on water. I've often thought that I'd want to be surrounded by an infrastructure to take my ideas to fruition. I bubble with commercially viable ideas fast enough to keep a few hundred people busy. My father and grandfather were that way, and I'd guess more than a few extropians are also idea geysers. My plan, which I think I shared here some time ago, is to bootstrap a software company. First, do everything myself to get a first product out (I'm within a few weeks of this). Then split my effort between marketing and writing successor products. Minimum target is not to have to work for someone else any more. As revenue increases, outsource the tasks I don't want to do. Ideally, grow to the point that I have serious money to put into developments I want to help along, like asteroid mining. This is, however, something that I've wanted for a long time, and I'm trying to understand and confront why it -- and life goals in other areas -- remains "in progress." In part, delays have simply been because I have been a custodial single dad, and that comes first. But she's now off in college, and it's a good time to examine what's been deferred and reprioritize. Ironically, four generations in my family are going through the same process simultaneously of self-evaluation coincident to transition to a new phase in life. My daughter is now a nominal adult, I'm mid-career with newly empty nest, my mother is semi-retiring from Physics Today after forty years, and her uncle is adapting to assisted living in his late nineties. Of course, I also know many other people re-examining their lives and making dramatic changes. I think it started consequent to the 9/11 attack for the outer world and with Sasha's death for us. We talk blithely on this list of who's going to bring the guacamole for a party ten billion years hence, and that's fun, and may even happen. But what if your life ends tomorrow? What will you regret not having been or done? -- David Lubkin. From max at maxmore.com Mon Nov 24 18:31:05 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:31:05 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <20031124155935.10563.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> References: <16322.9329.170579.298852@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031124122249.04f24440@mail.earthlink.net> Holding off environmental entropy is always an issue for me, given the volumes of stuff related to personal projects, ExI projects, and work projects. Having looked at quite a few organizing systems, I can recommend without hesitation my favorite: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity David Allen My review: Anyone who manages multiple projects or a complex individual role will find this book an invaluable help (unless you are already superbly organized). Out of the many books available on time management, priority-setting, and turning plans into action, this is one of the very best. David Allen's system takes some investment of time to implement but then speeds up decision-making and improves clarity of thought by downloading all your free floating concerns into a well-developed framework of files and action lists. This allows you to focus on your current task without worrying about forgetting something and without losing track of materials needed in the future. After explaining his view of mastering workflow and project planning, Allen shows you how to set up for the process and then has you corral all your "stuff". You then process this until your in-boxes are empty. He shows clearly how to organize materials for reference and for later action, stresses the importance of regular review, and shows how to keep projects under control. Implementing the whole program requires an investment of time (preferably two full days), though some techniques can be put to use immediately with clear rewards, such as the two-minute rule and the use of special folders for action items that will help you clear your paper and email in-boxes, freeing your mind to focus on current tasks. Highly recommended for busy executives and anyone with a complicated life. Max At 09:59 AM 11/24/2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: >The rest of my life, outside of my computer hard drives, is extremely >disorganized, but I've always lived with less room/space than what I >needed, just like with my early tool boxes, and, I don't have the >organizational equipment (i.e. a drawer system) to organize my stuff. >People don't really look at furniture as organizational technology, and >even when they do, they don't have enough of it for everything in their >lives. People that are really organized do realize this, I have found, >and tend to be the types with lots of shelving, and boxes, drawers, all >labelled, etc. From jacques at dtext.com Mon Nov 24 18:33:30 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 19:33:30 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <20031124155935.10563.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> References: <16322.9329.170579.298852@localhost.localdomain> <20031124155935.10563.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <16322.20218.479414.206219@localhost.localdomain> Mike Lorrey a ?crit (24.11.2003/07:59) : > > --- JDP wrote: > > > > You know one great advice about this? Wash all the tools (and the > > kitchen parts) you use in the preparation of the meal as part of > > the meal preparation. If you are only left with what you used for > > actually eating the meal, it is no big deal. The horror is to wash > > the things in which you cooked things, etc. Wash these along the > > way, and at the end of the preparation, before to eat the meal. If > > they are still hot from the cooking, it's even easier to wash. > > Yeah, but by that time, the food is cold. That's the typical reaction of course, when people are first exposed to the counter-intuitive notion of washing-as-part-of-preparation. To be sure, there *are* a few exceptions, things that you *must* put to soak and have no time to wash (especially true if you are a bad cook and things burn in the pan and get stuck). But in *most* cases, first you can wash a lot *before* you have finished the preparation, then the last things you can wash in seconds if you learn how to do it. I won't claim to have invented this technique. I haven't. It was taught to me by my father (my mother never mastered it, though). I can even remember my initial mockery and resistance to the notion, and my using that same fallacy of the-food-getting-cold. Recently, at least one friend (possibly two, I would need to check) noticed my doing this, was at first shocked and confused, and eventually ended up doing the same at his place. It's a powerful technique, but it's not easy to re-invent it independently as it seems impossible at first, and ruled out by common sense. It's a whole new way of looking at dirty pans. Jacques From natashavita at earthlink.net Mon Nov 24 19:42:13 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 14:42:13 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <168270-2200311124194213927@M2W063.mail2web.com> One of the best realizations about human nature is found in George Carlin's hilarious stand-up performance "A Place for My Stuff." http://shop.store.yahoo.com/laughstore/carlinstuff.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From alex at ramonsky.com Mon Nov 24 21:28:03 2003 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 21:28:03 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Device puts you in the right state of mind References: <5.1.0.14.2.20031124075736.04f2b690@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3FC277E3.7050702@ramonsky.com> Max More wrote: > > Do you really mean to suggest that extropians in general are ignorant > of neurotech?. > Based on one comment by one person who may not even describe himself > as "an extropian"? Nooooo! ...Based on last year's surprise at TMS, and apparent astonishment prior to that about the concept of wiping memory, and people mailing me off list and saying 'wow' a lot : ) > > > Neurotech has been discussed and covered frequently since Extropy > magazine first came out in 1988. Maybe those not so in the know are newcomers...not everyone goes through the archives? Also not everybody is interested in the same subjects. Who knows? But it did surprise me that a lot of folks got so surprised. I know too that neurotech is a field which is going through some very fast changes right now, some of which may slip by unnoticed, but usually extropians are the very people good at finding those juicy little bits of research everybody misses...so I'm not suggesting that extropians are ignorant of neurotech, so much as baffled as to why decades-old tech and/or techniques would be treated with such excitement by persons who are not. ...I _think_ that made sense; I might have to read through it again... : ) AR From thespike at earthlink.net Mon Nov 24 21:52:46 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 15:52:46 -0600 Subject: kitchen sink and all (was: Re: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness) References: <16322.9329.170579.298852@localhost.localdomain><20031124155935.10563.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> <16322.20218.479414.206219@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <011c01c3b2d5$4da457a0$9b994a43@texas.net> Jacques wrote: > It's a powerful technique, but it's not easy to > re-invent it independently as it seems impossible at first, and ruled > out by common sense. It's a whole new way of looking at dirty pans. Depends, I think, on how many sinks you have (most USians have 2 next to each other, but sometimes one is half the size of the other and/or contains a disposal unit that chews up scraps, and certains sects aren't permitted to mix the meaty dishes with the milky ones, etc), whether you use lots of freely running hot water or prefer to conserve its use, whether you *use* the sink/s space as part of food preparation (say, peeling vegetables into, rinsing bloody plastic wrap, etc. If you have a dish washer you can certainly rinse off pots etc and put them there until later. Damien Broderick From jcorb at iol.ie Mon Nov 24 22:41:30 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 22:41:30 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Stem cell research in the EU Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031124223825.02624ea0@pop.iol.ie> As most of you know, there's a lot of debate going on the in the EU at the moment regarding the permitting and funding of stem cell research. For those among us in Europe, it's a good opportunity to make our voices heard. I've already emailed the Irish Science Minister. Be sure to let the EU know this is an important issue. James... From bradbury at aeiveos.com Mon Nov 24 22:54:26 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 14:54:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <16322.20218.479414.206219@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, JDP wrote: > Mike Lorrey a ?crit (24.11.2003/07:59) : > > --- JDP wrote: > > > > Yeah, but by that time, the food is cold. Hmmm... But isn't this what microwaves are for? In my experience 60-90 seconds in my microwave (which may be a bit underpowered) heats things back up to a very nice temperature without overcooking them. I would assume that one could develop a system whereby one develops an approach of slight undercooking by normal methods, deposits the food on the plate, sticks it in the microwave to reheat at low power providing sufficient time to do the dishes followed by sitting down with a hot meal and the satisfaction that the dishes are done. Of course the timing of this may vary with the specific dish contents but if we used the collective ExI experience I'm sure we could work out dozens of ExI dishes where when you sit down to eat one knows the cleaning of the tools for preparation is complete. This may only work for 1-2 people rather than for families since most microwaves may not be large enough to hold 4+ plates. R. From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Mon Nov 24 23:23:15 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 18:23:15 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031124123628.03120008@mail.comcast.net> Message-ID: <000901c3b2e1$fc36a050$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> David Lubkin wrote, > Ironically, four generations in my family are going through the same > process simultaneously of self-evaluation coincident to > transition to a new phase in life. > Of course, I also know many other people re-examining their lives and > making dramatic changes. Excellent topic! These comments reinforce my own opinion. We haven't necessarily changed. The world has changed. The economy, technical environment, work environment, and life expectations have changed. Everybody is facing these same vital questions. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Tue Nov 25 00:59:26 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 11:29:26 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0DA@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > Of course, I also know many other people re-examining their lives and > making dramatic changes. I think it started consequent to > the 9/11 attack > for the outer world and with Sasha's death for us. We talk > blithely on > this list of who's going to bring the guacamole for a party > ten billion > years hence, and that's fun, and may even happen. But what > if your life > ends tomorrow? What will you regret not having been or done? > > > -- David Lubkin. Nothing, you'll be dead. Emlyn From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 25 01:20:20 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 19:20:20 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0DA@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <021801c3b2f2$4cf28da0$9b994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Emlyn O'regan" Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 6:59 PM >>what if your life > > ends tomorrow? What will you regret not having been or done? > Nothing, you'll be dead. Bloody negative Australians. Always looking at the bleak side of everything. Damien Broderick From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Tue Nov 25 02:35:38 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:05:38 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0DC@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Materialism's a bitch. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Damien Broderick [mailto:thespike at earthlink.net] > Sent: Tuesday, 25 November 2003 10:50 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Emlyn O'regan" > Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 6:59 PM > > >>what if your life > > > ends tomorrow? What will you regret not having been or done? > > > Nothing, you'll be dead. > > Bloody negative Australians. Always looking at the bleak side > of everything. > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From fortean1 at mindspring.com Tue Nov 25 03:58:46 2003 From: fortean1 at mindspring.com (Terry W. Colvin) Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 20:58:46 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Ivan T. Sanderson (1911-1973) - short biography Message-ID: <3FC2D376.76850B5E@mindspring.com> Wonders, December 1992, pp. 65-67 by Mark A. Hall Ivan T. Sanderson (1911-1973) Twenty years ago an old friend died. He was a British subject who chose to live in the U.S.A. During his life Ivan T. Sanderson was first a nature writer and then avid fortean author, devoting his later books and articles to mysterious natural phenomena of all kinds. His life and work are difficult to summarize adequately here. More information can be found in an excellent biographical entry that appears in the _National Cyclopedia of American Biography_, Vol. 57 (Clifton, NJ: J.T. White, 1977), 192-194. The entry is unsigned but its comprehensiveness and accuracy indicate that it could only have been written by his widow and second wife, Sabina (who has also written under the name Marion Fawcett). Sanderson's earlier books are still cited today for his observations on mammals (_Living Mammals of the World_), on elephants (_The Dynasty of Abu_), 0n primates (_The Monkey Kingdom_), on whales (_Follow the Whale_), and on jungles (_Book of Great Jungles_). It can be said that he was always controversial. One is as likely to find a disparaging offhand remark made about him in a popular science article of his day as to find a reference citing his work. But such remarks were usually in the nature of a cheap shot without the elaboration that would have shown that Sanderson was incorrect. He was always taking positions on the cutting edge of scientific inquiry. His curiosity led him to pursue the mysteries of science full-time. His later books included two on unidentified flying objects (_Uninvited Visitors_ and _Invisible Residents_) and three collections of essays on a wide range of topics (_"Things"_, _More "Things"_, and _Investigating the Unexplained_). His most influential book has been his 525-page opus on the varieties of Yeti/Bigfoot/Giant mysteries, _Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life_. It is the basis for all work done since that time in pursuit of mysterious primates. Even the old guard of Bigfoot hunters who predate his book owe him a debt. Without it the awareness of Sasquatch/Bigfoot might have continued to be as regional as, for example, the many lake monsters. I think this book and _Uninvited Visitors_ represent Ivan's best work. He did his best to meld an open mind with the scientific rigor of his early training. His _"Things"_ and _More "Things"_ are very good but have not had a greater influence because they appeared as paperbacks only and have always been hard to find. The publishers, Pyramid Books, were notorious for poor distribution of their line of books. Now the works are out of print and much sought-after. Sanderson had another impact during his lifetime that might easily be overlooked. I lived through the years that his popular articles were appearing in American magazines. I think those articles on strange happenings (from sea monsters to UFOs) were broadly influential in maintaining a healthy curiosity about our world and a healthy awareness of the existence of things yet undiscovered. As professional scientists slumbered through the last half of the twentieth century, a few influential voices such as Sanderson's reached the general public to pique curiosities and to assure witnesses to strange happenings that they were not alone and they were not crazy. Sanderson's popular articles appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in the decade following 1944 covering such topics as sea monsters and living dinosaurs. From the late 1940's till his death in 1973 popular articles appeared in True, This Week, Sports Afield, Argosy, Saga, Fantastic Universe, and Fate. Many of these periodicals will be hard to find preserved today even in library stacks. But these were popular magazines read and re-read by millions of people. They were bought by the ordinary person and passed around, read in barber shops and in military service day rooms around the globe. No one today reaches a similar readership with these topics and with the solid background that Sanderson gave to his articles. Only one scientific establishment publication, an Italian journal called Genus published in Rome, had the vision to print some of Sanderson's later works on the unusual. From 1962-1969 they published four essays on the possible survival of primitive sub-men. Since Sanderson's death specific allegations have been repeatedly published stating that he died from a brain tumor and that condition caused peculiar behavior in his later years. These allegations are complete rubbish and reflect only upon the dubious credibility of the sources. I can personally refute them because I was an assistant to Sanderson in the last few months of his life and lived in his house at the time. I see no reason to detail the man's medical history except to say that he died from cancer in his abdomen for which he was treated by doctors at the time. One of the things that occupied him almost up to the day of his death was giving radio interviews by telephone to numerous broadcasters around the country who were his old friends. To the end he remained a forceful and entertaining advocate of investigating true mysteries, despite the pain that came with his illness. Recently Ivan Sanderson came back into the news, briefly, upon the revelation of a hoax in Florida in 1948. All the recent discussions have been based upon an article in the St. Petersburg Times for 11 June 1988. That article explains, in convincing fashion, how large three-toed tracks were made on beaches and stories were invented to fake the appearance of a mystery in 1948. Ivan Sanderson investigated these and failed to identify the hoaxed elements of the reports. This episode is a lesson to all who would investigate such mysteries to look for repetitive jokers such as perpetrated this hoax. It would be unfair to Sanderson, however, to discuss this error as if it were the only thing he had done. If we do this then we justify the self-interested and pathetic flight by professional scientists from any investigation of the mysteries that crop up and are neglected. The possibilities of hoaxes, misidentifications, and bogus elements introduced by debunkers will always plague us. The professionals won't risk anything because they stay away and invent excuses. Those who do investigate take risks and the most active of them are open to being burned. If we venture nothing, nothing will be gained. This is the crux of why most professional scientists aren't gaining anything and will be remembered as mere time-servers in their professions. In common with the rest [of] us, Ivan had flaws and made some mistakes. Not all of his ideas will hold up and some will be put aside with just cause. But his positive influence upon today's world has been widespread. And the wisdom in much of his works will be proven yet in years to come. This is a common characteristic of the best fortean endeavors, that vindication can only come many years later. The fortean problems are the difficult questions that are routinely avoided for generations by the boffins, as Ivan might have referred to the research scientists. Sanderson deserves to be remembered for his contributions to organizing the mysteries that still intrigue us and for his unique encouragement to the generations now living to explore this marvelous world of ours. Selected Bibliography of Ivan T. Sanderson ANIMAL TREASURE (1937, Viking Press) CARIBBEAN TREASURE (1939, Viking Press) LIVING TREASURE (1941, Viking Press) ANIMAL TALES, editor (1946, Knopf) HOW TO KNOW THE NORTH AMERICAN MAMMALS (1951, Little, Brown) LIVING MAMMALS OF THE WORLD (1955, Hanover House) FOLLOW THE WHALE (1956, Little, Brown) ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN: LEGEND COME TO LIFE (1961, Philadelphia: Chilton). An abridged paperback edition with additional footnotes appeared in 1968 from Pyramid Books. That edition was reprinted in 1977 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. THE CONTINENT WE LIVE ON (1961, Random House) THE DYNASTY OF ABU (1962, Knopf) BOOK OF GREAT JUNGLES authored with David Loth (1965, Messner) UNINVITED VISITORS (1967, Cowles Education Corp.) "THINGS" (1967, Pyramid Books) MORE "THINGS" (1969, Pyramid Books) INVISIBLE RESIDENTS (1970, World) INVESTIGATING THE UNEXPLAINED (1972, Prentice-Hall) GREEN SILENCE (1974, David McKay) -- ?Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress.? Copyright 1992, Frank Rice Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program ------------ Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans, Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.] From gpmap at runbox.com Tue Nov 25 04:17:08 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 05:17:08 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Molecule gives clue to schizophrenia Message-ID: >From Nature: single molecule may underpin the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, a mouse study suggests. A better understanding of the roots of the disease and new antipsychotic medications may follow. Schizophrenia affects 24 million people worldwide. Sufferers experience disrupted thoughts and behaviour, and sometimes delusions. Its cause is uncertain, but faulty brain chemistry is thought to be key. Three main chemical messengers, called neurotransmitters, are implicated. Different researchers tend to favour one molecule the others as the disease's root cause. Schizophrenia a complex disease that affects the brain's chemistry and structure, says Carol Tamminga from the University of Texas, Dallas, who studies the disorder. "The next step is to work out how a molecular change like this translates into hallucinations and delusions," she says. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gpmap at runbox.com Tue Nov 25 05:29:04 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 06:29:04 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Genomics will transform economy and society Message-ID: >From SeedQuest: Genetic code will become the dominant language in the world, making possible everything from personalized prescriptions and diets to chickens with three wings, while transforming the economy and society. Best-selling author Juan Enriquez, Chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy and former Director of the Life Sciences Project at Harvard Business School, told a Canadian audience last week that Canada needs to educate its population and attract some of the world's best brains to compete in this revolution. Enriquez stressed that countries in a knowledge economy need only a few thousand smart people. "You can build the richest country in the world on a Caribbean island by cherry-picking brains. You don't have to move a bank account. You don't have to move a building. All you have to move is brains. That's a very different economy," he said. Genomics will have a revolutionary impact on numerous industries, including medicine, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and information technology. Medicine will be based on assessing whether genetic tendencies increase or decrease the probability of disease, instead of whether a patient is sick or well. "That leads to a very different type of medical system, because instead of getting a yes-no from a doctor, they're getting a series of probability curves," he said. "Maybe you should start taking chemotherapy before you get breast cancer. This is a very different world. It's a world in which people are going to start getting personalized prescription profiles. By the way, should your insurance agent know, should your employer know, should the government know?" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 25 06:07:51 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 00:07:51 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Brave New Ads References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0DC@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <029401c3b31a$791d70c0$9b994a43@texas.net> The Sci-Fi Channel just showed a 1998 `modernized' adaptation of BRAVE NEW WORLD, railing throughout against the evils of Soma. I nearly fell off my chair laughing when one of the ad breaks urged us soothingly to try Zoloft. Targeted demographics at its best! Damien Broderick From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 25 07:43:19 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 01:43:19 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] fun in Russia with the new `capitalists' References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0DC@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <029401c3b31a$791d70c0$9b994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <034801c3b327$cdffdda0$9b994a43@texas.net> http://www.nypress.com/16/45/news&columns/cage.cfm Robert or other informed Russophiles might care to comment on the accuracy of this scorching piece. Damien Broderick From matus at matus1976.com Tue Nov 25 08:43:51 2003 From: matus at matus1976.com (Matus) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 03:43:51 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0D4@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <000001c3b330$439de810$6701a8c0@GREYBOOK> Emlyn said: Personal experience? Google says good things about it (all hail the great one). ? Emlyn ---- Adrafinil ------- For those who've read "A deepness in the sky" by Vinge, I'd love a temporary "focus" pill, just to be able to plough through things and get them done. I find I have that ability built in already, but I'm not able to turn it on at will; it comes and goes as it likes, leaving me at the mercy of the high seas. ? Emlyn -------------------- Adrafinil does the same thing as modafinil, which I (not sure which email I was using at that time) posted a good deal about my personal experiences with a few months back. I have a few boxes of both sitting above my computer at this very moment. Short version: From my experiences, its great for keeping you awake and alert, although I wouldn?t say it made me more able to focus then if I was otherwise awake and alert. If you are tired it certainly will help keep you awake and focused but if you are already awake it seems to have little effect. Michael Dickey (aka Matus) From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Tue Nov 25 09:48:51 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 03:48:51 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: <20031124143800.77625.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> References: <3FC1ACA2.8090609@mail.tele.dk> <20031124143800.77625.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 06:38:00 -0800 (PST), you wrote > >--- Max M wrote:> >> Being a social democrat also means that you are agreeing with a >> system that has been prooved to work pretty well in several nations. >> >> Being libertarian means that you support a theoretical system that is >> supposed to work as in the economic theory. >> >> It's just like most medical trials, they allways works in theory. >> Often they also work in the petri dish on single cells. But when it >> comes to working in the whole body as actuall medicine, they allmost >> allways fail. > >Interesting view, which doesn't seem to reflect that the socialist >systems of europe always maintain higher unemployment Actually, a lot of the jobs people have in the USA would not even qualify as jobs in many european countries--they pay much less than unemployment over there, and of course the minmum wage is generally much higher over there. >and lower growth >than the US, They also have lower immigration, and so therefore do not require as high a growth rate. >which, while not libertarian, is significantly further >along in that direction. Within the US, more libertarian states tend to >higher growth than their less libertarian immediate neighbors. > >===== >Mike Lorrey >"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." > - Gen. John Stark >"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." > - Mike Lorrey >Do not label me, I am an ism of one... >Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com > >__________________________________ >Do you Yahoo!? >Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now >http://companion.yahoo.com/ >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat ------------- From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Tue Nov 25 10:01:38 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 04:01:38 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] fun in Russia with the new `capitalists' In-Reply-To: <034801c3b327$cdffdda0$9b994a43@texas.net> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0DC@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <029401c3b31a$791d70c0$9b994a43@texas.net> <034801c3b327$cdffdda0$9b994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 01:43:19 -0600, you wrote >http://www.nypress.com/16/45/news&columns/cage.cfm > >Robert or other informed Russophiles might care to comment on the accuracy >of this scorching piece. > Great article! This sentence from that article pretty much sums up a major portion of US foreign policy: "For a dozen years now, in that paper, anyone who disagreed with the neo-con laissez-faire corporate tribe aligned with U.S. interests has been a Soviet throwback." ------------- From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Tue Nov 25 10:04:49 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 04:04:49 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] fun in Russia with the new `capitalists' In-Reply-To: <034801c3b327$cdffdda0$9b994a43@texas.net> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0DC@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <029401c3b31a$791d70c0$9b994a43@texas.net> <034801c3b327$cdffdda0$9b994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 01:43:19 -0600, you wrote >http://www.nypress.com/16/45/news&columns/cage.cfm > >Robert or other informed Russophiles might care to comment on the accuracy >of this scorching piece. And another telling excerpt from that article: "Some of us who came home after seeing this began to realize that the same process is underway in the United States: the erosion of the tax base, the gradual appropriation of the tools of government by economic interests, a massive, disorganized population useless to everybody except as shoppers. That is their revolution: smashing states everywhere and creating a scattered global nation of villas and tax shelters, as inaccessible as Olympus, forbidding entry even to mighty dictators." ------------- From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 25 11:19:12 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 12:19:12 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Risks of Smart Drugs In-Reply-To: <000001c3b330$439de810$6701a8c0@GREYBOOK> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0D4@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <000001c3b330$439de810$6701a8c0@GREYBOOK> Message-ID: <16323.15024.219003.659736@localhost.localdomain> Matus a ,Ai(Bcrit (25.11.2003/03:43) : > Adrafinil does the same thing as modafinil, which I (not sure which > email I was using at that time) posted a good deal about my personal > experiences with a few months back. I have a few boxes of both sitting > above my computer at this very moment. Short version: From my > experiences, its great for keeping you awake and alert, although I > wouldn?t say it made me more able to focus then if I was otherwise awake > and alert. If you are tired it certainly will help keep you awake and > focused but if you are already awake it seems to have little effect. INteresting. I won't ask more specifics to you about it, as I can go and read what you already said. I have a more general question. As someone who has no experience of taking psycho-active substances (except for commonly available ones like alcool, nicotine, caffeine, and very rare experiences with THC and sleeping pills), I don't have a good intuitive grasp about how risky it is in the mid-term. It might seem unwarranted but, though it does leave to be desired at times, I value my brain in its present state. One of the things I would like to know is, can you trust that the substance is eliminated after some time, leaving no trace, or can damage or lasting modifications be made? Can some handy distinction be made between a group of substances for which this trust is warranted, and another group for which it is difficult to know or some real risk is known to exist? Are there certain general principles useful to reflect about this issue? Jacques From test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu Tue Nov 25 12:19:34 2003 From: test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 06:19:34 -0600 (CST) Subject: [extropy-chat] take care of your teeth to take care of your brain Message-ID: At least according to this: http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20031125p2a00m0fp013000c.html Bill ---------------------------------------------------------- Bill Hibbard, SSEC, 1225 W. Dayton St., Madison, WI 53706 test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu 608-263-4427 fax: 608-263-6738 http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis.html From jacques at dtext.com Tue Nov 25 12:40:44 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:40:44 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Socialism versus Transhumanism In-Reply-To: References: <3FC1ACA2.8090609@mail.tele.dk> <20031124143800.77625.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <16323.19916.900826.361028@localhost.localdomain> randy wrote: > > > >Interesting view, which doesn't seem to reflect that the socialist > >systems of europe always maintain higher unemployment > > Actually, a lot of the jobs people have in the USA would not even > qualify as jobs in many european countries--they pay much less than > unemployment over there, and of course the minmum wage is generally > much higher over there. This may be true, but you know, there is also has an unfortunate consequence, which is that in France, one is either IN or OUT (well, I'm an independent worker, so I'm really nowhere, but this is exceptional, and I've done almost all my business with non-French customers). Either one manages to get a "CDI" (i.e. "work contract with indefinite duration"), and then one has all the benefits (minimum wages, unemployment if it stops, 13th month and who knows what) that are reserved to this status, either one doesn't and then one is pretty much out of society. You can *not* find easily a small work, then a better one, then maybe an even better one. It's a bit all or nothing. There is this box in which you must enter, and if you are ready to enter it, and that you manage to do so, THEN you have some advantages. But it's a strong constraint. And all theses benefits make it even more a constraint to employers, who hesitate even more to sign such contracts, which makes it even more difficult to get them. (But of course they still need employees so they still do sign such contracts.) In fact, there is much talk of "la pr?carit?" (social insecurity) and "l'exclusion" (being out of society), as many people can't find "boxes" or do not fit in them, and are left to social welfare. There is little mid-ground. I don't have a good quantitative grasp of whether *on the whole* it is better here or *on the whole* it is better there. It depends on who you consider, too. IN my case, working 8 hours a day on non personal endeavours is something I never contemplated (and had the good fortune of never been forced to do, either), so to me all the "social benefits" stuff is all a bit abstract. I don't have "minimum wages", and if I don't find work, I cannot apply to unemployment benefits. All the "social conquests" were made by organized employees, and the system by now is designed for them. They have made the "box" nicer and nicer. If you do live in a box, then you obviously prefer a nicer box. If you want to (or must) live in a box but you don't, then you want the box to be nice, but also you want it to be available. And finally maybe you don't want and don't need to live in a box, and so you don't care about how nice it is. It seems clear that for people with low qualifications, who are still able to find CDI (the full-fledged box), the situation is better here. I like this fact, it's nice to know that some of the humble people live in a relative comfort, and that they are not pressed to death because they are not found to be useful enough. The issue may be the impact this organization has on creation, which also has incidence on the future of boxes (size and number). Jacques From natasha at natasha.cc Tue Nov 25 15:48:39 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 07:48:39 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Girls Night Out! Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031125074345.02dd70d0@pop.earthlink.net> Chat Topic: "Girls Night Out" - Women & the Future Time: Nov 30 - SUN 8pm Eastern, Length: 1 Hour Host: Susan Fonseca-Klein - co-director, ImmInst.org Susan's Biography and Discussion Topic: http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=99&t=2218&s= CHAT FOR WOMEN ONLY! Sponsored by the Immortality Institute (ImmInst.org), a nonprofit with the mission to end the blight of involuntary death, and hosted by Susan Fonseca-Klein, this chat is for women only. The men need to take a break. They will have their own separate chat room during this time. As co-director of ImmInst.org, Susan warmly invites all women to participate. If you've never tried a chat before, don't worry, the main goal is have fun while learning a little more about the following: 1. What do women want out of the future? 2. Why do women live longer than men? 3. Are there really more women than men talking about the future? CHAT MADE EASY Entering the chat room is easy. Usually within one minute and three clicks you can be typing messages. Try the following link to test the chat: http://www.imminst.org/chat Click 'Yes' and then Connect. For questions, email: support at imminst.org _____________________________________ http://www.natasha.cc Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher. ? Oprah Winfrey I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso. ? Rita Rudner If I had to live my life again, I'd made the same mistakes, only sooner. ? Tallulah Bankhead My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is. ? Ellen Degeneres -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bradbury at aeiveos.com Tue Nov 25 14:23:57 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 06:23:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] ANTHRO/EVO: what we have learned from chimps Message-ID: A very interesting article in the NY Times today about what we have learned about the possible sources and evolution of social behaviors. A Course in Evolution, Taught by Chimps Nicholas Wade, Nov. 25, 2003 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/25/science/25CHIM.html?pagewanted=print Raises some interesting questions about how much of this may be genetic and how much is learned. And further, with respect to transhumanism, how should we consider and treat groups (cults?) that want to evolve themselves into a more chimp-like society (alpha males, subordinate females) or socialistic societies (everyone really is *equal* -- no more sports or scholarships based on people with exceptional skills)? R. From mail at HarveyNewstrom.com Tue Nov 25 15:08:15 2003 From: mail at HarveyNewstrom.com (Harvey Newstrom) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:08:15 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] take care of your teeth to take care of your brain In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <003501c3b365$f3ba2f80$cc01a8c0@DELLBERT> Bill Hibbard wrote, > take care of your teeth to take care of your brain > > At least according to this: > > http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20031125p2a00m0fp013000c.html Unfortunately, this article gives no information as to why they believe this to be true. It merely shows a statistical correlation between tooth loss and dementia. We already knew there would be a correlation between the two. It's called old age. We lose teeth as we age. We get prone to dementia as we age. There is no surprise here. Tooth lose may cause dementia, dementia may cause tooth loss, or old age may cause both. Statistical correlations do not establish cause and effect. If they discovered an actual cause and effect, the article forgot to mention it. Tooth decay has been linked to increased risk of heart attacks. It turns out that the inflammation caused by low-level bacterial infection increases plaque buildups in the arteries. Inflammation also seems to be involved in Alzheimer's and other aging diseases. I would guess that the inflammation is more responsible than "brain stimulation" or structural support. -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, CISA, CISM, IAM, IBMCP, GSEC Certified IS Security Pro, Certified IS Auditor, Certified InfoSec Manager, NSA Certified Assessor, IBM Certified Consultant, SANS Certified GIAC From bradbury at aeiveos.com Tue Nov 25 15:22:07 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 07:22:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] fun in Russia with the new `capitalists' In-Reply-To: <034801c3b327$cdffdda0$9b994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Damien Broderick wrote: > http://www.nypress.com/16/45/news&columns/cage.cfm > > Robert or other informed Russophiles might care to comment on the accuracy > of this scorching piece. I would say there is a fair amount of accuracy in the article. In the early '90s the question was how to dismantle the Soviet Union. That lead to the development of the oligarchs. That the process was corrupt is most likely true. Western economists played a key role in the dismantlement process -- I don't think at the time they understood how shrewd a Russian could be at "rigging" things. In theory the average Russian was supposed to end up with shares of the important state assets. In practice they did not. In Russia the sociology is all about "power". They really are still living with a mentality that is 100 years old, i.e. the czar is effectively a god. Now-a-days one simply has a few more czars. When the czars come into conflict with each other something has to give. I am still amazed with the fact that Putin is the leader of Russia. He came out of nowhere -- for him to be the leader there has to be a *lot* going on behind the curtain which we are unaware of. So to live/work in Russia one either figures out who the power brokers are and attempts to gain their favor (the situation in any typical "organization") or attempts to cut ones own path with the associated risks and benefits (this is the case with Khodorkovsky) or does ones best to maintain a low profile (this is the case with the average citizen). These behaviors may be true in other societies but they are *significantly* magnified in the former Soviet Union states. I'll leave out an opinion on the Neo-cons and the comparison between the process in Russia and the current political state in the U.S. However based on past experience of the deficit spending of the Regan era and comparison with the Clinton era I would state that the U.S. population will let the Republicans/neo-cons only go so far with respect to tax reduction before they go the other way. My bets would be on Hillary in 2008. In contrast, in Russia there is a lot more going on that one cannot see. Putin has effectively turned independent media (at least with respect to TV) back into government news outlets. So there is no transparency. One could argue that they tried to do this recently in the U.S. with respect to F.C.C. regulation changes towards allowing increased ownership of media outlets (if one views "big" media corps as going along with the party line) -- but the public (and congress) didn't let them get away with this. All I have to say is watch and learn. It may be essential for ones survival in the future. Robert From mlorrey at yahoo.com Tue Nov 25 16:35:15 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 08:35:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] fun in Russia with the new `capitalists' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031125163515.54914.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> --- randy wrote: > On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 01:43:19 -0600, you wrote > > >http://www.nypress.com/16/45/news&columns/cage.cfm > > > >Robert or other informed Russophiles might care to comment on the > accuracy > >of this scorching piece. > > > > Great article! This sentence from that article pretty much sums up a > major portion of US foreign policy: > > "For a dozen years now, in that paper, anyone who disagreed with the > neo-con laissez-faire corporate tribe aligned with U.S. interests has > been a Soviet throwback." Dunno, the writer has a definite axe to grind, nor is NY Press a very objective source. Editor Jeff Koyen and company have been described as having an "off-red" bias typical of self described 'alternative' media sources. >From the quoted statement alone, I see a bias. I don't think anybody would categorize fascist Zhirinovsky as a "Soviet throwback", for example. The writer shows absolutely no sense of historical economic perspective, and seems pissed that the US won the cold war. The USSR so wrecked the economy in Russia that it is left in a 19th century state, in which oligarchs seem to be a natural precursor to a developed economy. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Tue Nov 25 16:36:47 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 08:36:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] fun in Russia with the new `capitalists' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031125163647.11255.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- randy wrote: > On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 01:43:19 -0600, you wrote > > >http://www.nypress.com/16/45/news&columns/cage.cfm > > > >Robert or other informed Russophiles might care to comment on the > accuracy > >of this scorching piece. > > And another telling excerpt from that article: > > "Some of us who came home after seeing this began to realize that the > same process is underway in the United States: the erosion of the tax > base, the gradual appropriation of the tools of government by > economic > interests, a massive, disorganized population useless to everybody > except as shoppers. That is their revolution: smashing states > everywhere and creating a scattered global nation of villas and tax > shelters, as inaccessible as Olympus, forbidding entry even to mighty > dictators." What Randy? Do you mean you LIKE dictators? Smashing states everywhere sounds like a mighty fine strategy. How can I help out? ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From amara at amara.com Tue Nov 25 15:38:02 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 17:38:02 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Perfect Storm Message-ID: http://starbulletin.com/2003/11/22/news/story1.html Wow!!!! Kids, Don't try to surf these please..... Amara -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end." --Calvin From bradbury at aeiveos.com Tue Nov 25 18:10:25 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:10:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] fun in Russia with the new `capitalists' In-Reply-To: <20031125163515.54914.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > The writer shows absolutely no sense of historical economic > perspective, and seems pissed that the US won the cold war. Mike, I didn't get that sense from the article. I know that I would agree with your perspective that a free economy is probably more productive than a managed economy -- *BUT* I would bet you have never been in the Moscow subways. A person I once worked with who grew up in New York and who had obviously experienced the NY subways was *amazed* when he encountered the Moscow subways. Both from the perspective of engineering audacity as well as style. So one has to be very careful when one goes critiquing various economic methods. > The USSR so wrecked the economy in Russia that it is left in > a 19th century state, in which oligarchs seem to be a natural > precursor to a developed economy. I do not believe the first part of this is accurate. Russia made a very rapid transition from a feudal state to a modern state to an industrial state (say from ~1880 to 1930). This did not "wreck the economy" -- it did alter its basis significantly. Was the economy of Russia less productive than it could be (from say 1930 to 1990)? I don't know -- there was a lot of "slave" labor used (and one could look back at various Roman or Greek societies that depended upon slave labor). So one gets into very complex arguments as to whether freedom will out perform properly managed slave labor. (We may face this again if we develop low IQ AIs or develop genetic sub-humans.) With respect to the transition from a communistic state to a "democratic" state (though I question whether this is a valid characterization) I think the U.S. economists attempted to create a U.S. like economic situation. The Russian oligarchs however hijacked the transition. There are some good books to be written comparing Russia in the 1990's with the U.S. from say 1880 to 1920 where the railroad, oil and automobile barons (Rockefellers, Gettys, Carnegies, Fords(?), etc.) were grabbing up all the assets or opportunities of value. The only difference is that it probably happened in Russia much faster. Now, whether Russia can make the transition to a "developed economy" as Mike suggests remains to be seen. There are several hundred years of czarist mentality (that didn't change much during communism -- Stalin and other Soviet leaders were czars with minor changes) that need to be overcome. One way to look at it -- many, perhaps most, people in Russia are comfortable being told what to do (and have been for hundreds of years) -- in the U.S. given the colonization stream from Europe and elsewhere that tended to not be the case. One is dealing with populations who survived their own self-determination vs. populations where self-determination urges were eliminated. Robert From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Nov 25 18:14:55 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 12:14:55 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Robert Zubrin sf novel References: Message-ID: <00bb01c3b380$0aee96e0$89994a43@texas.net> http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue344/books2.html The Holy Land By Robert Zubrin Polaris Books Trade paperback, November 2003 308 pages ISBN 0-9741443-0-4 ===== No, it's not about Mars. From etheric at comcast.net Tue Nov 25 19:27:12 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 11:27:12 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Risks of Smart Drugs References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0D4@adlexsv02.protech.com.au><000001c3b330$439de810$6701a8c0@GREYBOOK> <16323.15024.219003.659736@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <001401c3b38a$20b1d550$0200a8c0@etheric> The risk of NOT using any particular nootropic that has health promoting effects may actualy outweigh the risk of using it. I do have some experience with adrafinil, I used it during guard duty while working in security, interestingly The US military are interested in *modafinil as well. I've also had noticeably positive effects from vinpocetine. http://www.nootropics.com/vinpocetine/index.html It can be dangerous to judge substances with an intuition alone, so called "nootropic" substances by definition have a very low to nul level of possible negative side effects, however I don't consider Mod/Adrafinil a true nootropic, for although it is considered a safe, effective and well-tolerated agent, its is not absolutely benign, and so its occasional use only for me. The trick here is to study any substance you might wish to use thoroughly! http://nootropics.com/ http://adrafinil.com/ http://www.modafinil.com/ note: Modafinil is a controlled substance in the USA ----- Original Message ----- From: "JDP" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 3:19 AM Subject: [extropy-chat] Risks of Smart Drugs > Matus a ,Aicrit (25.11.2003/03:43) : > > > Adrafinil does the same thing as modafinil, which I (not sure which > > email I was using at that time) posted a good deal about my personal > > experiences with a few months back. I have a few boxes of both sitting > > above my computer at this very moment. Short version: From my > > experiences, its great for keeping you awake and alert, although I > > wouldn? say it made me more able to focus then if I was otherwise awake > > and alert. If you are tired it certainly will help keep you awake and > > focused but if you are already awake it seems to have little effect. > > INteresting. I won't ask more specifics to you about it, as I can go > and read what you already said. > > I have a more general question. > > As someone who has no experience of taking psycho-active substances > (except for commonly available ones like alcool, nicotine, caffeine, > and very rare experiences with THC and sleeping pills), I don't have a > good intuitive grasp about how risky it is in the mid-term. > > It might seem unwarranted but, though it does leave to be desired at > times, I value my brain in its present state. > > One of the things I would like to know is, can you trust that the > substance is eliminated after some time, leaving no trace, or can > damage or lasting modifications be made? Can some handy distinction be > made between a group of substances for which this trust is warranted, > and another group for which it is difficult to know or some real risk > is known to exist? Are there certain general principles useful to > reflect about this issue? > > Jacques > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From kilroy at hush.ai Tue Nov 25 18:47:14 2003 From: kilroy at hush.ai (Kilroy) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:47:14 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] I am being censored Message-ID: <200311251847.hAPIlEmW078962@mailserver2.hushmail.com> I am being subject to a new and unusual kind of censorship. Somebody's host refuses to receive emails from the domain hush.ai . The extropy-chat list server gets bounce messages from that host every time I send a message, and then unsubscribes me from extropy-chat. Thus, one sysadmin can intimidate users of particular mailservers into silence. I realize this is probably accidental, but the potential for abuse is interesting. kilroy was here Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427 From bradbury at aeiveos.com Tue Nov 25 20:33:58 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 12:33:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Risks of Smart Drugs In-Reply-To: <001401c3b38a$20b1d550$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: Also of importance is to realize that the use of such drugs may have very specific individual effects. It is clear that there are polymorphisms (gene variations) in neuroreceptors and that individual responses may vary. So while one person may respond positively another person may respond very negatively. The activity of a drug may not only depend upon variations of the genes (and therefore the proteins) in the brain but the differences in the genes in the liver that metabolize the drugs as well (which are quite significant). There are something like 50+ enzymes in the liver that are involved in drug metabolism. There may be individual genetic variations in each of those. This determines what your blood levels of a drug may be and how long the effect of a drug lasts. So the best way to look at this is that old saying: "Your mileage may vary". And if you run out of gas in the middle of the desert the experience may be very unpleasant. Its probably going to take 10-15 years to accumulate enough information in databases with respect to drug-genotype interactions to provide even minimal predictive capacity with respect to most drugs. Robert From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 25 20:21:23 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 21:21:23 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] I am being censored In-Reply-To: <200311251847.hAPIlEmW078962@mailserver2.hushmail.com> References: <200311251847.hAPIlEmW078962@mailserver2.hushmail.com> Message-ID: <20031125202123.GX23337@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 10:47:14AM -0800, Kilroy wrote: > I realize this is probably accidental, > but the potential for abuse is interesting. RBLs are notoriously prone to abuse. No submission checking whatsoever is done, and none is possible automatically. Unfortunately, people in general do not weigh the full implications of their actions, and just act reflexively in the majority of cases. I've recently had an interesting discussion with an ISP who silently introduced SpamCop on our mail server. Now SpamCop operators are nutters, and fully deserve to be DoSed out of the sky, but http://jhoward.fastmail.fm/spamcop.html the ISP owner was actually genuinely trying to explain that he was doing us a service, while we were getting confirmed bounces from three different providers -- our customers couldn't reach us. That was a feature, not a bug in his lights! Just as good this was an email exchange, not an audio link. Now it's trivial to operate your own mailserver on one of *nix machines we had in the racks, but I wanted a solution everybody could administrate after I'm gone, so an RBL-free email feed did cost the company 700 EUR (MTA license and one-time configuration). Nice, huh? This is very much like using a flamethrower to address tragedy of the commons overgrazing: lots of roast cattle, smoking ash, no grass, no overgrazing: problem solved. Maybe we *are* doomed. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From astapp at fizzfactorgames.com Tue Nov 25 21:21:48 2003 From: astapp at fizzfactorgames.com (Acy James Stapp) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:21:48 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Risks of Smart Drugs Message-ID: <56BC65EB2F3963489057F7D978B5E7B74661@amazemail2.amazeent.com> Vinpocetine is the only OTC nootropic that gives me any noticeable effect. Subjectively, it seems like the world goes by just a tiny bit slower, and I feel a bit more on top of things. Unfortunately I am unaware of any quick tests to determine the efficacy of nootropics. This effect seemed to fade over a couple of days though. Who knows whether I was adapting to the subjective effect (and still receiving an objective effect, if any) or whether I was adapting to the objective effect and it was losing it's efficacy. Acy -----Original Message----- From: R.Coyote [mailto:etheric at comcast.net] I've also had noticeably positive effects from vinpocetine. http://www.nootropics.com/vinpocetine/index.html From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Nov 25 21:59:13 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 08:59:13 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Should we drop the "believe" word References: <000b01c3a844$9e1318c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <3FB11363.3050206@dtext.com> <00c101c3a916$0f133ec0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> <16322.14873.267471.664068@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <000001c3b3a0$281c7a00$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Hi Jacques, I think the domain space of our disagreement has reduced to the point where to post the answer I have prepared to your last post in this thread might actually diminish rather than assist the political point I was trying to make. It seems that you are now capable of articulating my point of view almost as well as I could have hoped. All that remains to be seen is what you will do politically. I therefore propose to shelve the reply I've prepared until such time as I think you are using the word belief habitually and reflexively rather than deliberately. If you capitalise the word when you think its valid either in protest or to signify that you are using it deliberately then I won't bother trying to persuade *you* any further. If you want my response (its ready now but not polished) I will of course post it to you. Serafino posted a number of links which I've been reading behind. The debate you and I have had is one that has been had elsewhere. Philosophically it can go (imo) quite a bit deeper on both sides. No amount of philosophical discussion though is going to prove the *political* point I was trying to make. The tool of philosophy is inadequate to prove political truth although I think it can be adequate to show some types of error. I think that it is true that there can be no good policy based on the philosophical notion of three sided squares for instance. The best way to get at the political truth (the utility) of my assertion is to "suck it" (empirically) "and see" personally. My thesis or assertion is: That critical thinkers who experiment with forgoing the use of believing in their expressions (i.e.verbal and written communications) and in their internal dialog will find over time that making that change will differentially and preferentially empower them *personally* with respect to those that don't. It will work as a competitive advantage for those that try it. It will help and differentially empower those who use it over those that don't even in the debates on this list. It won't make everyone smarter than Robert or Eugen I am *not* saying that. I am saying that it will make everyone better able to win debates and be effective politically against their otherwise equal that does not do it. Anyone can find the truth of my thesis or assertion, I contend, by trying it. They can't otherwise. It is as simple as that. Thanks for your efforts. Regards, Brett From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Tue Nov 25 22:16:08 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 22:16:08 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] I am being censored Message-ID: <3FC3D4A8.9010100@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Hi I ran a trace on hush.ai. Results: hush.ai = hush.com = 65.39.178.14 This IP address is not in the SpamCop, ORDB or spambag blacklists. (These are the main ones I use). So I ran a check on all the blacklists. Bingo! 65.39.178.14 is in the Blars Block List. Blars tends to be a bit indiscriminate. Quote: 'In general, an entire netblock is added rather than just a single IP or customer of a larger ISP. (For example, if hugeisp has a /16 that they allocate a single /24 to spamcustomer, the /16 will be listed rather than just the /24.) An entire ISP may be added if they show a pattern of rejecting valid spam complaints for invalid reasons'. You could try asking Hushmail to get taken off the Blars List. Best wishes, BillK From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 25 22:32:49 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 23:32:49 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] I am being censored In-Reply-To: <3FC3D4A8.9010100@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> References: <3FC3D4A8.9010100@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <20031125223249.GG23337@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 10:16:08PM +0000, BillK wrote: > You could try asking Hushmail to get taken off the Blars List. You *are* kidding, right? I get bounces (especially from Bernstein's ezmlm paranoiaware, and not even consistently so) because my From: doesn't fit my MTA hostname. Good gracious lord, what were they thinking? They *were* thinking, right? Hello, McFly? Is your EEG really flat, or are you just playing possum? Coming next: obligate X-Social-Security-Number headers and random stripsearches (repeat offenders will be issued free anal probes) for a license-to-email. Wake up already, and smell the Kafka. Normal people no longer trust email, anyway. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From namacdon at ole.augie.edu Wed Nov 26 03:13:14 2003 From: namacdon at ole.augie.edu (Nicholas Anthony MacDonald) Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 21:13:14 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Mark Pesce: Terror and Transhumanism Message-ID: <1069816394.a1d81a20namacdon@ole.augie.edu> VRML Creator and Transhumanist Mark Pesce recently gave a lecture at Stanford titled "Terror and Transhumanism", in which he sounds off on the singularity, communications theory, nanotech, the singularity- and, unfortunately woefully misrepresents the Extropians. He refers to Extropians as the "extremist" wing of the Transhumanist movement, associates extropianism exclusively as "uploading"- and, here's the kicker, suggests that Extropians haven't studied philosophy- which is definitely a slander against Dr. More and Dr. Bostrom! Other than that, good lecture- the first 2/3rds are definitly worth a listen: http://www.hyperreal.org/%7Empesce/StanfordLecture.mp3 -Nicq MacDonald From gpmap at runbox.com Wed Nov 26 06:03:21 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 07:03:21 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] A Secure and Verifiable Voting System Message-ID: >From Slashdot: The cryptographer David Chaum, through discussion with top cryptographers such as Ron Rivest, has designed a secure and verifiable voting system. One of the goals of his design is that anyone can verify that votes were tabulated correctly. It's good to see real security/crypto people working on this problem. Their website vreceipt.com has a whitepaper and a press release. The new type of receipt is printed in two layers by a modified version of familiar receipt printers. You can read it clearly in the booth, but before leaving, you must separate the layers and choose which one to keep. Either one you take has the vote information you saw coded in it, but it cannot be read (except with numeric keys divided among computers run by election officials). The half you take is supplied digitally by the voting machine for publication on an official election website. These posted receipts are the input to the process of making the final tally. A lotto-like draw selects points in the process that must be decrypted for inspection, but not so many points as to compromise privacy. Anyone with a PC can then use simple software to check all such decryptions published on the website and thereby verify that the final tally must be correct. Such audit cannot be fooled, no matter how many voting machines or other election computers are compromised or how clever or well-resourced the attack. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From reason at exratio.com Wed Nov 26 08:01:16 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 00:01:16 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Immortality Institute book: call for submission Message-ID: The Immortality Institute is putting together a book of thematic essays and discussions for publication in 2004, with proceeds going towards the first Immortality Institute conference in 2005. Organization is proceeding apace, and submissions on basic and advanced issues relating to physical immortality through science are being sought. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2004, but earlier is always better. The announcement can be found here: http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=99&t=2276 and more details on the proposed book itself can be found here: http://imminst.org/book/ If you would like to talk about the planned book, jump into the Immortality Institute forums and have your say: http://imminst.org/forum/ Reason http://www.exratio.com From amara at amara.com Wed Nov 26 09:12:37 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 11:12:37 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] essay: Medical Uses of Illicit Drugs Message-ID: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/medical/meduse.htm Medical Uses of Illicit Drugs by Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar INTRODUCTION "Most of the psychoactive drugs banned or severely restricted by law in modern industrial societies have had significant medical uses at some places and times. In the case of natural plant drugs like opium, coca, cannabis, mescaline, and psilocybin, this medical history usually reaches back thousands of years and through a variety of cultures. The general tendency has been to restrict the uses of these drugs as their dangers are more strongly emphasized and substitutes become available. Although the trend toward greater precision in the use of drugs and greater concern for safety is a medical advance, there is a danger that legal and social restrictions will prevent the realization of some genuine medical potential. As we suggest in this chapter, establishing the balance is a difficult process that has not yet been worked out adequately. (The use of illicit drugs also raises other issues, such as individual freedom of choice, that are outside the scope of this essay.)" (see the essay for the rest) -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Obviously my body doesn't believe a word my brain is saying." --Calvin From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Nov 26 23:29:58 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 17:29:58 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] antiangiogenesis drug news References: Message-ID: <012e01c3b475$40b84fa0$ee994a43@texas.net> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/business/26biotech.html Avastin had failed to extend survival rates significantly in a small trial of patients with colorectal cancer. That is a comedown from a previous, larger trial that had such positive results that it was the talk of a conference earlier this year. Still, even in the new trial, Avastin did prolong survival by 29 percent... Avastin could be the first drug to reach the market that works by inhibiting the flow of blood to tumors, starving them of nutrients and oxygen. The earlier trial involved 900 patients with colon cancer that had spread to other parts of the body and were being treated with drugs for the first time. Those who received Avastin along with existing chemotherapy drugs had a median survival of 20.3 months, compared with 15.6 months for those who received only the chemotherapy. ... Avastin did prolong the time before tumors started growing again by 67 percent, a result that was statistically highly significant. From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Wed Nov 26 23:34:45 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 10:04:45 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] TECH: Soon, 3D Printing for the home office... Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0EE@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Machine Could Bring 3D Printing to the Home Office http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-11-25-5 A machine that cheaply and efficiently produces objects made of plastic and metal could soon bring 3D printing to home offices. Emlyn From dgc at cox.net Thu Nov 27 01:11:24 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 20:11:24 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] TECH: Soon, 3D Printing for the home office... In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0EE@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0EE@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <3FC54F3C.2000108@cox.net> Emlyn O'regan wrote: >Machine Could Bring 3D Printing to the Home Office >http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-11-25-5 >A machine that cheaply and efficiently produces objects made of plastic and >metal could soon bring 3D printing to home offices. > > > In the frenzy of digital photography, we purchased a high-quality color printer. It turns out, after a year of using it sporadically, that it's a lot cheaper to e-mail the images to a professional outfit and get the prints back in the mail. Why is this relevant? Because you can do the same thing with plastic and metal parts. There is a company at http://www.emachineshop.com That has a completely web-based business model. You start by downloading their software, which is fairly nice CAD program, at no cost. It's proprietary Windows software, and the license requires that you refrain from using it to create designs that you then fabricate elsewhere, but it's free. In addition to being a fairly good CAD program, the software has some neat features:: 1) you can select materials from an extensive list including dozens of plastics, steels, and aluminiums, and lots of other metals. 2)You select a machine (e.g, punch, 3-axis mill, tap) for each line or set of lines. 3)You select "finishes" for each surface. 3) After you design your part, or at any time during the design, the program can evaluate whether or not the design can actually be machined. 4) The program computes a set of prices for the part, based on delivery time and quantity. After you are happy with your design, you select the quantity and the delivery time, and click on the "purchase" button. The program sends the design to the company, and the company sends the parts back by mail. Unfortunately, I did not discover this place until after I fabricated the mechanical parts of my STM at home. I spent more for tools and material than the emachineshop design would have cost, and since I am a klutz, my result is a lot less professional looking. (I bought a drill press for $60, delivered, but a 9/16" drill bit costs $15.00!) If I succeed with my prototype. I will probably reward myself by having a few more built at emachineshop.com Prices? A very simple small metal part will cost $50.00, quantity 1, and $75, quantity 10. The STM part, as I designed it, would cost $100, quantity 1, and $185, quantity 10, in stainless steel. My prototype is aluminium, and the tools and materials cost about $200.00 As a separate issue, the really complex part of a modern product is the printed circuit board. There are now many companies on the web that will build PCBs for you using the same business model that emachineshop uses for machined parts. I intend to use one of these shops for the electronics for the STM. Again, the quantity 10 cost is generally not much more than the quantity 1 cost, and the smallest order is about $150.00 If you can afford to wait for delivery, hardware really is software, at least for small parts. To all American extropians: Happy Thanksgiving! From gpmap at runbox.com Thu Nov 27 10:53:02 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 10:53:02 GMT Subject: [extropy-chat] Longevity Meme: Activism for Healthy Life Extension Message-ID: >From Longevity Meme, a very good article on life extension that everyone should read: Despite widespread apathy, disinterest and ignorance of science in our society, there has been a real growth in size and sophistication of healthy life extension communities in the past few years. The Life Extension Foundation, the Immortality Institute and the Longevity Meme are but a few of these. We can thank the Interneet, reports of new breakthroughs in medicine, and the actions of a core of motivated early leaders for this blossoming. Interest is growing as the first inklings and discussions of the future of life-extending medicine appear in the mainstream media. As a group united in our vision for a better future, we have come to the point of being able to say: ?We want to live healthily for longer. We want real, meaningful healthy life extension therapies. What shall we do to make it all happen??... Today, humanity stands on the brink of real, meaningful anti-aging medicine. Scientists talk of 200-year life spans, of defeating cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer?s. Far longer, far healthier lives are possible. Readily available therapies to repair and prevent the cellular damage of aging could be twenty years away with the right funding and research choices. Yet, people in positions of influence and power - President Bush, Leon Kass of the President?s Council for Bioethics and Francis Fukuyama, to name but a few - devote their time to blocking research and speaking out openly against extended health and life. http://www.longevitymeme.org/articles/viewarticle.cfm?page=1&article_id=16 From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 27 12:17:04 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 04:17:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Longevity Meme: Activism for Healthy Life Extension In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > >From Longevity Meme, a very good article on life extension that > >everyone should read: Despite widespread apathy, disinterest and > >ignorance of science in our society, there has been a real growth in > >size and sophistication of healthy life extension communities in the > >past few years. The Life Extension Foundation, the Immortality > >Institute and the Longevity Meme are but a few of these. Ahem.... Let us not forget Aeiveos Corporation and Aeiveos Sciences Group! They were working on this in a very robust way -- doing both web sites and science *long* before The Immortality Institute or the Longevity Meme were developed -- from circa 1993-1997. In fact Aeiveos Corporation hosted the first web sites for both The Life Extension Foundation and A4M. In terms of personal resources spent on longevity research I think I am probably in the top 10 along with Larry Ellison, Paul Glenn, Saul Kent and Sam Barshop. Though neither company was successful, they did lead to the spread of a number of ideas very early on in the development of "longevity memes" which were acted on and continue to spread. Weindruch and Prolla have published a series of papers on changes in gene expression with age starting in 1999. ASG had the first results in this area using a much more difficult technology in 1997. The genotyping in centenarian studies were first started by ASG in 1996 and were continued by Tom Perls (with whom we were working) at Centagenetix which has now been incorporated into Elixir. Though Aubrey's plan for the IBG and Methuselah Mouse projects were created independently you could go back and find very similar elements in the scientific research plan of Aeiveos Sciences Group. The emphasis that the Ellison Medical Foundation places on aging -- probably to the tune of $10-20 million/year would probably not exist without my influence. So BJ and Reason I just want to point out that the roots in the evolution of this effort that may be deeper than you realize. > Today, humanity stands on the brink of real, meaningful anti-aging > medicine. Scientists talk of 200-year life spans, ... Only scientists who don't know what they are talking about. If one *really* understands aging and defeats it you are talking about 2000-7000 year lifespans limited by ones accident rate. > of defeating cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's. Cancer we will defeat gene by bloody gene (witness Gleevec and the current set of angiogenesis inhibitors). Heart disease is going to be a bit more difficult as it involves a complex process -- but we have a good handle on it. Solutions for Alzheimer's are still emerging but it appears (finally) to be a problem we can understand and deal with. > Far longer, far healthier lives are possible. Claim without facts in evidence. Brain cells *do* die at some rate (perhaps this rate may vary during ones lifetime). Have you ever done the calculation to see how long it takes before you have 1/2, 1/4, 1/10, etc. of your normal number of brain cells? [This is distinct from situations involving cell loss from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, strokes, etc.]. I did the calculation once and the numbers are not good (though I don't remember the exact result). It isn't clear how much of your brain you can lose before become someone significantly other than who you once were (you might be able to get away with 1/2 -- but I doubt you could get away with 1/10). The same would be true if one adopts a therapy of replacing the lost cells with neuronal stem cells. Sooner or later (unless one spends an extreme amount of time reprogramming the new neural connections with old neural connections -- a questionable exercise as I recall very little of my childhood from ages 2-10) one ends up being a different person. Food for thought, Robert From amara at amara.com Thu Nov 27 11:28:45 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 13:28:45 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Comet SL9, Analysis&Interpretation (6mos after event) Message-ID: Almost ten years later, this is still considered a remarkable event. I just generated a pdf of this talk, and updated this web site slightly. http://www.amara.com/sl9/sl9.html http://www.amara.com/ftpstuff/cometsl9impact.pdf (2.1 Mb) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impact in Jupiter: Analysis and Interpretation (6 months after event) by Amara Graps (Macworld Exposition, San Francisco, January 4, 1995) This 25 minute talk explored popular aspects of the Summer 1994's major celestial event, including comet impact dynamics, its effect on the cloud system of Jupiter, observations of several of the major impacts, predictions and puzzles, and sources for more information. -- *********************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ *********************************************************************** "Living on earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the sun." --Ashleigh Brilliant From jacques at dtext.com Thu Nov 27 14:14:16 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 15:14:16 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] TECH: Soon, 3D Printing for the home office... In-Reply-To: <3FC54F3C.2000108@cox.net> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0EE@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <3FC54F3C.2000108@cox.net> Message-ID: <16326.1720.215864.756987@localhost.localdomain> Dan Clemmensen wrote (26.11.2003/20:11) : > Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > >Machine Could Bring 3D Printing to the Home Office > >http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-11-25-5 > >A machine that cheaply and efficiently produces objects made of plastic and > >metal could soon bring 3D printing to home offices. > > > > > > > In the frenzy of digital photography, we purchased a high-quality > color printer. It turns out, after a year of using it sporadically, that > it's a lot cheaper to e-mail the images to a professional outfit and get > the prints back in the mail. I think this is somewhat paradigmatic of the whole personal computing business from the start. People make wrong judgements regarding real costs and the quality of end results, and choose the individual solution because they like to feel individually empowered. We got nice results (cheap powerful PCs) from misguided desires. (I wonder what enlightened desires would have brought.) Jacques From megao at sasktel.net Thu Nov 27 14:53:07 2003 From: megao at sasktel.net (Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc.) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 08:53:07 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] memory- hypothesis Message-ID: <3FC60FD3.31DDEF0B@sasktel.net> Register or Login: Password: Athens Login Medical Hypotheses Volume 59, Issue 5 , November 2002, Pages 555-559 Copyright ? 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Are neuronal activity-associated magnetic fields the physical base for memory? M. A. M. Banaclocha, Department of Pathology, Hospital General de Castell?n, Castell?n, Spain Received 2 October 2001; accepted 20 December 2001. Available online 21 September 2002. Abstract Despite intensive investigation into the mechanisms underlying the memory process, the physical bases for this superior cognitive function remain elusive. Recall of past events and actions depends on the generation of complex memory carriers that would have to integrate many items of information. Some human memory processes, like contextual recall, work at such high speed and integrate such a large number of cortical neurons and neuronal networks that molecular mechanisms of information storage and synaptic transmission seem insufficient. This limitation argues against molecular information storage mechanisms as being truly effective carriers for the memory process. In this paper, I propose that any type of information can be stored in the form of `neuronal activity-associated magnetic fields' that would record information in much the same way as the magnetic tape of a tape recorder. Integration and/or combination of the neuronal activity-associated magnetic fields throughout the complex three-dimensional structure of the human cortex could provide a storage medium for high-speed processing and discrimination that would support the complexity of the human memory process. Correspondence to: Marcos Mart?nez Banaclocha, Urbanizaci?n San Blas 31, 46740 Carcagente, Valencia, Spain; email: marbanacl at latinmail.com Medical Hypotheses Volume 59, Issue 5 , November 2002, Pages 555-559 Send feedback to ScienceDirect Software and compilation ? 2003 ScienceDirect. All rights reserved. ScienceDirect? is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. Your use of this service is governed by Terms and Conditions. Please review our Privacy Policy for details on how we protect information that you supply. From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Nov 27 17:16:02 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 09:16:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Longevity Meme: Activism for Healthy Life Extension In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031127171602.95261.qmail@web80409.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > Today, humanity stands on the brink of real, > meaningful anti-aging > > medicine. Scientists talk of 200-year life spans, > ... > > Only scientists who don't know what they are talking > about. If one > *really* understands aging and defeats it you are > talking about > 2000-7000 year lifespans limited by ones accident > rate. Or scientists who don't want to overly future shock the public, fearing they might lose their jobs if they did. > > Far longer, far healthier lives are possible. > > Claim without facts in evidence. Brain cells *do* > die at some > rate (perhaps this rate may vary during ones > lifetime). And can be regenerated, it turns out. It was once thought otherwise, but apparently not so. Of course, it might be the case that the natural replacement rate is less than the natural death rate, but this is something we can adjust. (Or, as you suggested, do replacements.) > It > isn't clear > how much of your brain you can lose before become > someone > significantly other than who you once were (you > might be able > to get away with 1/2 -- but I doubt you could get > away with 1/10). You can't even get away with 100%. People usually don't lose too many brain cells between 10 and 20 and 30, yet people are often at least a little - sometimes (often?) significantly - different at those ages. From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Nov 27 18:29:23 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 10:29:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Longevity Meme: Activism for Healthy Life Extension In-Reply-To: <20031127171602.95261.qmail@web80409.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, Adrian Tymes wrote: Commenting on 2000-7000 year life spans... > Or scientists who don't want to overly future shock > the public, fearing they might lose their jobs if > they did. Well, if they are short-changing reasonable expectations intentionally then IMO its a form of fraud. Commenting on neuron loss... > And can be regenerated, it turns out. It was once > thought otherwise, but apparently not so. Of course, > it might be the case that the natural replacement rate > is less than the natural death rate, but this is > something we can adjust. (Or, as you suggested, do > replacements.) There is limited regeneration in the hypothalmus I believe (Anders correct if this is wrong) but not in the cerebral cortex. See [1]. > You can't even get away with 100%. People usually > don't lose too many brain cells between 10 and 20 and > 30, yet people are often at least a little - sometimes > (often?) significantly - different at those ages. Well between 10 and 20 there are well documented hormonal changes causing neuronal structure/activity changes. Between 20 and 30 I would submit that it probably has to do with the rapid accumulation of "life experience" rather than brain cell gain/loss as a primary driving force. But it seems to be the remaining years during which one experiences gradual loss. According to the abstract for [1], the loss is 10% from 20 to 90. I'm sure you can do the math. Robert 1. Pakkenberg, B. & Gundersen, H. J. G., "Neocortical Neuron Number in Humans: Effect of Sex and Age", J. of Comparative Neurology 384:312-320 (1997); http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9215725&dopt=Abstract (Pakkenberg has a number of other studies related to this in PubMed). From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Nov 27 18:53:54 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 12:53:54 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] where did the spare soul go? References: Message-ID: <00e601c3b517$dce86980$82994a43@texas.net> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/27/1069825920727.html (I suppose it might be argued that this kind of chimerism is no different metaphysically from cannibalism, but still.) From dirk at neopax.com Thu Nov 27 19:44:48 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 19:44:48 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] TECH: Soon, 3D Printing for the home office... References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE0EE@adlexsv02.protech.com.au><3FC54F3C.2000108@cox.net> <16326.1720.215864.756987@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <040901c3b51e$eae8af70$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "JDP" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 2:14 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] TECH: Soon, 3D Printing for the home office... > Dan Clemmensen wrote (26.11.2003/20:11) : > > > Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > > > >Machine Could Bring 3D Printing to the Home Office > > >http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-11-25-5 > > >A machine that cheaply and efficiently produces objects made of plastic and > > >metal could soon bring 3D printing to home offices. > > > > > > > > > > > In the frenzy of digital photography, we purchased a high-quality > > color printer. It turns out, after a year of using it sporadically, that > > it's a lot cheaper to e-mail the images to a professional outfit and get > > the prints back in the mail. > > > I think this is somewhat paradigmatic of the whole personal computing > business from the start. People make wrong judgements regarding real > costs and the quality of end results, and choose the individual > solution because they like to feel individually empowered. > > We got nice results (cheap powerful PCs) from misguided desires. (I > wonder what enlightened desires would have brought.) No idea, but the advances in video processing are being driven by people's desire to play wargames. Dirk (aka 'The WussMaster', Happy Penguin, Wolfenstein) The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dirk at neopax.com Thu Nov 27 19:52:05 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 19:52:05 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Longevity Meme: Activism for Healthy Life Extension References: Message-ID: <043901c3b51f$ef5fc330$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 6:29 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Longevity Meme: Activism for Healthy Life Extension > > On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, Adrian Tymes wrote: > > Commenting on 2000-7000 year life spans... > > > Or scientists who don't want to overly future shock > > the public, fearing they might lose their jobs if > > they did. > > Well, if they are short-changing reasonable expectations > intentionally then IMO its a form of fraud. I don't think anyone is going to complain if they find out their treatment is good for 2000 years rather than the 10 that was advertised. BTW, interesting implications... http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994418 Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Nov 27 20:27:45 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 14:27:45 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Hilbert 16th on the run References: <043901c3b51f$ef5fc330$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <017201c3b524$f59f1700$82994a43@texas.net> What is it in that Swedish water? Anders? http://www.aftenposten.no/english/world/article.jhtml?articleID=678371 From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Nov 27 22:36:57 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 09:06:57 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] TECH: Soon, 3D Printing for the home office... Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE102@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > -----Original Message----- > From: JDP [mailto:jacques at dtext.com] > Sent: Thursday, 27 November 2003 11:44 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] TECH: Soon, 3D Printing for the home > office... > > > Dan Clemmensen wrote (26.11.2003/20:11) : > > > Emlyn O'regan wrote: > > > > >Machine Could Bring 3D Printing to the Home Office > > >http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-11-25-5 > > >A machine that cheaply and efficiently produces objects > made of plastic and > > >metal could soon bring 3D printing to home offices. > > > > > > > > > > > In the frenzy of digital photography, we purchased a high-quality > > color printer. It turns out, after a year of using it > sporadically, that > > it's a lot cheaper to e-mail the images to a professional > outfit and get > > the prints back in the mail. > > > I think this is somewhat paradigmatic of the whole personal computing > business from the start. People make wrong judgements regarding real > costs and the quality of end results, and choose the individual > solution because they like to feel individually empowered. > > We got nice results (cheap powerful PCs) from misguided desires. (I > wonder what enlightened desires would have brought.) > > Jacques I can't see what is wrong with the development of the PC. To me it makes perfect sense. Can you please explain your thinking here (I am interested to know)? Thanks. Emlyn From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Nov 27 23:36:46 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 15:36:46 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] cr again In-Reply-To: <017201c3b524$f59f1700$82994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000001c3b53f$5240ee60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Hey cool, no wonder Im so smart: http://channels.netscape.com/new/html/live/scoop/nn/0.html Weird Side Effect When Calories Are Cut When we eat fewer calories, of course we lose weight. But something else happens that you might not expect: Fewer calories could protect your brain from the ravages of aging by slowing the normal process of cell death that comes as we grow older, reports WebMD. Eat less to prevent Alzheimer's? Noting that previous research has shown that calorie restriction could boost longevity and mental capacity, researchers at the University of Florida wondered if fewer calories might also help protect aging brain cells. As we age, our bodies change. (Don't we know THAT!) Old cells die. New ones are made. That's normal. However, age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, cause a greater number of cells to die in the brain, and that's not normal. This abnormal cell death can also lead to a loss of brain function. To test their theories, the Florida researchers gave one group of rats unlimited access to food and water throughout their lives. Another group of rats was adequately nourished but was given 40 percent fewer calories. The results: The levels of proteins that indicate cell death increased as part of the normal aging process in the rats that ate as much as they wanted. But the rats that had a restricted diet did not have an increase in these proteins, reports WebMD. In addition, a protein that is thought to protect the brain from cell death dropped by 60 percent in the well-fed rats, but increased in the rats with calorie-restricted diets. DNA fragmentation, which is also an indicator of cell death, more than doubled in the high-calorie rats, but the increase was 36 percent less in the other group of rats. "We're not going to [eat less] right away to improve our memories; we're going to do it probably in general for the first reasons, which would be to prevent cardiovascular disease and cancer," study author Christiaan Leeuwenburgh said in a news release announcing the findings that were published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. "And maybe it also has a protective effect--and it's very suggestive in this study that it does--on brain function." This is just another reason to pay attention to what--and how much--you eat. >From Netscape News From cryofan at mylinuxisp.com Fri Nov 28 00:31:36 2003 From: cryofan at mylinuxisp.com (randy) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 18:31:36 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Funeral as an "act of conspicuous consumption" In-Reply-To: <017201c3b524$f59f1700$82994a43@texas.net> References: <043901c3b51f$ef5fc330$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <017201c3b524$f59f1700$82994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: Recent science seems to show that cannabalism was common in the past: "The question is why has cannibalism, by and large, stopped? The answer has less to do with innate decency or moral progress than with status. For most of the hunter-gatherer period a community could not afford not to eat its dead or its dead enemies. With farming came a certain pride in displaying a life of plenty. Human burials and cremations were (and are) acts of conspicuous consumption. It is easy to think that what "we" do is what all right-thinking humans do. And it is hard, in our supermarket culture, to imagine what it is like to scavenge for food. But the careful procedures of science can uncover the truth in the face of hardened preconceptions. Now we know that cannibalism was a widespread norm in the past, we need to find out why particular societies gave it up. Somewhat uncomfortably, the reason in Papua New Guinea, after the Australian government's suppression of funerary cannibalism in the Fifties, seems to have been a desire on the part of the indigenous population to be reincarnated as affluent white people." More here: http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2003/10/15/ecfcann14.xml&sSheet=/connected/2003/10/22/ixconn.html ------------- From mlorrey at yahoo.com Fri Nov 28 04:16:55 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 20:16:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] cr again In-Reply-To: <000001c3b53f$5240ee60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031128041655.45410.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Did the study specify what kinds of calories are the most beneficial/detrimental???? --- Spike wrote: > > Hey cool, no wonder Im so smart: > > http://channels.netscape.com/new/html/live/scoop/nn/0.html ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 28 06:03:21 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 22:03:21 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] cr again In-Reply-To: <20031128041655.45410.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000301c3b575$54422d10$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Mike Lorrey > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] cr again > > Did the study specify what kinds of calories are the most > beneficial/detrimental???? No, but I might speculate that calories from alcohol = bad, calories from sushi = good. {8-] 0====3 spike > > --- Spike wrote: > > > > Hey cool, no wonder Im so smart: > > > > http://channels.netscape.com/new/html/live/scoop/nn/0.html > > ===== > Mike Lorrey > "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." > - Gen. John Stark > "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." > - Mike Lorrey > Do not label me, I am an ism of one... > Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now > http://companion.yahoo.com/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 28 11:05:46 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 03:05:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] cr again In-Reply-To: <000301c3b575$54422d10$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, Spike wrote: > > Mike Lorrey > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] cr again > > > > Did the study specify what kinds of calories are the most > > beneficial/detrimental???? > > No, but I might speculate that calories from > alcohol = bad, calories from sushi = good. Perhaps not so spike. This is one of the more hotly debated topics in all of the CR literature. With some people making an argument that you have to restrict calories in the form of carbohydrates to reduce glucose spikes -- and others making the argument that you want to reduce the intake of specific essential amino acids from proteins to force the cells to recycle their proteins more frequently. The third camp says its calories period -- doesn't matter what type they are. I suspect there is evidence for all 3 positions. What is interesting is that almost all of the studies conducted to date are using inbred mouse strains (usually C57Black6) Sometimes Sprague-Dawley rats are used. But these are strains where each individual is extremely close to every other individual from a genetic background standpoint. So conclusions one might draw from the studies might work great for one collection of human clones but very poorly for another set of human clones. Across average human populations (which are generally outbred) trying to provide universal solutions may be a futile exercise until we can inexpensively genotype individuals and then tie specific genotypes to specific aspects of metabolism and aging. This is currently the "holy grail" from the perspective of molecular medicine and biotechnology its just that getting there is taking a while. With respect to alcohol, it depends what type you are talking about. Alcohol in general is a low level anti-oxidant. And of course red wine contains polyphenols, one of which is resveratrol, which seem to have very powerful antioxidant, which seem to have heart disease prevention properties causing what is known as "The French Effect" (the French drink a lot of red wine and have a relatively low heart disease rate). Sushi on the other hand is mostly rice. I'm not sure what the glycemic index of rice is but if it drives up your blood glucose levels it could be contributing to crosslinking the proteins in the walls of your arteries and veins, which in turn could increase your risk for high blood pressure and therefore stroke. Robert From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 28 11:08:05 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 03:08:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Funeral as an "act of conspicuous consumption" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, randy wrote: > Recent science seems to show that cannabalism was common in the past: > "The question is why has cannibalism, by and large, stopped? Couldn't the explanation be as simple as the fact that most of the people who practiced it have died out due to prion diseases (such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)? Robert From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 28 11:17:59 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 12:17:59 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] TECH: Soon, 3D Printing for the home office... In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE102@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE102@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <20031128111758.GT15515@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 09:06:57AM +1030, Emlyn O'regan wrote: > I can't see what is wrong with the development of the PC. To me it makes Not much, it's just a crock. Obsolete architecture, crappy components. And firmware/software to match. What's wrong with dinos roaming the landscape 2003 A.D.? I mean, if these furry mammals didn't came along, it'd still be business as usual. > perfect sense. Can you please explain your thinking here (I am interested to > know)? Thanks. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WorseIsBetter -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From charlie at antipope.org Fri Nov 28 11:53:06 2003 From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 11:53:06 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Funeral as an "act of conspicuous consumption" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6E116E0E-2199-11D8-A8E5-000A95B18568@antipope.org> On 28 Nov 2003, at 11:08, Robert J. Bradbury wrote: >> "The question is why has cannibalism, by and large, stopped? > > Couldn't the explanation be as simple as the fact that most > of the people who practiced it have died out due to prion > diseases (such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)? Possibly. But there's a fly in the ointment: CJD has such a long incubation period -- at least in the classically known familial form -- that before Kuru, Scrapie and BSE were identified as prion diseases it appeared to be genetic. A new generation would be infected in utero, and they didn't exhibit symptoms until well after they reached reproductive age -- thus infecting their own children. Given that diseases tend to coevolve with their hosts, if prion diseases were so widespread that they killed off a widespread social custom I would expect there to be a marked selection pressure for variants with a long incubation time -- and thus CJD-like familial diseases would be a lot commoner. (Of course, we don't know for sure what the causative origin of, say, Alzheimers is -- the evidence might be right behind our noses, only not identified as such yet. But I suspect the increase in interest in prion diseases over the past decade should tell us something useful in the near future.) -- Charlie (returning to the list after transition problems) From neptune at superlink.net Fri Nov 28 15:14:18 2003 From: neptune at superlink.net (Technotranscendence) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 10:14:18 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] cr again References: <000001c3b53f$5240ee60$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <00d801c3b5c2$4c3c29c0$93cd5cd1@neptune> To shift focus, have any of you heard of the recent findings on resveratrol? It seems to mirror the effects of caloric restriction by switching on the longevity gene... E.g., http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/resveratrol.html The Life Extension Foundation had an article on it too in their December 2003 Supplement. Cheers! Dan http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html "People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them." -- Dave Barry From gpmap at runbox.com Fri Nov 28 15:34:25 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 15:34:25 GMT Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store Message-ID: >From BBC: A common plastic used to keep monitor screens clear of fluff could soon be used as a high-density computer memory. In the journal Nature, the US researchers behind the discovery say it could let them pack a gigabyte of data into a sugar cube-sized device. The material is also very cheap to manufacture and data can be written down and read back from it quickly. The researchers predict that it could take only a few years to turn their discovery into working devices, and that very dense memory blocks could be created by stacking the thin layers of the material on top of each other. Working devices could be up to 10 times more dense than current hard disks. From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 28 16:03:36 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 08:03:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > A common plastic used to keep monitor screens clear of fluff could soon > be used as a high-density computer memory. In the journal Nature, the > US researchers behind the discovery say it could let them pack a > gigabyte of data into a sugar cube-sized device. Now this is interesting, if combined with the recent discussions on home based 3D printers it suggests that one could devise a storage device architecture and some printer "ink" that would allow one to print out extra storage on demand. The computer would just have large trays structured to hold sugar cubes (like ice-cube trays) and drop in additional storage cubes as needed. Then if one combined that with a home chemical/microbiological "mini-factory" one could convert garbage into the required plastic pre-mix (since garbage and plastic are largely alternate forms of hydrocarbons). Of course everyone doesn't have to have one of these, it could easily work on an individual block or apartment building basis. So people come up to your door, hand you a bag of garbage and you hand them back a couple of cubes (of a somewhat reduced volume due to profit, depreciation, etc.). Garbage into stored data -- if that isn't extropic, I don't know what is. Robert From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Nov 28 16:10:09 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 08:10:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Funeral as an "act of conspicuous consumption" In-Reply-To: <6E116E0E-2199-11D8-A8E5-000A95B18568@antipope.org> Message-ID: On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Charlie Stross wrote: > Possibly. But there's a fly in the ointment: CJD has such a long > incubation period -- at least in the classically known familial form -- > that before Kuru, Scrapie and BSE were identified as prion diseases it > appeared to be genetic. A new generation would be infected in utero, > and they didn't exhibit symptoms until well after they reached > reproductive age -- thus infecting their own children. Charlie, are you sure about this? I've never encountered anything that suggested there was mother-to-fetus transmission. It would be very hard to separate out -- if a mother was normally consuming infected individuals there would probably be ample opportunity for a child, teenager or young adult to consume infected individuals as well. One thing I do recall seeing is that some population groups *do* appear to have genetic polymorphisms that allow them to resist CJD and its variants. That is one of the factors that led scientists to conclude that cannablism was common in some societies at some point and that the disease must have exerted a selection effect. Robert From dirk at neopax.com Fri Nov 28 16:23:49 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 16:23:49 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store References: Message-ID: <00a101c3b5cc$162e3a30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" To: "ExI chat list" Cc: Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 4:03 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store > > On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > > A common plastic used to keep monitor screens clear of fluff could soon > > be used as a high-density computer memory. In the journal Nature, the > > US researchers behind the discovery say it could let them pack a > > gigabyte of data into a sugar cube-sized device. > > Now this is interesting, if combined with the recent discussions > on home based 3D printers it suggests that one could devise a > storage device architecture and some printer "ink" that would > allow one to print out extra storage on demand. The computer would just > have large trays structured to hold sugar cubes (like ice-cube trays) > and drop in additional storage cubes as needed. Then if one > combined that with a home chemical/microbiological "mini-factory" > one could convert garbage into the required plastic pre-mix > (since garbage and plastic are largely alternate forms of > hydrocarbons). Of course everyone doesn't have to have one > of these, it could easily work on an individual block or apartment > building basis. So people come up to your door, hand you a bag of > garbage and you hand them back a couple of cubes (of a somewhat reduced > volume due to profit, depreciation, etc.). > > Garbage into stored data -- if that isn't extropic, I don't know what is. Well, before everyone gets too excited maybe it should be pointed out that the *hypothesised* information density of 1GB/cc is probably less than for existing drives. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dirk at neopax.com Fri Nov 28 16:30:02 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 16:30:02 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: Message-ID: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Just to let people know that there now exists (in Britain) a political party with a Transhumanist Philosophy (see sigline). If you subscribe to wta-talk you will probably know this already. In fact, I only discovered the latter by doing a name search on the Consensus and saw that they were talking about the party. I'm now a regular member, and thought it about time I also joined this list, esp since I seem to have more contact with extroBritannia than the WTA. And on the advertising front, we are looking for people to stand as candidates in the local elections next year. If you're interested let me know. A brief synopsis - we are personally libertarian (small 'l'), Green, technophile and nationalist. On the left/right spectrum probably centre-left. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dgc at cox.net Fri Nov 28 16:50:04 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 11:50:04 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store In-Reply-To: <00a101c3b5cc$162e3a30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> References: <00a101c3b5cc$162e3a30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <3FC77CBC.1090909@cox.net> Dirk Bruere wrote: >>On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: >> >> >>>A common plastic used to keep monitor screens clear of fluff could soon >>>be used as a high-density computer memory. In the journal Nature, the >>>US researchers behind the discovery say it could let them pack a >>>gigabyte of data into a sugar cube-sized device. >>> >>> >Well, before everyone gets too excited maybe it should be pointed out that >the *hypothesised* information density of 1GB/cc is probably less than for >existing drives. > > > I just measured a standard 3.5" disk drive. It's just about exactly 300cc, including its PCB and connectors. You can buy a 350GB version, so yes, the density is already higher. From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Nov 28 17:08:26 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 09:08:26 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] cr again In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000001c3b5d2$3cf143f0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > > > Mike Lorrey > > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] cr again > > > > > > Did the study specify what kinds of calories are the most > > > beneficial/detrimental???? > > > > No, but I might speculate that calories from > > alcohol = bad, calories from sushi = good. > > Perhaps not so spike. This is one of the more hotly debated > topics in all of the CR literature... {Well-reasoned Bradburyesque treatise on CR}... Robert Ah yes, Robert, but my argument is far simpler, and goes as follows: by consuming near-Sandbergian quantities of sushi on a semi-regular basis, we are constantly reminded of the fact that this life is gooood indeed, which would further our motivation to extend life as long as possible in order to devour the absolute maximum amount of sushi, thus leading to our gaining discipline to do CR the rest of the time, ever anticipating the fishy treats. Its a positive feedback loop. Robert thanks for looking into this with such care and detail. Our world would be far more memetically impoverished were it not for rare and shining individuals such as you. {8-] spike From dirk at neopax.com Fri Nov 28 17:16:17 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:16:17 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store References: <00a101c3b5cc$162e3a30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <3FC77CBC.1090909@cox.net> Message-ID: <011001c3b5d3$681d8d80$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Clemmensen" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 4:50 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store > Dirk Bruere wrote: > > >>On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > >> > >> > >>>A common plastic used to keep monitor screens clear of fluff could soon > >>>be used as a high-density computer memory. In the journal Nature, the > >>>US researchers behind the discovery say it could let them pack a > >>>gigabyte of data into a sugar cube-sized device. > >>> > >>> > >Well, before everyone gets too excited maybe it should be pointed out that > >the *hypothesised* information density of 1GB/cc is probably less than for > >existing drives. > > > > > > > I just measured a standard 3.5" disk drive. It's just about exactly > 300cc, including its > PCB and connectors. You can buy a 350GB version, so yes, the density is > already higher. Seems to be true of a lot of promising memory technologies. However, I would certainly pay a 10x premium for an all solid state version of a 'hard drive'. Currently mass storage prices are about $1 per GB and the nearest solid state contender (flash) comes in about 100x that. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From charlie at antipope.org Fri Nov 28 18:12:29 2003 From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 18:12:29 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Funeral as an "act of conspicuous consumption" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6DDCD64A-21CE-11D8-A03A-000A95B18568@antipope.org> On 28 Nov 2003, at 16:10, Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > > On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, Charlie Stross wrote: > >> Possibly. But there's a fly in the ointment: CJD has such a long >> incubation period -- at least in the classically known familial form >> -- >> that before Kuru, Scrapie and BSE were identified as prion diseases it >> appeared to be genetic. A new generation would be infected in utero, >> and they didn't exhibit symptoms until well after they reached >> reproductive age -- thus infecting their own children. > > Charlie, are you sure about this? I've never encountered anything > that suggested there was mother-to-fetus transmission. It would > be very hard to separate out -- if a mother was normally consuming > infected individuals there would probably be ample opportunity for > a child, teenager or young adult to consume infected individuals > as well. I'm talking classic CJD in the environment in which it was first detected. (I doubt central European orthodox Jews were hot on cannibalism in the late 19th -- or was it early 20th -- century?) Caveat: I'm working from memory and don't have sources to hand. But as I recall CJD was thought to be just an early-onset form of senile dementia that ran in families, rather than a different type of disease. -- Charlie From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Nov 28 21:00:21 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 13:00:21 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ExI: FAQ - UPdate Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031128124208.03002270@pop.earthlink.net> It's time to update ExI's FAQ. We are making revisions so that the FAQ reflects ExI's newest version of the principles. Some links need to be updated, facts reconfirmed, and people and organizations included. Can anyone offer suggestions, inclusions, updates, revisions? We need FAQ answers to the following categories, and if you can suggest a different category, please do: 04 - Extropic Tools, Methods and Techniques 04.01 - (currently being developed) 05 - Transhumanist Philosophy 05.01 - (currently being developed) 06 - Transhumanist Culture 07.01 - (currently being developed) 07 - Transhumanist Futures 08.01 - (currently being developed) 08 - Transhumanist Technologies 09.01 - (currently being developed) 10 - Challenges for Transhumanists 10.01 - (currently being developed) Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From david at lucifer.com Fri Nov 28 18:58:30 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 13:58:30 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: AOL refusing messages again Message-ID: <027701c3b5e1$9eddc930$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> It has come to my attention that several AOL accounts subscribed to extropy-chat have been automatically disabled due to excessive bouncing. AOL has once again blacklisted the extropy.org mail server because we are "generating high volumes of member complaints from AOL's member base." I'm looking into it. David From dirk at neopax.com Fri Nov 28 19:48:52 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 19:48:52 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <000f01c3b5e4$0c2f4020$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <01bc01c3b5e8$a6f96c30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" To: "Dirk Bruere" Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 7:15 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > Thanks > > Where is your right of self defense ? Well, I've never felt that I needed anyones approval in order to defend myself. [I believe Rights are a social construct] However, from a political POV it would be covered by this: http://www.theconsensus.org/uk/manifesto/index.html "Home occupiers will be allowed to defend themselves and their property using 'necessary force' rather than 'minimal force'. The Rights of the criminal will be subordinate to the Rights of the victim in all cases. " BTW, why doesn't the return address work properly? Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 28 20:21:30 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 21:21:30 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store In-Reply-To: <011001c3b5d3$681d8d80$3bb5ff3e@artemis> References: <00a101c3b5cc$162e3a30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <3FC77CBC.1090909@cox.net> <011001c3b5d3$681d8d80$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <20031128202130.GJ22650@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 05:16:17PM -0000, Dirk Bruere wrote: > Seems to be true of a lot of promising memory technologies. > However, I would certainly pay a 10x premium for an all solid state version > of a 'hard drive'. They're a bit pricey, and don't store much, but you can get battery-backed DRAM solid state drives. Flash is actually very useful, as you can get a lot of functionality in one IDE-CF adaptor, if one uses a stripped-down *nix. CFs are getting plenty fast, too, they they don't like to be mounted as file systems seeing lots of r/w cycles. Solid-state no-movable-parts instant-on/constantly-running systems do have a strong application niche at home. Noise and boot-up delays are just not an option in home entertainment. > Currently mass storage prices are about $1 per GB and the nearest solid > state contender (flash) comes in about 100x that. The interesting watershed is MRAM. It's as fast as SRAM, but is nonvolatile. Suddenly, booting becomes obsolete. Systems which don't need rebooting to keep them minty-fresh become useful. Irish Railway did have a 17 year uptime (VAX 11/750, VMS 3.0), but current systems have GUIs, and run hypermutable code coming in from a very hostile environment. This takes a Lisp-like OS with real GC to become feasible. *nix just can't cut the senfgas. The best thing, slightly souped-up MRAM cells can do logic, too, and ns-reconfigurable, as well. You just can't do that with FPGAs. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mbb386 at main.nc.us Fri Nov 28 20:54:48 2003 From: mbb386 at main.nc.us (MB) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 15:54:48 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) Subject: [extropy-chat] META: AOL refusing messages again In-Reply-To: <027701c3b5e1$9eddc930$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> References: <027701c3b5e1$9eddc930$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Message-ID: Again? Wow. I'm glad I'm leaving AOL, that is just too annoying. My understanding is that the latest AOL software gives the customer a way to filter messages, blocking unwanted domains. That was never available to me before. Good luck dealing with AOL. I wonder if they've outsourced all their helpdesk folk - to some far away place. I've had spectacularly poor results dealing with them lately. Regards, MB On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, David McFadzean wrote: > It has come to my attention that several AOL accounts subscribed > to extropy-chat have been automatically disabled due to excessive > bouncing. AOL has once again blacklisted the extropy.org mail server > because we are "generating high volumes of member complaints from AOL's > member base." I'm looking into it. > > David > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 28 21:03:08 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 22:03:08 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] cr again In-Reply-To: <000001c3b5d2$3cf143f0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <000001c3b5d2$3cf143f0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031128210308.GO22650@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 09:08:26AM -0800, Spike wrote: > Ah yes, Robert, but my argument is far simpler, and goes > as follows: by consuming near-Sandbergian quantities of sushi > on a semi-regular basis, we are constantly reminded of the Sushi/sashimi is great, but: http://www.bento.com/parasite.html (ask your favorite search engine, no longer necessarily Google). Longevity in Japan is very good (though soy hormone analoga are blamed for premature onset of senility), but incidence of gastrointestinal cancer in Japan is greater than in the West, possibly due to chronical irritation due to parasites (can't find a cite for this, so possible urban legend alert). Gratuitious random link: http://members.tripod.com/sushilovers/intro.html -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Nov 28 21:32:24 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 08:32:24 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <01e201c3b5f7$1fb34de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Dirk Bruere wrote: > Just to let people know that there now exists (in Britain) a > political party with a Transhumanist Philosophy (see sigline). Has the (your ?) party written down its transhumanist philosophy anywhere? Does it have a manifesto or set of policies that are examinable on the net? Regards Brett Paatsch From dirk at neopax.com Fri Nov 28 21:42:36 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 21:42:36 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <01e201c3b5f7$1fb34de0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Message-ID: <020b01c3b5f8$93305140$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brett Paatsch" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 9:32 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > Dirk Bruere wrote: > > > Just to let people know that there now exists (in Britain) a > > political party with a Transhumanist Philosophy (see sigline). > > Has the (your ?) party written down its transhumanist philosophy > anywhere? Does it have a manifesto or set of policies that > are examinable on the net? All via the sigline, but for specifics: The manifesto is at: http://www.theconsensus.org/uk/manifesto/index.html and the general statement of a Transhumanist philosophy is contained in the Consensus Essentia http://www.theconsensus.org/uk/essentia/index.html Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 28 22:46:49 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 23:46:49 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store In-Reply-To: <3FC77CBC.1090909@cox.net> References: <00a101c3b5cc$162e3a30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <3FC77CBC.1090909@cox.net> Message-ID: <20031128224649.GR22650@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 11:50:04AM -0500, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > I just measured a standard 3.5" disk drive. It's just about exactly > 300cc, including its > PCB and connectors. You can buy a 350GB version, so yes, the density is > already higher. The density is relatively irrelevant (how much cool stuff could you do with a rodent equivalent?), it's the latency (several ms vs several ns of RAM, a factor of one million) and the bandwidth (some 0.1 GByte/s vs. 6 GByte/s, a factor of one thousand). It would be nice to have a TByte of RAM, but it would be far nicer still to have a 10^12 cell assembly, each capable of a 10^10/s refresh (the individual switches now could do half a THz). But no can do with rotating bits, magnet domains. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jacques at dtext.com Fri Nov 28 23:44:13 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 00:44:13 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] The development of PCs and misguided desires In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE102@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE102@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <16327.56781.242305.593725@localhost.localdomain> Emlyn O'regan wrote (28.11.2003/09:06) : > Jacques wrote: > > > I think this is somewhat paradigmatic of the whole personal computing > > business from the start. People make wrong judgements regarding real > > costs and the quality of end results, and choose the individual > > solution because they like to feel individually empowered. > > > > We got nice results (cheap powerful PCs) from misguided desires. (I > > wonder what enlightened desires would have brought.) > > I can't see what is wrong with the development of the PC. To me it makes > perfect sense. Can you please explain your thinking here (I am interested to > know)? Thanks. Of course, I don't mean to dismiss the usefulness of the present-day PC, especially for a certain category of people. And now that PCs are Internet terminals, this is even more overwhelmingly so. What I had in mind was the development of PCs (hardware and software) during the last decades, seen as resulting from an interplay between individual buyers and software/vendors. People bought out of certaine desires and expectations, and in many instances, I think they didn't really get the expected benefits. In a way, this is true for many consumer items. But it is much more severe for computers, for a simple reason: people don't know what PCs are, and how information-processing problem should be handled. To make their desires and expectations better grounded, they would need a computer scientist examining their needs, and advising solutions. Instead, they are "informed" by vendors, who sometimes simply mislead intentionally, but who more often identify vague desires, and cultivate and encourage them when it allows more selling, even if the desires are misguided. Some examples include (in no order and on different levels): - Needing to buy four generations of computers to go from Word 2 to Word 2000, with no gain in functionality. - Being tricked in believing that a PC is something easy to manage. Then getting lost in hardware interrupts conflicts, or drivers installation. Or getting lost in what would normally be the work of a sysadmin, and that you need to confront without you knowing it, like: implementing a sound backup policy, or handling the security for your Internet-DSL-connected system. Something that a simple user isn't only unable to do, but also the challenges of which he cannot appreciate. - Buying new hardware and new software to get wysiwyg word processing, which in the end wastes a lot of time and produces poor results. This last example is particulary telling for me, because as I have some experience in publishing, I know a bit about typesetting (French typesetting especially, which is a bit different from English typesetting). I have seen again and again people spending hours to make some document "look good", and then finally thinking that after all this work they got a perfect result -- when the result is actually terrible, but they don't realize it. It's a good example because the fact that the result is terrible doesn't matter as long as they don't realize it. To be given the power of having their own small press is very exciting, and they like it. But they waste time, and they get poor results. In many instances, like for writing sporadic letters, a typewriter would be fine; actually a pen would be fine. Some LaTeX-inspired solution, in which one focus on the content, and the formatting is taken care of automatically in a professional way, would probably be most effective. But it is not immediately appealing. You need someone that you trust to tell you: believe me, even if you don't see the corners of the page on your screen like in Word, you will actually produce better-looking documents and in a fraction of the time you would have needed in Word. But nothing of the kind (whether in this particular example or in other cases) ever happens in the dialogue between vendors and buyers. Buyers are attracted to something, and they are encouraged in these desires, however misled they can be. Then, maybe 3 years down the road the users hit the problem that would have been obvious from the start to a computer scientist. That is fine for the vendor: they can now sell a new solution that solves *that* problems -- and that creates other ones, which they will address in the next version, etc. The whole business model of Microsoft follows this principle: just give the user what he wants, even if it's a bad idea. When he realizes it's a bad idea, we'll sell him something that he perceives as a solution. As he's no computer scientist, this can go on, and does go on, for decades. Of course, from our extropian point of view, we are tempted to bless it all, because it sustains Moore's law, and we need some more cycles of that to get AI. Jacques From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 29 00:10:14 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 16:10:14 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The development of PCs and misguided desires In-Reply-To: <16327.56781.242305.593725@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <001101c3b60d$2a220ad0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Please forgive the off-topic: Does anyone here know how to make microsloth outlook load multiple files directly to hard disk? When I go back to work Monday, I will have 400 excel files in an email, and I need to load them all to the disk. For some reason, if I select all or even a few files, outlook will not let me drag the group to the hard disk, but I can drag them over one at a time. Any of you computer jockeys know how to send them all over together? Thanks! spike From dirk at neopax.com Sat Nov 29 00:49:22 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 00:49:22 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <000f01c3b5e4$0c2f4020$0200a8c0@etheric> <01bc01c3b5e8$a6f96c30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <006801c3b60f$42d8e060$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <028601c3b612$a1527c70$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" To: "Dirk Bruere" Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 12:25 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > > Home occupiers = apparently not out and about town, at work ect. > > all rights of self defense implicitly waved once you step out the door. > > right of self defense waved for right of travel > > no thanks So where does it say that? The manifesto covers points that differ from existing law. Under existing law the right of self defence exists using 'reasonable force'. Or are you some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder by a beggar is an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire from the assault rifle you habitually carry? Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From john at aculink.net Sat Nov 29 01:07:59 2003 From: john at aculink.net (John M) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 17:07:59 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The development of PCs and misguided desires In-Reply-To: <001101c3b60d$2a220ad0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <200311290108.hAT18ro11750@tick.javien.com> Use the "File-Save Attachments" menu to save all attachments at once. If you absolutely need drag&drop, I think you're out of luck. -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Spike Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 4:10 PM To: 'ExI chat list' Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] The development of PCs and misguided desires Please forgive the off-topic: Does anyone here know how to make microsloth outlook load multiple files directly to hard disk? When I go back to work Monday, I will have 400 excel files in an email, and I need to load them all to the disk. For some reason, if I select all or even a few files, outlook will not let me drag the group to the hard disk, but I can drag them over one at a time. Any of you computer jockeys know how to send them all over together? Thanks! spike _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From dgc at cox.net Sat Nov 29 03:52:38 2003 From: dgc at cox.net (Dan Clemmensen) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 22:52:38 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store In-Reply-To: <20031128224649.GR22650@leitl.org> References: <00a101c3b5cc$162e3a30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <3FC77CBC.1090909@cox.net> <20031128224649.GR22650@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3FC81806.2070904@cox.net> Eugen Leitl wrote: >On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 11:50:04AM -0500, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > > >>I just measured a standard 3.5" disk drive. It's just about exactly >>300cc, including its >>PCB and connectors. You can buy a 350GB version, so yes, the density is >>already higher. >> >> > >The density is relatively irrelevant (how much cool stuff could >you do with a rodent equivalent?), it's the latency (several ms vs >several ns of RAM, a factor of one million) and the bandwidth (some 0.1 >GByte/s vs. 6 GByte/s, a factor of one thousand). > >It would be nice to have a TByte of RAM, but it would be far >nicer still to have a 10^12 cell assembly, each capable of >a 10^10/s refresh (the individual switches now could do half >a THz). > >But no can do with rotating bits, magnet domains. > > > > True. But this is a multidimensional problem. In the classical informatin management domain, we can use hierarchical memory techniques to drive the effective latency down. At the TB level, we can employ a bunch of disks in parallel to reduce the effective latency. The point is that you can actuall create a TB storage system for <$1000US, quantity 1, today. I don't think that "plastic mem" will operate in the ns range. Memory in this range is specialize, e.g. ZBT, FCRAM, or RLDRAM, and it is not hi-density. DDR mem can reach 1GB/s throughput, but has latencies about 10ns. "Plastic mem" is likely to fill a gap in the hierarchy. Problems that are amenable to a hierarchial memory may benefit. As a separate issue, massive storage requirements are generally also "write-once" instead of RW. To he extent that this is true, a printer is already capable of creating cheap extensible storage. assuming a 20% overhead for ECC, we have 1200dpi can store a mabagit per square inch. This is one megabyte fo eight square inches, or 10 megabytes on an 8.5"x11" page. From etheric at comcast.net Sat Nov 29 04:28:33 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 20:28:33 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusio alterius References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis><000f01c3b5e4$0c2f4020$0200a8c0@etheric><01bc01c3b5e8$a6f96c30$3bb5ff3e@artemis><006801c3b60f$42d8e060$0200a8c0@etheric> <028601c3b612$a1527c70$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <010601c3b631$4044a880$0200a8c0@etheric> Yes isnt it obvious? Everyone that cares about the right to self defense OUTSIDE of ones home is only some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder by a beggar is an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire from the assault rifle they habitually carry... Please no more ad hominem bigotry, lets keep this rational shall we? Here's what its like in my world, its is quite explicit Some constitutional foundations: ARTICLE I DECLARATION OF RIGHTS SECTION 24 RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, SHALL NOT be impaired, but nothing in this Section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men. Some statutory provisions: RCW 9A.16.020 Use of force -- When lawful. The use, attempt, or offer to use force upon or toward the person of another is not unlawful in the following cases: (3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicioustrespass, OR other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is *not more than is necessary note: we have case law that covers what not more than is necessary means, it means until the threat has stopped. RCW 9A.16.050 Homicide -- By other person -- When justifiable. Homicide is also justifiable when committed either: (1) In the lawful defense of the slayer, or his or her husband, wife, parent, child, brother, or sister, or of any other person in his presence or company, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished; or (2) In the actual resistance of an attempt to commit a felony upon the slayer, in his presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or other place of abode, in which he is. We have the reqirement of explicity of laws: Expressio unius est exclusio alterius This conclusion is further supported by the well established rule of constitutional construction, "expressio unius est exclusio alterius." The express mention of one thing implies the exclusion of the other. State ex rel. Banker v. Clausen, 142 Wash. 450, 253 Pac. 805 (1927)." It is a basic principle of due process that an enactment [435 U.S. 982 , 986] is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined. Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap the innocent by not providing fair warning. Second, if arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide EXPLICIT standards for those who apply them. A vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application." Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108 (1972): Your manifesto also states in part: "There are no Rights without corresponding Duties, both of which must be legally enforceable to the same extent. Where a corresponding Duty cannot be defined in law no Right will exist. " That is very dangerous And states "Home occupiers will be allowed to defend themselves and their property using 'necessary force' rather than 'minimal force'. The Rights of the criminal will be subordinate to the Rights of the victim in all cases. " would it be so hard to say : We recognise all people have the right to defend themselves? BTW this is the same policy that Russia curently has, Notice the word "allowed", it is considered a permission granted, and not inherent in humanhood. Again I think Ill keep my freedom thanks, but if you want to live in a police state that "allows" you to defend your life, good for you. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dirk Bruere" > To: > Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 4:49 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "R.Coyote" > > To: "Dirk Bruere" > > Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 12:25 AM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > > > > > > Home occupiers = apparently not out and about town, at work ect. > > > > all rights of self defense implicitly waved once you step out the door. > > > > right of self defense waved for right of travel > > > > no thanks > > So where does it say that? > The manifesto covers points that differ from existing law. > Under existing law the right of self defence exists using 'reasonable > force'. > Or are you some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder by a > beggar is an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire from the > assault rifle you habitually carry? > > Dirk > > The Consensus:- > The political party for the new millennium > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 29 04:52:08 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 20:52:08 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The development of PCs and misguided desires In-Reply-To: <200311290108.hAT18ro11750@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <001701c3b634$8b399ff0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John M > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] The development of PCs and misguided desires > > Use the "File-Save Attachments" menu to save all attachments > at once... Ja, sure enough, "File-Save Attachments is the command I was looking for, thanks John. I am regularly a netscape user, with microsloth lookout being my office-only email program. Im not very familiar with it. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 29 04:55:13 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 20:55:13 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] life extension conference In-Reply-To: <200311290108.hAT18ro11750@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <000001c3b634$fa017520$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Yet another example of ideas extropians have been discussing for years, leaking into the mainstream: http://channels.netscape.com/new/html/live/scoop/np/1.html spike From gpmap at runbox.com Sat Nov 29 10:39:17 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 11:39:17 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Cancer gene therapy is first to be approved Message-ID: >From the New Scientist, more coverage of the first cancer gene therapy to be approved. For the first time, a gene therapy-based treatment has been given the go-ahead by regulatory authorities. China's medicines authority approved the cancer therapy after it achieved promising results in a clinical trial. The treatment, called Gendicine, will be launched commercially in January by SiBiono GeneTech of Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The results of the trial will be published in December in China's national medical journal. The Chinese did evaluate this in considerable detail, so this was not a trivial approval but a serious in-depth analysis. The treatment consists of an adenovirus designed to insert a gene called p53. This gene codes for a protein that triggers cell suicide when cells start to run amok, preventing them becoming cancerous. In 64 per cent of patients given Gendicine there was complete regression of primary tumours, a rate three times as great as that in the radiotherapy-only group. Peng hopes the virus will work against other kinds of cancers too. A PDF file is available from NEW BRUNSWICK SCIENTIFIC, who participated in the development work. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From major at audry2.com Sat Nov 29 14:48:41 2003 From: major at audry2.com (Major) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 22:48:41 +0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusio In-Reply-To: <010601c3b631$4044a880$0200a8c0@etheric> References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis><000f01c3b5e4$0c2f4020$0200a8c0@etheric><01bc01c3b5e8$a6f96c30$3bb5ff3e@artemis><006801c3b60f$42d8e060$0200a8c0@etheric> <028601c3b612$a1527c70$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <010601c3b631$4044a880$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <200311291448.hATEmfF21316@igor.synonet.com> "R.Coyote" writes: > no more ad hominem bigotry, lets keep this rational shall we? hear, hear! > Again I think Ill keep my freedom thanks, but if you want to live > in a police state that "allows" you to defend your life, good for > you. The Consensus (like most political parties) is behaving reactively here, not expressing a vision. He currently lives in a police state which does *not* allow him to defend his property. Major From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sat Nov 29 17:26:44 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 09:26:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: <028601c3b612$a1527c70$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <20031129172644.36259.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> WARNING: Dirk opened the season here. The discussion will herafter involve discussion of guns, self defense, and nasty things like rights. So those of you with sensitive ears, emotions, or constitutions who think guns, rights, or defending ones-self are 'icky' issues, please do not read further... --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "R.Coyote" > > > > Home occupiers = apparently not out and about town, at work ect. > > all rights of self defense implicitly waved once you step out the > > door. right of self defense waved for right of travel > > > > no thanks > > So where does it say that? > The manifesto covers points that differ from existing law. > Under existing law the right of self defence exists using 'reasonable > force'. > Or are you some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder by > a beggar is an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire > from the assault rifle you habitually carry? Okay, you asked for it... Considering that 'reasonable force' in Britain, under present law, extends no further than yelling loudly for help (and there is debate over even allowing that, noise ordinances and all that rot) as you are getting mugged by a fellow with an illegal gun who doesn't give a sod about either the law or your right to self defense. In fact, a number of individuals in Britain who have defended themselves have not only spent time in prison for doing so (even when their attackers were career criminals), but have been sued to the poor house by their attackers for injuring them while they were conducting their customary means of employment (i.e being a criminal). Families of criminals killed in the act have sued their victims as well. Law abiding British serfs going about their business have been convicted in Britain for illegal posession of a weapon for having any one of the following on their persons: knitting needle, pen, pen-knife, butter knife, wrench, screwdriver, letter opener, bottle of binaca, mace, pepper spray, taser, pencil, metal tipped cane, and even a water pistol. There is no such thing as 'reasonable force' permitted in Britain. As a result, the murder rate in Britain has been rising by double digits for the past three years, despite the government's schemes for giggering the stats (i.e. three people are killed by one killer, it is counted as one murder, a killer kills multiple people on different dates, it is counted as one murder, if a victim defends themselves, they committed a crime, so their murder is downgraded to homicide or manslaughter) illegal gun posession (i.e. guns smuggled into the country) has been skyrocketing, and property crime rates which were five times the rates in the US three years ago are now 8-10 times higher. Conversely, here in NH, the Free State, which has one of the highest rates of gun posession in the world, we have homicide rates and violent crime rates comparable to Switzerland, and one of the lowest property crime rates in the world. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 29 18:34:47 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 19:34:47 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Plastic promises dense data store In-Reply-To: <3FC81806.2070904@cox.net> References: <00a101c3b5cc$162e3a30$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <3FC77CBC.1090909@cox.net> <20031128224649.GR22650@leitl.org> <3FC81806.2070904@cox.net> Message-ID: <20031129183446.GG22650@leitl.org> On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 10:52:38PM -0500, Dan Clemmensen wrote: > True. But this is a multidimensional problem. In the classical > informatin management > domain, we can use hierarchical memory techniques to drive the effective > latency down. Memory hierarchy is a neat approach. Completely breaks down when the data locality assumption is violated, though. Stuff is CPU speed when it's in the registers. Stuff is slower when it's in 1st level cache. Stuff is slower still when it's in 2nd level cache. Stuff in memory is slower still, and if the access pattern is high-surprise (i.e., there is no pattern) it breaks down futher still. Even so, 50 ns is a long, long, long long way from 5 ms. It *might* be okay if I already know for what I'm looking, and just need to fetch a chunk of bits with mostly contiguous-movement of the head. It's a harsh constraint, and it ruins the domain of algorithms which we can run within reasonable times. > At the TB level, we can employ a bunch of disks in parallel to reduce > the effective latency. How much disks can I afford though, and how does this scale? Even if it's 90% sure the bits are on the same cylinder, you still have to wait for them passing through under your head. Even at 10 krpm, that's an effective eternity. > The point is that you can actuall create a TB storage system for > <$1000US, quantity 1, today. Sure, but what do I do with it? It's a great movie library, but how does it help us with designing nano, or creating AI? > I don't think that "plastic mem" will operate in the ns range. Memory in > this range is specialize, > e.g. ZBT, FCRAM, or RLDRAM, and it is not hi-density. DDR mem can reach > 1GB/s throughput, Right now you can have 6 GByte/s (3 GByte/s bidirectional), best-case with prefetch/streaming. Of course, there are just not that many things you can do in that access mode. > but has latencies about 10ns. If it streams, you're golden. If your fetches are PRNG driven, you'll do lots worse than 10 ns. > "Plastic mem" is likely to fill a gap in the hierarchy. Problems that > are amenable to a hierarchial > memory may benefit. I don't think it's any good. It's write-only, that niche is movies, and we already have DVD killing CDR, and blu-ray is about to ship. It would be interesting if they could fit a TByte in a cm^3, and have some >>10^6 r/w cycles, at flash speed or better. > As a separate issue, massive storage requirements are generally also > "write-once" instead of RW. Yes, unless you're looking at a large physical simulation. > To he extent that this is true, a printer is already capable of creating > cheap extensible storage. > assuming a 20% overhead for ECC, we have 1200dpi can store a mabagit > per square inch. > This is one megabyte fo eight square inches, or 10 megabytes on an > 8.5"x11" page. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 29 18:59:55 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 10:59:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: <028601c3b612$a1527c70$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Dirk Bruere wrote: > Or are you some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder by a > beggar is an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire from the > assault rifle you habitually carry? Dirk, although I do not view this as an A.H. attack I would view it as an inflamatory statement. Perhaps it would be polite to label such a question as [rhetorical question]. In fact the days when one carried guns for personal self defense in the U.S. generally ended perhaps a century ago with the civilizing of the "wild wild west". Of course arguments can be made that there are areas of inner cities in the U.S. where carrying a gun may be a reasonable idea. But one would have to ask why any intelligent transhumanist would be doing in areas that potentially pose such high risk factors? Living or working in such high risk areas seems to be counter-productive to the idea that one wants to extend ones potential lifespan. I personally moved from San Francisco to Seattle because I did not like the earthquake risk in S.F. That was before it was generally known what the earthquake risks were in Seattle (so my strategy was somewhat flawed). It would be logical for transhumanists to seek out the safest possible places to live and that would include places that have minimal instances of violent crimes as well as natural hazards. Robert From rhanson at gmu.edu Sat Nov 29 18:57:08 2003 From: rhanson at gmu.edu (Robin Hanson) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 13:57:08 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] The development of PCs and misguided desires In-Reply-To: <16327.56781.242305.593725@localhost.localdomain> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE102@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE102@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.2.20031129133244.01e0e5a8@mail.gmu.edu> On 11/29/2003 Jacques DP wrote: >... People bought out of certaine desires and expectations, and in many >instances, I think they didn't really get the expected benefits. >In a way, this is true for many consumer items. But it is much more >severe for computers, for a simple reason: people don't know what PCs >are, and how information-processing problem should be handled. >To make their desires and expectations better grounded, they would >need a computer scientist examining their needs, and advising >solutions. Instead, they are "informed" by vendors, who sometimes >simply mislead intentionally, but who more often identify vague >desires, and cultivate and encourage them when it allows more selling, >even if the desires are misguided. Some examples include ... >- Buying new hardware and new software to get wysiwyg word processing, > which in the end wastes a lot of time and produces poor results. >This last example is particulary telling for me, because as I have >some experience in publishing, ... again and again people spending >hours to make some document "look good", and then finally thinking >that after all this work they got a perfect result -- when the result >is actually terrible, but they don't realize it. ... >Some LaTeX-inspired solution, ... probably be most effective. ... >The whole business model of Microsoft follows this principle: just >give the user what he wants, even if it's a bad idea. When he realizes >it's a bad idea, we'll sell him something that he perceives as a >solution. As he's no computer scientist, this can go on, and does go >on, for decades. ... I believe your description of the situation with PCs, but let me suggest that this problem is *not* much more severe with computers - it is ubiquitous. You only notice PC problems because you have some expertize in computing and publishing - you do not notice it in other areas mainly because you do not have similar levels of expertize there. This problem shows up often when customers do not themselves have the expertize to judge product quality, and where they do not structure their contracts to make expert pay depend on results. It shows up in teaching, in medicine, in news media, in home repair, and so on. The main ways to reduce this problem are to make pay depend on results, and to limit the ability of experts to coordinate with each other. Unfortunately, since customers usually don't see that they have a problem here, they aren't very interested in such solutions. And setting up government regulation doesn't help much, as consumers aren't any better at choosing and policing regulators than they are at choosing and policing ordinary producers. For those who can tolerate math, I've given a general theoretical description of the problem at: http://hanson.gmu.edu/expert.pdf Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323 From bradbury at aeiveos.com Sat Nov 29 19:21:27 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 11:21:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Scientific Analysis [was: The Consensus] In-Reply-To: <20031129172644.36259.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > Conversely, here in NH, the Free State, which has one of the highest > rates of gun posession in the world, we have homicide rates and violent > crime rates comparable to Switzerland, and one of the lowest property > crime rates in the world. Sorry Mike, as much as I may lean in the direction of some of your political perspectives, I have to pull the "rational argument" card out of the hat. One thing I've learned over and over again in science classes is "correlation is not causation". I've lived in Manhattan and have relatives with homes or camps in both N.H. and Maine. So we will assume I have some experience to comment on your comments. The homicide (or violent crime) rates in N.H. may simply be due to lower population density. (I've also been to Switzerland and would say that it tends towards lower population density as well.) Many locations in New England are lower income locations so it may simply be the case that there is little or no payoff in resorting to violent crime. Alternatively there may be a greater sense of "community". In places like N.H., Maine, and Switzerland there may be a greater need to rely on people living near oneself -- so one may form stronger interdependencies with them which may increase community support and decrease the need to resort to violent crime. Furthermore one may not have as many opportunities to meet people (male or female) with whom one might form long term relationships so one tends to place a higher value on the relationships that one has thus diminishing situations that might lead to domestic violence. So there is a brief set of possibilities that might explain your claim for reduced homicide rates without having to rely on guns as the explanation. A good analysis would come up with a complete list of variables and try to explain what fraction of reduced homicide rates could be explained by "fear of being shot by the person one is trying to kill". As it is you are comparing apples with oranges -- homicide rates are not comparable to property crime rates. One may be motivated by rage while the other is motivated by need for personal gain. Robert From dirk at neopax.com Sat Nov 29 20:41:42 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 20:41:42 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis><000f01c3b5e4$0c2f4020$0200a8c0@etheric><01bc01c3b5e8$a6f96c30$3bb5ff3e@artemis><006801c3b60f$42d8e060$0200a8c0@etheric><028601c3b612$a1527c70$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <010601c3b631$4044a880$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <00a101c3b6b9$323b7bf0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 4:28 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius > Yes isnt it obvious? > Everyone that cares about the right to self defense OUTSIDE of ones home is > only some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder by a beggar is > an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire from the assault > rifle they habitually carry... > > Please > no more ad hominem bigotry, lets keep this rational shall we? > > Here's what its like in my world, its is quite explicit > Some constitutional foundations: > > ARTICLE I > DECLARATION OF RIGHTS > SECTION 24 RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. > The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or > the state, SHALL NOT be impaired, but nothing in this Section shall be > construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain > or employ an armed body of men. > > Some statutory provisions: > > RCW 9A.16.020 > Use of force -- When lawful. > The use, attempt, or offer to use force upon or toward the person of another > is not unlawful > in the following cases: > (3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully > aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against > his or her person, or a malicioustrespass, OR other malicious interference > with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case > the force is *not more than is necessary > > note: we have case law that covers what not more than is necessary means, it > means until the threat has stopped. > > RCW 9A.16.050 > Homicide -- By other person -- When justifiable. > Homicide is also justifiable when committed either: > (1) In the lawful defense of the slayer, or his or her husband, wife, > parent, child, brother, or sister, or of any other person in his presence or > company, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part > of the person slain to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury > to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such > design being accomplished; or > (2) In the actual resistance of an attempt to commit a felony upon the > slayer, in his presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or other place of abode, > in which he is. > > We have the reqirement of explicity of laws: > > Expressio unius est exclusio alterius > This conclusion is further supported by the well established rule of > constitutional construction, "expressio unius est exclusio alterius." The > express mention of one thing implies the exclusion of the other. State ex > rel. Banker v. Clausen, 142 Wash. 450, 253 Pac. 805 (1927)." > > It is a basic principle of due process that an enactment [435 U.S. 982 , > 986] is void for vagueness if its prohibitions are not clearly defined. > Vague laws offend several important values. First, because we assume that > man is free to steer between lawful and unlawful conduct, we insist that > laws give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to > know what is prohibited, so that he may act accordingly. Vague laws may trap > the innocent by not providing fair warning. Second, if arbitrary and > discriminatory enforcement is to be prevented, laws must provide EXPLICIT > standards for those who apply them. A vague law impermissibly delegates > basic policy matters to policemen, judges, and juries for resolution on an > ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and > discriminatory application." Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108 > (1972): > > Your manifesto also states in part: > "There are no Rights without corresponding Duties, both of which must be > legally enforceable to the same extent. Where a corresponding Duty cannot be > defined in law no Right will exist. " > > That is very dangerous Not IMO, since I view 'Rights' as a social construct and contract. > And states > "Home occupiers will be allowed to defend themselves and their property > using 'necessary force' rather than 'minimal force'. The Rights of the > criminal will be subordinate to the Rights of the victim in all cases. " > would it be so hard to say : > We recognise all people have the right to defend themselves? Yes, because that right already exists under UK law. What does not exist is the 'right' to walk around in public armed. Additionally, 'reasonable force' has been too restrictively applied in the UK IMO esp with respect to home invasions (called aggravated burglary here). > BTW this is the same policy that Russia curently has, Notice the word > "allowed", it is considered a permission granted, and not inherent in > humanhood. Again I think Ill keep my freedom thanks, but if you want to live > in a police state that "allows" you to defend your life, good for you. Then why do you need it written into your law if it's so obvious? Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dirk at neopax.com Sat Nov 29 21:05:32 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 21:05:32 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <20031129172644.36259.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <03bd01c3b6bc$86f3d720$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 5:26 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > WARNING: Dirk opened the season here. The discussion will herafter > involve discussion of guns, self defense, and nasty things like rights. > So those of you with sensitive ears, emotions, or constitutions who > think guns, rights, or defending ones-self are 'icky' issues, please do > not read further... > > --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "R.Coyote" > > > > > Home occupiers = apparently not out and about town, at work ect. > > > all rights of self defense implicitly waved once you step out the > > > door. right of self defense waved for right of travel > > > > > > no thanks > > > > So where does it say that? > > The manifesto covers points that differ from existing law. > > Under existing law the right of self defence exists using 'reasonable > > force'. > > Or are you some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder by > > a beggar is an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire > > from the assault rifle you habitually carry? > > Okay, you asked for it... > Considering that 'reasonable force' in Britain, under present law, > extends no further than yelling loudly for help (and there is debate > over even allowing that, noise ordinances and all that rot) as you are > getting mugged by a fellow with an illegal gun who doesn't give a sod > about either the law or your right to self defense. Not true. There have been a number of cases where a home owner has killed a burglar and it has been ruled as a lawful use of force. This includes the case of a man who woke up in the night to find someone at his bed, and in the dark stabbed that person to death with a knife he kept by the bedside. It does *not* include Tony Martin who shot dead a fleeing burglar by shooting him in the back. > In fact, a number of individuals in Britain who have defended > themselves have not only spent time in prison for doing so (even when > their attackers were career criminals), but have been sued to the poor > house by their attackers for injuring them while they were conducting > their customary means of employment (i.e being a criminal). Families of > criminals killed in the act have sued their victims as well. It's not a simple as you assume. > Law abiding British serfs going about their business have been > convicted in Britain for illegal posession of a weapon for having any > one of the following on their persons: knitting needle, pen, pen-knife, > butter knife, wrench, screwdriver, letter opener, bottle of binaca, > mace, pepper spray, taser, pencil, metal tipped cane, and even a water Depends on the context. > pistol. There is no such thing as 'reasonable force' permitted in > Britain. Untrue. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dirk at neopax.com Sat Nov 29 21:09:40 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 21:09:40 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: Message-ID: <03ce01c3b6bd$1a4e0220$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 6:59 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > > On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Dirk Bruere wrote: > > > Or are you some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder by a > > beggar is an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire from the > > assault rifle you habitually carry? > > Dirk, although I do not view this as an A.H. attack I would view > it as an inflamatory statement. Perhaps it would be polite > to label such a question as [rhetorical question]. Hardly. I have heard from a number of Americans how they feel it is their God Given Right to shoot dead anyone who so much as puts a toe on their land or a finger on their property without permission. > In fact the days when one carried guns for personal self defense > in the U.S. generally ended perhaps a century ago with the civilizing > of the "wild wild west". Of course arguments can be made that there > are areas of inner cities in the U.S. where carrying a gun may be a > reasonable idea. But one would have to ask why any intelligent transhumanist > would be doing in areas that potentially pose such high risk factors? > Living or working in such high risk areas seems to be counter-productive > to the idea that one wants to extend ones potential lifespan. > I personally moved from San Francisco to Seattle because I did not > like the earthquake risk in S.F. That was before it was generally > known what the earthquake risks were in Seattle (so my strategy I thought you were due for some giant vulcanism that will wipe out the whole area? > was somewhat flawed). It would be logical for transhumanists > to seek out the safest possible places to live and that would > include places that have minimal instances of violent crimes > as well as natural hazards. Universal and unlimited rights to own weapons does not make a safe place. At best it simply shifts the risk. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From matus at matus1976.com Sat Nov 29 21:21:03 2003 From: matus at matus1976.com (Matus) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 16:21:03 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Managing risk (was: The Consensus) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <007201c3b6be$b48655d0$6701a8c0@GREYBOOK> > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Robert J. Bradbury > But one would have to ask why any intelligent > transhumanist > would be doing in areas that potentially pose such high risk factors? > Living or working in such high risk areas seems to be counter-productive > to the idea that one wants to extend ones potential lifespan. > Similarly, shouldn't any intelligent Transhumanist make an effort to reduce the risks to themselves by others? You go the first step by avoiding high risk areas, but all areas have *some* risk, and if, as a transhumanist, you believe you will be around for a while, the longer you are around, the more likely that *low* risk area will cause you harm. The longer you are around, the more likely *someone* will pull a gun on you. I live in rural CT, and just last week someone held up at gun point the gas station that is in walking distance from my house, a gas station I frequent at odd hours of the night. Last year while driving home I at 4 am on a Tuesday, I came across a police roadblock. I was the only car, and four police cars where out, two on either side of the road, the police were busy swarming about. Suddenly I realized they all had their guns drawn, and two other were busy removing shotguns from the trunk of a cruiser. A cop motioned to me to turn around and get the hell out of their. What will you be able to do when someone pulls a gun on you? One could start by wearing some lightweight body armor, try hiding, or running away. But these are all passive forms of defense. The question of the continuation of your existence may reside one day solely in the mind of some thug pointing a gun at you. The question you must ask yourself is are you safer to have a gun and be able to protect yourself, or to rely solely on another party to either get there in time(police) or choose not to kill you (the thug). So why do you think an intelligent transhumanist should move away from high risk earth quake areas yet not minimize risk by giving themselves the ability to counter a threat? How many people are killed by earthquakes, and how many by homicide? Regards, Michael From matus at matus1976.com Sat Nov 29 21:49:35 2003 From: matus at matus1976.com (Matus) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 16:49:35 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: <03ce01c3b6bd$1a4e0220$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <007301c3b6c2$b173e8e0$6701a8c0@GREYBOOK> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dirk Bruere > > Universal and unlimited rights to own weapons does not make a safe place. > At best it simply shifts the risk. > Wow, you seem pretty confident in the validity of that statement. Last I heard this was a subject of pretty heated debate. (probably why it was discouraged from being discussed on this list) Can you prove that statement empirically beyond all reasonable doubt, or is that just your opinion? Of course you use the qualifier of universal and unlimited rights, so presumably this may include nuclear bombs, land mines, grenades, and missile launchers. To make the question more reasonable, does the right to own a handgun make a place safer or less safe? Does it make an *individual* (the one who carries the gun) more or less safe (after all, I doubt many of the rugged individualists present on the extropy list are utilitarians) The right to own a shotgun? A handgun or shotgun? Automatic rifles? Etc. etc. Obviously this is a very complex issue and a question that is difficult to answer. And other questions are implied by your statement, should individual rights be dependant on groups? Should laws be based on what makes an area safer or a respect for individual civil liberties? Random searches, checkpoints, special permission required to go out at night, cameras on every corner, etc, might all make a place safer. Even if these things make an *area* safer, should they be enacted? In fact, it might be that the safety of an *area* is directly proportional to the govt restrictions placed on it. After all, walking down the street at night in an Orwellian nightmare might be a pretty safe venture, as long as you don't think or do something the govt disapproves of. Michael From etheric at comcast.net Sat Nov 29 22:31:51 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 14:31:51 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis><000f01c3b5e4$0c2f4020$0200a8c0@etheric><01bc01c3b5e8$a6f96c30$3bb5ff3e@artemis><006801c3b60f$42d8e060$0200a8c0@etheric><028601c3b612$a1527c70$3bb5ff3e@artemis><010601c3b631$4044a880$0200a8c0@etheric> <00a101c3b6b9$323b7bf0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <001601c3b6c8$95f28800$0200a8c0@etheric> "I have heard from a number of Americans how they feel it is..." This is the base of your understanding of this issue? "Universal and unlimited rights to own weapons does not... " Thats not what we have here at all, this is quite an exaggeration. Use of force is the LAST stage of a defense continuum, avoidance of danger is the first, however one can never predict when and where danger may strike, and many of us do not have the luxury to relocate to safer environs. Anyway I don't feel comfortable to narrowcast my broad reservations of the Consensus into the firearms issue, And so to simplify things, I find your manifesto generally very restricting on personal freedoms, and I yern for even more freedom than we currently have now. If you refuse to take responsibility for defense of yourself or your family that's your thing, but my families pistols would never be a threat to you, my wife and I have lawfully carried out and about in public for many many years and MAGICALLY nothing dreadful has ever happened. Do yourself a favor and stop watching so many Clint Eastwood movies, unfortunately the gun owners image is unfairly associated with the good ol' boy bubba truck drivin wife beater crowd, most gun owners are not like that or like Dirty Harry Calahan, any more than you Brits are all crossdressing sillywalking Monty Python clones pip pip tally ho and all that rot. From dirk at neopax.com Sat Nov 29 23:30:37 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 23:30:37 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <00a201c3b5cc$f477beb0$3bb5ff3e@artemis><000f01c3b5e4$0c2f4020$0200a8c0@etheric><01bc01c3b5e8$a6f96c30$3bb5ff3e@artemis><006801c3b60f$42d8e060$0200a8c0@etheric><028601c3b612$a1527c70$3bb5ff3e@artemis><010601c3b631$4044a880$0200a8c0@etheric> <00a101c3b6b9$323b7bf0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <001601c3b6c8$95f28800$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <044e01c3b6d0$cb88f870$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "R.Coyote" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 10:31 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > "I have heard from a number of Americans how they feel it is..." > > This is the base of your understanding of this issue? As a percentage of people I've met, yes. > "Universal and unlimited rights to own weapons does not... " > > Thats not what we have here at all, this is quite an exaggeration. Then let's hear your limits - where, precisely, would you start infringing an individuals freedom? > Use of force is the LAST stage of a defense continuum, avoidance of danger > is the first, however one can never predict when and where danger may > strike, and many of us do not have the luxury to relocate to safer environs. > > Anyway I don't feel comfortable to narrowcast my broad reservations of the > Consensus into the firearms issue, And so to simplify things, I find your > manifesto generally very restricting on personal freedoms, and I yern for > even more freedom than we currently have now. Well, the Consensus would give you that, but if it's not enough just keep hoping. > If you refuse to take responsibility for defense of yourself or your family > that's your thing, but my families pistols would never be a threat to you, > my wife and I have lawfully carried out and about in public for many many > years and MAGICALLY nothing dreadful has ever happened. Yet something quite unmagical does happen to tens of thousands of people every year in the US with regard to guns. > Do yourself a favor and stop watching so many Clint Eastwood movies, > unfortunately the gun owners image is unfairly associated with the good ol' > boy bubba truck drivin wife beater crowd, most gun owners are not like that > or like Dirty Harry Calahan, any more than you Brits are all crossdressing > sillywalking Monty Python clones pip pip tally ho and all that rot. I've met both kinds, and I'd say that US gun-nuts vastly outnumber Monty Python clones. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From spike66 at comcast.net Sat Nov 29 23:45:34 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 15:45:34 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: <001601c3b6c8$95f28800$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <003d01c3b6d2$e220be90$6501a8c0@SHELLY> R.Coyote > To: Dirk Bruere; ExI chat list ... > > Do yourself a favor and stop watching so many Clint Eastwood movies, > unfortunately the gun owners image is unfairly associated with the good ol' > boy bubba truck drivin wife beater crowd, most gun owners are not like that > or like Dirty Harry Calahan, any more than you Brits are all > crossdressing sillywalking Monty Python clones pip pip tally ho and all that rot. > Haaaahahahahahahahahhaaaaaa... {8^D Play nice, guys, we are handling a troublesome topic. I must say, however, Im proud of you all for not taking the bait. spike From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 30 02:19:23 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 18:19:23 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ESSAY: Greg's Burch's writing on the New Enlightenment Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031129181755.00ab8d00@pop.earthlink.net> Extropes - Does anyone have a copy or link? Thanks - Natasha From bjk at imminst.org Sun Nov 30 00:12:10 2003 From: bjk at imminst.org (Bruce J. Klein) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 18:12:10 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] ImmInst Chat - Charles Platt - SAT Nov 29 @ 8pm Message-ID: <6.0.0.22.2.20031129173928.03402ca8@mail.kia.net> IMMINST CHAT: Charles Platt - Saturday Nov 29 @ 8pm Eastern TOPIC: Future Goals & Problems with Cryonics Author of many popular science fiction novels, co-founder of CryoCare and former director of suspension services for Alcor Foundation, CHARLES PLATT joins ImmInst to discuss the future. more: http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=99&t=2059&st=0#entry15518 java chat room: http://www.imminst.org/chat (click 'yes', then 'connect') irc: Server: irc.lucifer.com - Port: 6667 - room: #immortal Upcoming Chats: Nov 30 - Susan Fonseca-Klein "Girls Night Out" http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=99&t=2218&hl=&s= Dec 7 - James Swayze "Cryonics & Immortality" http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=67&t=1927&st=0 Dec 14 - Mike Perry, Alcor & Cryonics http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=63&t=2385&st=0#entry18367 Dec 21 - Max More, Extropy & Immortality http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=62&t=431&s= Previous Chats: Keith Henson - Founder, L5 Society Eliezer Yudkowsky - Fellow, Singularity Inst. Natasha Vita-More - President, Extropy Inst. Simon Smith & George Dvorsky - Betterhumans.com Aubrey de Grey, Cambridge Univ. Anti-Aging Researcher Dr. James Hughes - Sec, World Transhumanist Assoc. Anders Sanders - Founder, Swedish Transhumanist Assoc. Mike Treder - Director, Center For Responsible Nanotechnology Michael Anissimov - Director, ImmInst.org more: http://www.imminst.org/archive/chat.php From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 30 02:28:17 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 18:28:17 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] ESSAY: Greg's Burch's writing on the New Enlightenment In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031129181755.00ab8d00@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031129182649.02ed3850@pop.earthlink.net> Found it! It wasn't titled "New Enlightenment." (http://www.gregburch.net/progress.html) At 06:19 PM 11/29/03 -0800, you wrote: >Extropes - > >Does anyone have a copy or link? > >Thanks - >Natasha > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 01:12:55 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 17:12:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031130011255.14768.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > > On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Dirk Bruere wrote: > > > Or are you some US gun nut who thinks being tapped on the shoulder > by a > > beggar is an assault that can or should be met with automatic fire > from the > > assault rifle you habitually carry? > > Dirk, although I do not view this as an A.H. attack I would view > it as an inflamatory statement. Perhaps it would be polite > to label such a question as [rhetorical question]. > > In fact the days when one carried guns for personal self defense > in the U.S. generally ended perhaps a century ago with the civilizing > of the "wild wild west". Of course arguments can be made that there > are areas of inner cities in the U.S. where carrying a gun may be a > reasonable idea. I don't think this argument is supported by the facts. Firstly, twice as many states have laws recognising citizens have a 'shall issue' right to a concealed weapons permit than did a decade ago, and these states constitute a functional supermajority where Constitutional amendments are concerned (39 states so far). Secondly, areas of the country you go on to say where 'carrying a gun may be a reasonable idea' happen to be areas in which there are laws restricting your ability to do so. It is not an accident that the highest crime areas of the country also have the lowest gun ownership rates and citizens have little or no ability to carry concealed weapons. A rational criminologist easily concludes that the safest areas of the country are the way they are specifically because law abiding citizens can and do carry firearms for personal self defense. Prof. John Lott determined that every 1% of the population that carries concealed reduces crime rates by 2%. Lastly, while I recognise that there are individuals with severe allergies to facts such as these, but seem to need to be reminded from time to time of them, though I did not raise this issue on this list. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 01:26:03 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 17:26:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius In-Reply-To: <00a101c3b6b9$323b7bf0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <20031130012603.41328.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "R.Coyote" > > BTW this is the same policy that Russia curently has, Notice the > >word "allowed", it is considered a permission granted, and not > >inherent in humanhood. Again I think Ill keep my freedom thanks, > >but if you want to live in a police state that "allows" you to > >defend your life, good for you. > > Then why do you need it written into your law if it's so obvious? Only to instruct statist idiots to keep their hands off. Unlike you, or the UK, we recognise rights as prexisting any constitution or other document or contract. If you need a governments permission to be 'allowed' to do something, it isn't a right, it is a privilege, one that they can take away at whim. Rights are an inherent part of your constitutional being, not a piece of whimsey to be negotiated for on sufferance. Our Constitution does not give us our rights, it tells the government only what it can do, and no more. That which government is not specifically empowered to do are powers retained by the people as individuals. This is the difference of a government of citizens and a government of serfs. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 01:51:00 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 01:51:00 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius References: <20031130012603.41328.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <04bb01c3b6e4$67ca5d60$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 1:26 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius > > --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "R.Coyote" > > > BTW this is the same policy that Russia curently has, Notice the > > >word "allowed", it is considered a permission granted, and not > > >inherent in humanhood. Again I think Ill keep my freedom thanks, > > >but if you want to live in a police state that "allows" you to > > >defend your life, good for you. > > > > Then why do you need it written into your law if it's so obvious? > > Only to instruct statist idiots to keep their hands off. Unlike you, or > the UK, we recognise rights as prexisting any constitution or other > document or contract. If you need a governments permission to be Unless you're a theist then you must acknowledge that Rights are a contract between the individual and society. In a democracy that society is represented by the govt. > 'allowed' to do something, it isn't a right, it is a privilege, one > that they can take away at whim. Rights are an inherent part of your > constitutional being, not a piece of whimsey to be negotiated for on > sufferance. They are always a balance of power. > Our Constitution does not give us our rights, it tells the government > only what it can do, and no more. That which government is not > specifically empowered to do are powers retained by the people as > individuals. This is the difference of a government of citizens and a > government of serfs. Seems Bush has a rather flexible idea about your 'Rights', since they can be suspended by govt decree. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From alex at ramonsky.com Sun Nov 30 02:20:26 2003 From: alex at ramonsky.com (Alex Ramonsky) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 02:20:26 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: Message-ID: <3FC953EA.9080108@ramonsky.com> Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > But one would have to ask why any intelligent transhumanist >would be doing in areas that potentially pose such high risk factors? >Living or working in such high risk areas seems to be counter-productive >to the idea that one wants to extend ones potential lifespan. > >I personally moved from San Francisco to Seattle because I did not >like the earthquake risk in S.F. That was before it was generally >known what the earthquake risks were in Seattle (so my strategy >was somewhat flawed). It would be logical for transhumanists >to seek out the safest possible places to live and that would >include places that have minimal instances of violent crimes >as well as natural hazards. > ...He's not telling you you can dodge bullets...he's telling you you don't have to. : ) I have always wondered this...why do smart people hang out in dangerous areas?? I know with 100% certainty that I won't be attacked in my local city centre at night because I don't go there. Ever. Yeh I know, you're gonna say I should have the right to go there if I want to without being molested...but why would I want to? ...For what? An idiot zone is for idiots. There's nothing there for people like me. We used to color-code the county maps according to how dodgy an area was. When we got to places with actual armed conflict we just wrote 'Mordor'. : ) AR AR > >Robert > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun Nov 30 02:35:00 2003 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 18:35:00 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius References: <20031130012603.41328.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001f01c3b6ea$8dc00500$6400a8c0@brainiac> From: "Mike Lorrey" > --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > Then why do you need it written into your law if it's so obvious? > > Only to instruct statist idiots to keep their hands off. Mike, why do you need to sound so threatening and resort to name calling? (makes me wonder if you think *all* statists are idiots as your words seem to imply, even though it is mainly Republicans who are behind the cessation of stem cell research, softening rules governing financial markets, insinuating that citizens are unpatriotic if they do not support the Iraq war, and have such stellar intellectuals as John Ashcroft, Rick Santorum, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter, Billy Graham, William Bennett, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott [and many other such *very well known* politicians] among their ranks). Olga From gregburch at gregburch.net Sun Nov 30 03:25:58 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 21:25:58 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius In-Reply-To: <001f01c3b6ea$8dc00500$6400a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: Are you somehow implying that Republicans *AREN'T* statists? (Anyway, I agree it's best to try to use cooler language when one is addressing hot issues, as I've said a zillion times before.) Greg Burch <-------- armed to the teeth http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Olga Bourlin > Sent: Saturday, November 29, 2003 8:35 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est > exclusioalterius > > > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > > Then why do you need it written into your law if it's so obvious? > > > > Only to instruct statist idiots to keep their hands off. > > Mike, why do you need to sound so threatening and resort to name calling? > (makes me wonder if you think *all* statists are idiots as your words seem > to imply, even though it is mainly Republicans who are behind the > cessation > of stem cell research, softening rules governing financial markets, > insinuating that citizens are unpatriotic if they do not support the Iraq > war, and have such stellar intellectuals as John Ashcroft, Rick Santorum, > Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter, Billy Graham, William Bennett, Tom > DeLay, Trent > Lott [and many other such *very well known* politicians] among > their ranks). > > Olga > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun Nov 30 03:43:17 2003 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 19:43:17 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius References: Message-ID: <003801c3b6f4$17a54b50$6400a8c0@brainiac> From: "Greg Burch" > Are you somehow implying that Republicans *AREN'T* statists? Well, no ... but there is a tendency to label "liberals" as statists/leftists (we are all familiar with the term "leftist liberal," no?). And there do seem to more "conservatives" among Republicans (who are prone to attacking those "leftist liberals"). But, these days, with all that's been raining down on us since 9/11, who can tell anything about anyone anymore? > (Anyway, I agree it's best to try to use cooler language when one is addressing hot issues, as I've said a zillion times before.) Agree with you, sir, and thank you. Olga From extropy at unreasonable.com Sun Nov 30 03:52:27 2003 From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 22:52:27 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031129225211.025a4698@mail.comcast.net> Mike: > Only to instruct statist idiots to keep their hands off. Olga: > Mike, why do you need to sound so threatening and resort to name calling? > (makes me wonder if you think *all* statists are idiots as your words seem > to imply, even though it is mainly Republicans Greg: >Are you somehow implying that Republicans *AREN'T* statists? (Anyway, I >agree it's best to try to use cooler language when one is addressing hot >issues, as I've said a zillion times before.) Mike referred to all X such that X is statist and X is an idiot. He did not say that "X is statist" implies "X is an idiot." This may be true. However, Mike didn't say it. He also said nothing about Republicans. Olga, Mike gets into enough trouble for what he actually says. He doesn't need any help. That said, I agree that Republicans are de facto statists, whatever their rhetoric may otherwise suggest. >Greg Burch <-------- armed to the teeth Doesn't that make it hard to chew? -- David Lubkin. From extropy at unreasonable.com Sun Nov 30 03:52:38 2003 From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 22:52:38 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius In-Reply-To: References: <001f01c3b6ea$8dc00500$6400a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031129223150.025a6a98@mail.comcast.net> Mike: > Only to instruct statist idiots to keep their hands off. Olga: > Mike, why do you need to sound so threatening and resort to name calling? > (makes me wonder if you think *all* statists are idiots as your words seem > to imply, even though it is mainly Republicans Greg: >Are you somehow implying that Republicans *AREN'T* statists? (Anyway, I >agree it's best to try to use cooler language when one is addressing hot >issues, as I've said a zillion times before.) Mike referred to all X such that X is statist and X is an idiot. He did not say that "X is statist" implies "X is an idiot." This may be true. However, Mike didn't say it. He also said nothing about Republicans. Olga, Mike gets into enough trouble for what he actually says. He doesn't need any help. That said, I agree that Republicans are de facto statists, whatever their rhetoric may otherwise suggest. >Greg Burch <-------- armed to the teeth Doesn't that make it hard to chew? -- David Lubkin. From extropy at unreasonable.com Sun Nov 30 04:27:24 2003 From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 23:27:24 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Marvelous essay Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031129232641.0260ac60@mail.comcast.net> Simon Winchester, "The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary." The essay only appears in google's cache at the moment. See http://tinyurl.com/x1yl Many lovely bits. My favorite is probably: "You can never hope to bribe or twist the average British journalist, but when you see what he will do unbribed, there is no reason to." -- David Lubkin. From gpmap at runbox.com Sun Nov 30 07:12:53 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 08:12:53 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] More on TriStem Message-ID: >From SciScoop, more coverage of the new medical technology developed by the UK company TriStem: a process to convert easily-isolated white blood cells into stem cells which it can further culture to replace any defective tissue in the body. Current scientific dogma holds that once a stem cell has differentiated into mature body tissue like a blood cell, the transformation cannot be reversed. TriStem says it can. If true, not only has TriStem bypassed the current need to obtain stem cells from human embryos for research; it has revolutionized the very foundation of medicine. This could transform the treatment of everything from heart disease to Parkinson. To say that other scientists have been sceptical of TriStem's claims is an understatement. "I would be extremely sceptical of these findings and would need more proof," says stem cell expert Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California. And yet, TriStem has apparently taken white blood cells of lab mice, converted them back into stem cells, further treated the stem cells to make them into blood-producing bone marrow cells, and injected the new bone marrow cells into the bones of the mice, where the cells took up the duty of making blood. All of this research effort was performed under the watchful eye of a third-party U.S. research laboratory team. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gpmap at runbox.com Sun Nov 30 08:19:22 2003 From: gpmap at runbox.com (Giu1i0 Pri5c0) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 09:19:22 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: <20031129172644.36259.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Here we are again Mike, we have been talking guns before. To restate my own opinion, nobody intends to take away your right to carry a weapon for self defense in some specific circumstances, but pleeeeease don't make such a big issue of it!!! A gun is just a piece of metal that can be used to shoot bullets at bad guys who want to do bad things to you. Sometimes carrying one can be a very reasonable thing to do, but a gun is not a central feature of anyone's identity, especially not a symbol of macho power. My point against the permissive gun laws in the US is that they encourage any unthinking teenage redneck with sexual problems to carry one and make use of it. --- Mike: WARNING: Dirk opened the season here. The discussion will herafter involve discussion of guns, self defense, and nasty things like rights. So those of you with sensitive ears, emotions, or constitutions who think guns, rights, or defending ones-self are 'icky' issues, please do not read further... ... guns, guns, guns From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sun Nov 30 10:28:17 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 11:28:17 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: <3FC953EA.9080108@ramonsky.com> References: <3FC953EA.9080108@ramonsky.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Alex Ramonsky wrote: >don't have to. : ) >I have always wondered this...why do smart people hang out in dangerous >areas?? I know with 100% certainty that I won't be attacked in my local >city centre at night because I don't go there. Ever. It doesn't sound like the best option to me. I go to my local city centre at night very often, but I'm not attacked. No one is. Girls walk alone at 3am without a second thought. If one wants to avoid dangers associated with criminals, there are two options: - hide in your house and set up a good alarm system. - live in a low crime area Somehow, I prefer the second. Ciao, Alfio From amara at amara.com Sun Nov 30 13:29:46 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:29:46 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave Message-ID: "Terry W. Colvin" : >An informal poll of Italians or non-Italians living in Italy in 1978 could >be interesting. Amara, perhaps you can ask your Italian colleagues and >friends if they remember media accounts or anecdotal references? > I don't think that I'm the right person to ask. I haven't been in Italy long enough to interact thoroughly with typical Italians. Most of my colleagues and friends presently are scientists, which are a kind of nonperson in Italy. The answers I received so far are: "1978? I remember faint comet Bradfield in the spring at dawn only." I'll keep your question in mind, though.... Amara -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes From amara at amara.com Sun Nov 30 14:26:57 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 16:26:57 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Scott Walker Kama Sutra Message-ID: Came into my office to pick up some papers about carbonaceous chondrites on Earth, and I leave my office as I saw words and pictures about kama sutra for robots. Made me smile. Have a good day. Amara --------------------------------------------------- From www.scoutwalker.com "Welcome to the Earth edition of the Scout Walker Kama Sutra at www.scoutwalker.com Within the site you will find many beautiful and erotic pictures illustrating the positions and practices Scout Walkers indulge in their more private, intimate moments that generally go unconsidered by the interstellar media at large. These intelligent machines share a common bond with all other known races - a passion for passion. We hope you find your visit to this site exciting, informative and educational. It is our wish that you will leave this site with a better awareness of the culture and individuality of cybernetic and robotic races you would otherwise have continued to perceive as souless production-line killing machines thoughtlessly bent on conquest and bloody carnage alone. The Scout Walker Kama Sutra (all editions) was shot entirely in the county of Cambridgeshire, England, Earth during the Novembers of 1999, 2000 and 2001. Our thanks and appreciation go out to the RAF for the extended use of Bixby Hangar. We left it as we found it. " -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Naked singularities do not qualify as deities." -- John D. Barrow and Joseph Silk From support at imminst.org Sun Nov 30 15:04:04 2003 From: support at imminst.org (support at imminst.org) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 09:04:04 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] (2)ImmInst Update "Girls Night Out" Sun Nov 30 Message-ID: <3fca06e456020@imminst.org> ImmInst Update ******************************* Chat Topic: "Girls Night Out" - Women & the Future Time: Nov 30 - SUN 8pm Eastern, Length: 1 Hour Host: Susan Fonseca-Klein - co-director, ImmInst.org Susan's Biography and Discussion Topic: http://imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=99&t=2218&s= CHAT FOR WOMEN ONLY! Sponsored by the Immortality Institute (ImmInst.org), a nonprofit with the mission to end the blight of involuntary death, and hosted by Susan Fonseca-Klein, this chat is for women only. The men need to take a break. They will have their own separate chat room during this time. As co-director of ImmInst.org, Susan warmly invites all women to participate. If you've never tried a chat before, don't worry, the main goal is have fun while learning a little more about the following: 1. What do women want out of the future? 2. Why do women live longer than men? 3. Are there really more women than men talking about the future? CHAT MADE EASY Entering the chat room is easy. Usually within one minute and three clicks you can be typing messages. Try the following link to test the chat: http://www.imminst.org/chat Click 'Yes' and then Connect. To be removed from all of our mailing lists, click here: http://www.imminst.org/archive/mailinglists/mailinglists.php?p=mlist&rem=extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org From jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 15:15:30 2003 From: jose_cordeiro at yahoo.com (Jose Cordeiro) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 07:15:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 Message-ID: <20031130151530.45255.qmail@web41302.mail.yahoo.com> The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 2003 v27 i4 p13(8) Humanity 2.0: transhumanists believe that human nature's a phase we'll outgrow, like adolescence. Someday we'll be full-fledged adult posthumans, with physical and intellectual powers of which we can now only dream. But will progress really make perfect? Carl Elliott. At the front of the conference room, Robert Bradbury of the Aeivos Corporation is talking about immortality. He's showing us PowerPoint slides, with scientific graphs and charts. He's telling us about an artificial replacement for the human genome and about eliminating the need for a heart by replacing all the cells in the body with "vasaloid" systems. Immortality is probably not in the cards, Bradbury tells us, but once we eliminate all diseases it will be possible for us to live for 2,000 years. When we get rid of all the other hazards of living, we'll be looking at a life span of 7,000 years. Unless, of course, we happen to be over 40 years old already, in which case these technologies will come too late for us. Bradbury recommends that those of us past 40 look seriously into cryonics. If we have our heads frozen, we can be resurrected at some time in the future by our benevolent, superintelligent descendants. As Bradbury speaks, I remember the cemetery across from the Yale University campus that I passed on my way to the seminar. Carved into stone on the front gates were the words "The Dead Shall Be Raised." I've come to Yale for an intensive introductory seminar on transhumanism. The term transhuman is shorthand for transitional human, a stage along the way to becoming posthuman. A posthuman, according to the World Transhumanist Association, is "a being whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present-day humans as to no longer be unambiguously human by our current standards." Nobody really knows exactly what posthumanity will be like, but transhumanists are certain that it will be a big improvement over the current model. Transhumanists embrace cryonics, nanotechnology, cloning, psychopharmacology, genetic enhancement, artificial intelligence, brain chips, robotics, and space colonization. In fact, they embrace virtually any conceivable technology aimed at "redesigning the human condition." [Graphic omitted] Like many of my fellow seminar participants, I'm here out of curiosity. What little I know about transhumanism I learned many years ago from Ed Regis's brilliant, quirky, book Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (1990). Mambo Chicken was air affectionate but skeptical portrait of what Regis called "science slightly over the edge." The heroes of Mambo Chicken were not especially interested in ordinary scientific grunt work. They had much grander plans. They wanted to download their minds onto computer disks, manipulate matter at the atomic level, colonize interstellar comets in private rockets. The title of the book refers to chickens that muscled tip to Schwarzenegger-like proportions after gravity specialists at the University of California, Davis, spun them around in accelerators for six months. On the whole, the scientists in Regis's book were less interested in creating superchickens than in creating superhumans. They chafed at human mortality and the limitations of their own brains. "Why should we be restricted to human nature?" asked one researcher in Mambo Chicken. "Why shouldn't we go beyond?" Why indeed? In the 13 years since Mambo Chicken was published, transhumanism has blossomed into something new--part subculture, part academic discipline, part social movement. In 1998, philosophers Nick Bostrum and David Pearce established the World Transhumanist Association (WTA). Transhumanists have become increasingly visible in the media, often for their outspoken advocacy of all things technological: In a memorable encounter last year, transhumanist Max More, co-founder of the Extropy Institute, debated University of Virginia bioethicist Jonathan Moreno on CNN's Crossfire about the ethics of cryonically freezing the head of baseball great "Fed Williams. The seminar I've enrolled in at Yale is part of a larger conference, cosponsored by the WTA, called Transvision 2003. The theme of the conference is "The Adaptable Human Body: Transhumanism and Bioethics in the 21st Century." (I did not attend the larger conference, but the presentations are available online at www.transhumanism.org.) Bioethicists have begun writing about so-called enhancement technologies--medical interventions aimed not at curing illness but at improving human traits and capacities. For the most part, these interventions fall squarely within the realm of the possible: cosmetic surgery, synthetic growth hormone for short children, psychoactive medications, such as Ritalin and Prozac, and "lifestyle drugs," such as Viagra, Propecia, and Botox. Many enhancement technologies are too pedestrian to interest the transhumanists, but they make an exception for genetic medicine--the possibility of genetically enhancing human beings. Now that the human genome has been mapped and Dolly has been cloned, many transhumanists are starting to ask, "Why not use the tools of genetics to make ourselves smarter, healthier, and longer-lived?" At first, I was inclined to dismiss the transhumanists. They sounded more than slightly over fire edge. Later, I wondered whether I was being unfair. Weren't remarkable things being done in neuroscience and the genetics of aging? Didn't many of these transhumanists have impressive degrees from elite universities? While a Ph.D. is no guarantee of wisdom (as Saul Bellow once remarked, the world is full of high-IQ morons), it does have a way of making strange ideas seem somewhat more plausible. The transhumanism seminar seemed worth the price of admission, especially when the transhumanists offer, in the words of WTA cofounder Pearce in his book The Hedonistic Imperative, "sights more majestically beautiful, music more deeply soul-stirring, sex more exquisitely erotic, mystical epiphanies more awe-inspiring, and love more profoundly intense than anything we can now properly comprehend." Besides, I have a weakness for groups with manifestoes. I began to wonder: Who are the transhumanists? Fanatics? Visionaries? Trekkies with tenure? Should we be paying attention? "There is no great invention, from fire to flying which has not been hailed as an insult to some god," wrote the great British biologist J. B. S. Haldane in his 1923 essay "Daedalus, or Science and the Future." For people who see science as a way of improving the human condition, the "natural order" is nothing more than a barrier to human progress. As Haldane observed, new developments in biology always look unnatural and indecent to people who've never seen them before. "If every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy," Haldane wrote, "every biological invention is a perversion." Most transhumanists are not as eloquent as Haldane, but their sentiments are much the same. In transhumanist thought, there's nothing natural, and certainly nothing good, about confinement to a flesh-and-blood body that expires after three score years and ten. We can do much better than that. And if we were not so squeamish, we would do better. Transhumanists believe they have simply learned to put aside the ordinary human aversion to novelty in favor of technology-assisted human progress. As Eliazer Yudkowsky of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence--established to hasten the day when technology will create smarter-than-human intelligence in human beings--put it in his paper at Yale, "In transhumanism, this special 'yuck' reaction is missing, and such technologies are just an ordinary part of the natural universe." Take cryonics, for example. Cryonics firms such as the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona will freeze the bodies or heads of people who've been declared dead, in the hope that they can be revived (or as transhumanists put it, "reanimated") at some point in the distant future, when technological progress has made it possible to reverse the diseases or injuries that "deanimated" them. The father of cryonics was Robert Ettinger, a professor of physics and mathematics at Highland Park Community College in Michigan and author of the book The Prospect of Immortality (1964). Ettinger marshaled every piece of scientific evidence he could find about the prospect of reviving frozen bodies, and many readers found fire evidence convincing. Of course, others found the notion of deep-freezing their severed heads in vats a little grotesque. But defenders of cryonics replied (not unreasonably) that it was no less grotesque than being embalmed and buried, in any case, they were willing to put aside their squeamishness for the possible payoff. The Prospect of Immortality went through nine editions and was translated into four languages. Ettinger became a major media figure, and the cryonics movement was launched. [Graphic omitted] To many outsiders, the evidence that cryonics will actually work has never looked especially convincing. Indeed, cryonics, like other cultural products of the 1960s, might well have faded away--had it not been defended by Eric Drexler in The Engines of Creation (1986). His was the first book on nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter on the smallest possible scale. Drexler envisioned submicroscopic devices capable of manipulating molecules, or even atoms, to precise specifications. If we could just write the correct programs, nanotechnology would allow us to build or rebuild virtually anything, from the bottom up. After all, this is what biological organisms do; the programs are written into their DNA. Drexler devoted a chapter to explaining how nanotechnology could make cryonics a legitimate scientific possibility. With tiny assemblers, we could repair all the cells in a deanimated body and bring the dead back to life. The Engines of Creation has been enormously important For transhumanists, and no wonder. Raising the dead is only one of the miracles promised by nanotechnology, and it's not even the most astonishing. Once we have complete control over matter itself, Drexler argued, we can do virtually anything permitted by the laws of nature. We can end disease by repairing damaged cells. We can get rid of world hunger by making food out of plentiful ingredients such as dirt and sunshine. No more poverty, no more unpleasant labor, no more pollution. Precisely when all this will happen is a matter on which transhumanists disagree. What's important is that Drexler made such a persuasive case that it could happen. (It hasn't hurt the cause that nanotechnology is now being hailed as the Next Big Thing, attracting venture capital, government funding, and attention in prestigious scientific journals.) For many transhumanists, nanotechnology is the key to our posthuman future. With nanotechnology, for instance, we could scan the structure of our brains atom by atom, preserve all the neural patterns responsible for our personal identities, and re-create those structures on artificial hardware. In effect, we could upload our minds to computers and make copies of ourselves down to every memory, every last personality quirk, every last hope and prejudice and desire. Then we could design new and better bodies, or simply live on as information patterns in computer networks, like ghosts in a vast machine. Once we had uploaded ourselves onto computers, the possibilities would expand tremendously. We could make backup copies of ourselves, and re-boot if our original selves were to die. We could transmit ourselves over high-speed networks at the speed of light (which would be very convenient, the WTA points out, if we colonize space). We could live in simulated environments where the ordinary laws of physics were suspended. We could radically upgrade our intelligence, like computer software, and become superintelligent. Hans Moravec of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University laid out the basics of uploading in his book Mind Children (1988). In a mere 50 years, Moravec predicted, we'll be able to upload our minds onto computers, turn ourselves into robots, and live forever. Of course, not everyone may want to spend eternity this way. It's a matter of individual choice, and transhumanists insist on the universal moral right to decide for oneself. That's an important part of the WTA's Transhumanist Declaration. But should you decide to become a robot, an information pattern, or any other kind of sentient life, you can count on the transhumanists to advocate for your well-being. As I take my seat at the seminar, the first thing that strikes me is the gap between the grand transhumanist vision and the concrete reality of our surroundings. For all the talk about immortality and superintelligent robots, there's no getting around the fact that we're sitting in the basement of a college dormitory. On the list of seminar participants I see a mix of activists, academics, journalists, and computer specialists. We all seem to be glancing furtively at one another's name tags, trying to figure out which participants are the true believers and which are lust voyeurs. Our introduction to transhumanism will be delivered by Nick Bostrum, president of the WTA and a member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University. According to the syllabus that's been distributed, Bostrum's credentials include a background in cosmology mathematical logic, and standup comedy. My most pressing question is the one I never actually ask: Do transhumanists actually believe all this? Life spans of 7,000 years? Mind uploads? Colonizing space and living forever as robots? As the day wears on, the answer becomes clear. Yes, they do. I had wondered whether these were simply philosophical thought experiments, but the transhumanists at the front of the conference room speak of space colonization and radical life extension as if the technologies to achieve these things were just around the corner. When, a few weeks after the seminar, I asked James Hughes, the secretary of the WTA, about the plausibility of these technologies, he replied by entail, "Well, we certainly do like to talk about them, like philosophers do, but we also think they are quite real. We differ widely on the time frame, however." Maybe so, but it takes a certain naivete not to realize that an audience unfamiliar with transhumanism might he a little surprised by matter-of-fact references to, say, the economic consequences of becoming a robot. I was curious to find out whether other nontranshumanists had the same reaction. One scholar, who spoke on condition of anonymity, characterized the transhumanists as "a lot of young, pasty, lanky, awkward ... white males talking futuristic bullshit, terribly worried that we will take their toys away." William Grey, a philosopher from the University of Queensland in Australia who attended the conference, said, "Overall, I've never seen such a collection of highly intelligent people whose views (at least to me) are just barking mad." More than one outsider I corresponded with compared the meeting to a support group. I was struck more by its religious overtones. The transhumanists have their sacred texts, The Engines of Creation and Mind Children among them. They have communal gatherings, which usually occur online. They have a set of beliefs about resurrection and the afterlife, couched in fire language of cryonics and computers. They divide the world into believers and infidels (the "bio-Luddites"), and they call on one another to evangelize--or, as they often put it, "spread our memes." Many transhumanists believe that we're approaching an apocalyptic end-time they call "The Singularity," a convergence of technological developments that will push the rate of change so dramatically that the world could be transformed beyond recognition. The WTA states that if The Singularity comes, it will probably be caused by the creation of self-enhancing, superintelligent beings. If the religious elements also sound like science fiction, there's a good reason. The concept of The Singularity comes from Vernon Vinge's novel Marooned in Realtime (1986). Arthur Clarke wrote about mind uploading in The City and the Stars, first published in 1956. Robert Ettinger got the idea for cryonics from a story called "The Jameson Satellite" by Neil R. Jones, published in a 1931 issue of the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories. In that story, a man specifies in his will that, when he dies, his body is to be shot into space, where it will be frozen and preserved. Millions of years later, he's thawed out by robots and given a mechanical body so that he can live forever. Transhumanists resent the religious comparisons, and, to be fair, most of those at the seminar seemed no more like cult members than your average Amway representative. James Hughes rightly points out that social interaction among transhumanists occurs mainly online, and, for that reason, their social ties to one another are a lot weaker than those of church members. In any case, many transhumanists are openly hostile to organized religion. For example, when I asked Hughes what he thought of the Raelians, a sect that believes the human race was created by aliens, he replied, "Religious nut jobs, but no more or less irrational or absurd than the Abrahamic faiths, and a lot less dangerous." In my more charitable moments, I want to think that the transhumanists are old-fashioned utopians. Maybe transhumanists represents a high-tech, cyber-savvy version of Robert Owen's socialist community at New Lanark in 19th-century Scotland, or even the American hippie communes of the 1960s. Hughes, for example, teaches public policy at Trinity College and is writing a book called Cyborg Democracy: Free, Equal and United in a Post-Human World. Gould the transhumanists be the flip side of the Amish, putting advanced technology, to work for a better society? I entertain these thoughts for a while. Then reality, hits home, and I remember the transhumanists' angry, libertarian rhetoric. Most seemed less concerned about building a better society than they were about wanting to be left alone with their computers. They also seemed bizarrely out of touch with ordinary moral sensibilities. This disconnect became apparent during a presentation by Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University. At one point, Hanson told us about a project he had been working on for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The plan was to use the market as a tool to predict world events, such as terrorist strikes, coups, and assassinations. Traders would use a government-sponsored website to invest money in the likelihood that such events would occur, and the Pentagon-specifically, the Total Information Awareness project headed by John Poindexter--would use the data as a tool to predict future events. The rationale was that if people were willing to put good money on the prospect, say, of Osama bin Laden's orchestrating an attack on the World Trade Center, then the possibility that the attack might occur should be taken very seriously. It was only a few weeks after the seminar that Hanson's project became headline news and was angrily denounced by senators and representatives, who called it "betting on death." The project was eventually scrapped because of the public outcry, and Poindexter resigned his post. What struck me about the reaction of the transhumanists to these events was not simply that they backed the project, but that they seemed unable to grasp why anyone would find it unseemly. Hanson described it without blinking an eye, and then proceeded to a discussion of the economic upheaval that might he caused by mind uploading. When the public opposition later emerged, the transhumanists I contacted were oddly dismissive. The brouhaha was "nonsense," said Hughes. And Bostrum said that he was "very sad to see such a brilliant and potentially useful idea brutally murdered for cheap political gain." He characterized the outrage as "Shrug moral condemnation fortified by complete ignorance of the issue. Our reptilian brain in full action." So the question recurs: Should we be paying attention? I think we should. As far over the edge as the transhumanists often appear, they represent a number of ideological strands evident throughout American society. One is a brand of individualistic, libertarian ideology often associated with Silicon Valley. A second is independent, quasi-religious thinking of the sort that sometimes leads to new religious communities, such as the Mormons, but that more often is disguised as disdain toward organized religion. A third is idealistic faith in the power of technology to make the world a better place. To look at the transhumanist movement and its self-identified enemies is to glimpse some of the ideological battlegrounds where the debate over new enhancement technologies will be conducted. One key issue will be the need to strike a proper balance between idealism and pragmatism. The genetic revolution has been a weird combination of media hype, scientific success, and clinical disappointment. That disappointment reached a culmination of sorts several years ago with the death of Jesse Gelsinger in a gene therapy protocol at the University of Pennsylvania. In recent years, the federal government has temporarily shut down federal]y sponsored research at the University of Pennsylvania. Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and several other leading academic health centers. Given the enormous growth in clinical medical research (much of which is now being carried out be for-profit corporations), many observers argue that our regulatory system must be radically overhauled if we are to avoid more deaths and injuries. The safety of research subjects is a crucial concern in genetic enhancement and reproductive cloning. Yet the Yale conference did not include a single presentation on the ethics or regulation of biomedical research. In the introductory seminar, the potential dangers of enhancement technologies got significant attention only once, when Bostrum listed a number of possible threats posed by such technologies, among which he included evolution into oblivion, "simulation shutdown," and invasion by extraterrestrials. The transhumanist enthusiasm for scientific research represents an extreme version of the kind of idealism that will need to be tempered by an effective system of research regulation. [Graphic omitted] A second issue will be fine relative value of individual versus collective solutions to social problems. Many "enhancement technologies" are more accurately characterized as medical remedies for social stigma. That is, they are technological fixes for the condition of being shy, short, overweight, or small breasted. But these individual solutions have the paradoxical effect of making social problems worse. As Georgetown University philosopher Margaret Olivia Little has argued, the more breast augmentations that cosmetic surgeons perform, the more entrenched is the social preference for large breasts; the more "Jewish noses" that surgeons correct, the more reinforced is the social standard that makes Jews seek out surgery in the first place. A better solution would be the one that American individualists often regard as hopeless: fixing the social structures that make so many people ashamed of these aspects of their identities. Even technologies that unambiguously provide enhancements will raise issues of social justice not unlike those we currently face with ordinary medical technologies (wealthy Americans, for example, get liver transplants, while children in the developing world die from diarrhea). We live comfortably with such inequities, in part because we have so enthusiastically embraced an individualistic ethic. But to an outsider, a country's expenditure of billions of dollars on liposuction, face-lifts, and Botox injections while many of its children go without basic health care might well seem obscene. At one point in our seminar, Bostrum listed a number of ideological opponents of transhumanism, including religious conservatives, postmodernists, the writer-activist Jeremy Rifkin, the environmentalist writer Bill McKibben, the bioethicist Leon Kass, and the political theorist Francis Fukuyama. If anything unites such a disparate array of people, it's not opposition to technology. Rather, it's a conviction that the social order is critically important to human flourishing. Right-leaning moralists do not have much in common with left-leaning moralists; nor do religious conservatives have much in common with postmodernists. But none of these people believe that an individual is independent of the society, in which he or she lives, and, for that reason, they're uncomfortable with the notion that technologies of profound social consequence should be primarily a matter of individual choice. The technologies call for collective decision making. A final battleground in the debate over enhancement technologies will be the marketplace. Whatever you think of the ethics of these technologies, you must admit that they're being driven by a powerful economic engine. For a number of years now, pharmaceuticals has been the most profitable industry in America. Until the early 1980s, the most profitable drugs were those to treat anxiety. Now, according to the National Institute for Health Care Management, the most profitable class of prescription drugs is antidepressants, such as Paxil and Prozac. When Pfizer put Viagra on the market in the late 1990s, it immediately became the fastest-selling drug in pharmaceutical history. It's a long way from anxiety drugs and impotence remedies to germ-line genetic enhancement, but if the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries see a way to profit from a new enhancement technology, it's hard to imagine that they'll resist. Is the industries' power a danger? Whether you think so will depend on what you think of market-driven medicine. Transhumanists are not worried, but then again, neither is the average American. Cosmetic surgery has never been more popular than it is now. But for critics of genetic enhancement, the market represents something far more sinister because it seems to view the world as a place where everything has a price. How will our sensibilities he changed if we start to see our children, our bodies, and our minds as potential objects of consumption? Where does the soul go, once it's been priced and tagged? J. B. S. Haldane was an enthusiast for scientific progress because he thought that science was the servant of humanity. Bertrand Russell disagreed. In "Icarus," his famous response to Haldane's "Daedalus" essay, Russell wrote that the mistake scientists usually make is to imagine that they will decide how science is used. In fact, he said, science serves whoever holds power. If the people who hold power are evil, then they will use science for evil purposes--and Russell was not impressed with the people who held power. "I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups, rather than to make men happy," he wrote. "Icarus, having been taught to fly by his father Daedalus, was destroyed by his rashness. I fear that the same fate may overtake the populations whom modern men of science have taught to fly." CARL ELLIOTT teaches philosophy and bioethics at the University of Minnesota. His latest hook is Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (2003). Copyright [c] 2003 by Carl Elliott. La vie est belle! Yos? (www.cordeiro.org) Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gregburch at gregburch.net Sun Nov 30 16:16:41 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 10:16:41 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] More on TriStem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: If this turns out to be a real, reproducible development, isn't it the holy grail of tissue engineering? I'd like to hear the thoughts of our resident bio-nuts. GB http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Giu1i0 Pri5c0 Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 1:13 AM To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org; extropy-chat at extropy.org Subject: [extropy-chat] More on TriStem From SciScoop, more coverage of the new medical technology developed by the UK company TriStem: a process to convert easily-isolated white blood cells into stem cells which it can further culture to replace any defective tissue in the body. Current scientific dogma holds that once a stem cell has differentiated into mature body tissue like a blood cell, the transformation cannot be reversed. TriStem says it can. If true, not only has TriStem bypassed the current need to obtain stem cells from human embryos for research; it has revolutionized the very foundation of medicine. This could transform the treatment of everything from heart disease to Parkinson. To say that other scientists have been sceptical of TriStem's claims is an understatement. "I would be extremely sceptical of these findings and would need more proof," says stem cell expert Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California. And yet, TriStem has apparently taken white blood cells of lab mice, converted them back into stem cells, further treated the stem cells to make them into blood-producing bone marrow cells, and injected the new bone marrow cells into the bones of the mice, where the cells took up the duty of making blood. All of this research effort was performed under the watchful eye of a third-party U.S. research laboratory team. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 16:25:24 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 16:25:24 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] More on TriStem References: Message-ID: <00f801c3b75e$8ea87780$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: Greg Burch To: ExI chat list Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 4:16 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] More on TriStem If this turns out to be a real, reproducible development, isn't it the holy grail of tissue engineering? I'd like to hear the thoughts of our resident bio-nuts. GB http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html It sounds really major. What also got my attention some time back was the discovery that stem cells injected into (IIRC) heart muscle became specialised heart muscle - presumably with the clock reset. If this does turn out to be correct it might be interesting to see what happens to (say) old mice when they are treated. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From scerir at libero.it Sun Nov 30 16:32:47 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 17:32:47 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave References: Message-ID: <000401c3b75f$b191bbc0$f0c7fea9@scerir> "Terry W. Colvin" > An informal poll of Italians or non-Italians living in Italy > in 1978 could be interesting. There is a page here, in english too http://www.ufo.it/english/ufo1c.htm From gregburch at gregburch.net Sun Nov 30 16:36:53 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 10:36:53 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 In-Reply-To: <20031130151530.45255.qmail@web41302.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: How to write an article about transhumanism for the mainstream press: 1. Attend a WTA or ExI meeting. 2. Make note of how geeky the attendees are, especially that most of them are young, male, lack tans and seem to be socially maladroit. 3. Mention Eric Drexler and Hans Moravec. 4. Describe the most advanced ideas you hear at the meeting, with special emphasis on the fact that the speakers don't spend a lot of time explaining how weird the concepts are. Mention idea futures and Ted Williams as examples of how transhumanists are out of touch with the way most people react to their ideas. 5. Be sure to note the religious overtones of the Singularity, uploading and cryonics. 6. Sneer at the Silicon Valley libertarian politics of many in attendance. 7. Get a quote from a credentialled academic that dismisses the ideas as foolishness. 8. But end by saying that the transhumanists might be on to something after all and maybe someone ought to pay attention. GB, http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Jose Cordeiro Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 9:16 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Cc: wta-espanol at transhumanism.org; wta-venezuela at yahoogroups.com; fastra at yahoogroups.com Subject: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 2003 v27 i4 p13(8) Humanity 2.0: transhumanists believe that human nature's a phase we'll outgrow, like adolescence. Someday we'll be full-fledged adult posthumans, with physical and intellectual powers of which we can now only dream. But will progress really make perfect? Carl Elliott. From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 17:31:02 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 17:31:02 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave References: <000401c3b75f$b191bbc0$f0c7fea9@scerir> Message-ID: <014101c3b767$b9f3c120$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "scerir" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 4:32 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave > "Terry W. Colvin" > > An informal poll of Italians or non-Italians living in Italy > > in 1978 could be interesting. > > There is a page here, in english too > http://www.ufo.it/english/ufo1c.htm Always an interesting subject, esp from the sociological POV. The field is so complex and rife with conspiracy theories (and conspiracies) that even ET wouldn't be able to sort it out. Also a good place to look (esp in the US) for reports on classified experimental aircraft. Remember all those sightings concerning black triangular UFOs? Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 17:51:39 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 09:51:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius In-Reply-To: <04bb01c3b6e4$67ca5d60$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <20031130175139.9605.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > > > --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > > Then why do you need it written into your law if it's so obvious? > > > > Only to instruct statist idiots to keep their hands off. Unlike > you, or > > the UK, we recognise rights as prexisting any constitution or other > > document or contract. If you need a governments permission to be > > Unless you're a theist then you must acknowledge that Rights are a > contract between the individual and society. Untrue. I have, on several occasions on this list, demonstrated that the natural rights of man can be abstracted as Objective Truth via scientific observation from the embedded physical laws of the universe. No extra-universal or super-natural Prime Cause is necessary. Materialists do not need to depend on the vagaries and corruptibility of any social construct to embody the rights they were born with as human animals. > In a democracy that society is represented by the govt. No, it isn't. A government is an implementation of a constitutional contract and no more. That contract does not grant rights, in only recognises rights that pre-existed it and will remain long after that contract has become obsolete. > > > 'allowed' to do something, it isn't a right, it is a privilege, one > > that they can take away at whim. Rights are an inherent part of > > your constitutional being, not a piece of whimsey to be negotiated > > for on sufferance. > > They are always a balance of power. On the contrary, my right to swing my arm ends at your nose only when you have done nothing to provoke the swinging. As a libertarian, I support the non-initiation of force principle, but too many alleged libertarians assume that this is a pacifist principle, it isn't. It demands balanced response to agression or it is useless. Statists, being statists, are, by thought, word, and deed, constantly initiating force against liberty lovers and so any NIF, ZAP, (or whatever you call it) does not strictly apply to statists. The NIF/ZAP requires libertarians respond proportionately every day to transgressions against their natural rights. While a government may refuse to recognise your rights, its refusal does not take them away, their refusal is only a violation against your inherent natural rights, a violation you are obligated to respond to if you are a libertarian. > > > Our Constitution does not give us our rights, it tells the > government > > only what it can do, and no more. That which government is not > > specifically empowered to do are powers retained by the people as > > individuals. This is the difference of a government of citizens and > a > > government of serfs. > > Seems Bush has a rather flexible idea about your 'Rights', since they > can be suspended by govt decree. He hasn't messed with my rights one bit, in fact, he recognises my 2nd amendment rights far better than his predecessor. A government may decide to not recognise my rights, that does not mean they do not exist, since that government never invented them to begin with. What Bush has done is lowered the bar for prosecution of non-Americans who abuse our open society in order to attack us. Any society which would refuse to do so is doomed to defeat at the hands of insurgency. Insurgent infiltrators are, by their deeds, initiating force against free people by their abuse of the liberties recognised by our open society (note, not granted). This initiation of force demands the government, and the individual members, of that society respond proportionately to that agression. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 17:55:26 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 09:55:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus :Expressio unius est exclusioalterius In-Reply-To: <001f01c3b6ea$8dc00500$6400a8c0@brainiac> Message-ID: <20031130175526.92623.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- Olga Bourlin wrote: > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > > Then why do you need it written into your law if it's so obvious? > > > > Only to instruct statist idiots to keep their hands off. > > Mike, why do you need to sound so threatening and resort to name > calling? Who was I calling names? Anybody on this list? Since when is the word "instruct" considered 'threatening'??? Are you declaring that you are a statist intent on attemting to violate and confiscate peoples natural rights? Do you claim that the statist will to power over others is not idiotic? ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 18:10:10 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 10:10:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> --- Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > Here we are again Mike, we have been talking guns before. To restate > my own opinion, nobody intends to take away your right to carry a > weapon for self defense in some specific circumstances, but > pleeeeease don't make such a big issue of it!!! Firstly, I dispute this claim. THere are quite a number of people here in the US, and even a few on this list, who think British victim disarmament laws are just wonderful and need to be copied here, and they have said so a number of times in the past, so much so that the longest thread in this lists history was a massive troll assault by a member of the Dees-Thomases clan (i.e. Southern Poverty Law Center, Violence Policy Center, travel-gate central players, and advisors to the Clinton power faction) against people like myself. > A gun is just a piece of metal that can be used to shoot bullets at > bad guys who want to do bad things to you. Sometimes carrying one > can be a very reasonable thing to do, but a gun is not a central > feature of anyone's identity, especially not a symbol of macho power. I agree entirely, but must say that the myth of the gun proponent as a macho-ist is a lie of the hoplophobic left. Try getting a bit more informed about the real gun owning culture here before jumping to such conclusions. > My point against the > permissive gun laws in the US is that they encourage any unthinking > teenage redneck with sexual problems to carry one and make use of it. Firstly, most states limit the ability of teenagers to obtain and/or use firearms without supervision. Secondly, studies have shown that teenagers who regularly use guns in family activities like hunting, competetive shooting, etc. exhibit far fewer psychological problems and far less criminal tendencies than the ritalin addled, video game and MTV benumbed, goal-less couch potatoes one typically finds in a non-gun owning household. Your stereotype is a myth, and a rather offensive one at that, but I understand that it is one that the yellow-baiting european press likes to promulgate with regularity, because being prejudicial and racist against white country dwellers is entirely okay in leftist circles.... ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 18:15:23 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 10:15:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031130181523.96423.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- Alfio Puglisi wrote: > On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Alex Ramonsky wrote: > > >don't have to. : ) > >I have always wondered this...why do smart people hang out in > >dangerous areas?? I know with 100% certainty that I won't be > >attacked in my local > >city centre at night because I don't go there. Ever. > > It doesn't sound like the best option to me. I go to my local city > centre at night very often, but I'm not attacked. No one is. Girls > walk alone at 3am without a second thought. Alex, being a denizen of Britain, which is under assault nationwide by the criminal class liberated by victim disarmament laws, suffers from a popular notion that criminals are the product of society and that they deserve "a fair go" in getting away with their crimes. > If one wants to avoid > dangers associated with criminals, there are two options: > > - hide in your house and set up a good alarm system. > - live in a low crime area > > Somehow, I prefer the second. I live in a very low crime area, where any woman can visit our city center, or even jog along an unlit jogging path without fear of assault, because criminals know that they cannot trust that such women will not themselves be armed, and they therefore seek out more fruitful pastures where women are prevented from defending themselves, i.e. not in this state. Our crime rates are among the lowest in the world. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From fauxever at sprynet.com Sun Nov 30 18:28:43 2003 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 10:28:43 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns References: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <003c01c3b76f$c8e660e0$6400a8c0@brainiac> From: "Mike Lorrey" > --- Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > My point against the > > permissive gun laws in the US is that they encourage any unthinking > > teenage redneck with sexual problems to carry one and make use of it. > >... Your stereotype is a myth, and a rather offensive one > at that, but I understand that it is one that the yellow-baiting > european press likes to promulgate with regularity, because being > prejudicial and racist against white country dwellers is entirely okay > in leftist circles.... No, not entirely okay in leftist circles. It is harmful and prejudicial to use terms like "redneck," "trailer trash," and the like. I have stated so in the past. I can't see how the use of those terms can be justified. Olga From charlie at antipope.org Sun Nov 30 18:33:16 2003 From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 18:33:16 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 30 Nov 2003, at 16:36, Greg Burch wrote: > How to write an article about transhumanism for the mainstream press: > > 1. Attend a WTA or ExI meeting. > 2. Make note of how geeky the attendees are, especially that most of > them are young, male, lack tans and seem to be socially maladroit. > 3. Mention Eric Drexler and Hans Moravec. [ snip rest of accurate list ] Well, y'know, they used to act the same way towards members of the British Interplanetary Society in the 1930's and 1940's. Or to Verner Von Braun's pals (before the Wehrmacht got involved). And presumably the original home computing clubs came in for the same treatment. Transhumanism is, if anything, a hell of a lot bigger than any of the above -- and it raises profound questions once you get beyond the initial reaction. There are really important legitimate concerns that will occur to the public as transhumanism becomes an item on the political agenda, and they need to be addressed urgently; for example, is transhumanism compatible with democracy, or even with the Enlightenment thesis that humans are of equivalent worth before the law? Yes, these are indeed being addressed in the internal political debates on this list -- but as long as the debates hinge around minutiae of libertarian doctrine they're going to talk right past those people who aren't interested in libertarianism (but who have the ability to yell at their representatives to pass legislation). I fear that when transhumanism goes public, the actual transhumanist movement is doomed to be marginalized (at best) or persecuted (at worst), because the mainstream public will look at it in a very different light. This happened in the 1990's when the internet reacted public consciousness. I was there. I saw what happened. The initial ignorance and pigeonholing wasn't pretty, and neither were the consequences. (Great Firewall of China, RIAA/MPAA persecution of people who use file sharing tools, mad copyright absolutists in the driving seat, government attempts to monitor everything ... and that's just scratching the surface.) Here's a clue: we need good propaganda, and we need it fast. The difference between propaganda and press coverage being that propaganda is made, while press coverage is forced upon you. -- Charlie (working on some propaganda, due from Ace Books in mid-2005) From charlie at antipope.org Sun Nov 30 18:42:30 2003 From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 18:42:30 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 30 Nov 2003, at 18:10, Mike Lorrey wrote: > Firstly, most states limit the ability of teenagers to obtain and/or > use firearms without supervision. Secondly, studies have shown that > teenagers who regularly use guns in family activities like hunting, > competetive shooting, etc. exhibit far fewer psychological problems and > far less criminal tendencies than the ritalin addled, video game and > MTV benumbed, goal-less couch potatoes one typically finds in a non-gun > owning household. Your stereotype is a myth, and a rather offensive one > at that, but I understand that it is one that the yellow-baiting > european press likes to promulgate with regularity, because being > prejudicial and racist against white country dwellers is entirely okay > in leftist circles.... Mike, I've been off this list for nearly two months. I've just come back on. The first post on this topic that I've read is Alfio's, and the second is your response. I'd like to make two observations: Firstly, you appear to be indulging in exactly the same stereotyping that you accuse Alfio of. I make no judgement over whether he's stereotyping too; but you're not doing yourself any favours by making wild over-generalizations about (a) foreigners and (b) people from social backgrounds you don't approve of. Secondly, and this observation applies to Alfio also, a wise man once remarked: "do not waste time arguing with a pig. You won't learn anything useful, the pig won't learn anything useful, and all you'll succeed in doing is annoying your bacon." I see no sign that this debate is being pursued by parties with an honest willingness to adapt or moderate their views on the basis of new evidence. Beliefs about gun ownership seem to be deeply rooted to an almost religious extent, and I think they belong on an extropian list to exactly the same degree as discussions of the relative merits of one invisible holy friend over another. -- Charlie From scerir at libero.it Sun Nov 30 19:06:21 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir at libero.it) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 20:06:21 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave Message-ID: Dirk > Always an interesting subject, esp from the sociological POV. Another page, showing 1978 ufo statistics, Italian regions vs. months, http://www.ufo.it/1978.htm seems interesting: a Santa Claus effect? More interesting,imo, this page http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~umw8f/Barbarians/Sites/Glauberg/Glauberg.html please give a look to the sculptures at the bottom, !, and also to the so called Capestrano warrior. From wingcat at pacbell.net Sun Nov 30 19:17:41 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 11:17:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <16322.20218.479414.206219@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <20031130191741.57253.qmail@web80403.mail.yahoo.com> --- JDP wrote: > That's the typical reaction of course, when people > are first exposed > to the counter-intuitive notion of > washing-as-part-of-preparation. To > be sure, there *are* a few exceptions, things that > you *must* put to > soak and have no time to wash (especially true if > you are a bad cook > and things burn in the pan and get stuck). But in > *most* cases, first > you can wash a lot *before* you have finished the > preparation, then > the last things you can wash in seconds if you learn > how to do it. Slight improvement: especially when preparing a complex meal, there are often moments where you must let things bake/simmer/marinate/whatever. By this point, you will usually have accumulated certain items (ingredient packaging, if nothing else) that should eventually be cleaned or disposed of. Use those moments to do so. It's kind of like threads sharing time in a single-CPU system, where you're the CPU. From wingcat at pacbell.net Sun Nov 30 19:41:15 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 11:41:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Funeral as an "act of conspicuous consumption" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031130194115.76042.qmail@web80410.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, randy wrote: > > Recent science seems to show that cannabalism was > common in the past: > > > "The question is why has cannibalism, by and > large, stopped? > > Couldn't the explanation be as simple as the fact > that most > of the people who practiced it have died out due to > prion > diseases (such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)? Simpler possibility: those who ate the dead might not always have waited for death...or encouraged it, as a personal food source at the expense of the community. Natural selection does the rest, to the detriment of the community with fewer members. (Parallel: witness the spread of "thou shalt not kill" memes, at least as applied to members of one's own community.) From xllb at rogers.com Sun Nov 30 20:08:07 2003 From: xllb at rogers.com (xllb at rogers.com) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:08:07 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave Message-ID: <20031130200807.UPAK389421.fep03-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com@localhost> "Terry W. Colvin" > An informal poll of Italians or non-Italians living in Italy > in 1978 could be interesting. I expect that we will find both extraterrestrial life and intelligence as our scope of reference grows and we broaden our definition of both life and intelligence. Nevertheless in Italy visions are hardly unheard of, pun intended. xllb > > From: "scerir" > Date: 2003/11/30 Sun AM 11:32:47 EST > To: "ExI chat list" > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave > > "Terry W. Colvin" > > An informal poll of Italians or non-Italians living in Italy > > in 1978 could be interesting. > > There is a page here, in english too > http://www.ufo.it/english/ufo1c.htm > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > "Dogma blinds." "Hell is overkill." From etheric at comcast.net Sun Nov 30 20:11:49 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 12:11:49 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns ad nauseum References: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <003001c3b77e$3009d960$0200a8c0@etheric> Hey Charlie Firearms are as an extropian topic as martial arts or other personal safely enhancing strategies, how that for an asssertion! Obviously optimal living requires one to recognize and respond to dangers in ones environment, its hard to live forever while ignoring your personal safety, personal firearms are only one option (for those who are "allowed") on a defensive force continuum, down a long list of "if / then scenarios" "Beliefs about gun ownership seem to be deeply rooted to an almost religious extent". I would dispose of all (my) guns tomorrow If I had something more effective for this option strategy on the defensive force continuum, say like a star trek phazer set on stun. FWIW I have only recently come to an appreciation of guns after being strongly anti, on the basis of new evidence I "converted" after a long discussion with my wife, she illustrated the merits and my ignorance of the issue. Again this thread has unwittingly ran down a rabbit hole and has become narrow casted on the gun issue, I repeat I find the core tenants of Consensus party positions generally dis-empowering to the individual, quite repulsively so. With that I have no more energy to play point counterpoint on this issue. R Coyote patron saint of trailerpark transhumanism > Firstly, you appear to be indulging in exactly the same stereotyping > that you accuse Alfio of. I make no judgement over whether he's > stereotyping too; but you're not doing yourself any favours by making > wild over-generalizations about (a) foreigners and (b) people from > social backgrounds you don't approve of. > > Secondly, and this observation applies to Alfio also, a wise man once > remarked: "do not waste time arguing with a pig. You won't learn > anything useful, the pig won't learn anything useful, and all you'll > succeed in doing is annoying your bacon." I see no sign that this > debate is being pursued by parties with an honest willingness to adapt > or moderate their views on the basis of new evidence. Beliefs about gun > ownership seem to be deeply rooted to an almost religious extent, and I > think they belong on an extropian list to exactly the same degree as > discussions of the relative merits of one invisible holy friend over > another. > > > > -- Charlie > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 20:10:40 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 20:10:40 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave References: Message-ID: <01bf01c3b77e$07b76e50$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: To: "dirk" ; "extropy-chat" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 7:06 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave > Dirk > > Always an interesting subject, esp from the sociological POV. > > Another page, showing 1978 ufo statistics, > Italian regions vs. months, > http://www.ufo.it/1978.htm > seems interesting: > a Santa Claus effect? Or holiday effect, where people are not inside at work. > More interesting,imo, this page > http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~umw8f/Barbarians/Sites/Glauberg/Glauberg.html > please give a look to the sculptures at the bottom, !, > and also to the so called Capestrano warrior. Why? I don't see anything special. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 20:23:29 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 20:23:29 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 References: Message-ID: <01d901c3b77f$d7b85fa0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charlie Stross" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 6:33 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 > > On 30 Nov 2003, at 16:36, Greg Burch wrote: > > > How to write an article about transhumanism for the mainstream press: > > > > 1. Attend a WTA or ExI meeting. > > 2. Make note of how geeky the attendees are, especially that most of > > them are young, male, lack tans and seem to be socially maladroit. > > 3. Mention Eric Drexler and Hans Moravec. > > [ snip rest of accurate list ] > > Well, y'know, they used to act the same way towards members of the > British Interplanetary Society in the 1930's and 1940's. Or to Verner > Von Braun's pals (before the Wehrmacht got involved). And presumably > the original home computing clubs came in for the same treatment. > Transhumanism is, if anything, a hell of a lot bigger than any of the > above -- and it raises profound questions once you get beyond the > initial reaction. > > There are really important legitimate concerns that will occur to the > public as transhumanism becomes an item on the political agenda, and > they need to be addressed urgently; for example, is transhumanism > compatible with democracy, or even with the Enlightenment thesis that > humans are of equivalent worth before the law? Yes, these are indeed > being addressed in the internal political debates on this list -- but > as long as the debates hinge around minutiae of libertarian doctrine > they're going to talk right past those people who aren't interested in > libertarianism (but who have the ability to yell at their > representatives to pass legislation). I fear that when transhumanism > goes public, the actual transhumanist movement is doomed to be > marginalized (at best) or persecuted (at worst), because the mainstream > public will look at it in a very different light. > > This happened in the 1990's when the internet reacted public > consciousness. I was there. I saw what happened. The initial ignorance > and pigeonholing wasn't pretty, and neither were the consequences. > (Great Firewall of China, RIAA/MPAA persecution of people who use file > sharing tools, mad copyright absolutists in the driving seat, > government attempts to monitor everything ... and that's just > scratching the surface.) > > Here's a clue: we need good propaganda, and we need it fast. The > difference between propaganda and press coverage being that propaganda > is made, while press coverage is forced upon you. Well, you nerds and misfits have done a good job but Transhumanism is now too important to be left to people like you. This is now a serious matter for the political, military and intellectual elite, so kindly take yourself off to some other loony fad please while your betters (who actually know about the real world) take it from your amateurish hands now that you are out of your depth. There - I've written the epitath for any major technological innovation, and Transhumanism will be the biggest so far. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 20:25:50 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 20:25:50 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <20031130181523.96423.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <01df01c3b780$2a939dc0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 6:15 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > > --- Alfio Puglisi wrote: > > On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Alex Ramonsky wrote: > > > > >don't have to. : ) > > >I have always wondered this...why do smart people hang out in > > >dangerous areas?? I know with 100% certainty that I won't be > > >attacked in my local > > >city centre at night because I don't go there. Ever. > > > > It doesn't sound like the best option to me. I go to my local city > > centre at night very often, but I'm not attacked. No one is. Girls > > walk alone at 3am without a second thought. > > Alex, being a denizen of Britain, which is under assault nationwide by > the criminal class liberated by victim disarmament laws, suffers from a > popular notion that criminals are the product of society and that they > deserve "a fair go" in getting away with their crimes. Live here do you? While our crime is high our murder rate is only a fraction of that of the US. Ditto rapes. And innocent people who get shot in the course of a crime still make national headlines here. Do they in the US? Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 20:27:23 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 20:27:23 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns References: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <01e301c3b780$5df6d420$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 6:10 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Guns > > --- Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > Here we are again Mike, we have been talking guns before. To restate > > my own opinion, nobody intends to take away your right to carry a > > weapon for self defense in some specific circumstances, but > > pleeeeease don't make such a big issue of it!!! > > Firstly, I dispute this claim. THere are quite a number of people here > in the US, and even a few on this list, who think British victim > disarmament laws are just wonderful and need to be copied here, and I prefer the Singapore version - discharge an illegal weapon in public - get hanged. Seems to keep guncrime under control very effectively even though the citizenry is 'disarmed'. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From scerir at libero.it Sun Nov 30 20:36:12 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir at libero.it) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 21:36:12 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave Message-ID: > Why? I don't see anything special. > Dirk just strange people http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~umw8f/Barbarians/Sites/Glauberg/head.jpg http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~umw8f/Barbarians/Sites/Glauberg/chieti.jpg or strange sculptors! s. From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 30 20:46:18 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:46:18 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave References: Message-ID: <014801c3b783$04045f20$c5994a43@texas.net> > http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~umw8f/Barbarians/Sites/Glauberg/chieti.jpg Just the Pied Piper as Mouseketeer. Damien Broderick [the "flying triangles" are better mousetraps] From gregburch at gregburch.net Sun Nov 30 20:48:22 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:48:22 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: <01e301c3b780$5df6d420$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: Dirk, I assume you're relatively new to this list. Some of us have very strong feelings about what we consider to be an important right to keep and bear arms. In the past, inflammatory remarks by newcomers have set off a blaze of flames that have overwhelmed the list's good content. Please consider taking whatever discussion of this issue you feel is worthwhile off-list. Thank you. Greg Burch, Vice-President, Extropy Institute http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org]On Behalf Of Dirk Bruere > Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 2:27 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Guns > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mike Lorrey" > To: "ExI chat list" > Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 6:10 PM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Guns > > > > > > --- Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote: > > > Here we are again Mike, we have been talking guns before. To restate > > > my own opinion, nobody intends to take away your right to carry a > > > weapon for self defense in some specific circumstances, but > > > pleeeeease don't make such a big issue of it!!! > > > > Firstly, I dispute this claim. THere are quite a number of people here > > in the US, and even a few on this list, who think British victim > > disarmament laws are just wonderful and need to be copied here, and > > I prefer the Singapore version - discharge an illegal weapon in > public - get > hanged. > Seems to keep guncrime under control very effectively even though the > citizenry is 'disarmed'. > > Dirk > > The Consensus:- > The political party for the new millennium > http://www.theconsensus.org > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From twodeel at jornada.org Sun Nov 30 20:52:34 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 12:52:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > Firstly, most states limit the ability of teenagers to obtain and/or use > firearms without supervision. Perhaps. However, in both Nevada and Utah, when I was 16, I was able to purchase rifles and ammunition with no adult supervision. This was during the middle of the Clinton administration, too. Handguns, though, were not legally available to me until I was 18 or 21 -- I forget which. > Secondly, studies have shown that teenagers who regularly use guns in > family activities like hunting, competetive shooting, etc. exhibit far > fewer psychological problems and far less criminal tendencies than the > ritalin addled, video game and MTV benumbed, goal-less couch potatoes > one typically finds in a non-gun owning household. I'd like to see a cite for any part of this. > Your stereotype is a myth, and a rather offensive one at that, And yours isn't? My initial impression of you was as a pretty informed guy, Mike, but you're losing more and more credibility with every post. Stating that gun-less households usually have Ritalin-using goalless children is just bizarre hyperbole. You sure aren't going to convince non-libertarians with this kind of thing. From jacques at dtext.com Sun Nov 30 21:04:29 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:04:29 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness In-Reply-To: <20031130191741.57253.qmail@web80403.mail.yahoo.com> References: <16322.20218.479414.206219@localhost.localdomain> <20031130191741.57253.qmail@web80403.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <16330.23389.637199.899914@localhost.localdomain> Adrian Tymes a ?crit (30.11.2003/11:17) : > --- JDP wrote: > > That's the typical reaction of course, when people > > are first exposed > > to the counter-intuitive notion of > > washing-as-part-of-preparation. To > > be sure, there *are* a few exceptions, things that > > you *must* put to > > soak and have no time to wash (especially true if > > you are a bad cook > > and things burn in the pan and get stuck). But in > > *most* cases, first > > you can wash a lot *before* you have finished the > > preparation, then > > the last things you can wash in seconds if you learn > > how to do it. > > Slight improvement: especially when preparing a > complex meal, there are often moments where you must > let things bake/simmer/marinate/whatever. By this > point, you will usually have accumulated certain items > (ingredient packaging, if nothing else) that should > eventually be cleaned or disposed of. Use those > moments to do so. It's kind of like threads sharing > time in a single-CPU system, where you're the CPU. Absolutely! Thanks Adrian, it's good to feel understood :-) In fact, over time I think I developped a kind of very precise synchronization, so that I am almost never idle when doing the preparation, and I am either washing something, or unpacking something, or cutting something I will cook, or mixing what is being cooked, or seeing how it tastes, etc. Very often, when you cook several things in the same pan, they benefit from differentiated durations of cooking. If I fry, say, zucchini, carrots and onions together, I first put carrots, then zucchini, then onions. This adds more small time slots for cleaning, throwing things out, starting the cooking of something else on another fire, etc. (You're really master of the art when you can add to all this a tricky conversation with a potential sexual partner that you have just met, or with an intellectually sophisticated person arguing about some novel philosophical point -- and if the same person is both, then that's really spectacular.) Which brings us back to time-management, prioritizing, and synchronization, all integral to personal effectiveness. I do it in an intuitive, experience-based way in meal preparation (though I use a timer for pasta or rice for example), while I often do it with written planning when planning my day or longer periods (if anyone wants concrete advice about this I can tell my own way of doing it). One of the reasons for this difference is that meal preparation has built-in time pressure as things should not be overcooked, and you are hungry anyway, while in longer and more complex activity, the risk of drifting in perfectionism or digression is larger. Let me close by saying that the intuitive synchronization for meal preparation came with time and experience, and the will and interest to make it better and better every time. I used to take unreasonable amounts of times to prepare a meal, to be utterly unable to talk with someone at the same time (still not obvious, and can make you forget to put salt, neglect something that has just been said to you, or other similar potentially catastrophic blunders) -- and have a devastated kitchen afterwards. Jacques From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 21:08:42 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 13:08:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: <01e301c3b780$5df6d420$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <20031130210842.84880.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > > > Firstly, I dispute this claim. THere are quite a number of people > here > > in the US, and even a few on this list, who think British victim > > disarmament laws are just wonderful and need to be copied here, and > > I prefer the Singapore version - discharge an illegal weapon in > public - get hanged. > Seems to keep guncrime under control very effectively even though the > citizenry is 'disarmed'. At least now we know you are no libertarian. No real libertarian would espouse admiration for the Singapore government. Real libertarians look at gun rights as a litmus test of any society, whether the residents are considered citizens with rights, or serfs with privileges. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From charlie at antipope.org Sun Nov 30 21:25:38 2003 From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 21:25:38 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 In-Reply-To: <01d901c3b77f$d7b85fa0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> References: <01d901c3b77f$d7b85fa0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: On 30 Nov 2003, at 20:23, Dirk Bruere wrote: > Well, you nerds and misfits have done a good job but Transhumanism is > now > too important to be left to people like you. This is now a serious > matter > for the political, military and intellectual elite, so kindly take > yourself > off to some other loony fad please while your betters (who actually > know > about the real world) take it from your amateurish hands now that you > are > out of your depth. Exactly my point. Insert [XXXX] for "Transhumanism", then replace [XXXX] with any other snowballing phenomenon of the industrial age and it's a perfect fit. That's what happened to the internet. It's what happened to the starry-eyed followers of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. It's what the music industry wants to do to the artists without whom they wouldn't even exist. It's the rallying cry of every group of acquisitive scions of the aristocracy as they move in on a promising new field that has finally grown large enough to warrant the effort of breaking it to harness. I find the nexus of libertarianism with transhumanism fascinating these days because the libertarians are, for the most part, outsiders to mainstream society, and therefore handicapped when it becomes time to bring to bear on a project the large resources that the mainstream has in its power to grant. Transhumanism is resource-intensive; it's not something you can cook up in your kitchen, at least in the first iteration of the technologies. It therefore seems to me that the first overt users of intelligence amplification, uploading, genetic or proteomic enhancements, prosthetic organs, or whatnot, will not fit the political profile of the exi-chat list members. And how they use the tools may bear little relation to how we would *like* to see them used. (My pet phobia for this decade: the Panopticon Singularity. Now if only Whole Earth Review would get unstuck from their current fiscal crisis and publish their special singularity issue, I could maybe repost to this list the full-length, un-shortened version of my contrarian essay for WER ...) -- Charlie From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 21:29:32 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 13:29:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: <01df01c3b780$2a939dc0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <20031130212932.26771.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > Alex, being a denizen of Britain, which is under assault nationwide > by > > the criminal class liberated by victim disarmament laws, suffers > from a > > popular notion that criminals are the product of society and that > they > > deserve "a fair go" in getting away with their crimes. > > > Live here do you? > While our crime is high our murder rate is only a fraction of that of > the US. > Ditto rapes. > And innocent people who get shot in the course of a crime still make > national headlines here. Do they in the US? England -- Licenses have been required for rifles and handguns since 1920, and for shotguns since 1967. A decade ago semi-automatic and pump-action center-fire rifles, and all handguns except single- shot .22s, were prohibited. The .22s were banned in 1997. Shotguns must be registered and semi-automatic shotguns that can hold more than two shells must be licensed. Despite a near ban on private ownership of firearms, "English crime rates as measured in both victim surveys and police statistics have all risen since 1981. . . . In 1995 the English robbery rate was 1.4 times higher than America`s. . . . the English assault rate was more than double America`s." All told, "Whether measured by surveys of crime victims or by police statistics, serious crime rates are not generally higher in the United States than England." (Bureau of Justice Statistics, "Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and in Wales, 1981-1996," 10/98.) An English doctor is suspected of murdering more than 200 people, many times the number killed in the gun-related crimes used to justify the most recent restrictions. "A June 2000 CBS News report proclaimed Great Britain `one of the most violent urban societies in the Western world.` Declared Dan Rather: `This summer, thousands of Americans will travel to Britain expecting a civilized island free from crime and ugliness. . . (But now) the U.K. has a crime problem . . . worse than ours.`" (David Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen, "Britain: From Bad to Worse," America`s First Freedom, 3/01, p. 26.) Street crime increased 47% between 1999 and 2000 (John Steele, "Crime on streets of London doubles," London Daily Telegraph, Feb. 29, 2000.) See also www.2ndlawlib.org/journals/okslip.html, www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment071800c.html, and www.nraila.org/research/19990716-BillofRightsCivilRights-030.html. While America is quite different from certain countries in terms of firearms laws, we are just as different from those countries in other respects which have a much greater influence on crime rates. Attorney David Kopel explains, "There is little evidence that foreign gun statutes, with at best a mixed record in their own countries, would succeed in the United States. Contrary to the claims of the American gun-control movement, gun control does not deserve credit for the low crime rates in Britain, Japan, or other nations. Despite strict and sometimes draconian gun controls in other nations, guns remain readily available on the criminal black market. . . . The experiences of (England, Japan, Canada, and the United States) point to social control as far more important than gun control. Gun control (in foreign countries) validates other authoritarian features of the society. Exaltation of the police and submission to authority are values, which, when internally adopted by the citizenry, keep people out of trouble with the law. The most important effect of gun control in Japan and the Commonwealth is that it reinforces the message that citizens must be obedient to the government." (The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy: Should America adopt the gun controls of other democracies?, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1992, pp. 431.) Kopel notes that crime is also suppressed in some foreign countries by law enforcement and criminal justice policies that would run afoul of civil rights protections in the U.S. Constitution and which the American people would not accept. "Foreign gun control comes along with searches and seizures, and with many other restrictions on civil liberties too intrusive for America," Kopel observes. "Foreign gun control . . . postulates an authoritarian philosophy of government and society fundamentally at odds with the individualist and egalitarian American ethos. In the United States, the people give the law to government, not, as in almost every other country, the other way around." Following are details for two countries which anti-gun activists often compare to the U.S.: Parliament increasingly has given the police power to stop and search vehicles as well as pedestrians. Police may arrest any person they "reasonably" suspect supports an illegal organization. The grand jury, an ancient common law institution, was abolished in 1933. Civil jury trials have been abolished in all cases except libel, and criminal jury trials are rare. . . . While America has the Miranda rules, Britain allows police to interrogate suspects who have asked that interrogation stop, and allows the police to keep defense lawyers away from suspects under interrogation for limited periods. Britain allows evidence which has been derived from a coerced confession to be used in court. Wiretaps do not need judicial approval and it is unlawful in a British court to point out the fact that a police wiretap was illegal." (Kopel, 1992, pp. 101-102.) Recently, London law enforcement authorities began installing cameras overlooking selected intersections in the city`s business district, to observe passers-by on the sidewalks. The British Home Office has introduced "`Anti-Social Behaviour Orders` -- special court orders intended to deal with people who cannot be proven to have committed a crime, but whom the police want to restrict anyway. Behaviour Orders can, among other things, prohibit a person from visiting a particular street or premises, set a curfew or lead to a person`s eviction from his home. Violation of a Behaviour Order can carry a prison sentence of up to five years. Prime Minister Tony Blair is now proposing that the government be allowed to confine people proactively, based on fears of their potential danger to society." (Kopel, et al., 2001, p. 27.) "The British government frequently bans books on national security grounds. In addition, England`s libel laws tend to favor those who bring suit against a free press. Prior restraint of speech in the United States is allowed only in the most urgent of circumstances. In England, the government may apply for a prior restraint of speech ex parte, asking a court to censor a newspaper without the newspaper even having notice or the opportunity to present an argument. . . . Free speech in Great Britain is also constrained by the Official Secrets Act, which outlaws the unauthorized receipt of information from any government agency, and allows the government to forbid publication of any `secret` it pleases. . . . The act was expanded in 1920 and again in 1989 -- times when gun controls were also expanded." (Kopel, 1991, pp. 99-102.) Britain Now Crime Capital of the West http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=1792 7/15/2002 England and Wales now top the Western world`s crime league, according to United Nations research. The UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute reveals that people in England and Wales experience more crime per head than people in the 17 other developed countries analyzed in the survey. The findings are expected to cause further embarrassment to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has pledged to have street crime under control by September. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=314832 British Gun Crime Soars After Handgun Ban 2/25/2002 Gun crime has almost trebled in London during the past year and is soaring in other British cities, according to Home Office figures obtained by The Telegraph. The new gun crime figures also show that handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane massacre of 1996 and the ban on the handguns that followed. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/02/24/nguns24.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/02/24/por_right.html ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From natasha at natasha.cc Sun Nov 30 23:57:41 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:57:41 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 In-Reply-To: References: <01d901c3b77f$d7b85fa0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <01d901c3b77f$d7b85fa0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031130155510.02696d00@pop.earthlink.net> At 09:25 PM 11/30/03 +0000, Charlie wrote: It therefore seems to me that the first overt users of intelligence amplification, uploading, genetic or proteomic enhancements, prosthetic organs, or whatnot, will not fit the political profile of the exi-chat list members. What is the political profile of the ExI-chat list? Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From extropy at unreasonable.com Sun Nov 30 21:52:20 2003 From: extropy at unreasonable.com (David Lubkin) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 16:52:20 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Personal effectiveness Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031130165208.02536df8@mail.comcast.net> At 10:04 PM 11/30/2003 +0100, JDP wrote: >Absolutely! Thanks Adrian, it's good to feel understood :-) In fact, >over time I think I developped a kind of very precise synchronization, I love the effortless gracefulness I feel when I am cooking something that has to be exactly right and I can do another task and have it fold in precisely. I'm a cook not a chef, so the effortless grace only comes from dozens of repetitions. For example, when I make kasha, the kasha needs to be mixed with a beaten egg and the frying pan needs to be just hot enough for water to dance. I beat the egg and mix the kasha while the pan is heating, with seconds to spare. Once the pan is hot, there are nine steps to complete in about two minutes. Every time I do this, I see what else I can find time for, like soaking the mixing bowl or making coffee. I think I enjoy this because my usual moments of elegance are cerebral not physical. I faintly recall threads from a few years ago: a few extropians stated their desire to become transhuman in part to be capable of superhuman physical feats or activities. And certainly there have been expressions of current joy and satisfaction from physical pursuits. (Kendra/dancing, Amara/biking, Russell/bujinkan, and Simon/banjo come to mind.) As opposed, perhaps, to those who spoke here of sexuality as an annoying distraction from their goals. -- David Lubkin. From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 30 22:03:05 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 16:03:05 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] again with the gun stats References: <20031130212932.26771.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <018801c3b78d$be9651e0$c5994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 3:29 PM > British Gun Crime Soars After Handgun Ban > 2/25/2002 > Gun crime has almost trebled in London during the past year The details: < During the 10 months to January 31, there were 939 crimes involving firearms in the Metropolitan Police area compared with 322 in the 10 months to the end of January, 2001 - an almost three-fold increase. > Wow! From 300+ to <1000! Shocking. Note that these are not deaths. How does this compare with some other places of comparable size? Inner London in 2001: 2,765,975, so maybe roughly equivalent of US population would be 94,000 armed crimes; I can't be bothered googling very far into this, but http://www.vpcla.org/facts_firearms.htm According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) in 2000, 533,470 victims of serious violent crimes (rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault) stated that they faced an offender with a firearm. - Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002 I assume this means the offender held the gun. From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 22:18:42 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:18:42 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns References: Message-ID: <024701c3b78f$e9b2c780$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg Burch" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 8:48 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Guns > Dirk, I assume you're relatively new to this list. Some of us have very strong feelings about what we consider to be an important right to keep and bear arms. In the past, inflammatory remarks by newcomers have set off a blaze of flames that have overwhelmed the list's good content. Please consider taking whatever discussion of this issue you feel is worthwhile off-list. You mean 'don't annoy the gun nuts'? Like they say in the playground - he started it. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From charlie at antipope.org Sun Nov 30 22:19:59 2003 From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:19:59 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Humanity 2.0 In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031130155510.02696d00@pop.earthlink.net> References: <01d901c3b77f$d7b85fa0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <01d901c3b77f$d7b85fa0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> <5.2.0.9.0.20031130155510.02696d00@pop.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <560A5650-2383-11D8-9B19-000A95B18568@antipope.org> On 30 Nov 2003, at 23:57, Natasha Vita-More wrote: > At 09:25 PM 11/30/03 +0000, Charlie wrote: > > ?It therefore seems to me that the first overt users of intelligence > amplification, uploading, genetic or proteomic enhancements, > prosthetic organs, or whatnot, will not fit the political profile of > the exi-chat list members. > > What is the political profile of the ExI-chat list? ? Markedly more libertarian than mainstream political culture in the USA, I'd say. Making a random wild-assed guess: I'd say 30% of the list subscribers are vocal Libertarians, and at least another 30% have Libertarian leanings. (Being overtly *anti*-Libertarian is a good way to get mobbed off the list.) Comparing this to the Libertarian Party showing of -- what was it, 1-2%? -- at the last Presidential election, and the notable lack of Libertarian senators and congressmen, the conclusion I draw is that either the silent Libertarian majority overwhelmingly vote for non-Libertarian parties (I leave the charicatures to your imagination) or the majority is rather less Libertarian than this list. But that's an attempt to define the exi-chat list in terms of what it *isn't*. Negatives are easy: I'd guess a typical Exi subscriber is likely to be vehemently opposed to the sort of views typified by http://www.netfuture.org/ (which I read because I need the provocation). In terms of what it *is*, the extropian principles spring to mind, but I'd also say that not all members buy all principles. (Hence the ongoing chewing over of long-dead issues.) I for one don't believe that extropianism is intrinsically libertarian, or vice versa -- but I recognize that such a meta-belief isn't shared by all list subscribers. I *do* know that on occasion the list has been home to every shade of opinion from Trotskyites to extreme Conservatives. The one positive assertion I'll stick my neck out on is that the vast majority of subscribers to this list -- including the Libertarians and the Trotskyites, on the same side of the barricades -- do *not* want to see a future in which the technologies of individual self-improvement are withheld from them -- either banned or licensed and monopolized -- by institutions to which they have no access (be they governmental, corporate, religious, or other types of monopoly). (Does anyone in the house not want at least the possibility of being able to boost their intelligence, life expectancy, or health? If so, you've just proven me wrong ...) -- Charlie From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 22:21:19 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:21:19 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns References: <20031130210842.84880.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <025201c3b790$4747fe60$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 9:08 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Guns > > --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > > > > > Firstly, I dispute this claim. THere are quite a number of people > > here > > > in the US, and even a few on this list, who think British victim > > > disarmament laws are just wonderful and need to be copied here, and > > > > I prefer the Singapore version - discharge an illegal weapon in > > public - get hanged. > > Seems to keep guncrime under control very effectively even though the > > citizenry is 'disarmed'. > > At least now we know you are no libertarian. No real libertarian would > espouse admiration for the Singapore government. Real libertarians look > at gun rights as a litmus test of any society, whether the residents > are considered citizens with rights, or serfs with privileges. Real Libertarians demand their own nuclear deterrents. Right - anything less would be infringing their God given freedom. If you disagree with this you are obviously a lefty pinko commie stateist fascist etc Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sun Nov 30 22:22:43 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 23:22:43 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: <20031130181523.96423.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20031130181523.96423.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: You are twisting my words. I'm not entering the gun debate. In fact, the low crime situation I'm talking about is happening in a nation where guns are outlawed more or less like Britain - choosing a high or low crime area is orthogonal to the gun ownership rate. Then, one may debate why the crime rate is low. Ciao, Alfio On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > >--- Alfio Puglisi wrote: >> On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Alex Ramonsky wrote: >> >> >don't have to. : ) >> >I have always wondered this...why do smart people hang out in >> >dangerous areas?? I know with 100% certainty that I won't be >> >attacked in my local >> >city centre at night because I don't go there. Ever. >> >> It doesn't sound like the best option to me. I go to my local city >> centre at night very often, but I'm not attacked. No one is. Girls >> walk alone at 3am without a second thought. > >Alex, being a denizen of Britain, which is under assault nationwide by >the criminal class liberated by victim disarmament laws, suffers from a >popular notion that criminals are the product of society and that they >deserve "a fair go" in getting away with their crimes. > >> If one wants to avoid >> dangers associated with criminals, there are two options: >> >> - hide in your house and set up a good alarm system. >> - live in a low crime area >> >> Somehow, I prefer the second. > >I live in a very low crime area, where any woman can visit our city >center, or even jog along an unlit jogging path without fear of >assault, because criminals know that they cannot trust that such women >will not themselves be armed, and they therefore seek out more fruitful >pastures where women are prevented from defending themselves, i.e. not >in this state. Our crime rates are among the lowest in the world. > >===== >Mike Lorrey >"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." > - Gen. John Stark >"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." > - Mike Lorrey >Do not label me, I am an ism of one... >Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com > >__________________________________ >Do you Yahoo!? >Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now >http://companion.yahoo.com/ >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 22:23:11 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:23:11 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus References: <20031130212932.26771.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <025d01c3b790$8abb2500$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 9:29 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] The Consensus > > --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Mike Lorrey" > > > Alex, being a denizen of Britain, which is under assault nationwide > > by > > > the criminal class liberated by victim disarmament laws, suffers > > from a > > > popular notion that criminals are the product of society and that > > they > > > deserve "a fair go" in getting away with their crimes. > > > > > > Live here do you? > > While our crime is high our murder rate is only a fraction of that of > > the US. > > Ditto rapes. > > And innocent people who get shot in the course of a crime still make > > national headlines here. Do they in the US? > > England -- Licenses have been required for rifles and handguns since > 1920, and for shotguns since 1967. A decade ago semi-automatic and > pump-action center-fire rifles, and all handguns except single- shot > .22s, were prohibited. The .22s were banned in 1997. Shotguns must be > registered and semi-automatic shotguns that can hold more than two > shells must be licensed. Despite a near ban on private ownership of > firearms, "English crime rates as measured in both victim surveys and > police statistics have all risen since 1981. . . . In 1995 the English And were rising long before 1981. BTW, ever wonder why in a society so violent as ours we don't translate that into your style of murder rate? Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Sun Nov 30 22:26:07 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:26:07 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns ad nauseum Message-ID: <3FCA6E7F.8060801@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> On Sun Nov 30, 2003 01:11 pm R Coyote wrote: > Obviously optimal living requires one to recognize and respond to > dangers in ones environment, its hard to live forever while ignoring > your personal safety, personal firearms are only one option (for > those who are "allowed") on a defensive force continuum, down a long > list of "if / then scenarios" > So, your reason for having guns is to help towards a longer lifespan. That's OK. That's your choice. But do you realize that the whole macho male lifestyle shortens your lifespan by about 5.5 years? See: "According to statistics from 1997 to 1999, Canadian women have a life expectancy of 81.4 years compared with 75.9 years for men. When deaths from preventable causes are excluded, however, life expectancy for women is 73.5 years, slightly less than the average of 73.9 for men. "It's not biological advantage that makes the difference, it's the kind of habits that people have that make the difference." For example, between 15 and 24 years, the male-to-female mortality ratio peaks because of a sudden surge in male deaths with the onset of puberty. During this period, men are three times more likely to die than women, and most of the male fatalities are caused by reckless behavior or violence. Motor vehicle accidents are the most common cause of death for males in this age group, followed by homicide, suicide, cancer and drowning. If men could control their reckless, stupid or violent behavior, they would live longer. BillK From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sun Nov 30 22:27:51 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 23:27:51 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: References: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Charlie Stross wrote: > >On 30 Nov 2003, at 18:10, Mike Lorrey wrote: >>[...] >> owning household. Your stereotype is a myth, and a rather offensive one >> at that, but I understand that it is one that the yellow-baiting >> european press likes to promulgate with regularity, because being >> prejudicial and racist against white country dwellers is entirely okay >> in leftist circles.... > >[...] >Firstly, you appear to be indulging in exactly the same stereotyping >that you accuse Alfio of. I make no judgement over whether he's >stereotyping too; but you're not doing yourself any favours by making >wild over-generalizations about (a) foreigners and (b) people from >social backgrounds you don't approve of. Actually, it doesn't seem a response to my post. There's another one somewhere else. >Secondly, and this observation applies to Alfio also, a wise man once >remarked: "do not waste time arguing with a pig. You won't learn >anything useful, the pig won't learn anything useful, and all you'll >succeed in doing is annoying your bacon." I see no sign that this >debate is being pursued by parties with an honest willingness to adapt >or moderate their views on the basis of new evidence. Beliefs about gun >ownership seem to be deeply rooted to an almost religious extent, and I >think they belong on an extropian list to exactly the same degree as >discussions of the relative merits of one invisible holy friend over >another. Taken care of it in my second answer. BTW, I agree with you that people are unlikely to change position, and that a debate is doomed to be sterile. Ciao, Alfio From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 30 22:28:55 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 16:28:55 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] again with the gun stats References: <20031130212932.26771.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> <018801c3b78d$be9651e0$c5994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <01b101c3b791$595fd720$c5994a43@texas.net> I wrote hurriedly: > < During the 10 months to January 31, there were 939 crimes involving > firearms in the Metropolitan Police area compared with 322 in the 10 months > to the end of January, 2001 - an almost three-fold increase. > > > Wow! From 300+ to <1000! Shocking. > > Note that these are not [all] deaths. How does this compare with some other places > of comparable size? Inner London in 2001: 2,765,975, so maybe roughly > equivalent of US population would be 94,000 armed crimes A tad more tells me: http://www.met.police.uk/about/index.htm < Today, the Metropolitan Police Service employs 29,278 officers, 11,368 police staff, 609 traffic wardens and 865 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), and, since the realignment of police boundaries in April 2000, it covers an area of 620 square miles and a population of 7.2million. (figures updated: August 2003) > So maybe the more accurate comparison with the US data would be an equivalent of 36,600 armed crimes (cf. 533,000, or roughly one fifteenth), if I've done my rough and ready add-ups right. The Brits on the list will surely know in better detail. From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sun Nov 30 22:29:26 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 23:29:26 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Amara Graps wrote: > "Terry W. Colvin" : >>An informal poll of Italians or non-Italians living in Italy in 1978 could >>be interesting. Sorry, I was too young in 1978, but my parents don't remember anything significant (the fact that they were living in Canada in that year may contribute a bit :-)) Ciao, Alfio From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Sun Nov 30 22:32:15 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 23:32:15 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] FWD (UFO UpDate) Re: 1978 Italian Wave In-Reply-To: <20031130200807.UPAK389421.fep03-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com@localhost> References: <20031130200807.UPAK389421.fep03-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com@localhost> Message-ID: On Sun, 30 Nov 2003 xllb at rogers.com wrote: >Nevertheless in Italy visions are hardly unheard of, pun intended. Yeah, but no one has ever seen a flying Madonna or Jesus. They usually limit themselves to a waving hand and maybe a tear or two. After two thousands years, one would expect somethin more substantial :-) Ciao, Alfio From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 22:34:24 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:34:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031130223424.82816.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> --- Don Dartfield wrote: > On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > > Secondly, studies have shown that teenagers who regularly use guns > in > > family activities like hunting, competetive shooting, etc. exhibit > far > > fewer psychological problems and far less criminal tendencies than > the > > ritalin addled, video game and MTV benumbed, goal-less couch > potatoes > > one typically finds in a non-gun owning household. > > I'd like to see a cite for any part of this. Youth Violence Linked To The Media 7/26/2002 Four national health organizations have linked youth violence to violent content in the media. They say that the content and marketing of movies, T.V. and video games contributes to violent behavior by youth. http://www.msnbc.com/news/437705.asp Britain And Australia Top U.S. In Crime Gun control advocates have always claimed that America should model its gun laws after those of other countries, particularly Britain and Australia. A new international study reveals that those countries are actually far more dangerous than the U.S. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21902 The Media Over Reports Youth Crime With today`s 24 hour news coverage, and the TV producer`s mantra "if it bleeds it leads," the public`s perception of crime can be vastly different than reality. A new report on media coverage and public perception shows that the media over reports crimes committed by youths, particularly crimes committed at school. The result is a public perception that schools are unsafe, when the reality is that youth crime is on the decline. http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A800-2001Apr10.html "Murder rates for children, both as victims and as perpetrators, rose rapidly between 1984 and 1993, but declined thereafter. Virtually all of the rise and all of the subsequent decline were gun related. More specifically, homicides by family members held constant (most cases involving young children being beaten to death), while homicides by acquaintances?the majority gang-related?increased substantially (see Homicide Trends in the United States). " http://web.bryant.edu/~gcarter/home/Pearson%20Issue%20of%20the%20Month/december%202000/youth%20and%20guns.htm i.e. gun related youth homicides are primarily related to drug gang conflicts and the drug war, primarily in black families in the city, which is diametrically opposed to the stereotypes promulgated on this list by various european posters that US gun criminals are redneck whites. A FRASER INSTITUTE OCCASIONAL PAPER Number 71 / November 2003 The Failed Experiment Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales Gary A. Mauser http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/files/FailedExperiment.pdf "Restrictive firearm legislation has failed to reduce violent crime in Australia, Canada, or Great Britain. The policy of confiscating guns has been an expensive failure. Criminal violence has not decreased. Instead, it continues to increase. Unfortunately, policy dictates that the current directions will continue and, more importantly, it will not be examined critically. Only the United States has witnessed such a dramatic drop in criminal violence over the past decade. Perhaps it is time politicians in the Commonwealth reviewed their traditional antipathy to lawfully owned firearms. It is an illusion that gun bans protect the public. No law, no matter how restrictive, can protect us from people who decide to commit violent crimes. Maybe we should crack down on criminals rather than hunters and target shooters?" KIDS & GUNS: EXPLOITING TRAGEDY by Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne Eisen "If one bothers to check the numbers, it becomes apparent that today's youthful offenders are mostly inner-city, minority gang members. In a rare lapse into honesty, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) researchers James Mercy and Mark Rosenberg confirmed this well-kept secret: '... the current understanding of exposure to and use of firearms by school-age children is based on studies of inner-city children.'" http://www.keepandbeararms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=238 Now, you can go on claiming I don't know what I'm talking about, but, once again, you'd be entirely wrong. I can cite references for everything I say, especially when it comes to guns. The reason the guns topic has been taboo on this list is because, when it comes to debating the issue, I have proven time and again to be the best 'gunfighter' in the list, to the point where it is a waste of time, almost, when newbies like yourself who are not aware of the list history come and spout uninformed opinions that are entirely out of touch with the facts. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From charlie at antipope.org Sun Nov 30 22:35:18 2003 From: charlie at antipope.org (Charlie Stross) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:35:18 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns ad nauseum In-Reply-To: <003001c3b77e$3009d960$0200a8c0@etheric> References: <20031130181010.96676.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> <003001c3b77e$3009d960$0200a8c0@etheric> Message-ID: <79BA7D6C-2385-11D8-9B19-000A95B18568@antipope.org> On 30 Nov 2003, at 20:11, R.Coyote wrote: > Hey Charlie > > Firearms are as an extropian topic as martial arts or other personal > safely > enhancing strategies, how that for an asssertion! I disagree :) > Obviously optimal living requires one to recognize and respond to > dangers > in ones environment, its hard to live forever while ignoring your > personal > safety, personal firearms are only one option (for those who are > "allowed") > on a defensive force continuum, down a long list of "if / then > scenarios" You're looking at this on a purely individual level. There are other strategies for enhancing your long-term personal safety by focussing on the environment in which you exist. For example, if you're concerned about your neighbours being violent towards you, you *can* tool up -- but you can equally well move somewhere where there are (a) no neighbours or (b) where levels of person-to-person violence are an order of magnitude or two lower. What I'm trying to say is, guns are a red herring. They're not intrinsically extropian, in fact they're quite the opposite. The topic keeps coming up because of the Libertarian/extropian nexus, as gun ownership is a hot-button issue in the USA among people who think the government is infringing upon their rights. I make no judgement on whether this is the case or not -- as I said, it's an irrelevant distraction. Hmm ... > I would dispose of all (my) guns tomorrow If I had something more > effective > for this option strategy on the defensive force continuum, say like a > star > trek phazer set on stun. Random thought for you: strongly superhuman intelligences (pace Vinge) will, among other things, be vastly better at modelling the internal mental states of merely human level intelligences. I suspect our interactions with such SI's will mostly be friendly and cooperative -- and we'll somehow always find ourselves doing what they want. To coin a metaphor, the torch-and-pitchfork mob advancing on the castle will somehow find themselves buying their pitchforks and torches from that handy roadside stall operated by the friendly green fellow with the stitches around his neck, and when they get to the drawbridge they'll be puzzled to discover that there's a new owner and the monster moved out the day before yesterday (to take over a handly torch-and-pitchfork concession). If you've ever played with a dog or a cat, an animal smart enough (going by the intentional stance) to have a model of the organisms around it, but not smart enough to realise that you are modelling both it *and* it's internal model of you, you'll get the picture. > FWIW I have only recently come to an appreciation of guns after being > strongly anti, on the basis of new evidence I "converted" after a long > discussion with my wife, she illustrated the merits and my ignorance > of the > issue. Nailing my colours to the mast ... as a UK native, I'm somewhat peeved about not being able to legally own a handgun. Learning to shoot was on my to-do list before the Dunblane affair, not for home defense but purely out of interest. I'd strongly support liberalizing the British firearms laws, back to at least the state they were in prior to the 1980's. But if I thought I lived in a place where I *needed* a gun for personal defense, I'd rapidly start looking to move somewhere safer. -- Charlie From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 22:36:01 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:36:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: <024701c3b78f$e9b2c780$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <20031130223601.37049.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dirk Bruere wrote:> > You mean 'don't annoy the gun nuts'? > Like they say in the playground - he started it. Uh, no, Dirk, as I previously documented, and anyone can see from yesterday's posts, you started it. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 30 22:38:10 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 16:38:10 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] life expectancy References: <3FCA6E7F.8060801@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> Message-ID: <01ca01c3b792$a3b40ca0$c5994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "BillK" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 4:26 PM > > > "According to statistics from 1997 to 1999, Canadian women have a life > expectancy of 81.4 years compared with 75.9 years for men. > > When deaths from preventable causes are excluded, however, life > expectancy for women is 73.5 years, slightly less than the average of > 73.9 for men. Bill, I'm still trying to make sense of this. After you exclude the wild and dangerous life style of Canadian women, their life expectancy *drops* from 81.4 years to 73.5? I guess that the latter figure is for the entire living female population, or more exactly that the former figure is for girl babies born between 1997 and 1999, does that sound right? Damien Broderick From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 22:38:20 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:38:20 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns References: <20031130223601.37049.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <028001c3b792$a8042ce0$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Lorrey" To: "Dirk Bruere" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 10:36 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Guns > > --- Dirk Bruere wrote:> > > You mean 'don't annoy the gun nuts'? > > Like they say in the playground - he started it. > > Uh, no, Dirk, as I previously documented, and anyone can see from > yesterday's posts, you started it. On the contrary - he was asserting that there was no right to self defence in the UK, which he later equated with gun ownership. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From dirk at neopax.com Sun Nov 30 22:40:03 2003 From: dirk at neopax.com (Dirk Bruere) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 22:40:03 -0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] again with the gun stats References: <20031130212932.26771.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com><018801c3b78d$be9651e0$c5994a43@texas.net> <01b101c3b791$595fd720$c5994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <028801c3b792$e54cf500$3bb5ff3e@artemis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Damien Broderick" To: "Damien Broderick" ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 10:28 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] again with the gun stats > I wrote hurriedly: > > > < During the 10 months to January 31, there were 939 crimes involving > > firearms in the Metropolitan Police area compared with 322 in the 10 > months > > to the end of January, 2001 - an almost three-fold increase. > > > > > Wow! From 300+ to <1000! Shocking. > > > > Note that these are not [all] deaths. How does this compare with some > other places > > of comparable size? Inner London in 2001: 2,765,975, so maybe roughly > > equivalent of US population would be 94,000 armed crimes > > A tad more tells me: > > http://www.met.police.uk/about/index.htm > > < Today, the Metropolitan Police Service employs 29,278 officers, 11,368 > police staff, 609 traffic wardens and 865 Police Community Support Officers > (PCSOs), and, since the realignment of police boundaries in April 2000, it > covers an area of 620 square miles and a population of 7.2million. > (figures updated: August 2003) > > > So maybe the more accurate comparison with the US data would be an > equivalent of 36,600 armed crimes (cf. 533,000, or roughly one fifteenth), > if I've done my rough and ready add-ups right. > > The Brits on the list will surely know in better detail. And it should be pointed out that an increasing amount of gun crime is attributed to de-activated replicas, which are legal. Chances are, in Britain, that if you face a gun in a crime it is not real. Dirk The Consensus:- The political party for the new millennium http://www.theconsensus.org From mlorrey at yahoo.com Sun Nov 30 22:40:44 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:40:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] The Consensus In-Reply-To: <025d01c3b790$8abb2500$3bb5ff3e@artemis> Message-ID: <20031130224044.55108.qmail@web12902.mail.yahoo.com> --- Dirk Bruere wrote: > > And were rising long before 1981. > BTW, ever wonder why in a society so violent as ours we don't > translate that into your style of murder rate? Did you actually read the rest of the post? ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark "Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..." - Mike Lorrey Do not label me, I am an ism of one... Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ From twodeel at jornada.org Sun Nov 30 22:41:45 2003 From: twodeel at jornada.org (Don Dartfield) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:41:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns In-Reply-To: <20031130223424.82816.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 30 Nov 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > Now, you can go on claiming I don't know what I'm talking about, but, > once again, you'd be entirely wrong. I can cite references for > everything I say, especially when it comes to guns. OK. Provide references for the part about non-gun-owning families typically having Ritalin-using goalless kids. From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Nov 30 23:24:20 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 17:24:20 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Guns References: <20031130223424.82816.qmail@web12903.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <022601c3b799$17ddd880$c5994a43@texas.net> > http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21902 < In the Australian state of Victoria, gun homicides have climbed 300 percent. > Why do people offer such farcical pseudo-data? As I pointed out last time this comical factoid came around, the figures in question were as follows: http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/australiaguns.html Victoria (population circa 5 million) recorded 7 firearm-related homicides in 1996, and 19 firearm-related homicides in 1997. That number has now fallen. 1996 - 7 1997 - 19 (171.4% increase from 1996 to 1997) 1998 - 17 (10.5% decrease from 1997 to 1998). 1999 - 14 (17.6% decrease from 1998 to 1999). ============= Why keep citing this preposterous silliness, Mike? Damien Broderick From bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk Sun Nov 30 23:31:16 2003 From: bill at wkidston.freeserve.co.uk (BillK) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 23:31:16 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] life expectancy Message-ID: <3FCA7DC4.8010605@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk> On Sun Nov 30, 2003 03:38 pm Damien Broderick queried: > > Bill, I'm still trying to make sense of this. After you exclude the > wild and dangerous life style of Canadian women, their life > expectancy *drops* from 81.4 years to 73.5? I guess that the latter > figure is for the entire living female population, or more exactly > that the former figure is for girl babies born between 1997 and 1999, does > that sound right? > Yeh, confusing isn't it? :) Even when you read it in the full report it still seems likely to confuse. First, they say: "Life expectancy at birth is currently approximately 81.4 and 75.9 years for Canadian women and men respectively. When all external preventable causes were excluded, the sex gap in life expectancy was greatly reduced, at an estimated 84.9 and 82.7 years for women and men respectively, indicating that women do not appear to have a large biological survival advantage, but, rather, are at lower risk of preventable deaths". i.e. an increase of 6.8 years for men. These are the numbers the reporter should have quoted for the general public. But the reporter chose to quote from a later paragraph. "Health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) at birth was 70.0 and 66.7 years for men and women (1997-1999). When preventable causes were excluded, HALE actually became slightly lower for women (73.5 years) as compared with men (73.9 years). Health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) is a particular type of health expectancy measure. It incorporates explicit weights to combine discrete health states into a single indicator of the expectation of equivalent years of good health. i.e. it is not TOTAL lifespan, but only expected years in good health. Clear as mud, now? ;) But the point is even truer now. If men could learn to behave themselves, they would live 6.8 years longer. I'll stick to playing tiddlywinks, that's exciting enough for me. BillK